Posts by mhoulden

After three weeks of night shifts, very tired techie broke the UK’s phone network

Re: Ditto

From para 109 of the report: "The all-team briefing (paragraph 37) had 123 powerpoint slides, presented by a number of people, which covered health and safety, logistics, how the work should be carried out and the phasing of works on site. Some of the information was important, some less so, some inaccurate and some very poorly presented on the slides. " (my emphasis)

Normally "death by Powerpoint" is a metaphor. In this it could have been literal. How many people would remember anything after about slide #15? When I started having to do presentations at college we were still at the OHPs and transparancies stage. It certainly stops you waffling if you have to create slides by hand with OHP markers. A real challenge would be doing a presentation that gets all the important information across without using any slides.

Re: Ditto

You would hope the rail industry would have learned from it, but there was a near miss just outside Cardiff Central station in 2016: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/report-152017-serious-irregularity-at-cardiff-east-junction. Very similar situation: it was after a long piece of work when people were tired and didn't check things properly. A set of points had been forgotten about and not checked. They were set to move trains onto another line when they should have been secured ready for being removed. The driver of the first train of the day noticed they were set incorrectly and asked the signaller what to do. Just after they spoke a train came along the other line in the opposite direction. When they came to secure the points they found another set that was also unsecured.

If the first driver hadn't been paying attention and stopped his train they would probably have collided. In the end it was just a few minutes of delay while they sorted things out. Apart from one manager working for far longer than he was supposed to they also found briefings had far too many Powerpoint slides that were cluttered and largely irrelevant.

User complained his mouse wasn’t working. But he wasn’t using a mouse

Re: Things are obvious once you know

There used to be strips you could put above your F keys to remind you how to do things in WordPerfect. There's enough key commands in more modern software that I think an updated version would be useful. I wish MS hadn't decided Alt + Space was going to be used to pop up a useless AI rather than bringing up the window control menu as it has been since Windows 1.0x. That comes in very handy if a window disappears off screen.

Britain dusts off idle spectrum for rail and emergency comms

You jest, but I do remember seeing the boot screen for a BBC Master on a platform information screen in the early 90s.

Junior techie rushed off for fun weekend after making a terminal mistake that crashed a client

Re: And one closer to the story here...

One of the things I've picked up from these stories is the importance of making your local desktop look different from the remote one. A different colour at the very least. The sysinternals app BGInfo will add the hostname and other info for you. I think we have it running on most of our remote systems.

Techie cleaned up criminally bad tech support that was probably also an actual crime

I think I've mentioned this before. Someone made a big play about how his computer couldn't be pinched bercause he'd bought an expensive cable lock to attach it to his desk. One night the inevitable happened and all the computers in the office were stolen apart from his. He was less impressed when everyone else got new 486s while he was stuck with his old 286.

Developers feared large chaps carrying baseball bats could come to kneecap their ... test account?

There was a case in the UK where someone sued Tesco because their contaminated fuel damaged his van. He won the case and the court ordered them to pay compensation. When they failed to do so, the court sent bailiffs round to seize the alcohol aisle: https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/driver-sends-bailiffs-to-tesco-over-ps3-400-van-repair-bill-7219320.html.

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico came up with a set of ideas for burying nuclear waste and keeping it secure for over 10,000 years. The message they wanted to put across was as follows:

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

It just needs the Copilot logo adding at the bottom to finish it off.

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

A couple I've been involved with:

"My keyboard keeps typing two characters instead of one!"

"Turn it upside down, shake it, and get rid of the rubbish that's just fallen out of it"

"My Wifi doesn't work!"

"Remove the wire Christmas decoration you put in front of the antenna"

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

The / key to open menus in Lotus 1-2-3 still works in the latest version of Excel. Something else that hasn't changed since Excel 4 (the earliest version I've used) is its weird handling of copy and paste. Sometimes I'll want to paste something multiple times but Excel won't let you. And woe betide you if you try to open two files with the same name.

Choose Your Own Adventure with Microsoft 365

Meanwhile Oracle's licences are based on the adventure game version of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"You have no Java"

Who uses LLM prompt injection attacks IRL? Mostly unscrupulous job seekers, jokesters and trolls

The scenario of an LLM with access to both the internet and a shell with superuser rights seems too naive.

Oh, sweet summer child.

Twitter's former chairman sues X over unpaid options

Re: How does he manage to continue not paying anyone?

It also happened to a branch of Tesco: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/van-man-sends-the-bailiffs-into-456528. Bailiffs seized the alcohol section when Tesco "forgot" to pay someone compensation for contaminated fuel.

ESA's meteorite bricks hit Lego stores, but don't get your wallet out just yet

I've seen how this ends. Do not develop an intelligence dampening core or let an AI with a grudge get anywhere near it under any circumstances.

There is no honor among RAM thieves – but sometimes there is karma

RAM used to be very expensive. In the early 90s we paid something like £60 to upgrade our home 386sx from 2 to 4 MB, All the better to play Doom. That was one of the cheaper upgrades. 128 MB could cost as much as a small car. Theft of RAM was also very common. I heard of one place where someone had a case lock to prevent people from stealing it. He was quite proud of it when burglars stole the RAM from all the machines except his. He wasn't so amused when most of the office had their damaged 286s replaced with 486s, except for his.

Asda IT staff shuffled off to TCS amid messy tech divorce from Walmart

Re: Correction

Assuming they're based at the head office on Great Wilson Street in Leeds, there are plenty of IT companies in walking distance where they could go.

'Little weirdo' shoulder surfer teaches UK cabinet minister a lesson in cybersecurity

There's been more than a few times where politicians have wandered down Downing Street with transparent folders: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/29/brexit-leak-downing-street-papers-caught-on-camera. That's one place where it's pretty much guaranteed to end up on camera.

Google guru roasts useless phishing tests, calls for fire drill-style overhaul

Re: Not sure if it's possible

You can tell which ones are phishing tests because they're the only ones that don't go through the Safelinks thing. I'm not sure what happens if that ever gets compromised.

75% of enterprise coders will use AI helpers by 2028. We didn't say productively

I can imagine the remaining 25% will be trying to switch it off. It's bad enough trying to do something in Power Automate without Copilot popping up all over the place like a hyperactive Clippy.

Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

Re: Microsoft Presentation for the 1989 IBM PS/2 forum

“I have written a PM app that hangs the system (sometimes quite graphically)”

How unlike modern times where a PIM app called Outlook does the same thing. I remember Outlook 97 was particularly bad.

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

/me takes Notes...

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

It's also a Yorkshire term for a pork pie. Probably best to clarify which one you mean when you say you're going to have one for lunch.

Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains

I have vague memories of watching a British Rail departures board screen booting up in the 90s. Forget Windows 3.1x. This one said "Acorn ADFS". I think they had a BBC Master powering it.

Bank's datacenter died after travelling back in time to 1970

Re: Priorities

One time someone asked me to call round to get rid of a virus on his home computer. He didn't have broadband (this was quite a long time ago) so I had a CD full of security patches and virus checkers. It would have been pretty straightforward if he wasn't looking over my shoulder all the time and sounding like Stan Laurel just after he'd pushed Oliver Hardy out of a window. In the end I sent him away by asking him to get me a cup of coffee and not to rush back. By the time he did return I'd removed the virus and was installing the latest service pack. I also had words with him about the importance of backups that you can use on another computer.

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Grand Theft Auto 6 will actually be released rather than just yet another add-on for GTA Online.

Gauss we've all got a fresh option for a gen AI handheld: A Samsung device

Have they realised that hardly anyone uses Bixby?

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

Re: Just a quick manicure.

Memories of running Windows 3.1 on a 2 MB 386 SX. That was slow enough, but when the turbo button was pressed...

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

The Sorceror's Apprentice

Reading the article I had an image of a young Mickey Mouse trying to stop enchanted broomsticks from interfering with the laptop.

Lock-in to legacy code is a thing. Being locked in by legacy code is another thing entirely

A few years ago someone got locked in a branch of Waterstones: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/17/us-tourist-locked-inside-london-waterstones-book-shop. The idea of being locked in a bookshop with only sofas and a café for company proved so popular that they ran a charity sleepover a short while later.

Dialup-era developer writes ChatGPT client for Windows 3.1

There's an "evil" version of Eliza called Azile: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/classics/eliza/azile/0.html. You ask it questions and it finds creative ways to insult you. Needs a classic Mac (or an emulator) to run.

A toast to being in the right place at the right time

Re: He's toast

A few times we had a fire drill while the regional facilities manager was on site. She made extra sure everyone used their swipe card to get back into the building. They could show their ID cards if they didn't have one. Assuming they hadn't put them in their wallet and left it upstairs...

Microsoft finally gets around to supporting rar, gz and tar files in Windows

I'll definitely not hear a bad word said about 7 Zip. WinZip did stuff that Windows built in zip handling didn't but it's otherwise pretty terrible. I know there are command line utilities for tar and gz files but I can never remember the incantations to use them.

