Posts by Scott 26

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

I use the term 'slinkies' for the helldesk...

Once , in front of their manager - who laughed and laughed until she clicked to it being HER staff she was laughing at.

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

Re: HP

> The LaserJet printers were the reason HP had a reputation for making solid reliable printers

HW-wise, I agree with you, but there was a point (~PCL5) that the SW side of the equation became a complete nightmare... kernel-mode drivers for a printer?!?!?!?!??! grrrr. No! Bad driver! No biscuit for you.

Have no idea WTF is going on with the Oracle-Walmart TikTok deal? Don’t sweat it, here’s our latest rundown

he really hates that

Court hearing on election security is zoombombed on 9/11 anniversary with porn, swastikas, pics of WTC attacks

Re: What?

@I aint Spartacus: wish I could upvote these counter points more than once..... nice.

Take your pick: 'Hack-proof' blockchain-powered padlock defeated by Bluetooth replay attack or 1kg lump hammer

"Nothing on 1, click on 2.... SMASH!"

QR-code based contact-tracing app brings 'defining moment' for UK’s 'world beating' test and trace system

Kiwiland

We've had something similar for a while (covid app with QR codes at businesses. Scan code, adds an entry to your diary stored locally).

During Lockdown Season 2, it became compulsory for businesses to display a code (our health ministry website has a tool for generating the code, which you can then print off). Some businesses took it a step further - display a code and a manual sign in sheet: Please do one or other or GTFO.

As for supermarkets and other areas with lots of patrons: displaying multiple codes helps. Also, as a nation, generally we have gotten pretty good at scanning: as you approach, you get your phone out, launch the app, start pointing it at the sign. I'm had it register from about 2-3m away.

Q: How does hydrogen turn into a metal? A: Hang on a second, I need to train my AI supercomputer first

Re: Since we can't build a planet

Took this long to have a HHGTTG reference..... for shame el Reg commentards, for shame

Rocket Lab boss Peter Beck talks to The Reg about crap weather, reusing boosters, and taking a trip to Venus

Venus life

So long it's not a blue crystalline structure

As Amazon pulls union-buster job ads, workers describe a 'Mad Max' atmosphere – unsafe, bullying, abusive

Re: Well the

Upvote for the Cave Johnson reference, now I can't not hear it!

'First ever' snap emerges of something vaguely resembling our solar system 300 ly away. We'll take 10 tickets

easy to defeat: the old 'eat the telly' trick!

(icon kinda looks like Vyvan Basterd)

Faxing hell: The cops say they would very much like us to stop calling them all the time

Re: Also works the other way round

I hate wrong numbers who ask "well, what's your number?"

Who gives a fuck what's MY number - clearly not the number you want.... grrrr

Or multiple wrong numbers in a row "I keep pressing redial and I keep getting you".... no shit sherlock.

Now you've done it: Cyber attack targeted Australian brewery 'n' dairy biz Lion

Lion....lol

Lion Red 'popularised' by Once Were Warriors... 'nuff said.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Re: why vital?

pretty easy when you grew up in a small town in the 70s: 2-double-1

Friends were 6-3, but they were on a party line so you could potentially get the whole damn road on a single call... instant and specific tele-conferencing.

Raspberry Pi Foundation serves up an 8GB slice of mini-computing goodness

Wooohooo - this is great news... another RPi to sit in my desk drawer

'I wrote Task Manager': Ex-Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer spills the beans

At least MSFT knew a good thing when they saw it - acquired wininternals, and picked up Mark Russinovich in the process.....

Hooray! It's IT Day! Let's hear it for the lukewarm mugs of dirty water that everyone seems to like so much

Re: The East India Company?

>No, everyone knows that tea was introduced to Britain in Roman times by Asterix.

I was getting worried no-one had made that comment yet.....

Lars Ulrich makes veiled threats of another Metallica album during web chat with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Can't recommend Metal Evolution enough (doco film + doco series) for a great view on how Metal has...err... evolved over the decades.... very cool.

