* Posts by David Neil

601 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Feb 2007

Page:

When civilisation ends, a Xenix box will be running a long-forgotten job somewhere

David Neil

Re: Rolls Royce solution

New shiny, but no-one knows if an external outage will kill it, plus the maintenance costs go nuts once out of the warranty period?

Munich mk2? Germany's Schleswig-Holstein plans to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

David Neil

Re: Good for them!

"For none computer-savvy people (more than likey those offices workers in Schleswig-Hlstein) unix and most linux distros has a way too steep learning curve."

I'd go further, 99% of the office jobs in my bank are done via standard office suite tools and in house systems served via web front ends.

You could swap the underlying OS for most users, keep the wallpaper and they wouldn't care after a week.

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

David Neil

Re: "personal printing"

And even that can need a bit of time and coaxing for newly dropped sprogs.

FYI: If the latest Windows 11 really wants to use Edge, it will use Edge no matter what

David Neil

Re: World is looping

Err, Edge is a Chromium based browser, no IE in sight

Say what you see: Four-letter fun on a late-night support call

David Neil

Re: How to deal with calls

I feel attacked

Windows Subsystem for Android: What's the point?

David Neil

Re: Minimum system requirements

Just an aside, but being an older fart, when did we start thinking about 4GB not being enough memory to run apps?

It just feels weird

Metro Bank techies placed at risk of redundancy, severance terms criticised

David Neil

Re: Moving to Agile working

It's not a marketing fuck up, it's a failure to follow the regulations fuck up.

They are required to send SMS messages that you are in going into an urranged overdraft, and that additional fees may apply.

It's covered under the treating your customers fairly provision.

https://www.choose.co.uk/news/2020/metro-bank-overdraft-alert-refunds/

Amazon to cover 100%* of college* tuition* for hourly employees* in the US

David Neil

Re: Blue badge only

A yellow badge seems to indicate people with between 5-10 years service

A white badge seems to be a temp/seasonal worker.

Total recall: Amazon faces legal action from US consumer protection group over hazardous goods

David Neil

Re: Asbestos pyamas?

If you read the actual filing, they say it doesn't confirm with the regulations, the 'fireproof' claim comes from The Register's writeup

https://www.cpsc.gov/Business--Manufacturing/Business-Education/Business-Guidance/Childrens-Sleepwear-Regulations

How many Brits have deleted life-saving track and trace app from their phones? No idea, junior minister tells MPs

David Neil

Re: Nation Dependent

That maybe what they claim for the NHS Scotland app, but I know for a fact that scanning codes in London around the Scotland/England game didn't work.

A friend installed the NHS England app, scanned in, and when he got home was told to isolate. No such alert on the NHS Scotland app.

Guess which one he uninstalled so he didn't lose money.

When free and open source actually means £6k-£8k per package: Atos's £136m contract with NHS England

David Neil

At the risk of being pedantic...

"If you're an IT manager who hasn't touched anything other than packages of Microsoft stuff in years, then one of the simplest ways to de-risk the process is to outsource it."

Actually the risk still exists, you merely move the financial penalties to another party. The underlying risk will still exist in your organisation, you're just making someone else put their name next to it in return for some money, and hoping that they can do what they say.

Sure, if it breaks badly enough you get some money back, but it's still broken, and you're more than likely relying on your "service partner" to fix it now

David Neil

Support?

I can pretty much guarentee that support will be limited to the run of the installer, anything other than that and you're on your own

When security gets physical: Mossad boss hints at less-than-subtle Stuxnet followup

David Neil

Re: This is terrorism

You can easily read that as the neighbour being Israel

Apple settles with student after authorized repair workers leaked her naked pics to her Facebook page

David Neil

Re: How to tell if you're stupid.

I see the puritanical streak in the US is alive and well TeeCee

Today I shall explain how dual monitors work using the medium of interpretive dance

David Neil

Re: IT managers were always the most difficult

I had an IT manager in Singapore do that.

She actually managed to somehow embed it into a word doc as well, for bonus points

Check the TUPE: Facebook's hire of Bloomsbury AI founders wasn't 'traditional' acquisition - so sacked bod can't claim law was broken

David Neil

Re: "each cofounder had been hired individually – and therefore TUPE didn’t apply"

"Where you're at the top, you take your chances and look out for yourself. Running to the employment benefit larder when you feel you didn't get your fair share is rather pathetic."

He was fully entitled to bring the claim, the law is there for everyone

Apple sued in nightmare case involving teen wrongly accused of shoplifting, driver's permit used by impostor, and unreliable facial-rec tech

David Neil

Did you wilfully misread the article or are you always this ignorant?

The server is down, money is not being made, and you want me to fix what?

David Neil

Re: Constantly, in a fashion.

While working as an Incident manager/Ops manager for a big 4 consultancy, more than once we lost a very large datacentre somewhere in Germany.

Was always fun having to explain that we could only guess at what was actually hosted there as we'd inherited all sorts of shit from various country practices and no bugger had done anything like proper documentation until about 2 years beforehand.

That Salesforce outage: Global DNS downfall started by one engineer trying a quick fix

David Neil

Re: "We have taken action with that particular employee"

Who approved the delivery of change under that emergency procedure?

They also have culpability in approving a change that they didn't understand in terms of impact.

Sometimes you need to look at what drove the behaviour in the first place rather than just blaming the guy at the sharp end.

Guy who wrote women are 'soft, weak, cosseted, naive' lasted about a month at Apple until internal revolt

David Neil

Re: Unfair dismissal

Unlikely, it's an at-will state plus he'd only been there a short time iirc.

A short chat and see you is the most likely outcome.

David Neil

Re: "I'm actually honest, self-deprecating, and funny"

It's snuck in to NHS publications here too.

My wife spotted it in the latest edition of Ready, Steady, Baby issued by the NHS in Scotland

Ransomware victim Colonial Pipeline paid $5m to get oil pumping again, restored from backups anyway – report

David Neil

Re: Gothminister

"...Ukraine, which is controlled by the US."

You keep saying this, Boris

When software depends on a project thanklessly maintained by a random guy in Nebraska, is open source sustainable?

David Neil

Re: "Fix it"...?

So if I decide to use a spreadsheet to do my business forecasting, you suggest if I can't do the same by hand on paper that I should hire a developer just in case?

US declares emergency after ransomware shuts oil pipeline that pumps 100 million gallons a day

David Neil

To be fair to Angela she had one eye on the risk, unfortunately the other eye was 3 streets over and looking in a shop window

SAP to pay $8m in non-prosecution agreement with US authorities over Iran sanction violations

David Neil

Re: Iran sanctions

If you have a division of a company that operates in the US, they will apply penalties to that division if they trade with a sanctioned entity.

First Coinbase, now Basecamp: Should workplaces ban political talk on internal corporate platforms?

David Neil

Re: Sportswear bans in Scotland

It's a bit more nuanced that Protestant/Catholic and more around Native Scots/Irish immigrants.

Dressing it up as sectarian avoids the elephant in the room that it's essentially racism.

Quality control, Soviet style: Here's another fine message you've gotten me into

David Neil

I hate to break it to you, but we now make a similar amount of cars to 1970, so we do still have a motor industry.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/298923/total-number-of-cars-produced-in-the-united-kingdom/

David Neil

Re: Ziebart.

Bloke next door in a West of Scotland mining village bought a white FSO Polonez.

Think it took about 6 years before the rust got so bad it was written off.

17 years since release, iMac G5 finally gets an upgrade after tinkerer shoves M1 Mac Mini inside

David Neil

Re: Dell Too

The Dell capacitor problem was down to a component supplier, industrial espionage and chasing the bottom line

Decentish write up here

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/29/dell-problems-capacitors

Telecoms shack in the middle of Scotland put up for auction at £7,500

David Neil

Mind as you step out the door

Just this week the local police have reported people being caught on that stretch at 120mph+

Rookie's code couldn't have been so terrible that it made a supermarket spontaneously combust... right?

David Neil

The World cup match and the missing laptops

Pretty sure it was the 2010 World Cup, England v Germany match.

A large consultancy beside the River Thames, next to HMS Belfast.

An entire floor got cleaned out of laptops people had in their desk drawers and whatnot - the security guards in the building had all decided to sit in one room and watch the football and didn't notice someone jemmy open the pedestals and walk off with over 20 laptops.

A word to the Wyse: Smoking cigars in the office is very bad for you... and your monitor

David Neil

Sausage casings...

Was doing PC support in a factory that produced sausage casings and suchlike. Cow hides from the abbatoir in one end, collagen food casings out the other.

PC next to the production line needed to be swapped out, bit grimy but not horrific, until we got it back to the IT dungeon they had us in.

It was like the coating on the walls in Aliens, prising the lid open and there was a 'skin' clinging to every inside surface and component.

