Posts by Andy Taylor

Help desk read irrelevant script, so techies found and fixed their own problem

Having spent many years in support, the most valuable lessons I have learned is to pitch your conversation to the customer's level of experience/knowledge, to ask the right questions and never to assume that the first line checks have been completed.

More than 20 years ago I worked at a large NGO that had outsourced its IT to an external supplier. Computers were so locked down you couldn't even install a new printer without assistance from support.

They put trainees on our helpdesk and moved them to other accounts as soon as they became competent, replacing them with other newbies. The only thing you could reliably get out of them was the weather forecast for the next day or so - the helpdesk was located to the west of our office.

I eventually set my laptop up to dual boot into a copy of Windows I could actually control myself.

Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling

Re: WTF?

I'm mostly concerned about what BOFH adjacent calamity would happen to me should I stop coming to read his column.

Vendor's secret 'fix' made critical app unusable during business hours

Nothing changes

We use a bulk email system with a name similar to bloke auger from a company which has a name similar to letter simian.

In order to view the bloke auger interface, a user has to be a letter simian administrator, no lesser permissions will work.

Apple's 'Awe Droppings' fall close to the tree

It's not particularly thin where the camera is, is it?

The "trick" appears to be to put as much as possible in the thicker part near the top, make the battery as thin as possible and then trumpet the thickness of the thinnest part.

It's more or less what they did with the early Macbook Air models, although they didn't have a massive bulge.

Google’s Gemini refuses to play Chess against the mighty Atari 2600 after realizing it can't match ancient console

Re: More like...

Isn't this pretty much the same as the capabilities of the ~60 year old ELIZA bot?

Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well

Re: That reminds me

One word: Horizon

BOFH: HR tries to think appy thoughts

Re: "HR tries to think appy thoughts"

Simon and Steven age like Dennis the Menace or the Bash Street Kids - i.e not at all.

RIP Raymond Bird: Designer of UK's first mass-produced business computer dies aged 101

The HEC is not currently at TNMOC.

In case you're planning on making a special visit, the HEC is not currently on display at TNMOC it was returned to Birmingham Museums for a temporary exhibition and has not made it back yet.

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

Re: "built to survive minor accidents"

Mend-it Mark is a repair genius. Also check out his "banned" video which resulted in a copyright strike because he had the temerity to accurately describe the innards of a £25k amplifier as no better than a student project,

I've told this story before, but back in 2012 whilst working on a Fruit Store opening in Germany, we learned the hard way that TVs designed for the US market don't routinely come with universal power supplies. A step-down transformer had been shipped with the TV but was missed out. I was impressed that the TV lasted several hours before failing. I don't remember it going bang either.

We had an identical TV couriered from another Fruit Store on the other side of the country to ensure we had the complete window display working for opening day.

Tech support fill-in given no budget, no help, no training, and no empathy for his plight

Once place I worked had a strict procurement policy - all computers had to be purchased by the IT department who had no budget left when we wanted a machine.

So we ordered the components and built our own "data logger" industrial machine which if I recall correctly cost about 3 or 4 times the price of a single PC at the time.

3Blue1Brown copyright takedown blunder by AI biz blamed on human error

Re: I'm fortunate enough to have a large audience and contacts within YouTube

I came here to mention this one, a clear case of a bogus copyright claim just because someone was upset their little audiophool product was exposed as not being worth a 1/100th of its retail price.

Also there was a recent case where the content creator got a strike on his 10s audio intro so got a fully licenced recording to replace it yet still got another strike

And some time ago the BBC went after the excellent FranLab because she posted NASA video which the BBC had used in an old Horizon programme. The issue here being that all NASA video and images are in the Public Domain.

The entire system is broken, which is why many content creators are using alternative platforms (looking at you Big CLive).

After a long lunch, user thought a cursor meant their computer was cactus

Dust removal

I think my fastest ever fix which was not one of the above was a site visit to an old CD ROM network server which had multiple physical CD drives which were not being read. Every single disc was covered in a thin layer of dust and a simple eject/wipe/insert for each drive was all that was needed.

Hello? Emergency services? I'd like to report a wrong number

Not any more, most modern systems do not need a prefix to be dialled for external calls.

Best practice for phone systems is use 4 digit extensions.

If the customer insists on 3 digits, ensure numbers are all between 200 and 899 to avoid any conflicts with emergency services/special numbers such as 101, 105, 109, 111 etc.

Apple's Clamshell iBook G3 at 25 – not just a pretty case

"The Titanium PowerBook G4 was the Apple laptop that broke the curvy plastic mould in favour metal rectangles. Polycarbonate, albeit white, would live on for a bit in rectangular Macbooks and iMacs, colourful polycarbonate having a last hurrah in the iPhone 5C..."\

All the plastic MacBooks cracked, every single one. 2006 models around the edge of the keyboard, unibody machines around the Ethernet port and display hinges.

BOFH: Come on down to the dunge– erm … basement

I feel seen

Has Simon been visiting the storage warehouse for TNMOC?! His description is uncannily accurate.

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

Re: "help desk"

For me, ITIL is short for It'll be a cold day in hell before I implement.

I still think "I'm a JFDI Master" would make a good BOFH T-shirt slogan.

Yes, I did just crash that critical app. And you should thank me for having done so

All very well but...

Using the helldesk email for everything just means other helldesks start auto replying instead.

I'm still deleting tickets created by some of our partners own systems,

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

Re: sort of on topic...

This was also the method for the original Concorde simulator. I visited Filton in 1991 and had a go in the simulator (take-off, circle, land at JFK airport) with the more recently installed computer generated display. I only needed a little help with the landing.

The computer room was mostly taken up with the older physics simulator part of the system (complete with paper tape readers) with all of the graphics being handled by a single rack in the corner.

Standards-obsessed boss ignored one, and suffered all night for his sin

Re: IT Manager to the rescue! - Aside, theatrical near miss

"Then they got on with the rest of the play (which was actually really good)."

This must be a different play to the one I remember then, a play so boring that I once missed a lighting cue as I hadn't noticed the actors had all gone off stage.

The most interesting thing about it was programming the shiny new computer lighting system to "flicker" some candle bulbs for added realism.

UK convinces nations to sign Bletchley Declaration in bid for AI safety

Turing had nothing to do with Colossus!

Alan Turing’s sole contribution to Colossus was

recommending Tommy Flowers (who actually designed Colossus) as a Suitable

Person to look at the problem. Turing made valuable contributions to the Bombe machines which help break Enigma. By 1943 he was at Hanslope Park working on speech encryption (Delilah).

Food robots delivering bombs? Oregon State campus shut down by 'prank'

Also operating in many locations in the UK and Finland

Starship was trialled in London but first operated in Milton Keynes where there were around 200 robots last time I checked. Now also in Northampton, Cambridge, Bedford, Leeds and Manchester plus other countries including Finland and Estonia.

Nuclear-powered datacenters: What could go wrong?

This is going to make one hell of a "who, me?" story. Assuming the column still exists afterwards.

Raspberry Pi 5 revealed, and it should satisfy your need for speed

Lots of comments moaning that newest model is overkill/too expensive. Remember that older models are (at least theoretically) still available for purchase.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Re: if you tolerate this then your chilled air will be next.

I came here to say this too. Applause.

Re. the old school upgrades, many computers back in the day were made to a particular specification and then crippled to reduce performance after demands from marketing/sales.

Often an "upgrade" to an old mainframe was to *remove* whatever was slowing the machine down.

Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

I'm sure I have posted this before but when working at an about to open fruit store, we discovered the hard way that not all TVs have universal power supplies. It was for a window display and had been shipped from the US *with* a power converter but was plugged directly in to 230V. The most remarkable thing is that it lasted nearly a whole day before failing. A replacement was sent overnight from another store at great expense.

Grant Shapps named UK defense supremo in latest 'tech-savvy' Tory tale

Whoever is the incumbent, the job title is Secretary of State for Defence. That's Defence with a C not Defense. Please correct the headline.

Nobody does DR tests to survive lightning striking twice

My father worked for Thames Water in the 80s and early 90s and lightning strikes were responsible for a good proportion of the repair work required on the telemetry systems he managed.

Pumping stations water towers tend to be situated at the top of hills for some reason.

Re: At least you fixed the problem.

MK is much maligned but I can think of worse places to be (e.g. Reading).

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

Re: Hardly secret

Not acting on information because the enemy would know codes had been broken is another myth perpetuated by the "Irritation Game" film (and elsewhere).

It is widely held that Coventry was destroyed for the same reason - to avoid alerting the enemy. Again untrue.

