Posts by Why Not?

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

Re: Technology question

The Chinese got there first

https://uk.pcmag.com/security/150692/us-disinfects-routers-that-china-allegedly-used-for-hacking

The FBI disrupted a Chinese state-sponsored hacking effort against the US by resorting to its own hack to remove the malware from hundreds of infected Cisco and Netgear routers.

The infected routers formed a botnet that a Chinese hacking group called “Volt Typhoon” was allegedly using to try and infiltrate US critical infrastructure systems. But on Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it dismantled the botnet last month by securing court orders, allowing federal agents to secretly remove the malware from the infected devices—some of which were likely owned by regular consumers.

Re: nothing new

Botulinum cigars nearly worked!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro#:~:text=The%20assassination%20attempts%20reportedly%20included,%2C%20mafia%2Dstyle%20execution%20endeavors%2C

The assassination attempts reportedly included cigars poisoned with botulinum toxin, a Eumycota fungi-infected scuba-diving suit along with a booby-trapped conch placed on the sea bottom,[20] an exploding cigar (Castro loved cigars and scuba diving, but he quit smoking in 1985),[20][21] and plain, mafia-style execution endeavors, among others

Hello? Emergency services? I'd like to report a wrong number

Oh the universe invented a better idiot!

I used to do call logging and one of the reasons we sold loads of call loggers to government departments is because the fire Brigade used to turn up with a few appliances when the big departments called 999.

Obviously you had to be pretty stupid to dial 9999 but the switches were a little slow and the users were used to dialling 9 to get an outside line, impatient they hit it again & again until 5 London fire brigade appliances were hammering down the embankment!

Fire icon of course.

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

To be fair

35 years ago I used to get American PC's as voice mails from the mothership and they had these switches before they had auto switching. We a lost a few to the switch being at 110v before we figured it out.

Flame because..

London Ohio?

London Ontario?

London Finland?

London Christmas Island?

https://londonist.com/london/features/places-named-london-that-aren-t-the-london

Problem with ruling much of the world is that we named half of it too!

Techie told 'Bill Gates' Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours

Re: Excel is still rubbish

Plenty of colleagues spend their lives replacing Excel solutions developed by business users with more polished / corporate solutions. Though many times the Excel resurfaces. Its not an usually an Excel problem its normally a lack of decent development methodology.

For volume I used to use SQL server or Access (back when Excel choked on 1M lines.) but Excel is open all day on my machine.

What better alternatives are there?

Cigarette break burned out a huge chunk of Africa's internet

Re: False alarms also count as alarms

I tend to schedule a nightly copy to a network share for such things. Expecting people to backup before making changes is fairly optimistic.

Re: Own up to it

Shoulda Woulda Coulda

always plays in my head when I do changes.

Sadly best practice of proper documentation, four eyes etc were not common 20-30 years ago. ITIL made a serious impact when adopted.

If we plug this in without telling anyone, nobody will know we caused the outage

Re: Let's Check the Server Room Access Log

server room?

My first one in the late 90s was at the back of the stationary cupboard, key at reception. It was an improvement because when I arrived we had an AS400 dumped on the service dept floor, imagine how many toolboxes etc were rested on it.

In the early 90s Very few of the server rooms I visited in London had logged key card access, only the big market makers, traders and technology companies. Enron oddly enough had one!

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

Re: Compensation?

Which project did we both work on?

Totally agree with Graham and these projects have so many layers all making decisions based on what is reported to them.

In most large projects what the CEO is told by the PM is different to what the management team and the technical team are. In this size project there are frequently 5-10 layers of managers.

Until our government decide to make penalties severe for this kind of behaviour then it will continue.

Re: Fushitesu

at least we got a few decent books about the failings in the prison systems out of that!

Does "An Andrew" mean £12million?

Re: Fushitesu

which government do you think was corrupt? This started in 1995 and went live in 1999 so was it

Major, Blair, Brown, Coalition, Cameron, May, Johnson or Sunak?

I think we can let Liz Truss off, she didn't have the time to screw this one up!

https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/the-post-office-horizon-scandal-an-explainer/#:~:text=The%20project%20at%20one%20point,data%2C%20took%20place%20in%202000.

First prosecutions in 2000.

I was reading about the issues when Blair was in no 10!

Are you saying Labour, Lib dems and Tories all have their hands in the trough?

Re: Compensation?

A good point made the other day by a reporter was that the behaviour of postmasters apparently changed but where was the money?

Suddenly sub postmasters started making losses and "required" more prosecutions. At the point of the prosecution no one explained where the money had gone. As Nick Ferrari said "where are all the flash cars and fur coats?"

Surely the post office & Fujitsu should have noticed these changes. When you change systems you check that the figures match or investigate why they don't.

'The computer was sitting in a puddle of mud, with water up to the motherboard'

Re: Sewerage leak

I have posted this before but as the IT manager we got all kinds of accidental damage.

One of our electrical Engineers had just had a new baby boy. He was filling in his overtime sheet on his laptop. His wife realising Engineer junior needed a new nappy removed his current one and handed him to his father while she located a new one. Cold air hit the babies undercarriage and the laptop keyboard got an impromptu wash.

He phoned me up and we laughed for about 30 minutes. I salvaged spare parts from a similar but broken laptop. Posted the replacement parts to him so he could dismantle and replace while cleaning & drying everything. We accelerated his laptop replacement and sent the broken to the recycling vendor.

US Air Force AI drone 'killed operator, attacked comms towers in simulation'

Re: "the mistakes made by the drone in simulation"

History in this case would be written by the survivors!

Amazon finds something else AI can supposedly do well: Spotting damaged goods

with a little bit of luck & planning yes!

Re: Our ai future

Actually there is plenty of reason to expect that job availability will decrease short term as you suggest.

Also the expectations of the level of skill & education for future replacement jobs will be higher.

The Luddites were mostly illiterate, 1970s factory jobs were similar, there are very few jobs that don't expect you to read & write nowadays.

Training and legislation will be most of the answer, time for governments to govern - oh dear we are screwed!

As you say wealth accrual is going to be significant, I wonder if I will be a Bezite or a Muskie slave?

Laid-off 60-year-old Kyndryl exec says he was told IT giant wanted 'new blood'

Re: Let it go

Hey if the young can't compete on their own merits you need special treatment?

Workday sued over its AI job screening tool, candidate claims discrimination

Ate their own dog food?

They probably hired a developer who looked cool.

Its not like W3C and Microsoft have published any advice.

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

or Bulgarian airbags?

Privacy watchdog urges companies drop emotional analysis AI software

Why do the persist trying to put it back in the box?

It's coming, it won't be perfect at the start but honestly it will save lives and fight crime. Nurture it and see it grow.

Sage denies misleading customers over perpetual licensing, users not happy

The cloud is someone else's computer and a software subscription is someone else's code.

There you go ladies & gents a the sales team want you to pony up every year.

Shocked I tell you!!!!

How important are tech and other contractors to UK? PM candidate promises tax review if elected

Shocking they don't mention PSCs.

That would be because HMRC keeps losing in court?

Then they would become sole traders?.

If so you pay £6 a week NI and a claim third of your household bills against your tax.If your revenue falls the government sends you money!

Oh sorry the Tax man prevented that years ago when certain contractors left without paying tax.

We became limited companies because that was only route open not to avoid tax.

Excellent so all those MP's being hired as board members must pay full employment tax on 100% of their fee, along with sportsmen and celebrities?

Its not like David Bangham (if they like pigs) Or Gary the Crisp can just send a substitute? Maybe Hessy will send Mike Lynch or Camamoron will be sending Dominic Cummings?

The reality is few clients will accept a substitute when the rubber meets the road. I have done it but it is hard work.

Hey the country chose Bojo, the alternative had to be really scary!

Excel @ mentions approach general availability on the desktop

Re: Gerrof my lawn!

Excel

The most used BI tool.

The most used Migration tool.

The most used front end tool.

........

Client demo in 30 minutes. Just what could go wrong?

Re: What's in a name?

that explains the 44 inch chest!

How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?

Re: So you are saying ...

Nokia phone my third or fourth true Android phone likes to reboot regularly.

Raspberry PI is a lovely toy but until it booted off disk was almost useless in production due to SD card woes.

XBMC / KODI on various platforms was just patch after patch.

Windows phone mostly worked.

Windows media player the same.

Business wise at a recent job no one knows how DB2 or AS400 works and just follow guides plenty of us could use SQL server to a high level etc. I probably could understand DB2 & AS400 if I wanted. I sussed AIX, HPUX & Oracle on my own but it would take too long to provide value.

Re: Usual answer

In 30 years it has got a lot better.

Windows for crashgroups

windows ME (Multiple exceptions you couldn't count them)

Windows 95 (crashes per month)

windows 2000 (crashes per 2 years roughly 5 a day in my experience)

windows XP (10 crashes - roman numerals a week persistently)

Windows 7 (3 crashes and 4 reboots a week)

Windows 8 (reboots per fortnight it tends to slide to a near stop and refuses to move rather than crash)

Windows (10 reboots per 2 months)

Windows server properly fed falls over less than once a year nowadays.

The point about symbiosis is that the parasite needs to eat enough to survive without killing the host.

Microsoft spend billions on creating windows so that everyone loves it, then give it away almost free with a new PC which people use for 10 years expecting updates without subscriptions. Then people get upset because Microsoft try to monetise it, someone has to subsidise Windoze phone!

30 years ago I struggled to open one decent spreadsheet, 1 document and 4 browser tabs. I now have 10-20 times those numbers open all the time.

Visual studio is still like lifting a cart horse on your little finger, sometimes it breaks!

Having supported most leading UNIX variants with professional support contracts in place, systems falling over is not uncommon. It happened less because you only ran approved applications on such boxes and the pricing for everything is 4 to 8 figures 10 million+ was the most expensive box I worked on , it broke regularly.

Note I know you pay a portion indirectly to Microsoft for a windows license with a PC but compared to

a SCO licence at $1000 etc cost is almost nothing.

I think Microsoft possibly should be more clear about the offering

1. Windows business with subscription - No ADs ever!

2. Windows home with cheap subscription - No ADs!

3. Lapsed subscription / 'free with the PC' its like watching American TV more ads than programs.

Now are you prepared to pay an annual subscription to avoid ads?

Buy an Amazon Fire tablet (based on a free O/S) you get offered 2 versions

1. with ads

2. without ads + £10. Note the O/S is still firmly connected into the Amazon eco system so its easier to buy from them.

That seems pretty clear to me.

Your data centre UPS could feed power to the smart grid, suggests research

Batteries have a limited number of cycles

As above not only does investing in a UPS mean you expect to have a runtime normally specified based on cost i.e. 20 minutes costs X and 40 minutes X*3, big bosses aren't going to be keen on the extra risk.

But if you are charging/discharging then you are using the limited number of battery cycles and X/2 is probably the cost of replacing the batteries.

Both costs will need to be factored into any payment.

How can we recruit for the future if it takes an hour to send an email, asks Air Force AI bigwig in plea for better IT

False economy hidden costs are

Having worked with the client machine team of a large corporate who had a 3 year replacement policy for laptops and 3-5 for desktops one of the big costs as they got older than 3 years was they started breaking down. One on site call costs > £150, more if remote. That doesn't include lost productivity. Phone based call ~ £50.

As I explained to my boss 20 years ago, you supply a salesman a company car at ~£200 a month but refuse to spend £200 a year giving them a decent laptop that doesn't break down and replace it every 3 years.

Any large organisation who can't buy a decent laptop from one of the big suppliers for less than £600 needs to sack their procurement team. Even desktop replacement laptops are less than £1000. Desktops cost peanuts.

Such decisions need to come from the top.

IR35 is the biggest threat to the contractor working model, survey finds

Indeed real companies only pay 1% tax !

Re: £300bn annually to the economy?

oh blimey HMRC took that as well?

Re: £300bn annually to the economy?

See its all made up like IR35.

1. I paid more tax overall because I turned over twice as much as my permie salary. I even spent it in the UK unlike my future employers.

2. Many of my peers started up companies using their contractor returns. Some even employ other people. I just sub contracted other people and paid them.

3. As using an Umbrella or an accountant doesn't actually protect you when accounts they file are incorrect many just file minimum accounts when IR35 caught 5% of turnover is easy to calculate. So caught probably won't go Umbrella.

4.No PL etc insurance purchased by an employee.

etc

Define a 'real contractor' - HMRC can't.

Re: £300bn annually to the economy?

1.5 million - 2M UK contractors, a reasonable developer nowadays can get £500 a day = £125K. Senior Finance and business management contractors would expect £500-£1k a day = £250k. I have talked to senior management consultants that charge £10k a day, where do you think the money goes during insolvency?

Not entirely unlikely. Add the Agents cut 20% and other bits and bobs £300 billion seems almost reasonable. £200 billion is probably a better guess. Though many contractors have multiple clients and charge different rates for each.

90% of them not paying the "right amount of tax" i.e. 20% less than they should be= laughable.

Re: Not just a UK issue

That sounds like the Australian rules. The 80% from one customer (related companies count as one) triggers a determination and the worker pays extra tax.

Easy solution get multiple customers. Under Australian rules I would have definitely escape IR35 via this. I got to about 30% from other companies.

However there are 3 initial questions you can pass and not need the 80%.

Is payment only received after the work is completed?

Does the contractor’s business need to provide tools and equipment?

Is the contractor required to correct mistakes and defects at their own cost?

answer no and the 80% rule kicks in.

then there is another series of questions do you have a business premises, employees, unrelated clients or advertise.

Credit CUK for detail.

Key thing these are are objective tick boxes that the contractor can prove not some HMRC wonk making it up as they go along - e.g. if it walks likes a duck I don't know "rhymes with Duck"

Ah good job HMRC know the difference between their Arse & their elbow.

"HMRC reckons that only one in 10 contractors in the private sector who should be paying tax under the current rules are doing so correctly. It estimates the reforms will recoup £1.2bn a year by 2023"

Hmm remind me again how much of the £6 billion COVID grants etc fraudulently claimed from HMRC that ended up in Organised crime hands should not have been paid out? Oh yes none of it!

Fraud of 8.7% by a conservative estimate is not as bad as those filthy contractors paying their hotel bills to work away before tax.

Hint for HMRC - the elbow is the bit that doesn't normally smell of poop!

Back when I was a contractor the fear was that HMRC would make up an imaginary figure then pursue you to bankruptcy unless you had legal representation, then they normally eventually lost the case. HMRC have a 35% win rate at court (last 20 years) and a thousand+ cases they didn't take to court. See CUK's figures.

Many people decided to become employees to avoid these risks, I for one pay less overall tax than I did then, earn less so contribute less to the local economy.

Many multinationals (the sort of clients I had) are incorporated abroad and due to transfer price manipulation and internal fees avoid paying corporation tax or buying products in the UK

"You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a pound of coffee, $30,000 on image rights, do you?"

If you are caught by IR35 paying for your own training (in the UK) as I did is after tax so much for retraining the workforce.

The robots are coming! 12 million jobs lost to automation in Europe by 2040 – analyst

Such naiveite

As we know from the years of Downsizing, Age related redundancy, Offshoring, onshoring, best shoring and using 7 year olds to make trainers most corporations don't give a damn about most of their workers. They are only interested in making the world's richest men richer.

If you have been watching the truck driver & hospitality staff shortage you will have realised that the only thing that puts up wages is scarcity of cheaper labour.

Unless more high grade jobs replace those removed its a race to the bottom with a Dollar a Day the corporate wage target.

Many of us in IT will reinvent ourselves as needed, but we will have our fair share of ex miners who will be unemployed for decades.

Oh they are being born but due to immigration because our lords and masters are solving the wrong problem. They think we need cheap biddable labour, we don't we need taxes to care for our population.

Automation is happening now. 10 + million people will be affected we need to get on top of that.

Yep delivering takeaways and working in warehouses on zero hour contracts..

Already here, keep up at the back!

Now when I walk in to the nationally known Burger/Chicken/Pizza joints I have to order from an electronic kiosk or my phone. The staff numbers have reduced by 30%. With 3d printing / automatic grilling its going to reduce by 60%. Ending with just a security guard, cleaner and someone who loads Burgers etc in a hopper. Franchises will disappear and be replaced by automated restaurants remotely monitored and taxed (yep the big thing is the hole in taxation to pay for benefits & the NHS).

Any supermarket now has self service which has cut the number of higher paid till staff massively.

Robot stocking is a thing and will replace staff.

10 years ago I spent an interesting evening drinking with a couple of Germans commissioning an Asparagus picking machine near the site I was visiting. Most fruits & vegetables can be mechanically harvested now.

(X)ponics & vertical farming are reducing land use with the side benefit that fruit etc is much easier to pick.

Printing houses is a thing, Expect it to grow massively no more Brick layers.

Modular housing also a thing, fewer Carpenters, plumbers, electricians.

Bots are replacing customer service agents in their thousands.

Taxi & delivery companies are frantically working on driverless deliveries so your takeaway will arrive via drone etc.

The suggestion that servicing these systems is going to be enough to replace the jobs lost has a number of problems

1. POS systems are normally only fixed when they break so 8 self checkouts replacing 7 till operators (you need someone to change till rolls / authorise Alcohol) on each of 3 shifts would probably only supply 2-4 hours of work total for an Engineer a week for all 8 tills . How often do you see an Engineer fixing them rather a member of staff closing it until the engineer arrives.

2. Whilst loading burgers in the auto-grill is not highly skilled most Technicians need a modicum of intelligence and training even to swap modules out that are repaired in workshops, of course wages are driven down because a third party does the maintenance. Not sure I would let some of the staff I meet in supermarkets near sharp objects!

3. Sorry programming this stuff is quite difficult, as you can see when using the self service tills in some shops who have a GUI that is just plain annoying. Having programmed massive ACD systems and Bots it is quite challenging predicting all paths users may take and making the experience bearable.

4. As stuff gets more common and we learn more the suppliers try and reduce staff interaction completely or place the staff remotely in a lower cost country. That is their 'edge' saving staff costs.

5. Any job that tries to replace the jobs lost must be suitable for those replaced, that means they will need aptitude and training this may not be suitable for the pimply teenager that is in the supermarket. Some may be passing through but many find shelf stacking suits them for their life and or periods when they need to regroup.

6. If you replace the jobs then we need to ensure the new jobs won't disappear in the next wave and pay enough that workers are a benefit to taxation to pay enough for those unable to work.

We need to train and prepare for this so the pain is limited.

It's more than 20 years since Steps topped the charts. It could be less than that for STEP's first fusion energy

We need to replace Vlad's Gas

Until we are self dependant for Energy we are really exposed as a country.

I prefer well managed nuclear to fracking.

Machine needs more Learning: Google Drive dings single-character files for copyright infringement

20 years ago I worked for a big American corporate.

They scanned all network drives and eventually personal drives for Audio & Video files , if any were found you got a personal meeting with HR because RAA threatened them with massive fines if Audited. It wasn't actually too bad a decision overall the number of pirated songs, films and porn decreased rapidly.

The thing they hadn't thought about was the technical team generated their own content, our technical manager who recorded videos showing how to operate or fix our products was invited to HR on a daily basis.

This sort of thing needs to happen because copyright abuse is rife.

'Please download in Microsoft Excel': Meet the tech set to monitor IT performance across central UK government

Survey Monkey would do this initially and keep the data safe.

Re: Straight out of Yes Minister

Kerching!

Re: Ideal for data

One hopes there is no GDPR / Confidential data in it otherwise it will be spread faster than Chlamydia!

Doing migrations I love data from spreadsheets, the user will change the layout a couple of days before go live, multiple copies will be sent and of course there are technical issues with data and conversion.

10-15 years ago I was replacing such things with SharePoint and similar. Coding took a few days the main problem was documenting the rules that the users made up as they went along.

Excel, sadly doesn't with most users.

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

The Gate's foundation is doing wonderful things. People keep buying windows or at least office.

Some geek has made billions legally , married an intelligent and beautiful woman then raised kids with a sense of humour ('Sadly it did NOT implant my genius father into my brain.'). Then they together donated massive amounts of money and skill (otherwise like with our foreign aid the princes would just buy nicer cars while their people starve) to solving the worlds problems. That needs respect.

Solving Polio, Malaria, Sanitation , birth control, education, environmental issues what's not to like?

Good luck Mr & soon to be ex Mrs Gates hope it goes well!

All I can see is jealousy.

I started with DOS3 and windows 3.0 competing with Novell, SCO, AIX , OS2 , CPM etc. back in the early 90s Strangely windows won, Microsoft did bundle windows with many OEM PCs then, their competitors could have done it but preferred to charge a weeks wages per install instead .

Why did windows win? Because not only was it easier to use it also was much cheaper with NT3.51 you could have a server and workstation in one for the same cost as just a Novell license.

Think of it this way if Microsoft hadn't won and we had gone with UNIX every part of the O/S would be an extra and starting prices would be £1000 per desktop.

I remember Wordperfect and lotus 123 being market leaders Microsoft out developed them, Lotus Notes was crushed by a far easier but less technically advanced (at the time) Exchange.

Docking £500k commission from top SAS salesman was perfectly legal, rules judge

Well let's hope the customer demands an 800K discount because the cost of the contract has fallen.

I hope future SAS employees become aware of this and ask about it.