* Posts by MrBanana

642 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2017

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One-year countdown to 'biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete in history' as Windows 10 approaches end of support

MrBanana

Re: Please explain it to me, lots of stuff

I think the OP is complaining that having set up their Windows 10 desktop to something useable, moving to Windows 11 mangled it. Thus requiring an unnecessary degree of unmangling to get back to the same state. I've had my KDE desktop set up much the same way for the last 3 Ubuntu LTS upgrades without having to do anything at all. Unlike Windows, changing the underlying OS doesn't feck around with the user GUI.

Compression? What's that? And why is the network congested and the PCs frozen?

MrBanana

Re: Mental image

"Spanish guitar and introducing acoustic guitar"

Apple macOS 15 Sequoia is officially UNIX. If anyone cares...

MrBanana

But is it though?

Whatever Unix derived underpinnings that Apple claim, the user experience reality of MacOS is just a thick layer of GUI shmoo. Sure, you'll see an /etc/passwd file, and a bunch of other welcoming, standard issue Unix like files. But they are just shiny flimflam that isolates the user from the engorged, shoddy, mess that Apple have applied in spades over the top. And only getting worse as they dumb down MacOS to be on a collision course with a mobile phone app.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

MrBanana

Jaguar did a similar "update" to the oil pressure gauge to their V12 engine. The indicated oil pressure typically reads quite high at over 75% of the gauge, but also drops low on occasion. This is a all quite normal, nothing to worry about. Except it was the cause of a lot of service calls for the sensor or gauge being reported as faulty. The fix was to swap the variable resistive sensor for a simple pressure switch and a fixed resistor. This pegged the gauge at 50% of its travel to keep the customer happy, no mater the actual pressure, so no better than the already existing low oil pressure light.

After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?

MrBanana

Re: hmm , am I a hoarder

I like to have the right tool for the job, and get perplexed by the number of "professionals" who come to my house so ill-equipped. Sorry, the oak beam is too tough, I can't secure this joist against the main frame - here, this is the impact driver you should have in your toolbox. Do you have any washing up liquid to add to this mortar? - perhaps you meant to bring something like this plasticiser. Why did you charge me for a 20m spool of twin+earth cable? - I could have given you the 50cm length you actually require. Don't tighten that chrome fitting with a metal pipe wrench - use this one with plastic jaw inserts so the chrome stays intact. Call that a heat gun, looks like a hairdryer - here, try this... I despair sometimes.

Two British-Nigerian men sentenced over multimillion-dollar business email scam

MrBanana

CALL 419 NOW!

YOU SEND $10,000 I WILL GIVE ANSWER!

AI agent promotes itself to sysadmin, trashes boot sequence

MrBanana

Re: Reminds me of the time...

My record is just under an hour before they figured out that, although I had a ThinkPad with a Windows key it wouldn't be running anything that they could get me to follow according to their script. I even got passed up their chain of command to a more experienced "techie" before they twigged I was running Linux. Their parting shot was that they would cut off my internet access - I thought that was the job of BT, but I left them to it.

1 in 10 orgs dumping their security vendors after CrowdStrike outage

MrBanana

If the device had bitlocker installed, and the passkkey not retrievable from escrow, then that machine is unrecoverable back to its previous state. Not entirely bricked and 100% useless, but it requires manual, physical intervention to get working in any usable state again.

Customer bricked a phone – and threatened to brick techie's face with it

MrBanana

Re: Motorola brick

I once bought a set of lifetime warrantied drill bits from a vendor at the yearly Ideal Home exhibition. When one, inevitably, broke I checked the warranty and found that you had to send the broken bit back, and pay 5 quid P&P to get it replaced - really not worth it. Imagine the vendors surprise, and dark mutterings, when I returned to his stand a year later and asked the broken bit to be replaced, obviously no P&P required. He grudgingly opened up a new set to give me the replacement. I think it actually worked in his favour, as a few punters floating around the stand saw the exchange and it seemed to influence subsequent purchases.

Upgrading Linux with Rust looks like a new challenge. It's one of our oldest

MrBanana

Re: Why a new language?

Er, no. C++ is mostly a bunch of syntactic sugar on top of the same old memory problems that C has, but only worse if you want to do clever things.

Key aspects of Palantir's Federated Data Platform lack legal basis, lawyers tell NHS England

MrBanana

Re: Grease

Local truck stop: Liquor in the front, poker in the rear.

Microsoft Bing Copilot accuses reporter of crimes he covered

MrBanana

Re: Danger, danger.

"our clown politicians (you know who they are)"

That's all of them isn't it? Just some have redder noses and bigger shoes.

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

MrBanana

You say she does only three simple things. I pretty much guarantee that in 6 months time, at least 4 of those 3 things will be broken, in some heinously obscure way that is impossible to diagnose.

MrBanana
WTF?

Re: undeniably less attractive than the modern Settings app

Almost all of the extra "help" options that so many interfaces supply, are totally idiotic.

Setting for option A: Yes/No (?)

Click/hover over the (?) and you would expect something that described what option A was, and what the implications of setting yes or no was. Instead you get, the so very useful, "This is where you set option A to be yes or no". Argh!!! What kind of informational help message is that?

Client tells techie: You're not leaving the country until this printer is working

MrBanana
Happy

Customers can be nice

I had to travel to South Africa to work on a customer system. It should have been just a couple of days, but ended up being a long week of long nights. I had to use the local office's cash float to go and buy some spare clothes. Part way through the customer asked my for my plane ticket (this was so long ago it was one of those old, grey and red flimsy things, nothing onlne) so they could "check my flight" for me, unthinkingly I handed it over. At the end of the gig I did get my ticket back. At the airport I handed over the ticket at checkin and they asked me what address I was going to back to in the UK. I queried this and they said that it was part of my ticket. The customer had been so happy with my work that they had upgraded me to Virgin first class, which comes with a limo service at the other end.

Techie told 'Bill Gates' Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours

MrBanana

Re: apostrophes for fun and profit

If it really were a book published as "The Pedants Handbook", then that is how it should be written- adding an apostrophe anywhere would be incorrect. See many discussions on the correct naming of Presidents Day, and other similarly named public holidays in the US. Anyway, everyone should be saving up their apostrophe pedantry for the official day, August 15th.

MrBanana

Re: Excel is still rubbish

I see this a lot with Word docs as well. Passing a document file among collaborators in different establishments, especially education where no one has any up to date software, is bound to end in failure at some stage. Sooner rather than later if you are using tracked changes. At least everyone has moved on from the land of .doc to .docx. And yes, the 100% reliable fix is to read and rewrite using LibreOffice.

Microsoft whiz dishes the dirt on the Blue Screen Of Death's colorful past

MrBanana

Re: BSOD Screensaver

Ah yes, the fake BSOD screen saver. Not everyone was fully in on the joke, when I had one set up on my Sun workstation.

How deliciously binary: AI has yet to pay off – or is transforming business

MrBanana

Re: It'll still be the source of useless trash

My problem with current search algorithms is that they really take "like" to the extreme. Because you like A, you will like B. Nope. That may be true for someone else, not me. It used to be the case that Amazon etc. allowed the use of NOT "B" to remove those results from the list. That feature has been removed. Why? I explicitly don't want to see them, but now must page through endless crap to try and find what I want.

School gets an F for using facial recognition on kids in canteen

MrBanana
FAIL

Re: What's the problem?

You were going pretty well on your first paragraph, then failed - badly - in the second.

The months and days before and after CrowdStrike's fatal Friday

MrBanana

Sometimes it can be recovered, but not this time

The response a company makes to a major problem can be very telling. If they respond quickly, do everything they can to fix the problem, and reassure the screwee that things have changed, it is possible to actually build on their reputation. I've been in Tech Support with the customer literally screaming down the phone on the call with the support team and VP on the line, threatening all sorts of legal action and public shaming. Meanwhile someone is booking my flight, taxi to the airport, I'll buy clothes etc when I get there. Get it right, and you end up with a customer even happier then before the problem. But...

I can't see that happening here. The screw up was just too big. The recovery couldn't be accelerated by CrowdStrike doing anything other than publish the recovery process, which to their credit they did quickly. They will be a pariah from now on. If they could survive the publicity fallout, many of those customers will still be suing them and I doubt that CrowdStrike has the lawyers capable to hide behind their ELUA against such an onslaught. I would also guess that all the other AV pushers will be contacting the, now very public, customers of CrowdStrike to promote their alternative at a very affordable price. The association of the CrowdStrike CEO with a similar screwup at McAfee also doesn't help, he will have to go.

CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made

MrBanana

Re: Not sure what language they use

You're thinking about user code written in a high level langauge, where there is a saftey net in the kernel to catch your screwup, and gracefully return an exception. If you running as a kernel driver you will be wrtting in low level C and possibly assembler, no safety net, no exception handlers, just a hard crash. Made even worse by insisting on running at first boot - total borkage.

The Clacktop: A Thinkpad Yoga with a mechanical keyboard

MrBanana

Re: GOOD laptops

The switch to USB-C Power Delivery is a huge leap forward for a house full of multiple different laptop makes. Most still have a proprietaty charger arangement, which gets installed alongside a permanent work location, proper keyboard, second screen etc. Elsewhere around the house, most rooms where a laptop might be used have a USB-C charger which anyone can hookup to when required. No good for my power hungry Thinkpad P15, but works with all my other laptops, and also USB-C phones as well.

MrBanana
Coat

Re: Not Ian Fleming ... much older

Prolific indeed, "Biggles flies undone" was a particular favourite. I think I've got the paperback in my coat pocket.

EU gave CrowdStrike the keys to the Windows kernel, claims Microsoft

MrBanana

Re: Wrong question

"willingly accepted by every customer"?

I think you mean "blindly accepted by every customer".

I see that there are some companies, notably in the travel industry, who are passing on this disclaimer to their scewed over customers. Wasn't us, it was them, they don't have any responsibility so neither do we. Travel insurance policies don't want to cover this either.

MrBanana

Re: Dave Plummer has a different take on this

If you have time, watch Dave's YouTube video, less than 15 minutes, very informative. At least read the second comment above. Yes the driver is certified and signed. But, it has the ability to dynaimcally load other code that is not certified or signed. In this particualr case it was not tested either. In itself it is a problem, but made much worse by CrowdStrike being able to immediatley push the dynamic code update to all computers in its install base worldwide, bypassing any phased rollout that a normal sysadmin team would employ.

MrBanana

Re: Dave Plummer has a different take on this

Not so much bypassing CrowdStrike's policy, it screwed the end user by not allowing them to make staged updates. There was no way for sysadmins to do a phased rollout, which would have caught this a lot quicker, and caused a lot less damage.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

MrBanana

Re: Meh....

Milan is a total nightmare. I did it before the days of satnav - all the signs seem to point to the route out, but they lie. You have to follow either the blue or the green signs only, don't get distracted.

Nasty regreSSHion bug in OpenSSH puts roughly 700K Linux boxes at risk

MrBanana

Re: 2024 finally Year of the Windows desktop

Myself, I only used Putty to stop the window panes falling out of the frames.

Windows: Insecure by design

MrBanana

Re: Slackware

You must be my other twin. I also started my journey with Slackware in the early 1990s, and had a DEC Workstation as the day job. With a big, fancy CRT screen pilfered from a colleague who was leaving. Didn't work. Everyone laughed. Took a while to find the RGB parameter to pass on the boot line to make it hardware sync to the green channel. Then they were all envious of my 30 something inches, yeah baby!

Reddit hopes robots.txt tweak will do the trick in scaring off AI training data scrapers

MrBanana

Re: robots.txt is a machine understandable copyright notice

I had Disney in my paste buffer as I was reading the article, but you beat me to it. I guess they need to ask the head in the cryogenic chamber what to do next.

And yes, lawyers, the only winners.

Julian Assange to go free in guilty plea deal with US

MrBanana

Re: Not been said yet

He spaffed US secret data across the internet. They don't like that. So they wanted to get him. Make a case. No one else should consider doing this. The where or the who doesn't much matter.

Qilin: We knew our Synnovis attack would cause a healthcare crisis at London hospitals

MrBanana

Withholding drugs?

Quite a claim that the UK is withholding drugs from other countries, when it has big supply shortage issues of its own. If it is a political play for better access to drugs, then target the pharma companies.

Tetris Company celebrates classic game's 40th birthday

MrBanana

It is insane how they play past/abuse the inherent limitations of the game, just the controller gymnastics must be killer for their hands. Once you get into the charcoal levels they might as well be burned at the stake for being witches.

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

MrBanana

I took the tech support call from [REDACTED] regarding a program that was core dumping. I asked the usual questions, all of which were replied with with, I'm sorry I can't tell you that over the phone or send anything in email. An onsite visit to [REDACTED] was scheduled. Submit all identity and employment information before travel. Once escorted through the three layers of security I got to sit in front of an isolated, green screen terminal, in a windowless room, connected to a test system. How do I run the program? You can't touch the keyboard. Can you install a debugger? No. Can I see the source code? No. Can I access the database? No. Can I have my laptop back to check on something? No. A few other options were floated, all were "no". The impasse was only solved when a copy of The Official Secrets Act was proffered for to me to sign.

Ubuntu 24.04 upgrades available – to Mantic users

MrBanana

Re: expected

And in the comment below you literally say it is a problem for you: "I will probably just remove the Snap and install the Mozilla or UbuntuZilla build, TBH." Or is Liam Proven, an AI generated entity with no historical context?

MrBanana

Re: expected

Snap is evil, don't pretend otherwise.

Bad vibrations left techie shaken up during overnight database rebuild

MrBanana

Re: Pure Fiction

My memory of Gandalf was from the mid 1980s when it was the connectivity mechanism for tty hookup to the computers at University. It had a large number of ports, allowing multiple labs being able to multiplex connections to any of the lab servers - Unix, PDP, HP etc. Back then it was probably an uncommon requirement, but apparently someone from the computer department was wondering around a trade show (must have been rare at the time) at happened across something that could exactly fit their requirement and bought it on the spot.

So you've built the best tablet, Apple. Show us why it matters

MrBanana

Every time there is a major MacOS release I look at all the "new" stuff, and find that I have zero interest in it. Unfortunately they don't publish a list of all the stuff they have taken out. You have to discover it for yourself, and it is always the removal or dumbing down of something that can only be some internal UI war to see iOS takeover MacBook hardware. Why is the Wi-Fi indicator now only 3 bars of strength? What happened to the battery percentage indicator being easy to find? Why does Apple feel the need to continually "simplify" the user experience. No doubt their logo will morph from a crunchy apple into a jar of apple puree for the easy of digestion of the children that choose to use it, and the supposedly senile of us that are forced to.

HR expert says biz leaders scared RTO mandates lead to staff attrition

MrBanana

I remember recommending someone to apply for a job in our team for the role of support engineer, which we sorely needed. Although a customer, and our group knew him well because he called a lot, he was actually very knowledgable, and because he was able to ask the right questions, was able to fix a problem himself when given the right information. He was a perfect fit for our team. HR said everything looked good. Our manager nixed him because at the interview she "didn't like the socks he was wearing" - yes, because that is so important when answering the phone.

Cops developing Ghostbusters-esque weapon to take out e-bike thugs

MrBanana

Re: Because you don't want to accidentally brick a Tesla

They might be considered relatively harmless if they obeyed the rules of law, and weren't driven by twats. But since it is possible for a team of pace riders on bicycles to be travelling at nearly 30 mph in a public park, with a 20 mph limit, and actually kill someone without consequence - I'm not holding my breath for common sense here.

Blue screen of death or Eurovision's Windows95man performance – what's less annoying?

MrBanana
Pint

Re: Blue screen of death or Eurovision's Windows95man performance?

Congratulations on winning the internet dad joke of the day, have a pint.

MrBanana

Not a Bucks Fizz moment

In contrast to other acts both this time round (Bambie Thug) and previously (Bucks fizz, et al) the controversy was the, not unwelcome, addition of clothes during the performance.

MrBanana

What goes on in the boxing ring, should stay in the boxing ring.

Apple crushes creativity and its reputation in new iPad ad

MrBanana

Re: Correction

It may raise his eyebrow in a wry British fashion, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

Apple unveils M4 chip with neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and some other kit

MrBanana

Re: And did you see the advert?

The advert is awful. I see it is getting some adverse media attention in the UK at least. Apple have apologised in their usual half arsed way. They have agreed it was ill judged and decided not to play it on TV, but it is still available on Tim Cook's X account and Youtube.

Tesla devotee tests Cybertruck safety with his own finger – and fails

MrBanana

Re: "The frunk is powered and shouldn't be closed manually"

My Volvo has a tow hitch, with the auto opening sensor off to one side, Works fine.

MrBanana

Re: "The frunk is powered and shouldn't be closed manually"

There is some utility in having a powered trunk/boot. My Volvo estate has powered boot which is linked to a sensor under the rear bumper. If you have your keys in your pocket and armfuls of shopping then you can wave your foot under the bumper and it will trigger the tailgate to unlock and open. This is very handy. There are two buttons inside, one to close, another to close and lock. Also a button on your remote key fob as well as the outside handle. However you can only use the powered options. There isn't a way to manually close the tailgate. I wish it would operate like a CD drawer, where you just give it a small push and then it closes automatically.

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

MrBanana

Re: apostrophe problems

What I find most annoying are so called smart quote systems that insist on changing "this is a string with double quotes" into “this is now broken with different left and right quote characters”. Makes providing program code examples impossible for simple cutting and pasting.

Post Office slapped down for late disclosure of documents in Horizon scandal inquiry

MrBanana

I really hope you are wrong, but odds are against the righteous in this case. One difference to the other cases of mass death you mention is that POL - marking their own homework - were the prosecutors, not the CPS. That is a very direct link between the actions of the PO and the subsequent deaths of so many sub-postmasters. Sadly, I fear that it will all collapse into finger pointing between POL and Fujitsu.

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