* Posts by DoctorPaul

239 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jul 2018

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Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

Personally I pay Mythic Beasts three quid a month for basic web hosting just to use for my email. Catch-all redirection means one mailbox but effectively infinite number of addresses, blacklisting specific addresses is easy, webmail is available and the performance just blows tsoHost out of the water. I spent a good part of last year moving people's accounts from tso to Mythic, and with the same mailbox running in different Firefox tabs for the different servers the difference in performance was "enlightening".

BBC is still struggling with the digital switch, says watchdog

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: We have a commervial version of the BBC.

Fingers crossed that particular stupid idea has been canned. Other stupid ideas are available.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: A few things of interest.

Upvote for referencing Raydon's amazing firmware mods for the old Humax FoxSat receiver, and don't forget the other patch that flips a single bit so that HD recordings aren't encrypted.

Fully featured web interface, FTP server just for starters. Such a shame that Humax grokked what was going on and encrypted the firmware in their later models.

That said, thanks to Raydon my poor little mini-tower media server is now running 7 disk drives giving about 27 terabytes of storage!

Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Missing the point...

The quote that I always remember is

"People think that Ford are in business to make cars. They're not, they're in business to make money."

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: pisses off all the right people

Upvote for the reference to the massacre in Beziers by the Catholic Church during the Albigensian Crusade - "Kill them all, God will know his own".

Any other Cathars out there in commentard land?

Boss broke servers with a careless bit of keyboarding, leaving techies to sort it out late on a Sunday

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: "an on-prem email server"

Haven't got a repurposed coat cupboard but here at home I do have a repurposed airing cupboard :-)

It used to contain the hot water tank for the old heating system, but that was removed when we installed a modern combi boiler. Which left plenty of space for router, printer, one of my modded Humax satellite boxes, a couple of Pi-holes - you get the idea.

And of course the holes between floors where the 15mm or 18mm pipes used to run are perfect for routing ethernet cables, plus the waste heat from the kit means it still works as an airing cupboard.

Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Twitter staff: Go hardcore or go home

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: The Twitterverse will soon be silent

Upvote for Mythic Beasts who I found thanks to the good commentards of this parish.

I spent a good part of last month moving friends' web sites to them from tso.

Parody Elon Musk Twitter accounts will be suspended immediately, says Elon Musk

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Wehrmacht != nazi

Good point.

My late father was born near Gdansk and was 16 when Poland was invaded.

A few years later he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht, but more as forced labour - wasn't given a weapon, just a shovel basically.

In Italy he did a runner and was able to join the Free Polish forces, hence my father had the dubious honour of serving in both armies during WW2!

Your next PC should be a desktop – maybe even this Chinese mini machine

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Upvote for Desktop ok, been using it for more years than I care to remember, in my case on Win 7.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Get a Used Desktop

Absolutely this.

I used to put together my own systems (anyone remember the Shuttle XPC?) but for the last decade or more I've just headed to eBay and picked up a refurbished business PC for not very much, then thrown in what's needed.

Main machine is an HP Z230 with 32gig of RAM, SSD, couple of HDDs and a pair of GT710 graphics cards. They both support 4 HDMI outputs so I've been able to go the "full Terry Pratchett" with six 24" monitors - Windows 7 has no problem seeing all six, but last time I tried Mint only seemed to see one of the cards.

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: This isn't new kid hate

I've used Foxit products for decades, there's a free reader and a paid for editor. Haven't allowed Adobe products anywhere near my machines for the same amount of time.

How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

On Call has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while now as well:-(

Cops swoop after crooks use wireless keyfob hack to steal cars

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Progress of car security

Which explains how my partner's jewellery went missing on a ferry crossing back in the day (the day being the 1980s)

Microsoft leaves the Office, rebrands everything as 365

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Survey missing option

Ah yes, Office 2010 which I "bought" or thought I did.

Then I had to reinstall Windows (7 of course) and found that Microsoft had turned off the activation servers!

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Is it just me

I must say that the same thing had occurred to me, they've even put out the odd plaintive call for readers to send in articles.

Who would have thought that alienating your core readership would lead to a lack of engagement?

Tetchy trainee turned the lights down low to teach turgid lecturer a lesson

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Notes? How old school!

Quote from my uni days in the 70s.

"The lecture is a method of transferring ideas from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the student, without passing through the mind of either."

Girls Who Code books 'banned' in some US classrooms

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: One day they will look at their daughters killed by the Moral Police...

"as all religions regard women as underlings."

Hey, us Cathars were treating women as equals and that was 700 years ago!

'I Don't Care About Cookies' extension sold to Avast

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Same is happening to Nova Launcher

Saw this story elsewhere a few days ago.

There was mention in the comments that the popular Android Nova Launcher has gone a similar way, bought out by someone that I wouldn't want near my data.

Apparently the rot may set in with v8 so I've stopped auto update on it and downloaded the apk files for v7 from the developer web site while they're still there.

Tim Hortons offers free coffee and donut to settle data privacy invasion claims

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Tim Horton's (crappy) free coffee...

Visited relatives in Canada many years ago - they raved about their favourite coffee at Tim Horton's.

My godfathers! The "cappucino" came pre-sweetened with some sort of muck that nearly made me bring it back up after a couple of swigs - couldn't finish it.

Don't think that Tim Horton's will dare to open up in Italy any time soon.

Will Chinese giants defy US sanctions on Russia? We asked a ZTE whistleblower

DoctorPaul Bronze badge
Joke

Re: The USA will use any excuse to preserve its hegemony

Interesting handle, but you missed out a couple of letters.

VoiceOfMyTruth

TFIFY

Sorry everyone, I don't usually feed the trolls but my IBS is playing up and I'm in a foul mood.

Win 11 adds 'requirements not met' nag for unsupported hardware

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: What about?

<cough>BypassESU<cough>

SAP continues to support Russian customers

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: At the very least

For companies to say "we can't just stop taking their money, we've got a contract" makes me want to puke.

Cut them off now and see them in court, one day, maybe.

While I'm here, can I again plug the idea of making "ghost bookings" on Airbnb for properties owned by individuals in Ukraine.

I've booked a week in Odessa with Lidiya - won't be turning up obviously, but she will get the money and Airbnb are waiving their fees.

Europe's largest nuclear plant on fire after Russian attack

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Like primitive man putting his hand in fire

"Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face" - Mike Tyson I believe.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: I know it can't be done

Looks like Poland may be giving Ukraine some of their (relatively) elderly MIGs - Ukrainian pilots can't fly western jets without a lot of retraining - and in return the USA will let Poland have some nice shiny F35s or similar.

Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: The joys of modifying windows sounds...

Where I was freelancing I set my Mac startup sound to the Laurel and Hardy theme music - partly because I loved L&H but mainly as a comment on the working of the company.

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Tip from a friend in Turin - when parked don't engage the handbrake.

If there's a gap smaller than their car, the Torinese just shunt themselves in - leaving the handbrake off means less damage to the front/rear of your car.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Yep, 1989 BMW here.

It's new enough to have fuel injection, electric windows and central locking, what else do you need?

UK government's chief digital officer departs

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

No tool yet?

They've got a spreadsheet, so they know what data points they want to capture, plus the number of data items is going to be on the low side in the scheme of things - not in the millions, probably only a few thousand at most.

Back when I were nowt but a sole trader, I reckon that I could have knocked up a prototype in PHP/MySQL in an afternoon and would have thought I was pushing it to quote more than a week to deliver a working system to a client.

That said, finding the people who currently hold the required data might be the main problem - they've got a mailing list, so that's a start, but the first problem is always to know what it is that you don't know :-)

France says Google Analytics breaches GDPR when it sends data to US

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Confusing GA with advertising?

To optimise their web site photos / layout based on that knowledge maybe?

Bouncing cheques or a bouncy landing? All in a day's work for the expert pilot

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: In the pilot's defense...

Oh my lord, takes me back to the late 60's - yes I'm that old.

Started biking on a 200cc Tiger Cub, then bought a 650cc BSA Rocket Gold Star that needed an engine rebuild.

All ready to roll, pointed it up the road and whacked open the throttle like I did on the Cub - to promptly find that I was sitting on the rear number plate and hanging on for dear life! Did manage to avoid actually throwing it down the road though.

Years before that, my uncle's first ever bike was a 650 Beezer (no limits for learners then) - of course he put it straight through a hedge.

'95% original' film star Spitfire could be yours for a mere £4.5m (or 0.05 Pogbas)

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

I think there are even about 6 two-seat Spits in operation now.

I can still remember when I first saw the reports of the Grace Spitfire with its passenger seat - up until then you couldn't even dream of going up in a Spit.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Nightmares...

But then we would have to lynch them...

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: One of the best 5 minutes of my life

No connection, but I can heartily recommend Aero Legends at Headcorn aerodrome - my pilot "Parky" is ex-BBMF and Red Arrows and an utter gentleman.

And flying out of Headcorn (previously RAF Lashenden) you and the Spit take off and land on a grass runway - somehow to me flying one from tarmac wouldn't quite be the same.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: One of the best 5 minutes of my life

Was lucky enough to see the last flying Vulcan at air shows when they were still able to put the engines on full chat as they climbed away.

And on its farewell tour it came along the north Kent coast and did a 90 deg turn towards Manston pretty much right over our house - sad day.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: One of the best 5 minutes of my life

Once I get the 3 litre engine dropped into my 1989 BMW convertible I will! :-)

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: One of the best 5 minutes of my life

So true!

After the physical experience of flying it, I had almost-physical flashbacks for a few months while dreaming - anyone else who has skied had "skiing dreams" like I used to?

I like to think that there's a little bit of that physical feedback still hiding away in my spinal column somewhere.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge
Joke

Re: One of the best 5 minutes of my life

Wow, do they let you fly that if you go up in it?

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

One of the best 5 minutes of my life

In 2017 I went up in a dual-seat Spitfire (thanks Aero Legends), only finding out just before take-off that I would get to actually fly the plane.

Without a doubt, the BEST two and a half grand I have ever spent!!

The only problem is - when the first plane you've flown is a Spitfire, where the hell do you go after that? (Answer, start saving up for another trip)

Google sours on legacy G Suite freeloaders, demands fee or flee

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Fool me once....

You mean like I paid for Office 2010 and now it won't activate after a rebuild?

Microsoft patches the patch that broke VPNs, Hyper-V, and left servers in boot loops

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Quite a blast radius!

Will be looking at LibreOffice "real soon now".

I finally retired last year, so no longer need to exchange docs / spreadsheets with corporate clients, which is why I had to stick to Office.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Quite a blast radius!

I installed KB5009719 (.NET security rollup) on my Win7 box last week and it broke the AVIdemux video software somehow.

Upgrade from v2.7 to v2.8 didn't help, but rolling back the update fixed things.

If only I could get Media Companion to run via Wine (developer says it can't be done) then I could jump ship to Mint full time and be done with this. Oh, and on another box where I'm having to do a reinstall, the copy of Office 2010 that I paid for refuses to activate - WTF? It may be out of support, but I bloody paid for it and I sure as hell won't be taking out a 365 (ymmv) subscription as an alternative.

Planning for power cuts? That's strictly for the birds

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Boom .....

Fair enough, thanks for the details - that was how the guy from the electricity board explained it to me as a member of joe public. Just before they decided that they weren't going to compensate us for all the broken stuff as they had originally promised.

One thing I do know - having your own house do an impression of the Tardis under load while you're inside it is an experience that I wouldn't like to repeat!

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Boom .....

Similar thing happened to me in the UK some decades ago, but to an entire house.

Been a teleworker for most of my career so was happily working away at home when the magic smoke suddenly appeared from every TV in the house (they weren't even turned on), everything electrical ceased to function and the entire house was literally humming.

Cue desperate sprint downstairs to throw the main power switch, thankfully before the whole house wiring had melted down. Narrowly avoided the need for a change of underwear as well.

Turns out that water ingress into a junction box in the road led to next door's live phase of the mains being connected to the neutral of our house. So every circuit in the house must have ramped up to 415v and its arrival via the neutral seemed to bypass any fuses - this was in the days when the house still had an old-fashioned fusebox, none of that ELCB frippery :-)

Had to replace every electrical item in the house if I recall correctly, but at least the house didn't burn down - not sure how long it would have soaked up the over-voltage if I'd not been home.

Admins report Hyper-V and domain controller issues after first Patch Tuesday of 2022

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Goes all the way to Win 7!

Still running Win 7 here (plus Mint of course) and getting ESU updates (we all know how don't we?).

Security rollup for .NET arrived this week, seemed to install OK. Then I tried to load a movie for editing in AVIdemux 2.7 - file opened, indexing took place, then instead of displaying the first frame the application just crashed.

Tried a clean install of v2.8 and the problem persisted. Rolled back the .NET update and everything is fine - $deity knows what M$ did there.

The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Last decent version of Windows was

Ah so we are allowed to mention BypassESU here, I had begun to wonder :-)

Mind you, Office 2010 refuses to activate any more - is that legal? I paid for the software, a HDD crash meant a fresh install, now I can't use what I paid for. Still there's always that Office 2000 CD knocking about somewhere.

Fans of original gangster editors, look away now: It's Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Used to do a lot of "data wrangling" back in the day, porting data between disparate systems - Access to MySQL anyone?

Waaay back in the day I would fire up Delphi and hack some quick code, later on WAMPserver and a bit of PHP on localhost did the trick.

Guilty admission - regular expressions make my head hurt.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: TextPad?

Upvote for TextPad - used it for years, probably decades.

Indispensible back in the day to avoid Windows editors mangling files from other OSs.

A lightbulb moment comes too late to save a mainframe engineer's blushes

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: It can take a remarkably long time to notice that the alert mailer has stopped working.

Based on my experiences at Ricardo Engineering in the late 70s you *never* stand alongside an engine on a test bed - ALWAYS stand in line with the axis of the crankshaft.

Reason is obvious - when things go bang, large bits of metal exit the engine at very high speed and physics dictates the direction in which they travel.

Even then take care - these were Chinese lorry engines (based on a 40s design) running at full chat and maximum load, the exhausts were running cherry red. Then one of the radiator hoses ruptured and the resulting superheated water coming out under pressure would have broiled anyone in the vicinity.

New study demonstrates iodine as satellite propellant... in space

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Maybe mix the iodine

Oh that reminds me of some "unofficial" bits of chemistry at school back in the 60's :-)

I seem to recall that potassium permanganate and conc sulphuric acid provided interesting results - covered the entire chemistry lab in a layer of fine black fluff some ten minutes before the class was due to start.

Which in turn reminds me fondly of the grinding mill for gunpowder that my friend and I made out of Meccano, an Andrews tin and some marbles. Sealed (small) jar of the powder was ignited electronically using a model railway transformer, two wires and a sliver of tin foil - I sometimes wonder how I survived my childhood!

UK Ministry of Defence apologises – again – after another major email blunder in Afghanistan

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Smple safeguards

Even my crappy TSOHost webmail warns me if I cc more than 5 or so people - as happens with family emails where we want to see who is included and keep up the discussion with reply-all

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