Posts by Mike Friedman

No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data

Sure Elon. That's going to make up for losing 75% of your ad revenue because you allowed fascists back on Twitter.

Muskrat is the poster child for rich guys with no one around them who says "No. That's a stupid idea. Don't do that."

Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture

Hubby calls this the “forced march to fun.”

Two arrested in massive $575m cryptocurrency 'Ponzi scheme'

Re: Charles Ponzi

PT Barnum's (or not, it's not clear who first said it) adage about a "sucker born every minute" is no less true than it was in the 1870s. People are badly educated about money and still believe in get rich quick schemes.

Re: Crypto is a ponzi scheme...

Not only that but it's always a ponzi/pyramid scheme. By design. The whole thing is a scam. Anyone who invests in it now needs therapy or they can just give their money to me. The result will be the same.

Sage denies misleading customers over perpetual licensing, users not happy

Licensing? Clear? HAHAHAHAHAHA

SAGE isn't even the worst. They're terrible, but so many companies are far worse.

But pretending that your licensing mode is "clear" is absurd. All of us know that.

Intel to sell Massachusetts R&D site, once home to its only New England fab

I was living in Boston when DEC and Wang were dying in the late 80s and early 90s.

Wang's huge headquarters (five or six buildings), in Lowell (built there to spur business in an old mill town that had seen. better days) ended up selling for $525,000. It had cost $60M to build.

They just couldn't catch a break.

The perfect crime – undone by the perfect email backups

None of you has ever been yelled at because some stupid executive thought "deleted items" was his archive?

That was fun.

I was once the IT manager of a now defunct taxi company in New Orleans, USA.

One day I got a call from a police detective on a Monday afternoon, enquiring if he could look at the tape of our outside security cameras on the side street. Someone had been murdered a block away the previous Saturday night.

I said "sure," and arranged for him to come down. When he arrived, I pulled up the footage, only to discover that the cameras did NOT HAVE INFRARED. So about 10 cameras were taking video all night. Of nothing. The previous IT manager was apparently a total idiot.

I had to replace all of the outdoor cameras, which involved climbing a 20' ladder. Did I mention that I REALLY don't like heights. Yeah. It was a fun job.

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

That guy has now been CEO of 12 companies.

All of them failed because they did lunkhead things like this.

He's never figured out that he is the common denominator.

Elon Musk wants to take Twitter public again 'within 3 years'

He's already bored with his new toy and he hasn't even bought it yet.

Happy birthday, Windows Vista: Troubled teen hits 15

Anyone who thinks Vista had any redeeming features never had to use it. It was a giant steaming pile of crap from start to finish.

When civilisation ends, a Xenix box will be running a long-forgotten job somewhere

I really hope he charged them a LOT of money to fix that. I would've charged £25,000 to fix it. Just because it wasn't my problem anymore. I've done a lot of these in my day.

My favorite was the one where I started as IT manger in 2005 of a video production company which had never had one before. Just part time contractors who dropped in now and then. During the second week I was setting up a new email server for them. I had gone to run an errand at lunch and got a panicked phone call saying email was down. I got back to the office a few minutes later and it was the exact same problem. Disk was full. I cleared years of old logs and rebooted it and it was fine.

For my trouble I was fired the next day. They told the unemployment people that I "crashed the email server on purpose." I told the woman "why on earth would I create more work for myself?" Which made her laugh, and I got my benefits. I later found out that the people who ran the company were nuts. One of them had fired an entire department of people over the intercom once before.

Activision shareholders demand Kotick's head after CEO 'failed' to take claims of staff sex assault seriously

Of course he knew. No one believes he didn’t. But even if he didn’t know he should be fired for THAT. The behavior is so egregious.

My favorite detail is that they’re going to ban drinking booze at work but haven’t done so yet. Never get drunk at work. Why is this complicated?

Internet Explorer 3.0 turns 25. One of its devs recalls how it ended marriages – and launched amazing careers

And yet, IE 3.0 was complete crap. Unsigned Active X controls that run without your knowledge!? SURE! I'll sign up for that!

They should've just called it "Virus Vector 3.0." That's exactly what it was.

84-year-old fined €250,000 for keeping Nazi war machines – including tank – in basement

If that's your life's work, then maybe you should've gotten a different life. Doing something useful.

Activision Blizzard accused by California watchdog of fostering 'frat boy' culture, fatally toxic atmosphere

Re: smelling like a witch hunt?

When men see behavior such as that alleged in the complaint (and women's public airing of their experiences) and they do nothing, they are complicit.

One of the allegations involved the head of the WoW franchise having to be physically pulled off female subordinates (more than one!!!!!) that he was hitting on at a conference.

"During a company event (an annual convention called Blizz Con) Afrasiabi would hit on female employees, telling them he wanted to marry them, attempting to kiss them, and putting his arms around them. This was in plain view of other male employees, including supervisors, who had to intervene and pull him off female employees."

This isn't "frat boy behavior," this is sexual assault IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF PEOPLE. And nothing happened to the guy, but he eventually left the company.

https://kotaku.com/blizzard-harasser-from-lawsuit-is-still-all-over-world-1847345457

If you see a woman being harassed by her boss or you hear men making disparaging comments about female co-workers and you do nothing then you're part of the problem. Why is this difficult for men to understand?

I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google

I continually am amazed that people feel the need to put these screeds out in the world.

And then they're shocked when people flip out. It's bizarre.

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

Melinda Gates has still not appropriately apologized to the world for Microsoft Bob.

We're ALL WAITING MELINDA.

Docking £500k commission from top SAS salesman was perfectly legal, rules judge

Whether it's legally allowed and whether the company SHOULD do something are two very different things. Sure sounds like a way to discourage your sales reps from pursuing big deals.

Why would a sales person go out of their way to land the big sale if the company's going to nickel and dime them on the commission? It's penny wise and pound foolish.

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

Casual misogyny is everywhere.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Trump ban means the service has failed

Oh Jack. You really are a douchebag. You could've stopped this years ago, but you chose not to. Because you're greedy. Donald Trump was violating your TOS before he became President, but he drove traffic to you so you didn't care.

So spare me your crocodile tears, whining and pearl clutching. It's disgusting.

We didn't collude with Twitter to throw Parler off our servers, says AWS in court filing

Considering what we know now about Parler’s lack of any kind of security, they deserved to die.

Google Mail outage: Did you see that error message last night? Why the 'account does not exist' response is a worry

You get what you pay for. In this case nothing.

When I stopped hosting my own mail I started using a web host called Bluehost. It has its quirks but it’s never gone down on me in 9 years. I pay about $8/month for a bunch of domains. They’re nice people too.

Adios California, Oracle the latest tech firm to leave California for the wide open (low tax) Lone Star State

Wait until people move to Texas and find out their property taxes are 5x higher than in California. When there’s no income tax the money for schools has to come from Somewhere.

Apple's M1: the fastest and bestest ever silicon = revolution? Nah, there's far more interesting stuff happening in tech that matters to everyone

Wait. What? Apple wants to continue to make oodles of money by selling computers and phones?

<GASP> HOW! DARE! THEY!?

I use Apple products because I like them. They're well made and they last a long time (although Windows is better at this now) so they tend to be a good use of my limited money. I'm not an apologist for them and they sometimes do silly things. But expecting a well established, phenomenally profitable company to change its business model is also incredibly silly. In 1997, no one expected Apple to survive, let alone become the largest corporation in history. They're apparently doing something right.

Ever had a bogus call from someone claiming to be the IRS? A tax scam ringleader just got sent down for 20 years

In prisons in the US only pay phones are allowed and they are very expensive.

Engineer admits he wiped 456 Cisco WebEx VMs from AWS after leaving the biz, derailed 16,000 Teams accounts

Wow. StichFix must be really hard up for IT talent if they're willing to keep on a person who plead guilty to sabotage. Remind me never to use their services for anything.

I spent years as a freelance IT consultant and several times after I parted ways (occasionally unpleasantly) with a company I noticed that I was still getting important emails for them or had access to one of their systems. I informed them right away and deleted the saved password.

Why? Because I'm not an unethical douchebag.

In deepest darkest Surrey, an on-prem SAP system running 17-year-old software is about to die....

Wow. 16 years old? And never been upgraded? That's insane.

Makes me think of the client I had who was running their entire business on a database written in 1993. Yes, they were still running 16 bit Windows in 2008.

Taxi for Uber: Ride-hailing app giant stripped of licence to operate in London

Re: re. "Passenger safety is not our priority"

What profits? Uber loses money hand over fist, and has no roadmap to reaching profitability. There are two routes, raise prices or squeeze drivers. They’ve squeezed drivers hard. Only one way to go now.

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

It’s really simple. People think (rightly) that this is an insult. When the affected people say that, stop using the word.

It’s not “political correctness,” it’s respect. Be kind to people and respect them as human beings. Why is that so difficult ?

Tesla's autonomous lane changing software is worse at driving than humans, and more

It's always hilarious when someone criticizes Tesla. They never admit a problem. The problem is always the user.

Clearly this stuff is not ready for prime time. It's certainly not ready for an inexperienced or elderly driver.

Uh-oh .io: Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains as UN condemns British empire hangover

Because the people who lived there at the time had no say in the matter. They were being used as pawns by the great powers and by Mauritius.

And because the fruits of colonialism are always a mess. The British have found this over and over again but they still can't learn the lessons they should (Brexit is ultimately about Britain not being able to come to terms with the fact that it's a medium sized country with limited power). The lesson should be, don't blunder into someone else's home, "claim" it for your Queen and then control the place by evicting the people who live there. Is that really so complicated? Just because you can doesn't mean it's right or legal. You would most certainly not like it if someone did that to you. Because these people lived in a remote area and were poor and brown doesn't make it right.

Overzealous n00b takes out point-of-sale terminals across the UK on a Saturday afternoon

If I was that AS/400 admin I would’ve thanked him for pointing out a glaring hole in the permissions. An end user shouldn’t have been able to bring the whole thing crashing down.

It’s unfair to blame the new, inexperienced guy for your cock up.

Customer: We fancy changing a 25-year-old installation. C'mon, it's just one extra valve... Only wafer thin...

The answer to this problem is absolutely clear to me.

A can of petrol and a flamethrower. Burn it ALL DOWN.

What the #!/%* is that rogue Raspberry Pi doing plugged into my company's server room, sysadmin despairs

That's exactly what I would've done with this. Unplugged it, put it in my desk (locked of course) and waited to see who claimed it.

And then given them a talking to about putting things in MY server room that I don't know about.

Finally, San Francisco cleans up the crap from its streets – yes, all those fscking scooters

San Franciscans have responded to this stupidity by simply chucking them into dumpsters.

It's not good that they then get thrown in the landfill but the companies deserve this. They're awful people.

Tech support made the news after bomb squad and police showed up to 'defuse' leaky UPS

Um.....guys.... DO NOT take batteries like this to “the dump.”

LEAD IS POISONOUS. It should never be put in a landfill! All lead acid batteries should be recycled.

Why is Bitcoin fscked? Here are three reasons: South Korea, India... and now China clamps down on cryptocurrencies

Re: Nowhere near corrected

I'm sure your work would love to know that they're supporting your hobby/side business with their power and resources.

90 per cent of the UK's NHS is STILL relying on Windows XP

There's absolutely no excuse for this.

I can't believe that 90% of NHS Trusts have some app they cannot move off of Windows XP. This is sheer laziness on the part of IT staff. Yes, doing a huge migration project is a pain in the as, but now you're really in the fire. I'll bet you their backups suck as well.

Virgin America mid-flight panic after moron sets phone Wi-Fi hotspot to 'Samsung Galaxy Note 7'

The guy (you know it was a guy) should've had his return ticket cancelled. With no refund.

The guy (you know it was a guy) should've had his return flight cancelled with no refund.

How much of one year's Californian energy use would wipe out the drought?

This is silly.

California is full of incredibly bright people. This has been though of before (in face a large desalination plan went on line this year in San Diego and Santa Barbara brought its 1980s vintage plant out of mothballs this year). Others have been talked about.

But what exactly would you plan to do with all of that salt? And whatever other impurities might be pulled out? It's generally mixed back with some water and put back into the ocean which is not without its impact on wildlife and ocean ecosystems.

Desalination makes some sense in places like Israel or Saudi Arabia where water is quite scarce, and California will probably have to use it more in the future, but implying that Californians are dense and stupid because they haven't considered this is insulting and just plain wrong. It's complicated and very expensive to run destination plants. Of course if the energy is produced by solar in some way that reduces the environmental impact, but there is no such thing as a free lunch.

British people don't always have all of the best engineering ideas in the world. Trust me, I've owned a British car (a 1969 Morris Mini Minor).

Burned by a MacBook

make a backup...every day

I feel for you in terms of how you were dealt with. No one likes to be treated like crap by any company, especially when you've put a lot of money into something you depend on every day. It really does sound like you got a lemon (and I've seen those from every manufacturer there is, and support is often just as bad).

But I have to chide you for not making backups. With 500 GB USB drives available for $100 (in the US) there's no excuse whatsoever for being without a daily backup.