Posts by Richard Jones 1 1317 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Sep 2009
Do not wish for people dealing with you from the government, I have been trying to sort out probate with the pro-bait clowns. They keep asking about basic entries on the return. It appears they have not the slightest idea of what the form requires or why. Still they work for the 'civil service' so dismal quality is their stock-in-trade.
For critical, 'Do not unplug' equipment, we resorted to using specialised plugs and sockets, that were hard to unplug and into whose sockets, only the specialised plugs could be inserted. That defeated the cleaners and sundry hardware users. It did not stop one determined PC user who inserted his floppy, (with a month's work on it), into an off limits machine that ran processes 24 hours a day. It used the floppy drive as a sneaker-net output device. He tried to run what he wanted, the PC took over, trashed his floppy and overwrote it with the machine's process data.; lesson learned, there was no way back.
I have just moved from 10 to 11. At first, it was a buggy experience, but removal of OEM add-ons cured that and left the PC feeling much more spirited. After several days, I am finding it just like 10, but faster and more responsive. I have not yet explored the new 'features', but teams appears totally pointless and is probably not long for this land.
I should say that everyone's needs, uses and 'mileage' will be different, so their experience will not be the same as mine.
Please try to read page 1 of the fraudster's hand book, "list something for less than anyone else, and hope orders flood in with cash". When it goes pear-shaped, scarper. If some other seller list the item, why should they honour the dodgy dealer's price? What ever happened to Caveat-Emptor, buyer beware?
Or check all those other clocks against your watch, as I and many others do. Mine is a far less than £800 item that has yet to be recharged or have its battery replaced. With a quick to read, correction mentally absorb, analogue display, it is so much faster to read than those slow read digital ones.
I understand your position; as a 76-year-old, with hearing loss and hearing aids that are often better at picking up some background noises, conversations in noisy places might as well be the sound of heavy rain or other white noise. My immune system may also be suffering age effects, just like my hearing. My wife has metastatic cancer, so has been trying to shield as much as frequent health appointments allow. She went down with Covid-19, and I ended up playing nurse and the treatment gofer. Happily, I did not catch the bug, perhaps my immune system is not so bad after all. As a result of concerns, I have avoided crowded places as far as possible, masked up, and accepted that conversations are now for others to have. Now, I much prefer the written word, over whatever is spoken. (This includes watching video or TV where I find the text option essential, though often hilarious, 'London's mare' anyone?.) Yes, it is socially limiting, but so is bad hearing. However, I neither want to spread, nor catch, what has been a killer illness for too many. I have lived through other viral events unscathed, and seen the impacts of such as measles, whooping cough, polio, cancer, et al., that have cost the lives of some that I knew, and crippled others. I will do what I can to avoid that fate befalling other potential victims and keep my conscience clear.
It is impossible to understand why people clutter up a mobile with unwanted junk. I have never purchased anything from a so-called app store, why would I? The stores demonstrated what a pit of vipers they were years ago, with kids running up monstrous bills. So, had a simple rule, never I put any financial instrument near them. I use different cards as the humour takes me, when paying for things, so, sorry no need for juggling with a 'payment system' on a mobile either. My mobile is stuck away in a pocket, unlikely to get dropped, or grabbed, even now, it probably does not know what a sunny day looks like. Do I need new systems to make wasting money easier, why would I?
I have a handset that is said to be 5G ready, but will EE offer 5G where I live and go? They struggle to provide 4G and reliable voice unless I use Wi-Fi. My handset is about a year old, I became fed up with my marginal Motorola after years of use, any slower, and it would have gone backwards. All I did was rare texts and voice calls with an activity monitor thrown in. Now there are verification codes for doing almost everything, Current mobiles get cluttered up with applications to support this disruption, but once a handset can meet that need, what else is there? Mobile internet is dreadful, while I block most of the stupid advertising dross on my desktop, I have not ventured into the wacky-races field of doing so with the mobile. So, every attempt to use the internet is shut down by adverts for junk no one in their right mind could ever want.
That has not been my experience. Our system has been running for about 6 years when I guiltily decided to try to get it serviced for the first time*. It cools in summer and heats in winter, and is left to its own devices. It did ice up once, surprisingly during a cold, almost 100% humidity day. A brief rest and a wash down of the heat exchanger and 30 minutes later it was back to life again. The airflow might have been affected by the clutter of air carried muck, leaves, insects, dust, etc. that had stuck to the heat exchanger.
*Three different dates were agreed with three different service suppliers, only the third came along, the others just disappeared.
I cannot be bothered to venture into the snake pit that is app stores. So, other than a tiny number of Google's own apps, and a few from others such as a bank or two, I have avoided the rip-off activities of the hype vendors. Do they really have anything that would enrich my life more than they cost?
Some interesting points for any business hoping to survive. Diversification needs to apply to both the nature of the business in terms of having a number of profitable lines, but also having a diverse population of customers, or at least those supplying you with cash. Sometimes a low margin, mass product that is sold to huge numbers of different customers can work, if it carries almost all the business overhead. This leave speciality products to carve their own niches while needing to support little mass overhead. A great model for an espionage enterprise, though in such a case the master prize come from the niche product, neat.
Just send all the unwanted, undesired or unaffordable offspring to your nearest Supreme Court, aka Court of your Inferiors, injustice or nearest Republican fool, to raise them until they are gaol age.
One side effect of Roe vs Wade was said to be a reduction in criminals being produced, and hence gaol populations. Be careful what you force on the unwary.
Why do they need to know? After all, if you work on X or are involved in the Y department, there are possible generic hooks they can use. Otherwise, they might use the p0rn method, or the possible side interest, they do not care what they send out. Like the telephone scammers or text scammers who pepper the world with a grape shot of pure rubbish, hoping that the right fish will swallow the lure.
If they sell, X000000 units and one complaint comes in, a cover culture would probably step in and cover out the incident, 'sorry sir a rogue part was included, please have this totally new upgraded item for free. We will cover all reasonable costs of the downtime.'
Such things have happened in the past and no doubt will again.
I have never had an Apple device, unless you count the one I had for a while from my employer. That convinced me I never wanted to buy such a slow, overpriced counter-intuitive device. Having never used one since and having only ever used a mix of Nokia and Android, I have never felt the need to stray. I find the mobile web a total waste of time. Screens filled with advertising dross, terrible presentation, lack of useful information and so on. Every addition to my mobile's capability has been supplied or free, so no one fleeces me from oh so useless 'apps', or should that be craps.
Any 'G' would be great. Reception is perhaps fine, if you have 10,000 neighbours in your sitting room in CityVille, but move a few metres outside that hellhole and the idea of reception becomes a memory. Broadband Wi-Fi can help inside homes, but that is hardly mobile 'G' is it?
Is there any reason to buy an app, ever? I have never seen a need, add in the screen filling dross that plagues mobile web use already, and it appears that someone is actively campaigning to make mobile use unpleasant. I have a free Google application or two, and a few from banks/financial bodies for authentication, and that is about that. There is the point about possible market saturation, is there still something not already, served/abused/blanketed, delete as required?
Drift in with pocket money, plus passbook, deposit both on the counter. Get the updated passbook back. Reverse the process to make a withdrawal.
Now God only knows what it is all about, first find a Post Office if some clown has not arrested everyone! Even now, how many kids run internet access?
Many years ago, the main frame and a few terminals were on our no break UPS. I needed more data collection terminals for in-process data collection and other statical functions. Each time I added more collection points, (PCs) I told the power engineer and never had a response. Finally, I saw him on the stairs and questioned if all was well with his UPS and 'my loads'. A light bulb went off in his face, my activities were close to drawing 50% of the company's power draw. His comment, I wondered where all our power was going, bear in mind I was sharing the power with the mainframe running the company and several other 'useful' functions.
So, to be honest, I doubt that this impacted me. On normal web activity, I block adverts. As for mobile use, the damned adverts made web use too painfully useless. A recent mobile update tried to force every picture to be a video, and even polluted it with some god-awful noise. I deleted the crap, together with what might be the origin, an unwanted video and picture editing crap-app.
So, to be honest, I doubt that this impacted me. On normal web activity, I block adverts. As for mobile use, the damned adverts made web use too painfully useless. A recent mobile update tried to force every picture to be a video, and even polluted it with some god-awful noise. I deleted the crap, together with what might be the origin, an unwanted video and picture editing crap-app.
Batteries are far and away more toxic once they enter a body than almost anything else normally to hand. They can burn through internal organs within days, leading to fatal consequences, as a number of small children's parents have found. A case of look no throat or stomach, it is also incredibly painful.
Anonymous Coward, I went on IPv6 training courses some years ago. It was only slightly tarnished at that point. Time passed and I retired 20 years ago. It is 'interesting' to see that the debate has not really changed, and neither has the deployment of IPv6.
I have forgotten most of what the courses covered, and shredded and composted my notes years ago. I am probably the exception in not keeping things like Facebook open all the time, I am almost certain I am one of the few who has no dealing with Facebook, though my wife has an account, she might look once or twice a week. Perhaps I really wish I could see a useful benefit to me from IPv6, but I suspect that the number of current internet users who are happy not to have to deal with the work of any change over is large. There is no advantage to my, TVs and PVRs, having a direct IP address. I am not even sure they are IPv6 capable, anyway.
Do not get he started on the withdrawal of PSTN services, aka the ones that work at my home. I joked with an ISP person that broadband service probably suffered as I killed a few snails. I suspected they might have been delivering part of my service.
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