Posts by Tony Mudd

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

Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies

A bit more borderline is when it takes 6-7 weeks for your pension money to appear in your pension account.

i.e. the employer has paid you, deducted tax and pension, but it takes ages to appear in the account with the pension provider.

This was with a large employer and a large (nationwide) pension provider, so someone's sitting on > GBP1million and taking the investment/interest from it.

It looks like there is a regulation about it, but why is it 56 days (I think), in this day of banking and faster payments etc, the payments should go missing for more than a week.

Openreach hits halfway mark in quest to hook up 25M premises with fiber broadband

I'm sure there's no fiddling with the numbers there ......

My parents, who have Talk-Talk as their broadband provider (against my advice, but they've been lucky, nothing has gone wrong), had a fibre fitted to the house (just inside), but more than 6 months later, the broadband is still over the landline.

No-one has discussed with them that the landline will go away.

I was told by my installers that they don't really like the internal splice box. I don't know if it's more difficult to joint inside it.

They ended up putting the external-sized box in my attic - they prefer it to be outside, so the fibres could be replaced without coming into the house, but I said I'd live with that risk.

(shortly after that, the new fibre from the pole was run over a couple of times, but still works....)

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

Re: With apologies to Phil Collins

The IET don't do this - their "retirement" rate isn't that cheap. Fortunately, my employer didn't notice/care that I renounced my membership long before I retired.

Clingy Virgin Media won't let us leave, customers complain

Re: Switching to a non-cable area? Fugedaboudit...

I have no direct experience of Virgin, except getting junk-mail (dead tree versions) when the whole road isn't covered by them.

However, I found Plusnet quite good when cancelling broadband for a recently deceased parent-in-law, they didn't even hold us to the rest of the month. I guess it helped having already having my name on the account as being authorised to talk about the account (having been doing the in-house tech support for some years).

Anyone want an International Space Station? Slightly used

Re: ISS MkII

Could they not start building the replacement one on the side/end of the existing one, then de-orbit the modules from the far end as the new/replacement has been connected and tested.

That way, they should be able to keep a few of the pieces worth re-using (solar arrays?)

Re: Just a small request

Yes, I have a special birthday coming up in a few years, could I ask NASA for a really good firework display.

Three seconds of audio could end up costing Fox $500,000

Re: Harmony by disharmony

The cordon is 5 miles around Broadmoor, which includes most of Bracknell.

I lived there for ~20 years and only heard the alarm (except the Monday test) twice - once the day we moved in - "what does that mean".

The other time when I was in 6th form at school. The alarm sounding meant my Mum had to come and collect me (aged 19) and my brother (aged 17) (both over 6ft4) from school.

Loathsome eighties ladder-climber levelled by a custom DOS prompt

Re: "Four Yorkshiremen" moment

And if you went inverted (or as near as it would let you) before you dive, the speed would just keep increasing (more than a straight dive).

Keeping printers quiet broke disk drives, thanks to very fuzzy logic

More static.

I also worked somewhere the carpet was plastic, but not cheap since it had the company logo woven into it.

We had old style phones with plastic handsets and a metal insert for the loudspeaker. You could walk around, build up a charge, sit down and answer the phone without discharging.

First thing the caller hears is you swearing as the charge finds a way via your ear and the phone handset.

The company had someone who used to water the carpet to try to reduce the static generation.

Doctor gave patients the wrong test results due to 'printer problems'

Re: Photocopier challange

Same as a Kia Sedona does (in the UK). We had 2, one after the other over 14 years, never did work out how to do a hill start that didn't involve just releasing the parking brake and hoping you could get the clutch in the right place quickly.

So the data centre's 'getting a little hot' – at 57°C, that's quite the understatement

Re: I once had to do something similar in a Skoda...

We had the thermostat (that controls the electric fan) fail on a Golf when out in the middle of no-where.

Managed to short the connection out (so the fan stayed on) with a coke pull-ring - that got us home.

Nominet promises .uk owners it'll listen to feedback on plan to award itself millions... as long as it agrees with it

Re: Tax?

I thought they were bringing in choice of water supplier, but it looks like that's only for business users.

I was looking forward to selecting which company received my "waste water".

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

How easy to re-purpose the hardware?

I guess these bits of hardware have reasonable amps/Speakers in them, how difficult would it be to remove the Sonos bits and fit something else - say a Pi?

Slightly more fiddly if it's a single PCB inside, but I'd still expect the noisy digital side to be fairly separated from the analog/audio side.

Neglected Pure Connect speaker app silenced in iOS 11's war on 32-bit

Nothing to do with the "disagreement" Pure's owners (Imagination Technologies) had with Apple?

Guess who's hiking their prices again? Come on, it's as easy as 123 Reg

Hosting elsewhere ?

Thanks for the recommendations of where to move our domains to, but does anyone know of a registrar who can host .name domains and offer a catch-all email ([e-mail]) ?

I had a look last time when 123 put their prices up, but couldn't find one....

Give 'bots a chance: Driverless cars to be trialled between London and Oxford

Repainting the text....

Wouldn't it be good if someone did crowd-funding to get the "Give peas a chance" message repainted - it's looking a bit tatty now. Bet the railway company would never give permission let along the risk-assessment for painting over working motorway.

Who killed Pebble? Easy: The vulture capitalists

Last firmware update.......

I hope they fix the last firmware update (it only came out a week or so ago), but crashes more often that before.......

I also am now disappointed to be expecting a refund (via Kickstarter) instead of my Pebble Core, but on the plus side, at least the dollars are worth a bit more.....

EE roaming outage hits Brits basking abroad

Same for me

Same for me - didn't connect to any network until after we'd been abroad for 12 hours.

I still can't send texts.

Buy Your Own Device: No more shiny-shiny work mobe for you

Take your number when you leave.

Having a personal number is good when you come to leave your current employer.....

A colleague recently left, but couldn't take mobile number with him - I'm not sure of the full details, but something about the network charging GBP150 to allow this - it's not like the number was in the middle of a block of numbers matching our DDI or something.

Should I pre-empt this problem now ? - (I'm not planning on leaving soon, but it's possible sometime in the next 20 years), or get myself a personal phone (again) and stop carrying the work one everywhere..... If I leave this discussion until working notice, then the company has no incentive...

Be Your Own Big Brother: Peeking at pussy

I'm toying with the idea of using a Raspberry Pi to detect which cat is outside the catflap - shouldn't be too hard, since ours is completely black and the intruder is ginger......

MtGox accepted new customers JUST DAYS before collapse

recycling the bitcoins?

From what I understand, the problem was that you could double your withdrawals?

So it's possible someone worked this out, then emptied his MtGox wallet. Then had to put something back in, to be able to do the same hack again..... But it's a crypto currency, so the same coins weren't being recycled - makes your brain hurt.

Jean Michel Jarre: Je voudrais un MUSIC TAX sur VOTRE MOBE

Not value for money.

While we're complaining about JMJ not being value for money - I'm still annoyed at going to see him a year or so ago at Wembley - he played for just over an hour - not good value.

Now I'm going to have no chance of justifying the expense of going to the next Houston-type concert.

SourceForge responds to GIMP grump with crowdsourcing caper

Could someone have a word with Oracle about stuff being included with Java ?

UK.gov blows a fuse at smart meter stall, sets new 2020 deadline

Selectively turn customers off?

What they should do, is conduct a survey of all customers, on Nuclear, Wind, Solar etc, so when there are power shortages in the future (which there will be, until a government makes some unpopular decisions), they can turn off the customers who are anti-Nuclear, anti-French or wherever the remaining power is coming from.

Reg hack uncovers perfect antidote to internet

Safer idea?

I'd always wondered about something similar (but for rain-water storage rather than a well), but starting with the concrete rings at ground-level, and just digging out inside them, and a little bit under the bottom edge as it slides down. Probably need a larger diameter than used here, and couldn't use a machine......

Would it work - how far down would you get before the rings got stuck?

Zombify Me

Great for tonight.....

Looks good, I'll get the kids to test it later, thanks for the codes....(are they multi-use?)