Posts by ShortLegs

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Re: I'm a little skeptical of this story

It could have been UnixWare, that was released in the early 90s

BOFH: How to innosplain your way through an audit

Ah, Friday

at last

Is that a bird’s nest, a wireless broadband base station, or both?

Ah.. yepno

I visited Australia... and survived. Twice.

My then partners' son conned me into kicking what appeared to be a blue bag on the beach. That was bloody painful. The Huntsman spider is bloofy frightening for a non-venomous creature, but the size of the [poisonous] spiders' nests on the road signs- a literal tee-pee shape 3m high - was an eye opener.

Bloody lovely country though, with a laid back attitude to life and work that we could all follow.

After China's Salt Typhoon, the reconstruction starts now

"when the UK's British Telecom's Prestel text message service was attacked."

Doing something about it took about another decade with Project Argent, if memory serves. It was a box ticking exercise.

I got involved and the reviewer of my report turned out to have a background in security. Physical security. It was a farce...I suggested they ask BT procurement to say whether they thought Microsoft would provide that assurance. The requirement was dropped when procurement replied.

So the US Teleco's were using a UID of 2222222222 and pwd of 123 ? (thats the account and pwd of the Prestel account that Robert logged in as.

I assume from rest of comment that Project Argent was securing something else, as Prestel was not running on Microsoft in 1984...

25 years on from Y2K, let's all be glad it happened way back then

I was on eof those who spent months pathcing, upgrading, and replacing non-Y2K compliant systemts with compliant systems, so it wasn't an issue.

Thankfully, we had senior leadership team who recognised that it was a non-event because we had invested in IT to prepare, rather than deciding it had been a non-event all along.

Even the company (FT50, possibly FT2) prior to that had started preparing 4 years previously. In both cases, the upshot was investment in new technology that benefited the respective businesses anyway, regardless of Y2K.

The first (as in above, not chronologicaly) hadnt really done any serious planning; the IT manager was out of his depth despite Y2K and had been given conflicting priorities and then his walking papers. We really started in earnest in Aug 1999! A few hectic months auditing, testing, updating.... one memorable find was a Netware 3.1 server with an uptime measured in years, with the last login circa 1996 (!). I had a team of volunteers all happy to be on standby NYE, and was that confident we were ready I spent NYE in Zurich. Yes, we made a pile of cash in O/T on crash program, and on-call standby payments, but we really did earn them.

Apple called on to ditch AI headline summaries after BBC debacle

Re: It's garbage

Law firms trust AI? After some recent scandals involving AI "checked" case law, complete with plaintifs and outcomes, Im suprised anyone would let an AI anywhere near a law firm

https://blog.burges-salmon.com/post/102ivgu/a-cautionary-tale-of-using-ai-in-law-uk-case-finds-that-ai-generated-fake-case-l

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/22/judge-sanctions-lawyers-whose-ai-written-filing-contained-fake-citations.html

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/lawyer-cited-6-fake-cases-made-up-by-chatgpt-judge-calls-it-unprecedented/ <- same the cnbc report

Apple AI cocked up the sumamry of a BBC news item? Given the appalling sentence [mis]construction and grammar in some recent BBC articles, I m not sure if the BBC isnt using AI generated content in the first place. Its either that, or many of their "journalists" left school with poor English grammar comprehension.

Watchdog deep-sixes job ad that was actually pay-to-play training course

LinkedIn gets dozens of these. Another company doing much the same, two years of training including a placement to gain experience, and a guaranteed job at the end. The small print?

- you *will* accept the placement, regardless of geographical location. A fellow Glaswegian's placement was Manchester.

- if you refuse the placement, or leave for another job, you *will* refund the entire cost of training, valued at £22,000. The value is the advertised book value of Cisco/MS/etc equivalent training courses, in reality the training is in-house, and considered to be the equivalent of the vendor's course. Oh, and its attended by multiple candidates remotely, so doesnt cost anything like that.

- The gauranteed job isn't. Its a guaranteed job search.

Wubuntu: The lovechild of Windows and Linux nobody asked for

Re: PSA: Do not donate to this

"Anyone remember Lindows? Yeah, exactly."

Came here to say just that. I dont see this lasting.

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: ability

"ability

Even success can come to company-owning people who lack ability, if they can exploit enough halfway capable people. Which more often than not will be possible, as most people who are not wealthy enough to own a company themselves depend on employment for a living..."

