Posts by johnfbw

Google to wrap up Christmas Island with new subsea cable

Re: Cartographers unite!

I was wondering if I can get a head designer job at Google. My mum once hung a picture of mine on the fridge - I think that is enough credentials

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

Former consultant at DCC

Going to get buried...

I used to work for DCC and know this report is not entirely fair on them

The reason they have to use contractors for routine roles is the contract with the government gives an incredibly short cancellation period of the whole contract (less than 30days I think) which is incompatible with employees so they must take them at consultant rates.

It does have massive issues in other areas (and certainly didn't pay me way above market) and the whole smart meter philosophy has virtually no benefits.

In fact the only true benefits I could establish are

1) remote switching off (which is essentially illegal)

2) time based pricing (which will become relevant as renewable energy becomes more prevalent)

3) smart meters should theoretically be able to trace leaks and stolen energy down to streets in a real time basis. Though they haven't got anywhere near getting this one right

4) no need to manually read meters. Which can only really stop if #3 is implement because meter readers should be able to point out obvious cases of bypassed meters

Re: Consultants

Whilst this is true for many companies I used to work for DCC and know it is not entirely true for them.

The reason they have to use contractors for routine roles is the contract with the government gives an incredibly short cancellation period of the contract (less than 30days I think) which is incompatible with employees so they must take them at consultant rates

If Britain is so bothered by China, why do these .gov.uk sites use Chinese ad brokers?

Re: ".... reasonable to assume most UK citizens wouldn't ....,"

British subjects ceased to be in 1982 - now we are citizens

Re: An idea

This one will do it:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/404853222191?chn=ps&_ul=DE&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&amdata=enc%3A1__nQvjzYRMCzXOVFYsJZ3A32&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=707-134425-41852-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=404853222191&targetid=1716911581359&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9068330&poi=&campaignid=17943303986&mkgroupid=140642150118&rlsatarget=pla-1716911581359&abcId=9301060&merchantid=7364532&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw26KxBhBDEiwAu6KXtyrOIKcunFXwl7-0uHU6QQwQXyX3cr0GhhxV38hkpqpVcygoWpvsYBoCLtUQAvD_BwE

Now to find the discs...

Fujitsu set to be preferred bidder in UK digital ID scheme

Re: More control freak bollocks

You weren't 'stateless' you were passport-less. One is a lack of citizenship, one is piece of paper.

Also if you working in Asia and needed to visit other countries for business you can apply for a second British passport.

Current turnaround time for new UK passports sent to Germany is 10 calendar days (3 weeks ago got first child passport and a first adult passport - my renewal was done in the passport office a few months earlier with a weeks notice)

SAP ordered to pay $26.4M in South Africa energy firm dispute

Re: What happened?

Any time the Guptas are mentioned in SA bribery and corruption aren't too far away

What happened?

It doesn't really say what happened.

But the internal corruption probe in SAP; "SAP has a zero tolerance..." and "Gupta family" pretty much says everything.

What if Microsoft had given us Windows XP 2024?

Windows XP 2024 Pro also supports integrated OneDrive, so now you can

easily accidentally store your sensitive data on a US server held my a company that *promises* it won't look, rather than storing on your hard disk

'Corrupt' cop jailed for tipping off pal to EncroChat dragnet

Re: I suspect the one word answer is "idiot"

Exactly - the Official Secrets Act is the law of the land and applies to everyone. Signing it is basically the same as signing a companies data policy - it is just to prove you read it, not to exempt you from it if you didn't

You can buy personal info of US military staff from data brokers for just 12 cents a pop

Re: US privacy law incoming then?

It would be very American to bring in privacy laws, not to protect people, but to protect the military! It is scary how much data is freely distributed about people in the US - and all of it could be used for potential blackmail - not just for the military

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

Re: 75 percent ... would be put off ... if they knew prices were going to rise mid-contract

6 pages is not a summary

You've just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription

Re: Device no longer working as sold

Read the fine print that is inside the packaging or not displayed on the website you purchased it from. You can't be held to conditions you weren't aware of before purchasing

Re: "the sudden imposition of subscription fees"

I do have a 'smart' washing machine and it does have two advantages - 1. I can set it to finish when I get home (if I don't know when I'm getting home) 2. It tells me when a load has finished if I'm not the person who loaded it (it's not like I patrol the room to monitor). both stop getting mouldy sheets.

