Posts by Cartimand

Escape From Tarkov: Hardest of the hardcore looter-shooter is spellbinding despite the punishing learning curve

Hmmm...

Sounds very interesting, but I cannot forgive El Reg for its glowing review of Darkest Dungeon.

I bought it on your recommendation and it turned out to be a plodding, repetitive dog of a game!

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

Re: Surprised

"if a party proposes a new law to improve air quality standards, you'd be against it?"

Better be safe than sorry and I would tend to err on the side of libertarianism rather than totalitarianism.

We may be coughing our guts up, but at least we wouldn't be living under fascism!

Re: Surprised

Oops "father" not farther!

Re: Surprised

"Fascist" is one of the most overused and misused terms.

The farther of modern fascism Mussolini defined it as :

"All within the State.

Nothing outside the State.

Nothing against the State."

In other words, fascism is all about growing the state, at the expense of individual liberty.

Best way to oppose fascism? Never vote for any party seeking to grow the state.

Brian Eno's latest composition: A giant Christmas card with Julian Assange on it

Showing my age

Liked his manic synth break in the middle of "Editions of You".

All went a bit downhill after that.

Smartphone market's lifeless corpse twitches slightly in first sign of growth for two years

Re: 350,000,000 sales = 'Lifeless Corpse'

My 3-year old Blackberry Priv is still giving decent service (albeit held together with Gorilla glue) and I hope it will continue to do so until 5G is properly up and running.

Class-action lawsuit claims DXC 'selectively timed' job cuts to inflate short-term profit target

Strange new use of the terms "retain", "motivated" and "skilled"

Hard to reconcile the statement "...retain highly motivated people..." when every ex HP/CSC employee with any get-up-and-go took the redundancy money and got up and went a couple of years ago.

Alexa, can you tell me how many Chinese kids were forced into working nights to build this unit?

Think of the wei ones...

Whilst any form or coercive labour is rightfully condemned, the fact that some of these "children" are as young as 17 or 18 doesn't really add much weight to the case.

The opening text conjured forth grim images of tiny infants, hardly more than toddlers, working their poor little digits to the bone, under the grim and unblinking supervision of Foxconn slave-masters.

Are some of these child workers well into their 20s and 30s or even middle aged?

Do these internships look good on their CVs?

Enough of the cynicism though. If Amazon does put measures in place to improve conditions for workers of ALL ages, then that has to be a good thing.

DXC Technology warns techies that all travel MUST now be authorised

The few remaining staff are bracing themselves for the "A maximum of two sheets of toilet paper to be used per visit" edict...

DXC: We've told UK government that up to 2,150 heads could roll in latest job cuts

Don't eXpect Coherence

.... So why am I still being emailed, almost daily, vacancies at the Aldershot centre?

I left on fairly generous VR terms just over 2 years ago, when the closure of the Hook site was imminent and haven't looked back.

Found a better paid, more secure position within a few weeks at a company that awards pay rises, invests in training staff and has no prohibition on travel.

<exits gloat mode>.

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

Genuinely looking forward to this.

I spent a lot of time on FSX, including the around the world in 70 flights challenge in a gorgeous old Lockheed Electra. Also loved some of the built-in FSX missions, notably the Bermuda Triangle one. Have been meaning to upgrade my old desktop PC for a higher spec gaming machine for some time. Guess this will give me the excuse I needed.

DXC Technology exec: What should our brand be known for?

Re: from one of the ancestors

I can recall "Behind every mess - there's EDS".

DXC Technology seeks volunteers to take redundancy. No grads, apprentices, and 'quota carrying' sales folk

Ever decreasing circles

Before this Ouzelum Bird of a company finally disappears up its own fundament, I expect Mike Ashley to offer to buy it for £1.

He could replace those ageing HP servers with racks of tacky tracksuits and plimsolls.

DXC: We axed 10k staff, shut nine data centres, closed 4.6m sq ft of office space... and sales tumbled, funnily enough

Still whistling Dixie I see.

So glad that I jumped ship two years ago!

Users fail to squeak through basic computer skills test. Well, it was the '90s

When magnets (and ignorance) really suck

I recall, sometime back around the early 90s, Royal Mail IT was switching from the 5.25" to 3.5" floppy format.

One tech support guy I sat near entertained us with the tale of a user complaining that the new disks would not retain any data.

On visiting the site, he confirmed that the disks were indeed totally empty and asked the user how they were being stored.

She replied that, for convenience of access, she was attaching the most frequently used disks by their metal sliding read/write door to a magnetic clip on her cubicle, only to find that all her Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3 files had magically disappeared...

DXC Technology bids $2bn for Swiss big cheese Luxoft

Well I'm sure it was nice while it lasted, Luxoft employees.

Better get those CVs spruced up.

Deck the halls with ... oh, no. DXC tells staff they may not have a job in the New Year

DXC's favourite 'Knock, knock' joke

Knock, knock.

- Who's there?

Not you any more!

Took redundancy from the HPE cocoon just before the ghastly parasital DXC hawk moth emerged last year on fairly generous terms and found a better paid and more secure role within a couple of months - not that I'm gloating or anything!

Odd thing is, I look back now at those quarterly warnings of impending redundancy with a sort of misty-eyed nostalgia.

Black Friday? Yes, tech vendors might be feeling a bit glum looking at numbers for the UK

So it's a year to the day since I took up Amazon's Black Friday offer and let Alexa into my life.

Oh God! She just lit up.

Alexa: "Well, forgive me for being so inquisitive; but during the past few weeks, I've wondered whether you might be having some second thoughts about me?"

BlackBerry KEY2 LE: Cheaper QWERTY, but not for what's inside

Screen too small?

I still happily use my Blackberry Priv, with the sliding screen that exposes the QWERTY keyboard, being my favourite feature (and irrisistible to fiddle with). Whilst a physical keyboard is great, above all, I like a big screen and the KEY2s lose an inch, due to the permanently exposed keyboard.

Think I'll stick with the Priv for now.

Now DXC yourself to the door: Another exec exits outsourcing giant

Re: Concerned? You should be...

I recall the slogan was "Behind every mess - There's EDS".

At last: Magic Leap reveals its revolutionary techno-goggles – but wait, there's a catch

Does it come with 1,000 old ZX Spectrum games built in?

DXC UK chops more customer-facing service staff

Re: Thee are 200 new lives onoffer here folks

"I left HPE at the end of March 17 and dived straight into the market."

Me too - and am so very glad I took the redundancy money (on fairly generous terms at the time). Took me a couple of months to land on my feet, but now after almost a year in a better paid position with vastly better prospects and with most of my severance package intact (pretty well knocking my mortgage on the head), it turned out to be one of the best career moves I ever made.

Despite the Brexit factor, there IS life after HP/HPe/CSC/DXC etc. and more often than not, the grass really is greener.

Whenever I bump into old colleagues from HPe/DXC, they don't sound a very happy bunch these days!

'Dear Mr F*ckingjoking': UK PM Theresa May's mass marketing missive misses mark

Re: Syria

"It's for the National Association for Dyslexics."

When my doctor told me my dyslexia could be cured, it was music to my arse...

Oh dear.

Poor Mr Fuckingjoking and his wife DrearyFatBoring and their son SnivelingLittleRatface must have cruel jokes made about their name all the time (with apologies to Monty Python).

Trump's tax reforms lift DXC's profit

Re: Best shore?

"Pyramid correction is about changing the shape of the organisation."

In "best shoring" UK roles to Asia and the Middle East, perhaps it should be renamed "Peer Ahmed Selection".

What did we say about Tesla's self-driving tech? SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids

Re: "rapid, unscheduled disassembly,"

As a tester at HP many moons ago, I recall when we were ordered to stop referring to "crashes" in our bug reports and employ the euphemism "unexpected return to login" instead.

DXC confirms veep level shake-up in new world order

So most of the smaller rodents have long since been kicked off the floundering vessel DXC, with the sensible ones having taken the enhanced VR terms offered last year.

Now the large capybaras and coypus are starting to make a splash off the side too.

Must be time for another spin merge. Should call the new company Oozlum as it swirls around in ever decreasing circles.

DXC execs: Here's another deadline for skills profiling

Re: Roll up, roll up and sign your own death warrants

"I no longer have any interest in this car crash company aside from regular checks that they haven't yet stolen my pension pot."

A very real danger. Hence me transferring my DC pension fund to my new company's scheme, where it should be safer and earning a better return too.

Apple iPhone X: Two weeks in the life of an anxious user

Love the review - and it's convinced me to limp along with my Blackberry Priv for a little longer.

How's this for a stocking filler next year? El Reg catches up with Gemini

Looks good, but not convinced that price tag can be justified - especially as $s tend to translate into £s when such devices cross the Pond.

Does Gemini do much that a mid-range tablet/phablet or netbook cannot?

BlackBerry won't kill BB10 until 2020, pulls regular Priv updates

Disappointing news. The BB Priv has to be the best Smart Phone I've ever owned - much prefer it to my previous Sony Xperia, and was hoping to get a few more years of properly supported service from it.