Posts by gryphon

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

Windows for Workgroups

Mainly for 'easy' printer and file sharing and then having to back up only one machine without the expense of a proper Netware server.

Defra admits Windows 10 refresh letter to MPs was wrong – machines were already on Windows 11

I presume with all the different areas that are covered by the various sub-organisations within Defra that there are dozens of apps just for interacting with farmers let alone the water companies, food safety etc.

If they are all browser based then of course the client should really be able to be anything but it can't be taken as read.

Windows keeps obsolete strings forever to avoid breaking translations

Re: Oh FFS -

Presumably you made sure that a 20 character string in English that became a 50 character string in German (gotta love those compound words) didn't break your apps?

UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B

Re: "not everyone has a passport or wants a passport."

Weren't they all supposed to have been hoovered up with a free 'I have the right to vote' card when they introduced voter ID?

Re: Our is different...

We all saw how well that worked with the IR35 query system where HMRC consistently gave the wrong advice.

I've met Murray briefly.

Actually seemed a reasonable, pretty switched on guy.

My father knew him a lot better and liked him, he normally hated all politicians, especially Labour and the SNP.

Of course as a minister he has to hold his nose and the govt. line at the same time but that's the price you pay if you want to sit at the big table on the extra ministerial salary.

I think most MP's have their hypocrisy detectors and embarrassment factor invisibly removed the moment they walk through the doors of parliament, or maybe it happens when they put the papers in to stand for election.

Russia-linked crooks bought a bank for Christmas to launder cyber loot

Re: They'll be buying

I think you need to remove the 'next' and change the tense.

China recruiting spies in the UK with fake headhunters and ‘sites like LinkedIn’

Sharing your clearance, specific projects for clients etc. even if you only have SC is a definite no-no. Even worse if holding DV.

Annual security training will always say that as well.

"Since I hold DV I am working extensively with 'XYZ' on implementing 'ABC version X' - Not fine

"Recently completed a rollout of 'Product X' for Govt. dept Y" - Not fine

"I have implemented 'X' across a wide range of clients including detailed architecture and design etc. etc. - Fine (As long as it's a common product)

Obviously bad actors could put 2 and 2 together if you work for the usual suspects and say you are heavily involved in M365 or security software but shouldn't be presented on a plate.

Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia

I believe many US rural fire services operate a subscription only model and will only fight a fire from a non-subscriber as far as it might impact a subscribing property.

Likewise if a county fire service turns out to a call but determines the property is just over the county line and there is no-mutual aid agreement they might just let it burn

US taxpayers being kept in the dark over datacenter subsidies

I forgot the '/s'

I think if if was an American state taxpayer I'd be asking them to give a subsidy for datacentres not to be built in my state.

Brings very few permanent jobs, massive building disruption, uses crazy amounts of water and drives up the price of electricity in the region.

No doubt the states and communities get some form of land use tax but very unlikely to make up for the subsidy in the short-medium term.

UK agri dept spent hundreds of millions upgrading to Windows 10 – just in time for end of support

Defra is the parent.

All the rest are squabbling children that hate each other and are fighting to escape parental control.

Defra and the others all also mutually detest each other and are fighting between themselves and fighting Defra for resources.

Or so I am told.

Re: Reminds me...

As an interim step in the same Exchange organization that's perfectly fine since there was no direct upgrade path from 2003 to 2013.

But if they then stuck on 2010 rather than doing another migration to 2013 or going to O365 as was that's a different story.

I know there are orgs out there still using Exchange 2003, Fujitsu posted a job advert a few weeks ago looking for someone experienced in 2003 and X400 routing.

Fun, fun.

Labor organizers accuse Rockstar Games of 'ruthless act of union busting' after layoffs

Will be interesting to see if they actually followed the correct rules for firing all these people.

Even 'gross misconduct' will have specific requirements that they'll have to follow usually.

Wouldn't surprise me if it's US managers who don't realise the UK isn't the US.

Have a manager here who comes across from the US regularly.

He did a meet and greet and said he couldn't believe that HR had said he couldn't just tap people on the should accompanied by security and fire them on the spot. I guess he had just enough nous to ask the question beforehand.

Seemed quite disappointed by it which tells you all you need to know about US employment practises I think.

O2 cranks prices mid-contract, essentially telling customers to like it or lump it

Re: Giff Gaff anyone?

I still don't understand why anyone wanting an iPhone wouldn't simply get the interest free option from Apple themselves over 2 years?

Not sure if you still must get AppleCare but I know it's a separate payment these days.

Are combination airtime and phone contracts so much cheaper?

Re: Cancel and keep the phone?

I had all this to hand before because I had a SamKnows box monitoring the BT connection on behalf of Ofcom and giving me service reports. On the very few occasions I had a problem and mentioned that I had one of these so I knew they were lying and could prove it things mysteriously fixed themselves rather quickly.

Unfortunately the SamKnows box is no more because they've apparently rolled the functionality into the normal routers.

What would you suggest for monitoring the connection?

3.9%

I have never understood where that 3.9% came from and why they were allowed to make it 'inflation + 3.9%' rather than 'inflation or 3.9% whichever is higher'.

Latter obviously isn't great either but at least makes more sense.

I seem to recall reading, probably here, that some of the telco's, ISP's etc. would also base the total rise on the 'non-discounted' contract price so you'd be thinking the rise would be say 10% on £10 a month but was actually 10% on £30 a month because you were getting a £20pm 'discount'. Shady practise.

England's local government shake-up promises to be a massive tech headache

Costs

No doubt central govt. neglected to include IT integration costs into their careful budgeting that declared costs would be lower overall.

And also no doubt that they will make the wrong staff redundant when they merge them so all the knowledge of how things actually work will slip away and they will be completely surprised when the council's end up with Birmingham style IT cost overruns.

Very similar to the SNP declaring back in 2014 that de-segregating all the UK level governmental stuff and moving it to Scottish control would only cost about £50m.

I think that was about the only definitive cost they gave to cover going independent.

Even back then that would have bought about a quarter of a datacentre.

And they still haven't even managed to move the entirety of the DWP functions that they are allowed to to Social Care Scotland yet.

Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet

Re: Gail's app connection error

Whenever I see a cafe, baker etc. marketing itself as artisan or supplying artisan products I always run a mile.

Will inevitably be way more expensive and usually lesser quality than you could get for going 2 doors down the street to even a chain place.

Managers are throwing entry-level workers under the bus in race to adopt AI

Re: Larger cost savings are possible

Indeed. Recently read the SEC reporting form, a 10K perhaps for our parent company in US.

If firm was 100 pages the sections on the board and their remuneration was about 70 pages of that. CEO gets an allowance of $60k per year just to fill out his tax returns, no doubt because of all the share options. His total remuneration, upwards of $20m including RSU’s. These guys just live on another planet.

UK government says digital ID won't be compulsory – honest

Re: Scottish National Entitlement Card

We must be similar ages.

Likewise had one but never found it very useful for anything that I recall.

I think overall digital ID is the usual problem with anything that gets introduced to cover a, b, c.

A, b and c could be useful in the short or long term but then a little while down the road it gets extended to D. Obviously they send you an email with the new t&c, but very few read those much less opt out because A and B are still so useful. Then E is added with a couple of terms that, if you read them, would make one a bit nervous. Then a little while later we get to Z with page 1332 of the T&C’s, obviously the first few goes won Plain English awards but then they stopped submitting them for some reason, that in 6 pt text inside a massive paragraph says “we own your body and soul and that of all your successors until the end of time”.

Obviously that’s a little dramatic but never met a govt yet who didn’t like to “expand” things since “we’ve already spent so much money on this wouldn’t it be useful if it could also….” .

For example Glasgow council put cameras in to enforce ULEZ. Funnily enough since they know that nearly every vehicle would eventually be compliant in the next few years they’ve suddenly ‘discovered’ that they could use the same cameras for a congestion charging zone and are making plans for it. Funny that.

Scottish National Entitlement Card

Is already doing some of this via the back door.

All kids starting high school are automatically signed up for it and get a Young Scot card which allows them free bus travel etc. and as proof of age.

This is actually a national entitlement card under a different name.

It's actually run by local councils, they can do different things with it like add a tag for disabled bus pass etc., but no doubt there is a national spine database somewhere.

In saying that a Young Scot card holder does not automatically get an NEC when they reach the age limit but no reason they couldn't.

Can also be used as ID for voting in UK elections.

Interestingly it does NOT require a passport or driving license to apply for, just birth certificate, NHS medical card etc.

Banks don't seem to count it as an accepted form of photo ID, however my father being the obstreperous bugger that he was forced Nationwide to accept it as such when he wanted to open a new account and they wanted to go through the money laundering malarkey.

Pointed out that it was issued on behalf of the Scottish Government therefore it was govt. ID. And by the way he had £600k spread across his existing accounts due to a recent house sale, RBS was next door and did they have the forms available so he could request closure of all his accounts. Funnily enough it suddenly became acceptable.

He didn't have a photo driving license at the time since he hadn't moved house in 30 years, hadn't reached 70 and never had a passport.

I believe their policy at the time only mentioned government issued photo ID rather than being explicit as to what was acceptable so they were hoist on their own petard.

Japanese city passes two-hours-a-day smartphone usage ordinance

Re: Phone Zombies

Indeed, but then some numpty would no doubt report you for 'aggressive behaviour', hurting their feelings and incorrect use of the horn.

Phone Zombies

What really annoys me if I'm turning into or out of a road and giving way to a pedestrian as I should most of the time they don't even see me motioning them to cross.

Nose buried in phones and not paying any attention, always seem surprised when they look up and there is a car there waiting for them to cross.

And I'm pretty patient about such things, usually, although not according to my wife.

So I've wasted time trying to obey the law and be helpful and half the time missed a slot to turn out of the road so have to sit there and fume.

Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group

Re: There may be trouble ahead....

Funnily enough I was playing this game last night. 20 year customer.

My contract had expired in May or something but I hadn't set a reminder and was busy so didn't notice their emails.

For Signature, HD, Multiroom and Netflix on Sky Q it shot up to £66 or thereabouts.

They sent me a letter very generously offering to let me recontract for £64, couple of pounds off.

Called them and most they would come down to was £55 when I knew others were getting same for £25-30 pm so cancelled.

Offered me the Sky Stream but I didn't fancy it compared to the Sky Q box.

Needed to send Q and mini box back by 20/9 so finally got around to calling them again last night.

First operator tried to push broadband on me which I specifically said I didn't want.

Tried to transfer me to someone else, got cut off.

Called them back later - Offered signature, multiroom and Netflix for £44.50. No chance.

Asked about Sky Q Essentials (ability to record free-to-air) so she transferred me to another dept. which turned out to be the real retentions team.

Actually someone in UK this time and with no massive call centre background noise.

He tried his best to get my original requirements for a decent price but computer said no and couldn't get below the £44.50 level (probably because I didn't want cinema and sport).

He actually got quite irate with his system and Sky corporate about it.

So have taken out Sky Q Essentials with Mini box as a holding thing with a months cooling off period on a contract. (Can't do rolling monthly if discounted for reasons apparently)

£7 for main box and £8 for mini which is just crazy for the latter. Mini is probably costing me that in power actually it runs so hot.

I'll probably still cancel again anyway, I'd bought myself an Apple TV box for main TV and Firestick for bedroom TV in the interim so really just need NowTV for the main Sky channels.

UK Cabinet Office hands stalled Microsoft migration to another department

Confused. (And not in any way an MS defender.)

I tried clicking through to the article within the article about Microsoft being in possession of encryption keys but it seems to be mentioning a 3rd party rather than MS themselves in the headline.

I didn't read full article because I didn't want to sign up for yet another news site to spam me with constant mails.

I also thought customers could supply their own encryption keys rather than using MS provided ones.

I've not looked at the nitty gritty of that though so I'm presuming there is some wriggle that MS could do to access data outside of the Customer Lockbox idea.

Outlook outage over North America, Microsoft scrambles to respond

Clueless Execs

Opex always wins over Capex I guess.

And removing local admins and people who know what they are doing is always a good idea apparently.

Some people just can't see the issue even with a big clue bat or a cattle prod.

There was a thing I heard about and was asked to comment on.

Local installation of Exchange, SharePoint, Skype at one end of a satellite link with about 800-1024ms latency at most times.

Everybody else in company in M365 UK, data had to be held in UK.

Plan - Move everybody remote to M365

Me - What about the latency? (Even with non-satellite comms the distance to the UK datacentres would give 600ms latency due to the laws of physics)

Them - Oh that'll be fine we are just throwing bandwidth at it, they only had a 2Mbit pipe before now it'll be 50 or 100 or similar and we can always add more

Me - What about the latency?

Them - We just told you how we're handling that

Me - You do realise that even in cache mode Microsoft recommend no more than 30mms latency and that's pushing it, Teams and SharePoint should be way, way less

Them - There will be plenty of bandwidth

Me - Yes I know, but latency is the killer issue here

Them - There will be plenty of bandwidth

I gave up after noting my thoughts in writing.

They are just about to do the migration now, will be interesting to here the response of actual users afterwards. :-)

Nano11 cuts Windows 11 down to size, grabbing just 2.8 GB of disk space

Re: 2,8 GB?

Just as bad on phones.

iPhone. - Installed sizes not including data

McDonalds app - 348.5MB

Revolut - 401.5MB

Uber - 504.8MB

Outlook - 324MB

NatWest - 458.5MB

PayPal - 425.7MB

Why the devil do they need so much space.

Chase on the other hand is positively svelte at 225.3MB, other financial apps certainly aren't doing more than it.

I've seen the Revolut app up over 500MB sometimes then they seem to get their act together and it drops back to 350MB or so then starts creeping up again with every point release.

Johnson, Cummings met Thiel months before Palantir won NHS pandemic role

If they don't then no likely Private Eye will.

They certainly keep a close eye on defence procurement gamekeepers turned poachers.

e.g. General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett, former chief of defence procurement, is now working for defence contractor xyz after retiring 2 minutes ago and has pinky-promised not to be involved in any bid work on projects he knew about when at MOD for 18 months.

Techie ended vendor/client blame game by treating managers like toddlers

Yeah, had the switch port issue many times.

For instance user was reporting intermittent connectivity issues with Outlook in online mode which means it came through as a messaging ticket.

Obviously no fault found at our end and if she used colleague's PC all was fine.

Asked her to kindly try swapping the network port (not the cable) with her colleague who then started having the same issue.

Informed networks team in her building who of course denied anything could be up with their kit in any way shape or form. Must be the patch lead, nope tried that.

Eventually get them to repatch her at the switch end to a new switch and all is well.

Turns out that she'd been on 'one of those' switches which was slowly failing but they couldn't be bothered just getting the thing swapped out, hadn't flagged it up to anyone senior and were just moving people as they complained in the hope the thing would cure itself.

Microsoft can't guarantee data sovereignty – OVHcloud says 'We told you so'

I wonder how this fits in with the 'sovereign M365s' that they launched recently in France and Germany in partnership with Cap Gemini and a subsidiary of SAP respectively.

Also M365 local where it's supposedly all on-premises.

Microsoft pushes Pull print, so you don't have to dash to the printer to grab the 'Fire everyone' memo

Re: S-poo-ler

PC LOAD LETTER

The White House could end UK's decade-long fight to bust encryption

Re: Thanks Donald.

I'd be surprised if Corbyn could normally pass a Counter Terrorism Check or gain security clearance but since he was made a member of the Privy Council as leader of the opposition who knows.

Although the latter apparently doesn't need clearance unless being briefed on national security stuff.

Mexit, not Brexit, is the new priority for the UK

Re: Simple options

Incorrect.

SE versions are their 'forever' solution for Exchange, Skype and SharePoint. Or at least as 'forever' as MS ever makes anything. Only problem of course is that it's subscription only now.

On-prem Exchange is a very niche product these days, really only sold to meet regulatory or security requirements, MS have made that clear since Ignite back in 2017 or something. They want you to be on M365 for sure, all that lovely monthly revenue to keep the markets happy.

Re: Alternatives

There already is such a beast within UK govt. for certain levels of data.

Do a search for FCDO and ROSA.

Re: Simple options

For public sector there is no real choice except to use E5, or at least E3 + E5 security and compliance etc, which funnily enough costs more than E5.

What is surprising to me is that they don't do an E7 yet to include E5 + Copilot + x + y + z for a few $ a month less than the sum of the components. A lot of orgs would fall over themselves to sign up to that.

At least they are staying with a minimum 12 month contract period, for now.

Re: Simple options

Not quite true for Exchange now upgrade wise.

You can do an in-place upgrade of Exchange 2019 to Exchange SE whether the OS is 2019, 2022 or 2025.

What you still can't do is an in-place upgrade of the OS underneath Exchange.

So when the OS goes out of support you are still going to have to provision new servers with a new DAG in same org, install Exchange and then move all the mailboxes to databases on the new DAG.

Not a massive issue if VM's, more of a problem if running on tin and org have insisted on using an older version of the OS.

Tech support team won pay rise for teaching customers how to RTFM

Netware

I'm sure I read a story somewhere, possibly even on here, that the reason Novell provided a shelf-full of very visible (bright red more or less) manuals for Netware was because the software itself originally came on a single floppy disk.

IT had to be able to show something tangible to the bean-counters / senior management for the very large sum they had forked out just for the software.

Servers hated Mondays until techie quit quaffing coffee in their company

AirCon Replacement

Worked at a place that had a very old server room with massive air-con units around the edge providing underfloor directed cooling for min-computers that were no longer there.

These were hellishly noisy and since we had to work in the room a lot more than the old mini-computer guys it was a PITA.

They finally started failing and were replaced with ceiling units which were a lot quieter but up to the job.

Anyway, came in on a Monday morning to find that half the servers had powered down due to heat, room was like an oven.

Turns out the power had blipped on the Sunday afternoon or evening, and while the UPS had kept the servers up the electrician's hadn't wired the aircon units so that they started up again automatically when power came back. Oops.

It would actually have been better if the power had stayed off for longer since everything would then have shut down gracefully and somebody on the server team would have been called out.

Funnily enough a few days later a temperature sensor was added feeding back to the security office.

Obviously the aircon setup was adjusted as well.

Ex-CISA chief slams MAGA 'manufactured outrage' after sudden West Point firing

Re: They don't want to produce the best officers

Indeed, somehow I don't think ICE's bully-boy techniques would work so well against professional, trained soldiers.

I presume ICE's training consists of - here's a gun, this is how you take the safety off, here's a mask, no need to wear a badge, uniform, ID number or even name of the organization, off you go

ICE sign-on bonus

Personally I'm confused by the ICE sign-on bonus of $50k that has been mentioned in the news recently.

One would have thought they'd be so oversubscribed by 'patriot' applications that ICE would be asking for a sign-on fee not handing out golden hellos.

Nuclear reactors smaller than a semi truck to be tested in Idaho

Re: Mixed units?

I think most US homes can draw a max of 100A at 240 volts, although many older houses only have a 60A supply.

According to Technology Connections video that I remember seeing on UTube at least.

Ordnance Survey digs deep to prevent costly cable strikes

Scotland?

I wonder why Scotland isn’t covered.

Do we already have something similar or is it the usual case of Scottish Govt. exceptionalism in not wanting to tie into a rest of UK system?

Microsoft's on-prem Exchange and Skype for Business Server go subscription-only

Re: Blackmail via Blacklisting

Indeed.

Microsoft are already doing it.

You have to be on a supported version to do 'hybrid' mail between Exchange on-prem and Exchange online.

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

Re: US cloud providers are officially poison

Saw a few articles about 'M365 local' last week.

Interesting I thought. Fully on-prem might be workable for some of my clients. They aren't that cost conscious.

Runs on Azure local. Ok. That sounds fine.

Hmm. Azure local still needs to talk to Azure but can't find it detailed as to why. Licensing presumably.

Nope. I'm out. Unless it can be totally sandboxed apart from Exchange being able to send and receive emails externally it's no use to me.

Glasgow City Council online services crippled following cyberattack

Re: Future Processions

I think the bin calendar is the most important one.

We have 5 different bins all on different collection cycles so one needs a little helping hand.

Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3)

Who knew we had one of those.

I wonder if this is the usual Scottish Govt. duplication of effort idea because there is no way the UK wide body can be half as good as our little parochial one so we'll reinvent the wheel.

Visiting students can't hide social media accounts from Uncle Sam anymore

Re: This is going to backfire

When the US introduced fingerprinting for all tourists etc. did Brazil not do tit-for-tat, except they had to use ink-pads rather than scanning tech?

Breaking the nerd internet: Three overlapping generations of tech history – in one selfie

Cutler Interview

For anyone interested a pretty good interview with Dave Cutler by Dave Plummer, also an ex-Microsofty, can be found here.

3 hours + but well worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi1Lq79mLeE

And a similar one with Raymond Chen the oft Reg quoted Windows guru.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vJQv4rgHYE

Ukrainian carriers are leasing their IPv4 addresses to stay afloat - sometimes after being overrun by Russia

US DoD with 8 Class A networks and even UK MoD with 1 Class A network are sitting on a goldmine.

Surprised Donald hasn't sold all the US ones off already.