Posts by cosymart

What does London's number 65 bus have to hide? OS caught on camera setting fire to '22,000 illegal file(s)!!'

Too Busy

Still looking for the "Any Key" The old ones are best :-)

The bork on the sign goes round and round, round and round, round and round

Re: 256GB for a sign!

Probably a very good salesman "You really do need this much memory, cheap compared to the wraparound LCDs".

So you really didn't touch the settings at all, huh? Well, this print-out from my secret backup says otherwise

Re: Fear the

It seems The About has been updated by Chris Williams and both Dabbsy and Verity Stob are now ex-register employees :-(

Re: Fear the

According to the About bit he is still working here but there again this was last updated in 2019....

"About The Register

The Register is a leading global online tech publication, with more than nine million monthly unique browsers worldwide. The core audiences are the UK and US, accounting for more than six million. The bulk of the remaining readership are located in Canada, Australia and northern Europe.

Starting out in London in 1994 as an occasional email newsletter, The Register began publishing online daily in 1998. Today The Register is headquartered in London, San Francisco and Sydney and the sun never sets on its reporting team around the world.

Many Register readers are technology professionals but we're also read by technology enthusiasts, shed boffins, policy wonks and science fans around the globe. We cover hardware, software, AI, tech services and more, but The Register is also known for its "off-duty" articles, on science, tech culture, planes, trains, bridges and other feats of engineering. We also carry cult columnists such as the fiendish sysadmin BOFH, programming goddess Verity Stob and Something for the Weekend's Alistair Dabbs.

The Register and all its contents are copyright © 1998-2019, Situation Publishing. All rights reserved. All third-party trademarks are recognised. ®"

If Daddy doesn't want me to touch the buttons, why did they make them so colourful?

Re: I'll just leave this here.

Hands up all those who just had to look at the next definition :-)

Microsoft blocks Trend Micro code at center of driver 'cheatware' storm from Windows 10, rootkit detector product pulled from site

Re: Trend Micro

Presume you work for a company that goes for cheap rather than effective :-(

Far-right leader walks free from court after conviction for refusing to hand his phone passcode over to police

Was Miranda Read Her Rights?

OK I know that Miranda Rights are a USA thing but I found it amusing :-)

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

1st Computer

I had the task of putting together a procurement request for our very first office PC as one of our suppliers was now setting up an online ordering system. Our boss wanted to be in the forefront of this brave new world so muggins was summoned to the enclave and greeted with the comment "you've got one of these things at home we need one here, get it costed out" List duly drawn up I wondered back in to the enclave and the list was perused prior to approval. "what's this mouse thing?" (From memory the total cost was £2,000 and the mouse £15) You try and explain the function of a mouse to someone who has never seen one or seen anything other than a dumb terminal. I must have been convincing because the purchase was approved :-)

(The shenanigans of connecting the dial up modem using the internal phone system and shared lines etc. are a whole new story)

Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style

Acceptance Testing

We gave our acceptance testers specific instructions. "Try and break it!"

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

Fuddy

I am waiting for colour and Roman numerals, bah humbug!

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

These Goons

These goons can be dangerous, don't forget that in January they managed to shoot down a Ukrainian civilian airliner that had just taken off from Iran: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51073621 Who knows what other unreported stupidity lurks within :-(

This hurts a ton-80: British darts champ knocked out of home tourney by lousy internet connection

Re: Actually ...

... one of the things that has been highlighted during this crisis is just how many people have really substandard internet connections (and webcams). - Fixed it for you :-)

BT Openreach prepares to declare UK MBORCed* as all new phone line installations halted over coronavirus

Optional - Really :-)

I thought the home visits were insisted upon by BT et-al to justify their installation fee. So any new installations are now free?

One whole day: That's how long Facebook's COVID-19 content moderation went without a mess

Wow

Godwin is an actual person and is still alive - Kudos

Motorola bounds out the G8 with a harder, better, faster smartphone for the thrifty

No NFC

Just looked at the spec on the website and there is a big NO next to NFC, that's sad. I find a phone great for contactless payments.

Sure, check through my background records… but why are you looking at my record collection?

Buzz Words

Getting through interviews is a bit like the advice given to me by an examiner for business studies. You need lots of ticks (not the ones found in the fields). Just download your brain on to the exam paper, the examiner is looking for key words and each one gets a tick the more key words the higher the mark. The HR droid doesn't have a clue about the work but they have a list of key words (job spec) supplied by the dept looking for the minion. Get loads of key word out and Robert is your uncle :-)

BAE Systems tosses its contractors a blanket... ban on off-payroll working under upcoming IR35 tax reforms

Issues...

"Or they could hire those contractors the same way as they hire, say electrical contractors to do a wiring job."

There are issues with this: 1) The company will need to fully spec the work to be done and 2) The contractor will need to fully spec how they intend to carry out the work.

Might make for interesting conversations on both sides :-)

Another week, another bunch of Windows 10 machines punched by a patch

Re: Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night for....?

There's your problem right there: "put my box to sleep". I do a shut down, no chance of shenanigans from Microsoft or any one else :-)

Meet Clippy 9000: Microsoft brags about building Earth's largest AI language model, refuses to let it out of the lab

Re: Hello

I can't recall ever writing a letter before that irritating bit of bent wire popped up and said that I was. To be honest I can't recall the bloody thing ever suggesting anything else before it was binned.

Clippy managed to put to death any suggestions of user assistance in any format and in all applications from that period hence. So on reflection it was a good thing :-)

BOFH: When was the last time someone said these exact words to you: You are the sunshine of my life?

Hmmm

Not up to the normal BOFH as I got bored half way through and wondered how come the PFY is still a PFY given the years this series has been going and surly by now he is a POG (Pockmarked Old Git).

Step away from that Windows 7 machine, order UK cyber-cops: It's not safe for managing your cash digitally

# Me Too

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

" Since the election, Johnson's visibility has plummeted" You state this as being a bad thing?

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

Re: And what about key fobs....

"An elastic band allows me to keep it with me while swimming" All you are wearing is a pair of swimming trucks so you attach the elastic band to what?? Hope the water is warm :-)

Don't miss this patch: Bad Intel drivers give hackers a backdoor to the Windows kernel

What we need is a computer sized condom especially when poking strange things :-)

What's that, Skippy? A sad-faced Microsoft engineer has arrived with an axe? Skippy?

Re: Skippy-speak

There's no need to train management as according to management, they are perfectly happy with the skills they had 10 years ago doing a different job. Plus those expensive junkets have used up the budget.

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

Re: Seems fine to me

So how many studs does your mother have?

I thought the icon entirely appropriate :-)

I discovered the world's last video rental kiosk and it would make a great spaceship

Lost For words

I am lost for words. An entire article about an ancient video kiosk in the depths of rural France. Journalism at it's finest, take a bow Dabbsy :-)

Not a death spiral, I'm trapped in a closed loop of customer experience

Re: Halifax were a nightmare when we moved.

Halifax seems to have a preference for employing the odd wa****r My mother suffered from dementia so I took out a power of attorney so that I could look after her finances. The solicitors gave me the original power of attorney and some stamped/authorised copies. The local Halifax branch nominated power of attorney wonk decided that the duly authorised copies weren't good enough for him and demanded to see the original as "it looks and feels different". I asked if I had to use this branch or would any branch be OK? He said that any branch would be able to set up the changes, so with that I told him to get stuffed and went to the next nearest branch and got everything sorted in 10 minutes.

Apple Click Bait

"I have a vision of a conference room at Apple HQ in which top executives decide what new features to put into the Apple Watch, with the single proviso that they must have nothing to do with showing the time."

The same applies to any mobile phone. Is there any mention anywhere of how good or bad the item is to make a call with? Needs to be renamed as Camera/Communication device with optional phone function.

Linky revisited: How the evil French smart meter escaped Hell to taunt me

UK Smart? Meter

We had a smart meters fitted to our electricity and gas. The PFY who did the fitting was accompanied by a "supervisor" who spent the whole time sat in his van on the phone. This saga took an entire day. First the PFY got quite excited when his digital meter registered a few millivolts from a small terminated 2 core low voltage wire that passed adjacent to the fuse-board and slapped a "Dangerous Voltage - Do Not Touch" note on it. Secondly he turned off the gas boiler (more on this later). He also decided that because some of the 3 core PVC wiring passed close to a gas pipe the gas pipe had to be wrapped in thick plastic piping for safety. The fitting of the two new smart meters seemed to go quite smoothly until it was noticed that the incoming gas supply had an off switch that was upside down (marked correctly). This gas switch also gained a do not use label. We now have a house with an electrical supply but no gas. 2 hours later a Gas Network fitter arrives to fit a new, correctly orientated gas off switch. PFY then attempts to automatically get the gas boiler to ignite and fails due to having snapped off an igniter lug. A further hour passes and a gas fitter turns up to repair the broken lug and light the gas boiler.

A cautionary tale not to request a free smart meter.

Astronaut Tim Peake reminds everyone about the time Excel mangled his contact list on stage at Microsoft AI event

I suspect that rounding up is not quite the correct term. Paste a full phone number of say 022359841 into a numerical cell and the leading zero is stripped off leaving 22359841.

