Posts by Robert E A Harvey

'Fax virus' panicked a manager and sparked job-killing Reply-All incident

Tomfoolery is better than malice

Ah the happy days of fax shenanigans.

Drawing a sinusoidal cycle in pencil on a bit of paper, gumming the ends together to make an endless loop, and sending it to head office, who got a whole roll of paper with a sine wave on.

Then ringing up two hours later, in the certain knowledge that some lowly functionary would have binned it, and saying "did you get my banner for Sir Leo's presentation this afternoon?"

Or sounding a message on pirated Buckingham palace letterhead asking for someone to contact the Met about security arrangements for tomorrow's royal visit - giving the phone number of a Chinese restaurant.

Most fax machines printed a header with the phone number of the source - but that wasn't caller ID, it was supplied by the machine at the other end. I discovered that Panasonics would let you programme anything you liked, such as "Embassy of the GDR" or strings of oriental characters . So all sorts of unsettling suggestions were possible.

Hands up who hasn't made an offer to buy some part of Intel

Unreported elsewhere?

I wonder if El Reg could look into it!

The UK Government?

Given the UK has just bought Coherent Inc's facility in Newton Aycliffe, perhaps they had a pop at Intel??

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-buys-semiconductor-factory-for-defence-purposes

Nothing to scoff at: Crisps and nuts biz KP Snacks smacked in ransomware hack attack

"fuck clinics in the USA this week" said one criminal

I'd quite like to go to a fuck clinic. It sounds a lot more fun than the ones I normally have to attend.

Drones intone 'you must stay home,' eliciting moans from those in the zone: Flying gizmos corral Brits amid coronavirus lockdown

That Port Toilet video has a very unconvincing sound track. I don't think the drone is talking. The timbre is too good, and the volume doesn't change when it goes up. It's either recorded off a line feed, or total bollox.

Ever wondered what Microsoft really thought about the iPad? Ex-Windows boss spills beans

Re: 10 years!

THIS.

The $MEGACORP I work for lets div. mgr. and above choose hardware - everyone else has a $400 price limit. Lots of fujitsu flaptops. try doing CAD on an i3 with 4GB of ram and 128M of storage.

Microsoft's on Edge and you could be, too: Chromium-based browser exits beta – with teething problems

Re: Edge might be the best browser I have ever used

Yep. And the sync with the Android version is good too.

It's become (despite 30 years of being annoyed with Microsoft) my preferred browser.

Re: Edgemium

Mary Jo Foley christened it ChrEdge some time ago. I like that.

Azure consultant's Google image search results hotlinking sueball booted off the pitch by High Court

See, it's like this

Sometimes I laugh at the cleverness of your headlines.

Sometimes I read the article, and /then/ realise how clever it was.

.

I must be tired or summat, but this one looks like word bingo, and I CBA to read the storey.

Edge, Internet Explorer users Czech their settings after MSN 'forgot' their language

"My name is Bob and I use Edge"

Actually Chredge.

And only for my castbox podcast listening, because tthe player bit doesn't work in Firefox, and I CBA to find out why.

Official: Microsoft will take an axe to Skype for Business Online. Teams is your new normal

There are altertnatives

Take "circuit". Developed by Siemens, and spun off to Atos (boo.) https://unify.com/en/solutions/team-collaboration - it is quite tolerable, and I have almost begun enjoying using it.

I was quite surprised by how good monday.com was, and it is certainly not a clone of other things.

Ex-Mozilla CTO: US border cops demanded I unlock my phone, laptop at SF airport – and I'm an American citizen

What about Apple?

This chap is asking the ACLU to look into the legalities involved.

What about Apple? don't they have a dog in this fight? what about their security?

Down productivity tools: Microsoft Teams takes a Monday tumble

Time to dust off the on-prem systems. You'll need to find somewhere else to plug in the kettle

"Put it all in the cloud" they said.

"It will be more reliable" they said.

"You won't have to bother managing it" they said.

"We employ the best experts so you don't have to " they said.

You got a smart speaker but you're worried about privacy. First off, why'd you buy one? Secondly, check out Project Alias

Re: Be curious if it's picked up at the other end ......

Given that they are not supposed to be listening all the time, and the key phase is supposed to turn on the link to the AI at the other and and is detected locally, I wonder what the point is at all.

A far better bit of research would be to use wireshark and determine if the key phrase *does* start something up and see a bit more traffic, or if there is a continual snoop going on.

I can't do that because I don't have one and don't want one.

iPhone price cuts are coming, teases Apple CEO. *Bring-bring* Hello, Apple UK? It's El Reg. You free to chat?

so

Nothing to do with removing the headphone Jack then?

Even Windows 10 can't save the PC market as chip shortages, Brexit uncertainties bite

Surface grinder

I've tried - I've really tried - to like the surface pro, but it isn't fish nor fowl. Not appearing in these figures is no bad thing IMHO

Apple: You can't sue us for slowing down your iPhones because you, er, invited us into, uh, your home... we can explain

Lawyers

This has done nothing to shake my conviction that all lawyers are cunts.

Office 365 enjoys good old-fashioned Thursday wobble as email teeters over in Europe

and yet..

Yes, $MEGACORP has also been immune from this, running its own servers on its own hardware. They give barely any trouble.

Yet Microsoft want large corporations to sign up to Microsoft Managed Desktop, which I suspect will include a requirement to use thier azure structures, their AD and their Exchange Server. Something users will push for, as it will mean they can collaborate on Onenote and and end to 3rd party sharing systems like Syncplicity and Unify's Circuit for communications.

Nuts to that. The arbitary and high handed update and product dropping, and the sort of cloud unreliability they have displayed makes MMD a non-starter.

Everyday doings of a metropolitan techie: Stob's software diary

Re: Cable ties

Cable ties can fail in sunlight too. I used to work on cable laying ships and the management had exprimented with special UV resistent ones, which were not, and expensive original Ty-raps with a 25 year warranty that would not last a year. I suggested using stainless ones (with rubber belts, if necessary) and that sort of fixed it, except for the heavier handed seamen who could get them tight enough to not only cut into an armoured antenna cable, but into the aluminium frame of a buoy too.

Kudos

1. I agree about Leo Laporte

2. The remark about the samdung disk cloning software is incredible. How many of these have they shipped? I don't disbelieve it, I just can't believe they are still in business. Good tip

3. But Kudos must go to you for "special drawer reserved for disappointing surprise presents for the children of people you don't like" - the best thing on el-reg so far in 2019

Western Digital deploys heatsink on remodelled M.2 to tempt gamers

Window dressing

Buy me! I am so fast I need a heatsink!

Microsoft, you shouldn't have: Festive Windows 10 Insiders build about as exciting as new socks

Havn't they finished this yet?

They've been building Windows for over a quarter of a century, and it isn't finished yet?

It's official. Microsoft pushes Google over the Edge, shifts browser to Chromium engine

One word response

BWAHAHAHAWAHA

Is Google's Pixel getting better, or just more expensive?

Not gone Pixel yet

I am still using my Nexus, and see no reason to upgrade .

I did tell Google that I thought they were overcharging compared to what I paid for my Nexus, and the human on the phone just laughed at me.

iPhone XS: Just another £300 for a better cam- Wait, come back!

SE for me

I am still using my corporate SE, and have no desire to change it.

My private phone is a google Nexus, and that's still good enough too.

Budget 2018: UK goes it alone on digital sales tax for tech giants

Design for the coin

I suspect it needs to be riddled with holes, and thus be a hollow sham.

"Going alone"

I suspect that "Going alone" will rapidly turn into "blazing a trail" and then "leading the pack" until it becomes some sort of self-levelling normal.

Super Cali goes ballistic, net neutrality hopeless? Even Ajit Pai's gloating is something quite atrocious

baffled now

Is it cooler to ignore or acknowledge the headline writer's obvious skills?

Vodafone won't pay employee expenses for cups of coffee

About a million years ago I was a telephone engineer for the then GPO.

They gave us vauxhall viva vans - with the heater removed.

I was entitled to a subsistence allowance if I was more than 7 miles from the depot at lunch time. It was 31p (we had just been decimalised).

This was to cover the difference between what I would normally pay for Lunch, and what I might have to pay somewhere I was not familiar with.

So I am in no way surprised.

Core-blimey! Intel's Core i9 18-core monster – the numbers

Scared again?`

Is this just to shit on AMD?

They could presumably have done this at any time in the last 3 years, so are they doing it now because AMD are climbng out of the well at last?

Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

Re: Sorry, but ...

It never occured to me that was a typo...

BA's 'global IT system failure' was due to 'power surge'

Re: "Tirelessly"?

It must be true. He was wearing a yellow high-viz waistcoat when he said it

‘Artificial Intelligence’ was 2016's fake news

Half way there

My view is that the industry is half way there. It has cracked the "Artificial" bit. Now it needs to work on the "Intelligence" half of the definition.

willing victims

willing victims

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hackers-are-trading-hundreds-of-thousands-of-xhamster-porn-account-details

People have lost thier pron account details to hackers.

WHO in their right mind /registers/ at a pron site? why would you give the shady classes /any/ personal data? These people are, by definition, dodgy as fuck and even harder to get hold of than a jellyfish flambe!

And why would you need to? there is no shortage of pink (or non-pink) pixels to be had, and frankly when you have seen one you have seen them all.

Lambs to the slaugher, the lot of them. No sympathy at all.

Microsoft ❤️ Linux? Microsoft ❤️ running its Windows' SQL Server software on Linux

Re: Drawbridge?

My feeling is that it is called Drawbridge because they can pull it up at any time without notice.

As they have done to so many previous initiatives.

Hollywood offers Daniel Craig $150m to (slash wrists) play James Bond

what is going on?

There are at any one time around 400 people graduating from arts and theatre degrees, and a backlog of established actors.

Why does Bond have to be someone we have already seen in 24 other roles?

'Hey, Elon? You broke it, you bought it' says owner of SpaceX's satellite cinder

Re: Insurance covered the launch

Nah. These checks were an essential precursor to launching, the insurance company would get laughed out of court trying to evade.

Loads of satellites get destroyed before reaching orbit, the insurance for them is pretty mature these days.

If this one was not /adequately/ insured that is the client's fault, not SpaceX. Bluster and Bullshit

If you haven't changed your Dropbox password for 4 years, do so now

done

it asked me a few minutes after logging in, which was amusing. It reckoned I had not changed it since 2012, which is a bit rum because I only signed up this February....

BOFH: Free as in free beer or... Oh. 'Free Upgrade'

Re: I used to work on printers for a living..

Printers are made of compressed misery, and filled with liquid evil.

Android tablets too bitter a pill for Dell

Re: Success requires hard work

good point, well made. I live on too many systems.

Success requires hard work

Frankly if they put a bit more effort in, they might have sold a few more. They [i]looked[/i] very pretty. But there never were any in PCwhirled, or JohnLewes, so they can't have been that bothered

Evernote riles freetards with two-device limit

Re: value for money

I had long correspondence with the bloke at CloudMagic Email, which I use on my Android phone and IOS tablet because it shares the accounts setup. The free version is still free, but they are selling a clever little add-on that flags incoming emails with stuff from the sender, like thier facebook or linkdin profiles.

The asking price for this little gadget is something ike 50 times as much as I value it at, so of course I have not bought it. The developer chap was quite open about needing the money to keep things working, and I pointed out that his little toy was going to cost me more than I pay mail.com for the underlying service.

Bye bye

I just removed evernote from my devices.

Only shame is that the Ubuntu "note" application on the M10 tablet did a good job of using Evernote for distributed notes. I guess they will now have to find something else.

I have Onenote on my Office365 account, so I don't need Evernote as well. I /might/ have paid for it, if the price was sensible, but they wanted more per month than it was worth to me per year.

Visiting America? US border agents want your Twitter, Facebook URLs

which ones

I have 4 twitter accounts, one of which I only use for recieving winter driving condition reports, and it would not be hard to make more than on Fzcebook account

Microsoft releases open source bug-bomb in the rambling house of C

Re: Bounds checking for C and C++

Yes I was going to say "surely been done before"

Lester Haines: RIP

We shall not see his like again.

What will El Reg be without him

Shakes on a plane: How dangerous is turbulence?

Well, duh.

Speaking as someone who was once on a small aircraft approahing Sumburgh airport in the Shetlands in pretty turbulent weather - when we dropped from 4000 to 2000 feet in a matter of seconds, and the seat in front of me came off the rails and went over my head, complete with occupant - I think the case is demonstratable.

Prof squints at Google's mobile monopoly defence, shakes head

Re: Maps, etc.

My iPad, Samsuing, and Ubuntu phones all use HERE maps. The 'buntu one came with it.

It's jolly good, and so is the phone. Got the same problem with an app desert that Window,s Blackberry, and Firefox had, but the ubuntu phone and tablet are first rate, and HERE maps is impressive.

Good enough IT really is good enough. You don't need new hardware

26 megapixel

Quite. I have taken the opportunity to go from 8Mp to 12Mp to 18Mp to 28Mp, but only because I needed to buy a new camera at each time.

That said, the Olympus's OM-D E-M5 II is interesting. It's "only" 16Mp, which is a perfectly reasonable sweet spot for taking jolly good pictures - but if you tripod mount it it subverts the image stabilisation motors to dither the sensor about and take a 50Mp image. That's clever, and I can see myself being attracted. But there is no /point/ in going backwards from AP/C to micro4/3rds, and from 28 to 16 just to get 50. So my wallet is safe.

Probably

LibreOffice goes cloudy

Re: That's cool, but not new

I'd forgotten about https://www.rollapp.com/app/lowriter which has been round for a couple of years, and so I went to check up on it. It can use several cloud services, dropbox, box, googledrive, onedrive, and summat called yandex. So this new thing might be pointless. but still fun to fiddle with