Posts by GruntyMcPugh

Cheap, flimsy, breakable and replaceable – yup, Ikea, you'll be right at home in the IoT world

Kieren mate, some of us might like to know some more basic information about light bulbs, such as their output, and perhaps whether they are LED or CFL, 'cos at the end of the day (I'm using this literally, not as a cliche :- ) ) it gets dark, so are these mood lights, or will they fully illuminate a room, or are they dimmable,.... I guess I could let Google translate have a stab at telling me this on the .se Ikea site but that's probably more effort than I'm willing to put in, for a product I can't yet buy.

Robo-Uber T-boned, rolls onto side, self-driving rides halted

Re: Learning to deal with shitty drivers

Also what the driver is wearing, baseball caps, hoodies, and earphones all put me on alert as well.

Lloyds Banking Group axing hundreds of jobs again

Re: So...

"sending their IT work to IBM. Who, um, are announcing staff cuts"

Once this deal is signed, turn the hour glass, and see yet another round of redundancies once the TUPE protection runs out in two years.

Lloyds staff, once TUPEd, seek other roles internally ASAP. VR isn't what it used to be, don't rely on a pay out.

I've Been Moved: IBMers in same division slapped with 2nd redundo scheme in 2 months

Re: IBM are pretty famous

"Perhaps more companies need to operate like this."

Uh huh. The annual PBC process is a farce. It's graded on a curve, with a fixed percentage failure rate, so effectively each year the bar is moved up, as people are culled. So if all the workforce perform well, and meet all their targets and SLAs, it doesn't matter, some will still be placed in grade 3 or grade 4, because a certain percentage _have_ to occupy those grades. Remember doing hurdles at school? Imagine your class were running, and jumping hurdles, and everyone cleared every hurdle, only to be told that despite not knocking any over, some of you didn't do it well enough and were getting a 'F'. Way to screw morale, no?

Also, the process is geared towards rewarding salesy bullshitters who love bigging themselves up. The PBC process involves writing up why you are so great, which sales types never tire of. But if you are a backroom tecchie, and fit the stereotype of not being that social, well, the PBC process is rather uncomfortable.

Re: Infrastructure

Er, IBM host stuff for other people? They are cloud providers, via their datacentres in Warwick and Portsmouth. The issue is not cloud, nor the location of the servers, but that much of the support comes from lower cost countries.

Re: Just maybe

"the sheer layers of management are insane"

Indeed, my line manager was a nice bloke, but he was little more than an policy conduit, he didn't make any decisions, he was just responsible for making sure we abided by whatever decisions were handed down.

Good news, everyone! Two pints a day keep heart problems at bay

Re: A question

"What is the cause/mechanism that gives 'never drinkers' a worse outcome than moderate drinkers?"

Tee-totallers are uptight. They worry themselves into an early grave.

Re: So more like two glasses of red at dinner

"There is something in this more expensive wine makarky. I thoroughly recommend it."

I think you mean there's something missing from the expensive wine,... Sulfites. They are added as an anti-oxidant and preservative, and sweeter wines need more, so the fruity Australians probably have a higher content than your CNdP, which tastes like a pair of old leather sandals.

Re: Small beer?

"he trend seems to be for ever-stronger concoctions."

Not recently, there have been tax breaks in the UK for lower ABV brews, and these are proving quite popular.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/jun/14/lower-alcohol-beer-taste-test

'Clearance sale' shows Apple's iPad is over. It's done

Re: Education PC seller says Apple is no good in that market

"Not sure if this is really a fault of the iPad per sa"

Yeah, I had some printers print fine, and others just not accept print jobs, Bonjour print service was running fine, seems some printers needed firmware updates, and I wasn't up for that, I just made the staff pick up print jobs from the Library printer which worked. Plus it meant they had to think before they printed, the amount of printed waste was horrendous.

Re: Education PC seller says Apple is no good in that market

"On the other hand, the primary school where my grandchildren go to, has over 100 iPads..."

I used to work in schools, there were many, many iPads, and far too many 'Learnpads' (half decent Android tabs hampered by a crap custom UI).

Problem was, the iPads were bought because the IT co-ordinators assumed they could do everything they needed, but they were wrong, many educational web sites still use flash, and then couldn't be accessed on the iPads. Some sites had bought the Puffin browser, which just added frustration rather than solving the problem. Plus iPads are a PITA to manage, for some reason Apple Educational VPP is an entirely separate entity to iTunes, you can't get educational discounts using the same account, you have to register twice, once for VPP and once for regular iTunes, Apple Configurator isn't exactly slick, and requires a Mac to drive it, or you pay for an MDM solution. Plus I worked in Junior schools, and iPads were just too fragile, even in Survivor cases we got broken screens, charging cables were mangled regularly, and I never saw a charging flight case (GoCabby) without bent hinges, as teachers got the kids to put the iPads away, and the kids just slammed the cases shut.

The Learnpads never broke however. They were so dire they were never removed from their charging cabby.

$1m Popslate e-ink screen venture tanks, Indiegogo backers flame out

Re: No Working Prototype

"I'm not saying all projects on Indiegogo are deliberate scams, but"

Ahem, Fontus self filling water bottle, ahem.

Samsung's Bixby totally isn't a Siri ripoff because look – it'll go in phones, TVs, fridges, air con...

"Apple accounts for almost all of the remainder. You think Windows Phone and Blackberry are anything more than a rounding error at this point?"

-9/10 is still a fraction, just in case you are forgetting. 'Fraction' does not imply the smaller part.

"They also get features on every phone they sell"

-Oh FFS! Revisionist nonsense! When Siri was released, the iPhone4 was still on sale, and the iPhone4 did not get Siri.

"Because Apple were the first to make the technology a popular fixture, and that probably counts for something."

I think we have different understandings of the word 'popular' when globally, android has ~80% market share. Apple counts for a fraction of the remainder.

"It would be remiss to write about the adoption of voice assistants on consumer devices without mentioning Apple."

- No, really, this isn't necessary. We just need to now what Bixby can do. Siri wasn't the first voice assistant, as an android / Samsung user I'm far more interested to now how it stacks up against other vice assistants for that platform.

"They have the ability to introduce technologies to a wider public because of their integrated structure, resources, and that their user base is less fragmented."

- Revisionist horsepuckey. When Siri was released, the iPhone4 was still available to buy,... but it came without Siri. What's that if it's not fragmentation? Or is it only fragmentation when Android doesn't support a feature?

"They will rarely be the first to sell a technology, preferring to wait until it is more mature - and this only helps them promote it to the general non-techy public."

-More revisionism, Apple Maps was an omnishambles, not a mature product. Siri struggled with accents, upon release. The first iPhone didn't do MMS, C&P, browsing without WiFi, GPS, flash on the camera, ... it lacked features found as standard on other handsets.

"Siri has its roots in a DARPA project for triaging information to battlefield commanders."

So I hear. It's provenance is more of a concern, than a feature.

Why the Apple reference? Siri wasn't the first voice search program, Siri was an Apple buy in, originally intended to be multi platform and also run on Android as a competitor to Google Voice Search.

Confirmed: TSA bans gear bigger than phones from airplane cabins

Re: Metal detectors

"the random ping machine."

Defo, I don't look that friendly, I've been told, and when I fly, I try to minimise interruption, so I've made damned sure I'm not wearing enough metal to set off a metal detector, and everything that would goes in the tray,.... but,... 'BLEEP' 'Step this way sir!' and I get the pat down and the wand. The wand that does not bleep, oddly. They use the metal detector to select people they want to pat down, I guess it seems less antagonistic if the machine is seen to pick people instead of the staff.

Virtual reality is actually made of smartphones

'all VR kit is descended from the first iPhone'

No, it really isn't. I first tried VR at a computing show at London Olympia, getting on for 25 years ago. The VR and AR setups we have now are far more like those (reliant on external processing) than smartphones.

This article is fanboi drivel.

Norfolk County Council sent filing cabinet filled with kids' info to a second-hand shop

This is one of the many reasons why I hate printers. And users.

I have worked in schools, several of the databases containing information about children make it clear the data comes under IL3 and should not be printed. If notes are taken, they should be transcribed and destroyed. This error by the council is pretty unforgivable.

Friday security roundup: Secret Service laptop bungle, hackers win prizes, websites leak

Re: Disk encryption - yeah right

"sure, they have whole disk encryption setup - assuming the drive ever completed the encryption process"

Which would be ensured by the delivery team. I've built a fair few laptops for our staff, BitLocker is deployed as part our standard build, and laptops aren't issued until they meet all required criteria. We don't trust users to do that stuff themselves.

Spammy Google Home spouts audio ads without warning – now throw yours in the trash

Re: Disaster Waiting to Happen

"From the article, it sound like the ads aren't interest-based yet"

My fear here is that adverts will be tailored, and they can be broadcast not only depending on who is in the room, but on who isn't, so the Google AI can advertise products to children when the parents aren't present, for instant, so they capitalise on 'pester power' marketing, parents get ambushed by requests for products, instead of being prepared and setting kids expectations. A targeted AI driven ad campaign could be a protracted affair peaking around the time of the child's birthday, for instance.

Can you ethically suggest a woman pursue a career in tech?

I nearly stopped reading at the "We need to promote women disproportionately, pay them equally or better" line, but I'd have missed this gem: "offer them the flexibility that comes with shouldering the lion’s share of the childcare and housework."

Sexist much? Sounds like you are trying to help, while consigning women to the kitchen. How about _you_ adjust your attitude to such chores? You know, cook a meal here and there, discover where the vacuum cleaner is kept?

This isn't the only flaw in the article, there is no pay gap, not in the UK at least, jobs are not offered at different rates according to gender, that's been illegal since the Equal Pay Act, 1970. There may be an earnings differential, but that's down to hours worked, full vs part time, career breaks, etc.

Also, it seems there's an expectation that IT environments shoulder some burden to be better environments to work in that others. Seems this is a bit of arrogance on behalf of the author, holding other types of workplaces to a lower standard. Or maybe the word 'tech' was just sprinkled through the article in an attempt to justify it's publication at El Reg. Not sound reasoning either way.

IBM could have made almost all the voluntary redundancies it needed

Re: Never Volunteer

"If you volunteer you are only expressing interest, so they will make you an offer"

Indeed, I wanted the offer, whereas a colleague of mine fully expected to have her expression of interest go nowhere, only for it to be accepted. She accepted of course, it was a litmus test, but it highlighted some management BS that had been spouted, she'd worked really hard on her contract, living away from home and working from a customer site, as this was deemed essential, so thought they wouldn't see her as expendable. But they did.

"although I do hope they realise the terms that Lloyds and HBOS IT staff are likely to be on. 4 weeks for each year of service"

If there is immediate pruning to be done (middle management, IBM has plenty of that, and development teams, IBM will cost that activity as projects) it will be done before IBM take over. Then the staff at the coal face will train their replacements for the next two years, some will be sidelined so they just leave, or given PBC grade 4s so they can be sacked, then once TUPE protection ends, the vast majority will be severed with a statutory minimum settlement.

Quest celebrates first day of independence from Dell with layoffs

Re: "help finding jobs " - that is when you tell HR to Fck off and die.

"The "help " is generally some clueless "consulting " firm"

We were given some guidance by a career guidance company as part of our severance, so I went along, it was a day out (after my last day at work, they didn't release us to go while we were still employed), but it was a bit of a sausage factory, lots of CBT courses, a forum, etc etc, almost a job in itself, given the volume of stuff they wanted us to do. I got a real job instead.

Dungeons & Dragons finally going digital

Yeah, we had a prog to create Runequest characters, and print off the sheet. We had another program that generated character names (think we got that from 'White Dwarf'), I ended up with a Dwarf called 'Kuzmastesob'.

Headphone batteries flame out mid-flight, ignite new Li-Ion fears

"That was from the terrible singing she was listening to..."

She looks a bit singed. : -)

Lloyds to outsource 2,000 staff in IBM deal

"After an initial "town hall" meeting where an over-enthusiastic but plausible IBM puppet (sorry - first or second-line manager) extols the few virtues of becoming a new "IBM'er""

I remember mine well. The chap turned up and told us what a wonderful company they were to work for, and one of the take aways was the amount of training we were to get, two weeks per year (not all classroom, he said),.... so, in reality, I got one week of actual training with QA, because during a 'skills rebalancing exercise (Project Quantum) a pot of money was made available for retraining, so I blagged a course, then several years later, I blagged my way onto a VMware course, as the places had been booked and paid for, were non-refundable, and someone couldn't go, so I stepped in. Two weeks, in over 14 years. Oh, then there was one of the PBC fads where we had to do 40 hours training that year,... I was involved in the adoption of BigFix / IEM and apparently the conf calls counted, so that wasn't training, so much as creative accounting.

So, people of Lloyds, heed Pacman and myself, ... if there is a VR program now, and it's more than stat min, take it. Those two years of TUPE will go quickly, then your job will disappear.

Naming computers endangers privacy, say 'Net standards boffins

"Now they can link that moniker to GruntyMcPugh"

.. which is fine as long as I don't use the words SEMTEX and POTUS in the same sentence. : -)

My phone is currently called 'GCHQ Network Monitor', because I think I'm funny,.... but I rename it every few months as other stupid ideas occur to me. This all seems a bit moot, considering other stories about MAC randomisation, or it not really working that well.

On people using their name for their phone, I see that a lot, I used to work in schools, pretty much everybody I saw getting a DHCP address for their phone revealed their name, now we provide filtered WiFi for some public places too, and apart from one phone whose owner is a wag like me ( 'ViRuS ALERT!' ) They are all pretty much named after their owners.

Smart sex toys firm coughs up $3.75m in privacy lawsuit

"Other data collected by the app included the “vibration intensity level selected by the user”."

Do they go up to 11?

Public IPv4 drought: Verizon Wireless to stop handing out static addys

Damn, and I was hoping to retire to before IPv6 was adopted. I think I'll check my pension performance this weekend and see if I can take an early bath,.....

MAC randomization: A massive failure that leaves iPhones, Android mobes open to tracking

Re: Off topic, but...

I can see a slick marketing campaign, 'Lost your children on a hike? Want to find them before a Bear does? The new Iphone, with FLIR'

Re: MAC address changes are pointless because

"Re MAC collisions etc, this should not be an issue as once a device connects properly to a wireless network it will reveal and use the globally unique MAC."

Er,... so if an establishment has an open WiFi hotspot that doesn't require authentication, and a phone connects to that, it reveals it's unique MAC?

Iconic Land Rover Defender may make a comeback by 2019

Re: Belgian Guns

We should have swerved the SLR and continued with the EM-1 development, adopting standard NATO rounds, and getting a more honed and proven battle rifle than we ended up with the SA-80.

Re: Belgian Guns

7.62x51,.... useless in fully auto, which is why the SLR was semi-auto only, we were riflemen, not spray and pray merchants. And yes, it was a bit long, if you served in armoured vehicles, you'd get issued with a Sterling.

Re: Needling me?

Belgian _designed_ rifle,... the SLR was manufactured in the UK. Oh, and it was manufactured using imperial measurements, not metric, like the original FN FAL.

Adoption of the SLR was a farce, we had superior home developed bullpups, which were the precursor to the SA-80.

Re: Why?

indeed, I recall watching some Joint Forces Competition when I was a kid, where one event was two teams disassembling a Landy, running it to the other end of the arena (over a wall, iirc), and re-assembling it. Took minutes.

UK's Virgin Media subscribers suffer fresh email blocking misery

I've been a customer of theirs since the late 90s, even worked for them for a few years around then. Never had any email service from them. The only reason I'd get that is to set up remote TiVo control, last time I tried it asked for a VM email address. Although I can't say not having that has been a problem, there is always catch up,... or just not caring.

New prison law will let UK mobile networks deploy IMSI catchers

Install an app like Opensignal, and see if any 'new' towers pop up on your local map,.... might need to compare to results from a phone on a different network, I presume the fake masts will show up as servicing every network, rather than just on one network. Interestingly, there is a phone mast reported as being on the street opposite the local prison here,.....

Q: How many IBMers need to volunteer for corporate guillotine?

@Jonothan. Can you provide a link to one of these studies please? Because I worked from home for the best part of a decade, and didn't breach any SLAs, all our work got done, and we all all worked from home, in fact, we were quite thorough, and the methodologies and procedures we developed contributed towards IBM getting ISO 9001 accreditation. Our offshored counterparts sharing an office were not so thorough.

Now I work in an office, time is lost with people 'communicating' about football and personal crises.

Re: No incentive to leave voluntarily?

.. there is no real incentive, apart from it perhaps looking a little better on your CV? As it's stat min though, folks might as well tough it out, and get an extra months salary before they get IVRd, money is money after all.

Also, it's 47 bodies this time, but the axe will come out again soon enough. I left under VR two years ago, and there have been a couple of swings of said axe between then and now. It never ends.

BT splurges £1.2bn on securing Champions League rights, Sky heads for an early bath

"But he added that the latest move could result in costs being transferred to consumers. "

Can someone explain how BT price their service? I'm a Virgin Media customer, so should I want a sport package I'd pay extra for that. I think Sky works the same, people buy additional packages,... so BT, do they give you sports even if like me, you have no interest, then hike your bill?

81's 99 in 17: Still a lotta love for the TI‑99/4A – TI's forgotten classic

Mate of mine had a TI99/4a, remember there was a decent port of 'Defender' that kept us quite amused. I kind of miss those days, I had an Acorn Electron, other school chums had different machines, BBC model 'B', Commodore 64, Dragon 32, Amstrad CPC, Spectrums in various guises, we went around each other's houses to discover what each machine could do. And before you ask, yes, we played D&D, and no, I wasn't the chubby one.

Revealed: UK councils shrug at privacy worries, strap on body cams

Re: How much per camera???

"You can buy an one off bottom of the barrel Gopro for £150."

And that GoPro is mounted on a remote controlled gimbal for that money is it? Has optical zoom? How are you storing the data?

I've looked into some CCTV rigs for the site I work at, the cameras can be up to £300 (because they are on a gimbal to look around, can zoom, and have IR illumination to work in the dark), then there's a license cost per camera for the surveillance software (~£40 pa), plus the disk array the data is stored on. (£2k, plus annual maintenance for the disks)

Re: How much per camera???

£480 doesn't sound too bad, the IP web cams we have installed in our building here are ~£300 a pop, and they are just mounted to regular surfaces, ceilings, walls etc. Factor in weatherproof housings, and sticking them on top of a mast, and that easily accounts for the extra spend.

Re: What if I object?

"f anyone voluntarily breaks the law, filmed footage should be permissible in evidence regardless of the age of the criminal. "

It would be permissible, the publication limitations are about identifying minors to the general populace. Using video footage in court with reporting restrictions in place wouldn't be an issue, the identities of the suspects would be protected until they are sentenced, only then would their images get released to the press. I followed a relevant case recently, turns out my wife and I crossed paths with a young chap that went on to murder someone later that night. We recognised him from his description, and spoke to the Police about where he might have been caught on CCTV. It wasn't until sentencing when the pictures were released to the public, and we were sure we had identified the suspect.

IBM UK: Oh, remote workers. We want to be colocated with you again

Re: unpopular comment with daytime tv fans

I worked from home, and I had SLAs and progress reports to meet, so you know, work got done. Oh yeah, and the methodologies my colleagues and I (who all worked from home) helped get us ISO 9001 accreditation. It's amazing how much you can concentrate on work, when you aren't distracted by colleagues talking about football, soaps, and personal crises.

Re: Laying people off is expensive - redundancy payments etc

IBM used to pay over statutory minimum, but the latest, and previous rounds were at statutory minimum. The latest has a voluntary option at statutory minimum. Why anyone would take that is beyond me, might as well wait until the involuntary scope is announced, and take the extra salary in the meantime.

Re: Cost Savings

"What if they are good?"

After 'skills rebalancing exercises' IBM hold 'breakage meetings' to see where they are now breaching SLAs etc after letting too many people go, so if you survived the cut, and your accounts are in the green, expect to be handed a pile of crap to fix. Then, when everything is green, they'll look to sack a few more people again.