* Posts by Colin Bull 1

255 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Apr 2010

Page:

Specsavers takes off the Oracle glasses, sees better ERP options

Colin Bull 1

Not fit for purpose..

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.

This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer

Colin Bull 1

RMWeb

I have ended my subscription because of the poor editorial input. I model N gauge and do not have the time or patience to peruse links that are not of interest.

Eutelsat in talks with Euro leaders as they mull Starlink replacement in Ukraine

Colin Bull 1

Sanctions

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.

Copilot invades Microsoft 365 Personal and Family for an extra three bucks a month

Colin Bull 1
Unhappy

MS users are doing it to themselvest

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.

Infoseccer: Private security biz let guard down, exposed 120K+ files

Colin Bull 1
Joke

Not completly stupid ...

They could have told the ethical hacker to print out the data then shred it.

Debian 12.9 arrives, quickly followed by MX Linux 23.5

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Did no know MX was available on Pi

Moved to MX linux to avoid systemd crap about a year ago. Not disappointed. Was disappointed that Raspberry Pi still uses systemd. That MX Linux is on raspberry has make my day. I hope I can use the RPi imager prog to allow easy setup for headless Pis .

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Colin Bull 1
Unhappy

Money speaks ....

I am pretty sure you cannot subscribe to Sky except in UK apart from shenigans with VPNs because they greased enough palms of eurocrats.

SvarDOS: DR-DOS is reborn as an open source operating system

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Re: Can I put in a good word for 4DOS?

I had similar experiences - but the main difference was installing a Quadram Apple II emulator card so the Apple II games could be played in (4) colour on an IBM portable. Apple colour I seem to remember was vastly more expensive.

Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby: Hacking Christmas lights

Colin Bull 1
FAIL

Re: I have this mental image

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.

Colin Bull 1
Unhappy

Re: "that's not really allowed in the UK"

It looked really good - until the last bit -Tap to PAY !!

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

Colin Bull 1

Changing supplier ...

in my experience when changing suppliers is it useful to use one that it in the same jurisdiction. I trouble with a supplier that was headquartered in Scotland and could not use the English small claims court.

Contrary to some, traceroute is very real – I should know, I helped make it work

Colin Bull 1

Re: Traceroute for voice telecoms ?

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.

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Traceroute for voice telecoms ?

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.

QNAP NAS users locked out after firmware update snafu

Colin Bull 1
Trollface

Should I ..

Should I be thinking of replacing the OS for my Synology NAS by something else ? Can I ?

FTC urges smart device makers to disclose software update lifecycles

Colin Bull 1

Re: Knobbled, smartly.

Upvoted a thousand times.

Ten years under Dr Su: How AMD went from budget Intel alternative to x86 contender

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Still not competing in mobile markets

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.

Microsoft flashes Win10 users with more full-screen ads for Windows 11

Colin Bull 1

Re: Linux in the new year

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.

Microsoft Exchange update fixes security flaws, breaks other stuff

Colin Bull 1

Duh

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.

Colin Bull 1
FAIL

Duh

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.

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

Colin Bull 1

OUT From the frying pan to the fire ..

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.

Intel sued over Raptor Lake voltage instability

Colin Bull 1
Unhappy

If you want redundacy DO NOT USE RAID 5

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.

RAC duo busted for stealing and selling crash victims' data

Colin Bull 1
Unhappy

RAC did everthing correctly?

To mind this is RACs fault because they have not patched the security hole this leak that used at least 3 times before.

Bring the joy of train delays home with your very own departure board

Colin Bull 1
Pirate

The Edgcumbe Arms at Cremyll in Cornwall as one. It displays local bus times and the 2 ferrys. It takes awhile to get the gist of what is what as most of destinations are Plymouth. I guess should they got the metre board, but hats off to them for trying.

The amber glow of bork illuminates Brighton Station

Colin Bull 1

Re: "A toasted bacon sandwich"

The replay was last week - U-Yesterday

CrowdStrike deja vu as 'performance issue' leaves systems sluggish

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Re: Hmmm…

Well it must have taken that title from Outlook. That was always THE performance wrecker

Microsoft patches scary wormable hijack-my-box-via-IPv6 security bug and others

Colin Bull 1

WTF

'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?

Indian telcos to cut off scammy, spammy, telemarketers for two whole years

Colin Bull 1

Re: Wow!

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.

Survey finds that four in five enterprise endpoints could run Windows 11

Colin Bull 1
Thumb Up

Re: Five out of five could run...

20 years ago ODBC allowed excel to get data from a proper database and keep the benefits of a controlled data environment.

Colin Bull 1

Re: Five out of five could run...

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.

San Francisco set to ban rent-hiking algorithms used by landlords

Colin Bull 1
Mushroom

missing ther point

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.

Ridesharing makes new and unique mess in Japan's taxi industry

Colin Bull 1
Mushroom

Ride sharing my ARSE

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.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Colin Bull 1

The devil is in the detail

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.

RIP: WordPerfect co-founder Bruce Bastian dies at 76

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Not only Dos

Where I worked we moved to WP4.2 on Unix. It worked a treat on dumb VT100 type terminals as well as networked PCs.

Windows: Insecure by design

Colin Bull 1
Alert

New paradigm

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.

Colin Bull 1

Re: how much punishment are you willing to take?

"Sometimes you can't change the IP addresses or routes"

I was using IP aliasing for high availability scripts on Alpha Tru 64 in 2000. Would be surprised if Linux did not have this.

Former Fujitsu engineer apologizes for role in Post Office IT scandal

Colin Bull 1
Mushroom

Pending report from the inquiry..

Am I the only one that thinks the inquiry is a means of delaying any prosecution as long as possible, until the smoke has died down.

TeamViewer can't bring itself to say someone broke into its network – but it happened

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Re: " significant compromise of the TeamViewer remote access and support platform"

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.

Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch cleared of all charges in US Autonomy fraud trial

Colin Bull 1

software company ...

I thought the main thrust of HP's claim was that Autonomy overstated their hardware sales ....

Amazon fined in Europe for screwing shoppers with underhand dark patterns

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Kobo DRMed

Kobo books are tied to Adobe DRM. As long as you have an Adobe account you can load them on the KIndle and use Calibre and DeDRM to remove DRM and convert them to EPUB.

Year of Linux on the desktop creeps closer as market share rises a little

Colin Bull 1

Re: It is the UI

" 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.

Capita says 2023 cyberattack costs a factor as it reports staggering £100M+ loss

Colin Bull 1

Re: Take your pick

"Adopt a password keeper so people only need to know one password."

Am I missing something here ? That is only ONE password. What about the other 200 passwords we need most weeks of the year?

Data watchdog tells off outsourcing giant for scanning staff biometrics despite 'power imbalance'

Colin Bull 1
Mushroom

Re: Pathetic response from the ICO

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.

Zen Internet warns customers of an impending IP address change

Colin Bull 1
Unhappy

not my experience

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.

Raspberry Pi on IPO plans: 'We want to be ready when the markets are ready'

Colin Bull 1
Unhappy

Re: Here's hoping the IPO doesn´t ruin the community and support

'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.

How Sinclair's QL computer outshined Apple's Macintosh against all odds

Colin Bull 1
Thumb Up

IBM PC compatible with Apple II

I had an IBM portable with a Quadram 6502 card that I used to demonstrate apple IIe software. It was also better than than IIe itself in that it would run colour IIe games with an external monitor that was difficult and expensive with the IIe

Colin Bull 1
Happy

Re: The 128K Mac was not "rubbish"..

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

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

Colin Bull 1
Childcatcher

Re: How is Fujitsu not in the dock?

"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.

UK officials caught napping ahead of 2G and 3G doomsday

Colin Bull 1

D for Dream world

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.

Microsoft puts the 'why?' in Wi-Fi with latest Windows patch

Colin Bull 1
FAIL

Wifi works OK but ...

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 !

Tesla sues Swedish government after worker rebellion cripples car biz

Colin Bull 1
Happy

It takes 2 to tango

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.

Page: