Posts by Franco

Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off

Re: Two wrongs do not make a right: three lefts do

"Out of sticky notes? How will everyone remember their new passwords?"

Jumping back a few Dabbsy columns, they'll be written on the interactive whiteboard in permanent marker.

Trump silenced online: Facebook, Twitter etc balk at insurrection, shut the door after horse bolts and nearly burns down the stable

Re: And - Darwinism in action

Yeah, Twitter and Facebook took action too late, Mitch McConnell finally denounced Trump after the riot, Kelly Loeffler finally withdrew her complaints about the election after it cost her her own senate seat and will very possibly force her to sell her WNBA team who all vocally oppose her.

No surprise whatsoever that so many are trying to save their own skins now, nor that some, such as Missouri Senator/oxygen thief Josh Hawley (seen saluting the protestors prior to the riot) are clearly making a play for the Trump base's continued support

Lay down your souls to the gods of rock 'n' roll: Conspiracy theorists' 5G 'vaccine' chip schematic is actually for a guitar pedal

If only this would stop the theorists, but they'll say it's a deep state conspiracy to undermine them and move on. Also if they're proper gear heads they'll argue over whether or not an analog or digital pedal is better and what sort of NOS opamps it should have had and how much better it would have sounded it it was made by hand with germanium transistors and carbon resistors.

A volume control on these nutcases might not be the worst idea in the world though......

Server won't boot? Forgot to make that backup? Have no fear, just blame Microsoft

Re: A hard lesson...

"Ageing hardware that hasn't been power-cycled for yonks tends to give up and die when it finally gets turned off and back on."

A few years ago I was doing an SBS 2003 to 2011 migration for a client and well aware of the age of the hardware. The old server needed one reboot to apply the SBS migration settings before I could begin, and of course the RAID controller couldn't take it and the whole thing died.

Ended up with a MacGyvered old desktop with a load of extra drives in it to restore the old server to, purely so I could start the migration again.

Re: Out of the Frying pan, into the Fire?

To be fair Backup Exec was almost an industry standard product, right up until the 2012 version that was quite possibly the worst bit of software I have ever used.

Julian Assange will NOT be extradited to the US over WikiLeaks hacking and spy charges, rules British judge

Re: Suicide

Agreed, Assange cares about nothing but himself. If he were truly a journalist as he claims no one would ever have heard of Chelsea Manning or know how he got the information in the first place.

This won't end anytime soon either. If the next appeal fails he'll then ask for asylum in the UK, because wherever we deport him to (I don't know if the law is country of origin I.e. Sweden or "home" country I.e. Australia) will immediately be asked to extradite him as well.

Surface Laptop Go: Premium feel for a mid-range price, but Microsoft's Apple-like range once meant more than this

Re: Proprietary ports - DIE DIE DIE

Depends on the device Lusty. A lot of Surfaces (E.g. the Books) have a connect port between the keyboard and the screen sections, and you can plug your charger or dock in to them if you want to.

This obviously only applies to those devices with detachable keyboards though, so not the Surfce Laptops.

Re: Proprietary ports - DIE DIE DIE

I agree with you, but I can also see the point of leaving the connect port (for now) because the Surface Docks are VERY expensive but pre-dated mass acceptance of USB-C, so there will be a lot of businesses with lots of them around.

They should be moving to USB-C chargers now though, even if they are leaving the connect ports on the machines for the moment. Plus a lot of early USB-C docks and PSUs left a lot to be desired. HP for example had to supply a dongle for some of their laptops to convert USB-C to USB-A and power because they wouldn't accept power on the USB-C ports.

This product is terrible. Can you deliver it in 20 years’ time when it becomes popular?

Interactive whiteboards were a brilliant idea, but only from a marketing point of view. People rushed to buy them, then never used them, because they were a solution in search of a problem.

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away: Certification renewals to be free ... but annual

Yep. My first exam was the XP client exam. Every no boot scenario, the MS answer was "Use Last Known Good Configuration" which as everyone knows in the real world rarely if ever worked.

Still, at least (in theory) if they are switching to roles based certification they'll stop with teaching stuff no one used in the real world. Examples include WINS (was still in 2012 exams IIRC, despite no one with any sense using it since the 90s), ADRMS (never yet seen a live deployment) ADFS (only used relatively recently with Office 365 but they were massive on it since 2008, and now most people are ditching it in favour of Azure AD Connect SSO)

They've been pushing this for a while. Running workshops all over the country (pre-covid) and onlne now for Azure Fundamentals along with a free voucher for the exam.

Just passed the Azure Fundamentals, sadly got my 2016 MCSA exam to do before the end of January before it retires.

Dutch officials say Donald Trump really did protect his Twitter account with MAGA2020! password

"Should Twitter treat his personal account any differently than they do for any other person account just because of who he is?"

Yes, they already do. In the name of "public interest" his account has been more leniently policed than it would have been when he has posted demonstrably false information.

Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a-trump-loss-means-end-of-twitter-special-treatment

Office 365 (for example) flags quick changes of ASN by a user as suspicious, and if you use a web browser like Opera with a builtin VPN or a service like Hola the ASNs used by those services are blocked by many websites for obvious reasons.

I'm not defending the orange one, and I'm sure the hacker did use some sort of masking of his real internet address, but Twitter need to do a much better job on suspicious activity. It's not like celebrity hacks are a new thing, imagine what someone malicious could have tweeted from that account and the chaos they could have caused.

Leaving aside the orange one's idiocy, why the hell are Twitter not flagging up that suddenly a US registered account got a login from the Netherlands?

I know Trump would ignore it, but it would be a much better look for Twitter if they were flagging suspicious logins and could blame this on a stupid user

What a difference 6 months makes: UK retailer Dixons Carphone returns to profitability on the back of high online sales

Re: Black Friday

Annoyingly for me, it was in stock at my local store (at least according to the website so could have been BS) but I was in Tier 4 in Scotland and only came out of it at 6pm on Black Friday.

Suppose I shouldn't complain, I did eventually at least get my tablet, thousands of people got their orders cancelled.

No darker spot than the PR backlash they're getting currently from Black Friday. Thousands of people getting orders cancelled or (in my case) weeks later than expected.

They had about 2000 negative feedback responses on eBay just for the last month, and that's just on eBay, never mind the orders made directly online.

Tim Cook 'killed' TV project about the one website Apple hates more than The Register

I prefer bikes so I bought a Doo-kahtee.

Re: A badge of honour

Still can't find the original post, but here's a summary

https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/280180/brewdog-bp-darth-vader/

Re: A badge of honour

Saw an interesting example of this recently. Brewdog are very active on social media, and announced a new beer that was either zero-carbon or very low carbon to produce, a claim that was denounced in the comments on LinkedIn by someone who worked for BP. As the Human Torch would say, Flame On!

Can't find the post now unfortunately but it was a very entertaining read, unusually for LinkedIn.

Breaking up big tech can make smartphones interesting again

I've never declined one, possibly it was pulled before it got as far as me.

It WAS a great tablet, the Lenovo arrived yesterday so we'll see how it holds up. Got it for £90 from Currys on black friday, just meant that I had to wait ages to get it. And hope that I got it at all, given what happened with them.

I'm finally replacing my tablet (Google Nexus 7) after 7 years. Even then only replacing it because the battery life is terrible now and half the apps I have on my phone (Nokia 6.1) don't work on the tablet because it's Andoid 6.0.1. Really not seeing any great leaps forward in technology in the old one and the new though (Lenovo M8)

Ad blocking made Google throw its toys out of the pram – and now even more control is being taken from us

Re: Keep on AdBlocking

Ironically most of that is from google for setting them as the default search engine on a new install of Firefox. You are of course free to change that....

Re: Nothing wrong with ads ...

Been saying that for years. The prime example is the Metro. I'm sure pretty much everyone who's ever taken public transport has read it at one time or another and it's entirely ad supported.

However, there is nothing malignant about the Metro's advertising. You ignore it, or you read it, it matters not. On computers, and particularly on mobile devices, advertising is aggressively in your face a lot of the time, autoplays videos so takes from your metered connection, and is often either tracking you or trying to infect you with malware or both. The advertising is also very poorly regulated so it is not uncommon to see adverts for things that children should not be seeing. Vaping products and gambling sites being some of the more benign examples of that.

Right-to-repair warriors seek broader DMCA exemptions to bypass digital locks on the stuff we own

A barrage of lawyers for Apple (and many others) are even as we speak drafting a response about how this law is necessary to protect their intellectual property.

It has absolutely nothing to do with planned obsolescence or ensuring that people have to replace rather than repair, or at the very least use only authorised repairs.

CEST la vie: HMRC admits controversial IR35 status checker returns undecided verdict in nearly 20% of cases

Re: "they haven't got the legal muscle"

I've been arguing that here all along against all the trolls who assume contracting = tax dodging. HMRC's argument about getting more pay for the same job cuts both ways, if you are truly deeming people inside IR35 because they are doing an employees job then they have to get the same rights as an employee as well.

There is so much nuance to IR35 law that it's almost impossible to get right all the time, even the case law handed down from some of the tribunals against broadcasters have stated that and slapped HMRC for the way they apply their own rules

Re: Lies, more lies and made-up stuff

"It's WHY IR35 was introduced!"

