Posts by eamonn_gaffey

LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything

You Couldn't Make This Up

...unlike the LLM's :-)

2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies

Now that is what I call community :-)

Why did the Windows 95 setup use Windows 3.1?

Why ?

...is The Reg droning on about historical artefacts like Win 3.1 and 95 ? Almost pre-history in digital terms. How about current (and interesting) content/discussions, that has the added bonus of keeping the mag relevant.

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Re: Age verification

"Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to the mobile phones that so many have glued to the end of their arms from a very early age. I don't know how to fix that."

Generation(s) are growing up addicted to internet face time ("(anti) social media" etc.) via mobile devices (I predict that in several generations, babies will be born with a clasp shaped hand that neatly fits a mobile. :-) ). The future population are being groomed almost from birth by big tech to part with control of their data and their lives. This is the real issue, of which access to porn is but one facet.

SvarDOS: DR-DOS is reborn as an open source operating system

Christmas Fun

I thought this might be some fun for Christmas when I saw the headline, but it appears to be real.

Honestly folks, what's the point ? Happy to be enlightened, but CP/M was obscure in the 1980's so almost completely irrelevant now ?

Fun for some techie trainspotting, which to be fair is there to be enjoyed, so best of luck :-).

Even Netflix struggles to identify and understand the cost of its AWS estate

Re: Get a Dog, Learn to Bark

Plenty run their own DC's. In fact, I believe this esteemed organ recently published a piece on AWS users moving services back to such DC's. The corporate execs drank the koolaid, got the hangover and now realise the extent of the deception imposed by faddish Public Cloud groupthink ...but eventually money will talk.

Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

Fixing the English : 'committed by e.g. a murderer', not 'committed by i.e a murderer'.

Fixing the sentiment : Screw the "work" if it originates from highly suspect sources (e.g. Russia, China ....).Tough on any genuine people but this is a war, so act accordingly. No room for bleeding hearts unfortunately.

Excel Hell II: If the sickness can't be fixed, it must be contained

... keep the faith

Germany advises citizens to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Economic Argument

I got rid of Kaspersky years ago because it crippled my machine......but for me the argument is not whether Kaspersky is trustworthy, but whether I should be supporting a Russian company with the history that the founders (Mr and ex Mrs Kaspersky) have with the Kremlin. No chance, I will spend my cash elsewhere.

Bitcoin is ‘disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization’ says famed investor Charlie Munger

Re: Insert meme here

Yes, but the old man in question knows a lot more about efficient and highly profitable allocation of capital than almost anyone else, as demonstrated by his investment track record. Personally, I'll take the shouting if I can have the returns :-)

God bless this mess: Study says UK's Christian beliefs had 'important' role in Brexit

Yet More Dimensions of Division

I often wonder how nonsense like this even gets funded.... just what is the point of it ? In a UK the most divided in my lifetime, the authors seek to introduce the highly invidious dimension of religion to Brexit ? We don't need this given what we have just been through and are still dealing with (Brexit, pandemic).

We had enough nut jobs during the Brexit debate without encouraging the just as crazy religious fanatics. I am working on the assumption that this work is so obscure that it will go largely unnoticed, acting only as some raison d'etre for 2 out there academics to justify their salaries. All that education, what a waste.

Starlink's latent China crisis could spark a whole new world of warcraft

.... and the Chinese are gonna pay for it :-)

A borked bit of code sent the Hubble Space Telescope into safe mode, revealing a bunch of other glitches

Re: Test before deployment ?

That, plus it sounds like they may not have a test rig that reflects production on the Hubble....or if they do, adequate testing was not performed.

Still, sounds like they had sufficient contingency/resilience to enable a fix, which is impressive given the nature of the live environment.

Theranos destroyed crucial subpoenaed SQL blood test database, can't unlock backups, prosecutors say

Re: Sure thing

...and there are so many examples of such incompetence in IT, that this could be an entirely believable defence. However, there must be rules/law on corporate responsibility around things like DR that make a business a going concern that apply. At least, one would hope so...........

Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'

Re: Proof reader

I nearly always find errors on reading the printed version, even after having done the same on screen.

My explanation is those of us who grew up with paper will find proofing a printed copy fruitful, and the kids of the digital age won't ever need to look at one.

Agree that marking up is so much better on paper, Word Review is just plain awkward.

I can 'proceed without you', judge tells Julian Assange after courtroom outburst

Re: Blackmailed

The US has already made the decision on innocence or guilt. That is a major issue the UK should be considering....but then we need a trade deal some time soon...(notwithstanding potential criminal acts by US citizens with 'dimplomatic immunity').

IBM ordered to pay £22k to whistleblower and told by judges: Teach your managers what discrimination means

Re: Harassment and mobbing on the job

..maybe data scrubbers :-).

You would expect at least some empathy, but unfortunately, being female does not exclude such crass, odious and illegal behaviour. These "managers" were motivated by an internal culture that brooks no dissent. What an awful place to work.

All power to Ms Davidsen for having the courage to take them, and the company hierarchy on - very brave.

80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds

Re: sequence Numbers on punched cards

George3 : best development environment I ever worked on. Part of the ICL VME OS as I recall, a great piece of British software that unfortunately was rolled over by the IBM juggernaut....that and a sad lack of technological foresight, awareness and interest from various UK governments.

Easyjet hacked: 9 million people's data accessed plus 2,200 folks' credit card details grabbed

Re: Highly sophisticated

...this is how it happens folks. Pursuit of cheap and nasty outsourced IT "services", means you will get what you pay for - one day. The dicks who set up such, no doubt got nice pay rises and bonuses, and are long gone elsewhere. What fun, indeed.

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Re: Dreaming up barriers to adoption...

Well, as it turns out we are getting Corbynism by stealth ...and that from the most right wing Tory gov. in my life time - what irony !! Universal Basic Income here we come :-)

Why should the UK pensions watchdog be able to spy on your internet activities? Same reason as the Environment Agency and many more

To be fair, even if Plod had the resource their historical clear up rates are so dire I'm not sure it would make much difference (not entirely their fault as they have been badly blunted by the PC brigade of smart arse law people and misguided liberals) . I stopped believing in the fantasy of someone being there to help years ago - everyone for themselves now unfortunately.

Web pages a little too style over substance? Behold the Windows 98 CSS file

Re: Who needs gooey?

Why noy go the whole hog and bring back CP/M ?.....or maybe even some tally sticks ?

Cloudflare dumps Google's reCAPTCHA, moves to hCaptcha as free ride ends (and something about privacy)

Re: Let's not go into...

I think we ought to......

Want to stay under the radar for a decade or more? This Chinese hacking crew did it... by aiming for Linux servers

Re: Meaningless Group Of Statements Made Up Out of the Air

Agreed, this dross is not up to the usual Register standards...better not to publish it at all. Must be anxious to fill up content space (sort of understandable in these times).

Let's Encrypt? Let's revoke 3 million HTTPS certificates on Wednesday, more like: Check code loop blunder strikes

Re: The real world

The testing legacy has been replaced by the mentality of : "sling any shit live because my bonus depends on it", in an "agile" fashion, because we need to "act fast and break things(literally)" yawn, yawn, yawn..... Some things are fundamental, like a comprehensive test pack.

BAE Systems tosses its contractors a blanket... ban on off-payroll working under upcoming IR35 tax reforms

Re: "[HMRC] has predicted the reforms will recoup £1.2bn a year by 2023"

...especially with all those expensive and rate chasing 'contractors' :-)

UK contractors planning 'mass exodus' ahead of IR35 tax clampdown – survey

This is the most common sense I have seen on this thread. 'Contractors' (i.e. permanent staff dressed up as such for tax avoidance) have had it so good for so long, but this was always going to happen - someone has to pay for the increasingly lower UK tax culture.

There will be no 'mass exodus' as economic reality becomes apparent. - where are they going for a start ? EU looks like a big risk currenlty. As previously pointed out, there are loads of very well paid permanent jobs in UK currenlty. Be thankful.

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

Contractors won't sue RBS or anyone else over this, because they would lose. All that money on expensive QC's (also contractors) would be wasted.

Hirers of contractors are free to pay whatever rate they want, so if contractors (who claim to run their own businesses) don't like it, then look elsewhere.

All this complaining is starting to sound like permanent staff who actually are covered by employment laws - but contractors aren't, because they are not permanent. You can't have it both ways.

I suspect most of the complaining is coming from "contractors" who are de facto permanent staff, but have arranged recompense to avoid paying their fair share of tax.

Three UK does it again: Random folk on network website are still seeing others' account data

Re: Once is an unfortunate cockup. Twice needs stamping on

Even a one time 'cock up' is no excuse. Companies this shoddy and dangerous deserve a response from their customers.... who should take their own privacy seriously and vote with thier feet.

IR35 blame game: Barclays to halt off-payroll contractors, goes directly to PAYE

Gig Economy

Lots of posters here are delusional if they think non-public companies are going to cough up extra, just because (ex) contractors now have to pay their fair share of taxation. This is the Gig Economy going up market. We all watched it happen as we binged on Uber, Deliveroo (literally) et al., never expecting it to encroach upon the elevated world of "professional" jobs like IT.

Well, here it is, and unless the neoliberal revolution comes abruptly to an end (which it may still do with another 2008 style disaster), then this is our future. The share of the pie going to workers ( or "associates" in neolib speak) will decrease, and the share going to capital ("owners' rent") will increase - an inexorable trend since the late 1970's, of which this is yet another example.

Re: IR35 idiocy

"lingua latina" - Is that some software product that enables speakers of different languages to communicate, a bit like like a babel fish ? You might mean "lingua franca", which English certainly is both globally and specificlly in IT.

An excellent example of miscommunications between speakers of different native languages, even using a "lingua franca" like English.

Four words from Cisco to strike fear into the most hardened techies: Guest account as root

Re: Man it must be hard for Cisco

This latest example from Cisco may expain why UK Govt. persiists with Huawei. They would rather the risk of the PRC Communist Party spying on us, than the shambles from the likes of Cisco. A novel risk based approach I guess :-)

Ebuygumm doesn't break t' Nominet rules, eBay and Gumtree told

Re: Coming soon

Wrong side of the Pennines...........that's Lancashire slang.

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

Re: That's Chromebook right out of my buying list then

Disgusting as it is, that is the business model for the IT supplier industry, and it is no wonder they now own the earth. There have been notable exceptions in the software industry, where suppliers support everything they have ever released, but these are exceptionally rare.

As mug punters, we all (reluctantly) have go along with it. Maybe we should vote with our feet, except there are not a lot of places to go. As my (futile) little protest, I hang on to "stuff" until they are broken, putting up with ever decreasing functionality and performance, and only upgrade when I absolutely have to.

Microsoft: 2TB or not 2... OK, OK! 2TB. OneDrive dragged kicking and screaming into selling more storage

Re: "Google will take £7.99 a month off you for 2TB of space"

Agree. Spend GBP 50.00 on a 2TB portable device if needed. Otherwise, spend GBP 100.00 on a 2TB home NAS that can be accessed remotely. Take reponsibility for your own precious data !! :-).

Double trouble for Lyft after share price drop sparks class action lawsuits claiming hype

Re: Uber, Lyft and a good few others

Yet another bubble, and a definite sense of "deja vu". Neither Lyft nor Uber make profit, or are even projected to - so unless you are speculating (in which case your problem if you get burned) why would any sane, rational person buy their stock?

This is the current owners of venture capitalists, founders, employees etc. dumping essentially worthless equity on the market, which eagerly gobbles it up. These people are incentivised to market their "product" in any which way they can to dumb investors.

Find something better to do with your cash, and leave it to the snakes to fight it out amongst themselves - just say NO !!

HMRC: 30 months to prep Northern Ireland backstop systems, 24 for customs

Oh I don't know...think of all the contract hours you could rack up on a project with a hard(ish) end date, and therfore deep(ish) pockets. "Candy from a baby" springs to mind.....

RIP Charles Wang: Computer Associates cofounder dies aged 74

Re: They used to joke the Sales team dress code was "Sharkskin Grey"

Sharks is the right analogy. CA treated their 'customers' appalingly, more like cash cows. Their account mamagers were a bunch of spivs, and truly awful people.

NHS smacks down hundreds of staffers for dodgy use of social media, messaging apps

Re: … FFS

We need to be worried by a lot more US 'overspill' than election language, although that is the tip of an insidious iceberg. If the mob lead by Johnson/Rees-Mogg get their way, after they have screwed us with Brexit, the NHS will be re-born a la US privatised/medical insurance style. NHS 'staffers' pissing about on social media will be the least of our worries.

British Airways' latest Total Inability To Support Upwardness of Planes* caused by Amadeus system outage

Re: Why???

...and it comes at a "lower cost", at least in terms of pounds/dollars - undoubtedly a significant driver behind outsourcing this rather crucial system. Unfortunately you get what you pay for, and the exec leading the project, thus achieving his/her inflated bonus for that year, will have long departed.

Sub-Prime: Amazon's big day marred by server crashes, staff strikes

Re: I wonder...

The service contract might make for interesting reading.......

Swiss sausage sizzler 4.0 hits 200 bangers per hour

Re: Pah! Away with your namby-pamby hobbyists

...man after my own heart - which is currrently being investigated for coronary disease :-)

TSB's middleware nightmare: Execs grilled on Total Sh*tshow at Bank

...and would need double the high end of that to walk into the shitstorm, and work for a management team headed by the likes of Pester. On second thoughts, take the job as a 12 month contract, undercut IBM by 15%, and still walk away with enough to buy a retirement home in France...........

TSB outage, day 5: What do you mean you can't log in? Our systems are up and running. Up and running, we say!

Re: "Load Balancer Errors" is the clue

As a veteran of many such migrations of bigger proportions, I can attest this this is the only sensible approach. To go 'big bang' on something like this is just too risky. I'm guessing the reason TSB did it was because some megalomaniac in charge decided to go for the macho high risk approach, and fucked it up royally.

Interesting to hear Paul Pester,TSB CEO, on BBC Radio 4 this morning. Sounded very upbeat, almost smug (if you can beleive it), now that he has a global IBM team on board !. I'm sure that will be productive for TSB's customers (or rather, IBM in terms of fees generated).

.

Co-op says IT upgrade project going swell since axing IBM

Re: Years of under-investment

100% correct......and there are many "non sane" IT depts. that do spiral down this plughole. There is a reason why all the big vendors (IBM, MS, Oracle, HP, AWS..........) have concentrated on Global 'Services' and Outsourcing over the last decade - because it is a licence to print money. Moreover, it is like taking candy from a baby as they have their friends strategically implanted in many corporate IT set ups. Some people might say it borders on corruption................

As Zuck apologizes again... Facebook admits 'most' of its 2bn+ users may have had public profiles slurped by bots

Just Say "NO"

I am reminded of the UK Police's esrtwhile advice to young people when being approached by drug dealers - just say "No".

If you are already on FB, minimise what data you share, and then don't engage any further with this particular data dealership. If you are not in the FB clutches, don't sign up in the first place !!

I am also reminded of the maxim "there is no such thing as a free lunch" - so don't be surprised if FB is dealing your data, 'cos you are not paying for the FB 'service'.