Fujitsu: Just.Say.No.
That's it.
142 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
As soon as I hear the weasel words "...x Million homes...", I ignore the rest as being merely PR flack.
Are they referring to homes heated by gas / coal / oil or electricity or heat pumps?
My gas usage is 6X my electricity (net of solar panel contribution), so what figure are the said PR flacks using? I'd hazard a guess at the most misleading.
And of course, North American houses have an electricity usage - both for heating & aircon - far different from that found elsewhere in the world (maybe Australia should be included here).
At a meeting of a large government department in view of the Palace of Westminster (with armed police guards roaming the area), I left the meeting half way through as the remainder wasn't relevant to me.
I couldn't exit the building as the doors required a key card or similar. Cue flustered senior manglement type, "what are you doing?", to which I replied "I'm trying to leave the building"
I was informed I should have been escorted out, to which I said "I didn't know that!".
So he used his keycard to let me out. Didn't ask for any identification.
It rather seemed as if he didn't really understand what the measures were trying to achieve.
Safe, secure software should be a given and if vendors can't deliver, then it should be up to the law to convince them of the error of their ways.
But that's not enough. I think too little attention is given to the human <---> computer interface. Too often it's confusing / unclear just what the user has to do and pop-ups / splash screens don't help.
My particular beefs are:
1. The printer. Why on earth does it need updates? It works, it prints what I send to it (mostly) and the updates I'm forced to accept seem to do zilch. Unless of course I'm in the USA, where Epson seem to be hell bent on forcing me to accept an "update" that means I've got to by their moverpriced ink. (I did try to turn updates off, but Windows in it's wisdom ignored me.
2. My bank seem to think I'll enjoy seeing a different opening screen every time I go online. I have to plough through different adverts every time. Surely they could at least keep the opening screen consistent & relegate the ads to a sidebar or similar? Such iconsistency is I reckon a clear security risk
Byzantine certainly describes Kaspersky's unsubscribe process. Fortunately I'd changed credit cards so I managed to escape their clutches that way.
No way would I recommend or go back to using them. They fall squarely into my "scum" category"
I volunteer at the local library assisting mobile phone / tablet / laptop users with their many & varied issues.
During lockdown, I was asked to do a telephone session with an elderly lady who was having problems with her laptop.
The session went badly - nothing I suggested worked, the screens seemed all to pot, etc, etc. Eventually in desperation I asked her for the model name & number so I could look it up online. She was unable to do that as it was a hand-me-down machine from "the daughter". So I said when next the daughter sees her would she ask the daughter for the details & I'll see what I can do on the next scheduled call in a weeks time.
Next week arrived & I asked if she had the details of her laptop. Oh yes, daughter says its an iPad laptop...
What possible purpose - other than making their bid for the work sound "sexy" - is there in using AI for pension payments, for deities sake?
Pensions are about as simple as it gets: "Pay X the sum of £Y until he / she / it dies".
It's worked for many years without AI.
And it's Crapita. What possibly could go wrong?
In Newcastle, Barclays closed three city centre branches & opened a new branch in the middle of the main (Nothumberland Street) shopping street.
The Market St branch, now a restaurant, had a couple of sandstone plaques about 60 X 60 cm that must have been there for many years, engraved with "Barclays & Co, Bankers" & the like.
I suggested to them that they might fit in well if they were installed in the lobby of the new branch - would show continuity, etc, etc.
They referred my comments to their complaints section, who never made the promised response.
It's not the amount (at least here in the UK) of energy a house uses in a day, it's the amount of electricity it uses. The quote ignores space heating, which is more than that by a factor of about 4.
It's bad enough when media types, bless their innumerate selves, get confused, but in a technical setting this simply shouldn't happen.
I've spent years ranting about non-metric measurements.
But I've got to admit the American usage of cups in certain recipes is by far easier than using spoons, weigh scales & measurers.
Some recipes are actually more dependent on ratios, not volumes / weights.
e.g. my morning porridge (for two) is one cup of porridge (oatmeal) & two cups of semi-skimmed milk. No scales, etc & washing up simpler.
Otherwise, yup, systems other than metric are simply bonkers. (And far too error-prone).
Every time I read about crypto currency I get more baffled.
Why would I (or anyone else) want to part with real money for an IOU, whether paper or "digital", from someone I don't know, can't find, and have no means of trusting? All I can do with the crypto is swap it for other crypto or hope it's still got some value when I want to change it back to usable currency.
The only use I can see is for nefarious purposes - and even then I'm not so sure. I'd hazard a guess that all the cryptos are under quite close inspection by law enforcement authorities & tax agencies. Surely as soon a swap of real money is made some red flags are set? Especially if our friend blockchain is involved.
Great plane for passengers - it just seems to float into the sky from takeoff. Amazing given it’s huge bulk. I seem to recall the wingtips rise by something like 2 (or is it 4 ?) metres by the time it takes off.
I look forwards to reflying it once this pandemic is past. (Emirates to Dubai means I don’t have to use Heathrow - a holiday bonus in itself).
Seems to me to be a typical swiss cheese error:
* IT didn't delete her access at the right time - unclear why
* Aggrieved (ex-)employee
* Ex-employee decides to abuse IT's error / oversight
What's interesting to me is why she was able to delete stuff. As has been said, the data IS effectively the credit union & should be more or less impossible to delete, if for no other reason than compliance with corporate reporting, taxes, etc. Surely deleting critical data shouldn't be an option for someone apparently fairly low down on the food chain?
Alternatively, $10K is peanuts to most companies, esp in the financial sector, so maybe it was deemed an acceptable risk of doing business?
As updates for Android only run for a couple pf years I'd guess most Androids are insecure by virtue of running an out-of-date OS.
So running a banking app on Android seems a dubious practice at best. Even if the OS is currently up to date, it'll probably be no longer so by the time the device is disposed of.
I sold a property as executor & the solicitor was content to sign on my behalf. However, she did know the family both professionally & personally, so maybe that made a difference.
In the case here, the email shown doesn't seem to carry any of the regular caveats, e.g. "E&OE", "this is an offer","final terms to be agreed",etc, etc, so possibly that influenced the judges thinking.
Whatever, I think this needs to be considered on appeal by a higher court so some clarity based on precedence can be established.
"While 98 per cent of Universal Credit claimants make their claim online there is support for people who need extra help. Staff are on hand to help people to claim and we can give support over the phone or through a home visit where needed." ®
Not up here in the NE of England it isn't. Every week we get new UC claimants without IT skills referred to us by the JobCentre. The dialog seems to be:
"Fill in this 28 screen UC application & we'll consider your claim";
"But I don't have a computer & have never used one";
"Go to the library, they'll sort you out. In the meantime until the claim is completed & approved there's a food bank you might want to visit".
Is that I just can't rely on them to support their offerings.
For example, I used to find both My Tracks & Picasa simple, easy to use & useful. Google's dropped both. Finding suitable replacements has been a bit of a pain (and so far unsuccessful as far as Picasa's concerned).
They have the appearance of being a company long past it's innovative / growth stage & one now simply concentrating on protecting their market & profits. The story about their massive lobbying endeavours supports this. As is the way with most big US corporations, profits (i.e. bonuses) first, the long-term to be looked after by the next wonderkid brought in to save the sinking ship - Kodak anyone?