Posts by Richard Cranium

Microsoft moved the goalposts once. Will Windows 12 bring another shift?

Re: I still hate Micro$oft

I'm tempted to ask an AI assistant to translate this into English - but I can't be arsed.

Cook'd: Judge says Apple lied to court in Epic case, asks Feds to mull criminal charges

Re: What happened to the days of...

In brief, the tactic is deny,dispute,delay

Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

Users on here tend to be those with more demanding apps but even so $5000?

I bought my wife a new PC (processor unit only, re-used monitor etc) $400 and it's overkill, not used for much more than Office suite, basic photo edits and browser (but a lot of disk, she never deletes anything). She could have stayed on W10 but the machine was getting flaky. Sure Linux can extend PC life but no way would I risk moving my wife to it, and in any case her W10 hardware was old, slow and had been exhibiting problems despite upgrade to SSD a few years ago. She doesn't like change so being the go-to authority I thought I'd be in for a difficult time and was prepared for all kinds of gripes about W11 being different but she took to it very quickly and acknowledged that the new box is much faster. I set her up with a KVM switch so she could switch back to the old box if needed. She tried it but after a couple of days found she had no further need for it.

I'll be spending a bit more sometime soon for myself but still a long way shy of $5000. My replacement cycle is usually 5 years and I understand that's around average for desktops, and quite high for

laptops (the old PCs are still fairly good spec so not trashed but go to a good home). When I had a proper job my employer's policy was 5 years life for desktops, 3 years for laptops (The implication for anyone who was not given a timely replacement was that they would be being made redundant soon so let's not waste money on a new PC!)

In my experience keen gamers like to upgrade quite frequently will have moved to TPM2 equipped PCs at some time since W11 was released (almost 10 years ago) although they may have stuck with W10 until the general consensus was that it was reasonably stable.

I'd not be surprised if a lot of non-tech W10 users have W11 capable PCs but are wary of upgrading the OS (or don't know how, or don't even know their hardware is good enough).

NHS to launch 'real-time surveillance system' to prevent future pandemics

Only ONE week? Sounds like you won the postcode lottery.

Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: Blisteringly inappropriate insults

Re: What the ever-loving **** ?

I had an especially obnoxious boss who was seriously messing me about, finding fault where there was none. He was having an affair. My wife took matters into her own hands and made an anonymous call to his wife who said "I know" and burst into tears - so she empathised and it turned into a long "all men are bastards" conversation. (She ditched him).

Help! My mouse climbed a wall and now it doesn't work right

Used a digitiser with puck briefly in the late 1960s. A serious bit of kit operated by a specially trained guy who let me have a go. IIRC the movement of puck was mirrored by a detector on the other side of the working surface which was "connected" to the puck by a strong magnet, I think the position was "read" by potentiometers.

Re: Double sided

First they came for our stone tablets, then they came for our clay tablets, then they came for our papyrus, then they came for our vellum, now they've come for our paper - when will this madness ever end?

Re: Wow

Well the obvious fix for "optical mouse won't work on shiny surface" is to give it a non-shiny mat. There are metal ones (possibly clean-room friendly) with a textured surface intended to be ideal for optical mouses. I once had one made of frosted glass too but that didn't survive the inadvertent drop-test onto concrete.

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Hybrid

Surely HEVs are the best solution, at the very least to cover the time it will take to get the charging network to the point at which it's near fully green energy and no more hassle than travelling in an ICE vehicle.

Moving the pollution from my tailpipe to a fossil fuel power station doesn't get rid of it.

Recharge stops are more frequent and time consuming than a petrol refill. I sometimes have an extra gallon in a can in case of emergency (winter or remote regions) - there's no equivalent for an EV.

I considered an EV as a second car just for local journeys but, taking into account cost and parking spaces, taxi and public transport provide a better alternative.

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

Re: Likewise ...

Some customers are so demanding the cost of keeping them outweighs the benefit. If you explicitly fire them there's a risk they'll badmouth you.

One solution is to gradually increase your response time and charges.

If you're a large corporate or a government body the solution is to have a "help desk" behind a "call waiting" system and staffed by morons with a poor grasp of English who are rewarded for a high call closure rate and penalised if they dare escalate a call to someone competent. The problem customers will move elsewhere and become a drain on your competitor's resources - a double win!

Two flaws with that - there may be no competitor (Government agencies) but they don't give a f*k about the public they're supposed to be serving and you'll also annoy "good" customers (and miss the opportunity to understand and address genuine problems, imagine if initial reports of problems with Horizon had been recognised, escalated and addressed two decades before it escalated into a massive scandal and cover-up).

It is 2023 and Excel's reign of date terror might finally be at an end

After the "fix" input 0123 and a little warning triangle pops up reading "The number in this cell is formatted as text or preceded by an apostrophe" and it is indeed text, you can't do mathematics with it, not a big deal usually but a fudge not a fix IMHO

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Just a thought...

Many people complain about it being difficult to read the meter - like hard to reach location at the back of a dark cupboard, small numbers. Smart meters fix that (or would do if they were reliable). Another _inexpensive_ option would be to bluetooth enable the meters so they could be read by mobile phone app and the reading stored for the householder and sent to the energy supplier*.

Granted this doesn't facilitate feed-in and variable tariffs but it gets rid of reliance on the mobile networks, the mobile phone could use a WiFi connection too or store and forward if no immediate connection available.

* Actually rather than send direct to the energy supplier send the readings and the unique meter ID to a central database which then routes the readings to the current energy supplier.

BTW currently I use Octopus who send a monthly reminder to submit current readings then email a bill usually within 24 hours. A big improvement on Scottish Power who sent me a bill for a month's electricity 30 months years after I left and over 10 times what my monthly payments had been. It took hours of my time, proving to them and a series of debt collectors that nothing was owing. That took a further 2 years. You might have expected an apology or even compensation - don't be silly, this was Scottish Power.

I've never been happy with the ability to have power turned off remotely, still less happy that it's done just by changing a setting in a large centralised database. What a target that database is for anyone wanting to inflict massive damage on uk homes and businesses - but of course it's absolutely secure, like all the others we read about being breached on an almost daily basis.

As for monitoring energy use: I submit meter readings every month and then get a bill, that gives me a clue.

The house is reasonably well insulated and the pay-back period for improving on that is decades. I have room for an air-source heat pump but it would mean replacing the heating pipes and radiators. I have roof space for Solar panels but the salesman who did a survey was honest (!) and told me I'd probably need a full-house rewire but in any case the roof orientation and shade from a neighbouring tall building meant I'd not generate much.

If I want to reduce the fuel bill the choice is to reduce my use of anything that uses a lot of energy, basically anything that gets hot and, where possible, heat with gas rather than electricity.

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

its a gimmick

people seem to like the idea, several people have extolled its virtues to me but none had investigated beyond the advertisers hype

w3w is just an attempt to monetise latitude and longitude.

in UK OS NGR: SK123854 is a 10metre square and these options are usually good, not perfect but neither is W3W

LatLon: 53.365, -1.817 Postcode: S33 7ZA Location name: Edale Station

Google maps "share my location" works well, sends a link to a map with a point marker, you need mobile signal but without that summoning assistance becomes a bigger challenge anyway.

AML seems to be widely implemented and SMS can get sent even where mobile signal is too weak for voice.

Users of 123 Reg caught out by catch-all redirect cut-off

Some hosts don't provide LetsEncrypt, I had to help out a guy whose godaddy subsidiary had withdrawn LetsEncrypt from their cPanel interface with no notice just before xmas so his site was showing "insecure" 'till new-year. Tech support had a fix: just pay $50 extra p.a. for their commercial certificate. As it was $100p.a."budget" hosting, an extra $50p.a. was unwelcome. I showed him how to use certsage for a self install of LetsEncrypt, it does need quarterly renewal but once you know how it's a 5 minute job.

me too, came back from lunch to find 64,000 emails had just landed, which I took to be the limit on the mailbox as, having flushed it, more started to arrive. That was about 20 years ago I've never used catchall since and strongly advised my clients to avoid. I too am surprised that ISPs still offer the facility. I might even go so far as to say 123reg are (uncharacteristically) doing the right thing - just implementing the change too soon with inadequate notice. I ditched 123 many years ago (for too many reasons to list) although the task of migrating 200+ domains took a while.

As for alternatives to 123, I've used several others, the only ones so far that have managed to be as poor as 123 have been others also taken over by godaddy so if you're looking to change just checking it's not a subsidiary of godaddy will save you some grief.

Sci-fi author 'writes' 97 AI-generated tales in nine months

William Wallace Cook was doing this a century ago which led to Plotto, essentially an algorithm for creating plot outlines. I suspect it is/was well known to some of the prolific authors of low grade fiction since the 1920s.

Study: AI can predict pancreatic cancer three years ahead of human doctors

Re: Similar announcement

Agreed, an excessive number of false positives and causing unnecessary alarm, investigation or surgery is bad. But if the system was to be enhanced with further potential indicators, however inconclusive on their own, false positives could be reduced to a more acceptable level. Maybe some genetic predispositions or correlations.

My wife spent 6 months undergoing tests to diagnose the cause of what appeared to be indigestion and back pain, nothing found and no treatment was helping. At that point the doctors said it can only be psychosomatic so stop taking the pile of ineffective medications. That was when things deteriorated massively so another gastroenterologist had a look and gamma camera imaging showed the pancreatic cancer - far too late for there to be any possibility of a positive outcome, died 3 months later at 49.

After I had prostate cancer some years later, which had spread to the lungs, my DNA was sequenced for inclusion in the UK genomic research database. Hopefully that kind of information will contribute to earlier diagnoses or even preventative medications and lifestyle changes. The problem then is that we'll all live into our 90s - with all the concomitant infirmities, incontinence, Parkinson's, osteoporosis, arthritis, failing eyesight and hearing, dementia...

School laptop auction devolves into extortion allegation

Re: Investigating RDA ?

Would you do business with a PC shop that openly admits it examines data on PCs that pass through their hands?

The guys I use to get rid of my old technology routinely ask "any disks in this equipment" and if so part of their service is to definitively wipe or destroy (my choice) regardless of whether there's any data on the disks. Of course that does leave a matter of trust but in UK and probably most of Europe the act of looking at the data on any disks without permission would be an offence.

It's also an offence not to destroy the data before disposal so the school hasn't covered itself in glory either but do some not necessarily IT literate admin people think about that when there's a stash of redundant kit going to auction, maybe like this one https://www.sbcisd.net/apps/news/article/828912 with a mixed bag that might include Playground equipment, Sewing machines, Computers/TV's/laptops

OK so RDA are claiming to be acting in a public spirited manner because "he alleges some computers sold by the district went to foreign buyers" but wants the school to buy back the entire 514 machines (perhaps at a substantial mark-up?) AND he wants to rubbish the school's reputation and get his name in the headlines - well he succeeded in that.

Maybe the auctioneers have some responsibility too, did the sale catalogue make any explicit reference to the status of the disks. In my opinion they should be aware of risks inherent in what they are auctioning. If they were selling hand grenades I would expect them to state whether they were inactivated, dummies or contained detonator and explosive charge.

Bear in mind that the value of a completely wiped PC may be less than one that can be booted up into a valid operating system.

Not just from a security perspective any individual relinquishing control of a PC (a student at the end of the school year?) should ensure there's no personal data remaining, so should anyone responsible for disposal of obsolete kit and IMHO ethically, morally and possibly legally, anyone finding they are in receipt of personal data to which they are not entitled, is not entitled to use that for personal or financial gain.

Intel settles to escape $4b patent suit with VLSI

Re: "Patents shouldn't exist at all ..."

see also Charles Bourseul and Johann Reis

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Re: the first use of gruntled

I'd like to propose a new coinage? regruntled: the result of successfully recovering dissatisfied customers (listen, understand, empathise, apologise, fix the problem).

My mail-order beer supplier sent me a case of beer, one can had exploded. "Support" said what amounted to "shit happens, beer is a live product and fermentation can continue in the can, we don't offer replacements" so I cancelled my monthly deliveries. A couple of days later the proprietor called me in person and did the right thing: Understood, apologised, explained that the support person was new and had now been given some guidance, added a few pounds credit to my account, gave me his personal contact details and asked that I contact him direct should I have any future issues. I'm now regruntled and my beer supplies are being regularly replenished.

Record label drops AI rapper after backlash over stereotypes

Re: Call centre accent spoofing.

This software will confound my strategy for avoiding scam calls. If a caller has a "challenging" accent (that can include indian, glaswegian, American), I put the phone down. Same if the background noise is characteristic of a call centre.

If its important they'll find an alternative means of communication.

That's no help with calls I make to such as businesses when I need their services or support but in those circumstances the whole experience is far worse. "Press 1 for sales, 2 for..." etc to land in a queue of indeterminate length listening to "music" interrupted by "your call is important to us..." messages only to end up speaking to some clueless idiot whose only chance of employment is at a minimum wage call centre. In that case a difficult accent makes the situation still worse.

I wonder how it works when someone with an extreme Glasgow accent, challenging for a UK "normal" English speaker, gets put through to an Indian call centre,

What we need is another "rate the organisation" website. It comes down to a few questions, primarily "how long did it take to get the answer you needed (if at all)" . But could usefully add some more like : what was the communication medium (phone, email, social media etc); was an undertaking to respond later (call back, email etc) fulfilled; were you transferred to another person (how many times did you have to repeat the same question).

Massive telecom outage in Japan kicks 40 million mobile users offline

Re: POTS so reliable

I'd just like to be given the choice. My landline and all the associated kit to support it is in-place, fully paid for, the ongoing costs are just for maintenance but the plan is to switch me to voip. In recent months I've noticed poor voice quality on some calls, the penny dropped when one such caller (my sister) proudly announced that BT had just "upgraded" their Internet and phone service.

Rather than encouraging the switch to fully digital, government should be supportive of maintaining pots. I guess the telecoms operators have reassured them that "everything will be OK" and will be hoping their promise will be long forgotten when the wheels do come off as they assuredly will.

Google calculates Pi to 100 trillion digits

The power of π

My maths teacher (nickname Bong IIRC), with a reputation for enjoying his food, bounced into class one day and declared:

"This is my favourite power of pi" and scribbled on the blackboard.

π^t

before proudly declaring to a bunch of confused teenagers:

"I like raising pie to the teeth!"

I expect the reception here will be a similar to that he received many decades ago.

Somehow The Register seems to have conveniently obtained his photo for me to to use as an icon

Re: Measurement creep

When I was at school I learnt a mnemonic for the first 30 digits:

Now I, even I, would celebrate

In rhymes inapt, the great

Immortal Syracusan, rivaled nevermore,

Who in his wondrous lore,

Passed on before,

Left men his guidance

How to circles mensurate.

But it's been utterly no use to me in the ensuing 50 years - well maybe occasionally to show off (to those who give a damn, so not many!)

Buying a USB adapter: Pennies. Knowing where to stick it: Priceless

Houdini

Houdini reportedly made his escapes very quickly but concealed it to build the tension and to justify the ticket-price. If the punters had paid for a 90 minute show and it was all over in 15 minutes they might start asking for their money back.

To avoid cost-disputes about software tweaks I do something similar. When a simple task can be completed in a couple of minutes I always wait an hour or two before sending the good news (and invoice).

