Posts by Paul IT

Uncle Sam mulls policing social media of all would-be citizens

Re: If you don't have

Do we have to report that we are ElReg readers/contributers?

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

Re: Chatbot from Hell

I would add Veronica, the RealVNC Virtual Assistant to a Chatbot from Hell list.

Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan

Re: Meanwhile in Zürich...

Back in 1996, we flew from Edinburgh to London Heathrow for a BUNAC conference on a Saturday morning with plans for the Saturday evening festivities to include a disco/cèilidh.

One of my colleagues brought with him his full scottish regalia including his kilt and the small knife known as a Skean Dhu within his carry-on luggage.

No problem getting through Edinburgh airport security and after a great weekend of eating, singing, drinking and dancing, we made it back to Heathrow on the Sunday afternoon.

On going through security, alarms were set off and my colleague was taken away by security, not to be seen until we were boarded.

The little knife caused a fair bit of trouble and was handed to the pilot for safekeeping and returned when we landed at Edinburgh.

What a weekend !

Grey Skype icon in the system tray - where is the startup process?

Grey Skype icon in the system tray - where is the startup process?

Recently, I have a new Microsoft Windows 10 annoyance - the Skype icon in the system tray appears in grey and waits to be clicked on.

I cannot find how this process gets started not via Start up folders, HKLM and HKCU regkeys, not via the normal Scheduled tasks and not found in Services.

I can bring it up in Task Manager and select disable but it would be good to know how this process originates from on Windows 10 and remove it.

The other new annoyance is the Windows 10 remote desktop into another Windows 10 computer always sets the background to black and I have to change the colour to something less dark.

Any ideas on how to prevent Windows 10 remote desktop sessions automatically setting black backgrounds. I do have a very high res laptop which may be the cause as I suspect the remote session can't cope above 1920 x 1080 resolutions on remote desktops but then shows it at the max it can provide the 1920 x 1080 with a black background.

Thanks for any useful advice.

PC makers: Intel CPU shortages are here to stay ... for six months

Re: Pah... when I was a kid...

In 1997 Flew to USA, to purchase a Matrox Mystique 4MB graphics card as you couldn't get them in the UK. A bargain at $250 (not including the return flight).

The glorious uncertainty: Backup world is having a GDPR moment

Re: I think you'll find...

In regards to Social Services retention periods...

The following records are subject to statutory requirements:

Case records relating to children who have been placed, to be retained until the 75th anniversary of the child’s birth or for 15 years after death if the child dies before age 18 (Arrangements for placement of Children (General) Regulations 1999). GDPR that one!

Escrow you, Apple! Ireland expects Cupertino to cough up to €13bn

Re: the remaining 26 are the republic of Ireland.

Amusing YouTube video about The European Union Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg

User filed fake trouble tickets to take helpful sysadmin to lunches

No lunch for me

I was the lead technical person to convert 150 Groupwise mailboxes to Exchange 2007, performed a 16 hour work day /overnight to ensure the work completed successfully and by 7:30am mail flow and transfer was successfully working.

No overtime payment for me (salaried worker) but my boss was taken out for a very nice lunch by the MD of the newly installed Exchange server. My boss thanked me for his nice lunch. No pay rise or benefits, so I moved on.

PC repair chap lets tech support scammer log on to his PC. His Linux PC

Story - could be fake news?

I read about someone who pretended to be attacked with a gun during the scam and made the gun shot noises audible enough for the caller (scammer) to hear then asked the scammer to call the emergency services and made sounds like they were dying slowly loss of blood. Encouraging the scammer to write down the last voice messages such as please let my mum know I love her etc...

And finally to say, please stay on the line as you are a witness in this crime.

Why does Skype only show me from the chin down?

Re: Ethernet fan out

Not in use but still hanging from the wall in our building - not quite able to reach up to it to pull down.

King's College London staggers from outage, replaces infrastructure services head

Re: King's seeks a Business Continuity Manager

But it is a temporary / fixed term position - Obviously not a long term solution....

Joke alert - The university takes the safety of its people and the protection of its business very seriously and the Business Continuity Manager will play a pivotal role in the development of a strategy to ensure that day-to-day operations support these aims.

A serious Business Continuity Manager isn't going to apply for a temporary position and the pay is too low. This role is vital to the business/organisation and yet peanuts are on offer.

… in a loop. Cisco warns Nexus 3000 upgrade could get you stuck ...

Re: Meanwhile I've been waiting 18 Hours for WIndows Update to start updating

An early Christmas present for you...

Stop WU service

Download and install the following KB updates for Windows 7 in this order

3020369

3125574

3172605

(May need to reboot after each one and then stop WU service again)

This fix has been around a few months.

Sysadmin told to spend 20+ hours changing user names, for no reason

Re: Push back and automate

Rob - you are right - the problem with usernames and people's personal lives are HR.

Marriage can cause problems when a username incorporates their maiden name, but the biggest problem is divorce, when they absolutely want to get rid of their previous surname from aspects of company business including their AD account and SQL databases.

It is also not pleasant when previous documents that had been written by said persons include their path/user/full name on the footers of documents of years gone by and requested (ordered by HR) that these are updated by IT. No f*cking way.

Sysadmin figures out dating agency worker lied in his profile

Setting passwords for international users

A cruel but fun game is setting passwords with a £ sign for users with US keyboards.

£ = Alt 0163

Definitely a Friday afternoon

Microsoft still working to fix Outlook sync issues

Fixed Hotmail on Outlook 2013

Yesterday, I was helping a lady where Outlook 2013 had EAS connections to two Hotmail accounts. One of the Hotmail accounts was connecting and syncing and the other could not.

Could not explain or understand the issue at all.

So created an alias in outlook.com for the faulty EAS Hotmail account and created a new Outlook user profile and able to sync Hotmail using outlook.office365.com exchange account using the new alias email address. Added the other Hotmail account, which also used outlook.office365.com and both started working again.

The lady received an email from Microsoft last week about recreating a new Outlook email profile because of Office365 reconfiguration of Hotmail but I wasn't expecting it to break it so soon.

The Reg seeks online community manager

Wrong medium for contact

Why don't you post the job on Twitter - I don't use such a modern fangled device - but if you can get the best response in the limited number of characters, then that would be someone of character for the El Reg team.

HPE crams unloved software down Brits' throats – then charges them $9bn to swallow it

Break out the COBOL books

000010 identification division.

000020 program-id. stock-file-set-up.

000030 author. MicroFocus.

000040 environment division.

000050 configuration section.

000060 source-computer. mds-800.

000070 object-computer. mds-800.

000075 special-names. console is crt.

000080 input-output section.

000090 file-control.

Oh it brings back the memories....

Don't use a VPN in United Arab Emirates – unless you wanna risk jail and a $545,000 fine

SSTP anyone?

SSTP uses SSL certificates - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Socket_Tunneling_Protocol - Could the authorities tell that you are VPN's or browsing secure websites?

It's really useful when hotels crack down on VPN outbound connections.

Is Satellite broadband affected by these rules?

Nuisance caller fined a quarter of a million pounds by the ICO

Go after the owners / directors

This is where ICO needs to grow up. Fine the owners and directors as they are the bad people not the company. I agree with KaneSama with the fine being £1 call for every scam call with the recovered assets split between UK Treasury, ICO and CitizensAdvice. This would be an incentive to collect the fines.

These popup companies needs to be brought under control.

Now... who is tackling the India scam syndicate callers...

Brexit: Time to make your plans, UK IT biz

Re: The Problem with the EU

Been known for a long time..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11139515/600000-a-week-paid-out-in-child-benefit-to-parents-overseas.html

quote "In 2014, Figures show that £31million was paid to families of children living overseas last year. In all 20,400 Child Benefit claims were made, covering 34,268 children – two thirds of whom are living in Poland. "

Although the child benefit cost is around £11 bn and my maths may be a bit wrong, around 0.002% goes abroad, wouldn't it better to spend it on people who need it in the UK?

The Problem with the EU

My issues with the EU include...

Allowing UK child benefit payments to kids who don't even live in the UK

Unlimited migration from any EU nation into the UK

The EU does not know how it spends the money it receives for its budget, something like 4% is unaccounted for.

The EU MEP's shuffle between Brussels and Strasbourg and is a waste of time and money, something that EU parliament should stop.

Voting for prisoners and many other rules should not be dictated by Brussels, and as such if we stay in, every looney EU rule will be voted in by majority voting and we just have to take the hits.

These are some of my reasons for not staying in the EU and if Brexit happens, then David Cameron should be kicked out and get someone in who can negotiate a new deal with Europe.

BT: We're killing the dabs brand. Oh and can customers re-register to buy on our site?

Re: From the founder of Dabs

Dave.

Any chance of resurrecting dabsv2.com and regaining the customers, like me who still use the dabs.com mug.

Paul IT

Sir Michael Lyons tells .uk registry Nominet: Time to grow up

Scumbags every day

I used to drive past their offices in Oxford every day and wished I could throw a brick through their posh offices as they were not for profit, but all the cars in car park were Mercedes, bmw and audi. In the past, the high costs of changing a name on a domain name were ridiculous and it was obvious where the money was spent. At least now the cars in the car park include Mini's and Fiesta's.

Waving Microsoft's Windows 10 stick won't help Intel's Gen 6 core

Re: Let me get this straight...?

Interestingly if your phone is lifted from your coat and walked away - you are locked out of your computer to report a theft... Needs some further thinking

Microsoft’s Get Windows 10 nagware shows signs of sentience

Prepare for disaster...

The hole that MSFT is digging is getting bigger and wider, please can someone, anyone tell them to STOP.

We can't clear this s**t upgrade off quick enough.

I am expecting floods of tears and sad stories when the upgrade takes 8 hours and fails.

Outsourcer didn't press ON switch, so Reg reader flew 15 hours to do the job

Hamilton to Lancaster

Back in 1997, I was asked to drive from work to a travel shop to fix a printer issue.

The staff had moved the PC and Printer and reported that the printer parallel cable would not go back in the same slot on the computer.

Drove down in my little Fiat Panda to find the parallel cable connector had the screw holder attached.

Two minutes later the PC was able to print again, when the screw holder was reattached to the PC.

On my way back, I decided that this was time to move jobs. A 6 hour round trip for two screws.

iPad data entry errors caused plane to strike runway during takeoff

Weigh Station...

Airports could implement a weigh station on the taxi route to the start of the runway and display the weight on an electronic board. This would resolve a few aircraft crashes as they has been a few episodes of Air Crash Investigation where the crew got the weight wrong and weight was a contributing factor to their plane crashing.

Ex-BT boffin Cochrane blasts telco's 'wholly inadequate' broadband vision

Look into the future

I would love to see Openreach split off from BT Group and allow it to open its infrastructure to all.

Mobile operators, community groups, local councils could collaborate on improving the fibre in their locality without spending millions on BT overpriced charges.

I would be prepared to DIY a trench through my garden, for fibre to the neighbourhood, if the outcome included I was able to get FTTP.

Once speeds reach 1Gb/s to homes, then I would consider that should be fast enough.

BT boss in shock 'bigger is better' claim as £12.5bn EE bid heats up

Yes you can have EE but give up Openreach

What about a this suggestion to say that yes you can have EE but you have to give up Openreach.

That would be a win win win win win win for all.

RIP Windows RT: Microsoft murders ARM Surface, Nokia tablets

Sad day

I like the Lumia 2520, its simple and the 4G option with EE means today is not a good day.

The down side was the limited apps in the store and thus could not get GotYa to be installed and with BT swallowing EE, expect 4G to become 3 times more expensive and less stable.

The tablet had the MS Office applications without the Office 365 overpriced subscriptions

So real work could be done on it with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

A sad day.

Soz, web devs: Google snatches its Wallet off the table

Too late to the party

I offered Google Wallet as part of payment on my website, along side PayPal and not one person paid using Google Wallet except Google when they added 1p to verify the account.

I guess PayPal using their catch line "People Rule" have the market share.

Google does do some good things but were too late to the online payment party.

Holy cow! Fasthosts outage blamed on DDoS hack attack AND Windows 2003 vuln

Routine and Extensive Security

"As a result of our routine and extensive security monitoring, Fasthosts today identified a vulnerability specific to part of its Windows 2003 shared web server platform."

What do they mean by routine - once every couple of years or so - I suspect the vulnerability had been previously advertised by MS and patches made available.

BT: Consumers and cost cutting save the day

Re: Small increase in punters

Bunbury - I see your point but other utilities such as Water and Electricity (and Network Rail & Highways Agency) have done major nation improvements and are enthusiastic about spending the taxpayers (alibi home bills) money.

BT were kicked until they were forced to setup FTTC - whereas some other nations were already 5-10 years ahead with broadband equivalent internet access.

Hardly pioneering more like protectionism.

I just think the OpenReach operation should be franchised off and competed like the train operators are to open access internet for all.

Re: Small increase in punters

Thanks for the down votes - I would have thought everyone would like faster broadband.

Phil O' - That's what exactly Managing Directors said when BT brought out ISDN - why do we need to so much bandwidth when 56K is enough.

Similar to what BT stated at the HoL committee on broadband speeds in 2011 when BT was encouraged to rollout 2Mb to every neighbourhood.

Where would Amazon / Tesno shopping be now if those MD's had the popular view that 56K was fast enough!!

If the speeds were faster - there would be a lot more consumer businesses on line.

The economy would be stronger and more people in work.

For those who do not have access to Cable, I cannot see why you need a copper line to have fibre. It makes no sense. Even in new build houses, they are laying copper WHYWHYWHY - Just put the f'king fibre to the new houses. This is an example of BT gone wrong.

BT are putting up line prices not because they are more expensive to maintain, but because people and businesses are making less land line calls. If BT can't cope with providing a national infrastructure suitable for this century, then give someone else an opportunity to improve this nation.

Small increase in punters

There's nothing but a sinking ship here from BT gaining 3000 new customers (88,000 - 85,000), that's less than 9 day - the sales team must be piss bored.

When will OpenReach be brought back under Government control and outsourced properly with 5 year contracts to the anyone but BT?

If the franchise of OpenReach was done properly, Aluminium & Copper lines would have been ripped up 20 years ago and every one would be on Gigabit home connections.

BT you have had your time.

Hungary's internet tax cannot be allowed to set a precedent, says EC

There is a point

I believe that email should be taxed when you send. A charge of 5 pence per email sender would bother anyone and this should go towards a greener society as no one pays for the power used to transmit the email through the hundreds if not thousands bits of kit needed for the delivery of the email.

All email should be authenticated and thus taxed. It won't reduce spam but may deter some spammers.