Posts by Headley_Grange

Wait, hold on, everyone – Mozilla thinks Apple, Google, Microsoft should play fair

I don't mean clicking on links. Go into an Apple app. - like Mail, Notes, Music. Highlight some text. Right click and select "Search With <your selected search engine>". On my Mac, unless I'm in FireFox, it always opens with Safari.

Mac OS also selectively ignores the default browser rule. I can set FF (or whatever I want) as default but if, for example, I'm in an app like Mail or Notes and I highlight something and right-click to look up on the web then it always opens in Safari.

Top-tier IT talent doesn't stick around in 'mid-market' organizations

Dog Bites Man

This isn't new, is it? When I started work in aerospace 40 years ago it was no different. Companies need bright young things but they thrive and survive on a base of comptetent staff with the "top tier" being a pretty small percentage of the workforce. It would be a nightmare running design, development, delivery and support of a range of products if all your staff were high-flyers - they'd get bored and bugger off pretty quickly. I used to view the constant movement of these types like insects pollinating plants, transferring new ideas, skills, methods, etc. around the industry as they fluttered about until they found a place to settle and grow a long grey beard.

Meta accused of enrolling undecided EU users in ad-sponsored platform

Additionally, as well as swingeing fines, they should make them pay back all turnover they made from the illegal acts from the date that the lawsuit was opened. If the ad-slinger says this is too hard to calculate then just start at 100% unless they can prove different. This will stop them dragging court cases out.

If they know that the penalty for non-compliance is too small to notice compared to the cost of compliance then why the fuck would they comply? The lawyers are on the payroll, so already costed in. Until they are fined amounts large enough to make a dent in their turnover and share price then they'll just keep going until the rest of the world hasn't got enough money to go to court.

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

Re: We need more articles like this one

Maybe if those smaller organizations had invested in and developed their own permanent talent instead of reying on hiring contractors then they would have grown expert/competent/lautonomous/profitable enough to have been able to compete. How can you imply that they are more competent if they rely on contractors for that competency and then lose it because IR35 legislation changes?

Full disclosure - I'm a contractor.

Re: We need more articles like this one

A cynic might regard Fujitsu's saying they won't tender for contracts pro tem as a warning shot across the government's bows.

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed

Re: The problem with Notes

In my experience (including myself) most users' complaints about the UI boil down to "it's different to the one I'm used to using".

(Except, of course, for the Microsoft Ribbon.)

I liked it (as a user, not IT/Admin) when my company used it in the 90s and early 00s. The easy integration between mail, calendar and ToDo was great and something I find missing from Apple's ecosystem - especially since Sonoma broke my scripts for turning mails into calender entries and Reminders. The first Word Processor I used on a PC was Lotus Manuscript in the late 80s, which also had some great features; the formating of outline sections in Manuscript was way ahead of anything I've used since.

Fujitsu gets $1B market cap haircut after TV disaster drama airs

Re: 4% down ?

What's new is that the government has taken notice and Fujitsu are talking about compensating victims. Up until now the investors have been assuming that they'd get away with it.

Re: If government contracts with Fujitsu

This is compounded by the fact that in UK law there's an assumption that the machine is always right and it's up to the defence to prove that it's not.

From the Graun

"Then there was a potent ingredient thrown in by the legal world. Just before the scandal began to unfold in 1999, a legal change was introduced stating that there would now be an assumption that computers were “reliable” unless proven otherwise.

Previously, a machine’s reliability had to be proved if it was being used as evidence. It has now been revealed that the Post Office itself lobbied for that law change. In its submission to the official consultation on the issue, it said the previous requirements were “far too strict and can hamper prosecutions”. The legal change would help it go on to privately prosecute more than 700 subpostmasters."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/14/a-tragedy-is-not-far-away-25-year-old-post-office-memo-predicted-scandal

Re: Procurement rules

Yes they are -

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-policy-note-0415-taking-account-of-suppliers-past-performance

but.... it needs contracts to be set up so that the performance certs are meanigful, it's a bit woolly, can be gamed quite easily and it's pretty pointless if there's only one realistic supplier with massive barriers for entry for competitors. The problem isn't just selecting suppliers, it's writing contracts and options to make sure that a single supplier can't embed themselves so deep that it will always be cheaper to keep them no matter how crap they are.

I've run a couple of infrastructure projects under European Journal* rules and you are allowed to have pre-qualification requirements relating to criminal acts, ongoing legal cases and behaviour likely to bring the client into disrepute. Theoretically, a single Horizon prosecution of Fujitsu as a company could be used at the pre-qualification stage to exclude them from a procurement. It is difficult - and illegal - to write a pre-qual to exclude a particular supplier but if the will's there it might be possible.

The bigger problem is that these companies are so embedded that they could play tit-for-tat and, for example, threaten not to take up options for upgrading, maintenance, etc. Their ability to do this would very much depend on how the earlier contracts were written; the cynic in me knows who would lose.

*Now we're out of the EU we operate under the WTO's GPA which isn't substantially different from OJEU.

Justice

Justice won't be served until Fujitsu and Post Office staff are in prison and their personal property sold to compensate the victims.

Google is changing how search results appear for EU citizens

Re: Websites

Same here. Also has the advantage that if things go wrong and you do a credit card chargeback then it's got a better chance of success. I've had one declined by the CC because the agency claimed it had satisfied its contract (booking a room) and wasn't responsible for the problems I had with the hotel.

Websites

They could make the websites of hotels and the like more prominent so I can book directly instead of having to wade through half a dozen scapers and booking services - some of which don't even cover the business I'm interested in.

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

There's a "Send Corrections" link at the top of the comments page.

This is worth watching. It looks long, but time flies and respect grows with each minute. It has good detail on memory use and procedural genration and lots of other good stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4YLMLar5I

My favourite factoid: for the 3D effects they used the dot product of a shape's surface normal and the ship's trajectory to work out if that surface was in view or had to be "hidden".

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Re: Rising prices are guaranteed

"You're the kind of guy who would have predicted in 1900 that the Ford T would be reserved to the rich."

Or "I think there's a world market for maybe five computers".

Re: Rising prices are guaranteed

Hard to believe. Features that were only available on top-of-the range cars when I first started driving are standard on today's base models: electric windows, central locking, rear wash/wipe, electronic ignition, radio, aircon, etc. And things that were considered the height of luxury, seen on RR and Bentley, like heated seats, heated steering wheels, electric seats, tyre pressure monitoring, reversing cameras, etc. are now options on most models today, Once EV build quantities ramp up to ICE levels then prices will come down.

What was that stuff I used to spray into the air intake (or somewhere) to get my car started on cold mornings? I also remember having a toolkit, gallon of petrol, engine oil, water, spare hoses, bulbs, plugs, etc and lots of rags in a box in the boot of my first 3 or 4 cars. And string to tie the exhaust up when it fell off. You just don't seem to see bangers any more.

Re: Sounds like an "Oil Company" sponsored story

In my early days of motoring I bought a cheap charger that was crap and soon broke. Instead of spending money on a good battery charger I bought a 30V 10A bench PSU from work that had damaged connectors that I easily fixed. I've still got it - dual supply with master/slave function. It charges car and bike batteries fine - you just have to keep an eye on timings if you want to blast them - and it's been useful for lots of other things too.

Microsoft braces for automatic AI takeover with Copilot at Windows startup

Re: Windows Share

It corrupt must corrupt be corrupt all corrupt those corrupt Reg corrupt readers corrupt and corrupt their corrupt voting corrupt corrupt corrupt....

Trump-era rules reversed on treating gig workers as contractors

Re: I gig, therefore I am not

The problem is with app-based services they have, effectively, exported these labour laws to other countries.

You're right (I call it the Paper Round model), but what happens when the gig companies have put all their competitors out of business and every job is a gig job?

Be honest. Would you pay off a ransomware crew?

I won't even allow the JS to run the video player.

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

Re: It is only Covid if you take a test

If someone made a TV programme about it and then maybe MPs will get interested.

Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

When I was a student on my industrial placement a production engineer once spent a while explaining the types and uses of flat, star, crinkle and spring washers. It's one of the many things I wished I'd paid a lot more attention to when I was younger.

DARPA's air-steered X-65 jet heads into production with goal of flying by 2025

Re: What could go wrong...

"Strong cross winds on landing requires instant and precise control"

I am not an aerodynamics expert so excuse me if this is a daft idea but for a conventional aircraft isn't the amount of control you have ultimately limited by the speed of the air across the control surfaces? This aircraft might not have such limitations and therefore have better control at the lower landing speeds.

As lawmakers mull outlawing poor security, what can they really do to tackle online gangs?

Re: "Another approach is to outlaw poor security practices"

When I worked on a large project that included some works that were classified as construction we all (directors included) got a full day's lecture on the legal implications of Health and Safety legislation including the fact that we had individual as well as corportate responsibility and that we could be personally prosecuted, put in prison and have our assests seized to pay fines and compensation. The first thing the directors did was put a CDM consultant on a retainer. Everyone got a handbook and it was consulted regularly. Anyone in doubt went and asked for help. The directors didn't ask us to take stupid shortcuts that risked an H&S breach. It worked fine - but only because people knew they could go to prison.

Ditto when I ran a project under ITAR - the threat (whether real or not) of extradition to the US was enough to make everyone take ITAR seriously.

If the same rules applied for cyber security then I assure you things would change pretty quickly and the "accidental outcomes" would disappear because the threat of prison and losing your house really focuses people on understanding, expertise and attention.

Make it illegal to pay fines.

Make it illegal to insure against it.

Make it mandatory to report the measures you're taking.

Put board members, directors and shareholders in prison when their main countermeasure is a pre-prepared "We take security extremely seriously" statement.

That's just me brainstorming on my own and ignoring the ones relating to judicial killings of the perps.

Xerox prints pink slips for 15% of workforce

Re: Xerox’s Heyday ...

In the 80s my company used to send us on a week-long management course. The only memorable part of it was that we were divided into small teams to spend an hour a day running a company based on a computer simulation. The company was in competition with the other teams' companies and you were presented with stuff by the computer and had to make decisions. We invested everything we had in R&D and we won with a course record.

X reverses course on headlines in article links, kinda

Move Fast and Break Things

And then try to put them back together but some bits fell on the floor and maybe the missus swept them up cos you can't find them and also one of the screws needs a special tool that you haven't got and..............

Navigating the truth maze in a world of clever machines and cleverer marketers

Re: Truth is a function of time

I think the LLM side of it is annoying and it will get even more annoying. Already you can spot the eBay item descriptions that have been written by AI. Even without errors it's noticeable and starting to grind on me. If it persists then in a couple of years we'll be looking back on today's management-bullshit-speak as if it were Byron.

"Working" ?

"How do we know how well it's working" - depends who's asking. For the people developing and selling AI "working" will be defined only by how much money it's making for them and how quickly they can achieve market dominance by buying or bankrupting their competitors. Given the history of search and advertising I don't think that the regulators have got a chance.

Mozilla CEO pockets a packet, asks biz to pick up pace the 'Mozilla way'

Re: "Backed by the non-profit that puts people first"

But they've got 15 engineers on AI - what more do you want?!

UK government lays out plan to divert people's broken gizmos from landfill

Re: How many

I'd have products assessed for repairability against a standard and add a sales tax from 0% to, say, 100% based on how difficult they were to repair. Apple would soon introduce replaceable batteries and get rid of glue if their phones doubled in price.

Re: Easy or Expensive?

Didn't realize that. The only things I've given them have been chairs (plain wood) which, although ironically flammable, they were quite happy to take!

Re: "a trip to your local tip"

I think our local rag-and-bone man has been taken over by Hermes. They drive down the street (cul-de-sac) ringing a bell, but by the time you get outside to tell them you've got something for them they've disappeared..

Easy or Expensive?

Where I live in the UK it's not hard to recycle white goods, but it's not free; my local council will pick up large goods for £20. Note that if you're binning something that still works (or is useable, like furniture) then charities like the British Heart Foundation will pick them up for nothing.

CEO arranged his own cybersecurity, with predictable results

Re: If you want phishing taken seriously

I've worked with engineers who would see this as a badge of honour, not shame.

Re: PostIt Note Security

"..then you have bigger security problems than just having the odd password stolen.."

Nope - your biggest problem is that you've got people working for you who don't take even the most basic rules of security seriously.

Re: Customers are the security liability

HMRC used to to do that. Their main website is a .gov.uk but documentation used to come from a US .com organization's address in an email with hallmarks of phishing.

Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?

Market Model

The problem is the market model that says making a decent profit is no longer good enough and companies need to make ever increasing profits. It didn't used to be that way in some sectors it still isn't. I bought a Rega record deck in 1991. Since then I've bought one replacement belt and based on the performance to-date I might buy one more belt before I pop my clogs and pass it on. I assume I'm not a special case and there aren't many people buying a new Rega set-up every couple of years, but somehow Rega is stil lin business, still making enough money to keep its owners happy by making products that keep its customers happy. Microsoft and all the other subscription robber bastards only get away with it because they can and because the markets demand that they increase their profits year on year. Once they've exhausted the forced inclusions and add-ons they'll just put up the subscription prices until the pips squeak and they start to lose market share; only at that point will the "shareholders" stop demanding more profit. It's a shit shit shit shit world. Happy Christmas!

Bricking it: Do you actually own anything digital?

Re: "hard copies"

I recently bought a random job lot of DVDs for £40 on eBay and there was enough interesting stuff to make it well worth the money. I suspect there will be more and more DVDs coming up for sale as people's DVD players die and they convert to to streaming.

Still Waiting for Derry Girls DVD

Same here for DVDs - I rip and convert to mp4, put them on the NAS and then the discs go in folders as backups. Newer stuff on the streaming platforms isn't available in many cases, but I'm OK with that so far and they might bring DVDs out when the streaming rates slow to a trickle but realistically the writing's on the wall for DVDs. Not sure what I'll do then; I don't subscribe to any streaming services, but I've got 17TB of mp4 to keep me occupied.

Same here for physical books. Some of them I've read many times and will read again. For the rest I'm reading my way through them and deciding which to keep and which to give to family, friends or charity. I rarely buy books now and when I see something I'd like to read I try to get it from the library, although I will buy a hard copy of those I really like.

I tried Kindle and it was great for when I was doing a lot of international travel and work but like the author of the article I used Calibre to get a version I could keep. I haven't read anything using Kindle (app or device) for many years.

California approves lavatory-to-faucet water recycling

Re: Please could you ....

Came here to say the same: ounces, cubic metres, gallons, litres and Denmarks. What a mess.

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

I used to work in a very large open plan office and walking through it at lunch time when about half the engineers were playing Doom could bring on an attack of seasickness as the world in your peripheral vision swung about!

The only thing I use voice recognition for is to add Reminders while I'm driving. You know how it is, something pops into your mind while driving, so I tell my iPhone, via the car interface, to add a Reminder. It's most entertaining, especially after a long trip, reading the resulting reminders and trying to work out what I wanted to be reminded about. I'm not Scottish, I have a southern English accent, I haven't got a particularly deep or shrill voice, but my iPhone doesn't seem to be able to understand about half the words I say and in my experience trying to use voice recognition on the iPhone is as bad as those two Scottish blokes in the lift.