I often refrain from saying "yes I can" but instead something like "I think that should be possible but I'll need to take a look and get back to you".

Although the task may take 5 minutes the overhead of customer communication consumes significantly more of my professional time. It takes time to understand and clarify their requirements, maybe to refresh my knowledge of the code, to document the changes in the code or my own notes and any end-user documentation. As they never read the documentation, supplement that with explicit advice of any related actions or procedure changes they may need - and simply to advise that the problem has been fixed or the new feature added.

I've spend hours and $$$ developing my skill set at my own expense, the customer needs to make a contribution to those costs.

I've got office space, computers, software packages, office furniture, stationery and utility bills to pay. That's all part of the cost of providing the service too.

It's very easy to under-value ones' knowledge and expertise. I may understand and find a task straightforward/easy/obvious but that only means it is for me. When my central heating pump failed I could have bought a replacement and the necessary plumbing tools but even with the help of an online video tutorial I'd not have done the job as well as the professional and I'd have spent hours researching the best pump, the best tools and watching "how to" videos. I was quite happy to pay £100 (plus the cost of the pump) for the guy who was on-site for little over an hour.

I learnt my lesson years ago when I was invited to dinner and a dip in the friend/client's large indoor pool and "perhaps you could take a look at my PC" which of course turned out to be an unholy mess. These days I deny all knowledge and understanding of PC/Mac/Mobile-phone hardware and config, I empathise and refer them to a local PC shop "I use when I have similar issues". In similar vein I deny any knowledge of the workings of popular apps like social media and suggest they ask a teenager.

Worst of all is SEO - "could you just help get my web site to do better in Google search results?" NOT F***ING LIKELY (and not recommending an SEO either as I'll get a share of the blame when the SEO charges a fortune for delivering almost no improvement).

What begins with a 'B' and is having problems at tsoHost? Hopefully not your website

Re: There's another problem at TSO...

Standard at GoDaddy (as if there aren't enough reasons to avoid them anyway). This page covers it, https://uk.godaddy.com/help/install-a-lets-encrypt-certificate-on-your-linux-hosting-account-28023

I really don't think they want anyone to use third party certificates with text like this "...cannot guarantee their safety or reliability..." and a link to another page to explain how to "Install your certificate and private key in cPanel" that gives "No page found."

It seems GoDaddy is buying up smaller hosts and migrating them to their platform which means the old host's clients lose their existing Lets Encrypt certification.

That they do that without prior notice to those clients beggars belief. GoDaddy SSL certs come at an even higher price than TSOhost at £70p.a. (after an introductory discount if you pay up-front for 2 years).

A friend runs 3 small web sites on TSOhost's 5 web site package at about £86p.a. he reluctantly stumped up £50 for SSL for one of them when TSO pulled the plug on Lets Encrypt. He told me after the event but I was at least able to help him set up LetsEncrypt for the 2 other sites he has there, otherwise what once cost £86p.a. would now be £236p.a..

President Biden orders transformation of 'Federal Customer Experience'

Re: Leaf Out of HM Gov's Book

I disagree:

Links that seem to send you to a more relevant page that has a link that seems to get you closer to your goal which turns out to be a page that sends you back to where you started.

Use of terminology that might be fine for the well-educated intelligent user but not your average joe.

Not everyone is as smart as readers of The Register.

Maybe a comic book version (https://medium.com/war-is-boring/this-u-s-army-comic-book-has-cavemen-dinosaurs-and-tips-on-how-to-blow-up-tanks-d0afbe1c14bb) would be going too far but these sites really do need to cater for the widest community of potential users.

Amazon tells folks it will stop accepting UK Visa credit cards via weird empty email

Re: Will be interesting

"VISA is way more popular than Mastercard in the UK so relatively few people have the latter." Evidence? On hearing the news I took a look at all my (rather too many) debit and credit cards from different banks and supermarkets. All the ones I actually use are Mastercard, the two I don't use are bank Visa debit cards.

The reason I have multi credit cards are many and varied. One gives me a very high credit limit (although all get paid off monthly by direct debit it's good to have the contingency), various companies and supermarkets give some kind of benefit if you pay there using their card - hence my Amazon card is used at Amazon because I get, IIRC, £10 back for every £1000 spend, not a big deal but better in my pocket than their's.

What I don't understand is that in comments above, the issue Amazon are arguing with Visa about is their fees but mastercard charge the same so why? And don't Amex charge a lot more? I understood that was why Amex can give customers bigger cash-back. I tried Amex a few years ago for the big cash-back but found it impossible to use it enough to recover the monthly fee because some businesses wouldn't accept it stating the high fees and difficulties dealing with the company.

Swiss lab's rooftop demo shows sunlight and air can make fuel

Re: Policy shift from whom? The Gods of physics?

"Ammonia as a fuel ..."

I was wondering about that too but why do we have to think of solar capture purely in terms of fuel?

Can it be used to produce a simple raw material to reduce the need for fuel? For example, a material with an industrial value to supplement more resource intensive or polluting sources?

I'm not an expert (in anything...) but isn't Ammonia used to make fertilisers?

A quick Googling finds this headline: Industrial ammonia production emits more CO2 than any other chemical-making reaction.

It would be great if solar energy captured in remote places could be used close to source to create high value readily transported materials.

If water is a necessary raw material then, as with marine wind farms, what about marine solar islands? Maybe attached to production platforms like the oil rigs?

NHS Digital exposes hundreds of email addresses after BCC blunder copies in entire invite list to 'Let's talk cyber' event

standard legalese footers are the solution of course...

...not.

This email and any attached files are strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual(s) to whom they are addressed. If you are not a named addressee you should not disseminate, share, distribute or copy this e-mail. If you have received this e-mail by mistake please notify the sender immediately and delete this e-mail from your system. If you are not the intended recipient you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.

That should fix it!

On a slightly more positive note: when I press send on a Gmail that contains wording indicative of an attachment, Gmail alerts me "It seems like you have forgotten to attach a file...".

It would be good if there were a similar alert for any email with a cc: Something like - "are you sure you want all recipients to see the email addresses of all other addressees?"

This would be great for those occasions where I intentionally cc: all 30 members of a club so they all know who is seeing it and can *when appropriate* use reply all but then a few choose to "reply all" with some mundane observation or intended just for me.

Even adding a standard footer "Please don't annoy everyone by using 'reply all'." didn't work. When I started sending those who persisted a sarcastic comment most but not all got the message...

Might not be worth considering for a bcc: alert too - "Are you sure you need all recipients to receive this information".

Completely unnecessary if everyone knew how email works but that knowledge is seemingly limited to readers of The Register and a handful of others.

UK competition watchdog unveils principles to make a kinder antivirus business

Re: Model contracts

Bring it on! Imagine the same for car and household insurance renewals?

How that works now is each annual renewal is typically 10% more than last year (but a couple of years ago with a long claim free history my motor insurance jumped 27%).

So it's time to do a tour of the comparison sites, fill in a lengthy questionnaire at each, wade through dozens of different options, find a cheaper quote, call current insurer. They may offer a small cut but seldom match the best offer because "it's not a like for like equivalent". You read the small print and there are minor detail differences like "no excess for windscreen damage" but the overall excess is £250 instead of £200. Sure it's not like for like but I'm not planning on making a claim anyway and have no idea which choice is the best value for money.

Go for the cheaper quote. Those who don't will find that after 10 years they're paying £1000 p.a. for what was initially £400 p.a. By then a competitive quote might save £500 but in the intervening years the aggregate saving of a yearly switch would be many £hundreds.

If there were some model motor insurance contracts I guess annual switchers like me would end up paying more but would benefit from a couple of hours time saved each year. That should be mitigated by the financial savings to the insurers of reduced call centre, sales, advertising and admin costs.

Netflix sued by South Korean ISP after Squid Game fans swell traffic to '1.2Tbps'

The tragedy of the commons...

...look it up.

In the early days of the web I used a London based web host for my client web sites. They had a policy of unlimited usage.

It was fine for many months but then it started to get slower and, within a few days, glacial. I established the cause. Another user was hosting a single page web site which appeared to be promoting an islamic religious book, there were no internal links from that page but there were other pages, a substantial stash of pornographic images, available to anyone who knew what page name to enter to the browser.

The news of that stash had spread. One the technicians they employed was not happy with the situation and went public with the bandwidth usage stats on a user forum. About 95% of the total available bandwidth was being consumed by that one customer. The management response was to put the blame on the lead time for getting additional capacity. What surprised me most was that many users on the forum who were all suffering the same virtually unusable speeds supported the management's stance of unlimited everything rather than apply some kind of fair-use cap.

I spent an entire easter weekend shifting all my websites elsewhere, mostly early morning when the porno enthusiasts had worn themselves out.

I think it's common for ISP and hosting contracts to include constraints such as a "fair use" clause. I believe my "unlimited" fibre broadband provider has a policy of throttling usage if I were to exceed a daily threshold, reinstating normal service at midnight.

If SK Broadband are having a problem and have some kind of fair use clause they should be invoking it, if not they need to amend their contracts, hike their monthly fees, charge a premium to Netflix users, block or throttle Netflix pending a resolution.

Fundamentally it is a mistake to set up any kind of "commons", in the case of internet services advertising unlimited bandwidth, disk, websites etc. It is a fiction, it is not deliverable and will be exploited by someone.

Xero, Slack suffer outages just as Let's Encrypt root cert expiry downs other websites, services

Why make changes on last /first day of the month?

I used to work at Midland bank, payday was 20th of the month to steer clear of the end of month peak Bank activity. Likewise no system changes on a Friday night so there are people around to fix any unexpected problems

Ofcom unveils broadband switching plans, but providers claim it's not so easy

Re: Please can we have it for Domain Names as well?

I feel your pain but the fact remains you dropped the name, nobody has any obligation to reserve it for you in case you change your mind. When you've dropped the name in whose name do you expect it to be registered? It's probably in godaddy's name because if they left it in your name it would appear to be yours, unfortunately it's not, you intentionally dropped it. It is probably in the process godaddy explain, it's past the no penalty renewal option and is in the renew for a large fee stage, next it will go for auction and if it attracts no interest will eventually be released onto the open market.

So now the real issue is what should you do? If you think there's a real chance that someone else will buy the name when GoDaddy put it up for auction and if you really want the name, sorry but your best option is to grit your teeth and pay the [expletive deleted]s. If you think the risk of another buyer (including drop-catchers) emerging is small wait 'till godaddy let it lapse and try to re-purchase.

As regards valuing a name the most valuable names are short, single dictionary words or proper nouns.

Examples from Sedo: book.co.uk $50,000 BookReview.co.uk $5000 ScienceFictonBooks

.co.uk £550 - more words lower value, short single word, premium price. Change to .com and expect at least ten times the valuation (Note that those are only asking prices and seem very optimistic).

Re: Please can we have it for Domain Names as well?

I have little time for godaddy. There are better providers, in brief just about anyone else! - but make sure that any other choice is not just a subsidiary of godaddy.

Nevertheless I will offer a defence.

GoDaddy do have a published policy which is something like free recovery for about 3 weeks after expiry, a short window when you can recover for a higher fee, then made available at godaddy's auction service and if not sold after a few weeks, released to the open market. At that point you may be able to register the name just like any other unregistered name - but it's a gamble.

Another way to look at the issue is to consider what happens when a name is allowed to lapse. Some domain names traders use a practice called drop-catching. They scour the list of lapsed names looking to buy those they consider to have resale potential. Take a look at domain name auction websites like sedo and you'll see just how much you might need to pay - then you'll be grateful to godaddy for "only" asking ten times their normal annual rate.

You can paint godaddy's policy in a bad light but it is published policy and many others do something similar. Another view is that they are protecting your interests by allowing a short period to recover from an accidental lapse. You could fail to renew in time, perhaps because you didn't get the renewal reminders - spam filters, or changed email address maybe. In that case you'll probably become aware that your website has disappeared and your emails no longer work. It happens. You get 3 weeks to discover that problem and fix it.

Godaddy are reflecting the policies of ICANN (https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/errp-2013-02-28-en) and Nominet in respect of lapsed names. They are not released to the open market for a length of time after expiry, allowing further opportunity for name recovery by the original owner but at a premium.

Best advice is never to get into that position. Move ALL names to a better provider, probably at a cost saving, making it more affordable to keep names you no longer currently need. Then you may then consider making redundant names available for sale, perhaps through an online domain name auction site or by routing to your own "name for sale" web page. If after a year (which has only cost you a years renewal fee) you've not changed your mind or found a buyer, drop the name.

Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland

There's a broader problem relating to documents originating centuries or millennia ago.

They were addressing a very different world. Population has increased tenfold since the US constitution, twenty-fold since Magna Carter, 50 fold since the New Testament. Most of the "authoritative" historic texts were written in different languages, addressed different life circumstances, have been subject to difficulties in translation. Few have been subject of revision and updates. They were, broadly speaking, attempts to improve the lot of the general populace in the context of the pertinent risk factors at that time. Literal interpretation a few hundred or thousand years later is as misguided as adhering to the UK laws of a couple of centuries ago.

Take the London Hackney Carriage act of the 1800s with its requirement that London Cabs carry a bale of hay to feed the horses (that requirement was abolished in 1976). The act's regulations relating to not ripping-off passengers or driving while intoxicated are still broadly applicable although superseded by UK wide legislation which usefully includes piloting an aircraft and while impaired by a wider range of substances and conditions than alcohol way beyond the perception of legislators 2 centuries ago.

That doesn't mean the older sources are irrelevant, most religions have a set of core guidelines comparable with the Judaeo-Christian Ten commandments or seven deadly sins. Even with those common short-lists, interpretation is where things go awry. Take the old testament "thou shalt not kill". Irrespective of religious or other context few would take exception to that "command" but we do interpret it. Most of us take it as only applicable to humans and regard killing in self-defence as a valid exception.

The serious imbeciles can always find a questionable translation and out-of-context interpretation of some obscure clause in whichever historic document suits their purpose to give false "authority" to their deranged agenda.

tsoHost pleads for 'patience and understanding' as sites borked, support sinkholed

Plan on a change of host every 2 years

It seems that whenever I find a good host it gets bought up by a bigger and ultimately crappier host. I have a 25year plus history of having to ditch hosts including some of those already mentioned.

I remember Netlink, demon, 123, HEG, 5quid, TSO, Vidahost, Hostdime, fasthosts and there have been a dozen more. It seems that the predators seek out successful smaller hosts and offer them a price too good to refuse.

My policy now works like this:

I have a primary host then one or two on trial for a year or two. When the primary gets gobbled up there's usually an interim period when service is in gradual decline, that gives a year to shift sites away to a host that's performed well in the trial period.

My most recent primary host remains excellent in terms of features, performance, availability and it's not been bought (yet) but their prices have rocketed and front-line support has become script-followers who are very reluctant to escalate anything they can't handle. The response to one simple request relating to their server configuration was "you need to ask an expert" well, as a coder with half a century in IT and 30 years Internet, without wishing to appear arrogant, I think I'm reasonably competent. Also when I call support that IS "asking an expert" or should be...

Influenced by the https://publicbenefit.uk/ I've recently shifted a dozen sites to Krystal (more to follow probably as other accounts expire), and might I point out that many of the biggest hosts including GoDaddy supported the original Nominet management.

Man found dead inside model dinosaur after climbing in to retrieve phone

Re: I was wondering how they found him.

The article gives a possible answer:

"... that a father and son who often visit the model dinosaur noticed something amiss" - so some external signs of a problem, foot sticking out of the mouth perhaps?

Alternatively the article says "Local media said the man was reported missing by his family" so family used a "find my phone" app perhaps?

The speculation that "...the man somehow managed to lose his phone inside the model beast..." is ambiguous. Some other posters here have taken it to mean he dropped the phone into the dino and went in after it. That is one possibility. An alternative is that once inside and stuck (maybe head down in a confined space with surfaces of slippery plastic) he attempted to get the phone out to call for help but dropped it and the eventual rescuers found it slipped further out of reach. Or being head-down, the phone just slipped out of a pocket.

No cause of death specified but in that situation CO2 build up? (See the stories of cavers Neil Moss 1958 in Derbyshire and John Jones 2009 in Utah).

As for "...possibly drunk..." that too is pure speculation until the autopsy reports the blood-alcohol level.

"...perhaps after deciding to spend the night within its skin..." speculation again and questionable as he was a family man. Speaking as such, in the event of a disagreement with my wife and deciding to spend the night elsewhere, spending it inside a model dinosaur would not feature prominently on my list of possible venues. (To my dear wife, should you read this: I don't actually maintain such a list but, should the need ever arise I can assure you I could come up with a better alternative, not necessarily with a lady-friend. I'm not aware of a suitable dinosaur in our locality and would be reluctant to go on a long journey to locate one.)

We were 'blindsided' by Epic's cheek, claims Apple exec on 4th day of antitrust wrangling

Anyone old enough to remember VisiCalc?

Back in the 1980s I was involved in the emergence or personal computers into a global bank. We were using the Sirius Victor. Financial modelling was a major need, some of that was being done on IP Sharp dial-up (acoustic coupler) timeshare system.

On the Victor we had an alternative, I don't recall the name but it was pre-spreadsheet and not for the faint hearted.

The minute anyone in finance saw VisiCalc they wanted it, and to get it they had to have an Apple computer. At the time it was regarded as "the killer app", the decision was not "what's the best hardware/operating system?" but "what do I need to run VisiCalc?". The Apple kit was expensive (inflation adjusted price probably over £4000) but we soon found a functional alternative to run on MsDos (might have been MS MultiPlan, again I don't recall).

I'm not a gamer but seems that Fortnite may fall into the "killer app" category and the answers to "what do I need to run Fortnite?" seem to include PC, £200 Android, Nintendo Switch.

Vote to turf out remainder of Nominet board looks inevitable after .uk registry ignores reform demands

Re: Shine a light

Worth pointing out that I understand (most?) registrars will accept an incoming name transfer at no cost, until the normal annual renewal so there's no obstacle to moving away NOW rather than await renewal date.

Spy agency GCHQ told me Gmail's more secure than Microsoft 365, insists British MP as facepalming security bods tell him to zip it

email is fundamentally flawed

The problem is that when Ray Tomlinson sat down half a century ago to create the basis of the email system we see today, it was an unofficial side-project to facilitate communication between a somewhat limited group of largely techies.

Anyone intending to design a global email system today supporting 4 billion accounts would make some very different decisions.

The problem we have now is that there are so many mail servers that it's far too late to change. The NCSC estimated 7,000 microsoft servers in the UK alone had been affected by the Hafnium email hack, despite the widespread publicity, several days later only half had implemented the patches). The slow adoption of approaches like SPF & DKIM are examples of the difficulty of implementing change however worthwhile that change may be.

A floppy filled with software worth thousands of francs: Techie can't take it, customs won't keep it. What to do?

Re: A Cunning Plan

Maybe you were thinking of Viewdata?

Or Prestel or was that the same thing?

Yep, you're totally unique: That one very special user and their very special problem

Re: Where’s the effing handbrake!?

"My first (and so far only) hire car in the USA was not only the first automatic transmission car I had driven..."

Me too and do you know what else? The silly buggers had stuck all the controls in front of the passenger seat, I ended up having to sit on the left to control the damn thing. I understand the same happens in France but I'd expect that kind of contrariness from them.

UK draft legislation enshrines the right to repair in law – but don't expect your mobile to suddenly be any easier to fix

What about batteries?

OK not white-goods but many smaller electricals use rechargeable batteries with a limited life. I've just binned a decent battery drill because the battery pack has died and replacements are no longer available. I took the battery pack to bits to see if it was just a cluster of something like 18650s but no, proprietary. I also have a collection of other stuff, mobile phones, digital cameras, satnav, dashcam, multimeter, kitchen scales etc with dead, non-standard batteries and no manufacturer replacements available.

A lot of this stuff has a 3-5 year life expectancy as a consequence.

On the other hand my RadioShack EC4075 programmers calculator (using 2xAA cells that last several years) is still perfectly fine after over 40 years regular use.

Lets see some standards for battery electricals:

Standard cells or if they must be proprietary then consumer replaceable (or at least by third party repairers) not glued in and spares available for 10 years. BTW another issue is that I was able to get replacement party batteries for a digital camera but I guess they were old stock (or counterfeit) with much lower effective capacity than new.

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

Are Splunk trying to adopt the status of the Académie française in respect of English?

Well they can f***-off and stick to their line of business.

Wouldn't it be useful if the resource they've wasted in this attempt to redefine how the English language should be used went instead into doing something productive.

As for the hundreds who have contributed their valuable time and intellectual efforts to this forum thread - lets forget the losers at Splunk trying to tell us how to use OUR language and go do something useful instead.

Do we want to end up with an English equivalent of the Académie française? If we do, should that role be in the hands of a commercial organisation? In any case it will be an ineffective laughing-stock just as the Académie française has become.

English is fluid, continually evolving. That is its strength. Where there's a need it will adapt whether that be by adopting a word from another language, coining a new one or expanding the scope of an existing word. That's why English is effectively the global language, perhaps not the largest first language but adding speakers for whom English is a second language, it is by far the most widely used. And that's to disregard those who may not have the confidence to speak English but can read English, understand spoken English and possibly write in English. It is the common language the educated classes everywhere and the de-facto language of science, business and navigation.

Where any two persons get together whose first languages differ, how do they communicate? As often as not, in English.

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

Profiteering

I've experienced problems with imports (from other places) before. In both cases the fee payable was substantially less that those in recent press reports some of which have been substantially more than this seagate example. Someone is making a killing from this, I wonder how the charges differ between parcel delivery companies.

My 2 examples:

As a prize for "Comment of the week" on a forum. I found I'd won a Tee shirt. It came from the USA and was declared at $15 but HM customs looked the product up online and found it retailed for more than that. I had to go to the post-office to collect and pay £18.

A friend in Japan sent us a gift (silk kimonos she'd made herself) and declared a value of $200. Post office got in touch to say they needed £70, as we weren't expecting anything and didn't know who it was from we debated whether we wanted to spend £70 for a "mystery parcel" or let them return it. Luckily we chose to pay, and, as it turned out to be "legitimate", the sender would have been offended had it been returned, it might seem to her that WE had rejected it.

For the time being I think the best advice is: avoid sending parcels between UK and EU if at all possible.

You want me to do WHAT in that prepaid envelope?

I read the story without looking at the author's name but was soon able to guess (didn't AD write for some of the early computer mags - remember those printed paper things we used to rely on before the internet).

Anyway as an oldster I can confirm the the process has improved, the earlier little wooden strips to place samples under little cardboard windows on 3 consecutive days (like a kind of reverse advent calendar - each day fill a window with shit, close it and post it to someone), were a real pain in the ... (how appropriate) calling for a major clean up of one's person and of the "bathroom environment".

I advise against sending shit through the post in any other circumstance, it can cause offence.

The NHS has a series of gifts in store for you as you age, the pleasant one comes next when the pharmacist told me to put my money away, I'd become so old I didn't need to pay for prescriptions. And then (men only) there's the Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening.

Any bloke over 45 should be thinking about asking the GP for an occasional Digital rectal examination if there are any of the early signs of prostate problems. Some GPs aren't very keen as the "digital" bit is not in the high-tech sense you might first consider, this being an IT forum (it involves a rubber glove) but my view is that they get paid a lot more than me and I used to metaphorically "shovel shit" in an IT sense (for HSBC) so make them earn it.

On to the other topic of the article: ergonomic everything. Over 20 years ago my wife bought a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. After a few months the letters were wearing off the keys so she complained. The complaint was not acknowledged in any way except one, a carton of about 10 more keyboards arrived unannounced. They weren't UK standard but a version with some accented letters, still QUERTY and quite useable, just minor quirks like the @ sign not in the usual place. As a "proper" typist she considered the keyboard more comfortable but as a two finger typist I found it less so. They kept us, friends and family, in keyboards for many years.

LastPass to limit fans of free password manager to one device type only – computer or mobile – from next month

Re: moving on

Same story. I don't have a problem with paying a reasonable amount for decent software (I even pay for good apps where payment is a voluntary donation like IrfanView).

IIRC LastPass used to have a one-device limit and I used to pay to use on mobile as well as laptop. Then they removed that limitation on the free version but increased the price on the paid version which I no longer needed now the free version did what I need. As a home user the price is now too high for multi-device so I'll have to move. How odd. If they'd kept things as they were a few years ago I'd continue with Lastpass and pay a reasonable amount.

Isn't it the same people that pigged off LogMeIn users a few years ago?

Faced with the sack, Nominet CEO half-apologizes for taking the 'wrong tone,' asks angry members to hear him out

Re: Dont Count your chickens

"some of their customers may decide enough is enough and switch to another"

IMHO very doubtful.

I assume many registrants only hold a handful of names, most probably just one or two. They are probably not aware of this issue and may not have the technical nous or financial incentive to shift if they do.

Imagine a micro-business has not just paid over the odds for registration and "Domain Ownership Protection" (£24 combined) through 123reg but have also signed up to their email and hosting deals. Moving will be a major PITA just to register dissatisfaction with some guy at an organisation they are barely aware of.

I'm happy to place a substantial bet that Haworth will find a way to incentivise a small number of those with large voting influence to vote down the proposal to replace him.