IT contractor caught charging Uncle Sam expert rates for newbies, agrees to pay back $6m in settlement

David Neil

Re: Working with outsourcers

"You give them a process and an SLA and if they don't meet SLA, then you claw back the funds from the next invoice. "

I've been involved in multiple discussion where that was mooted and then almost immediately ruled out because the vendor were actually bigger than the customer, and the customer didn't want to poison the ongoing relationship.

A couple of low level lads on a helpdesk might get shouted at, but any chance of enforcing a contract?

Nope.

UK tax collector won't probe businesses for compliance with IR35 rules unless there's reason to suspect naughtiness

David Neil

Re: What's that smell?

What about my power company then, or Broadband provider.

It's not as simple as provider of services

Wells Fargo patent troll case has finance world all aquiver so Barclays, TD Bank sign up to Open Invention Network

David Neil

Re: Wonder how this will impact UK banks with no US presence?

So, nothing for transactions in the EU, but a bank with a presence in the US such as HSBC may find themselves afoul of this.

David Neil

Wonder how this will impact UK banks with no US presence?

Do the cheque imaging patents extend to the UK/EU, or are Barclays singing up because they are exposed by US business?

This Brit biz's seven-screen laptop is something to behold

David Neil

Re: I used to require 2 screens, believing nobody could be efficient with 1

Every day's a school day

Web prank horror: Man shot dead while pretending to rob someone at knife-point for a YouTube video

David Neil

Re: This is why they should be banned.

Playing devils advocate, but maybe he was worried abut some tit with a knife trying to rob him?

Alphabet Workers Union hits Google data center contractor with labor complaint: We were banned from discussing wages, say staff

David Neil

Re: Sigh!

if.you.don't.want.to.be.fucked.up.the.arse.by.your.employer.why.do.you.have.an.arsehole

Dropbox basically decimates workforce, COO logs off: Cloud biz promises to be 'more efficient and nimble'

David Neil

Re: Remember Kim DotCom?

relaunched as Mega.NZ in 2013, still ticking along

You only live twice: Once to start the installation, and the other time to finish it off

David Neil

Belfast

1998, sent over from Glasgow to Newtonards to do a network survey on a factory - someone wanted to know length of the cable runs etc.

Pleasant day trip, first time over there so my immediate impression of the bunting was "oh must be a Gala day coming up" - i realised my mistake about 5 seconds later.

Everyone was very nice, lots of people keen to understand what football team I supported and did I know such and such ( I lived in Ayrshire at the time, if you know, you know).

All went well till I got back to Belfast City and my carry on went into the xray. Seems various networking gear and cables, a fluke multimeter, assorted screwdiver sets and the like, all looked a bit odd to the nice man. His even bigger, grumpier friend with the gun across his chest invited me into a side room for a chat with some people in suits.

Reader, my arse collapsed....

Return of the flying car, just when we all need to escape

David Neil

Re: Video Conferencing

I believe that's called Chaturbate

Indonesia’s black-market phone prevention plan bricks a whole bunch of handsets

David Neil

Re: What about roaming?

If it's using IMEI, it won't care about the SIM inside, it's the handset itself that needs to be registered.

Wonderwhat the churn rate is on new handsets with a mobile userbase that big, even 1% would be a pain to update properly.

IBM to spin out Managed Infrastructure Services biz – yes, the one that was subject to all those redundancies

David Neil

Awkward

So EY just dumped a load of their IT people onto IBM as of 1st October, who now find they are being shuffled onto NewCo.

EY who had signed up a nice deal to get IBM cloud services a week before they announced the cull.

Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid mechanical keyboard: Weird, powerful, comfortable ... and did we mention weird?

David Neil

Horses for courses

I know a lot of people swear by the MS Natural 4000, but I found it aggrevated my shoulder pain, by having the mouse so far to the side.

Switching to a 60% kb and a trackball sorted me right out.

.uk registry operator Nominet responds to renewed criticism – by silencing its critics

David Neil

Re: Meh

What's stopping you from doing it?

Financial Reporting Council slaps Autonomy auditor Deloitte with £15m fine over audit 'misconduct'

David Neil

Big fines and reputational damage

What's the bet the plebs in Deloitte find their bonus pool trimmed to a much greater extent than the partners?

Intel NDA blueprints – 20GB of source code, schematics, specs, docs – spill onto web from partners-only vault

David Neil

Re: 10 and 7nm

It's Intel, not TSMC, so unlikely

Capita's bespoke British Army recruiting IT cost military 25k applicants after switch-on

David Neil

Re: When I was young...

They still exist, there is one on Queen St, Glasgow

Page: