Posts by romanempire

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Re: going passive-aggressive on a petty tyrant

I was at that auction too!!! (if it was the one in London.)

Plasma's going for about same price as new and as its an auction, its sold as seen with no warranty for what was quite new tech at the time!

Workgroup printers with high page counts for about same price as new.

Did get an early lot of 5 NEC flat screens at an OK price and managed to blag some fancy monitor arms to go with them :-)

It seemed to be the phone and internet bidders that really ramped the prices up. Bet there was lots of buyers remorse after that one.

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The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility

I beg to differ...

On the rare occasion I've had to deal with Zen customer service I've always found them helpful, friendly and knowledgeable.

Unlike BT who won't move from their script.

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More than half of companies rethinking back-to-office plans amid variant uncertainty and vaccine mandates – survey

Re: Convenience

"Thankfully, 85% or so of the great British public live in urban / suburban areas and should have a choice between where they live / work and how they travel between the two."

Sorry I gotta disagree with your rose-tinted view of public transport.

I live 9 miles from where I work. Public transport would cost me about 3 to 4 hours a day and be a deeply unpleasant experience in the winter. Great for work/life balance! Not. And knowing the area, I'd suggest its not unusual. So I drive, mostly. I'd like to cycle but as I've got older I've become very wary of the number of maniacs on 4 wheels.

When I lived and worked in London I didn't own a car and that was workable. But having lived and worked in several cities over the decades, I can say that id very much the exception.

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Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

A thought:-

Instead of sending the energy to Earth, it could be used to drive space-based industry. At our current level of technology the two biggest constraints on our space activities are energy and raw materials. Orbital solar combined with asteroid capture would solve that. Then the only thing we'd need to send into orbit are meat-bags :-)

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Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

Re: web Teams works on Linux

<-------- This

Its a joke to deploy, admin and manage in corp environment. What the hell were they thinking!!!

Not even any GrpPol for it.

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UK taxman is supposed to know how IR35 reforms work but still lost appeal against TV presenter Kaye Adams

Re: Anyone remember "Shout99"?

Me too

Who knew that hosing a table with copious amounts of cubic metres would trip adult filters?

Re: Funny placenames

Wollaston - lovely village :-)

HMRC: We 'rigorously tested' IR35 tax-check tool... but have almost nothing to show for it

CEST is fundamentally flawed because....

It wilfully ignores the relevant case law:-

Hall v Lorimer (Court of Appeal November 1993)

In arriving at the decision Mummery J said:

‘In order to decide whether a person carries on business on his own account it is necessary to consider many different aspects of that person’s work activity. This is not a mechanical exercise of running through items on a check list to see whether they are present in, or absent from, a given situation. The object of the exercise is to paint a picture from the accumulation of detail. The overall effect can only be appreciated by standing back from the detailed picture which has been painted, by viewing it from a distance and by making an informed, considered, qualitative appreciation of the whole. It is a matter of evaluation of the overall effect of the detail, which is not necessarily the same as the sum total of the individual details. Not all details are of equal weight or importance in any given situation. The details may also vary in importance from one situation to another.’

Its a 'qualitative' (as opposed to a 'quantitative') exercise so is probably very difficult (if not impossible) to capture in an algorithm. But in any case for HMRC its just window dressing. They just want everyone on PAYE.

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(BTW I hate the new Reg design. I'm down from several visits daily to once a week.)

Suunto settles scary scuba screwup for $50m: 'Faulty' dive computer hardware and software put explorers in peril

Fuck!!!

Just fuck!!!! That's proper scary.

But thats why, when I used to dive, I had alternates for dive time, depth and cylinder pressure. My air-integrated computer was pretty good (for the time) but having backups for each function seemed like simple good sense.

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Phased out: IT architect plugs hole in clean-freak admin's wiring design

Re: Plot twist? What plot twist?

"home installation"

Unusual to have 3 phase in domestic premises.

Do UK.gov wonks understand sci-tech skills gap? MPs dish out Parliamentary kicking

Re: Stream the schools not the children

I agree. Especially in light of my experience of selection in York (one of the hold-out authorities) in the early seventies. Having just moved back to the country I faced doing an 11+ in a room at the local education office one dark December evening without a clue what it was or how it was going to set in fucking stone the very limited educational opportunities available to me if I failed. When the useless waste-of-space dolts realised I was considerably brighter than the original test indicated, all they would offer me was a move to another 'secondary modern'. I suppose moving me to a 'grammar' would have been an admission of their flawed testing.

So, while in principle the idea of selective education has some merit, the practise would probably leave a lot to be desired. Knowledgeable parents would game the system so that it wouldn't be a test of the child's ability but rather the parents.

(Icon for what I'd like to have done to the hellhole school I went to)

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UK lacks engineering and tech skills to make government's industrial strategy work – report

Re: Universities and schools

Not sure I agree. Especially in light of my experience of selection in York (one of the hold-out authorities) in the early seventies. Having just moved back to the country I faced doing an 11+ in a room at the local education office without a clue what it was or how it was going to set in fucking stone the very limited educational opportunities available to me if I failed. When the cunts realised I was considerably brighter than the original test indicated, all they would offer me was a move to another 'secondary modern'. I suppose moving me to a 'grammar' would have been an admission of their flawed testing.

So, while in principle the idea of selective education has some merit, the practise would probably leave a lot to be desired. Knowledgeable parents would game the system so that it wouldn't be a test of the child's ability but rather the parents.

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British broadband is confusing and speeds are crap, says survey

Re: UK ISP are uniformly terrible.

uniformly? Try Zen.

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Revealed: The naughty tricks used by web ads to bypass blockers

Re: Quality sites like El Reg...

They're not too bad but I still use an ad-blocker as that dumbass teaser takes up a ridiculous amount of screen space. And now that I've just checked with ad-block off I find the ads too intrusive. At the moment I can see 17 articles I might like to read. With ad-block off in the same size window I can only see 7 and far too much space is lost to a pointless, irrelevant and distracting picture.

Three Microsoft Outlook patches unpatched, users left to DIY

Re: "any automatic technique for removing the patches"

In my experience WSUS does not do removal well or reliably. Hence the need to have a test group and a time lag between MS release and approving patch for release in ones domain.

While WSUS works 'OK' when used in a fairly 'textbook' manner it's in desperate need of an update to improve the console, reporting and various other bits.

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Luxembourg passes first EU space mining law. One can possess the Spice

The main point of asteroid mining is to provide materials for construction and consumption in space to avoid the cost of lifting them out of Earth's gravity well.

Samsung releases 49-inch desktop monitor with 32:9 aspect ratio

I looked at ultra-wide curved monitors...

a few months ago. I've already got a Dell U2913WM (2560x1080) at one of my desks which I really like but I sometimes find myself pulling one or the other closer when I'm reading (yes, I wear reading glasses). The ultra-wide curved monitors seem to have stuck north of £500 probably because Samsung seems to be the only producer. Then I found the Samsung C24F390 (1920x1080) for about £150 each. Even with the cost of a twin arm monitor stand its still waaaay cheaper. Don't notice the bezels. Much better then using 2 flat wide-screens which I've had to at some clients.

I agree it would be useful to have more room vertically.

Can't see the point of curved TV's but curved monitors are the way to go.

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Labour says it will vote against DUP's proposed TV Licence reforms

Re: Amazon and Netflix?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...........

Have a pint and an upvote. Spot on about Horizon.

