Posts by Phil O'Sophical

European Parliament Putin things back together after cyber attack

Oh, I don't know. The savings on 5 year's wages and expenses for all 705 of them would be useful.

France says non to Office 365 and Google Workspace in school

Re: You can't sell for less than cost in France

There's a difference between predatory pricing, and selling a few items as "loss leaders" to entice people into a shop. The latter is pretty commonplace in UK supermarkets, where something basic like milk or bread is sold below cost, in the expectation that people will buy other items while there.

We need an European cloud managed by European companies.

Maybe a nice reliable French supplier like OVH?

Time Lords decree an end to leap seconds before risky attempt to reverse time

Re: Let it slide

We could rename the months, what about Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, etc.? And just go straight to decimal time.

I think you'll find that is due to a worldwide pandemic. Other European countries are experiencing the same issues, France is at more risk of power cuts for example.

Jaguar Land Rover courts coders caught in big tech layoffs

Hopefully they'll hire coders who actually drive cars. Too many modern cars have "infotainment" systems which seem to have been designed by people who use smartphones but have never actually been behind the wheel in rural traffic.

iFixit stabs batteries – for science – so you don't have to

Re: Hmmm

No, but the battery can burst due to gas release, and spray sulphuric acid around. Could be worse than a fire.

IT manager's 'think outside the box' edict was, for once, not (only) a revolting cliché

Re: Just Packaging

All well and good -- until you want to buy one of those dividers.

That's when you need an "escape" divider to place before the one you want to buy.

Re: Cardboard was the solution

A few years ago I heard about a spate of TVs being returned to dealers, with complaints about poor audio volume and quality. Turned out that there was a thin strip of clear plastic along the bottom which covered the speakers and many people had not noticed it when unwrapping their new TV.

Microsoft makes a game of Team building, with benefits

Team building

with Solitaire?

Worried about your datacenter carbon footprint? Why not put it in orbit?

Data sovereignty?

I'll bet the lawyers are salivating at the thought of the arguments to come about exactly who has sovereignty of the data in an orbital DC.

NASA's Artemis mission finally launches after faulty Ethernet switch delayed countdown

Re: Faulty Ethernet switch?

Yes, other papers said that this was for the kill switch, which is not something you want to fail at a critical moment during launch. Some redundancy would seem essential to avoid the risk of dropping a faulty rocket on Florida.

Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

Re: The Hospital versions..

And never forget the Diagonal Steam Trap

Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything

Well, it did almost go titsup at that point...

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

Re: I had a similar experience

Yeah, DEC in that era was similarly good. We once had a fault with the main band printer in the office. Local support didn't have a spare but asked us to leave it with them for an hour.

They soon called back to arrange replacement of the required part. Turned out that they'd called the only other customer in the area with that VAX & printer combo and who had the spare part in a cupboard, and 'borrowed' it while a replacement was ordered. They owed the customer a favour, we got the printer back online quickly, and IIRC we returned a similar favour for that customer some months later. That's what customer support should mean.

Sadly, though, it's probably why neither Sun nor DEC is still with us, good support always seems to lose out to pennypinching bean counters.

Unlucky for some: Meta chops 13% of global workforce

Re: Zuck and metaverse

By "government subsidy" you mean "taxpayer cash"? Not mine, thanks very much.

If you want a glorified toy car, buy it yourself.

Sizewell C nuclear plant up for review as UK faces financial black hole

Re: Daft

Student Loans were introcuded in 1990, oh wait,.... bang in the middle of two Tory governments.

Those were low-cost loans, to help top-up student grants. It was the Blair government that introduced tuition fees in 1998, and abolished grants so that almost all students had to take out loans to pay for their education.

Re: Daft

I was under the impression that grammar schools only catered for those able/willing to pass certain 'academic' requirements; what happens to the rest is of no interest to them.

Grammar schools do focus on more-academic subjects for those with aptitudes in that area, others focus on vocational skills for those who are better with their hands than their heads. Much the same as happened with University versus Polytechnic. We need both, there's no point in forcing a skilled painter, plumber or carpenter to study the abstract academic theory behind those subjects if their skills really lie in the practical application of them.

Re: Daft

And the introduction (and retaining) of comprehensive schools has been demonstrated to be better overall for most kids.

One place that successfully fought the move was N. Ireland, where the Labour government of the 1970s didn't want to push too hard due to political sensitivities, and fell before it could complete the transition. Pupils in NI schools consistently scored better than those in comprehensive schools, so I would disagree that the comprehensive system was "better overall".

there was a demand for more higher education as we went towards a more skills-based system

If the demand is there from the students then it should be catered for, but Blair's insistence that everybody should go to university (he never seemed to understand the difference between "should go" and "should have the opportunity to go if they want") is what led to schools offering pointless "degrees" in vocational skills like hairdressing, or irrelevant subjects like media studies. As a result we got the famous "Polish plumbers", where we had to import skilled tradesmen from outside because the educational system here wasn't producing them any more.

(mainly due to the fact that our manufacturing base got shut down by Thatcher.)

A popular myth among the left, but not borne out by the facts. The industry's own publication notes that:

"Despite the decline since the 1970s, when manufacturing contributed 25% of UK GDP, the UK is currently the ninth largest manufacturing nation in the world. Overall, the UK’s industrial sector has increased by 1.4% a year since 1948, according to a recent report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS)...Although the contribution of manufacturing to GDP has declined on paper, many of the services provided to manufacturers which would have once been considered part of manufacturing – such as catering; cleaning; building services; security; logistics and so on – are now allocated into different areas of the economy."

Those countries ahead of us in the table are, not surprisingly, the heavywights: China, USA, Japan, Germany, S. Korea, but the UK is in no way "shut down".

And finally - Blair sent his kids to a state school. The London Oratory is a state Catholic school. Get your facts right.

Yes, I mispoke. It's not a private school, but a grammar school which became a grant-maintained (i.e. state-funded grammar) school when others were forced to go comprehensive, and then an Academy. It is not, though, a comprehensive, which was the point I wanted to make. Blair forced that on the rest of the country, but not his own children.

Re: Daft

Labour trashed the UK educational system. They introduced comprehensive schools against parents' wishes, renamed polytechnics as universities and then forced people to go to university even when it wasn't the right choice for them. To pay for that they had to introduce student fees, and crippled graduates with loans. The best way any country can build its future is by giving the next generation the best, most appropriate, education it can. I will never forgive Blair for destroying the great system we had. The hypocrite then even sent his own children to private schools, after he'd trashed the public system.

Re: Daft

It is true.

The UK has been using gas for many things for 100+ years, prior to the 1990s most power station use of gas was open-cycle, essentially jet engines hooked up to generators as rapid-start, inefficient, emergency supply for short-term coverage of peaks. From 1990 on it moved to closed-cycle generation as a much more efficient main power source. That's when the numbers of gas power stations shot up, and coal-fired ones were closed.

Re: Its ok

Well, they set up a committee to look into it back in July. They'll have to take submissions from stakeholders, discuss it with industry, perform an environmental impact study. I'd expect the conclusions to be available sometime in the next 5-10 years...

Re: Daft

Thatcher was gone before the "dash for gas" kicked off in 1991. Coal-powered generation was pretty steady up to then, most of the coal station closures were during the Major and Blair governments.

Re: Daft

13 years, 1997 to 2010, but it seemed so much longer.

Europe wants Airbnb and pals to cough up rental property logs

Re: It had to happen

The AirBnB model is also a very expensive one. Last year we were looking for a longer-term rental during a house move. We found a great place on AirBnB, but the service charge was huge, seemingly because it was based on the total nights. The same property was available on TripAdvisor for the same weekly rate, but a flat service fee per stay. The owner told us that she got the same money either way, so we should pick the one that worked best for us.

As always, it pays to shop around.

Twitter employees sue over lack of 60-day layoff notice

Re: The situation in Ireland is perhaps more interesting

If you seriously think that employee protections in Europe are scanty compared to the US i would politely suggest that you investigate this bridge I'm selling.

I have been involved in several layoffs which involved US and European employees, and I can assure you that the difficulty and cost of doing it in Europe, even in the UK, is orders of magnitude more in Europe than in the US.

Hot, sweaty builders hosed a server – literally – leaving support with an all-night RAID repair job

Re: Botched Aircon

True air conditioning controls humidity as well, not just temperature.

International summit agrees crack down on crypto to combat ransomware

"crypto" is conventionally used as an abbreviation for "cryptography" which is how I first took the headline. Although disappointed at the idea of a government trying to limit cryptography I wasn't surprised.

When you are referring to cryptocurrency, please use that term, instead of abusing a term most of us understand to mean something else.

InSight Mars lander has only 'few weeks' of power left

Re: Use inclined solar panels

Agreed.

Re: Use inclined solar panels

Could solar panels have a coating that could be electrostatically charged & then reversed, to charge and then repel the dust?

Tablet, Chromebook shipments come crashing down

Are tablets still relevant?

I found a tablet to be handy when I was travelling and didn't want to lug a laptop around, but my current phone has a large enough screen (larger than I'd like, to be honest, but all I could find) which means that a tablet as an intermediate device is less useful. My current Samsung tablet is hitting memory limits as apps become more & more bloated, but I probably won't replace it when it finally becomes unusable.

Singapore to phase out checks for businesses by 2025

Re: When...?

You mean like

If status < 0 then...

?

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

we weren't planning and building enough generating capacity

Surely not. Those nice chappies from the National Grid keep telling us that we should all drive electric vehicles, and the grid will have no problems supplying the power to charge them. If that's true, how can we possibly be running short of power to meet existing demand?

Signs of sediment-rich ocean lend direction to Mars life search

Re: Reg standards

Perhaps we need to define a new unit equivalent to a millisheep? I would have suggested a lamb, but they tend to move faster than sheep.

This Windows worm evolved into slinging ransomware. Here's how to detect it

What, like testing software before they release it?

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

DEC the halls?

GM: Seeing as all y'all like our electric cars, we'll double output next year

a normal range car will be more than adequate for more than 99% of the time

Nope, I worked that out before I bought my current car.

you can hire a vehicle with longer legs

Where from? Most of those longer journeys will be Bank and/or School Holidays, demand will be very high then and quiet at other times. That's unlikely to be a viable business model for rental companies, who rely on their fleets being in constant use to keep costs down. They can't afford to keep large fleets that lie idle much of the time, nor is that likely to work for whatever fuelling network they need.

get a train or plane

Certainly an option if the long journey is a simple point-to-point one, where a short-range vehicle can be hired at the end, and exactly what I'll be doing next week. Doesn't work if it's a journey with multiple stops, taking or bringing back stuff.

Best to get it working for the majority of users first.

That assumes that the majority of users only ever make short journeys. It's a fallacious argument, based on the idea that if 90% of journeys are under 30 miles, then 90% of cars need only be able to travel 30-50 miles.

In my case 90+% of my journeys are indeed 30 miles or less, but every month I make at least 2 journeys of > 50 miles, and one of > 200. Once or twice a year I may make 1000+ mile journeys. Having a car that meets 90% of my needs is of no use to me, I need one that meets 100% of them.

As for charging infrastructure, it also needs to be more logical and more convenient. When approaching a standard petrol station, there's a large sign outside identifying the supplier and the price of each fuel on offer. Once at the pump you can pay with any credit card or cash. There's no need to have a Shell app, an Esso app, a Texaco app, etc. each pre-loaded with enough for a fill-up. I recenly took my (plug-in hybrid) into a car park which, according to the internet, had 2 chargers. When I arrived there were 10 charging bays, no indication of cost or of supplier. After parking I found the supplier from small print on the chargers, and navigated to their web site. That refused to give me a price for a charge, insisting that I downloaded their app. After downloading it wouldn't give me a price until I had entered credit card details, at which point it showed a price that worked out more expensive per mile than just using petrol.

Needless to say, I deleted my card details from the app, and didn't charge. None of the bays was in use, unsurprisingly.

If EV charging is to work there needs to be a clear sign outside with supplier brand & cost of slow/fast charge, so you can decide before entering and parking. Once in, the chargers need to accept simple card payments.

Voyager mission's project scientist retires after 50 years of service

Straps? What sort of soft bugger 'as straps?

India's – and Infosys's – favorite son-in-law Rishi Sunak is next UK PM

Re: Talking points

The left are keeping their heads down after Rupa Huq got the boot for her outrageously racist remark about Kwarteng.

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

Re: I don't mind PDFs

And lets not forget the Letter versus A4 wars that battle themselves wherever a "PC Load Letter" sign is blinking, and beeping. The document is NOT the same, even if automagic resizing takes place. Die PDF, Die.

Actually I always found this a great advantage of PDFs. When my US colleagues sent me a US Letter document, if it was in .doc or .odt I couldn't print it without either resizing the pages (which often changed the layout) or fighting with the "Load Letter" complaint.

With a PDF I could just print it on A4, and assuming that the margins were reasonable (they almost always are) it printed just fine. Same in the opposite direction, I used to get "thank you" emails from the US for sending them PDFs and not unprintable MS Word docs, since their chances of finding A4 paper to load in an office printer were close to nil.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Re: Press the button

"oh, you didn't tell me I had to switch the TV on as well"

Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce

Re: Serious point amongst all this humour !!!

With the Tories repealing the fixed term parliament act

Now, be fair, it was also Labour policy to repeal it. The Tories just got there first.

I do think there should be a way for the population at large to demand a general election though.

I'm not so sure. We'd end up having one every month.

Re: Export please!

1066, with an arrow?

Moon has been drifting away from Earth for 2.4 billion years, rocks reveal

Re: Is it...

Selenexit?

Cops swoop after crooks use wireless keyfob hack to steal cars

Re: motors from two French automakers

Hard to believe that any of those brands would be such desirable targets, don't these thieves usually go for Porsches, Mercs or Lexuses (Lexi?)

Too bad, contractors: UK government reverses decision to axe IR35 tax reform

Re: This should make people happy

Even decades of Tory backbiting is, "Labour's fault".

Curious, where did I say that? Did you even read the rest of my post? The tory backbenchers who played into Labour hands to oust Boris must take a major share of the blame.

The drift toward high tax started with Blair, but was continued through the past years of the Tory governments, something I criticized them for. They share the blame for the current economic stagnation, and I had some hope that a new PM might turn that around. Unfortunately, as I noted, Truss did so in such a cack-handed way that she made things worse, no surprise there at all.

As for immigration, please enlighten us as to how that matters in a discussion about failed economic policies?

Re: This should make people happy

we are looking at more of the same

Indeed. Truss was never going to be the right person for PM, the backbenchers who conspired with Labour to oust Boris were warned about the dangers, but wouldn't listen. Turkeys voting for an early Christmas.

A pity, because the basic aims were reasonable. We've had steadily, and stealthily, increasing taxes since Tony Blair was elected. That's left us with permanent austerity, low growth, and stagnation. Cutting taxes and encouraging business to grow is the right solution, it's just a shame it was done in such a totally inept way. Not providing detailed costs and sidelining the OBR just increased the markets' suspicions, no wonder they spooked.

Dropping the top rate of tax may well be a good idea in the long term, it's a crazy level to be at, but announcing it when people are having trouble paying energy bills was a classic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot idea. It should have been left as the cherry, once the economy was growing & healthy.

Likewise a penny off basic rate tax is pointless, it has no impact on the lowest paid, and even those who pay it won't see any significant difference. It would have been far better to drop the VAT rate. Backtracking on IR35 at this point doens't seem useful, at least the original statement accepted that its implementation was problematic, and that was welcomed.

Now we're stuck in a situation where the only thing worse than Truss as PM would be the upheaval of kicking her out.

Japan space agency blows up eight satellites aboard Epsilon rocket

Re: Yup, space is still hard

That's true of life in general.