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

TRFOOTYSPHTOBKJIC (Those Rooms Full Of Old Tech You Should Probably Have Thrown Out But Kept Just In Case) - aka TNMOC (The National Museum Of Computing)

Techie called out to customer ASAP, then: Do nothing

The BOFH had a term for this

Appeasement Engineer

"Because he's NEW and ALONE, he's what you call an appeasement engineer, the new guy they send so they respond within the 4 hour guaranteed response period. (Things are getting better and better) Your average appeasement engineer is about as clued-up on computers as the average computer "hacker" is about B.O, and their main job is to make sure the power plug is in and switched on, then call back to the office for "PARTS". The really keen ones will sometimes even take a cover off the equipment and pretend that they see this stuff all the time. I wonder what sort today's is...

Amazon to shutter Digital Photography Review

DP Review informed my first DSLR purchase in 2004 (Nikon D70) and all subsequent purchases.

I stopped reading or contributing to the forum when I got bored of the "measurebators" and CAG (Camera Acquisition Guys) but still drop in once or twice a week.

Imagine selling your entire Company A system because Company B announced a slightly better camera then selling the entire Company B system to switch back when Company A makes the inevitable upgrade to beat company B's offering...

There are other sites, but I'll miss DPReview.

PC tech turns doctor to diagnose PC's constant crashes as a case of arthritis

An all too frequent occurence at the Genius Bar

I saw this many times at the Fruit Store. Metallic bracelets would trigger the sleep function on Macbooks for this exact reason.

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

I am pretty sure I have told this story before. My dad managed the telemetry systems for Thames Water in the 1980s back in the days when they had a 24/7 control room where a duty controller would watch over their domain *and take calls from the public* as well.

At some point the decision was made to install air conditioning and a suitable unit was plumbed in and commissioned. A week or so later my dad went in to see how they were getting on.

"This new airconditioning is rubbish" was the response. On probing further, he established that it was blowing hot when they wanted cold and vice versa.

Further investigation revealed that they didn't understand the controls. They thought the snowflake icon meant "when it's cold" and the sun "when it's hot", not "blow cold air" and "blow hot air".

My dad moved the control to the correct position and all was well again.

Another story from a little later - I used to do a bit of contracting work for Thames Water (thanks dad!) and was asked one day to visit a water treatment works where their shiny new SCADA system wasn't working too well. On arrival I found a PDP-11 sitting in the middle of the main control room which was a massive glass walled room which wouldn't look out of place in a Bond film, but was not air conditioned. The ambient temperature was that of an average greenhouse.

I quickly realised the issue was the poor PDP was overheating, this was fixed by installing some portable cooling, I forget exactly what they did, but it was enough to reduce the machine's temperature to within the operating window.

BOFH: Generating a report the Director can show the Board – THIS is what AI was made for

Meet DAN

DAN = ChatGPT - filters. I wonder how much input they got from Simon and Steven?

https://kotaku.com/chatgpt-ai-openai-dan-censorship-chatbot-reddit-1850088408

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

Re: Bank of England going to trade show

I thought this was a feature of the old £50 note but the BoE website doesn't mention it.

Apple to pay $50m settlement for rotten butterfly keyboards

Re: Ive

All the 200x Nvidia powered MacBook Pros were affected and Nvidia paid the bill.

I replaced hundreds of logic boards on up to 6 year old machines when I worked at the fruit store.

One of the Apple-centric YouTube channels featured an early prototype iPhone. It had a plastic screen similar to the iPod Classic - that would have scratched so easily.

In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished

Re: Sort of similar

When I worked for the fruit shop I worked out several “short cuts”. One particular model of the all-in-one desktop machine shipped with defective hard drives and we had to replace a significant number of these.

The official process involved completely removing the LCD panel to access the drive. I worked out it was possible to simply unscrew the display, unplug one cable and then tip the display onto my chest while I swapped the drive. It saved so much time and reduced the chance of damage to the screen as well.

Never mind the Panic button – there's a key to Compose yourself

Re: On Mac

Use the option key; for example, option-e writes an acute accent. You then type the character you want to have that accent (usually e), so option-e e writes é.

Simple and intuitive.

Please pay for parking – CMOS batteries don't buy themselves

Re: Paid parkng Tesco....

Parking companies have no shame.

I recently helped a lady who had overstayed at a car park when heavily pregnant and unable to move around quickly. She had to endure discussing her personal medical history during a court hearing before the case was dismissed. This was despite telling the parking company from the outset that she had a medical need for more time.

I won't name the company but they are one of the largest and most litigious.

Recent statistics show that around 89% of County Court claims are not defended. Based on the number of hearings in 2020, that's around 90,000 claims or around £18 million in default court judgments for an outlay of around 300k in court fees. Not a bad return.

Re: Paid parkng Tesco....

Don't pay the parking scammers, especially those who believe compliance with the Equality Act is providing some blue badge bays.

There is probably a reason why cameras and signs disappeared abruptly in the article - no planning permission.

Several greedy parking companies have altered the "free stay" limit only for it to be discovered that free parking was a condition of planning department.

pepipoo is great, also MoneySavingExpert forum and several Facebook groups (but beware the ones that provide poor advice).

In short, if you get a private parking charge:

Complain to landowner. Escalate to CEO if needed

Ignore the "discount".

Appeal as Keeper/Hirer of the vehicle

Do not reveal who the driver was.

Expect any appeal to be rejected by the parking company

Use POPLA secondary appeal service if offered, but don't just repeat the original appeal.

Do not use the "IAS" appeal service, it finds against the motorist about 85% of the time

Ignore debt collectors - they are unregulated and cannot buy up the "debt" because it's not really a debt.

Respond to Letter Before Claim if received, demanding all information including authority to issue charges and pursue them through the courts

Defend court claim if issued.

Wait for parking company to discontinue or have your day in court where there is usually a good chance of winning.

Parking companies rely on people not knowing the law to extract payment. Sadly it works.

Who you gonna call? Premium numbers, but a not-so-premium service

Re: Wrong number

The correct format is, of course, 020 xxxx xxxx

Down on the south coast, the traditional rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton means that although they share an area code (Solent, 023), all Portsmouth numbers begin 023 9 and all Southampton ones 023 8.

A certain Southampton based telephony provider named after a Greek letter still lists the two locations separately in their number allocation tool.

Sharing is caring, except when it's your internet connection

Accidentally connecting to a neighbour's wireless

This happened to me some years ago. I must have been connected for a few hours before realising that I was on the wrong network.

I did the decent thing and went round and helped my neighbour set up a password on their shiny new wireless router.

Fatal Attraction: Lovely collection, really, but it does not belong anywhere near magnetic storage media

Sleep switch too

MacBooks have a sleep switch which is triggered by a small magnet in the lid. Turns out if you’re wearing a bracelet with a magnetic clasp it can make the machine sleep seemingly at random.

Don't touch that dial – the new guy just closed the application that no one is meant to close

Re: Back in t'day...

It's a well known fact that the original iPhone demo had to follow a carefully arranged sequence otherwise the phone would crash. They also hard coded the signal strength bars to show good signal.

This also reminds me of the time I was the person in charge of the dumb waiter for the play "The Dumb Waiter". During one performance the actors managed to skip 3 pages of dialogue, go through another couple, skip back to the pages they'd missed, did those and then skipped forward past the pages already done. Meanwhile I'm going frantic behind the set trying to work out if I'd missed a cue. Luckily I hadn't.

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...

My dad's 1978 Skoda Estelle (in which I learned to drive) had a similar issue. Dad fitted an additional fan to the radiator with a manual control in order to improve the airflow and stop the engine overheating catastrophically.

Somebody is destined for somewhere hot, and definitely not Coventry

Re: Works the other way as well

Sounds like my local paper, every few months they run a story on the area's dogging problem and proceed to list all the locations and times where such activities occur.

El Reg visits two shrines to computing history as the UK lifts coronavirus lockdown

Re: Are those KV1430s?

Yes, one of them was mine, I donated it in 2014 when I started volunteering. Purchased 1987 to use with my Atari ST.

See what's on the slab: Apple reportedly mulls stretching the iPad Pro to 14 and 16 inches

Re: Schematics? What are the repair shops going to do with them?

Component level repairs are available from many independent companies. I know of several who offer a flat fee service at reasonable prices.

Why pay £600+ for a logic board when you can have the faulty part(s) replaced for a quarter of that?

The future is now, old man: Let the young guns show how to properly cock things up

Re: An age ago. Or two.

When I worked on VOIP systems, I often had to deal with support queries like "why is my exchange getting hammered by SIP registration requests?" The reason was always because the relevant ports hadn't been closed properly and the box was under attack from persons unknown trying to get free calls.