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Majority of contractors distrust HMRC's IR35 calculator, survey finds

Re: Yes, blame the tool

I don't see how this tool is possible given that the judge in Hall v Lorimer (Court of Appeal November 1993) explicitly said,

"This is not a mechanical exercise of running through items on a check list to see whether they are present in, or absent from, a given situation. The object of this exercise is to paint a picture from the accumulation of detail. The overall effect can only be appreciated by standing back from the detailed picture which has been painted, by viewing it from a distance and by making an informed, considered, qualitative appreciation of the whole. It is a matter of evaluation of the overall effect of the detail, which is not necessarily the same as the sum total of the individual details. Not all details are of equal weight or importance in any given situation. The details may also vary in importance from one situation to another. The process involves painting a picture in each individual case."

Note the use of the word 'qualitative' (as opposed to quantitive) which means that any weighting in the tool runs counter to one of the most important pieces of case law on the subject.

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HMRC's IR35 tweaks have 90% of UK's IT contractors up in arms

Re: James Avon Clyde (Lord Clyde) said it best

And that ruling is law (case law). And I seem to recall there is also another piece of case law that says broadly say the same thing.

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IT consultant gets 4 years' porridge for tax fraud

Re: I'm not condoning his actions....

" tax aviodance" (sic) is not illegal no matter how much they try to conflate it with 'tax evasion' (which is).

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Home page button for bottom of page

Re: Home page button for bottom of page

If my hand is already on the keyboard then fine. But if my hand is already on the mouse then it would be more convenient to have a link back to the front page.

Can't see the "Week in Summary" but no matter as I tend to read the Reg daily so is unlikely to suit my purposes. YMMV. In any case since I started using AdBlock since the redesign to remove that waste-of-space "top_tease" the front page still works for me :-)

Edit:- Do you mean "Week’s headlines"? Don't like it. Easier to see more at a quick skim from the normal front page.

Home page button for bottom of page

I enjoy reading and very occasionally contributing to the article comments. However I do find it a little laborious at the bottom of a long page of comments to either 'Home' key (when I'm already on the mouse) or to scroll back to the top of the page so I can jump back to the front page. I think it would be useful to have a button or link back to the Reg home page at the bottom of the comments page.

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New solar cell breaks efficiency records, turns 34% of light into 'leccy

Re: We're thinking about this backwards.

Or better yet, let's build a ring world. More living space, more solar collection area.

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Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware storms live TV weather forecast

Re: re: Nag Nag Nag

No WSUS server I'm guessing, otherwise you'd have been able to block that update from reaching your machines. Or do you just let all the updates through without checking/testing/filtering.

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BOFH: Sure, I could make your cheapo printer perform miracles

Re: Computer User - Not Technical

I'll second that and have an upvote.

Call the Cable Guy: Wireless just won't cut it

Re: Wired vs wireless

I rent as well but I still installed Cat 5e. Here in the UK most houses since the 70's have stud & plasterboard internal walls and dot & dabbed plasterboard fixed to the external walls. So its fairly easy to run cable where you want it with the right tools and a bit of know-how (and make it look like it was always built-in).

Going on a thin client diet

Sounds like...

they don't have a competent BOFH. Any decent sysadmin would have that all bolted down so the poor lusers couldn't hurt themselves and the sessions optimised for lean smooth running.

NatWest tightens online banking security after hacks' 'hack' exposé

Re: Are Barclays...

Yep AFAIK. But one can also use the Pinsentry function on the mobile app which is handy as it saves having to carry the calculator-sized Pinsentry device around. I get the impression that they are steering customers to the mobile app as they charge for extra Pinsentrys.

HSBC had an RSA-type key fob.

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Gov must put superfast broadband along HS2 rail line, says Parliament

Humbug

Dumbass white elephant!!!

Upgrade West Coast mainline to 4 tracks at least as far as Manchester so that current fast (enough) inter-city trains can be kept separate from slower local trains. Probably cost half of HS2 and use balance to get rest of country fibre-to-premises which would reduce need to travel.

But what do I know.

The Police Chief's photo library mixed business, pleasure and flesh

Re: Pr0n

Ah, Tom Sharpe's first two novels - "Riotous Assembly" and "Indecent Exposure" were the first ones of his I read. Had me in stitches. Re-read them recently and the scenes they conjure still had me laughing out loud :-) Not very PC but then apartheid South Africa wasn't very PC (tell the young 'un that and they won't believe you ;-) ).

Aircraft laser strikes hit new record with 20 incidents in one night

Small missile...

... launcher mounted above the flight deck loaded with laser homing guided missile. Perhaps with a ground proximity fuse (say 50m) that triggers a parachute and ignites a flare to light up the perps so the police can spot them. Or the payload could be a blob of that anti-theft marker dye that paints the perp.

That thing we do in the UK? Should be ILLEGAL in the US, moans ex-State monopoly BT

Re: Realism is hard?

"Virgin reach most UK homes"

Hah hah hah, Hah hah hah, Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah,Hah hah hah.

Try 50%, which isn't "most" in my book.

How about it becoming the telecoms equivalent of National Grid?

Make sure your storage can grow with your business

Re: Not always inexpensive

Original setup had the NAS type storage 3 switches (inc 2x 2510G) away from the hosts and other servers on an un-segmented LAN.

2510G-48 - packet buffer size: 1.5 MB

1920-8G - packet buffer size: 4.1 Mb

So it should be an improvement in terms of performance. It will certainly be an improvement in resilience and upgrades will be easier to implement (without having to take everything down). Granted its nowhere near the sort of enterprise environments I usually work in but, given the budget constraints, its better then what they had.

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Re: Not always inexpensive

Check out the HP MSA 1040. The client has 3 x DL380 G7 with VMware Essentials Plus and I'm just putting one of these in with a couple of HP 1920-8G switches to create a proper SAN. The MSA + disks + switches + cables came to less then £7k. It can scale in performance and capacity easily.

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Chinese takeaway, hold the Google: Xiaomi Mi4 LTE Android

Moto G 2nd Gen

At least as good and half the price (with UK support and lollipop) :-)

Just sayin :-)

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Microsoft discontinues Media Center with Windows 10

No good alternatives

Plenty of content on Freeview, more than I'll ever watch. Trouble is its scattered all over the schedules so how to harvest it. I've had hacked Series 1 Tivos for over 12 years and its ability to capture program series and other things via 'Wishlists' can't be bettered. The main problems are the lack of multi-tuner support and the faff of watching content on other devices. (Don't even mention Virgin Tivo - I'm in a not spot and pay TV would be very poor value anyway.)

I have messed around with various Linux media centres (XBMC, Myth TV, OpenELEC, etc) but they take the piss. Especially when it comes to tuner support. I've wasted days at a time googling, reading fora, wikis and howtos and still haven't had a working TV recorder. Great media players but nothing that will just sit in the corner and harvest programs from the schedules using the installed tuners.

Contrast that with the WMC I have sitting in the loft. Done and dusted and operational in a few hours. I'll need to sort a few add-ons to tweak it but the whole driver bit just worked. Don't get me wrong - I wanted the whole Linux thing to work and had useful outcomes using Smoothwall and Freenas but the media centre thing made me lose the will to live.

TomTom MyDrive brings satnav syncing to PCs and mobiles

Tom Tom are s*#t

Dumbass routing! Travelling back from York to Midlands it always tries (very insistently) to send me down the A1M and M18 and doesn't shut up til I'm way past Barnsley! Granted its about 6 miles longer via the M1 but come on! 3 lane motorway vs 2 lane A road with truck sand self-appointed coppers in the outside lane. Duh!

Useless live traffic! Just renewed the service (only because it was on special offer) because I'm in and out of Brum 3 times a week. It still tries to send me down the A38 Aston "Expressway" even though it takes over an hour to get to the M6. Ring-road around to the A45 is 9 times out of 10 better. I thought it was supposed to get real-time info from speed and density traffic sensors. S*#t S*#t S*#t

Anything better?

