Posts by OGShakes

Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

Travel and other wasted things

So I had a boss in the past who required first class travel to do any work at customers international offices and a 5 star hotel. When they opened a new office in the UK and realised any of us could do the basic network fit out, he was shocked when they got local contractors to do all the network install for us and told him to set up the servers remotely. He blamed us for stopping his free holidays!

I had several wasted days working for him, he would regularly require us to 'spend face time' with customers for issues that were easily fixed remotely and I had to do a 300mile round trip to check that a cable was plugged in right, weirdly the customer made it clear they were not paying us for my day when I 'wiggled the network cable' and everything started working.

Uber won't face criminal charges after its robo-car killed woman crossing street

Re: Safety driver?

Weirdly in the UK there is a level of liability on the Pedestrian, they still need to stop look and listen before they step out in to traffic. If they don't do that drivers are not at fault outside of a marked crossing! If they are on a Zebra crossing then the pedestrian should pause to make sure they are seen by the driver so they can stop, but legally the driver will be considered at fault for hitting them without additional evidence.

I have been involved in some events where the Car insurance industry has started looking at the 'who it liable' side of things for self driving cars, it is a nightmare and will cause problems for years to come.

Re: What? The car can't do emergency braking on it's own?

I have commuted to London daily for a long time and get 10 min on the train before someone else's bum is in my face. The return journey is just as bad, with the bonus that by the time the train is empty enough for me to get my book out I have to get off. It depends on your train. On the plus side, getting to central London by car takes even longer, so any idiot who thinks they are better off driving always arrives in a stressed state. I guess self driving cars would make them not stressed from other drivers, but they would still be another hour on their way in.

Users fail to squeak through basic computer skills test. Well, it was the '90s

Mice are weird

My Dad used Apple Mac computers, since he was a graphic designer, starting in the 90's with one running system 7. When ever he tried to use my Windows PC with a 2 button mouse, he could not figure out which button to press. This was made worse once I got a mouse with scroll wheel and he refused to touch a windows PC ever. To be fair later in life he chucked the mouse completely and just used a graphic tablet!

I'm just not sure the computer works here – the energy is all wrong

Rats!

My favourite memory was of the systems in a plant hire company with offices that are still to this day a bunch of porter cabins. They started to have some weird network issues from time to time that we could not fix until we traced the network cables through a hole in the floor in to rats nest of wires that contained a genuine rats nest. A quick rewire so all the network cabling was in trunking inside the cabin, not under it, and everything was fine. As far as I am aware, no one was brave enough to remove the old cabling from under the cabin, so the rats are likely still living there.

Crystal ball gazers declare that Windows 10 has finally overtaken Windows 7

Who cares?

Only us tech people will view Linux as a reasonable option and don't get me started on Apple still assuming people don't make viruses for their products. All 1000 staff at the company I work for are now on 10, it works and all their software runs on it. If I was to wander in to any team and talk about getting something different, there would be a panic and we would have to spend months training them all how to use even the most simple other system. Some of my more 'special' staff didn't even notice that their new laptops were running W10 not W7, they were more put out by the new laptops being silver not black.

LG's beer-making bot singlehandedly sucks all fun, boffinry from home brewing

Brewing is easy!

Pointless machine that destroys the fun! I have only ever done all grain and only produced one beer that was undrinkable in about 3 years... I will always swear its the crappy 'malt kits' that produce really bad home brew!

As for the time it takes Brew day is just a excuse for me to play xbox all afternoon with several short breaks to stir, filter and boil.

Not tried using a Sodastream but I do put all my water through a Brita filter before I start.

Lush scrubs its card-processing servers squeaky clean

Simple Object Access Protocol

This is what Soap is... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP

Cash? No idea, did you mean Cache?

What if tech moguls brewed real ale?

ITIL IPA

ABV 3.5%

A standardised IPA recipe that has an over complicated flavour that no one really likes.

CryptoLager

Looks and tastes like most mass produced lagers, think fosters, but it leaves you totally unable to access any of your memories from the night before....

Avengers: Infinity War: More Marvel-ous moolah for comic film-erverse, probably

Re: Howard wouldn’t be seen again until...

I am glad I am not the only one who spotted that! I can only assume the Writer didn't know you don't leave the cinema till the screen goes dark or you will miss some sneaky little in joke or nod to the next movie!

LESTER gets ready to trundle: The Register's beer-bot has a name

Press for Beer

A pub in Brighton did have booths with 'press for beer' buttons on the wall that would summons the bar staff to get your order. It lasted about 6 months before they turned them off. Apparently on a busy Saturday night as you carry 3 pints back to your mates you will spill about half a pint, if they bring them too you at your table they have to be full thus losing them the additional revenue from all those spilt drinks.

Tech bribes: What's the WORST one you've ever been offered?

Good, Bad and ?

Good

My local youth group has Rugby balls, mini footballs, Frisbees and various other branded stuff that I have grabbed over the year. My wife has not purchased pens or stationary for her small business in years. Oh and none of my friends have had to buy the paid version of a decent antivirus in a while... I train most of my account managers to bring doughnuts if they come near the office.

Bad

instead of answering my technical questions, the team on one firewall manufacturer's stand kept giving me another beer and handing me to another person. This started at 2pm and continued in to their 'after party', at 11pm they took me for a curry then I slept on the sofa in one of their rooms and was purchased breakfast. They never answered my question and so I never used their product.

?

I once went to a product demo event where we all got given a free licence (worth about £80) to play with back in the office. My boss took all the staff in the company, took all the free licences from us and sold them to customers...

No, Stephen Hawking's last paper didn't prove the existence of a multiverse

Re: Cognito ergo universi?

Why do we find the idea that the Universe may be aware and thinking in some way odd? Surely it would be small minded not to consider that this may be an option? I know for a lot of people this sounds close to saying 'there is a God', so they dismiss it as a fairy tale or stone age thinking, but to say an entity on these scales could not exist is equally as stone age in its understanding.

That we are aware and thinking proves there is thought in the universe, so maybe we are part of the universe looking at its self and asking 'what am I?'

Boss visited the night shift and found a car in the data centre

What haven't I found...

Golf Clubs, a Stack of fancy (Glass) bottled water and a rotting plate of food in one server room.

A LARGE Umbrella, this was on the top of the rack as the roof leaked.

An inflatable chair, kettle and ashtray.

A small child

9 year old HP servers running mission critical services...

'I found the intern curled up on the data centre floor moaning'

3 am call from 200miles away

Ah I remember when I worked for a small IT support firm in Brighton (Sussex) that looked after Business and Residential clients. We had a note on our website and in the yellow pages ad that we did 24 hours support, but no one had made it clear this was for business clients only. So one fine morning I received a call asking for help recovering a laptop from a virus, from memory the conversation went as follows:-

Me - Can I check which client you are calling from

Them - Oh I am a new customer

Me - Ok, not a problem there will be an extra surcharge for the out of hours service. Can I confirm your company name

Them - I am not a company, I am a student and I think a virus has just wiped out my dissertation

Me - I have to warn you our out of hours service is part of our business support offering and this callout will not be cheap. Is this something that can wait for our residential team to assist with in the morning?

Them - No I have to hand this all in in the morning and I cannot lose it. Please I will pay anything just help me.

Me - Ok what has happened and I will take some details so we can start to get the ball rolling.

Them - I had a bluescreen flash up, now my laptop just keeps rebooting. It said something about safe mode but wouldn't boot in to that so I have put my restore disk in and now I am in windows but cannot find my files.

Me - Ok, It sounds like you have reset your computer and may have deleted your files, do you have a backup? if not power off the computer and we will have to collect it to perform data recovery.

Them - no backup, sorry, how soon can you get here?

Me - whats your address and I will send someone along? As you are not a contract customer it will be £200 per hour including all travel time.

Them - Manchester

Me - I recommend you call a data recovery specialist, they will be cheaper since it will be 10 hours round trip for you to pay for, plus our onsite time. As you are outside of our normal cover area I will need to take a deposit of 50% of the expected travel, could you provide me with details of a credit/debit card I can charge £1000 to?

At this point I heard them start crying and they hung up. Oddly they didn't call back. I do hope they got their file back and they were ok in the end.

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Early webcam prototypes tended to have the side effect of irradiating the user...

AVG defends plans to flog user data as privacy row continues

Free as in Lunch

They really didn't think, they supply Antivirus definitions to WatchGuard and other vendors to integrate in their products, all these others will now be quickly looking for another vendor that does not come with a PR nightmare!

I stopped using AVG since version 7, mostly as I didn't like the way it was starting to nag about the paid version...

Bethesda all out for 'Fallout 4', fallout for global productivity foretold in countdown

Beyond Hope

I think Canada is crying out to be the next setting for Fallout, with most of the country already beyond Hope. Ok this is a Vancouver/Canadian in joke, look up Vancouver on google maps and follow the TransCanada highway in land!

Win Phone to outgrow smartmobe market for next four years

I can see this happening

I work in IT, one of my friends who is a Trade Paint Supplier and my Mum who is Mad/Stupid/Old got windows phones. Both found them easy to use and fast, even my Mum with the bottom of the range one. I tried them and thought it wouldn't hurt to get the 1020 for the camera knowing the cooling off period would end 2 days after I returned from holiday. I would not go back to Android if you paid me now and my work supplied iPhone is only used to make calls, all my work email is done on my windows phone.

My Wife prefers her iPhone as do some of my team at work, but those who have given MS a chance have all been presently surprised. My Boss has decided that when the contracts end we will have midrange windows phones as our new handsets.

Ding Dong, ALIENS CALLING

Stargate has the answer

Dial Number

Watch wormhole open

Step through

Panic when you realise you have a wrong number

Microsoft just saved Windows Phone... Now stop whining

I have one and it's really good!

I think they should lock articles about windows phone to only allow comments from owners of the device. I ditched Android due to the number performance problems and bugs I found in what was one of the top 'flag ship' phones. My Wife has an iPhone, so I have used that a fair amount too, before someone shouts at me for being biased. I would have windows phone any day of the week instead of android or iPhone, its easy to use and fast even on low end hardware. I have never had it hang when I have tried to make a call or rebooted randomly when I was mid call.

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

Roll out of the pub?

We work on a rolling roll out, so get to laugh at the companies who were still putting XP. Late in 2010 we accepted windows 7 was good and started to roll out all new computers with it on, unless there was a technical reason not to. So now we have no XP left and are waiting to see what 10 looks like before we decide to do this again.

Joyfully I keep hearing noises about 10 being free to those with 8.1 licences and so long as M$ don't put a time limit on performing the upgrade, all the PC's running window 7 under downgrade from an 8.1 licence should be good for the future.

BILL GATES DRINKS 'boiled and treated' POO. Ah, 'delicious'

Re: Any chance this machine could be reshaped into a stillsuit?

Nice Dune reference!!!

Its amazing anyone finds this surprising, we are all drinking piss and shit that's been cleaned up. The good thing here is that the bit you cannot drink is being turned in to something useful!

Bloke, 26, accused of running drug souk Silk Road 2.0 cuffed by Feds

Tin Hats all round

Just saying...

Microsoft KILLS Windows 8.1 Update 2 and Patch Tuesday

Another MS story, lets shout mindlessly until satisfied!

Why does everyone get so upset when Microsoft say they are doing anything? Microsoft could release windows for free and everyone would still complain.

Facebook goes down, people dial 911

Facebook or Facepalm?

Nope Napalm the people who call the law for this kind of stuff, its the only answer!

Microsoft blasts sueball at Samsung over Android patent royalties

MS v Samsung

Law - Samsung agreed a deal, now they have changed their mind. They are in the wrong, they should have asked if they can renegotiate the terms.

Biased comment - If Samsung didn't want to pay, they should have put windows phone on, its free now! And before someone says 'ms is forcing the market by making people pay the price of Google's infringement' this is one of the basic principles of economics, they can sell their stuff for what ever price they like even if that's free. Samsung's position in the phone market is undeserved, had an S3 when it was the latest thing and regretted it after 3 months, my boss had a similar experience of the S4. 6 months in with my Nokia/MS phone and I am already sure I am going to have another one when my contract is up.

Panasonic's seven-inch Windows slab has tough exterior, confused mind

Re: The niche market that Windows 8 appears to have been designed for.

I sit here with 4 screens and a fairly decent i7 Dell workstation running win 8.1 pro, missing my Toshiba U920t Ultrabook that is having its touch screen fixed. I have used Windows 8.1 in anger on several devices and must admit, once it has all the patches installed, its actually quite usable.

I have used everything since windows 3.0 and Mac OS 6, yes Win 8 is very different to the ones that went before.

My View - MS took a gamble, W8 was not ready, W8.1 is what they should have launched and people would have still been unhappy. I remember the move from 3.11 to 95 and friends having trouble with the new interface, same again this time.

BOFH: You can take our lives, but you'll never take OUR MACROS

Its not just Bean counters

The Boss uses Excel for everything and the trainee adds macros to them all. We are an outsources IT company, I have just rebuilt all our client records in to a wiki and my boss was amazed how much easier it was to find things that one endless table per client. He still uses them for project management and keeping records of quotes etc, but I will solve this addiction soon...

BOFH: Resistance is futile - we're missing BEER O'CLOCK

Cloudy Minds

Well there was the time that a client of mine could not understand why it would take 5 days for his server to be restored from the 'cloud backup' after a fire. Or they would send him a disk next day for £150.

The other client who made everyone work from the office, who was amazed that they all just sat there doing nothing after their internet went and they could not get at all their cloud services.

Want to keep the users happy? Don't call them users for a start

invalid memory

This artical is very good, but it forgets to tell us not to use tech jargon or acronyms that the users will not know. We also need to be aware we know stuff and they don't, so when they call needing something simple they are not being an ID10T, they simply do not know the same information as us and often we forget we could not do their job. We need need to look after them in the same way we would want them to look after us if the roles were reversed.