I have to take issue with this. If I start and own a company - and as an entrepreneur possibly several companies - I'm going to *recruit* the best people I can to run it. Not exploit them, but reward them. And I would expect my managers to recruit good staff. Unlike a manager, as the owner I want to employ people brighter/cleverer/more able than I. Because I want to make my company successful.

Felix Dennis was a proponent of this, and as Britains richest self-made man (or one of, certainly more so than AMS), I think he knows what he was talking about.

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

You know where they went wrong? They tried to make the LRT too modern and shiny.

My LRT was nothing more fancy than a re-purposed pick-helve, with LART emblazoned in marker pen ("sharpie", for those across the pond)

EU stings Meta for nearly a billion bucks over competition-trampling Facebook Marketplace

This has nothing to do with whether FB Martketplace is anti-competitive or not. Its everything to do with the EU trying to screw money out of a company.

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

To re-iterate what others have said, the remote disconnect functionality was presented as "demand management" many years ago. I distinctly remember reading about this... on El Reg.

Packaged, as I recall, a "safety measure" to allow "rolling reconnection" to the grid following a major incident, such that 20million properties all coming back on-line at once, after a grid failure, didnt cause a further grid failure. There was also a report? that stated it allowed selective disconnetion, on an individual or area-wide basis, such that rolling power restrictions could be enacted if (when) demand exceeded supply, a not remote possibility as at the time iirc we were within 2% of grid capacity.

"As I recall the ombudsman got involved and OVO was very heavily criticised."

And thats part of the problem right there. They should have been heavily find, AND forced to pay heavy punitive compensation.

The whole story is even worse; this happened AFTER bailiffs had attended on a prior occasion to fit a meter, in turn weeks after Rachael Holgate had been trying for weeks to inform SSE/OVO that they were not her supplier. But SSE/OVO refused to discuss it with her as she was not a customer... When the media contact OVO, their response was

"We’re very sorry to Mrs Holgate for the inconvenience caused. We’re attempting to reach Mrs Holgate to apologise and provide a resolution". You'd be forgiven for thinking that surely they would have an address and phone number...

Its about time we had real watchdogs, with teeth, and chief execs recruiter from a consumer background and not an industry background.

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Re: Wat?

"It was part of a new piece of expensive control equipment. Generally, random employees don't use the room that is in as a crew room. If he was there, he was supposed to be there. So by definition he knew what it was and had probably had training on its use. Throwing his heavy (metal?) lunch-box on the desk right next to the new expensive equipment should be an obvious no-no even to the most uneducated gorilla. And in that time period, it was commonly a disciplinary offence to even drink a mug of tea next to the computer and/or keyboard, never mind eat your lunch over it, or worse drop your lunch box on it.

Not least of which, it happened on multiple days. The system crashed each time he threw is lunch box on the table. Even he ought to have correlated the effect with the cause after a few days."

Again you are adding suppostion.

Its a new system, who said anyone had been trained in its use? Heck, Ive worked in places were "training" is a deliverable, but never is.

Heavy and metal. Its weight and composition are not mentioned, and are irrelevant. A tupperware box with sandwiches in can press multiple keys.

Ive been in the game for years but never been in a company that made it a disciplinary to have a drink or food at desk, including the Forces where back in the day Junior ranks were barely trusted with the things, often being cautioned to hell and back wrt the cost of it, and how they couldnt be trusted with one (which made me laugh, as many soldiers were entrusted with equipment worth far more than the paltry £1200 386sx from the DGITS catalogue.. try £5m worth of CET!).

Uneducated gorilla... hmm.. how many blue collar workers would you use that expression to their face... I'll hazard a guess that will be 'none' then.

Re: We had

"the problem of operators with extra fingers pressing things they should not."

"I thought this story was set in a gas plant, not a nuclear facility!"

I thought it was set in a gas plant, not Norfolk

Re: How to crash a CRAY-1

"her nylon work coat rubbing against her nylon tights was causing a static buildup that she discharged through the sensitive electronics."

Fnarrr fnarrr!!!

Re: Wat?

"Does he run round the rest of the room pushing random buttons for shits and giggles? what a tool . This has really pissed off more than a "on call" should or has before for some reason ."