It absolutely, categorically IS NOT. IR35 was introduced to stop COMPANIES punting people off payroll and in to contracts to save themselves on NIC costs etc, exactly as the BBC has been doing for years.

Some contractors take the piss, some companies take the piss, but assuming that everyone takes the piss under the guise of "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is beyond heavy handed.

Re: Bitter, bitter, legislation from champagne socialists

Yes, but contractors are (largely) a soft target. This thread, like every one on contractors, will attract "you are all tax dodgers" trolls, a popular argument outside these pages too. HMRC knows this and knows they haven't got the legal muscle to fight Amazon, Google, Apple et al, so they do this so they can say "look, we're doing something" although they often pick TV presenters who DO have the legal muscle to fight back.

Apple aptly calls its wireless over-the-ear headphones the AirPods Max – as in, maximum damage to your wallet

Re: $/£

Thanks for that, I just re-read the headline of that story and forgot that the actual "exchange" rate was a bit steeper than reality. Can't criticise Apple for that though, because all the tech companies change dollar prices to pounds directly instead of applying exchange rates.

"This is exactly the opposite effect that the purchaser was aiming for."

To be honest Geoff, it isn't because you (and I) are not the target demographic for these. Those who haven't drunk the koolaid will think as you and I do, those that have will think jealous thoughts of the people that can afford these or will think about buying them.

This is after all a company that charges £560 just for a set of wheels. https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/16/apple_mac_pro_699_dollar_wheels/

PSA: The 2020 monolith is a dead meme. You can stop putting them up now. Please

Oh, good. In a world where Banksy is a celebrity for hiding his identity, making "thought-provoking" art and generally ripping off Blek le Rat we now have a collective of wannabe hipster arseholes copying him.

Re: So Now

The SCCM sub-reddit is actually pretty good and there are a few others. For the most part though it's memes and porn. Kind of like the rest of the internet TBH.

Running joke: That fitness gadget? It's, er, run out

Funnily enough I have an "Activity Tracker Pulse Fit" mint in box on my desk right now. It was a free gift from Nutanix for attending one of their webinars, but the Nutanix logo didn't survive the single time it's been out of the box as the logo is printed on the strap at the exact point you need to yank it to seperate it from the watch to reach the USB port.

Think I'll stick to my TomTom, who, although they've exited that market, haven't gone Pete Tong at time of writing.

Microsoft engineer thinking ahead? Troubleshooter doc for Active Directory references 'Florida Retirement System'

Hmmm, FRS has been replaced by DFS so I assume that means nowadays the answer is down the back of the sofa.

Acronym overload always makes me think of Robin Williams though. Seeing as the former VP is such a VIP, shouldn't we keep the PC on the QT? Cause if leaks to the VC he could end up MIA and then we'd all be put on KP.

If I pedal faster and feed it spinach, my robot barman might pull more pints

"started receiving the infamous Modern Man catalogue in my favourite new language"

For some reason that gave me flashbacks to the "Innovations" catalogue that used to periodically appear through the door or with some broadsheet newspapers. Glossy pictures of brilliant solutions to problems that didn't exist such as the ioniser to recreate the refreshing air found just after a storm.

Craig Ferguson (Scottish comedian nowadays best known as a late night chat show host in the US) did a sketch on this where James Bond was fitted out for a mission by Q with items from the catalogue, including a "wireless woodland creature".

Monoprix also sounds like a much more fun place to shop than the Co-Op that just opened near my house.

Who knew that hosing a table with copious amounts of cubic metres would trip adult filters?

Re: Inside joke?

"Certainly not worthy of a whole On Call column. The abbreviation for my employer's name ends in SH and we are the IT department, we laugh about it in the office, never heard anyone outside the office catch it..."

There's a tanker firm here in Scotland who's domain name is wemovesh.it, domain redirects to their actual company name.

Calls for 'right to repair' electronics laws grow louder across Europe

Unfortunately as Apple leads so the others shall follow. Many, many people said they would never buy iPhones because they wanted swappable or multiple batteries. Although battery tech has improved massively since those days the vast majority of phones now have embedded batteries. Ditto with removable storage, and to a lesser extent headphone jacks.

It's true of laptops as well, I myself used to look for laptops with easy to upgrade RAM or hard drives but RAM is now often soldered to the board, HDs are glued in etc.

It's almost like replacing the clutch on a car. £50-100 or so part cost (maybe more for some cars), massive labour cost because it's at least gearbox off, maybe engine out in some cases.