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Re: Switch provider, and refuse payment

have an upvote.... I have to rememebr that one....

Let's get digital... digital: Microsoft Ignite switches to online-only as 2020's tech calendar clears

But how will vendors get my email address by enticing me with a shiny new pen?

Yeah, that Zoom app you're trusting with work chatter? It lives with 'vampires feeding on the blood of human data'

We are using it at a client's (a govt.nz) site (paid, I think), because it is easier to get going with multiple vendors and the client themselves than say teams (we use teams as well).

I just looked at my last Zoom invite and it had this stamped on the bottom: "Use Zoom for meetings which are classified up to a level of 'In Confidence' ONLY"

I assume the client put that in there, it's in a different font to the rest of the invite info.

Icon, just because.

Fancy that: Hacking airliner systems doesn't make them magically fall out of the sky

Re: Wait, you're telling me that the scenario in Die Hard 2 wouldn't work?

Came for the DH2 reference, was not disappointed

Also, in the future airplanes will only need 1 pilot and a dog. The dog is there to make sure the pilot doesn't touch the controls, and the pilot is there to feed the dog.

All that Samsung users found on UK website after weird Find my Mobile push notification was... other people's details

> Here was I thinking it was just me, got it this morning in England on my S9+.

> I thought.....that's weird......so tapped it, it disappeared and then promptly forgot all

> about it until I saw this article, odd.

exactly the same here in Kiwiland

What's the German word for stalling technology rollouts over health fears? Cos that plus 5G equals Switzerland

Re: A few decades of experiments should be enough?

> Just saying that all of this might just be a tad ironic in the big picture.

surely "...a tad ionic...".....????

Super-leaker Snowden punts free PDF* of tell-all NSA book with censored parts about China restored, underlined

Re: But isn't the big guy in America a Russian stooge?

> Name one good thing Trump has done for Russia.

The aqueduct?

It's been one day since Blighty OK'd Huawei for parts of 5G – and US politicians haven't overreacted at all. Wait, what? Surveillance state commies?

Re: It isn't like

'rite, Trig

Beer necessities: US chap registers bevvy as emotional support animal so he can booze on public transport

"I could go a Puppers"

http://www.letterkenny.tv/puppers

Why is a 22GB database containing 56 million US folks' personal details sitting on the open internet using a Chinese IP address? Seriously, why?

Yeah, right

>You would think a company trafficking in

>personal records would care a bit more about being able to be reached.

Who are you, and what have you done with the real Mr Nichols.

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

Re: Paging Dr Kildare

I'm not known for my patients(patience)

Oi, Queenslander who downloaded 26.8TB in June alone – we see you

X-Posted into /r/DataHoarder - see if anyone owns up :)

Bad news: KeyWe Smart Lock is easily bypassed and can't be fixed

Re: Lots of bog-standard locks are easy to bypass.

Love the LPL...!

Can't believe you've got so many down votes!

Vote rigging, election fixing, ballot stuffing: Just another day in the life of a Register reader

Whereas in NZ, this is the extent of Vote Rigging: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/107617165/forest-and-birds-bird-of-the-year-voting-hacked--again

(Icon: only bird available)

Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk

Re: ITeC

Have an upvote for the Sanyo reference - that was our first computer, the 550 IIRC, circa Jan 1986

Came with MSDOS1.25, shortly upgraded to 2.11

School started a "proper" Computer course in 6th form that year, and one of the machines the "exit to DOS" menu option wasn't password protected.... "hey I recognise this" - my teacher just shook his head muttering something about "damn, he knows more than I do and it's only Week 1"

Good times.

A peeling solution to pothole has split the community... Yeah, they stuck a banana tree in it

If Minecraft has taught me anything: you just need bonemeal

Harvard freshman kicked out of US over OTHER people's posts on his social media

Good luck convincing the border cops that you (as a young student) don't use social media... if it were true, they'd never believe you

Latest sneak peek at PowerShell 7 ups the telemetry but... hey... is that an off switch?

Re: Wow

Up to now you had to rely on this trick:

$result = 1..15000 |

ForEach-Object {

"Line $_"

}

becomes

$result = 1..15000 |

& { process {

"Line $_"

}}

for about a 200x increase in speed....

-parallel SHOULD be better

One person's harmless japery can be another's night of LaserJet Lego

Flat LAN set up

In an old flat I lived in ~2002, we had a HPLJ hooked up with a (public facing) webpage front end and webcam... , so you could enter text in the webapge, which would update the display on the HPLJ, and you could see the results via webcam embedded in the webpage

Ahhh... geeks with too much time on their hands :)

Having bank problems? I feel bad for you son: I've got 25 million problems, but a bulk upload ain't one

Re: 10 minutes, not a second more...

>I liked the days when we had real fuses, not resettable circuit breakers. You could take a fuse out and keep it in your pocket to prevent that sort of thing.

Some bugger around here keeps taking the fuses, so I carry a 4" nail in my pocket.

Microsoft goes to great lengths to polish Azure Active Directory's password policies

Re: Interesting

Minute Physics has a great video to why QM Computing is a danger to online encryption, even I was able to follow about a 1/3 of what he was saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvTqbM5Dq4Q

Samsung's tricksy midrange teasers want your flagship catch

"(The J series competes at below $250 in emerging markets)"

sigh - the J5 is my work-supplied phone....

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Does his 7 years in the broom closest count as time served?

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

No MPatHG references?

Science says death metal fans delightful and intelligent people, great at dinner parties

Timely - going to Slayer & Anthrax this weekend....

(Not 'death' metal, I know....)

Even the new generation of metallers coming through are (apparently) 'nice' (eg Alien Weaponry).

As for death/black metal, I was the one in our little group of like-minded individuals to import Grindcrusher (Earache Records compilation record)... I was the only one to like it though - bit too extreme even for Slayer fans

Trying to log into Office 365 right now? It's a coin flip, says Microsoft: Service goes TITSUP as Azure portal wobbles

09:50am is a bit early for beer o'clock, even in MiddleEarth

Couldn't even get through to premier support (via phone) to log a ticket....

Updated our internal ticket with words to the effect of "world+dog ringing MS, I think they know they have a problem"

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

Re: why won't El Reg ever write an article about why major sites still have Google Analytics on them

>I went to do our equiv of that here,

>and the gubbermint site uses

>(and reccomends) a thing called "Poli".

I was on the NZTA site last night and saw that POLi link - I ignored it and paid by CC.

Steamer closets, flying cars, robot boxers, smart-mock-cock ban hypocrisy – yes, it's the worst of CES this year

> Still, cool though. Which clearly separates it from the dull-but-worthy laptops,

> the terrible boxing kits, the mold-inducing clothes rack, and the immoral

> vagina-simulator.

Given the device in question is "for her", shouldn't that last bit be "and the immoral vagina-stimulator."

Amazon robot fingered for bear spray leak that hospitalised 24 staffers

South Park's latest episode (aired last night, NZT) is based around a workplace accident at Amazon....

Spooky.

Baroness Trumpington, former Bletchley Park clerk, dies aged 96

HIGNFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ollDxiMIejI

Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too

Re: Where's Rutherford?

>Where's Rutherford?

>Admittedly he was born in Kiwiland but the father of nuclear physics? How cool a title is that?

upvoted, but he is already on our one hundy kiwi peso note.

Boss helped sysadmin take down horrible client with swift kick to the nether regions

Best of luck, Simon.

You probably don't remember, but one vBeers prior to a Sydney vForum many years ago we met.

Don’t talk to the ATM, young man, it’s just a machine and there’s nobody inside

Re: Staff don’t care about access to the computers

> "Simple", he answered. "Wheelbarrows".

The one I heard was an old man riding a bicycle for years through Checkpoint Charlie.