* Posts by tin 2

498 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Apr 2010

Page:

We asked for your Fitbit horror stories and, oh wow, did you deliver: Readers sync their teeth into 'junk' gizmos

tin 2

Re: Pebble

...but they also shut down their servers so the apps don't work, creating more digital junk. So they have form.

Two years ago, 123-Reg and NamesCo decided to register millions of .uk domains for customers without asking them. They just got the renewal reminders...

tin 2

Re: Inertia selling

Easy win then. Become a Lawyer, bring the case. Millions.

Android PDF app with just 100m downloads caught sneaking malware into mobes

tin 2

Re: "The Register has reached out to CamScanner's developer"

It also implies The Four Tops

Welcome to Hollywood, Claranet-style: You've (not) got mail, or hosted sites for that matter

tin 2

20 years ago I worked at an ISP. Update the IVR and the status webpages were the first action when stuff blew up that customers would see. What is wrong with these people?

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

tin 2

yep "As such, Liberty says that it is now focused on driving Virgin's strategic and financial value, with substantial opportunities for growth" which means crowbars applied to wallets. Good luck Virgin Media customers!

Take the bus... to get some new cables: Raspberry Pi 4s are a bit picky about USB-Cs

tin 2

Made a mistake for sure, but "an inconvenience for hobbyists, and certainly not ideal for those that bought the things in bulk"? I doubt that. I don't think there'll be an awful lot of people trying to run it on their macbook charger, or if they do, that can't stump up for a PSU, and if they can't, that will really really want to get on their hobby-horse about it.

And if they do, I guess they can just return the pi for a refund, can't they?

UK's North Midlands hospitals IT outage, day 2: All surgery and appointments cancelled

tin 2

Cisco?

Really? they're the provider in this one? I doubt that somehow. More like someone or other not able to get a Cisco product working correctly.

Brit hosting provider tsoHost takes needleful of 'unauthorized code' to the servers, suffers week of outages

tin 2

TSO have been circling the pan for years now. My problem has been that when something does go wrong the attitude of their support organisation is abysmal. The cover ups and long periods of time without status updates alleged in the article would seem to corroborate. It was not always so. Time to find another provider once more I fear.

Microsoft doles out PowerShell 7 preview. It works. People like it. We can't find a reason to be sarcastic about it

tin 2

Internet Explorer used to be "good" and people flocked to it, to the practical destruction of all else. Check out how that ended up. That's just one example of many.

The shell has been this stupid crappy old thing that nobody needs cos everything shall be done in GUI for years. Suddenly (ish) that message is changed. Does that not make anyone suspicious?

DXC Technology seeks volunteers to take redundancy. No grads, apprentices, and 'quota carrying' sales folk

tin 2
Coat

Re: DXC Troubles

you mean their *redundancy* protocols?

That magical super material Apple hopes will hit backspace on its keyboard woes? Nylon

tin 2

In fairness WD-40 was the product and not the brand for a long long time, hence the potential for misunderstanding.

Lyft, Uber drivers boost app surge prices by turning off, tuning out – and cashing in

tin 2

Re: FACTS!

Agree. Completely meaningless stat.

Upgrade refuseniks, beware: Adobe snips away legacy versions of its Creative Cloud apps

tin 2

Dunno so much about features in Photoshop being unavailable in rival packages.

I've found that it's impossible to do stuff that was an absolute piece of piss in DPaint.

Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register

tin 2
Pint

Thankyou

Firefox armagg-add-on: Lapsed security cert kills all browser extensions, from website password managers to ad blockers

tin 2

Re: Oh ...

+1 for this thread. Never ever will I allow ads. But I will pay you money that surely must be better than the millipence you'd get paid for me seeing ads.

Sky customers moan: Our broadband hubs are bricking it

tin 2

This reminds me of when...

... Sky bought O2 and BE. I had an O2 service back then.

Eventually they got bored of maintaining the network that BE had built, they wanted to move us over to Sky's. They promised a seamless changeover. On the day it actually happened, my broadband went down and stayed down. Sky couldn't actually confirm they'd tried to move me over at all for a day. Then sent an email congratulating me that my broadband was up and running - which it most definitely was not and I would have thought they would know - and as if I were a brand new customer. The references to a seamless changeover were gone.

They needed me to do all the usual plug-it-into-the-master socket lark, then tried to get an openreach appointment, because the system at the helpdesk said so, while cutting me off the phone repeatedly and never calling back when they did. Then finally realising that the "seamless" update of the o2 router was apparently never going to work, and they needed to send me a sky hub, which took a week.

Then of course the broadband itself was about 2/3 the speed of o2's and much worse in the evenings. Couldn't possibly think why....

Then sent me a bill with penalties - incredibly actually called out as penalties - because I didn't take Sky TV or phone or whatever other bullshit, while ghost-of-O2 (O2's paperwork and style of letters just with a hastily pasted on Sky logo) insisted I hadn't paid their bill, but Sky helpdesk nimrods repeatedly said it would be OK, and regardless, there was still a DD in place that they didn't use. That carried on until I started getting letters from debt collectors claiming people had been in touch (of course, they hadn't) and this was the final notice of big problems. I then posted my displeasure in their forums and they deleted everything supposedly due to breach of TOS.

Basically, fucking useless all over.

One of UK's largest pension funds goes to Hull, bids £504m for broadband firm KCOM

tin 2

"KCOM, founded in 1904, floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1999 and, as pointed out by the Financial Times, was something of a darling in the City, climbing from 225p on day one to £16. Then the dot-com bust happened."

They also purchased companies like Omnetica and Eclipse and royally screwed them up. Because the people at the top have absolutely no clue what they're doing. So balls to them quite frankly.

Windows 10 May 2019 Update thwarted by obscure tech known as 'external storage'

tin 2

Re: Amiga days.....

It didn't even make sense without fixed storage. The Amiga would ask you for a disk, by volume name, usually in any drive. In DOS (and win 3.1) land, changing the disk would freak the OS out as it had no idea it wasn't the same disk as 5 mins ago.

Now that's service: TalkTalk customers enjoy a Friday morning free of pesky emails

tin 2

Re: Pesky emails

Indeed yes. When Virgin Media moved to Google mail, Google decided this practice was no longer allowed, no matter what you configured your mail client to do and what authentication you used.

There was some big clunky authentication thing you could do but Google/Virgin slapped (essentially) a massive "youraddress courtesy of ouraddress" on the outbound mail so made it completely useless - in terms of covering up and/or providing easy migration from an ISP related address.

Then they migrated back off Google anyway. Complete PITA and a lesson in how Google likes to completely break standards just because they're big enough to force enough people to put up with it that it looks like it's accepted.

Bit nippy, is it? Hive smart home users find themselves tweaking thermostat BY HAND

tin 2

Re: Smart heating systems do have their uses.

That's craziness, should have at least one room stat somewhere to shut the whole system off for a while when the whole gaff is hot enough, and to run the system when it gets towards freezing.

tin 2

Re: No fallback controls!?

but does it have a "continue working as was last time I reached the server" mode, or does it literally become a thermostat? Because if that is the case, that's extremely extremely shit.

TV piracy ring walks the plank after Euro cops launch 14 raids and shutter 11 data centres

tin 2

Re: An anecdote

Yeah for another example for years you could watch Eurosport UK which required a subscription to Sky, or Eurosport Germany in the clear. However Sky now have their teeth in that market too :(

tin 2

Re: Expensiv

advertising the sport to tell people to come and watch it :)

tin 2

Re: whack a mole

The sports teams and leagues charge TV networks massive amounts for coverage only because the TV networks started offering, and figuring out even more outlandish ways of offering, said teams and leagues massive amounts. Sky is chief in this.

The teams and leagues aren't exactly going to say no to a geezer on their doorstep saying if you go with us we can line all your pockets with vast wads of cash. The money men pile in, and now you have what you have today. The only way to stop it is to vote with your feet for a while, or stream and hope that the "subscribers" are considered so small fry to not be bothered pursuing.

PuTTY in your hands: SSH client gets patched after RSA key exchange memory vuln spotted

tin 2

Re: PuTTY's days are numbered

I've been using a MBP for (by far) my main machine for 3 years, and I still very sorely miss PuTTY.

Apple's revamped iPad beams a workhorse in from Planet Ludicrous

tin 2

Re: Still waiting...

I'm surprised that it took WinPho to burn buyers. Those buyers have been buying the MS "hey shiny shiny", "oh unsupported, buy the newer better one" literally forever. The "first" Windows Phone itself was actually clearly labelled as their 7th attempt.

Silent Merc, holy e-car... Mflllwhmmmp! What is that terrible sound?

tin 2

Windows sounds

Win XP startup sound as a car is coming near just makes me cackle.

Fancy a .dev domain? They were $12,500 a pop from Google. Now, $1,000. Soon, $17.50. And you may want one

tin 2

GitHub, Slack, CloudFlare and Salesforce....

...who all already own their own (properly spelt) .com domains?

Weird. Just pay for another domain name for a laugh? or just to say you have it? how far does that go? .devs, .developer, .devops, .company, .gaff, .whatever?

OK, Google. Music in 2019 isn't what it was, but Play nice, will ya?

tin 2

Re: Out of curiosity ...

But I can go out to the shops and get a new cable. Not wait for Google to decide that they want to fix my cable for me.

OK, it's early 2019. Has Leeds Hospital finally managed to 'axe the fax'? Um, yes and no

tin 2

Re: paper records

and of course fax machines nearly always have a photocopy function.

Is this a wind-up? Planet Computers boss calls time on ZX Spectrum reboot firm

tin 2

Re: This company being cunts doesn't have a lot to do with indiegogo.

Indeed. IGG is facilitating scams, putting a more legit sheen on and widely broadcasting campaigns that otherwise would fizzle into nothing.

They also (foolishly?) committed to doing something about this particular scam, and then patently haven't.

Mobile network Three UK's customer details exposed in homepage blunder

tin 2

Re: A small number of customers...

I LOL that they've clearly specifically demanded that the reg make it clear only 4 people complained.

Like that's somehow representative of something. Fucking liars.

Hands up who isn't fighting Oracle in court? HPE, for now, as Solaris support sueball tossed

tin 2

Oracle really are just a terrible terrible bunch of twats. Rinsing their portfolio until nobody ever wants to be their customer ever again.

But yachts all round so who cares, eh?

It's a Christmas miracle: Logitech backs down from Harmony home hub API armageddon

tin 2

woot!

Squeezebox resurrection next please!

A year after Logitech screwed over Harmony users, it, um, screws over Harmony users: Device API killed off

tin 2

Re: *GASP*

Don't like it. Somone's moved the steering wheel into the boot again.

tin 2

Re: Went off of Logitech...

I'm not so sure it's that benevolent. Given the continuing popularity of the product and the fanaticism of the userbase, they'd get properly lynched if they really did discontinue those services. But I am grateful what's still there is there.

tin 2

Re: Went off of Logitech...

Same here! Heavily invested in the kit and that's why Logitech can go and do one. and i'm not surprised they've pulled a similar stunt again.

Also of course: getting out of the internet connected smart speaker market just as that market was really taking on? Smart.

tin 2

But if a product is "updated" by the manufacturer and now doesn't do what it did when you bought it, documented or no, that's problematic.

BT to 'sunset' Apache CloudStack cloud, customer demand went AWOL

tin 2

"We continually review our strategy and operations. As part of that process, we focus our efforts on areas where we see the strongest customer demand and as the same time secure the best return on investments"

TBH that struck me as a pretty straightforward bit of corporate speak. Maybe I've been subjected to too much next-level corporate speak.

Why millions of Brits' mobile phones were knackered on Thursday: An expired Ericsson software certificate

tin 2

An expired certificate....

...made the whole data network shut down?

Wow. There was no point building in any other resilience elsewhere then.

also, think the comment from Ericsson subtext is "o2 is still using very old software they should have replaced moons ago"?

tin 2

Re: Days like today are when I'm thankful

I'm thankful my stupid company made me carry two phones.

364 days a year it's a slight annoyance, today it saved my arse.

tin 2

Re: Don't feel so bad Ericsson, you probably did us all a favour!

Don't be daft, I just tethered to my other phone and carried on being a zombie.

Total Inability To Support User Phones: O2 fries, burning data for 32 million Brits

tin 2

Re: Other mobile operators around the world are also affected?

also not heard anything about any other mobile operator in the world having similar issues. maybe searching would not reveal, but seems odd.

OneDrive is broken: Microsoft's cloudy storage drops from the sky for EU users

tin 2

While I love Synology as a general concept, mine absolutely lost it's tiny mind when a disk failed. Made the data inaccessible by basically DOSing itself. Was not impressed.

tin 2

yes, but said user will more often than not be some poor sod who's had it decreed upon them by some overinflated CIO that their company has gone cloud, and therefore they now have to keep all their files in the cloud, and that it has to be the MS flavour of it. Because cloud is good.

Poor user ;(

tin 2

Every developer who's decide they can just say "something went wrong" with a little twee jovial pic or phrase, and suggest to the potentially harassed and pissed off user that they just try again needs a massive slap around the chops.

Blighty: We spent £1bn on Galileo and all we got was this lousy T-shirt

tin 2

Re: Well, who'd have thought it?

Have to agree entirely. TBH I'm not sure how even the most rabid brexiteer didn't immediately clock the Irish border and say "ahh well I would have loved to have done that, but it's obviously impossible".

Health secretary Matt Hancock assembles brains trust: OK, guys. Let's cure NHS IT

tin 2

I've only had a little bit of experience with IT in the NHS but got a little bit of exposure to both ends - the very simple kit on the ground and the unfathomably complex systems in the background. For me the only way is for the NHS to grow a pair and start developing in house. It will take strong management... ah, there's the problem, OK forget I spoke.

HPE Aruba's 510 line of campus hotspots do 802.11ax. Which in plain English is Wi-Fi 6, duh

tin 2

"hotspot"?

Amazon Prime Music turns the volume down a little too much

tin 2

Re: The personal touch as only Amazon knows how

also @AmazonHelp Social Media Representative 21 is sorry for *your* issues. Not theirs.

Page: