Posts by Chloe Cresswell

Things I learned from Y2K (pt 87): How to swap a mainframe for Microsoft Access

Re: bare hands?

Creative spelt "Photonicinducation"? ;)

Is everything OK over there, Britain? Have you tried turning the UK off and on again? ISPs, financial orgs fall over in Freaky Friday of outages

That'd be Anchor?

Who says HMRC hasn't got a sense of humour? Er, 65 million Brits

Re: It's funny....

I got a letter reporting that I had failed to submit PAYE returns for a company of mine.

For the year after the (non-trading) company had been closed, struck off, HMRC informed, etc.

So we have a company with no income, no employees and doesn't exist, being threatened with fines/etc for not supplying information that couldn't exist in the first place!

Re: They do have a sense of humour sometimes

Now I have the image of getting a package from HMRC with a chocolate bar in it..

(and a form to mark it as a benefit in kind, and therefore not tax deducible)

Whirlybird-driving infosec boss fined after ranty Blackpool Airport air traffic control antics

Re: Over here:

"His licence was suspended after the incident and the CAA will decide whether or not to return it." they have pulled his license.

I hope we'll get an update when the CAA decide if he gets it back or not.

Re: Just a fine?

"His licence was suspended after the incident and the CAA will decide whether or not to return it." he's grounded for now *nods*

Y2K quick-fix crick? 1920s come roaring back after mystery blip at UK's vehicle licensing agency

Re: Who's a betting man?

How's your left side?

BOFH: You brought nothing to the party but a six-pack of regret

Plus clearing the sick taste from your mouth with beer would be a waste of beer?

We won't CU later: New Ofcom broadband proposals mull killing off old copper network

Re: Spare a copper?

The OTN needs power, and can also have a battery unit connected to it (which takes AA's I believe) which is the user's job to keep an eye on and replace.

The router and phone then connect to one of the sockets on the OTN.

Re: reliability

to be technically correct, given how adsl/adsl2 is deployed here, that would be the distance from the exchange. VDSL is the only normally fitted in the cabinet (and therefore that would be correct for it - distance from the cabinet).

Re: reliability

KC started to deploy using a semi-rigid tube with the fibre blown down it. By the time I needed an openreach fibre installed on a site (last year), it was fitted as a self supporting fibre - basically a steel wire or 2, with the fibre part of the make up. I think this was a single wire, which I believe is a wire with a groove in it - the fibre goes into the groove before the outer layers are applied. It's only going about 30 metres from the pole to the building's 2nd floor, but so far the wind hasn't caused any issues.

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

On all the sound bars I've used, you have to select bluetooth to enable it, otherwise it's not available, and also not when the unit is in standby. It's always been turn on, select bluetooth to find it with them.

So if you are woken up at 3am because you left it turned on, and had the bluetooth input selected, then I'd say that's more your security issue, not the soundbar.

You mean someone could find a flaw in it if you leave the bluetooth on and they could play *insert current band/artist of meme hate*?

Wham, bam, thank you scram button: Now we have to go all MacGyver on the server room

Re: Dont have your machine room at the top of a building

Makes me think when I was told about cam.ac.uk having a halon dump on a false alarm.

That's when they found there was plumbers grease in the halon pipework. Well, there was. It was atomised and deposited all over and in their new mainframe.

Register Lecture: Can portable atomic clocks end UK dependence on GNSS?

Who sets the standard? Why it'll be a British Standard... and like most standards, therefore there will be at least 2 competing times to set yours to...

Bose customers beg for firmware ceasefire after headphones fall victim to another crap update

Re: What a time to be alive...

Why, that was no accident, that was 1st degree toastercide!

Re: I mean since when did headphones even need firmware updates?

Someone's been listening to HolRock?

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

Re: What's DAB for?

It's not so much the broadcasters want DAB - iirc the government won't let you have an FM licence now unless you have DAB, and the more that are on DAB, the greater the chance of flogging off some more spectrum...

150 infosec bods now know who they're up against thanks to BT Security cc/bcc snafu

Re: Who?

You mean a normal/traditional complete balls-up by BT...

Team size increases...

"we'll be increasing the size of our security team by 25 per cent..." 25% +1 now, maybe?

When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences

Re: User ignore email

ASR once had the comment of:

"*sigh* Oh, how I wish lusers could read documentation more than they read porn..."

(and the reply...)

' That's IT! PORNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION!

"...and as she finally reached orgasm, she screamed 'the mail server will be down for three hours tonight! Yes! Oh, yes!'" ' ;)

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

Re: Forget the risk of fire spreading through the holes in the wall

I see timber interior frame walls with brick exterior (load bearing) walls around here.

Remember the big IBM 360 mainframe rescue job? For now, Brexit has ballsed it up – big iron restorers

Re: Seriously?

Yeah, I mentally went though my clients drags, as we work for a couple of international hauliers.

It's the tail lift that's the deal breaker. All the artics with lifts are normally doing food type work and aren't so much in the general pool of available units.

Mandatory electronic prescriptions was the easy bit in NHS paperless plans

Re: Three gas guzzling trips coming up

My GP has on their IVR "We do not accept requests for repeat prscriptions over the phone"

And most of the pharmacies I tried last time it wasn't a case of "call to notify you", it was "We can not get these, we will not accept this prescription for dispensing"

Re: Pharmacy out of stock of a medicine ?

My record in the past year has been needing to go to 6 pharmacies to fill a 6 week prescription. The 6th had 4 weeks worth and were willing to let me take that.

Re: Three gas guzzling trips coming up

For myself, getting a repeat prescription is: Drive to GP (2 miles), order prescription. 2-3 days later, drive to GPs to see if it's ready, if so, take it. Then start the round of walking at the weekend to fill it. My record so far is needing to go to 6 pharmacies, because 5 didn't have it. The 6th had 4 weeks out of a 6 week prescription, and 2 weeks later were able to fill the missing 2 weeks with a different medication.

So I guess I'll be sticking with paper too.

I see your blue passport and raise you a green number plate: UK mulls rewards scheme for zero-emission vehicles

Re: Go Dutch?

Well, if you remove things like the side impact protection systems, etc, I'm sure you'd reduce the weight of the 2019 astra a lot.

A History of (Computer) Violence: Wait. Before you whack it again, try caressing the mouse

We had a user kick a dent into the side of his new computer because it was slow. This wasn't the worse thing he did while we worked there, but it was the most visible.

Three UK goes TITSUP*: Down and out for 10 hours and counting

Re: TITSUP *

Nice, but I'm only collecting the ones in articles.. I have a pastebin where I add them when I see them ;)

Yay, another titsup backronym to add to my growing list!

Private equity to gobble up Brit virus blocker Sophos for £3bn

As a sophos reseller, I'm so happy to have found this out via my clients and elreg. I wonder when they'll tell us.

Plusnet is doing us proud again with early Christmas present for customers: Price hikes

Hmm, no broadband with out line rental will be fun for my Mum's line.

The phone line is under contract with my Mum.

The broadband is under contract with myself. I can't give permission for them to take over the line, I'm not the legal party involved.

I will have to keep an eye on this...

TalkTalk says WalkWalk if you've got a mouldy Tiscali email address, or pay £50 a year to keep it

I wonder if they asked via email, in which case I think we're 100% sure there will not be a response..

When the satellite network has literally gone glacial, it's vital you snow your enemy

Re: Battleship!

We had a client who put in a pair of dlink 802.11g waps with external antennas to link and old and new building. Was about 150 metres. We warned them, the site director warned them...

Worked fine till we had a cold night after a sunny day, and the (slight) valley filled up with fog off the river. Both end points were working, but the actual signal that got though was close to zero till the sun came up and the fog burnt off.

They argued for a month into the autumn. Then paid for a fibre.

Re: Satellite in the 90's

We had one where the signal dropped due to a crow peeling away the feed horn cover like a milk bottle top and getting water into both the down and uplink LNBs.. The ISP didn't believe us till we sent them some photos...

https://i.imgur.com/d7JEL2y.jpg

BBC said it'll pull radio streams from TuneIn to slurp more of your data but nobody noticed till Amazon put its foot in it

Re: No.

For me, the normal answer on DAB is "you live in the wrong places" "you drive in the wrong areas", etc. I can't tell my clients to move their sites so I get a better DAB signal when I drive to site.

Re: No.

Belmont here too.. http://www.raccoons.co.uk/~chloe/temp/DAB.mp3 it's so clear ;)

Re: No.

I rarely use the DAB side of my radio in the car - it's the crystal clear distortion, breakups and drop outs that mean I'm more likely to use FM...

BOFH: We must... have... beer! Only... cure... for... electromagnetic fields

Re: Irradiated Haggis

Any homoganised pudding?

This is where we find it's a bluetooth headset to a deskphone! ;)

TalkTalk still struggles to shut down legacy email addresses on request

Re: I don't feel very well

Yeap, you'd think there would be a way to disable access to the mailbox while it's worked out, rather the leaving it fully running.

Re: They might be cheap

I have the opposite issue: We looked into a Virgin Business account for a client due to lack of choice, they let us down multiple times on just the quote, so we never ordered the line.

I've had multiple emails informing me of planed maintenance on the non-existent line.

I've rung 5 times to complain, been told each time I've been removed from getting these notices, then another turns up.

In this case we are actually paying nothing but getting the harassment for free! ;)

Switch about to get real: Openreach bod on the challenge of shuttering UK's copper phone lines

Re: For 2025 read 2075

Yeah, would be nice if the customer got any documentation.

OR didn't even tell Zen to start with which network port we should use. So we tried eth1, and got a BT broadband error.

Even with only a zen connection on it, we have to be connected to eth2, and eth1 is still connected to part of BTB!

Re: For 2025 read 2075

I love the way that's worded: "The battery back-up unit is charged by your Openreach fibre modem." Interesting, on my client's unit, the openreach PSU plugs into the BBU, and the BBU connects to the ONT.

So in our case, the BBU powers the ONT, not the ONT charging the BBU..

Re: For 2025 read 2075

For fttp lines, the ONT can have a battery backup fitted, client of mine's has this.

The battery is as old as the install, and doesn't appear to hold any real charge any more, however. I have no idea who's responsibility this is (ONT is openreach, original subscriber's connection on eth1 was BT, my client is on eth2 with Zen) to fix...

Re: My customers are going to have fun...

Agreed.

My customers are going to have fun...

They are only due to be upgraded to FTTC by august 2020.. so unless OR upgrade them to FTTP soon, anyone on FTTC will lose that first level of testing for a fault: plugging in a phone and seeing if it's live.

Two years ago, 123-Reg and NamesCo decided to register millions of .uk domains for customers without asking them. They just got the renewal reminders...

Re: Maybe it is past time to call Trading Standards.

Hit the word "honourable" in reference to the person.. and I think my head BSODed.

Right-click opens up terrifying vistas of reality and Windows 95 user's frightful position therein

Re: Similar

The alcoholics would have lived longer?

Cu in Hell: Thousands internetless after copper thieves pinch 500m of cable in Cambridgeshire

Re: A simple (but costly) answer

Making it clear only works if people bother to check.

Lumps of the rail signalling systems have been going from copper to fibre, and sections still get cut and taken because people still think it's copper.. :(