Phil Katz died in 2000. If he hadn't published the Zip file format we might be using something else now. I wonder what he'd be doing now if he was still around.

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

One hot summer our office air con broke down. Quite a few people plus a couple of server rooms meant it wasn't the coolest at the best of times. We hired a few temporary free standing coolers to make the place a bit more workable. I was talking to someone next to one of them when it decided to spring a leak. When a cloud of white gas starts coming towards you, you move. A couple of minutes later it tripped the fire alarm and the place was evacuated.

Three seconds of audio could end up costing Fox $500,000

I used to have the Protect and Survive jingle as an SMS alert. Then someone sent me a text when I wasn't expecting it and gave me a nasty surprise. I now have something a bit more neutral.

The FCC had to specify that the EBS test should be spoken with no background music because at least one radio station did it as a catchy jingle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YRHAro1iTE.

If your Start menu or apps are freezing up on Windows, Microsoft has a suggestion

Re: Wait, what?

I remember the Active Desktop they introduced with Internet Explorer 4. Very early way of enabling it.

This can’t be a real bomb threat: You've called a modem, not a phone

Story I read ages ago somewhere...

In among all the university buildings on Oxford Road in Manchester is (or was) the National Computing Centre. It was a fairly high profile building and an occasional target during the Troubles in the 70s and 80s. One day someone went past, dropped a bag full of batteries and wires, and ran off. They called the police and got the bomb squad out. After a brief investigation they were allowed back in. It wasn't someone trying to blow the place up, but a shoplifter who had nicked a load of stuff from Maplin just up the road.

Swatting suspects charged with subverting Ring doorbell cams and calling cops

Of course the culprits deserve punishment. But why is it so easy to get an armed response unit out on the strength of a single phone call in the first place?

WhatsApp boss says no to AI filters policing encrypted chat

Re: Let's start

Whatsapp is already used quite heavily by MPs. Degrading the encryption would make it much easier for their group chats to end up somewhere like Pastebin. But I'm sure they've got nothing to hide from public scrutiny.

Being declared dead is automated, so why is resurrection such a nightmare?

Re: The title is optional

British Gas has form. In 2009 someone sued them for stalking because their billing system wouldn't accept that she didn't have an account with them any more and didn't owe them money: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2009/46.html.

You need to RTFM, but feel free to use your brain too

Re: Zero Knowledge

In the days before the UK had a Freedom of Information Act someone asked the local police force for details of their internal computer systems. They refused. However all the details were available in a job advert that anyone could ask for.

When product names go bad: Microsoft's Raymond Chen on the cringe behind WinCE

Over summer 2000 I had a temp student job where I had access to the Windows API reference. Hungarian notation was quite a big thing back then. A variable with a name like intCounter was no big deal. A Windows structure called shItemID on the other hand...

You want me to do WHAT in that prepaid envelope?

It's a good idea to make sure you don't have any other envelopes around when you're parcelling it up. Don't want to mix it up with Christmas cards or something similar.

Next day delivery a bit of a pain? We have just the thing... nestled deep in the terms and conditions

I've worked in office parks where that would be an understatement.

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: Hanlon's razor

Hugely expensive, increasingly irrelevant as time goes on, and seen with a certain sense of nostalgia by people who didn't experience it? That sounds about right.

First impressions count when the world is taken by surprise by an exciting new (macro) virus

Re: I Love You

I got sent a copy when I was at uni. It seemed a bit odd that a lecturer I didn't know very well would send me a personal note in a Javascript file so I just ignored it. I spoke to a friend about it a bit later. He promptly turned white, ran back to his room and emerged about half an hour later looking pretty shaken. He used email a lot more than I did and he had a lot of contacts.

Flying taxis? That'll be AFTER you've launched light sabres and anti-gravity skateboards

Re: What we need are

Just step in and whoosh you get sucked up and blown out at your destination.

I think that was a service they offered around Kings Cross station in the 80s.

Huygens if true: Dutch police break up bulletproof hosting outfit and kill Mirai botnet

I think it's where the syadmins drink vastly overpriced coffee mixed with butter instead of cream.

Dry patch? Have you considered peppering your flirts with emojis?

Re: Why can't we use emojis when...

Whose personal erotica site is it then? I think we should be told.

Bulb smart meters in England wake up from comas miraculously speaking fluent Welsh

Re: default language

They don't make many, but it's not unusual.

The Windows Terminal turns up in the Microsoft Store

I was disappointed to see it wasn't the old Windows 3.1 Terminal. A version of Macro Recorder that spat out Power Shell scripts would definitely be worth having.