Posts by Terry 6

How to stop a content filter becoming a career-shortening network component

Re: Keyword filtering

I may well have told this previously, but what teh hell, if I had it's still worth it.

When I did jury service years ago the attempted murder case we were on had to be delayed. The defendant's statement was being sent electronically from the nearby nick*. But it was blocked by the software because said defendant's words included several that were banned. We had to wait while it was rewritten.

*And no, I have no idea why they couldn't have just brought a paper version in. This was never explained to us

Re: implementing Surf control was fun

Maybe I'm being a bit over-imaginative, but I do detect a slight hint of hypocrisy there. It's OK to wok for a sex-trader, but not view their products?

Re: Leviticus 11:9–12 is relevant to both Judaism and Islam …

Or as I had it explained to me by a colleague when we were comparing Kosher and Halal laws (both of us working in a C of E school).

"I can eat shellfish, but not go to the mosque straight afterwards"

Spring tears down math geek t-shirt listing because it dared to mention the trademarked word 'zeta'

Re: Oi - Merkins

But the Greek alphabet isn't.

Et tu, Samsung? Electronics giant accused of quietly switching SSD components

Possibly more egregious practices out there too

My Dell i7 laptop came with a just about adequate sized SSD, which started to fail just out of warranty. I have no idea of the speed or spec beyond actual capacity- which goes for most users outside, I'd assume corporate IT teams and the like.

What I do know is that the Dell PC had been pretty sluggish compared to what I'd expected- until I slapped in the new SSD (Samsung as it goes).

Suddenly it was giving me all the performance I'd expected from an i7 with plenty of RAM.

The DELL came with an SSD described by capacity, just as a HDD would have. Clearly though some beancounter somewhere had decided to cut a few corners.

Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'

More to the point "intuitive" means putting something where you'd go looking for it. Each successive version of Windows seems to make it less likely that anything will be where common sense would lead you to expect it to be.

Re: Eh...

Agreed. Mine are grouped Win 3 style according to function. I want to edit a sequence of video clips? I just look in my "video" group that has Openshot as well as VLC and some camera apps in it (I just looked). My "Office" group has the MS and LibreOffice icons, as well as ABBY and several PDF utilities of one kind or another. I would not be able to actually name any of those PDF programmes, and sometimes I replace one with a better one ( Or just add it). I even have a group called "uninstallers" where I move all the "uninstall <programme name>" links at the same time as I move the substantive link into its new home and delete its original installer created folder (and included cruft).

Re: Soorry, no

It doesn't matter what they call it. As long as there's just one. How it's organised is another matter altogether. Ideally they'd make it intuitive and simple. Being MS they'll make it convoluted and dumb.

Re: Yes, but misses the point........

In such circumstances I kind of suspect that MS has a feeling of fear that they will miss The Next Big Thing, or at least the way forward. Because they so badly missed the coming of the internet and had to struggle to catch up.

Re: They're not selling to us

Exactly this. I haven't bemoaned a function change simply because it annoyed me if I've thought it would be sensible for the users. After all I can switch to OO/Linux at the drop of a hat.Only when I've placed myself as a user and seen that a change would either directly make life difficult for fellow users or prevent me from making it easier for them.

Re: What about the Workers?

In my case- a dozen desktops that had Office (WORD) menus that were customised so that frontline staff who didn't have a lot of time in our admin base could quickly locate the menu items they needed grouped according to where they could expect to find them - and without the distraction of stuff that just cluttered the screen and would not be used anytime before the heat death of the universe.i.e. anything to do with editing assessment reports could be found under Edit. And stuff to be used in creating, I dunno hyper-linked web pages or some such specialised function would be removed or shunted into a "misc stuff" menu. In edge cases where those things would be needed there would have been a reason and a plan and it was easy to restore the required items. I don't think I'd ever needed to though.

Re: Yes, but misses the point........

Actually, all this needs- all it ever needed- was a fixed menu item that says "Show default mode".

