Posts by GlenP 1093 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Apr 2012
When I moved in to my house, a new build which had been standing empty for about 6 months, there were several increasingly threatening letters from TV Licensing. They were also giving misinformation as to their rights, implying a right of access to the inside of the property that doesn't exist.
I can see the attraction of this. Business systems are slowly becoming less dependant on legacy compatibility (our ERP and Finance systems are both now browser based and becoming browser agnostic) so that reduces the issues significantly. Setting up computers is a pain in the proverbial, especially with remote sites where I have to get the equipment here, get it set up then ship it out again. Being able to just place an order and have it arrive at the user's desk would be handy, especially if I can then forget about it.
There are huge buts to this though. Microsoft's reputation for cancelling services is a major issue. I already rejected moving to Office 365 due to the amount of admin work needed, I suspect having to administer your estate is actually going to be a lot harder than they admit. I wonder about the application install and config, e.g. are they prepared to install Acrobat Reader (answer, almost certainly no, "use Edge").
Definitely not for me.
did a student have access to the admin system in the first place?
Back in the day when I worked at the local college we'd certainly have noticed the excessive CPU times almost immediately as we reported on the heaviest users and applications weekly*.
*By far the biggest application for page swaps was a simple game which the students must have been playing endlessly. It had been written by one of the programmer/analysts who'd subsequently left but I found that by moving a subroutine from a separate function to inside the main code it would run without swapping. The system performance noticeably improved.
It seems to be common with banking but I had one the other week in an app where not only could you not cut and paste but you couldn't swap between the app and the password manager to check on the password as it would immediately wipe what you'd already entered. With any complexity to the password there's then little choice but to write it down.
When I started at a previous company as IS manager the DP Manager, who became my junior, had previously had a free hand at IT. We still had mainly dumb terminals on an AS/400 connected via Twinax (it ran from the concentrator then terminal to terminal with a terminator on the last connection). No real problem, except that every time a new terminal had been added he'd simply run two new cables from/to the nearest two terminals even if they were across the room. The end result was that the cable runs in the main office zigzagged across the floor.
It took about 20 minutes after hours to recable the entire office so that the runs went down each side. I've hated cable covers in offices ever since!
The drives I talk about above are 40-80gb
What are these gb of which you speak?
I'm going back to the megabyte days!
First HD I had in my own PC was 20MB, stretchable to 32MB with an RLL Controller*.
*They packed more data on the outer edges of the disk where it spins faster, ACT had done something with floppy drives that appeared to play music as they actually varied the spin speed.
I had an Apricot 486SX PC where the HD had probably got a coil gone in the motor so once in a while it wouldn't spin up. Easy enough, turn it on and just give the box a bit of a rotational tweak. Again, had to be timed right between power coming on and POST reporting no boot disk, but that wasn't too much of an issue.
Way back we'd had an HD that was really sticky. Can you run a disk without the top of the case? We could then but only long enough to retrieve the data having got it moving "by hand".
It's only neutral if that value of the goods and services you are selling are worth the sames as what you are buying. A large profitable company will never be able to make the two match up so they will be paying VAT on their profits.
Assuming the company is VAT registered, not so. The company receives VAT income from its customers, it makes VAT payments to suppliers. The nett balance between those is either paid to or, occasionally, claimed from HMRC. To the business the overall impact is neutral.
I had a nightmare untangling logins and credit card details for a number of domains that all appeared to be personally registered to someone who'd left the company. Fortunately he had used the company email address and the registrars concerned didn't look too closely when I changed the details.
I've had what could be worse in the distant past, a Finance Manager who decided she would take an extra 30 days to pay all invoices, without telling any body and without considering that some invoices, such as ones for resold maintenance cover on a client's system, must be paid immediately. I managed to fudge round the inevitable breakdown whilst they weren't covered.
That's my understanding as well.
We had issues "back in the day" with Apricot networking not being cross phase tolerant. A new build for one of our clients was specified with turned-earth-pin plugs and sockets for the computers being all on a single phase.
Despite this being accepted by the architects when we actually got in there (with only a couple of days to complete the installation) we found that firstly they hadn't supplied the special plugs (a motorcycle courier was arranged to bring them from Birmingham) and secondly that they hadn't wired them all to the same phase as "they're too close to the other sockets". They'd also totally ignored the instructions on the network cable install but we managed to work around that.
This would all have been avoided if our request for a site meeting with the sparkies before they started work had been accepted but we were assured that the architect knows best!
I have two routes I can take out of the village towards work, a choice of two options where they join back up and, on one of the options there, a choice of going through an estate (shorter but only 30mph) or down the side of it at 40mph. So a genuine 5 options (and actually lots more once in town). They're all around 5-6 miles and 10-15 minutes.
I have dropped a mobile*, once, it landed corner first onto a concrete step. As it was a nice solid HTC P6500 the only damage was a bit of a dent in the case, the internals and screen survived and carried on working.
The number of phones I have damaged by users at work, probably around 10% per year that I know about (I suspect some get 3rd party screens fitted without them telling me), suggests it's not that uncommon a problem though so anything that reduces the damage is a "good thing".
*Juggling phone, car keys, laptop and various bits of kit as I exited through a fire door.
Although I think Menu is probably the original out of Xerox, back in the day we always knew it as Mouse. That's not a duplication of Pointer since we had various forms of pointer before the mouse to move them*.
*Including a horrendously large graphics terminal that used two wheels to move a cross-hair cursor, a bit like a giant Etch-A-Sketch. It even needed wiping and refreshing periodically.
Glen
We lost maybe three RA81 HDAs and one logic board out of well over a hundred, and one memory board from one of the systems.
It was tough kit! Once had a VT-240 terminal that had been in a fire (sadly the VAXes didn't survive). The case had partly melted but when we powered it up it still came up with a reassuring "VT-240 OK"
in Britain I'm utterly certain anyone connected with electricity ( or gas etc. ) supply, governmental or utility, retains a complete right to enter your properties, examine/remove/alter your meters, and do anything necessary: all without warrants.
Only in an emergency, otherwise they need consent or a warrant:
Rights of Entry (Gas and Electricity Boards) Act 1954
1 Restriction on exercise of rights of entry.
(1) No right of entry to which this Act applies shall be exercisable in respect of any premises except—
(a) with consent given by or on behalf of the occupier of the premises, or
(b) under the authority of a warrant granted under the next following section:
.
Provided that this subsection shall not apply where entry is required in a case of emergency.
Because obviously the Soviets would only ever recruit the right sort of people,
I recall many years ago at a plant building ships for Her Majesty they vetted all the Programmers. They didn't vet the Operators though who had far greater access to the systems and data.
And only yesterday an MS Sales Drone was trying to persuade me to look at their cloudy offerings.
OK so if we have a major network problem on prem we'll likely have similar issues (then switch to the slower but independent backup line or worst case bring the offsite DR server online with the latest available data) but we'll be high up the list to "get it fixed".
And given that basic keyboards cost about a tenner, what have you to lose?
Back in the day when keyboards cost considerably more than a tenner (in excess of £100 in some cases) washing them to try and save them was a frequent occurrence. The worst we had was caused by spillage of Tango (other sugary orange fizzy drinks are available!) That one was dismantled and scrubbed under the tap for a while - it did survive.
Now they're a consumable item.
Glen
I've had cause to look at a couple of other projects on Indiegogo in the last few weeks. Both were also around 2 years late, with little evidence in one case of any product being forthcoming and with complaints about lack of information. Yet people still seem prepared to risk large sums for something that often amounts to vapourware.
I was in Fulwell a couple of weeks ago and would have gone to see the site there if I'd known.
Our family are well aware of the Zeppelin raids and in particular the one on Sunderland on 1st April 1916. My grandmother was born prematurely the next day and according to the doctor wouldn't have survived to full term.
the police also used to deploy alarms that fed straight into their radio systems
We had one deployed at a company I worked for after two break ins to steal PCs. The robbers still managed to get in and out a third time! The police reckoned the toerags would be in-and-out in under 2 minutes so unless they happened to be very close there was little they could do.
We employed a security guard from then on.
I'm another who started with DEC kit. We had a PDP 11/45 and 11/70 but they were turned off* (still didn't stop me having to insert the manual updates in the folders each month). Main computing was a couple of VAXes, a 780 and a 750. There were then several PDP 11/23 boxes around for experiment work so mainly running RT-11.
*It was a civil service job and at the time all government computing was supposed to be ICL unless you could justify otherwise. The 11/23s were mainly bought as part of a package, e.g. they'd come with a cheap microphone and sound input board so weren't "computers". The larger PDPs had been justified on the grounds of compatibility and then the VAXes as being compatible with those.
Occasionally had smoke coming from devices (generally monitors and terminals) but I've usually caught them before there have been actual flames.
Not strictly IT but I was making coffee when the kettle lead caught fire. Probably a good job it was me as all I did was turn the power off then open the window for the smoke to clear. It turned out the cheap kettle had a standard C14 socket instead of the high temperature C16 notched version and a standard cable had been used instead of the original. I suspect if some others had been faced with that we'd have had a panic!
I'm not sure whether power sockets on PSUs just weren't very good but slightly unplugged power cables weren't that unusual. As first (and second and third, small company) line 'phone support you'd go through the rigmarole, including asking them to unplug the power lead and plug it back in, then if that failed try a different lead. We'd also warn them that if an engineer was called and it turned out to just be an unplugged lead they would be charged. It's amazing how often the engineers found the power cables almost hanging out of the sockets.
The software I was supporting was sensitive to unexpected power downs. I had one user insisting that no, there was no way the computer had been turned off, however the symptoms said otherwise. An hour or so later I had an apologetic phone call, her boss had accidentally turned the computer off and switched it back on hoping nobody would notice*!
*No logins on PCs in those days, they were set up to boot straight in to the software.
I can see the attraction on long haul over cattle class but having flown to Aus on Business Class* it certainly wouldn't be an improvement on that. The Cathay Pacific seats effectively give you a full length private bed anyway, complete with 15" TV, etc. Long haul flights are also going to be the ones needing most cargo space.
*Necessary as I was in the office about 10 hours after landing in Bris.
I've never been a huge fan of wireless keyboards and mice in the office environment.
Had the boss of a sister company which we used to support decide he and his chief oppo "had" to have a cordless mouse each so, contrary to policy, went out and bought them from PC World* at vast expense. These days it wouldn't happen but things weren't very sophisticated back then and he couldn't understand why his cursor kept moving randomly. Although the two mice were in different offices the desks were actually effectively back-to-back with a thin plasterboard partition between so kept interfering with each other.
*The same person once bought a Sony Vaio laptop from the same source. It was a DSG Retail special brought in directly from Japan and apparently made up of left-over bits. It failed a year later, just out of warranty, with zero support or driver availability.
I'd rather know what s**t is happening with the systems than have an almighty mess to deal with when I return to the office.
Like in the days before email when the tape drive failed on a Unix box. Despite phoning me (I had the "mobile" carphone-attached-to-a-battery) and me telling them I'd sort it on my return the pHB insisted on calling in a PC engineer. His first act, since he didn't have a clue about Unix, was to power down the server. Cue a week of rebuilding and recovering given that of course we didn't have a backup for a few days.
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