* Posts by adam 40

1158 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Oct 2009

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The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

adam 40 Silver badge
Go

Use Thunderbird Instead

It's faster than Ourlook too!

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

adam 40 Silver badge

The worst job (interview) I ever 'ad...

Well I've had a few, but one stands out. After reading the above, it's a bit lame but here goes....

I went to an interview with a S/W and H/W company somewhere in the Midlands. The main interview goes reasonably well, and at the end they hand me a sheet of A4 paper.

On the paper is a list of TLA's, and the final task was to say what each one stands for.

After about 15 of them, they started correcting me here and there, "yes but in our company it means 'Total Concept Paragigm'" or whatever.

After almost an hour and and into the third column my mind started exploding, and when I got to the end I was spent.

I can recommend this as a form of torture! Probably it should be banned by the ICC.

I didn't get the job. Phew!

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: I may have told this one before...

One place I was at (SG), HR brought in psychometric testing, then stopped hiring people with extreme graphs.

Not too long after, the business went downhill, because they were hiring the boring people and rejecting creative types.

Meta seeks ASIC designers for ML accelerators and datacenter SoCs

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: 200k a year, in the bay area, for bleeding edge hardware design

Agreed, $200k/pa is only worth ~£80k here, after you factor in health insurance, long hours, etc etc.

And they want ASIC designers? They need to be paying double that.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

adam 40 Silver badge

EVERYONE - CLICK ON "Expand Comment"!

Best On Call story for some time.

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: Got to love an optimist ...

I had a client who stiffed me for about £1200 while I was working away overseas, doing more than 37.5 hours a week because it was in Taiwan, and on a critical project.

Unknown to me there had been a max hours edict from upper manglement for cost cutting.

My middle manager didn't back me up up on my invoices, and they didn't even pay the 37.5 hours while they disputed.

After several months of reminders I asked them to at least pay the 37.5, and the rest remained in dispute.

5 years later it was apparent I wasn't getting another contract with them, so I took them to small claims for statutory interest. I got awarded £1500. By that time, Motorola had bought them, so had to pay, which was an added bonus! :-)

adam 40 Silver badge
Pint

It's friday - time for beer.

It's friday - time to take my team for beer.

FTFY!

Europe's deepest mine to become Europe's deepest battery

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: Think big!

If you extract too much tidal power they WILL start rubbing together.

adam 40 Silver badge
Alert

Re: Performance isn't exactly great

What sort of moths would attack a mineshaft?

Venus has a quasi-moon and it's just been named 'Zoozve' for a sweet reason

adam 40 Silver badge
Angel

What about

The rings around Mianus?

LockBit shows no remorse for ransomware attack on children's hospital

adam 40 Silver badge
Happy

Re: It's time

At least our agencies have letters _and_ numbers. But, so far, no special characters (apart from Bond, James Bond, of course).

Fujitsu finance chief says sorry for IT giant's role in Post Office Horizon scandal

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: Horizon is an EPOS....

Or "Evidently"

(if you don't cover it up)

adam 40 Silver badge

... and then the election happens, and whoever gets in, fuck all progress for the Postmasters and Postmistresses.

adam 40 Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Meanwhile, back at the Post Office...

If they are going to "rake over the coals" as intimated by this latest article, and revisit previous compensation settled "in full and final settlement" because some of the evidential inputs to the decision making/tribunals/ombudsman were false, perhaps they should also consider funding the revised settlements, at least in part, from recovered bonuses paid out to the board over the same timeframe?

Because it seems to me that these bonuses were awarded based on PO profitability, which would have been less if the proper settlements had been made at the correct time, based on the actual facts, not something made up.

It's all going a bit nuclear!

Standards-obsessed boss ignored one, and suffered all night for his sin

adam 40 Silver badge

At least there wasn't a crash...

Adios, dead zones: Starlink relays SMS in space for unmodified phones on Earth

adam 40 Silver badge
Stop

No no no!

" being able to make an emergency call from the middle of the wilderness" is not what was demonstrated!

They demonstrated send (or receive) SMS which needs maybe 200 bytes of data in a packet (inc overheads).

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: employee of the year

Probably because he was from a "grande ecole"?

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

adam 40 Silver badge

There were 3500 cases, though, probably with lesser amounts.

adam 40 Silver badge

Labour will take the fall

I predicted this, as Horizon was rolled out mostly under Labour, they will take the flack.

In an election year, no less.

adam 40 Silver badge

That was a bit of an own goal.

adam 40 Silver badge

And I bet there are quite a few Civil (!) Servants with gongs who advised on this matter, who will not be handing them back.

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

adam 40 Silver badge
Alert

Re: Plumbosolvency!

Actually now you get platinum from the car exhausts.

Which explains the massive rise in asthma attacks.

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

adam 40 Silver badge
Alert

Keep an Eye on this!

I've been following the story for ~10 years.

I see comments above such as "But the depressing factor in all this (which has been covered by computer weekly, Private Eye and this esteemed publication over the past TEN YEARS) is the way its taken a prime time TV drama to finally force those in charge to get off their collective arses and behave like they are in charge."

NOTE THIS: once the furore about the TV programme has died down, Sunak and the Govt will close ranks again, and we will hear little about this again.

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: How is Fujitsu not in the dock?

In my experience, Japanese business people have a certain sense of integrity, probably higher than any other nationality I've dealt with.

So - they SHOULD have exposed ICL's shortcomings once it became known internally.

To not do so, is a good reason to fall on your sword.

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: How is Fujitsu not in the dock?

The (internal PO) auditors were probably happy with the change in fraud levels, thinking that the IT system was detecting fraud previously hidden in the paper system.

However, they didn't do their jobs properly, in forensically examining them to prove Horizon was not to blame.

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: The possibilities are infinite

It is worse - they were bought in as "expert" witnesses, for which the costs charged to the defendants would have been swingeing.

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: Hot air

Ad I recall, anyone giving evidence to the inquiry gets immunity from prosecution (for what they reveal).

Microsoft floats bringing a text editor back to the CLI

adam 40 Silver badge

You dropped your briefs

Someone mention brief?

Best feature: macros to make it look like vi.

adam 40 Silver badge
Coat

Vi(m) is hardwired into my brain

and it follows me whereever I go, be it linux, android, DOS, whereever.

:w!q

Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making 'inflation-linked' price hikes mid-contract

adam 40 Silver badge

Exactly, in line with Moore's Law and the general increase in bandwidths of the backbone for the same price over time, the prices should be going down 10% a year.

What I do, is to vote with my feet. Usually the next contract for the same b/w is 40-50% cheaper.

Digital memories are disappearing and not even AI or Google can help

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: Not because the search engine fails

Thanks for the tip,

now to find some Italian pr0n. All I need now is an obscure Chinese part number!

World's largest nuclear fusion reactor comes online in Japan

adam 40 Silver badge
Mushroom

TOKAMAK

Russia's enduring prank played on the West.

This architecture will never provide net positive power.

Why aren't we making stellarators instead?

Remember when the Hubble Space Telescope was more punchline than science powerhouse?

adam 40 Silver badge
Big Brother

Some idiot used the spy satellite grinding dimensions - where it focuses a mere 200 miles away.

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

adam 40 Silver badge

I have made One Note of these puns.

Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: GIF pronunciation controversy

Your .zip is flying low.

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: Are you sure, this isn't the plot of an IT Crowd epsiode?

I have so many in my home office/electronics lab that I have started painting the plugs with tipp-ex and writing on what they are connected to.

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

adam 40 Silver badge

Sentence the Robot to death

Strict laws about this would make manufacturers realise that in the long term, safety devices are cheaper.

Suits ignored IT's warnings, so the tech team went for the neck

adam 40 Silver badge

Majorca

Where the water doesn't taste quite like it oughta.

You can blame the desalination plant.

Nexperia sells Newport Wafer Fab to American chipmaker for $177M

adam 40 Silver badge
Thumb Down

Junkets for the MP's

Oh yes, and ARM was happily sold off abroad, validating your points.

GPS leading your phone astray? We can just fix that in code, startup claims

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: And I need this why?

Exactly, GPS I've seen quoted to 10cm accuracy 99.99% of the time.

So the other 0.01% of the time, it propels me/you into the other lane?

On a 10 mile drive, that's once per journey, probably by someone I'm passing.

There is still a long way to go. We need 6*9's availability.

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

adam 40 Silver badge

Fuck 'em

If they jack up, I jack off, to another cheaper provider.

CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: EMACS

However, I think it can emulate Vi.

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: On the flip side of that coin, sometime users are right!

You had to remind me about X11 mode lines!

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: CS students are interesting

Yes I thought it quite amusing how much our local college thought Computer Science was in fact learning how to use Micro$haft products, and doing powerpoint presentations with queasy fades.

adam 40 Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "supposed expert who turned out to be anything but"

Sadly, our IT department forbids us to replace Windoze with Linux. :-(

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: "supposed expert who turned out to be anything but"

It works both ways - I have user settings that are "fixed" by IT doing software updates.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is now available ... if you pre-ordered

adam 40 Silver badge

I'm alright (usb) Jack!

I'll be going there too.

Europe's digital identity system needs patching after can_we_trust_this function call ignored

adam 40 Silver badge

Brexit Benefit

Good job we are out of eIDAS - we wouldn't want town clerks from across Europe access to our sensitive data, would we?

NASA and Boeing try to chase the contrail clouds away

adam 40 Silver badge

There's already been a mass contrail experiment

https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set-the-stage-for-an-unlikely-climate-change-experiment

Want a clean energy transition? Better start putting cash into electrical grid

adam 40 Silver badge

Re: Serious question

A/C for obvious...

obviously skin effect only applies to A.C.

Interconnectors are now generally D.C. (because of capacitance, too).

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