Same response as to Marty McFly. Re-read the arrticle. The guy wasnt running around pressing random buttons. He threw his lunch box on the table. Guess what, its not uncommon for people who work in non-IT functions to do that sort of thing.

Thank god you are not in a postion to sack anybody - you'd be pretty lonely having sacked everyone for something trivial that pissed you off.

Re: Wat?

"I've seen this countless times. A new technical system is going in place and it is impacting someone's job. You can bet damn well that maintenance worker knew exactly what was going on and got a good laugh out of the new system crashing.

And the "solution" was a piece of plexiglass over the keyboard?? Talk about not solving the problem! The problem is employees blatantly thrashing on company equipment. And it was going unchecked by other employees coming in for the same shift?"

Did you read the article? I dont think you did. It never stated that the employees were blatantly thrashing on company equipment. It stated that ONE employee threw his lunchbox on the table, where it hit the keyboard.

No mention that this was impacting someones job. No mentikon that it was a maintenace worker. No mention that the worker knew the effect it would have. Not even "Henry" and his colleague had any idea that simulatenously pressing X number of keys would crash the system.

US Army should ditch tanks for AI drones, says Eric Schmidt

Re: Full spectrum dominance

The US military was never unleashed on the Taliban. You might want to read an inwardly digest the meaning of the word "unleashed", and take into account RoE. And the fact that no Western army has ever been unleahsed on a foe; we always fight within the RoE and to the desired Effect.

Whatever. Im now thinking you are nothing more than than an adolescent child whose sole experience of the military is Call of Duty, Wikipedia, and a few YouTube videos.

Come back when you are grown up. ta ta

Re: Tanks and drones are obsolete

"short: Now try hiting a tyre at 100-300m, on a moving vehicle on unulating terrain. Tell me its easy, for the majority of infrantrymen.

cow: You have no idea.

THey are using bombs which explode with thousands of fragments. THey are not shooting individual bullets at the target."

But you said bullets... let me quote your post:

"What about the tyres ?

Lets pretend Cyb ertrucks are bullproof, the tyres are not. They are an easy target."

Not "bombproof", not "fragment proof" but "bullproof" Now perhaps you are going to state that you meant proof against male bovines...

As for whether I have an idea or not... well. let me see

Qualified Marksman HPSS every ACMT for the last 8 years,

Qualifed marksman on the SLR, SA80, A2, and perhaps more pertinently on the L96A1 back in the day. I think I have more than an idea, sunshine.

Re: Still useful...

You really have no clue.

Normandy beaches were less fortified because the Germans expected the invasion to be in the Pas de Calias area, and heaviliy fortified that area.

The reaward Panzer Divisions were assigned to an area between Normandy and PdC, in the expectation it would swing against a landing on either beaches, but was not authorised to deploy to Normandy when the allies invded as the High Command believed the Normandy landings were a feint.

This is simple historical fact.

ShortLegs: You have clearly never spent a day in anyone's Forces. And if you have, I'll apologise: I didnt know the muppets had an army.

cow: Being a random soldier in an army does not make you an expert in anything except the limited role you performed.

Serving in any army does not make you an expert in all the equipment in that army. I hope i dont have to explain this.

After 40+ years I have a hell of a lot more experience and knowlege than you. You have no idea of what *roles* i performed in, nor the experience I have. You plainly have zero experience of any role, or capabillity, of any weapon system, force application, arm, or service.

~

ShortLegs: There is no single weapon system that is all conquering and can be deployed on its own in every single tactical environment. Drones and tanks cannot hold land.

cow: I never claimed any of these statements.

No, you are quotoing out of context:

"Short: If the mission purpose is to take and hold land, those two elements are support roles to take land, but neither can hold land (for any value of $land, ie a hill, a building, a village, a river bank. etc).

cow: America had a lot of tanks in AF, they never held the land there. Close to 90% of AF was always held by the taliban. The Taliban never had any tanks and they held all of AF and continue to hold it today."

And now you are totally ignoring the comment. that those two elements (tanks and air) are support roles in the taking of land, but neither can hold land in isolation. You need infantry for that.

America did not have a lot of tanks in AF. None coalition forces deployed tanks in appreciable numbers, primarily because Afghanistan is not suited to manouever warfare. Its a tad difficult to deploy a 60ton tank in the mountains.

"Holding land is a cmplicated topic, its not about parking a tank anywhere. You are making v large sweeping statements."