It's always DNS, especially when a sysadmin makes a hash of their semicolons

Re: I had an MSX machine

http://www.mkw.me.uk/beebem/

BBC Emulator, works perfectly on Windows 10 and allows me to indulge those occasional desires to play Arcadians or Manic Miner and have "In the Hall of the Mountain King" in 8-bit glory in my head for the next 2 days.

Re: When I were a lad

Ah, the ZX81. Only one mild sneeze away from a crash at any time due to the ridiculous design of the RAM pack. Conclusive proof in fact of the fact that a butterfly flapping it's wings can have terrible effects.

Showing my age but reminds me of the days when getting new games for the BBC Micro meant a trip to John Menzies, the purchase of a magazine, hours of typing and many more hours of swearing and using a magnifying glass to confirm if it was a comma or a full-stop in the line that causes the game to crash.

Not sunshine, moonlight or good times – blame it on the buggy

Straying off topic, any mention of Caeser makes me think of the old world building games Caeser and Caeser II (essentially Sim City set in Roman times). I fondly recall my computer shouting at me periodically "Plebs are needed."

Trump fires cybersecurity boss Chris Krebs for doing his job: Securing the election and telling the truth about it

Re: Impossible position

It's pretty clear that there isn't any evidence and never was, because anyone with any sense would have handed it over before the election to close the alleged loopholes that were being exploited.

There are obviously plus points and minus points to the UK way of doing things over the US way, but the instant transfer of power in the UK along with the civil servants, permanent under-secretaries and infrastructure does at least stop this attempt to scorch the earth before you leave.

I did see that even Mitch McConnell was critical of the decision to brings troops home from Afghanistan, so the tide does seem to be turning within the GOP over what Trump is doing.

Not on your Zoom, not on Teams, not Google Meet, not BlueJeans. WebEx, Skype and Houseparty make us itch. No, not FaceTime, not even Twitch

Re: Yeecall, Big Blue Button, Face Flow, Talky, Nexmo, imo, Whereby, Tox, Linkello

The stupid names thing is very common at the moment. Choclatey for example, or my absolutely most hated company name of all time, https://www.powwownow.co.uk/

As stated in other threads the lid of my laptop is usually closed due to weird resolution issues that I seem to get with dual monitors if it's open, so that's a good excuse for the camera to stay off. Do still get people saying "I can't see you" on calls occasionally though.

[Checks meeting agenda...] Where does it say 'Talk cr*p and waste everyone's time'?

Re: no extra screen?

I always find trying to use multiple monitors as well as the laptop screen is almost impossible. Either the monitors end up in an odd resolution, sometimes even a square monitor aspect ratio, or the laptop screen looks like a 640x480 EGA monitor from the days of playing Sierra Software games where I had to save every 14 seconds to avoid dying horribly or rendering the game impossible to complete.

Don't get me started. I have a very nice Jabra folding headset that gets a firmware update about 3 times a month to try and keep it's hardware buttons working along with the rate of change of Teams. Right now I can join a meeting with the hardware button, but not leave it. Periodically the mute button doesn't work with Teams and I end up in "double mute" having to unmute both Teams and the headset to talk.

BOFH: You might want to sit down for this. Oh, right, you can't. Listen carefully: THIS IS NOT AN IT PROBLEM!

Re: It always surprises me..

I once had a contract in a place where (as someone mentioned above) everything with a plug on it was IT's problem. Fridges, projectors, TVs, Microwaves and even shredders. Due to the last one some bright spark decided that the entire office's stationery was IT's responsibility as well, a problem IT solved by putting the stationery cupboard in the secure room for tape storage. Suddenly the admin team decided it might actually be part of their remit instead...

Microsoft warns against SMS, voice calls for multi-factor authentication: Try something that can't be SIM swapped

Re: Lol...

I like it for online checkout, means not having to create accounts that will mean getting spammed.

They do indeed, I use Microsoft's app as I had it anyway for both personal email and Office 365 business email. Only small drawback is that you have to put in the 6 digit code rather than approving the sign-in via a toast notification, unless I just set it up incorrectly.

123 Bork? Six-day DNS record-edit outage at domain name flinger 123 Reg enrages users

How is 123reg still a thing? At least once a year they have some sort of major incident and yet keep going.

Been using Namesco myself for a while, haven't had any issues and they didn't try and pull a fast one with .uk domains that I never asked for appearing in my renewal unlike some registrars.

Shopping online for Xmas? AI chatbots know whether you want to be naughty or nice

It would be much better if she replied in the style of the old Sierra Software games. IIRC Leisure Suit Larry just said "same to you pal" whereas the less risque games like Space Quest would go with something like "does your mother know you talk like that?"

Or perhaps Life of Brian style would be better. "How shall we fuck off, O Lord?"