Posts by The Boojum

BT tries to crack cyber crime, grabs stake in Safe Security

It would be nice if BT 'spent' £££s on preventing spam calls by blocking them, but no, that would hurt revenue.

AWS offers you the opportunity to pay cloud bills before they’ve been issued

Re: Public Sector Budgets

And in the UK it's always interesting to see the number road repairs happening in March.

Brit IT firms wound up by court order after fooling folk into paying for 'support' over fake computer errors

Re: Hold Music

Thanks for the PMD 'recommendation'. I do like a lot of modern classical music so will listen to this with interest and an open mind on a suitable occasion.

However I can absolutely see its value as spam-call-on-hold music [evil grin]. Have a ...

Lego's Space Shuttle Discovery: No trouble with Hubble, but the stickers will drive a grown man to insanity

Re: Curse you, Mr. Speed!

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Some minutes later

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Double-curse you, Mr, Speed! I've just ordered it. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!

Curse you, Mr. Speed!

I enjoyed the review and thought, 'Oh. I'd rather like that.' So when I read that it had sold out I was somewhat pleased, as that meant I could have the vicarious pleasure of wanting it but not being able to actually buy it.

Then I looked on the Lego store and it is in stock. So now I can buy it. But I don't know where I would put it. And I've still got two big Technic kits to build.

So again curse you, Mr. Speed. My your life be full of silver Lego stickers. (Not really :))

Quality control, Soviet style: Here's another fine message you've gotten me into

Not quite sure how, but I first read "...Despite being the butt of a thousand jokes..." as "...despite being built of a thousand jokes...". Doesn't quite make sense, but I do like the sound of it.

South Africa's state-owned energy firm to appeal after court rules Oracle does not have to support its software

Re: R7.3bn down to R400m

AC: Full disclosure - I have no knowledge of Eskom but I'm really struggling to imagine a firm far worse than Oracle.

Then again, maybe I have a very limited imagination.

Mike Lynch extradition: Uncle Sam offered Autonomy founder $10m bail if he stood trial in the US

Whilst I absolutely agree with most of your post, I think you're mistaken in including the CFO in the list of the culpable. If I remember from El Regs passim, Cathie Lesjak, the CFO at the time, was dead against the acquisition. Indeed she believed at one point that Apotheker had fired her for her opposition.

That said, apparently she also admitted having not read the Due Diligence report, but then she may have believed that the deal was irredeemably bad so reading the DD report was a waste of time.

GitLab removes its 'starter' tier: Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

Agreed. I would need to be paid far more than £4.99 a month to watch The Kardashians on Prime.

Oh! You mean...

Games Workshop finds that in the grim darkness of the 3rd millennium, there is only ERP

I don't know about the fishing industry but GW is currently worth quite a lot more than Marks and Spencer (£3.6bn versus £2.7bn).

How'd they do that? It's classified: Microsoft's Azure cloud goes Top Secret

Teams will also target spam calls and digitally attest outgoing calls to prevent a user being tarred by the spam brush themselves.

I wish MS would deal with its own Teams spam, namely the in-meeting conversation notifications that appear on my screen even if I've not joined that meeting and even if I've deleted that instance of the recurring meeting. Extra Anger Points when it's a town hall-type meeting

Which numpty thought that this 'feature' was a good idea! Hint for MS: If I didn't join the meeting, I'm probably less than interested in the side conversations.

Icon because surely not even Paris...

Apple aptly calls its wireless over-the-ear headphones the AirPods Max – as in, maximum damage to your wallet

Re: You forgot to mention

Passed the 'genuine LOL' test.

Have a pint and an upvote!

None of our apps (except those 3) could secretly slurp Facebook user details, devs rage to High Court of England and Wales

I admit to not understanding the minutiae of the article, but the overwhelming sense I get is...

Scum vs Scum

Wisepay 'outage' is actually the school meal payments biz trying to stop an intruder from stealing customer card details

Re: Plain text passwords

I think this is a problem with a good number of Education Software / Service providers. I've sent more than a couple of emails querying their security after I received emails confirming my ID and password. Funnily enough they are all 'just about to upgrade their security systems'. So I just take even more precautions than normal in setting up the account.

Your latest security headache? Ed from accounting using his kid as an unpaid helpdesk

Contacting the IT helpdesk is an act of ultimate desperation. And I still just about know more than my kids about most bits. Just.

First rule of Ransomware Club is do not pay the ransom, but it looks like Carlson Wagonlit Travel didn't get the memo

Double Negative!`

Am I the only one struggling with the phrase "less than half of businesses paying ransoms don't recover all of their data"? Or is is simply a bit more attention grabbing than "more than half of businesses ... recover all of their data".

By emptying offices, coronavirus has hastened the paperless office

Re: Print volume that would fill the area of seven football fields every minute in 2020.

The rate of reduction is about 0.04μWales/second.

We need a new intermediate unit between the football pitch and the Wales.

BOFH: Here he comes, all wide-eyed with the boundless optimism of youth. He is me, 30 years ago... what to do?

Re: A better essay on the state of IT I have not read

In the same way that PHBs are buried in the best concrete?

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

Re: Why?

tramping over small companies countries.

FTFTFY

5G signals won't make men infertile, sighs UK ad watchdog as it bans bonkers scary poster

Re: effects on lab test animals and not on humans,

I refer you to the person who just won his case claiming that Veganism was a protected belief. He does not take the bus on the basis that it will kill insects hitting it.

IT protip: Never try to be too helpful lest someone puts your contact details next to unruly boxen

Re: Overtime

A few years ago I was in dispute with an Accountant about the 25% uplift to the bill for completing a (procedurally very simple) tax return that I lacked the professional knowledge to complete, at least until I'd reverse-engineered his work. His main defence was to inform me that the uplifted amount was what he had booked on his time sheet and therefore had to be correct. I took great pleasure in informing him that I was well aware of the very tenuous link between the hours worked and the hours recorded and could he please answer the following specific and detailed questions about the drivers for the price increase against the original estimate. The firm's business manager then replied to say that the cost of the Principal's time in answering those questions was greater than the value of the uplift and they were going to write off the increase.

I just love your accent – please, have a new password

It's in the same building in the Sirius system where they counsel redundant lifts thrown out of work when Gogrilla Mincefriend reinvented the staircase.

Official: Microsoft will take an axe to Skype for Business Online. Teams is your new normal

Another interesting Teams use case

As a Knowledgebase. Without a search facility.

One piece of advice I found was to access Teams through a browser because that way you could at least use the browser's search.

Operation Desert Sh!tstorm: Routine test shoots down military's top-secret internets

Re: rows of car batteries baking in the 48° heat

Possibly an obscure addition to the thread but I suffer from sleep apnoea and have to use a CPAP machine to get a decent night's sleep. Some people with this condition like to go camping, which means they need a serious power source to run overnight, and 'proper' CPAP batteries are expensive. So the question is often asked, "Can't I just use a car battery instead?" To which the answer is, "No. Car batteries are designed to deliver a massive current for a few seconds then be recharged quickly. If you subject it to an extended drain over a period of hours then you will kill your car battery in very short order."

I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

Re: G Docs

Yes there is. It's advanced technology beyond your understanding.

Minecraft's my Nirvana. I found it hard, it's hard to find. Oh well, whatever... Never Mined

Re: I liked this column

But I can for the whole wide world in my hands!

Techie with outdated documentation gets his step count in searching for non-existent cabinet

I reckon I can just see the BOFH's shadow at the top of the photograph heading the article.

Re: So it wasn't his job

Yay! I get to use my most recently acquired bit of grammar - Nazi pedantry. Something is an acronym only if you can say it as a word (e.g. NATO). Otherwise it's an initialism. And I defy anyone to say OBTW as a word. In fact I defy anyone to say OBTW faster than they can say the underlying words!

AI has automated everything including this headline curly bracket semicolon

Re: 'An Evil A.I.'

You can add Obie from Jack Chalker's Well World series. Definitely one of the good guys | AIs.

My 2019 resolution? Not to buy any of THIS rubbish

@Doctor,

I must admit I didn't expect the question mark at the end of the sentence.

Microsoft menaced with GDPR mega-fines in Europe for 'large scale and covert' gathering of people's info via Office

But you don't understand...

The telemetry is just MacroShaft being helpful. It saves the beta-test community (i.e. everyone) from having to manually submit manual bug reports.

Where to implant my employee microchip? I have the ideal location

Re: As someone who currently designs chip-enabled cat interface devices...

Tried that. Cat still got out.

Where can I hide this mic? I know, shove it down my urethra

Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint USB Drive life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoint USB Drives would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpoint USB Driveoid lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint USB Drive-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint USB Drive equivalent of the good life.

Still using Skype? Good news! After HOURS of meetings, Microsoft reckons it knows when you're Not Active

Re: Just kill it already...

"The only real reason Skype is used is that it's marginally better less worse for screen sharing"

A flash of inspiration sees techie get dirty to fix hospital's woes

Re: Upsetting non-techies can be hard

Too right!

My cat has discovered this to great effect. The record is 45 minutes undoing what she did in about 5 seconds.

I've seen the future of consumer AI, and it doesn't have one

Solution looking for a problem?

Sounds like we need an Electric Monk to use all these AI gadgets to save us from being exposed to them.

Prank 'Give me a raise!' email nearly lands sysadmin with dismissal

Re: The reason I left...

Was his name Jeffrey Archer by any chance?

BOFH: Is everybody ready for the meeting? Grab a crayon – let's get technical

Re: "concerns over its debts owed to private equity parent, Rutland Partners"

But he did tip Satan's electronic deputy down the Infinite Abyss when it looked like the shiny box on wheels would become Satan's deputy. A true BDFH?

A pretty and helpful user interface? Nahhh. Is that really you, Samsung?

I agree with the sentiment but if I don't want to use a particular piece of software, I don't want to just hide or disable it, it want to be able to delete it. Anything less is not acceptable.

Dixons Carphone 'fesses to mega-breach: Probes 'attempt to compromise' 5.9m payment cards

Communication preferences

I received a text from Currys PCW yesterday stating that 'Important information from Currys PC World concerning data security' was to be found at a shortened URL. A check of the URL results in a long, tech-style address ending in cpwplc.com. Checks on that reveal this it's probably OK but I'm not minded to try it out.

So in short - and assuming it's valid link - lets warn our customers by sending them a text that looks like an invitation to be phished!

Sounds to me like an early recipient of of a GDPR 'Right to be forgotten' instruction.

NHS England fingered over failure to forward patient correspondence

Re: "concerns over its debts owed to private equity parent, Rutland Partners"

Why should they? There wasn't a service level agreement in the contract for telling anyone about misdirected post.

Visa Europe fscks up Friday night with other GDPR: 'God Dammit, Payment Refused'

Ah! That was the problem.

Uber robo-ride's deadly crash: Self-driving car had emergency braking switched off by design

Re: Design Life Limitations

Alternatively, the problem can come from the opposite direction.

On a previous car the engine warning light started flashing. A quick check of the manual came back with the instruction not to drive the car and to seek immediate assistance. So i did.

The Recovery mechanic quickly identified the problem: a brake light bulb had blown. The reason for the engine warning light was that the engine's control software took input from the braking system to reduce fuel flow under braking. In short the car's designers identified the wrong problem and massively overstated the severity of the problem.

Facebook Android app caught seeking 'superuser' clearance

"We <del>do not</del> need <del>or</del> and want these permissions, and we have already fixed this issue to extend it to all Android phones. We apologize for any confusion,” Facebook commented.

Did you even sweat, tho? Plaintiffs told to amend claims in Apple headphones suit

Re: Too salty

No, no, no!

Apple Fanbois "Glow".

Men perspire and horses sweat.

Blood spilled from another US high school shooting has yet to dry – and video games are already being blamed

Re: "concerns over its debts owed to private equity parent, Rutland Partners"

Video games don't kill people. People kill people.

German IKEA trip fracas assembles over trolley right of way

In the modern version of Dante's Divine Comedy, one of the circles of Hell is an Ikea car park on a Sunday afternoon.

Zookeepers charged after Kodiak bear rides shotgun to Dairy Queen

Re: Sense of humor

Plus "the sort of growl that starts in the back ofone throat and ends up in someone else's."

There will be blood: BT to axe 13,000 employees

Read the figure of £200m somewhere.