Posts by handle bars

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

I use that Nokia as an example of when to fire people for being out of touch with the market place. It should have been a concept and never a key launch product. It was the first sign Nokia was designing for it's own art not for the needs of the actual users

Brit consumers still holding off on buying new PCs until that Brexit thing is over and done with

May be they know the EU adds a 10% tax for computer imports and they are looking forward to that not applying?

Reliable system was so reliable, no one noticed its licence had expired... until it was too late

Software licences and who "owns it" in large companies with bespoke service departments must always be a laugh. I had an MD ask me if I had ever heard of some software they were getting billed for (via an all team email). My department used to be part of his thiefdom and everything we used was because of his wants at the time. I quietly went to his desk and pointed at an icon on his own desktop. It was the software in question. No one in any of his divisions used it and we all assumed it was part of the other ones use... and the man who put it there forgot it was him or what it did. The cost was "a lot" a year for years.

Are you sure your disc drive has stopped rotating, or are you just ignoring the messages?

Then you give these people a second referendum and claim it has significance

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

Merrill Lynch Investment Funds was often mis-typed into search boxes - but I remember the crack down on work internet use and the "sniffers" compliance for HR put on email & web site use just happened to coincide with a need early 2000s for a head count reduction & looked a cheap way to bin people

Now Europe wants a four-million-quid AI-powered lie detector at border checkpoints

Once in though you can go from country to country plotting what you like...

You're alone in a room with the Windows 10 out-of-the-box apps. What do you do?

You are not worried "man gets given mundane dept lead and seeks to make it his own in order to impress" syndrome won't happen? When leaders think they have to make a bold statement in the corporate fashion to get the better role they do strange things

You don't get as far as the office drawer apps having lost all will to live post experiencing the dreadful "mail" app. And there is windows 10 problem - designed to be a jack of all trades o/s across pc, tablet and phone it became a master of none. And now? With only the pc needing it the jack of all is inadequate at what it once ruled

Not OK Google: Massive outage turns smart home kit utterly dumb

Re: Not reading articles again... and not thinking...

and like people who bought w95, expect in 3 years time a new w98 then xp then.... to come out which will likely no longer work with the "old" equipment... so like people who found their laser printers died with windows 8/10 will find where a radiator valve would last 20 years or more the smart version is good for as long as a smart watch.... about 4 years before all smart function is lost.

Re: Possibly deliberate?

more likely "due to GDPR we can only tell you X & y resulted in z" and whether z is important we can't confirm

well when your system goes down, you fire up slack to talk to the team and.... oh wait, it's down. still it is not as bad as when you are in London and your IT are in Singapore and they can't just send someone to your desk to actually work on it in front of you...

Uber's London licence appeal off to flying start: No, you cannot do driver eye tests via video link

Pirate radio stations could not just say forget the past

Uber came into the London market with no cares about what the rules were. When told they were wrong they stuck two fingers up and continued. Now they want forgiveness? Remember when pirate radio stations broadcast illegally? They had to jump through hoops to be one of the lucky allowed to become legit... Uber still has a long way to go. The chicken and egg question is not applicable, you follow the law first then open for business.

Braking news: Tesla preps firmware fling to 'fix' Model 3's inability to stop in time

Does Tesla have to give a copy of every firmware version to a govt agency so that it can't change potentially dodgy software in a crashed car over the air before it is examined?

If the car records a crash, and the firmware installed at the crash, and that firmware version is independently held for reference it would remove a clear potential issue in the future where the autonomous car or assisted function can not be "altered" post crash - and we know car companies have been dodgy in the past when accident / recall costs can cause them legal issues so we know they need to be stopped from being tempted.

Zuckerberg gets a night off: Much-hyped Euro grilling was all smoke, absolutely no heat

Typical mess caused by the "too big too work" over reaching EU structures. Too wide a spectrum of interests end up being watered down to some ineffective blandness. The EU questioning becomes as toothless as the Swiss Army, it exists but it will never take sides. That is why the EU only has an effect in the rules it passes not in anything it debates.

About to install the Windows 10 April 2018 Update? You might want to wait a little bit longer

Re: Seriously

Friends do, because friends know that people are not good at looking after themselves and the branded products bring "confidence" in application.

How many non techie friends do you know who have managed to absolutely write off their hardware by getting their machines clogged with mallware, messed up "open with" options so dredful apps open to do simple things like music, video or picture.

Friends would rather their friends get a balck cab home rather than chance their bad choices with a random car they flag down.

Every week there is a new random issue indicated by Windows Security Centre's action needed system tray shield icon.

Naturally after the upgrade which took 3 hours not "the 1" suggested above Norton took a few reboots to start working - yet action centre said nothing was wrong. I also changed the order of what icons were in the tray and what were "hidden" so Norton showed on the tray rather than the MS stuff it decided should be always shown.

A week later and action centre declared no working virus/malware software. Norton said it was fine and a couple of eicar tests proved it was doing something. again a few reboots were needed for action centre to decide all was ok

then yesterday action centre decided there was a device performance health issue or two. the wizzard was run which corrected a temporary folder moving issue (?) but could not fix dissapearing app issues (?) a google search on a "type this in" - "net helpmsg 2182" gave up 2 year old confusing stuff so i ignored it... this morning it again had an unhappy shield, yet clicking on it and there were green ticks on every item in "security at a glance" - the shield magically fixed itself to a green tick after that.

MS should stop peeing around with automatically changing login screen pictures that randomly decide to offer "information buttons" about them and stick to the knitting... no one is impressed when the colourful front door leads to a buggy insides.

Indian data leak looks to have been an inside job

The weak link will often be inside people who can be paid to gain access. With India's costs so low compared to other countries the cost to criminals to gain such access is more likely. when you have a huge database that will become tempting. It is one reason western countries that have data protection fines should "inflate" them by the multiple the company saved by moving their processing off shore. As for this case, the benefits of huge databases do not seem to be balanced by the risk of data breaches. Until they are safer personalised data should be silo'ed in tiny amounts as "big data" has not yet shown it needs instant wide access to "everything" but criminals & foreign competitive countries have shown they love it.

Virgin Media mulls ditching 1 in 3 UK facilities, starts £20m spend audit

Re: Virgin on demand (not)

I mean how daft of VM not to spend £100s of to connect you just so you can make them £2 a month profit... no wonder you don't get it (any of it)

Re: I have to ask ... what is the point of Virgin *Media* ?

If you wanted Sky Atlantic (something Sky uses as a differentiation - you will find something is "exclusive" and thus missing between every tv platform) you could have gone with Sky's NOW pay as you go offer... they do phone, broadband and TV now under that brand... while Sky, BT & VM are premium brands NOW & BT's plusnet are their cheaper service offers... VM offers "all the football" which the others can't as Sky and BT compete directly, while BT doesn't compete with the top end of VM tv bundles where they let VM offer BT sports included.

Does that say a lot about what the true reality of "remote working" is like... these guys sell the network but don't appear to be able to make such office linking work themselves.