Smart heating is useful in all but the smallest houses. There are some rooms I don't use at certain times. Why heat a bedroom during the day? Why heat the lounge in the morning if going to work. These schedules change far too much for timers (which are often daily/weekly v weekend and the overrides usually need to be manually controlled). Then of course I always forget to switch to holiday mode. A lot of it comes to the ability to centrally control the finer points without wandering around the house.

Properly managed you can significantly reduce your heating bill

...........As a complete co-incidence I actually got a message on my phone when I wrote point 2. Now I get to find out what the girlfriend set washing and then went to sleep.

Re: "the sudden imposition of subscription fees"

A Smart House is fine, its trusting a company to run it is the problem. If you have your own server (or NAS) there are plenty of devices that work with ZigBee or zwave that don't require any call home to manufacturer. Often these devices are the same price and much more customisable

I'm sure there is a genuine market for a non-cloudy smart home (or one that runs on your own purchased cloud and is just managed by an external party)

Device no longer working as sold

Return for full refund due to manufactures design mistake

Lenovo PC boss: 4 in 5 of our devices will be repairable by 2025

Thinner laptops?

Did many people really want them much thinner? Most laptops don't leave the home or office. I've owned and used many and other than the 17" ones been heavy I've always wanted performance over smaller (some even get so thin they look flimsy)

Google killing Basic HTML version of Gmail In January 2024

Google Users complain they aren't getting their monies worth!

hmmm

BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year

Re: Three

To be fair, Durham is a city with many close hills, protected areas where they can't set up masts and the buildings in the centre are often built close together. Added together with the fact it is surrounded by university students (massive data hogs) - it is always likely to be a bit of a brown spot from a mobile perspective. Having said that, I had absolutely no problems getting a fast 4G signal there two weeks ago with my o2.de SIM card, so it isn't all that bad

Russian allegedly smuggled US weapons electronics to Moscow

Re: Why bother?

Wouldn't the most telling sign of Russia's weapons superiority be the speed with which they 100% occupied Ukraine with zero casualties?

I know what you did next summer: Microsoft to kill off Xbox 360 Store

Re: "committed to supporting Xbox 360 gameplay for the foreseeable future"

They are committed to the gameplay, just not committed to supporting an 18 year old system!

As much as I hate to say it, they don't need to keep the store open considering half their customers for the Xbox Series X might not have been alive when the Xbox 360 was released!

Imagine people complaining that Apple was planning to stop support the Iphone (the original) in two years time!! (they actually stopped supporting it 13 years ago)

The price of freedom turned out to be an afternoon of tech panic

Re: I'll assume this was America

So basically they were blackmailed into a bribe over and above the bill to keep them out of prison, then their personal details were collected and circulated to many unrelated companies. This would be highly illegal in a lot of the civilized world (not to say they wouldn't do it)

Re: D'oh

Excel and Access get a lot of shit from the IT world because they don't understand that quick prototyping is often the only way forwards (often because IT can't do it). Good job you realised that Excel was just a step, not the destination

Indian authorities reject Infosys 'COVID ate my homework' excuse

Sending data sight to...

Why exactly is a keyboard app sending key strokes anywhere?

Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase

Re: For readers outsie the US

Aw 85mph. *Laughs in German*

Linux lover consumed a quarter of the network

Re: A Dozen CD ROMS? Which alternate universe Debian is this?

Funny I was thinking the same - even with today's bloatware the download (that took less time that to click on reply) is 642Mb - basically an overstuffed CDROM

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

Even reading your post makes me turn into the BOFH. Where did you bury him?

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

I've seen that too often - Germans with German letters in their passwords create big problems. Personally I try and pick special characters that are in the same place on all keyboards (so sadly no £, Z, Y)

Vodafone offers '5G Ultra' to users of very specific phones in very specific locations

I've got 300mb here and even though I can easily get the 1000mb package I can't see the need, I never saturate the connection - even when streaming multiple feeds. Bottlenecks aren't on the bit coming to my house and latency does not decrease with bandwidth

SAP admits HANA Cloud makes for multicurrency messes

Re: Close but PCE

I don't believe 70% of the world's multinationals are using S/4 HANA - I think that figure is for SAP

Starlink's rocket speeds hit a 50 megabit wall for large downloads

Re: 200mb/s for "10minutes or so" = ~15GB

Who the hell is downloading 15GB regularly enough to notice a cap? I can't remember the last time I downloaded that amount of data - including downloading ISOs. Only stupidly large COD updates get that big - but frankly once every 6 months I have to leave a download running for 10mins capped by MS - so what?

China bans Micron products after security review finds unspecified flaws

Wouldn't put it past them

It would be interesting to know whether and what they found. America is certainly not above adding spyware to it's products at home or abroad

SAP users not happy about German giant's price rises

SAP complaints start now

Every time SAP is mentioned a lot of comments from people who have no experience in it or its competitors.

(Yes the price rises are crap)

Shocks from a hairy jumper crashed a PC, but the boss wouldn't believe it

Re: "Hairy jumper"

Not sure if to upvote for the comment or downvote for the truth :(

Reddit: If you want to slurp our API to train that LLM, you better pay for it, pal

Re: They Might Not Need No Stinkin' APIs

Given the whole db is probably less than 1Tb (it is text only) I bet there are plenty of copies flying around that have walked out the office with ex-employees

CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus

Re: Easily solvable....

I think the problem is a little more involved than simple unlocking (which probably uses basic handshake like you mention). It is every single operation must be done via communication with the fob. Turn on the engine, unlock the steering wheel, go left, accelerate, stop etc. The fob would run out of batteries before you are round the first corner.

Judge grants subpoena to ID Twitter source code leaker

Re: Slightly more chilling

Why wouldn't it? Copyrighted material uploaded against the copyright holders permission and downloaded without license.

The only difference is one is code for a programme and one is code for a movie

Re: Slightly more chilling

They manage to get people who download movies, so I would assume the same principle applies

US Navy turns to hull-climbing bots to combat maintenance backlog

Setup time

I can't help wondering how much setup time is required to customize each robot for Frigate type A sub class B deck 5. Probably makes sense on the bigger ships and the more consistent items (I'm thinking outer hull) but when you have 500 different ships it is probably quicker and easier to get a cheap guy checking the deck than an expensive programmer programming to analyse this type x landing craft

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

Re: Mobile dongle and ISDN

I had a similar argument with Plusnet every time my FTTP went down - they insisted that FTTP didn't exist and I must be confused

Huge lithium discovery could end world shortages ... Oh, wait, it's in Iran

Re: Operation Iran Freedom

No worse than has been done historically - maybe, the big difference is this is happening now and can be stopped

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

Re: Avalanche

I challenged one company for their data collection policy and they said it was on their website. It was the one for using the website that categorically started they wouldn't collect the data they were asking for!

I'm not sure if the seller has any liability for agents illegally prescreening if they pass that information onwards (I know in reality they will never be charged)

Re: Avalanche

Come to Germany, some estate agents won't even show you a house until you have sent employment contracts and passports - totally illegal but the law has no clout

Re: Only the first one counts?

I think you are confusing murdering lots of people and murdering the same person lots and lots of times. One is multiple crimes, one is double jeopardy.

The article different really say what they did with the data (if anything) and I would envisage only the first scan was the collection and the rest were simply deleted..

Another RAC staffer nabbed for storing, sharing car crash data

Re: re. I shall up my opinion o them by a notch.

I wouldn't put it past them to have been 'incentivised' by a connection to one of the victims. Doesn't mean that prosecuting was wrong, just shows that they don't do it enough and need a kick up their ass

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

Re: Watch out for "multiple sites"

But it has 150 residents - how can it have a couple of posties?

British monarchy goes after Twitter, alleges rent not paid for UK base

Re: Head of Commonwealth

Given the leader of the UK is the king (an unelected position) and republicans are against that it is pretty relevant

Re: Head of Commonwealth

Exactly, the commonwealth leaders voted Charles to be head.

Guess I was down voted because people don't see the difference between nepotism and hereditary

Head of Commonwealth

Because they voted for him! (unlike all his other titles)

Seems unlikely that Musk is responsible for the complete failure of the company in three months, unless they had less than three months of operating cash and literally all revenue disappeared.

He might have had a point that he was mislead