I'm sure there will be debate on that one. Lots of people have their favourite/least hated (as applicable) versions. But XP.3 is definitely in the mix. I have a fondness for 98. But then I have a fondness for 3.11 as well.

Re: Eh...

"Some of the things people are complaining about are no longer necessary. Like creating program groups isn't really necessary anymore because you can just search for an app name. "

Bollocks! That only works if you can remember what the dratted thing was called, when you last used it. (Or even that you have a programme for that job or have more than one). And since some programmes may only get used once or twice a year - and many have damn fool names that give no clue to their function for doing a search, I wish you luck with that if you use more than a handful of regular programmes. And even then, being to remember a programme name and being able to instantly recall it are two very different things.

And that's apart from it being a roundabout way to replace clicking on a programme's name from an easily located group.

And saying that some/many/most even people don't need a given function is still a bloody stupid reason to take it away from the remainder who do. Most people don't use libraries or theatres- but that is still a bloody stupid reason to close them.

Yes, but misses the point........

Which is that Microsoft has systematically(?) been removing options from users, even unobtrusive options. This Win 11 Start menu removes a few more.

Just as the Office Ribbon actually removed the option to customise the standard menus, instead leaving users with only the option to completely hide and replace each standard menu with their own versions, built from the ground up.

Re: Telemetry

That's easy. It's reasoning (I use the word loosely) that since almost everyone does their computing on a mobile device, every device that is used should be like a mobile device.

It's the superficial logic of the total idiot. Not far removed from saying that since most people eat in fast food outlets every restaurant has be like MacDonald's.

(And interestingly, in that regard, there's an actual restaurant/take away (Indian) near me that's actually gone down this same route that has obviously failed to make a go of it. While all the other, very successful, places near me now have a pretty sophisticated menu compared to a decade ago these reopened after it had flopped* after many successful and busy years, with a simplified menu that resembled something from the 1980s and this hasn't brought in the punters, pretty obviously, because now they have put in a fastfood restaurant style front counter with the pictures of the food above a la Maccy D etc. and have split their personality to be also a Fried Chicken outlet as well as an Indian Food one. Needless to say I have yet to see anyone waiting at that counter.

*Flopped because it went down hill in terms of service, reliability, cooking etc. not the actual menu

And I'll bet they still haven't fixed the bug in the recycle bin icon.

[If you choose your own custom icon pair you need to edit the registry and add a ...,1 to the end of path name of the new icons- not a job for the average user!].

It's been there since Windows 9x.

Loss of the ability.....

And here lies the core of the issue (imao).

Microsoft still do not seem to have mastered understanding the difference between "don't have to" and "can't".

You don't have to organise your Start menu. You may be OK with an alphabetical mish mash of programmes sorted by whatever name the publisher has chosen to give it ( "Aoemi", "Balabolka", "doPDF", "Fairstars", Dspeech", "Openshot", "VLC", and so on) with added irrelevances such as web links, especially if you are good at remembering the names of the various programs you have. Or you might only use a handful of programmes that you can remember easily, or that just sit on your desktop. Which is fine. But the option to organise the Start menu doesn't stop those people that don't need/want to use it from just ignoring it. However, stopping people who do want to use it from using it is a different matter.

I have no interest in playing tennis- but I have no wish to bulldoze the local tennis courts- they don't do any harm to anyone.......

When everyone else is on vacation, it's time to whip out the tiny screwdrivers

Re: Haynes Manuals

It also isn't true. It's never true. For any step-by-step repair. (Haven't done car stuff since I was a kid so my experience is largely computer stuff a la Dabsy).

There's always;

1.) some section where the dismantling wasn't covered in the guide, but was obvious and maybe even easy to figure out. But when putting it all back together nothing works. There is, at that juncture, three bits that all can only be fitted before the other two. And

2.) some section that is obscured in the diagram ( or just not shown), but is the one where fitting it back the right way is really tricky.

UK government names suppliers on £3.5bn contact centre, shared services, and outsourcing framework

Not in the slightest. They've been slandered, sidelined and blamed so that ideologues can override theor commitment and sense.

Re: You know that thing....

