* Posts by MisterHappy

147 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Mar 2014

Page:

Fresh version of Windows user-friendly Zorin OS arrives to tempt the Linux-wary

MisterHappy

Re: Coincidence...

I must respectfully disagree with the phrase "They will have spent so much effort on learning how each new version of Windows works". I'd estimate about 80% of our user-base never learn how Windows works, all they want after any upgrade is for the 5 or 6 icons on their desktop to still do the thing they always have.

They don't care that they are running Win 7, 10 or 11, they just want to double click on an icon and open their Excel Database (shudder).

However, these same end users are the ones who probably wouldn't care if their desktop was Windows or Linux as long as those icons were the same and did the same thing.

'Exemplar' digital hospitals trust hit by multiple tech-related traumas

MisterHappy
Mushroom

A lot of moving parts

Part of the issue is that there is no single provider for NHS Systems, a lot of the time someone will do 70% of what is required. Cerner may or may not include a Pharmacy component which means that a separate Pharmacy system would have to be sourced & would (hopefully) be able to interface with Cerner. Another central system might have pretty much everything but some of it not as good as a specialised system so that part doesn't get implemented.

Back in the day of on-prem system it was possible to use an integration engine to extract records from one system, do a bit of formatting and then pump that into a second system, rinse and repeat until you have several systems that can pull the relevant information from other systems. These days I would guess a lot is cloud based and a lot of what could have been done by internal IT is now a paid for service from the supplier so integration may not be as simple.

With the under-staffing in the NHS front line at the moment, people may also not be able to get trained on systems so what could be a 2 minute process ends up being 10 minutes & a call to IT.

Vote now on who should take the lead in Musk: The Movie

MisterHappy

Kevin Durand

The Paul Bettany movie "Legion" was on Film 4 last night & when Gabriel kicked open the door to the diner I thought "Oh crap, it's Elon Musk!"

BOFH: Monitor mount moans end in Beancounter beatdown

MisterHappy
FAIL

Re: Excellent!

I can do you one better on the mileage I think...

When using a company van to travel between sites you must use the routes specified. Apparently it was the most fuel efficient & the mileage was checked every now and then by a manager with nothing better to do & questions would be asked if the 8.6 mile trip had somehow taken 9 miles.

I remember a couple of times when people called from another site to ask where the engineer was because they had been expected "an hour ago", it was usually because of an accident or delay & the engineer sitting and waiting for the traffic to clear because they couldn't deviate from the specified route.

Bear in mind that on one refresh of the vans, they took out all of the radios to discourage the engineers from pulling up in a lay-by and just listening to music (a thing that had never happened).

Apple jacks prices to juice profits because $19.3B a quarter isn't enough

MisterHappy

For that 10%

Maybe because someone doesn't want to pay a full subscription for just that 10% of content they are interested in?

Piracy was big when region locking was in place & release schedules differed between geographic areas. It was easier to download the movie that had been released in the US than get hold of a legit copy (either ebay a R1 disc or wait until the released in R2)

Netflix came along and suddenly lots of stuff was easily available in one place & piracy dropped

Now everyone wants their own subscription service so you "need" 4 or 5 subs to get the content you want so Piracy is going up.

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

MisterHappy

Re: "I wonder if someone... might use this to sue Microsoft under the Trades Descriptions Act."

If they can do that, can I sue Apple when the iPhone 14, that was touted as "The best iPhone Ever!!" turns out not to be as good as the iPhone 15?

Let's take a look at those US Supreme Court decisions and how they will affect tech

MisterHappy
Happy

Re: Question...

Thank you... I appreciate the clear reply

MisterHappy

Question...

Please bear with me as I am unsure of the impact of this.

Is this saying that a business owner cannot be forced to make a website (or cake) that goes against their personal and/or religious beliefs?

Or

Is this saying that an employee of WebSiteCo can refuse to work on something that goes against their personal and/or religious beliefs?

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

MisterHappy

Re: Reminds me of an old (early '80s) AI koan ...

Happy memories of when I did desktop support & would shlep across site or to a different site only to hear a variation of:

Me: "Can you show me the problem please?"

User: "I open this & select here & then click this button and then... Oh, it's working now"

Think of our cafes and dry cleaners, says Ohio as budget slashes WFH for govt workers

MisterHappy

Make everyone equally miserable

"saying state employees such as police, firefighters, and garbage collectors didn't have the luxury of working remotely, and with the COVID-19 pandemic over, no one else does, either."

Oh great, instead of seeing how they can make things a little better for some people they have decided to make things a little worse for the rest.

"If I can't have a puppy then no-one else can have one, so there!!!" Does sound like the reasoned argument of a spoiled child.

Dell reneges on remote work promise, tells staff to wear pants at least 3 days a week

MisterHappy

Re: With so much attention towards CO2 emissions and climate change why do

"maybe reduce the salary a bit when people want to work from home most of the time."... I have a serious issue with this. Why would they reduce my salary?

If you are going to say that I have reduced commuting costs then I would ask if my colleague who lives less than a mile from work and walks to work every day will also have his salary reduced.

When I took the job there was no mention of an increased salary because I had to drive an hour each way.

Journalist hurt by exploding USB bomb drive

MisterHappy
Black Helicopters

Mum's Basement?

I have told everyone, sooooooooo many times, it's not mum's basement, it's..

MY FORTRESS OF POWER!!!!!!

The Shakespearian question of our age: To cloud or not to cloud

MisterHappy

Re: Shakespearian question?

Maybe the downvotes are for your implied hypocrisy?

You "Kind of" went off of Joni Mitchell after she "Kind of" went off of Spotify? It may not have been your intent but the implication is that while you can choose not to listen to her music because of her choices, she cannot exercise her right to withdraw from Spotify because of their choice.

I could be misinterpreting but that's my view. As for downvotes & upvotes, I tend to hit either one only when its a strong agree/disagree, otherwise 'meh'.

Amazon mandates return to office for 300,000 corporate staff

MisterHappy

Re: Creepy

So should it be:

A) "Now we have been working together for a several months, I realise that you are the kind of person I like & get on really well with. We have a few interests in common and we have talked loads while working on projects together. Unfortunately seeing as we work together I feel that we cannot be friends so, thanks for the invite to your housewarming/BBQ/Social event but no, don't ask again."

Or

B) "How was my weekend? What has that got to do with work? We are at work and you are only a colleague so please keep any discussion to work topics only?"

Maybe, just see how you get on with the people you work with, find out that out of all of them there are 1 or 2 that you wouldn't mind socialising with outside of work & gradually transition from colleagues into friends.

Caveat... If the only people you have as friends are from work then maybe look at socialising more.

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

MisterHappy
Alert

Training costs!

By attending this training you agree to reimburse the company if you leave:

100% of course cost if you leave within 6 months of completion.

50% of cost if you leave within 9 months of completion.

25% of cost if you leave within 12 months of completion.

That box remained unticked!

BOFH and the case of the Zoom call that never was

MisterHappy
Coat

Far too close to home

I think I have had this exact scenario, just without the ambulance at the end (if only!)

Smart ovens do really dumb stuff to check for Wi-Fi

MisterHappy

Re: Frightening

Even my mum's oven had a "Come on at time xx:xx" feature, it was manually set on the analogue clock on the front. It was supposed to be used so you could leave everything in the oven in the morning and then return home to a steaming hot casserole or similar & it was used fairly regularly.

My washing machine has a 'delay start' function on it so it can run either overnight or when we are not in the house. The oven has something similar but it's all digital & I can't work it out (I'm IT not a rocket scientist!).

The issue isn't "Unattended operation", that's been happening for years, the issue is why have Wi-Fi enabled washing machines & fridges? Remote diagnosis of faults? A marketing ploy aimed at the gullible? Or simply because "Everything's got Wi-Fi now"?

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

MisterHappy
Coat

Use a book & write them down

As long as it's not in labelled "Passwords", it's a lot more unlikely that someone will break into your home and look in every book in your bookshelf.

Microsoft Defender ASR rules strip icons, app shortcuts from Taskbar, Start Menu

MisterHappy

Re: Have the same issue

We have grabbed the shortcuts from a reference PC & are pushing them site-wide with SCCM. Some odd ones will need to be manually re-created as people call in.

The only good thing is that ASR works when you access the icon, so if it wasn't clicked, it's still there.

MisterHappy

Exclusions being added to ASR and then shortcuts being pushed back out... Appears to work in testing on a few PCs

BOFH: It's 4ft tall, heavyset, has optional fax. No they didn't take the toner!

MisterHappy
Alert

Timing is everything

This, the day after our 2 hour long "Print Strategy" kick off meeting.... Is it a sign of things to come?

'What's the point of me being in my office, just because they want to see me in the office?'

MisterHappy
Coffee/keyboard

Mockup1974 - Are you my senior manager from 2003?????? Arrgghhh, the flashbacks!!

MisterHappy

Re: Contract clauses

Quite a few to read through but I thought I'd add in my feelings/opinion.

I get assigned work to do (or pick some up) and that's what my boss looks at, I have worked from home since the first lockdown with the odd days in the office. Project work gets completed, meetings attended, tickets closed, etc and nobody really cares who is in the office or who is at home as long as there is a minimum presence. If I have something that requires my presence on site then I am happy to work in the office on that day.

As for when I log in, 8:55. When I finish depends on me, if I am in the middle of something that I can finish off in the next 30 mins but would be a ball-ache to restart the following day then I will work on to finish it. My choice. If my boss wants me to pick something up that has to be done out of hours or will require working (extra) late then he can choose to pay me the O/T or let me have the hours back.

There is give & take on both sides, I don't moan about the odd 30 mins extra worked here & there but my boss is happy for me to finish early or take time out of the day when I need to.

As for "Must be willing to work extra to get the job done"? I did, I worked extra last month/year. If you are non-specific in your requirements then I can be just as non-specific in fulfilling them.

Spooky entanglement revealed between quantum AI and the BBC

MisterHappy

Not just malingerers!!

After 3 months I was begging my Dr for pain killers that would allow me to function but not be so strong that I couldn't work!

BOFH: We're an industry leader … in employing idiot managers

MisterHappy

Nice screen layout

This was displayed on my screen under the "FTX disarray declared 'unprecedented' by exec who cleaned up after Enron" which pictured a dumpster fire... Possible "Green Upgrade"?

Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next

MisterHappy

Geo blocking MFA requests

We allow MFA to be set up on a phone only when using the corporate wireless.

After that we block any attempts from outside the UK. If "Bob" really needs to log in while on holiday in Japan then he can request to be added to an exclusion group for the duration of his holiday.

3rd parties are added to a set up exclusion for no more than an hour and told they have 1 hour to set it up, after that they are then added to the UK only group.

We do have a couple of suppliers that are outside the UK but their accounts are disabled and they have to request access.

More than 4 in 10 PCs still can't upgrade to Windows 11

MisterHappy

Why bother?

We have 8000+ Windows devices & we are not even looking at Windows 11 yet.

Most, if not all of the PCs and Laptops have a TPM and can be upgraded but with support running until Oct 2025 why would we bother? It's a PITA for very little benefit so I imagine the project will be looked at in the first quarter of 2025.

Personally, I upgraded one at home to Windows 11, there is functionally very little difference so haven't bothered with any others.

Keeping printers quiet broke disk drives, thanks to very fuzzy logic

MisterHappy

Laserjet5p

Still in use by a mate of mine. Printer was rescued from the WEE bin because no parallel ports on PCs anymore, I still had one at home. A couple of years later I rescued a better printer & passed the 5p onto my mate.

The last time I dealt with it was advising said mate to buy a USB to parallel cable after his PCI Parallel port finally failed.

Apple debuts iPhone 14, Watch 8, other sparkly things

MisterHappy
Coat

Re: I should copyright this

Yet again they are using "Ever" to mean, "since the last ones"

Am I the only one who cringes & thinks "Ever" means that they are saying that they will never make a better one?

Salesperson's tech dream delivered by ill-equipped consultant who charged for the inevitable fix

MisterHappy

We don't have problems, we have "Opportunities"

Me: "We have the opportunity to see how long the data centre can run mid summer with no air-con."

Boss: "Huh? What are you talking about."

Me: "Well, as we never have problems, I can't say that the Air-Con is broken."

Boss: "Don't take the piss!"

Left-wing campaign group throws weight behind BT strikes

MisterHappy

Is your reply to this comment disparaging the persons age or the fact that they went to uni?

Not all people who went to uni are from wealth and/or privilege, some of them worked damn hard.

Not all 'younger people' are feckless wastrels either.

Commenting as an old fart who never went to uni.

Apple to compel workers to spend '3 days a week' in the office

MisterHappy

Re: Don't know what they're talking about

100% Agree with this. I have told my boss that I am far more productive at home, when I am in the office I get all of the "Can you help me with..." or "Have you got a minute" requests that could have been asked in an email or Teams but some people just hold onto it until they can collar someone in person.

My set up at home is much more conducive to work, even after the mandated 2 monitors per desk they implemented, simply because when I buy my own kit it's to my personal spec & not what bigbox co can supply at a low price.

Yeah, we'll just take that first network handshake. What could possibly go wrong?

MisterHappy
Facepalm

You mean Change Enablement don't you?

Yes I think it's ridiculous too but apparently it's not Change Management anymore.

Icon for the whole "We are not managing but we are enabling" wank.

BOFH: Would I lie to you, Boss?

MisterHappy
Pint

Was this the guy...

Was this the guy they recruited after the last boss left? If so, they definitely got the right person for the job.

""He asked for a bag of barley sugars and then ran headlong into the wall," the PFY sighs."

Top notch!

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

MisterHappy

Will they also cut the pay of the guy who lives just down the road from the office & walks in every day?

MisterHappy
Holmes

Happy to return to work if....

If my boss can tell me what it is that I "Need" to be in the office to do then I am happy to go back in. I have happily worked from home over the last 2.5 years without any issues, going in once or twice a month when I had to.

Some of my colleagues prefer working from home & others like to get out of the house and go into the office, there have never (so far) been a case that something urgent has come up and there has been nobody available on-site to look at it.

The last conversation about it was about Team building and 'sense of belonging' which pretty much translates to "I'm a crap manager & want to see you in the office so I know you are working".

Concerns that £360m data platform for NHS England is being set up to fail

MisterHappy

Re: Misunderstanding the NHS

This is what I have tried to get across on here before there is no "The NHS" when it comes down to Hospitals, Trusts, GP's & Dentists, it's more like a franchise.

There are standards in place for data formatting, most systems use a variant of HL7 for messaging between clinical applications to allow interoperability, with some translations needed because HL7 is not a strict standard.

At the moment Trusts/Hospitals are free to choose their preferred software for EPR/Imaging etc & this is usually driven by the clinicians, which can lead to some interesting conversations around what IT think should be implemented vs what the clinicians desire. (The clinicians always win btw).

EU makes USB-C common charging port for most electronic devices

MisterHappy

Re: A good day for Intel, I guess...

Oh the Dell power brick!

Lost your charger for your laptop or left it on the train? Just let me dig through the bin of old bricks and cloverleaf cables.

Want a spare charger for home working? Same bin.

About the only thing you could get wrong with those was using a Laptop brick to try and run a docking station and even then it mostly worked, just didn't charge the laptop.

I miss those days.

Windows 11 usage stats within touching distance of... XP

MisterHappy
Facepalm

Re: Win11 Hijacks - or Premier League Football?

I'd like a checkbox for "Corporate Install" so I don't have to remove "XBox Game Bar", etc from the image!

MisterHappy

Re: The actual OS is fine

Said it before & will probably say it again in a month or so.

80-90% of users just want the desktop icons in the same place & to do the same thing, they don't care about the OS or the GUI.

"Most corporate users could also be switched to Linux or a Mac with little or any OS retraining. But there may be massive retraining on the applications they use." - Depends on the business, a lot of our required software has no Linux equivalent so we are tied to Window.

Creator of SSLPing, a free service to check SSL certs, downs tools

MisterHappy
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Pingu

Windows Server 2008R2 is currently getting security updates & will continue to do so for a few more months... IF you paid for the 3rd year of extended support.

Having said that there is a bit of a scramble to get rid of our last couple.

The march of Macs into the enterprise: Demand is on the increase

MisterHappy
Facepalm

Re: How do I use my Macbook here??

Would that be less resources needed to add MAC support to a fully managed Windows environment with 100s of applications in use across the whole estate?

I don't even know if there is an NHS spine client for a MAC, let alone how we would get any of the other stuff working on one.

MisterHappy

How do I use my Macbook here??

The usual answer is, "Register on the staff wi-fi and then use that to get to AVD, here's a link."

We have 7 MACs in our estate that are joined to the network, all in use by graphical/arty people. Most of the client software in use across the estate will not run on a MAC & no, not everything is available in a browser.

"I must have a MAC!!", the response is usually, "Why?". We are a 99% Windows environment & manage 8000+ PCs/Laptops, we have neither the time or inclination to support MACs.

I imagine that if we were 99% Apple then we would have the same reaction to someone bringing in a Window laptop.

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

MisterHappy

8000+ PCs/Laptops

The main drivers for any upgrade cycle for us tends to be what is the benefit & how much of a PITA will it be.

Having completed the Win10 rollout to various PCs and Laptops, replacing where needed, we know exactly how much of a pain it will be and are looking at the EOL for Windows 10 as the time to upgrade, we have a stable image with 3rd party software supported by the vendors so why change anything?

MS will probably offer extended support in line with Win7 so buying that will give us an extra year.

Notepad Dark Mode and Android apps arrive on Windows 11

MisterHappy

I expect this will be unpopular but...

I have to disagree on this one, MS have a good understanding of how 80-90% of their user base works.

Most people simply don't care, as long as the 5 or 6 icons they always use are in the same place on the desktop, they are happy. They don't care about UI changes or Feature updates. Does the internet work, does Facebook work & in a work environment, do the applications work the same way as they did?

We are the ones that make up the other 10-20% and we do care (In varying amounts).

I just want a checkbox at install for "Corporate or Home" so I don't have to mess around removing XBox game bar before imaging 7500+ machines.

Page: