Posts by Antron Argaiv

Re: Not that unreasonable

As my son pointed out...his kids won't need to know how to drive a stick, all the cars they drive will be electric.

Re: But it's in the contract

There was a young lady named Bright,

Whose speed was much faster than light.

She departed one day,

In the usual way,

And arrived the previous night.

Re: Ahh, Team building/break the ice exercises....

"Sorry, Windows just rebooted itself, and now my camera won't work. Let me see if I can get it working again. May take a couple of reboots. Back as soon as I can."

Re: Error messages have sometimes improved a bit

ERROR: SOMETHING BAD HAS HAPPENED. SEE YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER.

Linux, as well

Which video device? Which audio device? Did I remember to connect it before starting the app? And did I wait long enough for it to be enumerated?

They're almost all on USB, but I have a headset, a camera (with microphone), motherboard analog audio, etc.

It would be so much easier if the drop down list used the actual device name from USB, instead of the device pathname...

The time when...

...our (married) young and very attractive female intern confided in me that she could never remember which was the male and which was the female connector.

Cue a few seconds of careful thinking, then a very carefully phrased reply on the order of "the male is the pin and the female is the socket", while hoping upon hope that this would prove both a sufficient answer, and insufficient to attract the notice of HR.

She thanked me and continued working, to my infinite relief.

...but I did get a story to tell here...

Re: Wifi-- NEVER!

Same here.

Solved the problem with an Amazon powered USB3 expansion with inbuilt GigE jack. Total $35 or so. Paid for it myself as it was so cheap & IT bods had other more needy clients to service.

USB3 dongle powered the gaming headset I use for Teams ($25, again, self funded because it works for X-Plane as well), the USB external keyboard, and the USB video camera (as the laptop is closed). USB-C and Displayport cables for the dual monitors complete the expansions which make my laptop much more usable at home.

Surprisingly, not a single compatibility problem with any of the above!

Re: Amazon are gonna Amazon

Shortly after my son moved to Hawaii, Amazon delivered a pricey office chair he had not ordered. He called them, but they could not find the order in their database. He asked for a return label, but they wouldn't send one because it wasn't in their database. His card was not charged and the chair did not show on his orders page. Yet, it was sent to his address and had his name on it. And it definitely came from Amazon.

He held onto it for a month. No response. You'd think someone might want their multi-hundred dollar chair. Nope. Eventually, he hit on a solution. Ordered something bulky and cheap from Amazon. When it arrived, he filed to return it. Got the return label. Slapped it on the office chair. Problem solved.

Re: The problem is the human brain ...

I remember a demo in uni where the prof started with 8 bit 8kHz sampled speech and sequentially removed bits from the input. Though noisy, the 1-bit version was still mostly intelligible.

Later, I worked on a voice messaging application for my employer, and we repeated the experiment with similar results. Turns out, the human speech recognition wetware looks mainly at zero crossings.

Yes, but you see, the problem is they *don't* own it.

What they own is a blockchain tagged image of the artwork, which is pretty much identical to the one I have on my PC from doing a right click and "save image". Theirs does, of course, have a blockchain tag permanently associated with it, for which they paid a considerable amount of money, but that means nothing to me.

So, NFTs are perhaps even more ethereal than bitcoin. And much more useless. Unless, of course, you happen to be selling them.

Re: "improper implementation of the password validation algorithm"

Password validation algorithm?

Something no one in the history of programming has ever implemented? Something that should have been implemented once and put into a library and used everywhere?

Has Cisco lost all its competent software people and are the PFYs now running the show?

Re: LibreOffice, for example, is every bit as good as Microsoft Office

An MS response - we changed how the app works, because we thought you'd like it. No backsies, so you better get used to it.

Add one side, add the other side, add both totals togetther, divide by 2, print value under both columns.

What's so hard about this programming stuff?

Re: It should be called Team!

Retired now, but my former company had bought into metrics in a big way. They were "phasing in" performance monitoring software (Hubstaff), which has some wonderful Big Brother features. All of which seem to be based on you sitting in front of a PC and typing.

I'm (was) an electrical engineer, which means that from time to time, I end up at a lab bench or under some piece of equipment, poking and probing with a meter or an oscilloscope to figure out why something isn't working. I'm not sure how Hubstaff would manage to record tnat time. Or, alternatively, the time I spent doodling a circuit diagram on a pad of paper (we old farts do tend to still use those old fashioned pencils).

Teams is fine for what it is, but since it's from Microsoft, there are a few missing pieces, like the ability to categorise and label conversations by topic. It seems to assume you'll remember what a thread was about, simply by knowing who was on it. And, of course, the implicit assumption that all work is done on a computer.

Re: Remember the why

Call me skeptical, but I suspect MS's seemingly more frequent push of Windows n+1 is more related to their goal of gaining as much control over your machine as possible.

Certainly this is true in the home market, where the lucky Windows user is now subjected to avertising along with unblockable "upgrades". I suspect in the not-too-distant future, Windows will require some sort of "secure boot" hardware which will make installation of any other OS on said hardware impossible.

Another fan of GParted. When others fail, it works. I've been using it for years and it has never (knock wood) let me down.

Re: Admin access

...though, sometimes, it takes longer than one would hope.

e.g.: the previous occupant of the US Whit House.

Re: Fun Police

HELP

"There is no help for the helpless."

// Some Data General system or other...I'm thinking a text editor...

Re: I had a physical "DNS" related failure

Hmmm. I might..."might", I say...have been inclined to think, "F it", and leave the cleanup to whoever put the markers there.

But I would have been responsible, and gone in search of a large bottle of isopropanol (making sure it took some time, which may have involved a visit to the local pub) before returning to clean the board.

Re: Risks of testing your systems

...MOST of the time.

:-)

Murphy cannot be fooled.