Posts by ComicalEngineer

Microsoft moved the goalposts once. Will Windows 12 bring another shift?

The money stream

Let's be brutally honest, what M$ wants us to do is to pay more for our software.

One of the best ways of doing this is to have a new glittering piece of software with some unique selling point.

Only it's become incredibly difficult to find a new USP for an operating system so M$ are down to tinkering with the interface. LOOK it's got ROUNDED CORNERS on the windows ... or going further back anyone remember the semi-transparent panes?

I will be brutally honest here, as a person who uses their PC 95% for work, no Windows version since 7 has offered me anything new that I need to do my job. The W8 / 8.1 interface experience was truly horrible, but TBH, I'm quite happy with 10 having spent a *happy* half hour turning off the spyware. That said, over the last 5 years I've found myself using Linux Mint more and more for everyday tasks.

My brief experience with 11 has been that the user interface is just plain anoying, especially the adverts and spyware plus the limited taskbar (I want it on the left FFS, how is that difficult?) There are numerous other irritations that prevent me using the OS in the way that I've done for the past 30 years and I'm not going to bother learning a whole new set of ways to work because some half-baked programmer with an IQ near my shoe size in Redmond thinks that hidden scroll bars or some other such idea is cool.

Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu

Start menu?

Can I have the task bar on the left and organise my apps on the start menu like Win 10?

No?

Go forth and reproduce with your Win11, it's still a pile of dog poo as an operating system.

Connect my iphone with all my work and personal contacts to a M$ device?

You'll have to rip the phone from my decomposing corpse.

Commodore OS 3 is the loudest Linux yet

Woo Retro Games Heaven

For old geezers like me, for whom the height of games fun is Galaxians / Frogger / Elite / PacMan / Donkey Kong etc this sounds like fun. I can get a cheap i7 with 16GB of RAM for £100 and connect it up to my existing monitors etc and just use it for gaming.

Giving it serious thought.

Edited to add: Can someone please do a BBC emulator in a similar vein so I can play my 1980s Beebug games?

Teens maintained a mainframe and it went about as well as you'd imagine

Good, but don't do that again

Working for a large company, as I did for 10 years, they were strangely stingy with their IT budget on occasions. I had "inherited" a Compaq III luggable, one of those chunky box shaped things that were portable only between mains wall sockets, and with a little red plasma screen that could be tilted upwards and a small keyboard. This thing had a whole 20MB HDD and a 360k floppy. It did not take long for me to fill the HDD but also 2 boxes of floppies. This was getting tiresome so I requested a new PC.

I think I was one of the heaviest computer users in the group, being in the middle of designing a £12M chemical plant at the time.

Go and see Phil (his real name) over in Block 10, he does the procurement, I was told by one of my colleagues. So off I trotted. Phil's comment was that there was a limit of IIRC £800 on new items, but that we could get round this by ordering a separate system box, monitor and keyboard / mouse. Great! I thought, and a few weeks later received a call that my machine had arrived and the IT team were setting it up for me, but I could pop down and have a look. My mighty Compaq Deskpro 386SX20 with 80MB HDD was sitting on a bench and next to it a full fat IBM tower case PS/2 Model 80 with maths co-processor and graphics card plus a big screen monitor and IIRC 120MB HDD.

Whose is that? I asked. Oh, that's JC's (his real initials and head of our section of 500 people). What does JC do with that? I asked, somewhat puzzled, as JC's leggy blonde Cheshire Set secretary did most of the work for him.

Oh, he reads his emails and writes the odd letter, I was informed.

So yours truly had battled the system to get the minimum spec machine to do the job, and this powerful (for 1992) machine was being used to read emails and type letters! Rank hath it's privileges I was told.

Later on I was given a fairly gentle but firm chewing out by my line mamager for getting my machine by the back door, even though I was in desperate need of it to do my job.

"Don't do that again" I was told, very clearly.

Microsoft tries to knife passwords once and for all - at least for consumers

Trust M$ with my biometric data????

I would not trust M$ with my biometric data OR my phone number.

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Spikes

My late father worked for a large department store which had a mainframe payroll computer. Data input was normally done by a rather well brought up young lady. There were intemittent problems which only occurred when this particular lady operated the terminal.

It turned out that the lady in question had a penchat for silk underwear which was causing static electrical spikes when she moved arond on the chair.

I do not know how they found this out (unfortunately) but I believe that the solution was to ask the lady to change to a different underwear material!

20% discount offer on Windows 365 expires around same time as Windows 10 support

I dispute you definition of "goodies"

"For one, theCloudy Win11 PC has all the microsoft goodies baked in, like Office 365, onedrive, outllook et al. Then there are plans where one machine is associated to up to 3 non-concurrent users (ideal for things like call centers)."

I can hear the horsemen of the apocalypse saddling up just waiting for the first software crash that brings down the system

I would almost rather have my testicles torn off by an angry pit bull than rent Win11 / O365 subscription services from Microsoft.

UK's smaller broadband operators face tough road ahead, consolidation possible

We have a local company "Facto".

Not being an "early adopter" I decided to wait and see how good they were.

Their marketing is like an Indian call centre but with less honesty. The new system reliability is appalling with frequent drop-outs for 1-2 hours.

At one point they were emailing, texting and ringing my mobile and land line numbers several times a week to the point where I threatened them with the Information Commissioners' Office unless they ceased and desisted.

Meanwhile we're staying with out existing provider which, whilst not the fastest, is adequate for our use and reliable.

AI models routinely lie when honesty conflicts with their goals

Brave New world of AI

We are truly entering a Brave New World.

HMRC's Making Tax Digital scheme also made tax more expensive – by £300M

Re: Small business VAT

Exactly my experience. Used to upload figures from my spreadsheet to a web form taking abut 3 minutes, now have to use 3rd party software and go through multiply verification and confirmation steps taking 10 times longer.

My accounts consist of typically 8 - 10 invoices per quarter plus travelling expenses and a few off purchases of stationery etc.

Absolutely disporportionate.

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Re: I'e already said this

Ditto, only because several of my customers are wedded to Word / Excel. I also have one legacy CAD program which will only run under Windows

I tried Ubuntu about 15 years ago but was not overly keen on the new interface and swapped to Mint which I'm still using. I bought a cheap Fujitsu Q520 i7 and put a SSD in it with 8GB of RAM. It does almost everything I need work wise (I'm not a gamer) except for my CAD program.

I have been usingOpen / Libre Office for over 20 years and the current iteration deals with .docx files very well except for some odd formatting. I find Libre Office easier to use than any version of Word after 2003 (I.e those with the bl**dy ribbon) and LO makes smaller and better PDFs than Word. Some of my documents are 100+ pages long with tebles, pictures and drawings imported from my CAD package. LO has taken everything I've thrown at it without any bother.

I am counting down to retirement and currently have less than 18 months until I pull the plug.

Edited to Add that today M$ threw me another full screen "end of support" nag to upgrade a PC that doesn't have a TPM to Win 11.

RIP, Google Privacy Sandbox

Your data = their profit

One particular social media website which I use occasionally (a somewhat niche user interest group) lists over 600 different "partners" all of whom want to suck up my useage data via cookies to give me "targeted advertising". I now run that site in a private window to make sure that the cookies aren't saved. along with an ad blocker.

Small ocean swirls may have an outsized effect on climate, NASA satellite shows

Damned butterflies

Why not blame it on the butterflies?

20 years on, DART still a masterclass in how not to rendezvous in orbit

Need more practice...

After excessive amounts of time firstly programming (in BBC Basic, it was one of the exercises when I learned to program) and then playing a moon lander programme [Lunar Lander?] I bet I could have docked them.

Ditto a lot of time playing "Elite" and docuking my spaceship.

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

We (my previous company) took a bloke on who had taken early retirement from a large company. He had an HND in Electrical Engineering rather than a degree (we normally required a degree in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering) but the company worked for was known for its' exceellent personnel so we took a chance and gave him a contract position. He eventually worked for us for 10 years and was one of our best consultants making more money working for us that he had with his previous work. Despite not previously working in consultancy, he was well liked by all our clients some of whom used to ask for him specifically.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Microsoft blames 'latent code issue' after Windows 11 upgrades sneak past admin blockades

"a recent service change uncovered a latent code issue, causing impact."

So there are lumps of code lying round inside Windows that nobody really knows about or understands? Colour me shocked. Not.

An acquaintance previously worked for M$ and his comment was that Win XP would be reduced in size by 30% and work faster if the programming was more efficient and redundant code and comments were removed. Instead we have more bloated software which is even less efficient and contains a bunch of features that no-one (common users that is) really wants or uses? And an interface that now gets in the way of working instead of facilitating getting on with the job.

Microsoft admits it's not you, Classic Outlook can be a real CPU, power hog sometimes

Welcome to your new software....

Here is your new [insert M$ product name of choice]

It has less functionality and many more bugs than your old software but a NEW SHINY interface and lots of features that a/ you'll never use and b/ don't work properly.

It will also require more keystrokes to do what you did previously, your shortcuts won't work anymore and you'll have to pay a monthly subscription for the pleasure. But it will be AI powered.

Reasons why my daily use computer uses Linux Mint.

PIRG's 'Electronic Waste Graveyard' lists 100+ gadgets dumped after support vanished

Re: Buile it yourself...

SWMBO has has a BoseWave for about 20 years. She often listens to radio 4 in bed (and goes to be earlier than me). The sleep function is brilliant as it gently reduces the volume. Ditto the alarm volume increases gently.

When the need arises the volume can be cranked up so that she can listen to music when e.g. changing the bedclothes or I can when doing jobs around the bedroom and landing.

I'm usually awake before the alarm and tend to use my iphone if I really need an alarm.

Exchange Server 2019 has less than six months of support left in the tank

I can almost hear the screams ...

Any bets that this will be another almighty cock-up when the untested software weith a host of *new features* is unleashed on unsuspecting sys admins?

Never mind the increased license fees.

CIO and digi VP to depart UK retail giant Asda as Walmart divorce woes settle

Asset stripped

Buy the business using debt, pocket massive "consultancy fees" and dividends whilst asset stripping the business.

Build yourself five mansions for all your family on green belt.

What's not to like?

Flog the depreciated business off to some other mug.

We have a large Asda in our local town. It's a depressing place to shop. There is no-one on the tills until after 10am and then usually only 1-2 people regardless of the queues. One member of staff looking after 24 automated tills, usually running round in circles looking harassed.

Fruit & veg mostly short dated and of indifferent quality. Limited selection of bread but piles of offers on multi-pack crisps and fizzy drinks plus the inevitable microwave meals.

Once again a good steady company taken to the cleaners by asset strippers.

In addition, having visited the USA, I would avoid anything Walmart like the plague!

Windows Recovery Environment update fails successfully, says Microsoft

Re: Error messages of a generic useless type

would this DOS error be applicable?

DOS Error 217 Zombie process.

Southern Water uses Capita's AI tool to flush customer complaints

"The introduction of AgentSuite has been an incredibly positive experience for all involved...."

Except the customers.

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

Re: And that's why...

The more sensible option would be to purchase one of the stand alone versions of Office which can be installed locally on the machine. Mostly I run Libre Office but I have Office 2010 installed on my machine just for those customers who need the full .docx compatability.

I bought a number of Office 2010 licenses a few years ago (home & student) when they were 3 licenses for £79.99. I believe that I still have 2 licenses left. This, however, won't matter in 20 months time when I retire.

There are still stand-alone licenses available from some resellers if you hunt round the internet and a well known auction site.

Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after

My previous line manager was an idle sod who made massive mistakes not because he wasn't competent but because he was too lazy to do the job properly. I was given a poison chalice project (think has to be done within a set timeframe and is production critical) where - let's call him "M" handed me details of the project plus a cost spreadsheet. (as you might guess from my name I'm a chemical engineer by training) with the words "I've done all the work for you, all you have to do is get it built".

Sitting down with my oppo mechanical and electrical engineers we went through the design and it became obvious that it wasn't going to work. Not only was it not going to work but the cost spreadsheet was out by 20% of the total project cost just for electrical and instruments (missed out the requirements for additional PLC I/O cards, new rack, new electrical panels etc.)

I was called in by the Works Director to explain what had gone wrong and was greeted by "don't worry, I know whose fault this is, just tell me how M cocked it up this badly".

M was later caught asleep at his desk by the same Works Director and ended up as the only manager reporting to another manager (an effective demotion).

I later came across him working as a contract engineer at another company.

Windows 11 poised to beat 10, mostly because it has to

Won't be upgarding to 11

Not upgrading under any circumstances.

Have tried 11 on SWMBO's machine and utterly hated it. She is fine because she only ever uses email (Thunderbird), Word (2010 home & user edition), browser (Firefox or Chrome) and very occasionally Excel (2010)

Last week I got the full screen nag for Win 11 at boot. Gave me a nasty start as I'd popped out of the room to make a coffee -- until I realised that the machine that happily runs Win 10 dates from 2012 and doesn't have the required TPM module.

I'm pretty happy with Win 10 generally, but equally happy with the legacy machine that I have running Win 7.

Win 11? Stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

Microsoft is redesigning the Windows BSoD to get you back to work ‘as fast as possible’

Never mind...

... the next BSOD will be full inclusive and be rainbow coloured with the words "DON'T PANIC" in big letters

Boeing's Starliner may fly again, pending fixes to literally everything

Re: I have the solution

Tell the bean counters who wanted minimum cost engineering that they'll be riding it next.

Windows 11 roadmap great for knowing what's coming next week. Not so good for next year

Am I alone in thinking ...

that the roadmap is a "highway to Hell"?

AC/DC going through my head:

I'm on the highway to hell

...

And I'm goin' down

All the way

I'm on the highway to hell

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Business partner porn...

About 25 years ago I left a large company and joined a very small company as a partner in the business. My previous company gave me a high spec laptop (it was more powerful than my head of department, but then I used to spend a proportion of my time trying to break the latest version of the company's in-house technical software).

As I only had a tower desktop at home and the new job involved travelling my business partner lent me a laptop which had [allegedly] been used by a *mate of his* who had been doing some marketing for the company.

As the laptop only had a relatively small HDD I decided to give it a spring clean including deleting the internet explorer history, temporary files and any other junk lying around on the drive.

One of the reasons for the lack of space on the drive was the number of porn pictures and links to porn sites in the IE history. Literally thousands of files hiding away on the C drive.

I cleaned them out and mentioned to my colleague that there had been a large number of porn files and links on the machine which I had now removed. He blamed his mate for this and at the time I knew no better.

Later on I found out that my business partner had a serious porn addiction issue and had been using the spare laptop to view porn so that his wife didn't see it. The laptop was kept in the office so that his wife wouldn't accidentally borrow it. I later found links to an organisation who were *helping* him to overcome his addiction. He's not my business partner any more, but that's because of me finding financial irregularities with the accounts [I ended up as a director of the company]. He never did find out that I knew about his porn issue but it put a different light on him.

IBM US cuts may run deeper than feared ‒ and the jobs are heading to India

Re: Train new hires from India ?

Instead of geeing random phone calls "Hello my name is Dave from Microsoft..." I'll be getting random calls "Hello my name is Dave from IBM"?

Both in an Indian accent

Microsoft patches patch that broke USB printing in Windows 11

I seem to remember that the early days of Win 10 updates used to break our printers

every

single

time

And meant that we had to reinstall all three office printers from scratch.

What goes around comes around.

Microsoft's many Outlooks are confusing users – including its own employees

Re: Thanks MS for the job security, at home I use Thunderbird

I ditched Outlook when M$ wanted to charge me £99 for the privilege after my old machine died and was replaced by a new machine running Office 2007.

I currently look after 9 windows machines (wife, kids and my own two laptops & CAD machine) in our household and two Linux Mint PCs. All of them have Thunderbird installed.

I quite liked the older versions of Outlook and was sorry to see it go, but damned if I'm going to fork out £1,000 for an email client.

Brit supermarket finds breaking up is hard to do as Walmart-Asda divorce stretches into fourth year

Our local town has an Asda, Sainsburys (about 200m away from Asda) Lidl & Aldi about 400m each, Tesco 2km and Waitrose (500m).

Asda has no people on the tills before 10am, it's all self scan, and even after 10 a maximum of 2 tills open, regardless of the queues. The cafe serves the worst coffee for miles around and some of the grimmest food. Other than that they stock a range of small electrical goods like phone charger leads I would not even bother entering. Sainsburys is following downhill with customer service although Tesco is somewhat better, and Waitrose is best of all and the cafe does decent coffee.

The Asda staff are largely dispirited and glum and appear only to carry out their functions under duress. I get the feeling that the customers are the ones who are desperately avoiding Aldi & Lidl and can't afford Sainsburys. Th Issas have destroyed Asda and as someone noted above, are now stuck between the cheapo Aldi & Lidl and the now more upmarket Sainsburys and Waitrose. Not that the Issas care as they've just built a five new mega-mansions near Bolton and allegedly have a £5 billion fortune.

Waitrose has by far the best customer service and the best fruit and veg and you can get a free coffee. Despite the higher prices it wins every time over Asda.

NASA's inbox goes orbital after email mishap spams entire space industry

One of my previous employers used Lotus notes as the email client as well as for storing a lot of information in various databases. The company had set up a large number of email lists so that users could email groups without typing in the individual names. These would usually start with (for the UK) ENGGB [engineering GB] followed by a list identifier e.g. ENGGB-ENV would be the UK engineering department environmental team.

Now this was the days of modems and dial-in and the early days of digital camers.

One of our senior managers was overseas (Hong Kong IIRC) when a junior secretary decided to email a photo of a temporary secretary's new baby - she had recently left the company - to the entire commercial department using a Lotus notes emailing list.

Now for those who remember, Notes downloaded emails in date order, so when very senior manager in Hong Kong dialled in to pick up his very important emails, the first on the list was this photo of someone he didn't know and who was no longer with the company. The eventual bill for the dial in was well over £100 ... including the 30 minute download of the photo.

An email was sent out in a very harsh font and the secretary in question was given a severe talking to.

After three weeks of night shifts, very tired techie broke the UK’s phone network

On site at a large UK chemical company (think more than 10,000 UK emloyees). We had to carry out some work on the 11kV feeder to a building which ran from the substation under the roadway to the building.

Instructions to contractor:

"Dig down the first 18" (0.5m) with your JCB and then the rest manually with a shovel. We know that the armoured cable is 3 feet below the surface."

About 30 minutes later: BANG -- heard in our office. and the power went off.

Rapidly followed by Electrical Engineer going vertical take-off and running out of the building.

Need I say that the contractors (insert name of Irish cable contracting company here) had waded in with their JCB and gone straight through the armoured cable.

Microsoft tastes the unexpected consequences of tariffs on time

Regardless of Brexit / Tango Man politics...

The shame of this is that there isn't a credible alternative to M$ for many people and organisations.

M$ can continue to foist inferior bug ridden and insecure software on the masses without any real business or financial penalties.

I use Linux (Mint) in preference to Windows but many of my customers are totally wedded and locked in to M$ products. I'm not getting into the Linux good / Windows Bad / Mac Nasty debate, but even Mac users are running M$ apps.

It would be really nice if there was a genuine alternative to M$ crapware and MacOS prison but the Linux community is too fragmented for many less computer literate users to use as a genuine alternative to Win/MacOS. Most (non-computer savvy) people just want it to work out of the box and do whatever they want whether that be games, word processing, internet surfing or their accounts.

M$ will continue to produce crapware until there is a genuine and cost competitive alternative.

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

On a related but not entirely similar note, one of our team was having issues with a Fortran 77 program on a mainframe (I think it was a Prime from memory but don't ask me which one). The program kept going into an endless loop and eventually being kicked out on time. These were the days when you submitted your job in a queue to be run. the problem was that in busy university term time it could be 12 hours or even the next day when your program results came back. The debugging was also pretty poor and message would read someting like "LOOP AT LOCATION X NOT RESOLVED" or something similar (can't remember the exact words but it wasn't particularly helpful for debugging).

Eventually we managed to get a copy of the program onto a Master 128 with co-processor, BBC Basic being sufficiently like Fortran to get away with only having to change some of the variable names. Within 2 days we had found the issue within the program which was trying to iterate towards a number with an excessive degree of accuracy and the bug reduced the size of the iteration such that it just ran out of time.

I loved my BBC

SAP legacy ERP customers still in no rush to adopt latest platform

'You have to have AI, otherwise you'll not be able to survive.'

"I'm sorry Dave ...."

The real story is that many users find the existing system satisfactory if not perfect and the additional cost of upgrading including the additional training etc is not justified.

Secondly, cloud computing is just your data on someone else's server and if that goes breasts skywards or else gets hacked ...

I completely agree with wanting to keep your data on your own server.

Don't want Copilot app on your Windows 11 machine? Install this official update

I have just spent a *happy* few minutes re-uninstalling Copilot after it got installed by the latest Win10 update.

I don't want Copilot or any other AI [automated idiot] software.

The day I can't think for myself I will stop using a computer.

OK, Google: Are you killing Assistant and replacing it with Gemini?

"Marquardt also promised “a new experience, powered by Gemini, to home devices like speakers, displays and TVs” with details to come “in the next few months.” "

I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that until you've paid your subscription...

Windows 11 adoption picking up speed, but older sibling still ahead

Win 11 offers me nothing that Win10 doesn't have.

In fact, I find the interface obstructive, and the inability to have the taskbar on the left of the screen downright annoying, and the amount of spyware that has to be turned off an intrusion never mind the even more annoying adverts.

There is no killer app or other significant reason to move to 11 other than M$ hammering on about end of support".

October 2025 will be a support massacre for a bunch of Microsoft products

Re: Win 10 will surely get an extension

It won't [IMHO] get an extension.

M$ are pushing hard to get as many mugs, sorry users onto a subscription model as possible. that way M$ have a permanent regular income stream and roll out downgrades sorry security fixes also on a subscription basis. Bear in mind that they will also be able to turn off your copy of win1x when your subscription runs out. Then the price will inevitably creep up.

I am in the fortunate position of being less than 2 years from retirement and my present Win10 machines [laptop and desktop] will last me until then and probably beyond.

M$ will rely on big businesses paying their subscriptions as they are wedded to M$ Word / Excel / PowerPoint and Outlook etc. plus, of course, their Windows annual subscription, plus those less computer savvy individuals who have always used M$ products and don't have the ability or inclination to change, or the knowledge that there are alternatives.

Windows 7 lives! How to keep your favorite fossil running

Many moons ago I bought an Acer 15" laptop from Tesco in early 2009 [it was cheap] for the clildren to do their school homework on. It came with Vista, which was swiftly replaced by Win7 Home Premium. the machine is still chugging on albeit with a larger HDD and a new keyboard (£12 IIRC after a key broke on the original).

I keep it because it runs a piece of legacy 32 bit software that won't run on W10 even under compatability mode.

It is running a version of Libre Office and Office 2010 home and student and works fine if a little slow to boot.

The interface still looks like the original XP and it still does a job.

I don't connect it to the internet often but it has an up to date antivirus and get peridically de-cluttered.

How mega city council's failure to act on Oracle rollout crashed its financial controls

In 1993 I flagged up that a particular (French) contractor could probably not meet their performance guarantees. Now I don't have particularly fluent French but when at a meeting the contractor's body language says that they are lying coupled with much very rapid French (of which I picked up a few words) I was absolutely sure that they were either very nervous or directly lying.

I flagged my concerns up to my line manager (who was also at the meeting) and to the senior project manager in writing and was told that this contractor was the only one who could do the job and in any case, they had just signed a performance guarantee. As a fairly junior cog in the project wheel I was told that we were going with this contractor on cost grounds and that was it.

Once installed it didn't meet the contract performance and a couple of years later and following several visits from the French implementation team a law suit ensued which went in our favour. Nonethelss we were saddled with a system that didn't perform to specification.

Microsoft's updated Windows battery indicator rollout runs out of juice

Re: Rollout stopped because...

[/sarcasm on] ... Microsoft realised that this may actually be a useful addition to W11

... or else M$ programmers actually broke the simple bit of coding that is a battery level indicator [/sarcasm off]

But seriously, only M$ could make a complete hash of a simple piece of code.

My laptop has a simple white icon (on a dark blue background for me) and when it gets down to 10% the screen goes darker and it pops up a warning that the battery is low. How complicated can it be?

Murena kicks Google out of the Pixel Tablet

Give me some more memory plus a SD card slot and a headphone socket and I'll consider it to replace my ageing iPad mini.

The mystery of the rogue HP calculator: 12C or not 12C? That is the question

I worked for a company that issued RPN calculators to all their engineers (HP11c's) Mine was later upgraded to a HP32II but I preferred the landscape format and so I went back to my 11c.

Thankfully I don't need financial functions, only engineering ones. The calculator is in my desk drawer immediately adjecent to my hand.

Data is very valuable, just don't ask us to measure it, leaders say

The big data bubble ....

A lot of the perceived *value* of this data appears to be in directing targeted ads. Most of these targeted are utter garbage.

Example: our microwave recently had a terminal incident with some burning popcorn courtesy of my son's girlfriend. So I went on line looking at microwaves and a couple of days later purchased one from John Lewis (delivered to the local Waitrose for free, saves me a trip and I can do a grocery shop at the same time). For the past two weeks I have been getting adverts for Microwaves on ebay and the online version of outlook to mention but two. How many microwaves do I need? One. How many more am I going to buy as a result of adverts? None.

Time to clear out the cookies and start using DuckDuckGo more.

Less than 10% of adverts are effective. If only the advertisers knew which 10%. (Can't recall who said this originally)

It's the same with most data gathered, only I suspect that 99% of this will be of no use whatsoever.

Some big data is useful, but only in the sense that it can be used statistically e.g. to look at looking at trends for government. Most of the rest is just noise.

DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers

DIMMs? Think bigger

I worked for a large chemical company (about 40k employees). One of our HQ buildings was raided for computer memory in the early 90s. This was done by a building repair contractor who accessed the building on a Saturday. He was, however, caught as all of the turnstiles had working CCTV. Didn't take long to find him.

On a larger scale, our operating sites used a lot of expensive pipework made out of exotic metals such as Monel (nickel / copper alloy) and high grade stainless steels. Again in the ealy 90s, pipes were disappearing in 5m lengths (which they came in). All vehicles were occasionally searched when going on or off site, and all trucks and vans frequently searched. Anything removed from site had to have a removal chit signed by a manager, and these were issued in numerical order from special duplicate pads.

Eventually one of the smarter security guards noticed that some pipes were shoved into the chassis of a truck. Turned out that the driver had discovered that a 5m length of pipe could be slid into the chassis of the truck. bear in mind that stainless steel was about £3,500 per tonne at the time and a length of 2" pipe weighs over 25 kg. The driver was weighing the pipe in at an unscruplous local scrap yard. A criminal conviction was obtained and his employing company lost their site contract.