I never made any such statement. I stated that tanks and drones cannot hold land.

~

Short:

Every single "tactical" advancement - from snipers, through mortars, through tanks, to drones, has seen a counter.

cow:

Of course it has.

My original statement was that tanks have been shown to be on the way out... just like horses were on the way out and it took a long time for them to stop being used in the military. For Fucks sake Hitler was still moving crazy amounts of supplies in WW2 with horses. Today its tanks.

"collins: Tanks need infantry to keep enemy infantry from clambering about all over them dropping grenades into machinery, opening hatches, and setting fire to things

cow: WTF are you talking about ?

OPENING HATCHES, DROPPING GRENADES ?

What you rdescribe basically never happens, you have been watching too many Rambo movies.

Event the recipients of Victoria cross and Purple hearts rarely do what you claim. Anybody doing what you claim would be recievinv their countries highest honours and this is simply not happening and never happens today and rarely for the past 100 years and that includes WW1 and WW2.

You have no idea what happens in war, what you claim almost NEVER happens. It may be happens a dozen times a year it is not happening every day."

Your last line.. how ironic. Because you certainly dont.

Yes, infantry have taken out tanks be exactly those means. Molotov cocktails, sock/sticky bomb, grenades dropped onto turrets from buildings in urban warfare in WW2...

The Purple Heart is a US decoration awarded for being wounded, not for heroism. The VC is awarded for valour in the presence of the enemy, not just taking out tanks. And so what if one hasnt been awarded for taking out a tank with a grenade

"AC: 1) ground can only be held by a physical presence

2) infantry need tanks for support and tanks need infantry for support

cow:

This is plainly untrue.

Most of America does not have a physical presence backed by tanks. There are no tanks in DC or NYC or LA.

9/11 i think proves my point about presence near NYC.

America has been free a long time, tanks has nothing to do with it. THe same is true for western Europe, it also did not have that many tanks, especially when you comapre their count against the Russians.

Am had how many tanks and infrantry in IQ and AF did they control either ? They might have controlled parts of IQ, but they never controlled that much of AF. The Taliban had no tanks and they beat America, so again your statement is wrong.

THere are many factors but its not all about tanks or infantry."

You posted earlier that some people dont have a brain in the world and post about things they dont know about. Time to take your own advice.

You know jack-shit about warfare, 2 parts of F-A. Tanks and Infantry are mutally supportive, in close quarter combat.

I have no idea why you are commenting about the lack of tanks in DC or LA... so what? So what if there were no tanks in NYC on 9/11 - even if there were, they would have had no bearing on the outcome. That said, an airliner isnt really an anti-tank weapon so your point is.... what?

No only do you not understand mutually supportive arms, but you dont even understand the point being made: ground can only be held by boots on the ground. That is a simple, undeniable fact. Neither drones, helo, nor air can *hold* ground.

The Taliban never beat the Coalition armies. Nor did AQ. What did happen is Western Govts have no stomach or stamina for protracted conflict, due to financial and political cost, the later being the 'cost' in terms of popularity when body bags come home. They care very little about the occupants of body bags, in or out.

No one said "its all about tanks or infantry". You are strawman'ing an argument.

Re: Tanks and drones are obsolete

"What about the tyres ?

Lets pretend Cyb ertrucks are bullproof, the tyres are not. They are an easy target. The battery is even an easier target. Start a fire with the battery and the occupants are locked inside and incinerated at 3000C.

The result would be even worse than those Russian tanks getting their top blown off."

Seriosuly, is your military experience from CoD? How old are you, a teenager? Try shooting a tyre with a 9mm. But dont be anywhere close when you do it.

Tyres can be sold, they can be self-healing, the can be pretty resistant to even 5.56/7.62mm.

An easy target? Is this from your extensive military experience? Hitting a static Fig 11 target at 100m, on a one-way range, can challenge soldiers. If it moves, even wt walking pace, it becomes much harder.

Hitting that same target when the target fires back is immensely harder.

Now try hiting a tyre at 100-300m, on a moving vehicle on unulating terrain. Tell me its easy, for the majority of infrantrymen.

Can you see the battery? No, So how do you aim for it?

Occupants are not locked inside any AFV. And frankly, there isnt any difference between being inside a vehicle burnign at 800deg, 2000deg, 3000deg, or the inside of a tank thats just been hit by HESH, and sliced by spall. Grow up, and stop posting about an area you have zero experience of.

Re: Full spectrum dominance

Throat: US Military doctrine is currently "full spectrum dominance."

cow: Yes full dominance demonstraated to perfection with those technically backward Houthis.

Yemen is the modern shame of the USN and USAF, supposedly the most powerful on earth and yet they cant do a single thing to stop the Houthis who today still harass their part of the world.

You really are an ignoramus, aren't you. The US haven't fought the Houthis. How long do you think the Houthis would last if the US military was unleashed upon them?

The US Forces are operating under RoE that at present do not permit them to engage them.

Its like arguing that PIRA fought the British Army to a standstill. We knew, and so did PIRA, the we could eliminate PIRA as a "fighting force" inside of 48hours had the RoE permitted it, and the Army Council inside of two weeks - with no restrictions on operating inside Eire, which as a soveriegn country would have been tantamount to a declaration of war.

But PIRA would have ceased to exist. The RoE never permitted us to do that.

Re: Still useful...

Jesus, you really are clueless

Tanks always need infrantry support, and this has been "known" since WW2. That armies/commanders (or politicians) have forgotten, or ignored, this, is moot.

Infantry can stalk tanks. Infantry armed with AT weapons. Tanks have no real anti-infantry capabillity. Yes, they can have co-ax mounted machine guns; these are limited to forward firing. Pintel mounted on the turret places the firer in a vulnerable position. remote pintel operation suffers from the operator having a severely resticted field of view.

WTAF. You do realise that the dreadnaught was a British invention? The major clue being in the name of the ship - HMS Dreadnaught.

And that Britain continued to have an empire for about another 40+ years.

Russina tanks are useless for attacking the West? Why? Because they are vulnerbale to drones that the West doesnt have off the bat?

cow: I am a highly experienced warrior. How dare you question me.

me: Aye, a keyboard warrior, and your experience is from YouTube videos.

You have clearly never spent a day in anyone's Forces. And if you have, I'll apologise: I didnt know the muppets had an army.

There is no single war-winning wonder-weapon. There is no single solution to winning a tactical conflict, from a fire-fight to a tank battle. There is no single weapon system that is all conquering and can be deployed on its own in every single tactical environment. Drones and tanks cannot hold land. If the mission purpose is to take and hold land, those two elements are support roles to take land, but neither can hold land (for any value of $land, ie a hill, a building, a village, a river bank. etc).

Every single "tactical" advancement - from snipers, through mortars, through tanks, to drones, has seen a counter.

Wanted. Top infosec pros willing to defend Britain on shabby salaries

"Government pays crap wages" - hardly news, is it.

"generous public sector pension scheme" - but 25% of feck-all is srill 25% of feck-all. And to actually receive a full pension one has to stay there for how many decades, working for feck-all?

Put it this way

Option A. Work for peanuts for 37 years and retire on a "full" pension at 55. That "full" pension being 50% of final salary, lets assume £21k. Possible tax free laump sum depending on scheme. Wait 12 years to claim state pension.

Option B. Work for more money for 45 years, moving from job to job on increasing salaries, with a basic pension-matched schemes contributing 12-16% salary. Add AVCs as reuired. Retire from age 55 onwards with a pot(s) worth in excess of £50k/annum. Higher salary, higher pension on retirement, AND larger tax free lump sum.

UK immigration seeks tech support, development partner for border crossing systems

Ive never seen such a blatant use of steganography before. let me decode the hidden message in the announcement:

"Attn Fujshisu, Crapita. Large buckets of cash awaiting. Get your snouts out now"

Just doing my civic duty, squire.

UK’s new Minister for Science and Technology comes to US touting Britain's AI benefits

And there we have it. The party that claims to be for the common man (ok, peson)

"It shows the respect that governments should be showing companies that innovate on the scale that some of these companies are. I don't want to be a Secretary of State that sits in their office thinking, "I can control things by legislating and regulating from Westminster," because those days have gone when it comes to this area. We need to have a far more relationship-based approach to engaging with big tech."

Just like Blair's govt in the late 90's and early 2000s, they claim to be for the people but the second they get in power they become enthralled to business. Brown was a prime example of this.

Companies should be respectful to people and Governments, NOT the other wat round. And legislation is absolutely f**king vital to keep them in check.

What an absolute muppet.

I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...

Re: 6509 was a chassis switch not a router

Pretty sure the 6509 supervisor engine featured routing, so it could be used as a router

IIRC it was the replacement for the CAT5xxx and RSM (router switch module), to perform inter-vlan routing and switching.

Re: Every network admin has done this

"It is a standard interview question round here, we all know you will have done something stupid but how you behave after doing said stupid thing is what is important."

And just as important is the reply a candidate gives. Same league as "whats the biggest mistake you ever made".

If a candidate replies that they have never inadvertently shutdown the wrong server / device interface Im instantly suspicious. Liekwise if they claim to have never made a mistake, they are either fibbimg, or I wonder how they would respond when they do make the inevitable mistake.

Smart TVs are spying on everyone

Re: Buy a non smart TV - if you can find one

[quote]Rubbish.

I hate Samsung with a passion and I would be the first to give them a kicking for their anti-privacy shenanigans, but you can skip the setup and refuse the T&Cs then they just function as a dumb screen. They do prompt you to complete setup if you accidentally try to access any of the smart features e.g. pressing the Home button, but as long as you leave the Samsung remote in the box and use the remote from whatever source is attached to it (after doing initial picture/sound setup) then you're fine.

One thing worth mentioning is that you only need to connect a Samsung TV to the internet once to be thoroughly screwed. They immediately download the ad bar and a cache of suitable ads, then even if you disconnect and block it, it'll just continue to cycle through the ads it's downloaded. The only way to avoid this is to never, ever connect it to the Internet and reject the T&Cs."/[quote]

Now try doing that with an LG. I migrated from my "old" but perfectly functional Panny VT50 plasma to an LG G2 last Jan. I couldn't complete the initial setup from power-on without accpting T&Cs and a network connection. The dealer couldnt help, and an email from LG was essentially "you must connect to the network".

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

Re: Pedant Alert

Yes, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett, and StingRay are all set in the same "Andersonverse", before "-verse" was a thing.

I was an avid reader of the "official" annuals, and some of the stories featured cross-overs, or back-stories that involved charcaters in one series having a history in the other.

In the timeline, Capt Scarlett occurs after Thunderbirds; Scarlett and Black were on a Zero-X Mars mission following the one featured in Thunderbirds, which led to Black's death and subsequent reanimation as a Martian "puppet".

Ah awesome nostaligic childhood memories of Saturday morninsg StingRay, and having to go to Italian lessons and missing it!. I was serving in Brompton Bararcks when Thunderbirds was re-run in 1992 or 93, and the excitement of *everyone* over the age of 25! That Friday afternoon the entire RSME had an unofficial early knock-off so the instructors could get home, get comfy... and relive their childhood!

WHo else recalls the Blue Peter Tracy Island, made from "a squeezy bottle and some paper mashey[sic]'

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

Different branch, same MoD, 1991

Posted into a team of system analystrs (Senior NCOs) and programmers (Junior NCOs), with a team of Civil Servants providng admin support and an HEO-grade as a QA. "Sam" was eagle-eyed, very sharp. and by all accounts had no sense of humour, Everyone dreaded taking work to him for QA.

As programmers, we created MS-DOS turnkey applications in CA Supercalc, GRASS, Paradox. I take a program to him for QA. He gets to the point where it says "Press Any Key To Continue". And he presses the CTRL key, the SHIFT key, the ESC key.. and nothing happens. "Fail. Try again". He was correct, but all the same.

Me being me... I wrote a small TSR that intercepted key presses and fired up a DOS pop-up if the ESC, CTRL or SHIFT keys were pressed. Installed it on his PC. Take some work in.... Sam presses the CTRL key and up pops a window "F**k off, Sam" when he presses the CTRL key. It did make him smile, and after that we not only got on like a house on fire, but I never had to submit my work to QA again!

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

Reminds me of the time two VIPs came over to the UK. They visited the UK, mainly in London, but visited my site "up North", staying at a local hotel. When I arrievd to meet them for dinner, they were just comming back from tennis. Slightly surprised at the coincidentally matching tops, shorts, trainers, wristbands.

He was plesant enough, but other VIP? A complete b****. And not just to me, but very rude and "entitled" towards the staff.

As it happened I knew the hotel owner through the Chamber of Commerce. He was so annoyed with her he "innocently" asked if the invoice should be for one roomm as one room hadn't been used.

They returned to London, where she decided the Interocontinental wasnt good enough, checked out and booked into Browns. And run up an expense bill that included chirpopody and manicures

CEO hears of these escapades... both gone over a weekend.

BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies

Re: So true to life

>auth failure on the company wifi with the machines blithely ignoring the expired certificates even though they had been replaced weeks before with new ones…

Erm, but shouldnt the machines ignore the expired certificates, because they been replaced? Or are the expired certs still on the equipment / end-user devcies and actually require replacing?

>so now we're preparing some backup switches just in case (the new certs don't expire before 2040…).

2040? That may just cause issues in itself when a client decides that the certificate end date is beyond 14months so must be invalid... or a security risk.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: Global auto update: What could possibly go wrong?

@TonyJewell

Except this is an automatic security endpoint deployment, not a typical OS / application update that can be put through Test/Dev, pre-prod and then delployed to prod a la most patches

Dangerous sandwiches delayed hardware installation

BAOR c1987, vehicle hangars Corunna Bks 26 Enr Regt evacuated becasue of a rectangular silver-foil wrapped package found on top of one of the 432s.

25Sqn lines evacuated as in direct line of sight of the hangar, every one piled into 30Sqn or the scoff house

EOD called, controlled detonation of a packet of sandwiches. :)

As I recall, it became a not-uncommon occurence after that

Innocent techie jailed for taking hours to fix storage

Drivers Hours are a thng if you use a company car, or your own car for business purposes.

In the Army Reserves, doing a full days work then pitching up on a Friday evening to drive either green fleet vehicle (armoured vehcile, landrover, anything green) off on an ex, or a white fleet vehicle (minbus, car, hire car), the RMTO will not permit one to drve if the total driving time added to the 8 hours already worked exceeds Drving Hours. Full stopi end of story, as both driver, chain of command, and MoD are liable in case of accident. Driving hours can be exceed under very spefic conditions, with the Commanding Officers signature, but these are exceptions and not the norm,

My current employer also enforces a similar policy, and insists that if one does a full days work, then one does not drive if using a company vehiicle or own car and claiming mileage - the reality is one is often told to book into a hotel, regardless of cost when such situations (thankfully rarely) happen

Cloudflare debuts one-click nuke of web-scraping AI

I dont think you understand what Cloudflare does.....

Re: ICE

Wintermute

Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station

Unilever Basingstoke

Back in the 1990's*. The Basingstoke-based division of Unilver, Oxoid-Unipath, had an AS400 arrive on-site for installation. Two issues had been overlooked:

1. Whilst it might have iftted through the main doors, it was too big to pass through reception

2. The server room was upstairs

Not a problem at all: management** promptly arranged for the outside wall of the server room to be removed, and a crane bought into lift the AS400 into the room.

This was slightly before my time, but I did see the pictures :)

* Was it really that l;ong ago! I started there in 1996 and Im sure that was only a couple of years ago... well maybe a decade.. THREE decades? WTAF!

** We had an excellent management team at Unipath. The SLT were not too proud to seit in the same canteen as us, smoke in the same smoking room, wholly approachable, and in the main had risen up through the company as engineers, chemists, biologists. etc. Unipath had possibly the last ever Personnel Dept in the UK, *not* HR. They were extremly people focussed. I will never forget Val in Personnel, Mike, onof the Directors, or Alan the IT Manager.

"stories of non-IT tools being employed in IT ways"

Depends on the value of $TOOL, as I encounter many, many 'tools'... many of them in HR, managements, change control.

I'm not sure if using one of those tools to test the continuity of a 240V 30A AC feed would be considered an IT use of a non-IT tool

On reflection, its a perfetctly valid use.

Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch cleared of all charges in US Autonomy fraud trial

Re: Hilarious

"He had the money to employ sufficient lawyers to get the job done properly, most of us wouldn't have anywhere near enough cash to do that so we'd sink without sight in the US system faced with similar charges."

Moot, as none of us here would be in the position to sell a company for £11billion anyway.

Sodium ion batteries: Yet another innovation poised to be dominated by China

Re: New tech

"The materials are easy enough, but getting around the patents will be expensive in blood sucking lawyers."

But the minerals are the solution to the blood suckng lawyers... they [i]definately[/i] dont mix

Russian hacktivists vow mass attacks against EU elections

Re: What a silly idea

Any links for this purported corruption and related crimes?