* Posts by Outski

462 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2017

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McDonald's ordering system suffers McFlurry of tech troubles

Outski

Re: Doing their bit...

Or House of Lords (which often seems like a final resting place)

Outski

Can't stand them, the ones in our high street branch don't ever seem to work for me - the branch manager got irate when I pointed it out. A portly gentleman, he wasn't amused when I asked if his ire was due to him having eaten all the stock.

Outski

Re: Maccas closed?

And food served on proper plates.

Last one I saw was on Kingsway in London, c 2001, wonderful.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

Outski

Re: The first one is free

I think we have all done technical consultancy masquerading as interviews.

That actually got me my most recent job - I diagnosed a problem with a mail server based on the scant details from the hiring manager, the IT Director, a generalist who was very good, but didn't know this software.

Come second iinterview, he'd taken my recommendations and performance had improved by 90%. Hence he recommended me to his boss; I started the following week.

Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union

Outski

Re: No problem

You can't use Android if Apple is mandated by your employer.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

Outski

Re: Compensation?

Surcharge, same as Shirley Porter for gerrymandering Westminster council (not that she paid it it, buggering off to Israel before the bailiffs got her)

Outski

Re: s/unable/unwilling/

As I understaand things, appearing before a parliamentary committee is akin to appearing in the House - there is a duty to be truthful, but, as Liam Byrne reminded Read and Petterson yesterday, they are covered by parliamentary privilege.

BOFH: The Christmas party was so good, an independent inquiry is required

Outski

Re: I guess the truth hurts.

Someone withe a Masters in Law, say, creative use of data protection legislation?

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

Outski

Re: azidoazide azide

I haven't studied chemistry since O-level, but reading that first piece reminded me that things with 'nitro' and 'tetra' in their names should be avoided by a long distance.

HCL modernizes Notes by adding 2023's hot new item ... mail merge?

Outski

More problematic were, firstly, a lack of freely available training materials, although the redbooks were brilliant, compared to the MS guides that were on sale in most booksops, and secondly, the hare-brained push to put everything on Websphere, which, while undoubtedly a powerful system, was everything Notes/Domino wasn't.

MS's bundling of Exchange with the enterprise OS license also didn't help, but by the time it got to court, the damage was done.

Outski

Re: Oh dear

More recent Notes installations allow you to just use a password (at least where I work at the moment that still has one last Notes holdout), but that may be a security setting that can be selected.

That only works if you have a properly configured ID vault - the ID file is uploaded on registration (or first use if it's recently added to an existing estate). Then user.id is downloaded on first use by the actual user to the \data directory, meaning that you can lock the client and reauthenticate happily, even when offline.

No, no, no! Disco joke hit bum note in the rehab center

Outski

Re: Could be worse, of course

I actually have the opening bars (less triangle) of YYZ as my ringtone, edited to repeat rather than go into the main theme

Sure, give the new kid and his MCSE power over the AS/400. What could possibly go wrong?

Outski

Back in the day, the CLP (Certified Lotus Professional) certification had both tracks, SysAdmin and AppDev. To get either, there were three exams, one of them being from the other track. Seemed like a good approach to me.

Nobody would ever work on the live server, right? Not intentionally, anyway

Outski

Re: spaghetti

You weigh spaghetti?

I've always used the "hmm four of us, two are teenagers, that seems about right" method

Outski

But you can tell the difference between the types of guitar, LP, Strat, Tele, PRS, Ricky... My beloved RS sounds nothing like my Squier Strat, even on the same amp settings.

And you can tell the difference between players as well - Dave Gilmour and Steve Rothery sound different playing the same piece of music, for example.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Outski

Re: Reminds me of an old (early '80s) AI koan ...

Ah, the old IT professional Proximity Field

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Outski

Re: Security 101.

Try Thai, you get a different charset, plus an entirely new calendar (although I'm sure Steve Bong would be able to navigate it)

Cheapest, oldest, slowest part fixed very modern Mac

Outski
Headmaster

"chord" is actually the correct spelling for that phrase

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

Outski

Re: What are the odds?

What are the odds it would have an event in the 6 hours we had it disabled?

Isn't it Captain Carrot who's the expert at precisely calculating million-to-one odd?

Outski

Re: death trap

I smoke like a beagle, but wouldn't spark up anywhere near a server room

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Outski

Re: Why all the cheering before the last 10 seconds?

I think that was when they restarted the countdown - it had been on pause at around the thirty second mark for a while (not sure, I skipped forward rather than watch the whole thing)

Child-devouring pothole will never hurt a BMW driver again

Outski
Pint

Nomen es omen

The Register feels the pain of anyone injured in the line of duty to bring us artery-clogging treats

Well, with a name like this particular Vulture writer's, he would say that wouldn't he :o)

Bottle of Kingfisher over here, please

Vessels claiming to be Chinese warships are messing with passenger planes

Outski

Re: Peak China?

Bullshit. China has been trying to bully countries around South East Asia for well over a decade, this has got nothing to do with US foreign policy.

There are vast swathes of what's known as the the South China sea where countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines have territory and accompanying territorial waters, yet China seeks to claim sole rights to said territories and waters, and to bar international maritime traffic.

This is more of the same.

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

Outski
Pint

I managed to rack up a 1k ringgit bill during just one week in China from my colleague calling me to see how a job was going. Reimbursement came out of his budget within an hour of me getting back to the KL office...

Needed a few of these --->

Activist investor tells Airbus to end Atos Evidian talks now

Outski

They're the ones that remove any sense of perspective, and chirp "Implement Layoffs" at random intervals during the day...

while unsurprisingly calling for increased dividends and share buybacks...

No more rockstars, say Billy Idol, Joan Jett in Workday Super Bowl ad

Outski

Re: Rock star

It's interesting how besuited, Gucci-wearing so-called high-level executives want to be associated with what is commonly known as a depraved, drug and alcohol-filled lifestyle.

There's almost as much nose candy consumed in the marketing world as there is in rock and roll

Find My Kids app is basically AirTags for your offspring

Outski

Re: But still

A ban on unaccompanied minors carrying guns has just been defeated in the Missouri state senate.

Words fail me

No, you cannot safely run a network operations center from a corridor

Outski
Pint

Re: Losing face

I was engaged to run an audit of Notes/Domino for a Chinese company. On the admin side they were good, but their appdev side had jerry-built a system to update names in the directory and all names fields in applications whenever a change was detected in AD, despite the fact that ND has a wonderful built in process to do this (Pascal Monett will back me here). When I pointed this out to the head of appdev, he didn't take it well, and I was gently steered by our contact (head of systems admin) to say that we could set up a test system to prove that a ten year old process actually worked, and that this would free up appdev time without losing face.

We secured that year long maintenance contract (until our guy, a native Mandarin speaker chose to come home to Malaysia).

Beer for our contact, who sent me back to KL with a lovely couple of gifts for the Outskits.

Shag pile PC earned techies a carpeting from HR

Outski

Re: Spoof

I tend to use random lyrics from about the third verse of an album track from some obscure prog band, with some letter/number swaps - have fun with that, my ITSec colleagues and your multiple GPUs :o)

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Outski

Re: I'm pro SI

1 chain x 1 furlong = 1 acre

1 chain = 1 wicket

and a quarter of a mile (2 furlongs) is 440 yards. Furlongs are pretty easy if you follow horse-racing

Outski

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

Wine bottles are 75cl because that's the accepted standard size internationally. In the UK, and most of Europe as well, I think, boxes are 225cl, as that makes three bottles.

Native Americans urge Apache Software Foundation to ditch name

Outski

Re: Oracle? Sun? Java?

Oopsie - someone obviously forgot to remind the lawyer that the coffee Java was named after comes from the island :o)

FD: Bahasa Java is one of the working languages chez Outski, MrsO being from there

Outski
Joke

Re: Oracle? Sun? Java?

News just in: Zorastrian extremists have called in a bomb threat again a UK newspaper accusing it of shameless blasphemy /endit

(jk, all the Zoroastrians I've met have been really lovely and kind people. And also refugees.)

Tributes flow as Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo - the mind behind Sound Blaster - passes aged 68

Outski

Still using Creative

I had a Zen for about ten years, bought when I moved overseas and didn't want to take 100+ CDs with me, it was great, and Creative's after-care service was top notch, despatching a new charger gratis to my UK office on a short work trip back to Blighty to cover for the one I'd forgotten to bring with me from Malaysia. When I was on the look out for some PC speakers last year they were my first port of call, and didn't let me down.

Thank you, Mr Sim.

Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building

Outski

Windows

Many years ago, I was shown the server room of the central govt department I worked for (at a satellite office): lovely, huge racks, great aircon, big halon fire system (it did say it was many years ago, mid 90s to be closer) and a back wall of toughened glass.

Not toughened enough, apparently, to stop a Transit at 20 mph, into which was loaded a few tons of govt kit...

Outski

Re: standing upright and keeping still

"They go through bone like butter"

https://youtu.be/kDKiQfBs9lo?t=294

Twitter staffer turned Saudi spy jailed for 3.5 years

Outski
Trollface

The Beeb can't report from Donetsk because their crews will be killed. Reports of Ukraine military activity in Donetsk are made, with caveats that those reports are unverified.

Your mention of 'Antifa', as if that's a thing, mark you out as a Trumpian and Putinesque troll.

End of an era as the last 747 rolls off the production line

Outski

Re: My first flight

And Emirates too, come to that

Outski

The A380 always looks like it has a massive smile on its 'face', I love them :o)

Outski

Re: My first flight

Same on MAS

It was Russia wot did it: SolarWinds hack was done by Kremlin's APT29 crew, say UK and US

Outski

El Reg cited by MS Security Honcho

Gareth, it might interest you to know that this article was screenshot in a presentation by Alexx Weinert, MS VP Identity Security, alongside pieces from NYT and WSJ

Woman fakes pregnancy to smuggle hundreds of CPUs, iPhones into China

Outski

Easiest way with telly is to write the pregnancy into the script, particularly with soaps; plot the character going away whenever the actor's baby is due, give them a prosthetic once they've had it, and you can write in a very realistic delivery scene.

Britain has likely missed the boat for having a semiconductor industry

Outski

Re: You could really have an entire website devoted to this phrase in the UK:

But they can point to investing millions into the project... on the countless meetings, project boards, discussion papers, consultants' reports, repeat ad nauseum

Outski

Re: British innovation

Oooh, never a big fan of fish and chips, but I could go for a battered sausage (fnarr) right now

Outski
Pint

Re: British innovation

Champagne, or at least the champenoise method, with its secondary fermentation, was invented by an Englishman, several years before Dom Perignon. It was also the English who worked out how to bottle it without the bottles exploding under pressure. Yay for us.

No champagne icon, so closest thing --->

Spooky entanglement revealed between quantum AI and the BBC

Outski
Pint

Re: And when IT works, what would/could you have IT do? Do You Think IT Would Listen and Comply?

I actually understood that more than the article

Maybe I need more ----->

How not to test a new system: push a button and wait to see what happens

Outski

Re: And if it isn't in the manual it ought not to happen.

Also known as knowing where to put the chalk-mark

Waiting for speedy broadband? UK's Openreach prioritizing existing work over fiber expansion

Outski
Headmaster

See me after class

It's FIBRE, it's spelled that way in the press release, so stick to it.

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Outski

Re: You get what you order

Kuala Lumpur

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