Posts by James Fox

Morgan Stanley hit with $60m penalty for failing to properly decommission old kit hosting 'wealth management' data

Scratches Head

"Office of the Comptroller of the Currency". Comptroller?

It's IPO week and one of Wall Street's own is raising the spectre of a stock market crash

"Seven of the nine big tech businesses at that time – including Cisco, Intel, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Nortel, Lucent, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett Packard"

Hewlett Packard, so good they valued it twice.

Sounds like the black helicopters have come for us. Oh, just another swarm of FAA-approved Amazon delivery drones

+1 for serving that image from an S3 bucket

Tata on trial: Outsourcer 'discriminated' against non-Asian workers, claim American staff

"workers who are not South Asian or ndian"

Is that Big-ndian or Little-ndian?

HP starts slinging Apple hardware, tech support vending machines

Printers?

HP Ink

Is that what the printer division's called now?

Forget cyber crims, it's time to start worrying about GPS jammers – UK.gov report

"In a forward to the long-awaited doc from the Government Office"

Foreword. That is all.

Capgemini: We love our 'flexible, flowing' spade

Hmmm...

With the new logo my eye seems to be drawn right to left (from the spade to the lettering) and with the letters all in one colour I seem to only get as far as 'mini'.

Probably just me.

EU privacy gurus peer at Windows 10, still don't like what they see

Serious question

"a fairly homogenous, and not too-too-literate class"

should that be:

"a fairly homogenous, and not too-tech-literate class"

or:

"a fairly homogenous, and not tutu-literate class

?

HPE to open private London drinking club

Wot no...

... HP Sauce joke?

WinPhone community descends into CANNIBALISM and WOE

I'm actually back on my old 7.8 device whilst waiting for a replacement battery for my 820 and it has really reminded me how complete a vision win 7 was in comparison with what 8.x became. To be fair I can do more with 8.x (like actually open most media files), but I can't help but feel 'if only MS could have kept their nerve...'

Outlook 2013 spurns your old Word and Excel documents

Story?

"Outlook 2013 won’t work with .doc or .exe files for Word 1997 to 2003 and Excel versions 1997 to 2003, the company has revealed in a blog."

That's a pretty vague statement (even allowing for the presumed typo of .exe), isn't it? Does this mean I won't be able to send these files as attachments? Or does it in fact mean that they can't be used for some rather more onscure import/export functions?

If you're going to recycle a blog post then at least try and add something (like clarity) to it.

Standing NEXT to an HTML coder is like standing NEXT TO GOD

MLF Evaluation

I thought the video was titled "MILF evaluation film". I turned out to be much less interesting that I'd hoped.

Microsoft announces ASP.NET zero-day vuln

@mikeHegley

ADO.Net? I thought it was a 0 day vuln, not a -3000 day vuln =) But then I suppose all Microsoft technologies look the same to you.

Brits unleash world's hottest chilli pepper

@Ben Tasker

Dude, you seriously have to tell us what's wrong with you to cause a doctor to prescribe groin-maming chilli cream as a cure. Or have you volunteered for some kind of experiment?

Shareholders sue HP over Hurd's sex scandal probe

@kain preacher

Thanks for clearing that one up.

I've always wondered what moral turpitude was, especially since US immigration puts it up there with genocide.

Thought occurs: If MH was found in breach of a moral turpitude clause, would he ever be able to leave the US for fear of not being allowed back in?

Tories may scrap IR35 tax rules for contractors

Turkey voting for Christmas?

I won't be crying if IR35 is abolished, but I've never been opposed to it in principle either - even though I am a contractor. I became a contractor to carry out varied work for multiple clients and opperate a company that allows my legimate expenses to be met and my income managed according to my discretion, within the current tax regime. All of this is exactly in accordance with IR35. I actually believe that if you want to sit at the same desk for years, manage other staff, be trained by your employer (etc...) then you should be treated like the permanent employee that you clearly might as well be. It's no coincidence that I've always found that those people who seem to want the latter are the bordeline dross that give contractors a bad name and I'm not sure I want to give them any further encouragement.

Also, it's not just the subsitution clause, but it's not so complicated that a couple of hundred quid spent at the beginning of a contrat with a decent IR35 specialist lawyer can't keep things watertight. If you can't reconcile that kind of outlay then you really aren't acting like a business.

Scots unleash world's strongest beer

Hang on...

... you're suppose to drink it in spirit sized measures but it hasn't got a screw cap. That would be spirit sized measures all the way to the end of the bottle in one sitting, then.

Manchester ID staff suffer isolation as new dawn fades

Wacky Jacqui

She's Lost Control

Mines the one with the existentialist paperback in the pocket.

Windows 7 users to fly without SP parachute

GT3?

The only way your Porsche analogy would stand up is if Windows 7 didn't actually exist. I think you mean GT2 as the GT3 is normally aspirated and so not related to the Turbo at all.

God, I love the smell of pedantry in the morning.

Ten years of .NET - Did Microsoft deliver?

God I'm old

Hily Shot! My whole career summed up uin a single article. Never did goet 'round to working out whether C# was any good or not - too busy counting my money. Pray tell, what will I be coding in for the nest ten years?

SQL Server 2008 - from semi-relational to sublime

@Dr Dweeb

Your post is a great critique of SQL Server and I honestly stand behind you on everything you say - I must have encountered most of the things you pick out at the most inconvenient moments myself.

However, will that stop me betting my mortage (in a very real sense) on the continuing success of the Microsoft product? Not a chance. Long live the marketing dollar.

New iPod nano torn to pieces

A title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits

If I shouldn't try this at home, can I take it to the pub and have a go there?

Zombie plague analysed by Canadian maths prof

Exactly...

... the sort of research that should be encouraged, no, made mandatory. I can only assume that the other guys in Smith?'s team are solving equally pressing questions such as "In a fight between King Kong and Godzilla...."

Apollo 11 - The Owners' Workshop Manual

Me Want

That is all.

Fair cop, this posting was just an excuse to say Paris - because she knows about re-entry procedures.

Robo-fish to hunt pollution in Spanish seas

Slight Problem

Isn't a 1.5m long carp going to look pretty appetising to whatever it is that eats carp in the local area? Seems quite expensive to end up as shark food.

Drunken BOFH wreaks $1.2m in Oz damage

130 Experts

I can only assume there wasn't a single computer literate Australian human not employed on this project.

I used to work in Australian IT and I don't think the number of experts was necessarily reduced when I left.

BA edits Branson from Casino Royale

Not So...

I was on a BA flight to San Francisco this week and Richard Branson was still in the film. Shame BA couldn't edit the plot into better shape.