Well, the idea is that it's a corporate lesson,irrespective of who sits in the chair. In theory (huh) lessons learned are meant to be incorporated in the organisational culture. I'd suspect that beancounter culture and MBA culture both think it's their role to overwrite company culture when they arrive in the C suite- even when it's a good one. (Maybe especially when it's a good one).

Re: Deckchairs on the Titanic

Nonsense. There is not one single jot of evidence to suggest that these multitudinous outsourcing calamities have been anything to do with the frontline staffing, except in as much as that the outsourcing companies have attempted to undercut the in-house costs while also funding their own management and "shareholder value" by using fewer staff to do a bare bones version of the same tasks.

In no case that I've ever met or heard about ( and there's been a heck of a lot of both) has the quality of the work been a factor in the decision to outsource. It-has-always-been-about-cost-cutting.

You know that thing....

....after an unmitigated disaster, total fiasco and massive waste of public money with untold numbers of lives being harmed. And they say that " lessons will be learned"?

I'm starting to think, that maybe, just possibly maybe, perhaps, it could be that they don't actually learn any lessons ?

Eh?

Hacking the computer with wirewraps and soldering irons: Just fix the issues as they come up, right?

Re: Computer O Level

Harsh? Back in those days doing all that and only getting a C sounds like something bordering on psychopathic by the exam board.

Live, die, copy-paste, repeat: Everything is recycled now, including ideas

TIVO

HDDs from inside them make useful backup drives. Stick em in a spare bay or USB HDD enclosure.

Woman sues McDonald's for $14 after cheeseburger ad did exactly what it's designed to

Re: If you find a McD cheeseburger irresistible

This kind of food is cheap and tasty (read addictive). For families on a small budget, or with small kids (or both) it's an affordable and easy way to eat out.

It's fine us sneering - I'd prefer to eat only Michelin recommended grub if I could, but for many folks a Maccy D is a treat. Eating Out. No cooking, no washing up afterwards, in a bright cheerful place, rather than a small, crowded flat near the top of an inner city tower block.

The catch here....

Either Maccy D have to accept the complaint, because their advertising works, or defend it because their advertising doesn't work.

Interesting quandary.

Pi calculated to '62.8 trillion digits' with a pair of 32-core AMD Epyc chips, 1TB RAM, 510TB disk space

Re: Random numbers

Being locally CO2 neutral(ish) but performing a bloody pointless task doesn't do anything to help with global CO2 reduction.

It's like saying you're not quite in debt so it's OK to blow a few quid you don't have.

Re: Two questions

Was thinking along those lines. As in how do they know how many they have? I assume the software must index it somehow.

Also, why did they stop there? Run out of storage/computing capacity/coffee?

Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland

Re: Sumption is wrong

The document's title is "Magna Carta", Fair enough.

But when referred to as an object or concept ( as it often is) it's the Magna Carta, or even a Magna Carta - if there was more than one.

Re: It was a lovely day for a coup

Gave you an upvote, but I think the reality is that Social Meeja gives fools support and reinforcements. Or to put it another way, once there was just one idiot per village, but now they're all on Facebook together.

Electrocution? All part of the service, sir!

Re: "The power lead approached the PC..."

Years ago, before education services had corporate IT to install new kit (or indeed networks) I had to receive boxes and connect up new PCs. I was lucky, the first time I did this, to notice that there was a rocker switch with 110/240 positions -and it was worryingly open to accidental pressing- albeit with a bit of pressure, perhaps. It was OK, but after that I always checked new PCs. And on two or three occasions the rocker switch was set to 110. And one was just rather less firm than I'd have liked ( and more prominent). I've experienced the latter on a home PC too - and some other items as well if my memory serves me correctly.

It goes onto my mental list of *stuff that shouldn't ever happen but probably will*.

Q: Post-lockdown, where would I like to go? A: As far away from my own head as possible

Re: New "Thing" at work

As an aside, it's funny how Customer Service Surveys never ask how good their Customer Service Survey was.

Breaking Bad or just a bad breakpoint? That feeling when your predecessor is BASIC

Re: Debug build on a live server?

