Posts by Steve C#

European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab

The Japanese are suppossed to START vaccinating in 3 months on April 1st.

The CIA's 'entire' collection of UFO records has been made available for you to sigh at

Re: Too Little, Too Late

I think you are thinking of Jimmy Carter, he claims to have seen a UFO.

El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail

Where I used to work we had a Project Manager who insisted in storing her old email in the "Deleted" folder. She was constantly complaining that her email was not working properly. I told her it was the 30,000 emails in the Deleted folder that was causing the problem but she refused to listen. The Exchange admin had a policy in force that blocked PST file creation. The two system admins there proved the Peter Principle to be true.

Staff sacked after security sees 'suspect surfer' script of shame

This is why we have firewalls

We have a WatchGuard firewall to protect our network and to protect users from doing stupid things that will get them into trouble. At one of my former employers a senoir vice president was let go for accessing porn websites.

Who fancies a six-core, 128GB RAM, 8TB NVMe … laptop?

Should be a great CAD machine...

I just received two P7530s from Dell. We are going to use them to run SolidWorks. It is important to properly configure these machines for the best bang for the bucks. I was able to configure them for right around 3 grand and I will like to see how they work out.

IBM fired me because I'm not a millennial, says axed cloud sales star in age discrim court row

No surprise here

I do senior level IT helpdesk work and was hired into my present position sight unseen. On my resume I left off my non-IT work experience and MBA. When I showed up I could tell they were surprised, they probably had my age off by 20-25 years. But they needed an experienced person fast and the interviews had been by phone. I was replacing a much younger tech who could never get anything done on time and was from stories I was told rather immature and not customer service savvy. I know what I am doing, out of 16 people in the companywide IT department I completed the most work tickets the last quarter with high customer satisfaction.

My point being is this. In IT there is extensive, unjustified age dicrimination. HR and their lawyers can always point to some bogus reasons why they will let an older employee go. One company I used to work for had HR people that were ALSO lawyers, they were NOT part of the legal department. At that same company my manager complained that I was making too much money as the Lead Helpdesk Tech a few months before I was let go. They axed 1/3 of the IT department one day to cut a million dollars out of the budget. Security had been one of my areas of expertise there and a few years later they were hit by a massive and expensive ransomware attack. What goes around comes around.

USB-C for Surface owners arrives in form of a massive dongle

Why even bother reporting on the Surface?

The last two companies I have worked at have banned any further purchases of MS Surfaces. One of these companies actually does work for Microsoft. The MS Surfaces are so unreliable (constant blue screens) and unrepairable that it was a waste of employee's time and the company's money.

1 in 5 STEM bros whinge they can't catch a break in tech world they run

Best person hired and promoted?

I do not care what you are as long as you are the best and most competent person. Unfortunately I have seen companies hire and promote people due to their physical characteristics instead. Too many companies think is more important to do that then to have the very best employees. Racism or sexism of any kind is just stupid.

Wi-Fi sex toy with built-in camera fails penetration test

Check this out

Guess what I just found:

https://www.amazon.com/Svakom-Siime-Wireless-Lighted-Camera/dp/B00UAM114M

Fun, no reviews yet....

Software bug sets free thousands of US prisoners too early

Same old story in Washington State

I live in Washington State. The state and local governments have been run for many years by incompetent, very politically correct, bureaucrats that are constantly being sued for their screw-ups. Rarely is anyone fired/sacked and they are often promoted. This is especially true for WA State Child Protective Services, their total in lawsuits paid out was over $150M a year ago. This does not include active or unresolved lawsuits.

Another example, the WA State Legislature and Democrat Governor are currently trying to find a way to impeach the WA State Auditor, a Democrat. He was indicted for federal income tax evasion, lying to investigators, concealing millions of dollars, and making repeated false statements.

This issue was probably bad programming of the software and not the software itself. Yes, blame the software, not the incompetent personnel. The real crime here is that the Department of Corrections has know about this for years and has kept it hushed up. Why release the news just before Christmas? Well, it is between elections and a good time to bury the news...

Tacking on new prison time should be done only if the convict released early is once again in prison, either due to a new conviction or a probation violation. The goal should be reform of the individual and not punishment for punishment sake. But then, bureaucrats don't think that way.