Posts by Bill_Sticker

BT Tower broadcasts error message to the nation as Windows displays admin's shame

A blast from my past

Ah BT Engineers, who are reputed to go into early retirement immediately after qualifying.

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

I would have thought the answer was reasonably simple; armed counter-drone. Track signal, identify offending drone. Then using an anti-drone equipped with a lightweight double barrelled shotgun, closely pursue intruder to outside airport perimeter and shoot down.

Using an aerospace material (Titanium) for barrel, breech and some form of composite for the firing mechanism the payload for an Anti-drone need not be more than the weight of a high definition camera.

Or of course you could buy in the Israeli's 'Drone Dome' https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-firm-unveils-Drone-Dome-that-defends-against-aerial-attacks-450915

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

After twenty five plus years using Microsoft Products, Windows 10 has been the straw that broke this Camels back. My wireless connection keeps falling over in 10, as does my wireless keyboard and Bluetooth, but oddly enough when I boot the same machine using a Linux Mint USB they're all rock steady.

When I bought two brand new laptops last year, Windows 10 worked fine with all these things until the 'Upgrades' that dumped applications on my hard drive I didn't ask for and never wanted in the first place. Not to mention screwing with what was a perfectly functional machine. Don't even get me started on that utter annoyance called 'Cortana' which I can't fully disable or uninstall.

Now I'm seriously working toward going full time Linux and note with pleasure that moving all my precious files into long term storage via Linux to an SD Card for archive from my machines hard drive is an absolute snip. LibreOffice is likewise more than a match for MS-Office. I may even migrate back to WordPerfect.

In Windows 10 Update land, nobody can hear you scream

Re: Installing Windows 7 on Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs

Well trolled.

Brit startup plans fusion-powered missions to the stars

Dead Horse flogging

Tokamaks? That's 1950's Soviet era tech. All you're ever going to get out of one of those is a bang in a bottle. Some form of focussed pinch field device might just work continuously, but not Tokamaks, no matter how big you build them.

Microsoft gives Windows 10 a name, throws folks a bone

I have a legit copy. As a product far superior to all the versions of Word I've ever used. For home use OpenOffice is a reasonable replacement for anything MS ever produced. Exports to PDFs, reads more formats, I've even been able to access documents written on Macs. Who needs Word?

EU wants one phone plug to rule them all. But we've got a better idea.

Re: Be much more interested in...

I loved 2000 sp4 and latterly Windows 7. Both did what you told them to, were backwards compatible and rarely BSODed. Windows 10 by contrast is a complete bag of sh*te which screws around with your carefully configured settings and you can't turn off the (Spit, snarl) 'updates' unless you've forked out the extra for a 'Professional' edition.

For example, my last Windows 10 'upgrade' managed to lose my webcams zoom facility that worked very nicely right up until July 2018. Never mind needing 'driver updates' virtually every month.

Yes, I know I should go down the Linux route. Only the wi-fi adaptor in my spare Acer laptop isn't compatible.

As for the changing to a pan-european power standard; think of all the extra work for Sparkys (Electricians) updating all the ring main wiring in every single house and place of work. Across Europe. All at once. Ker-ching!

Bluetooth 'Panty Buster' 'smart' sex toy fails penetration test

Re: Did it include a hidden camera?

Does that sort of thing need flash?

Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands today... ish

Sometimes the fun never starts...

Oh goody, another glitch heavy update which will add more 'features' and do nothing to fix the wireless keyboard and mouse bugs the last two 'updates' brought with them.

It's April 2018, and we've had to sit on this Windows 10 Spring Creators Update headline for days

Windowa s Gi-Go

Yes, well perhaps this 'upgrade' will fix the bugs introduced by the last 'upgrade' that screwed around with my wireless keyboard and mouse settings and not cause my wi-fi connection to bob up and down like a yo-yo like the last one.

Windows 7 had its shortfalls, but at least it used to work and not change my system settings.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Wonder if the Tesla will outlast the Voyager probes? Like the thought of mans real message to the cosmos being 'Don't Panic'.

User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work

My all time favourite

Working on a local government desktop support temp contract as 'maternity cover'. One sunny August morning in the early 00's I got called to a remote office to swap out a 'faulty' desktop unit only to find it surrounded by about twenty assorted quartz crystals stuck into bits of play-dough in a complete 'magical' circle. User was nowhere in sight. Told she was on sick leave.

Unstuck the crystals and put them in a scrounged box and left them on top of a filing cabinet. Cleaned the desk of play-dough residue and replaced the unit with an identical loan Dell Desktop unit after cleaning dried on spill of local government instant coffee residue from underneath the desktop unit.

Checked replacement unit. Logged on using test account, no problem. Got another user in the office to log on via the machine. Checked remote connections to Netware servers for duplicates, Pinged the Internet proxy server and the email server. All working fine.

For the sake of a quiet life, took 'faulty' desktop unit back to base and decided to test it thoroughly. Everything worked properly, connected to the Internet and mail server using test account. An hour of testing and checking went by. Everything was working properly. Applications configured correctly, a number of duplicate profiles from repeated crashes in the file system, but nothing I couldn't fix in five minutes. Put desktop unit aside for ghosting new build.

Routine check on my support job queue the next morning showed a familiar office location flagging up. Support Manager is smirking at me. Same user. Oh Gawd. Phoned remote office to say unit had been replaced and all was working well when I left it. Same user was worrying about where all her crystals had gone "Because my computer is evil." Reassured her that I had replaced her computer completely and had sent it to be 'cleansed', then told her where her collection of 'protective crystals' were. Which seemed to mollify her.

The following week I swapped her old 'refreshed' unit back in. Didn't hear another peep after that because (According to Support Manager) said user had gone on extended sick leave. She was still on sick leave when my contract ended five weeks later and I moved on to another (and better) contract.

Phone fatigue takes hold: SIM-onlys now top UK market

Re: RE:werdsmith

I've gone retro with a 15 year old 6310i. Still gives me 12 days standby and three hours talk time.

Black Horse Down: Lloyds Banking Group goes TITSUP*

Ah, upgrade time, eh?

Tesla share crash amid Republican bid to kill off electric car tax break

The last thirty? Try the last hundred. Edison was experimenting with electric cars back in the early 1900's. There was a fad for electric cars in the 1920's and early 1930's, latterly in the late 70's and early 80's. Now in the 2010's. Every single time they've been found impractical for the same reasons, range and refuel times.

With Tesla's there are issues on build quality and catastrophic suspension failures.

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

Re: Prescription

Is your doctor taking any new patients?

Grumpy Trump trumped, now he's got the hump: Muslim ban beaten back by appeals court

Re: Just one small thing

All Trump has done is to repeat the actions of Clinton, Bush and Obama with this 90 day travel ban on seven specific countries (Specified by the Obama administration) which are either failed states or openly hostile to the USA. It is emphatically not a 'Muslim Ban' and it is both misleading and disingenuous to report it as such. The fact that they are majority Muslim countries doesn't affect the visa suspension for those citizens who are not Muslim.

The blinkered and partisan can downvote this post all they like, but it won't change the fact that a similar visa suspension under the Obama administration lasted for eleven months, not the 90 day suspension Trump has tried to put in place. The UAE (A Muslim country) also have a similar travel ban. Where was the self-righteous outcry against those? *Crickets*

Naughty sysadmins use dark magic to fix PCs for clueless users

I used to do a good evangelical. "Oh Lord, heal this computer! Heal I tell you!" For (Cough) Usererror.

Hackers could turn your smart meter into a bomb and blow your family to smithereens – new claim

Explode?

I don't know about exploding, but there have been multiple instances here in the not so frozen wastes of Canada and in the United States of these 'smart' meters bursting into flames because of dodgy installations. No hackers required. Although I don't think it would be that hard to get the shonky things to overload and go 'bang' if you understood how trigger the right sort of overload remotely. As someone pointed out further up the thread, their security is almost non-existent.

Because of the fire issues, in Ontario they've taken many Smart Meters out, and Saskpower in Saskatchewan has stopped using them altogether. On our side of the great divide, BC Hydro in British Columbia was ordered to remove 88,000 'Smart' Meters back in January 2016. To list but three examples.

Information on smart meters? Yep. They're great. That works, right? – UK.gov

Smart meter downside

Increased Unit sensitivity for higher unit readings and bills - Check

New 'Smart' unit MTBF, @7 years instead of @25 for the old type - Check

Higher unit cost of each new meter going straight on your electric bill - Check

Higher costs of electricity because of Carbon taxation - Check

Can they really cut off your supply remotely? - Check

Hey, they're new and sparkly. So why does everyone suddenly look depressed?

User needed 40-minute lesson in turning it off and turning it on again

40 minute help desk call for the on and off button? The zombie apocalypse has arrived. It's probably been with us for quite a while.....