It's several decades since my semi-amateur coding days. Even then I used two copies of the s/w. One for doing the testing and one that I'd only amend after I'd got the test version working.* These of course were not a on a server. Deployed to stand alone PCs.

*OK yes there were a couple of times when the amended version didn't run properly. I think I always was able to find the typo with a quick look.

LOL ;-) UK govt 2 pay £39m 4 txt msgs 4 less thn 2 yrs

You say that. But in parallel to this Dixons/DSG have just won a court case over their failure to protect public financial and identity data, having paid a chicken feed ICO fine. And anyone who's actually had any dealings with a large company when things go worng knows full well how they avoid any kind of accountability (or even contact). So there is true impunity. Whereas, despite those assertions, most public employees are fully accountable, doing a professional job like anyone else under and accountable to management like anyone else. It's a job. Like anyone else's.

And the mandarins who make these kinds of decisions come out of the same public school+Oxbridge bunch as their politician masters and a good many CEOs. Which route they take seems to be pretty random, and frequently interchangeable. Today's mandarin or Politician is tomorrow's Company Director, or vice versa.

As to that bit about their pensions - an irrelevance that simply identifies a general attitude to public servants. This seems like it's envy. The public servants take a pay and conditions contract like anyone else on recruitment. We can all apply for such jobs, but chose not to ( or were rejected).. Theirs includes a nice pension and decent job security, too, but pretty crap pay. TBH most of us wouldn't want to take that job, even the higher level roles, because we can earn a damned sight more in private employment.

On this most auspicious of days, we ask: How many sysadmins does it take to change a lightbulb?

First and only thought

What crap management systems they must have (had) there. Issues that surely go beyond misuse of IT staff.

What is your greatest weakness? The definitive list of the many kinds of interviewer you will meet in Hell

Re: Interesting previous interviews

There's always the risk, as an interviewer, that you are referencing a subject that the candidate knows tons about, but hasn't recognised that this is what you're asking about. Which might be a valid reason not to hire, but more likely means loss of a potentially knowledgeable/able candidate.

While perhaps being immodest about my strengths by saying this- I got caught by that as a young, almost qualified teacher interviewing for a first post, with the ILEA in 1981.

Interviewer: What can you tell me about the 1981 education act?

I waffled and said nothing of worth. Because The new 1981 Education Act was just the framework I'd been trained under. , To me it was just normality. I should have remembered that it was the 1981 Education Act, but just didn't connect the title to the actual substance. The interviewer didn't ask a probing question - so didn't ever find out that I knew that stuff really well. Didn't do me any harm in the long term and I still ended up working in a senior role within the ILEA until its abolition, but it was stupid interviewing ( by both of us tbh).

I had something of the sort, donkey' years ago. I can't remember much about it - not even where it was for. But someone from a similar education service to mine asked me if I was interested to moving to them. I said I was happy where I was, but I'd consider it. So they asked me to come along and discuss it with them. So I went. I expected a chat, with some inducement to join them ( and I guessed a proper paper application and an interview of some sort would follow to fill the HR requirements, of course). Instead I found myself in something that seemed more like an actual interview, with people I'd had no previous contact with and questions being aimed at me as if I was there to prove myself to them. And if my memory serves me correctly they were expecting me to start a lower grade or a probationary period ( or both). Though I remember very little of it almost 40 years later, I still have the "Why would they do that" surfacing through my fading consciousness from time to time. It just felt very strange.

After staring over the precipice once before, Kent County Council considers £500m in outsourcing again

There may well be some services that can be outsourced with a resultant saving. Small, specialist teams that don't justify a regular department, managers etc. might be a cheaper, more efficient solution. Otherwise the maths don't work - unless the outsourcer is paying staff well below the odds, cutting corners such as not letting staff clean the rooms properly, or failing to provide aspects of the service, ( starting with anything not explicitly in the contract, i.e.everything the council managers don't realise happens, or don't think important) to pay for its own shareholder value and promised savings. The fact that this includes services such as legal, which protect the council from loss of revenue, screwing up or harming the public etc. is lunacy.

BOFH: You say goodbye and I say halon

In real life I've been in many a meeting where it happens the other way around. A clear agreement is reached in about 5 minutes because choice X is clearly the best. Then the next 115 minutes is spent discussing the merits of all the other options until finally we all agree that X is the best choice.

The old New: Windows veteran explains that menu item

Re: "stop moving stuff for the sake of moving it"

I just agreed with Bombastic Bob. What he wrote made sense to me! I'd go for a lie down to recover, but I worry that I'll wake up and amanfrommars will be starting to sound sensible to me too.

Re: It would be more useful if it allowed specifc templates

Yep, me too.

Re: "stop moving stuff for the sake of moving it"

we'd all still be using the Win3.1x Program Manager paradigm.

And that would be a bad thing because.........

Re: Always an important consideration

I kind of got the impression that if you let it Windows was looking for an excuse to search on the internet - and being of a cynical nature that this was because Microsoft wants to move everyone in to a cloud model with subscription software that lives on their cloud servers.

Absolutely. Irfanview by default, for me. Paint.net maybe for a bit of tinkering beyond Irfanview, possibly. And if I want to do something creative/sneaky it's Photoshop Elements. Because I want to use the software that gets my result as quickly and simply as possible.(And never have I felt the need to get full-fat Photoshop or The Gimp - but some people may need those- sometimes- and that would join the hierarchy, I'd assume).

Also... Not every programme provides every function as well as each other. If I just want to crop an image or remove a bit of red-eye then Irfanview is the one I find does that job best. If I'm carefully removing a person from one photo and placing it into another so that it looks realistic then it's Photoshop Elements.

Re: An idea

And again with the exam invigilation. getting the kids to save their document at the start, as soon as they have set up the header (name, exam number etc) in the documents folder is paramount. After that regular saves will be in the right place ( and ctrl-s is ok).

Windows 11: What we like and don't like about Microsoft's operating system so far

Re: 7th generatin intel core processors will not be powerful enough

It seems silly to me that an operating system , not the software that the computer uses it to run, but the OS that runs the software needs to have a more modern spec CPU than the software itself.

And if I'm not making my views clear enough. An OS is there to make programmes run on computers. Computers do not exist to run OSs they exist to run programmes. Within reason an OS needs to be able to run on the PCs people use. So stuff it. If at some point Win10 ceases to be viable on my big 4th gen i7 PC it'll be my excuse to get the family on 'nux.

Re: Bells and broken whistle

Well, for a starter, because I don't have the freedom to do so. Even though ( I'm on El Reg after all) I am a tech enthusiast I don't have a spare machine to tinker with. I do need to use the PC for actually doing stuff.*

And that's a further barrier to ordinary people joining. It's also irrelevant. What's required is listening to ordinary users and finding out what they want in an OS and how they use theirs, rather than either relying of focus groups, who are often self-selecting, or as seems most often the case, MS deciding a direction and trying to herd us all that way.

*(I admit I've wondered whether I could try it in a VM).

Re: Bells and broken whistle

Anyone can join the insider build program. It's not restricted to techies and enthusiasts. There's no IT exam you have to sit before they allow you to join.

Sorry, but that is disingenuous to the point of incomprehension.

By definition, any one who chooses to sign up to that insider thing is not an ordinary user. It's practically a definition of "enthusiast" .

If you weren't an enthusiast why would you do it? The probability of anyone not a techie or an enthusiast choosing to sign up to something like that is vanishingly low, at best. It's irrelevant that they could, it's whether they would.

You * could* mortgage your home and buy a racehorse - you'd have to be very enthusiastic about horse racing to consider actually doing it though.

Troll jailed for 5 years after swatting of Twitter handle owner ends in death

Re: swatting

"SWAT" in this case doesn't actually refer to fly swats.

It's about setting a SWAT team on someone.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT

Which in a country where shoot first and ask later ( if they survive) is a matter of course is pretty significant. Virtually the same as pulling the trigger yourself