Posts by Wally Dug

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

Re: Poor Service-Level User Response

I was told by a vendor, due to receiving poor levels of support from their Support Staff, that I should raise every call - every call, no matter what the issue - as a P1.

But, I just couldn't.

ServiceNow's new AI agents will happily volunteer for your dullest tasks

Re: I guess?

Yes, a great one is the mention of TUPE.

At first, the American company seemed to scoff and flat out reject it when our HR informed them about their obligations under TUPE law and then the meeting with the affected employees is quickly ended by our HR. And then our HR must have had a fun chat with the American HR and when the next consultation meeting is held shortly afterwards, the Americans' attitude is oh so different as they grit their teeth and say that they will cover all costs of redundancy as there are no positions for us.

Fortunately, we were kept on by the UK and to be honest, I have often wondered if our HR were just purposely putting the wind up the Americans who were blasé right from the off that they had won the contract and had no use of the UK workforce.

Britain dusts off idle spectrum for rail and emergency comms

Fat Controller? Fat Agnus?

Some models of the Amiga had Fat Agnus and that was a kind of controller. Does that count?

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

We already have "the equivalent of a coal tip able to supply power for three months stacked in the rain outside power stations" - hydro electric:

Cruachan can reach full load in 30 seconds and can maintain its maximum power production for more than 16 hours if necessary

https://www.drax.com/about-us/our-sites-and-businesses/cruachan-power-station/

Okay, 16 hours is not the same as three months, but that's just one hydro electric power station. Scotland alone has got two pumped-storage power stations and dozens of conventional ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Scotland

Windows 11 24H2 goes back to the drawing board over AutoCAD 2022 glitch

Re: This is entertaining

Nope.

Excel for diagrams.

And databases.

And making posters.

You can also do letters on it as well.

And - get this! - some people even use it for calculations! Fools!

Microsoft makes sweet, sweet music with Windows MIDI Services

Feature-rich Operating System?

"The Internet? No, it won't come to anything, let's not bother with it."

"MIDI? No, it won't come to anything, let's not bother with it."

"Privacy? Security? No, they won't come to anything, let's not bother with them."

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

Re: I bet Tesla didn't

Yeah, yeah, going back over old ground here. Can you not get a different view?

Heart surgery device maker's security bypassed, data encrypted and stolen

Re: "Sounds like th-aorta get this sorted quickly"

Is this story:

A Negative

B Positive

O For Goodness' Sakes

or

AB Undecided

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Re: Ah....backups....

Well, speaking as an old f4rt and someone who is heavily into backups, surely if someone is responsible for changing the tapes (or nowadays checking on the backup storage utilisation or data crystals or whatever the storage du jour is), then they should take the initiative and responsibility to also wonder, "What would happen if we needed to recover some data? Or a system?"

Build regular recovery testing into the job and make it official. And when it becomes official, it will simply slide into your monthly tasks along with your other checks.

It doesn't have to be exhaustive and put in the procedures - yes, write procedures! have a checklist! have a record of what has been recovered and when! - a disclaimer that these are just quick recovery tests and no guarantees can be given to recover all data possible and that there is no gaurantee that the contents won't be corrupt without proper testing. With regular recovery testing of the various objects (e.g. files, databases, individual e-mails, AD objects, complete VMs, etc.) that you back up, then when the time comes you will either know exactly what to do and quickly get the system back or it will fail spectacularly. In which case, point to all the previously successful recovery tests and the disclaimer and say "I did my best, but without management buy-in to test properly, there's nothing else I can do."

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

EMultiplan

I remember using EMultiplan - or Enhanced Multiplan - under Unisys' CTOS in the early- and mid-90s which I believe was the forerunner of Excel. If I remember correctly, converting existing EMultiplan spreadsheets to Excel was fairly easy when I did eventually start using Excel in 1995 as the formulae format was similar-ish, but the two systems were separate, so it was a manual process.

Not sure if Multiplan/EMultiplan became Excel or if it simply donated the general principles.

The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg

Red Stripe/Shirt

Isn't the one with the red shirt the first one to die in Star Trek when they leave the safety of the USS Enterprise?

Stop installing that software – you may have just died

Bomb

Similar-ish story from me.

Working in a busy town bank branch located within a busy town shopping centre, although we were just outside the undercover section, when the shopping centre's fire alarms sounded and told people to evacuate. Shortly afterwards a security guard opened the door and told us to evacuate (we would normally have been phoned by the shopping centre admin team), so we quickly locked everything up and went out the back to our fire evacuation point.

Eventually we were allowed to go back into the premises only to be told it wasn't a fire alarm but a bomb threat... in the shop unit right next to ours and not too far from our fire evacuation point. Yes, it was just a hoax but surely they could have given us a little bit more information and got us slightly further away?

(And no comments, please, about us being a bunch of bankers!)

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Wrong GNSS Details

There is a dual carriageway in the centre of my town that is street lit - so 30 mph. My GNSS system shows this as 30 mph. Then there is a break in the central reservation - no change in speed limits at all - and my GNSS system shows 50 mph. At the next break in the central reservation, the GNSS system goes back to 30 mph and then it resumes as a two-way street lit carriageway, so still 30 mph. How many other inaccuracies are prevalent in these systems?

And if it was the other way - a higher speed limit suddenly becoming a slower speed limit - and the haptic feedback is enabled, who would be liable for any resulting accidents/claims due to sudden deceleration?

In general, a speed limiter is a good thing - one simply has to read news reports about the impact caused by people who speed (for example https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxe2j8x222go where the driver drove at more than 140 mph) - but like all technology if it relies on something to make it function then that something has to be accurate and trustworthy.

I didn't touch a thing – just some cables and a monitor – and my computer broke

Re: Blonde moments

Or trying to install a wireless mouse for the first time and cursing the manufacturer for not supplying the USB dongle for it.

And then you RTFM...

Cascading Crows

In a place that I worked in many years previously, if a new sales rep started (i.e. new, not replacing somebody else) - let's call him "A" - then a new laptop was bought. Of course, this laptop had to go to the Sales Manager. And his current laptop was reinstalled from scratch and given to "B", one of the Assistant Sales Managers... whose laptop was reinstalled from scratch and given to "C"... whose laptop was reinstalled from scratch and given to "D"... and, yes, eventually "A" got a laptop, but after perhaps five or six iterations of the "higher up and therefore better" reps getting better laptops.

This was in the days of Windows 95 when an installation usually consisted of IIRC 27 or 29 floppy disks for Windows alone, followed by Office, and everything else that was required. And then, obviously, each laptop was kept for a week or so before being wiped to ensure that all data had been transferred successfully. So one new sales rep could generate work lasting a good wee while. And most of the reps lived so far away that handovers were conducted via Red Star parcels, which introduced further delays and the possibility of broken screens, no matter how well the laptop had been wrapped. (We always bought the optional insurance!)

Then came the advent of CD-ROM drives (hurrah!) and then pre-installed Windows (yay!) which drastically reduced the timescales. This cycle was only broken when a new sales application was bought which necessitated everyone getting a shiny new Gateway 2000 laptop.

A thump with the pointy end of a screwdriver will fix this server! What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Technical Terminology

I've heard a hammer being referred to as a "persuader".

I told Halle Berry where to go during a programming gig in LA

Re: Alternative uses for hotels

Glasgow's Red Light district is/was adjacent to the hotel business district, about half a mile from Central Station. My office was here, which did mean we got asked if we wanted a good time if we left the office late at night.

FTFY:

six-person jacuzz -> murky sex-pond

six-person jacuzz -> mucky pond scum*

*(and things resistant to all known antibiotics. So I've been told, ahem.)

Nearest Hotel

On a trip to the US, I chose a hotel via Google Maps that looked as if it was within walking distance of the office I was being sent to. The office manager who was helping me was perfectly happy with that, but came back rather sheepishly to tell me it was denied by the Powers That Be as there was a hotel $20 cheaper about an hour away and they wouldn't let her book it for me.

Fortunately, she agreed with me and argued my case by saying that, while that hotel may be cheaper by $20, I would either need a hired car or taxi journeys and that would cost more than $20 a day. I wasn't popular, but got my hotel which was a pleasant 15 minute walk from the office.

Tesla devotee tests Cybertruck safety with his own finger – and fails

Next Up:

Mr Fay checks to see if that paint really is wet before embarking on a trip to the woods to look for a bear clutching a roll of Andrex.

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Et tu, Brute?

Speaking to the BBC, St Marys Walk folk urged the council to restore the apostrophe lest "everything go downhill."

So, is this an accidental removal of the apostrophe by El Reg or are you secretly siding with North Yorkshire Council?

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

The Dutch wouldn't consider it odd, either, to split a bill...

UK skies set for cheeky upgrade with hybrid airship

Really???

Some have described the shape as resembling buttocks, branding the airship "the Flying Bum" (in the UK sense of "bum" meaning rear end, not the US sense meaning vagrant).

"Bum" in the UK also means vagrant, to boast, to beg, and also used for a bum deal, as in what the British readers now increasingly find with articles in El Reg.

Also, is there not a kind of worldwide shortage of helium, despite that major find a couple of years ago? Should these airships really be using it rather than keeping it for important things such as MRI scanners and party balloons?

London Clinic probes claim staffer tried to peek at Princess Kate's records

I worked for a competitor bank and everything was audited, so if an investigation took place, they could see who (or more accurately, what logged-in staff member - if someone left their system without locking it...) searched, when it was searched and exactly what was searched. And, yes, for certain high profile accounts, it was a sackable offence (this was the early 1990s, so not even a faint smell of GDPR).

Yes, I did just crash that critical app. And you should thank me for having done so

Different Kind of E-mail Loop

I'm sure I've told this one before.

We had a very annoying director who put read receipts on all e-mail messages. There was one message that I put, "unread" (aren't reading preview panes great?) into the Deleted Items which, of course, was set to delete on exit. Which, in turn, triggered an "unread" message to said Director. Next time I started Outlook, I'd go into my Deleted Items, select Recover Deleted Items and get that particular message back. Which was deleted the next time I logged out of Outlook. And so on and so on.

It lasted a good few months until she brought it to my attention when I feigned ignorance and said I'd investigate. Eventually (!) I reported to her that I'd "found a glitch with that particular e-mail" and had, I think, corrected it.

Pointless and petty and immature? Absolutely. But she deserved it (her office nickname was "The Bitch").

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

Hypothetical Example

I was at an interview once for a similar position I was currently in for a different company but within the same overall group. I was offered a seat and then realised that the two people interviewing me were sitting at right angles and at a distance - in order to answer A, I had to turn in his direction, completely out of sight of B, and then turn to B to answer her, being out of sight of A.

The interview seemed to go okay apart from that and then I was given a hypothetical example. It's so long ago now I can't remember the complete scenario, but it was along the lines of:

It's Friday, 10pm and you're the only one in [part of it was a call centre] the office and someone reports that their computer isn't working. What do you do?

(Thinking: Is this a trick?) Go and help the person.

Okay, good. Now, you get a phone call. What do you do?

I presume I have finished with the user, so answer it.

No, you're still working with the user.

Well, I'd be away from my desk, so they would hopefully leave a message.

You've got the phone with you.

Okay, I'd excuse myself from the user, answer the phone, explain I was busy and promise to call back as soon as I could.

But it's one of the directors.

I would still say the same.

He needs to print a report urgently, but it's not working.

(Thinking: What? An "urgent" report at 10pm on a Friday?!?) I would explain the situation to the director that I was in the middle of helping someone else and would call him back.

But he's a director!

With all due respect, all users are equal and I am already assisting one with an issue - and that user is currently unable to speak to customers and therefore is not generating business for the company.

It's an urgent report that the director can't print.

In that case, can you tell me what the priorities are?

You need to decide them yourself.

In that case, I am helping the user that I have already started helping.

Surprisingly, I didn't get the job - but, obviously, I didn't want it as I'm not into those kind of mind games.

It's crazy but it's true: Apple rejected Bing for wrong answers about Annie Lennox

Right By Your Side

So, Apple, Google is Right By Your Side and It Only Wants to Be With You whereas Microsoft/Bing is simply Waiting In Vain?

Icon because of the obvious ;-)

Microsoft veteran on how to blue screen your way to better testing

Re: "PS/2 keyboard support turned up in Windows 2000, USB keyboards were added with Vista in 2007"

I don't think the author means that PS/2 keyboard support and USB support were added at that time. I think he means that the ability to create the manual crash with a PS/2 keyboard came with Windows 2000 and with a USB keyboard with Windows Vista. As per the linked article, a special key combination is required - Hold down the rightmost CTRL key, and press the SCROLL LOCK key twice - and this was only added for those keyboards at that time. (A special Registry key needs to be set, then a reboot takes place before this is actually enabled.)

Oracle quietly extends Solaris 11.4 support until 2037

Yes, you're right - many organisations are entirely reliant on their mission critical systems. But I'm pretty sure if that's the case, then I would hope the majority have a DR solution in place that is regularly tested, the plan is kept up-to-date etc. and the hardware may even be geographically spread out for load balancing, DR purposes, etc.

And with all due respect, I'm unsure if one of my theoretical mission critical systems could be upgraded "easily" or replaced - rightly or wrongly - as the organisation would have made a major investment in it over the years. And the kind of organisation that is happy to spend millions on building, running and maintaining a mission critical system will happily pay for proper vendor (in this case Oracle) support rather than some kind of third-party service provider whose SLAs include the term "best endeavours".

One of the organisations that I worked for in the past had a vendor's parts bank on-site with common spare parts, despite being promised a one hour delivery of any part, as their system really couldn't be down. And, yes, this system was fully clustered, fully redundant, full DR capability (with DR site being updated in real time), so shouldn't have needed any of that, but such was the value of the support contract and the clout of the organisation, the vendor happily agreed. (This was a shared parts bank. The vendor also had an engineer based on-site 24/7/365.)

So, yes, maybe relying on a single vendor is bad from a financial point of view, but in some cases, it's not only the right choice, but the most prudent choice.

I'm guessing that money isn't a problem and you make a lot of bad decisions every day anyway.

Have you ever been in an environment where Solaris and Sun hardware has been in use? Yes, it may very well be legacy now but in my experience, Solaris and Sun hardware, especially when running as a cluster, is pretty bombproof with uptimes running into the years (decades?) rather than days and weeks for Windows.

It's not so much that "money isn't a problem" it's having the confidence and comfort of a having a rock solid platform to run your enterprise or mission critical applications, some of which may literally mean life or death to your customers/clients.

I admit it's been a long time since I've had to look after a Solaris box to that extent, but I reckon there's still a fair few of them running away quite happily, doing what was promised of them in the 2010s, 2000s and even 1990s, hence why support has been extended.

Microsoft 365's add-on avalanche is putting the squeeze on customers

Revenue Stream

Analyst Michael Cherry added: "Microsoft and other cloud vendors promised the cloud would help reduce IT costs, not just in terms of on-premises hardware and software, but also in terms of IT headcount. It now seems that the cloud is the cause of significant new costs."

And therein lies the rub. In the good old days, Microsoft got its revenue stream with a new release of Windows (both server and client) every few years followed by a new release of Office. With the cloud, that made way for the subscription model.

But, if you provide a stable, unchanging platform that suits your customers, the revenue stream levels off, which doesn't suit your shareholders. Each new addition to M365 is simply the equivalent of an "upgrade" which makes your shareholders happy, sure, but what about the customer whose "simple to manage" estate is ever more complicated to manage, licence and afford?

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

Time Bomb Y2K

The HBO movie documentary "Time Bomb Y2K" was released in the UK on 31 December 2023 and used archived footage of the time from interviews, news reports and tv programmes. It was fairly interesting from an historical aspect, but it barely touched on what Y2K was and how people around the world were investigating/fixing it. Instead, it seemed to focus on the naysayers, doom merchants and bunker dwellers - including a few self-proclaimed programmers who stated "I know what's going to happen and I'm going to hide away" - so all in all, it was quite a negative and unbalanced film. Still worth a watch, though, if you have a spare 90 minutes and don't mind an increase in blood pressure every so often when viewing some of the "rational" arguments used by certain participants against the Y2K concept.

On a similar note, my boss and I had an argument a few years back with someone who claimed that Y2K was a big hoax, waste of time and money etc. Oh, and the person we had an argument with worked in IT at the time and by his own admission did Y2K checking. Go figure.

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

Re: ZX81

Likewise.

A day or two after Christmas, I was showing a "horse racing" game (i.e. pick number 1-3 and see if it matched the one randomly picked by the computer) to my uncle that I had typed in from a magzine. It said either "You won!" or "You lost!" and he said, "There must be a way that you can make it tell you which horse of the three won". He looked at the code, saw the variable, worked out how to print it to the screen and I thought "wow". From then on, I tweaked code, added things to it, and discovered that this wasn't a fancy, unreachable "thing" - I was in complete control of it.

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

Jack and Irving

Jack and Irving - I like what you did with the names this week. Well, actually, as an Amigan (I still use it under emulation), i don't like what you did with the names - I'm starting to get cold sweats already and I'll probably have nightmares tonight :-(

Philips recalls 340 MRI machines because they may explode in an emergency

Back of a Motorcyclist?

Why would you be on the back of a motorcyclist in the first place? I'm intrigued. Are you regularly on the back of a motorcyclist? Please tell us more.

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

Re: "Yes, I could buy an ad-free version, but why should I?"

With all due respect to you GJC, at no point did I say that I wanted "support, and presumably updates, forever, for free". My remarks about support were simply to highlight that when Microsoft withdraws support from Windows (10 Home in 2025, in my example) then support for MS Solitaire, by extension, will also end. In fact, I agreed with your comment that the software "will carry on working, forever", although it may not be supported forever. Likewise, I also agree with a later post by Yankee Doodle Doofus: "Support and updates... to solitaire? Porting to 64 bits should have been the last time an update was needed."

Judging by all my upvotes compared to your downvotes across all posts on this topic, the majority of readers understand my original point which was to agree about the scourge of bloatware and unnecessary features and I used MS Solitaire as an example as now it needs an Internet connection to keep your score and it also feeds you ads whereas previous - and recent - versions did not.

And as for your last question: "Do you give your work away for free?" Yes, in the past I have. I admit that I am also a salaried employee within the IT industry, but I have also carried out IT-related work in the past for people for no cost, even supplying them with (admittedly older) equipment that was going spare. May I ask if that has answered your question?

Re: "Yes, I could buy an ad-free version, but why should I?"

The "problem" is as mentioned in my original post:

"...the requirement for an Internet connection to play MS Solitaire now, for both the scores and those annoying ads!"

Previous versions of MS Solitaire did not contain ads and did not require an Internet connection, so we're back to bloat and unwanted/unnecessary features, as per the OP.

When you say "And that copy that you bought will carry on working, forever" then, yes, technically you are correct. But it will still contain ads, still require an Internet connection unlike previous versions and at some point in the future (14 October 2025 in the case of Windows 10 Home) Microsoft will stop supporting it. So technically, yes; realistically, no.

Re: "Yes, I could buy an ad-free version, but why should I?"

Nobody want to pay for software.

Actually, I already "bought" MS Solitaire when I bought my copy of Windows 10 as it comes with it, just like it did with every other version of Windows that I bought. Would you like to see the receipts?

Word 6

Obviously this is based on my fading memory, but I think that Word 6 will have most/all features that I use in Word to this day. And how many different versions have there been since then? So, yes, bloated software full of "features" that may benefit a very, very small percentage of people only, yet is programmed into all copies of Word/Office out there.

And don't get me started on the requirement for an Internet connection to play MS Solitaire now, for both the scores and those annoying ads! (Yes, I could buy an ad-free version, but why should I? Solitaire has been free in every version of Windows up to 10, so why change it?)

Telco CEO quits after admitting she needs to carry rivals' SIM cards to stay in touch

DR Strategy

"Another admission was that the former CEO's personal DR strategy had evolved to see her carry SIM cards for Australia's two rival mobile networks."

And this has been highlighted for what reason? This sounds perfectly sensible to me. (Unless by "personal" it means her and only her and not the rest of the people who would be involved in DR?)

Tenfold electric vehicles on 2030 roads could be a shock to the system

Re: Mind you...

By 2030, Teams will be fully AI-based and will type what you're thinking even before you've thought it.

Not Just Charging Issues, Transport Infrastructure Too

As well as the need for clean energy and charging infrastructure, electric vehicles are heavier than ICE vehicles which will probably result in more wear and tear on the road infrastructure. Will roads need to be repaired more often than they currently are once EVs get into more common use? Or do we need a redesign of our roads? Remember: It's not just cars, but buses and trucks, too.

And it's not just roads. What about bridges? Car parks? Ferries? Docks? Level crossings?

Bids for ISS demolition rights are now open, NASA declares

I believe that the Vermicious Knids have.

Diaster Area

Shirley Mr Hotblack Desiato and the rest of Disaster Area can be employed here?

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Moving House

I remember reading an article several years by the then BBC's Technology correspondent who lived in the US and he was moving from state A to state B and all he had to pack was his clothes as the two properties were rented, his car was leased, his music was "leased" on his phone, his TV was "leased" via NetFlix, Amazon, etc. as just about everything he had was via a subscription.

I find that very bizarre that you don't own anything... but I'm the kind of dinosaur that loves physical CDs, films, books, etc. and will happily pay what some people would consider a premium to not only be able to hold it in my hand, but to keep it in my hand for ever.

Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

Re: Printer Features

That's part of my ignorance as I don't know the ins and outs of modern printers and what features they can offer - how does one manufacturer differ from another these days to get your business as it surely cannot be on price alone? But as Reg Commentard Nick Ryan said above:

The new common print drivers that are out are near useless, with little actual support for additional functions - even the really common options such as duplex or colour control are frequently just not there, less common options such as stapling and booklet collation (incredibly useful in the corporate world) are nowhere to be seen.

Even pre-Covid I rarely printed, but in previous jobs I have certainly used stapling and booklet collation, both features selectable via the non-Microsoft supplied printer driver.

Printer Features

Off topic, admittedly, but 30-odd years ago, the printer drivers supplied by Commodore-Amiga were abysmal. A divine being call Jeff Walker was bemoaning the poor output resolution of his Canon BubbleJet printer (BJ10 IIRC) in his magazine Just Amiga Monthly and a German reader called Wolf Faust took it upon himself to try to make a printer driver that took advantage of the printer features, such as the higher BubbleJet resolution (360*360) over the standard ink jet printers (300*300) of the time. Don't laugh, I did say it was a long time ago!

Long story short, not only did Mr Faust create a brilliant printer driver, then a suite of controlling programs, but Canon were so impressed that they gave him all the latest models so that he could develop for them and they could support the Amiga. Many Amiga users, myself included, specifically bought Canon BubbleJets because of Mr Faust. (And as a side note, most of my printers since have been Canon.)

My point being: Who is best to provide a printer driver that supports all the features of the printer? The manufacturer or a global alliance of printer manufacturers via Microsoft? Will all the features of my printer be supported or will only the main features be supported? Are printers and printer features now so indistinguishable from each other that an OS provider can distribute generic drivers? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

Enter Password

I once got a very worried phone call during the day from someone telling me that the computer was asking for a password, so what should she do?

Thinking that something was amiss, I went round to see the user to try to work out what it was. After all, this was the Finance department, so...

I was confronted with the standard Windows 98 network logon box. When I asked the user what had happened beforehand, she mentioned that the computer ran updates and did a restart, but she wasn't sure if she should put her password in. I stayed with her while she put it in and confirmed that, yes, it was just standard updates.

So, don't always assume.

Windows File Explorer gets nostalgic speed boost thanks to one weird bug

Re: just get Linux already

Sorry to be pedantic, but...

Mark Twain: "The reports of Windows' death are greatly exagerated."

Oscar Wilde: "There are two tragedies in life; one is Windows, the other is Linux."

Henry Hoover: "All operating systems suck; Linux just sucks less."

Windows Explorer is Speedier...

...and the article is written by Richard Speed.

I see what you did there - well done!

Now, if only you had Getridov Bloatt or Fallback To-Xp working at El Reg Towers, who knows what may happen...