Improved Apple Watches won't get more expensive? Hmmm

Re: Gordon Brown

"Can't hear anything. La la la".

FTFY

Lenovo CTO: Hey, look around – we're not the only ones with a crapware infection

Just take off...

and nuke it from orbit. Its the only way to be sure!

Seriously though, I always install from a SA ISO and and add the drivers. That works with whatever product key you have, be it OEM, SA, retail, Action Pack. I've done that with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer and Tosh.

Finding the drivers is the pain. Tosh are the worst, their site is all over the place. At least with Lenovo you just need to install their 'System Update' utility which will detect your hardware and download all the relevant drivers (especially useful when there are 2 or 3 different cardreader/audio/etc used in a given model) and deselect what you don't want. Pity the other manufacturers don't have something similar. Combined with vanilla Windows install media it would make nuking and reinstalling windows much easier especially for home users (given all the dodgy sites that come up when looking for drivers).

(Note to self - get my own MDT instance setup soon!)

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

[Set Adblock slider to:- Blocked element:

<DIV

id="top_tease" >]

And the 'Expand comments' is dumb beyond words. If I'm interested enough to read the comments then I use the PgDn button. The 'Expand comments' crap forces me back to the mouse which doesn't help my RSI!

The Register

Biting the eyes that read IT

Adblock installed...

...because of the redesign. Previously I didn't bother on the Reg as they weren't too intrusive.

It also has the added benefit of blocking that dumbass 'hero' pic. Draws the eye for absolutely no benefit.

The Register

Biting the eyes that read IT

Shit

Too much white space doing nothing. Too spread out.

Too much work to see at which stories might be worth reading.

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Mighty Blighty broadbanders beg: Let us lay cable in BT's, er, ducts

Duct infrastructure

What's the point of having duplicate infrastructure? The last place I lived had the ridiculous sight of two sets of slit trenches and manholes in the pavement (sidewalk to the merkins) where both BT and Telewest/NTL put their cables in the ground. It doesn't make sense for either the consumer or the businesses concerned (except maybe the guys digging the holes). Openretch should be treated the same way National Grid is. Then all the (phone/net/cableTV) service providers would pay equally and have the same access. A competitive market is all well and good but most of the BT's infrastructure was built out at taxpayers expense and BT are (naturally) hanging on to that advantage for all their worth which means its not a level playing field.

I don't know what the numbers are but it wouldn't surprise me if all the money wasted on duplicate infrastructure would have easily have paid for fibre to every house in the country by now.

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Be Your Own Big Brother: Going to pot

Re: All beside the point.

I assembled something to do this a few years ago. Used a PIR of the type used to control a flood light to control a socket into which I'd plugged a 12v transformer which powered a 12v water valve (from a washing machine). This controlled the water supply to a impulse sprinkler. This worked pretty well once I figured out how to shade the PIR from the sun as it had to face south. Also had a bit of fun finding a PIR with adjustable sensitivity (got it from RS in the end).

It wasn't pretty but it worked. There is an all-in-one device that does the same thing:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Contech-ScareCrow-Motion-Activated-Deterrent/dp/B005MW9VOM

but its good to feed your inner Heath Robinson :-)

PSST! New PCs with Windows 7 preinstalled are out there – and will be into 2015, at least

Two words...

Classic Shell

Outsourcing your own job much more common than first thought

Re: ummmm

" If companies can outsource, why can't employees?"

Because an employment contract is a 'contract OF service'. The service must be given personally by the employee. There is no right of substitution.

Other contracts are a 'contract FOR service' and substitution can occur in these.

Thanks ever so much Java, for that biz-wide rootkit infection

I'm for the...

the "nuke from orbit option". Its the only way to be sure.

FCC (finally) cracks down on BLARING! TV! ADS!

TIVO

One of main reasons I still love my old Series One Tivo and still keep it going despite the lack of dual tuners, HD, etc.

See http://www.tivoland.com/altepg/

R.