Posts by The Quiet One

That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

The SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE, oh It's a Snaaaaaaaaaaake!!!!

Microsoft tells staff work-from-home is now ‘standard’ – with caveats galore

Re: Commuting

A lot of people conveniently forget the cost of a commute and get hung up on the few quid extra electric.....I was spending about £100 a week on fuel pre-lockdown. Now I'm only in the office 1 day a week i reckon i've saved £2.5k this year on fuel alone. I don't mind shelling out for a new office chair on that basis.

2 more degrees and it's lights out: Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix's toasty mobile bit barn

This has always intrigued me, would love to see more content on the IT Side of a travelling motorsport team and the F1 grid clearly has the budget to make it interesting.

The lack of A/C is an odd one, I'm surprised they can't get efficient portable systems that can be rigged on on-site but i guess working to the outdoor temps they don't normally struggle.

At Silverstone they probably need a 2 bar electric fire to keep things running properly ;)

Y2K, Windows NT4 Server and Notes. It's a 1990s Who, Me? special

Re: Even to this day...

Getting harder and harder to totally lock yourself out of stuff these days.

Our new SDWAN kit (Cisco Viptela) has a feature that after you apply a config change, if it does not get a confirmation back from you in a set time (say 3 minutes), it reverts back the change as it assumes you screwed up and lost access.

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

Re: airport security

I got quizzed at Gatwick over a Viptela SD WAN router in my carry-on. The official persisted in referring to It as a games console while clattering it about on the counter...….

King's College London internal memo cops to account 'compromise' as uni resets passwords

Not Shocked....

My Wife works at a University and still has the same, short, AD password she was issued on Day 1 - Never asked to change at first logon and no ageing out of passwords. My AD account at SCHOOL in the 90's had to be changed every 90 days FFS.....

No guns or lockpicks needed to nick modern cars if they're fitted with hackable 'smart' alarms

My father in law once watched a likely lad in South London trying and failing to open his Series 2a, that was already unlocked...... Eventually the miscreant gave up and walked off into the night.

Vodafone exec dons tartan tam-o'-shanter, clutches bottle of Irn-Bru, in snap shared with firm... just before Glasgow staff told of redundo dates

Who did his Media Training, Myra Hindley??

Microsoft decides Internet Explorer 10 has had its fun: Termination set for January 2020

IE 10 goes EoL - Dozens mourn the passing....

Is ANYONE actually using IE10, anywhere?? If so, have a word with yourselves.....

NHS England claims it will be all-digital within the decade

I've not had a huge amount of exposure to the NHS over the years, which i suppose is more luck than judgement, but when my Wife was pregnant with our son it really amazed me just how old fashioned the NHS was...

Anyone who's had a kid will remember the reams of paper, forms, booklets, you need to have with you at all times from about 7 months on. Why the hell this could not be done electronically is beyond me...it's not that hard, is it??

I was once one of you, F1 star Lewis Hamilton tells delighted IT bods

Fernan Dellonso......

Anyone At the Dell Tech Forum in London the other week see that painful Video McLaren forced Fernando Alonso to do (presumably at Gunpoint) where he prattled on about how Dell were Critical to McLaren's success?

I thought they had slowest car on the grid this season.......

New MacBook Pro beckons fanbois to become strip pokers

Re: Interesting idea..

Agreed. My Firm has used HP for years and hardware problems are pretty much non existant.

My Probook 6470 has been al round the world, pretty much never gets turned off and I run it into the ground with various tools all day.

It i still as fast and responsive as the day I imaged it and the battery still gives me enough for a two hour meeting (just).

No need to replace it, and I dont think it will ever die.

Fight over internet handover to ICANN goes right down to the wire

Tough Luck yankees

Perhaps they would like Mrs May to pop over and warn then that they will be at the back of the queue for new domain registrations if they leave this arrangement.....

Windows Phone dives into irrelevant-like-BlackBerry territory

Re: Blackberry has gone with Android already

The Priv is an excellent phone. My Wife has one after owning 3 successive BB Bolds and she could not be happier.

Windows phone is underrated as a business device. My Lumia 735 is the best work phone i have had, email managment is better than my old BB Torch (and that was excellent). The reason it has died a death is the poor app store, unfortantely. If you dont care about games or frivilous apps WinPho is pretty damn good.

Label your cables: A cautionary tale from the server room

It was Working Yesterday.....

......has got the be the single most annoying phrase to hear in IT.

1. Of Course it was working yesterday, otherwise you would have called me yesterday - you moron.

2. Something working at a given point in time is absolutely zero guarantee that it will continue to work for the remainder of time itself.

Users - it's why we can't have nice things!

'Apple ate my music!' Streaming jukebox wipes 122GB – including muso's original tracks

LOL

I will stick with my MiniDisc player, thanks!

Idiot millennials are saving credit card PINs on their mobile phones

Nothing new here...

I setup a new mobile for a user and to make sure ActiveSync was picking up contacts, i took a quick look in the address book app.

And there it was, clear as day.....The first contact, "Mrs Abbey Pin" who, mysteriously, only had a 4 digit phone number.

At the very least, make it look like a real number and then make the first or last 4 your PIN...or better yet, just remember it. How hard can it be?

How to not get pwned on Windows: Don't run any virtual machines, open any web pages, Office docs, hyperlinks ...

Re: What tha..?

I feel blessed that my Win 7 PC has not been receiving the GWX nagware, despite my being a good little drone and updating it each month. It did appear briefly back in November then the PC went in storage for 2 months while I moved house, it hasn't come back since.

So, there you go, The real solution to avoiding Windows 10, just shut down your PC for two months and you'll be fine!

HTC 10: Flagship goes full Google – but the hardware's top notch

Re: No removable battery = not in my pocket

My M8 is getting on for 2 years old, the battery still lasts well over a whole day, sometimes two at a push. It's been so reliable that I can count on one hand the number of reboots (not update related) it's needed. A rock solid phone I can trust, if the 10 comes anywhere close I will be ordering one for my upgrade this summer.

Adobe preps emergency Flash patch for bug hackers are exploiting

This just in....

Reporting a Flash bug is about as pointless as DFS reporting they are having a sale.

Being riddled with bugs and them working on a patch is their default position, so we should just assume as much until further notice.

Is iOS 9.3 Apple's worst ever update? First it bricks iThings, now Safari is busted

Re: apple fans

Wow - Homophobia, the epitome of good comedy

Bellend

Computers shouldn't smoke. Cigarettes aren't healthy for anyone

I had to replace a laptop keyboard for someone at my work. They claimed keys were unresponsive, in fact they were sticking because of the think layer of tar underneath you could actually hear the keys squelching as you pressed them.

Easily the most disgusting things I have had to deal with, a close second was the user who spilt a bottle of milk in their laptop and left it a couple of days before sheepishly reporting it. Removing what had become cottage cheese from a laptop is not my happiest memory.

Look out, Windows Phone 8 users – yes, both of you – here's ... Windows 10 Mobile

Thanks, but no thanks

My Work device is a 735 and it will be staying on 8.1 for as long as I can keep it running. From a work point of view the email and exchange integration is the best around and the Here maps are excellent when i am driving between sites in London.

I should caveat that the media experience is poor to the point I still run an HTC one as my personal device, but for work WinMo does the job.

SAP backs UK remaining in the EU ahead of vote

New Headline

How about "German MegaCorp backs German lead EU Status Quo for benefit of fellow Germans"

Catchy, no?

HTC teases yet another make-or-break comeback flagship

Re: I only see one speaker!

Same, the speakers on the M8 are pretty decent. I have been really happy with mine, but the power button is starting to give up and not work maybe one in 10 timies. I upgrade in June so here's hoping this is a worthwhile replacement.

If not, I'll follow my Mrs and get a Priv as that is a truly brilliant phone.

NatWest tightens online banking security after hacks' 'hack' exposé

Re: Been there, done that, got the paperwork!

She received a call about suspicious activity when they tried to pay the credit card bill, she tried to login to check it out and when she couldn't Natwest took over and sorted it all out.

It would have been much more stressful had it been more money than it was, and the turnaround time was OK as I could support us from my own accounts. She had to wait for a letter with a new activation for the On-line Banking and a new debit card which delayed sorting it out completely. So the money was probably back pretty quickly but she couldn't access it for 5 days.

I also steer well clear of banking on my mobile. I feel there are some things I just don't trust Android with, the same reason my Play Store account has no permanent payment details. I use gift cards if I want to buy something from their ,which is super rare.

Been there, done that, got the paperwork!

My Wife's Natwest account got hacked about two weeks ago, probably using this method. She went to logon and was asked for 10th and 11th characters of a password she thought was only 10.... She was not notified in any way that the password had been changed.

Meanwhile the erstwhile crims had moved over £4k in £900 lumps (probably because that's below a threshold that sets of alarms bells in the fraud team) to her current account, set up a new payee and tried to pay off a Barclay's Credit Card Bill with it.

In fairness to Natwest, it was swiftly and painlessly dealt with and we were refunded in about 5 days, but it should not be this easy to do, surely?

A mandatory notification of any change to account details via multiple communication channels is a good start, I suppose.

Personally I would like to see the perpetrators caught, flayed over a gun carriage in Parliament Square and hung by their you-know-what's from London Bridge! (other cities and landmarks are available)

SAP’s Byzantine licensing leaves its customers feeling exposed

PowerBuilder.....

Anyone who has ever tried to License SAP PowerBuilder will know the pain all too well. It is easily the most backward, belligerent software I have ever had the misfortune to come across. Woe Betide you if you want to install it on a VM accessed by RDP, because then you will need to install the hideous and unnecessarily convoluted "local license server".

if you get to this stage, you might want to consider murdering the user to remove the requirement for this app entirely..

The paperless office? Don’t talk sheet

Re: I'll see your dot matrix

What do you mean, not many 'had' line printers?

Our firm is still rocking two Tally Genicom line printers that must be easily twenty years old. Printing via an equally ancient ShivaPort Atom to get Parallel to Ethernet.

They are some noisy buggers when they get going..

Pilot posts detailed MS Flight Sim video of how to land Boeing 737

Good Luck....

James May wrote a book a few years ago, entitled "How to land an Airbus A320". Which was aimed at helping the modern man find his way out of such sticky wickets.

I recall a passage where he spoke to a seasoned A320 pilot about the likelihood of a passenger actually being able to pull this off. His response was along the lines of

"Everyone would be Killed".

The only hope you have is ATC can give you the settings you need to punch in to perform an Autopilot landing, I don't think even an amateur pilot or anorak and adenoid totting Flight Sim buff would stand a chance of manually getting a jet liner down in once piece.

VW floats catalytic converter as fix for fibbing diesels

Serves them right for buying a diesel, filthy disease spewing heaps.

Ban them entirely for passenger cars and make it a commercial vehicle fuel only for use in lorries, buses. etc. All Diesel owners should be given a limited time offer of scrappage on existing diesel cars only if they exchange to a hybrid, petrol or electric car. After 10 years, anyone still driving a diesel should have to pay tax per mile and have real time monitoring of emissions fitted with prison sentences for breaching strict limits.The sooner we are rid of that filthy stuff, the better off we'll be.

As for VW, hang them out to dry for all I care. They make boring cars for boring people who care about fuel economy and resale value more than the joy of motoring. Before you all flame me with the "some people have to buy diesel as it's cheaper" argument. Let's face facts, if they were worried about money they wouldn't buy a brand new VW diesel, they are hardly the cheapest brand on sale (well, for now).

Diesel owners are either idiots who think diesel is "well fast innit, TDI Pooooower bruv - roooooooooooneeeeeey" because it has a turbo or middle management types who want a grey car for they grey little lives the kind of person who has no knowledge of cars whatsoever and just got what the man in the shop said was best (and better commission for him thanks to the premium price, plus more expensive services for the company).

Bah humbug. It's Andrew's Phones of the Year

Priv

My Wife has had BBs since the 9700 Bold. She was worried the Priv would be too different but two weeks in and she is loving it.

I have to say, i am very impressed with the hardware and the way they have implemented their take on Android. I will be watching closely to see what they do over the next 6 months and will seriously consider a Priv or newer model when my HTC M8 is due for a swap.

Hope this is the turning point for BB.

Five things that doomed the big and brilliant BlackBerry 10

Re: My Wife will be gutted...

I have since bought her a Priv for her non-denominationally specific festive gift giving ceremony. She absolutely loves it!

So that's two more years of peace for me.

My Wife will be gutted...

She has been a BB user since the 9700 Bold. She absolutely loves her Q10 and just cannot understand why modern phones don't have keypads.

Such is the way of modern tech that when someone at work asked her what phone she had, they thought she was joking when she told them.

Blackberry missed the smartphone bus and have been chasing it down the road for years. It's a shame this is how they will end up, but they have had enough chances to get this right.

Secret shaggers, rejoice! Now you can blame that Hyatt credit card bill on hackers

Re: Just once

My wife's card got done a few years back, the Bank called up straight away to ask if we were in Vegas buying jewellery?

Alas, we were in a rainy Sidcup. The card was replaced, money was returned within a couple of weeks. No fuss whatsoever.

A good job, well done by the bank,

And the reasons for buying new IT gear are as follows ...

Re: if you want to see long life equipment...

Our Goods In dept is still docking a laserjet 2 and a jetdirect box to print purchase order information from our ancient (soon to be replaced) system.

I swear that printer will never die.

Another team in our firm still uses an ancient Tally Genicom line printer for handling packing notes for orders they send out. They worked for ages, then one of them died during a site move. The printer even had a sign on it, "Do not power off if you want this to work ever again"....i guess they were right.

Horrid checkbox download bundlers drop patch-frozen Chrome

Re: Bah! Now with extra unrequested humbug.

Don't forget all the Java updates trying to force "Ask" or yahoo(!) on you. I hate that kind of thing with the burning passion of 1000 suns. This is how people end up with so many toolbars in IE that the actual usable browsing space is about 100 pixels tall......

If you are shipping a product, ship THAT product alone and free from other shite, please.

BlackBerry Priv: Enterprise Android in a snazzy but functional package

Re: Price.

"While I don't like on-screen keyboards, well-executed ones (Apple) and larger screens (HTC Sony etc) are a sensible compromise."

Good god man! What planet are you on?? An Apple keyboard "Well Executed", is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard!

I mean, it took them until iOS9 (yes,NINE!) to make letters change case depending on your position of the shift key! Android has been doing this since year dot.

The best on screen keyboard is Windows Phone, regardless of what you think of the rest of the phone, it is a masterpiece in design and functionality.

Finally...

A suitable repplacement for my wife's Q10. I was worried i might come to harm if she couldn't keep a BB with a keypad.

Looks like a great phone for people who want to get things done. I'm sold.

TalkTalk attack: Lad, 15, cuffed by UK cyber-cops

I call bullshit....

If a 15y/o kid can hack the Talk Talk Website single handedly, either their security was so laughably poor that they deserved it, or that kid needs a maths scholarship to Cambridge and a job at MI6.

In reality, he probably send the ransom email for a joke and will get a slap on the wrist from the law and an absolute shoeing from his mum.

More to come from this story I think.

HTC's new One A9 will gulp Android updates days after Nexus mobes

Looks like the bastard love child of Samsung and Apple. Not a fan of the styling.

However, I have always loved HTC handset and their interface I had a first gen Desire, a One X and now have a One M8. Each phone has been a big step up from the last and reliability has been awesome. I think i once had about 150 days uptime on the One X before an update forced a reboot.

Hopefully the next flagship model will retain the front speakers. That, plus the improved update schedule will keep my brand loyalty alive.

Microsoft now awfully pushy with Windows 10 on Win 7, 8 PCs – Reg readers hit back

Spotted this bullshit on my wife's Win 7 laptop the other day, not been used for a while as she has a Surface Pro 3 as a daily use device.

Fired it up and straight away, the "Get Windows 10" icon produced a bubble type alert, saying 100m people had already updated....I just fucked that right off and assumed that would be that.

Next, i manually ran Win update from the control panel and was amazed that after scanning for a but, instead of telling what updates I could have, it just told me to update to Win 10!!

Oh my days!! So i had to go into the optional updates, uncheck that update before i could patch the machine ( also - dafuq, optional but checked by default, you wankers!!!!!)

So, with a small amount of knowledge you can avoid it, but can you imagine how many morons and suckers have just blindly "Next>next>nexted" themselves into oblivion?? No wonder 100 MEEELION people have upgraded , they probably don't know they had a choice!

If would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Fuck you MS - Windows 7 was great and now you've gone and fucked it all, again.

P.S - the person quoted in the article, who has a "Business Critical backup machine" and is getting his updates straight from Win Update. What a pratt! You have no business working in IT!!!

How long does it take an NHS doctor to turn on a computer?

Nothing new here....

I once spent 20 minutes talking to a user about why they could not logon to the VPN from home. After tracing the problem back as far as her internet connection, she proclaimed....

"The internet is plugged in, I just pressed the button to make the flashy lights go off because they are annoying".

You can't help some people, and that's why I drink.

VW: Just the tip of the pollution iceberg. Who's to blame? Hippies

Diesel is dead

You'll have to excuse me while i keep my 2.4L Petrol Honda, V8 Land Rover and V6 Mondeo. Always knew Diesel was a bad thing, horrible filthy stuff. I am glad the truth is finally coming out.

Techies! Shadow IT means you need to up your game

Easy to Avoid

There is no excuse for having Shadow IT. It's the job of an enterprise IT team to serve the company, not hold it back. This means restricting your users to the lowest rights they need to do their jobs (yes, even devs should have a separate "<user>_a" logon for admin rights), implementing web filtering to stop access to file storage sites etc, technology like applocker GPO's for software restriction to stop unapproved apps from even running if you get then installed.

The flip side of this, for IT staff, is to make sure you damn well listen to users. If they have a new tool, let them evaluate it, if it does the job for them, and you are happy with it. Let them use it.

Users need to look at IT as being here to enable them, not to stand in their way for the good of their own stats and KPI's.

Re: Hardly a rebellion

"But most users are revolting."

Tell me about it...you should see some of the keyboard i have to use at users's desks.

Remote Assistance is my preference, purely for my own health.

Windows 10 is FORCING ITSELF onto domain happy Windows 7 PCs

Anyone with machines joined to a domain, who is not managing updates with WSUS or SCCM has no business working in IT.

Don't want Windows 10 FILTH on the company network? Step this way

Re: Silly admins. Power users don't bother joining domains

You, Sir, are a wanker!

My top three IT SNAFUs - and how I fixed them

Re: "Fond" memories...

...the HP support line insisting that a software upgrade would miraculously fix faulty hardware...

The HP Support line once told me that updating the BIOS on a laptop would suddenly change it's shape so that it would fit in the a docking station. It was clearly nothing to do with a "That'll do pig" attitude to quality control.

HP won't ship PCs with Windows 10 preinstalled until mid-August

Not a surprise

All that HP Bloatware takes some time to get just right....

I mean, what's the point in having Windows 10 if i can't have a live tile that helps me order printer supplies......