Posts by Colin Bull 1 255 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Apr 2010
I purchased hearing aids from Specsavers just over 4 years ago. Their franchise / parnership model is for their benefit. It hinders customer service. You cannot order consummables - if if you want pay with out a new hearing test . NO ONLINE ORDERING. Even in the pandemic. Got to go a branch. 6 weeks to get an appointment.
Their hearing aids or locked in to them. No one else can adjust them.
You are right. But in a new world where sanctions are a reaity the Europeans can squeeze the russian economy by imposing tariffs on the BRICS. It would hurt, but only for 18 months. But doing this would be have be done properly not the half arsed sanctions that have had little effect so far.
Not true.
I am fairly tech savvy. I needed to get a new laptop because the old one has a screen faulty about 3 years.
I wanted to get a fairly recent AMD processor to stop by balls burning. I hunted high and low for a laptop WITHOUT Windows. I could not get one. Dell was supposed to sell non windows machine for I spend hours on their web site and could not find one.
There IS NO way the general public can get anything BUT WINDOWS. I got a Lenovo that has soldered RAM and soldered SSD even though I did want them AND windows.
I was involved in customer support for a UK LED "manufacturer" that had problems with their off the shelf stock control system that no one foresaw because of 4 byte integers. I was once taken to task for complaining that a customer only had 12 invoices on their system for the whole year. I soon learned that they made assembly lines for car manufacturers and each invoice was for multi millions.
I understand VERY WELL the problems of CLID, that was why I was suggesting traceroute could be used instead as a definitive list of hops a call has gone through and the ability for the authorities to see where a call has be originated from. If a switchboard is originating a spoofed CLID ( that they were not untitled to) they could be taken to task and dealt with.
The present system where anyone can make voice calls with impunity has gone on too long. In my naivete I think it should be possible to chain together the hops and have some verification of the links in the chain of a VOIP call.
I also am "even though it is way WAY over my head" reader.
But i fantalise that traceroute be mandated for VOIP calls to allow a network of trusted sites ( similar to SPK DKIM for email ) to allow authorities to seek and destroy the spammers out of existence.
Please tell me it is possible.
I know the things can be fudged but that is the point of TRUSTED network nodes.
It 2020 I needed to replace the Intel lap warmer / jet engine with an AMD and non Windows laptop.
I best I could do was a Lenovo with Windows and a soldered SSD. None of the niche suppliers could get the latest AMD chips.
Still running cool, but I am worried if the SSD gives up the ghost.
Mint Cinammon or Mate is first
Ubuntu is my next choice
I have now moved to MX Linux to escape systemd - but growing up on Unix 35 years ago I feel it should be easy to add a start script but systemd is beyond me.
I have rarely to use the command line mainly to use awk.
I find a web search is easiest for most things - you get to know best sites after a while.
Trying to report a phisting scam to report@phishing.gov.uk today. Immediately get a error back saying the email could be a spam.
WHAT FUCKWIT DECIDED TO PUT THAT TRANSPORT RULE IN PLACE.
So I decide to try point their errors of the ways, after a dozen a so links to FAQ that are not a relevant, I get to a web page to voice my concerns that is a Microshit Report form what ever that is its. Type in my concerns, then I THAT I HAVE TO LOGIN TO A MICROSHIT account.
Is the total UK security services managed my Microshit?
Three weeks ago I attended a talk to 100 old age pensioners from the U3A from the local plod that that stated that reporting phishing scam to report@phishing.gov.uk wiull help stop them. If I have trouble reporting them what chance have these people got.
If there are any ACs out there that can enlighten me please do so.
Apologies for disjointed grammar after 8 weeks from a stroke, hopefully will get better after therapy next week :-)
Please, are there any ACs out there that enlighten me on what I missing.
Trying to report a phisting scam to report@phishing.gov.uk today. Immediately get a error back saying the email could be a spam.
WHAT FUCKWIT DECIDED TO PUT THAT TRANSPORT RULE IN PLACE.
So I decide to try point their errors of the ways, after a dozen a so links to FAQ that are not a relevant, I get to a web page to voice my concerns that is a Microshit Report form what ever that is its. Type in my concerns, then I THAT I HAVE TO LOGIN TO A MICROSHIT account.
Is the total UK security services managed my Microshit?
Three weeks ago I attended a talk to 100 old age pensioners from the U3A from the local plod that that stated that reporting phishing scam to report@phishing.gov.uk wiull help stop them. If I have trouble reporting them what chance have these people got.
If there are any ACs out there that can enlighten me please do so.
Apologies for disjointed grammar after 8 weeks from a stroke, hopefully will get better after therapy next week :-)
Please, are there any ACs out there that enlighten me on what I missing.
I have be trying to reduced my monthly directly debits to Octopus for about a year. They keep raising them every 6 months or so even where I have a credit about 2 months average of bill. You can change your monthly amount, but only by an amount. I have to monitor every 2 months to change amount to keep to stupid a credit limit.
There was an excellent web site called BARFFF.org I think. That discussed the merits of all the RAID offerings. Summarised RAID Five, RAID Four and RAID Fhree were bad choices.
RAID 10 is the only RAID to use.
I saw a site 25 years using RAID 5 using 4 drives and a parity drive. Every day for a week every drive fail in turn and on the 5 day the last one went and they lost all their data.
'CVE-2024-38199 – a Windows Line Printer Daemon (LPD) Service RCE Vulnerability with a 9.8 CVSS rating.'
How can a printer daemon have a 9.8 rating. It listens, gets a bunch of data and sends it to a port. It perhaps has permissions to write to its own temp files. If it has data out of bounds it can just write an error log and abort the job.
Am i being naive?
If we had any regulators in the UK the problem could be reduced considerably.
There are systems in place to control energy brokers, but this is completly bypassed by sub-brokers from India.
TPS is beyond a joke. They have a boiler plate reply to ANY complaint that the company complained about says 'it is not us guv' and TPS says sorry to trouble you. EVEN if you have DKIM and SPF proof by email AND voice recordings, that the the scamming bastards have sent. EVEN if they have given you some one elses meter AND bank details!
And do not get me started on the private sector. Part of Trustpilot's guidlines is you must not slag any one off EVEN if they are breaking the law. If they complain about a review Trustpilot will withdraw it.
My blood pressure is to high to even contemplate the waste of space that is Ofcom.
If the ERP systems of 20 years or more ago could run on dumb terminals or web applications I do not see why the like of Delta airlines cannot move to a web based 'app' on a bog standard linux machine. And by using several flavours of linux avoid the crowdstrike syndrome of SPOF.
Most of these ERP endpoints are focused on a handful of screens. If a VT100 terminal can do it a low spec PC can too.
Here in the UK we have one of the densest population number in Europe. The last net immigration figures I have seen was 700k in a year. I calculate this to be approx 1% growth in a year. I do not think this is sustainable. We cannot build houses fast enough for this growth. I do not condone the recent violence that has been aided and abetted by the social media in the UK. But am I a racist because feel we need to resist population growth by allowing mass immigration.
The greatest single factor in the world's use of energy is population growth. This is not going to be countered by expensive smart meters that do nothing to reduce our consumption.
Uber tried to break into the market by calling their service ride sharing and suggesting it was a novel system. They have used every fraudulent method possible to shaft everyone else. Medicals over the phone - this should have put them out of business permanently.
As far as I am aware THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANY ASPECT OF RIDE SHARING. I think is shit journalism.
I am a great fan of cruise control - but in the present car the software is not up to the mark. I will set the CC to 62 MPH, but if I go down a gradual slope it will change down to slow the car to 62, even when the limit is 70, reducing efficiency badly.
And do not get me onto the auto cut out when stopped. WTF after the engine has cut out after I have braked to a standstill the engine starts when I put the handbrake ON. Seems perverse to me.
I remember about 10 or 15 years ago when something called the interweb was invented and there was a lot of talk of making most apps work over HTML I genuinely do not understand why this has not been happening for the largest companies.CGI, ODBC all seemed to work reasonably well and performed on ancient hardware.
Going back a year or two, I had weekly support people from Microsoft offering to fix problems with my computer, even though it uses Linux. After about 5 minutes of me telling them that Ctrl-R was not doing anything they would resort to asking me to download Teamviewer which I did. For some reason the Teamviewer install program would not work on Ubuntu.
I emailed Teamviewer suggesting they put a warning on their home page advising of possible misuse, but I think I had a negative response.
They were a major accessory to extortion and did not give a shit so to see the boot on the other foot does not worry me.
" it's remarkably hard to do so. Most vendors will sell you Windows or Windows, and if you try and convince them to sell you a machine with no OS at all, because you don't want Windows, they just plain won't."
3 upvotes for this. But as much as I like PCspecialist, I have found their CPUs are 6 months behind the curve of the major PC suppliers.
Dell will supply PCs without Windows but I am completely flummoxed as to how to do this. I am sure the Competition and Markets authority should be doing something about this but I guess the FOSS eco system is not geared up to dishing out the brown envelopes. Every time I buy a PC I shudder at having to pay the MS tax and not get any benefit.
I think Ofcom would probably edge this one. How many years has it taken them to think mid term hyper inflationary price rises were acceptable. Still out for consultation?
TPS has been outsourced so as to have deniability - that is now a 100% waste of time. Every complaint has the same response. We "cannot be sure this is the company you are complaining about". Even when you have a verified email from the spamming fuckers.
I would never recommend the Phone Coop to anyone. They are more interested in being a 'Coop' than proving a service. I had a loss of service for over 3 weeks and they were pathetic. I only got the service back by getting a friend of a friend who was an Openreach service manager to get involved.
'oh dear, looks like a referral to the charity commissioners then.
They are a waste of space like Ofcom. They will ask if you have complained to the charity trustees and what response you got. If you like pi$$ing in the wind, go ahead.
A good example of the beauty of the original Mac was a program called Musicworks. No idea of the authors, but it was a lovely piece of software. Compose music, multiple instruments, play back with multiple screens, add to boast of their ability to multitask they had a utility called trails that would leave a ghosts of the mouse movements at the same time as everything else.
And the best bit was their manglement of the standard apple file menu. Remember Apple introduced a new coherence in the pull down menu options across all software vendors. In musicworks when you clicked on the standard File / Volume button it showed an image of a power plug with disconnected wires. To control volume Musicworks had its own volume control button.
Magic
"Why didn't they attempt to properly audit these cases "
What I do not understand through all this is why transaction logs were not requested by defence in these prosecutions.
One example was a supposed 40K plus deficit in one day. Surely this would have shown up on a transaction logs for a sub post office.
Every system of any size I have worked on has transaction logs of some kind.
You are living in a dream world if you expect Ofcom to step in and do anything. They have only just woken up to the fact that most suppliers are selling fibre/copper as fibre and think they need another year or 2 to get their act together and tell the truth in their adverts. And after years of conning people with hyper inflationary mid contract price rises Ofcom think perhaps that should not be allowed.
I recently bought a Lenovo laptop for my grand daughter and straight away replaced Windows with Linux. Wifi worked perfectly with no problems at all.
Pity the keyboard did not work. In my 40 years in the industry that is the first time a manufacturer has managed to bork the bios to disable keyboard. Must be down to these new found keyboard specs. I only got in working in the end by installing the latest version of kernel (6.5.10) in Fedora 39.
I feel for all those Linux devs who have to put up with this crap.But they fixed it !
50 years ago I worked for a company that had good industrial relations. It was completely unionised, but the management worked with the unions for the benefit of all employees.
The main benefits were -
profit sharing
Sick pay decided by managers/shopfloor committee (NEVER any them / us nonsense)
Extra days off if no sickness in a year
Suggestion scheme with BIG payout. £10k one year and a car !!
Everyone worked for their mutual benefit.
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