Re: I need some AI

It may not be the people that you work with that are the problem. We had an office that was only manned for part of the day and people were encouraged to leave a message at other times. I would listen to the various messages that rambled on about their requirements, their current lifestyle and sometimes that of their pets but the really important information, the contact number, was tagged on the end in the manner of an inarticulate racecourse announcer in the final furlong.

Re: "once companies understand what exactly AI is"

Not still talking about Boris are we?

Careful now, UK court ruling says email signature blocks can sign binding contracts

All You need

A contract has 3 things: the offer, the acceptance, and the consideration. Simple :-)

TalkTalk still struggles to shut down legacy email addresses on request

ID

The advent of online utility billing was a problem for car hire companies (they fixate on the drivers licence now) in that they requested a printed copy of a utility bill so I used to ask them what address they would like me to print on it :-)

Loathed Aussie mining magnate Clive Palmer punts libel sueball at YouTube comedian

Re: Good on ya Aussie

To be honest our Boris doesn't run the country either, I think he might have just discovered that minor fact despite being PM.

Be careful there in Australia, if Boris keeps on digging his holes he might pop out down under :-)

You better get a wiggle on then: BT said to be mulling switching off UK's copper internets by 2027

Re: How many connections is that?

No, No, No, Yes. Don't be silly they won't remove anything they just won't connect any new copper as it will be all FTTP. If you want proof just take a drive out into the country, most poles now have fibre hanging from them.

Welcome to the brave new world. Lets connect everything up just before the next generation of wireless/mobile hits and makes all this redundant.

First water world exoplanet spotted – and thankfully no sign of Kevin Costner, rejoice!

Re: everyone would know what a light year is.

Coor :-(

Psst. Wanna brush up your supervillain creds? Get a load of this mini submarine

Re: Cost?

Does that include a mini-bar and suitably clad host(ess)?

Just wanted to use the pirate icon :-) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Virgin Media's Project Lightning now at 1.8m connections. Just 2.2m to go before year's end, right?

Re: Upgrading

@VinceH As Virgin Media have you listed as having a phone line just raise a fault that your phone is dead. That way it will get sorted as they prioritise phone faults :-)

Summer vacations put an end to rampant desktop crimewave

Simple

The best method for preventing pens from walking is to only ever have one pen visible on your desk, no-one nicks the last of anything as it is obvious that it's been nicked.

Virgin Media promises speeds of 1Gpbs to 15 million homes – all without full fibre

My virgin media is advertised as upto 150Mb/s and is up there 90% of the time so no complaints here. What has London to do with anything? Their "superhub" is anything but and easily fixed by flipping to Modem only mode and attaching a decent router. Simples :-)

Bad news: Earth is not going to be walloped by asteroid 2006 QV89. Good news: Boffins have lost sight of it, so all hope is not yet lost

Re: No wonder they cannot find it

"There's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow;

there's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, Jim."

Virgin Media blocks Imgur, literally tens of people rage at UK ISP

Why not...

An interesting experiment would be to only re-enable those who noticed. It would reduce the number of IP addresses in use by cloned/dead/users by a few billion and solve the IPV4 problem instantly :-)

See icon - What is "flank" speed??

Here's a great idea: Why don't we hardcode the same private key into all our smart home hubs?

Re: RE: TonyJ

The car replacement is probably an insurance thing - replace like for like?

Hot desk hell: Staff spend two weeks a year looking for seats in open-plan offices

Re: Hot Desking?

"CC Everyone on Everything" I stop CC to me by the simple note back stating: "If you had to print a copy, put it in an addressed envelope and pay for a stamp would you have copied this to me? - If the answer is no why have you copied this email to me!" Works every time :-)

There's a reason why my cat doesn't need two-factor authentication

Re: A pretty simple concept really:

Secure building with access via airlock/tube doors.... In the event of a fire all the fire doors open all around the building. Once the emergency/drill/test is over all the staff have to enter one by one via the 3 tubes in the main entrance. It's a very, very long queue!

Simple

Just chip the entire population of the planet. if it's good enough for the cat it's good enough for me :-)

Microsoft: A new Windows 10 build arrives while another remains in hiding

Re: Spring

Here's me thinking that Spring ended on 31st May.... No wonder our Summers are getting shorter :-)

I'll just clear down the database before break. What's the worst that could happen? It's a trial

Re: BTDTGTTS

There must be some deeply built in shock system within human brains that only kicks in nano seconds after hitting the enter key. If only we could re-program it to kick in prior to hitting the key. :-)