Posts by clyde666

Cloudflare goes retro with COBOL delivery service. Older coders: Who's laughing now? Turns out we're still vital

Retrieve the old textbooks

One of the things on my To Do list during this lockdown, is clear out old (very old) storage.

Like my old course textbooks, notes, etc.

Maybe I should accelerate that and put the books up on Ebay.

With punched cards.

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

RACIST BIGOT

I downvoted your post because you included the SNP in your group of "right-wing nationalism".

The SNP is a centre-left socially progressive party which leads a government mitigating the worst excesses of uber-Thatcherism. Often supported in parliament by the Greens.

Get your facts right.

Brits swarm Dixons Carphone for laptops, printers, games consoles, fridges, freezers to weather out COVID-19 storm

mobiles

People not going out or to work won't need to buy a new mobile, as there will be nobody to show it off to

Brit housing association blabs 3,500 folks' sexual orientation, ethnicity in email blunder

Plus ca change

It's not so many years ago since a council, not a dozen miles from me, had two different coloured job application forms.

If you went into the council office to fill in a job application, you got asked "what school did you go to?". You got one or the other colour form depending on your answer.

The reason ? Catholics attended certain schools, and Protestants (and others) attended specific other ones.

World's smallest violin to be played for opportunistic sellers banned from eBay and Amazon for price gouging

SOAP

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times

Whoa, someone actually texted you in 2020? Oh, nvm, it's just Boris Johnson, telling you to stay the f**k at home

Network overload

Late yesterday morning I was trying to phone to arrange onsites for enabling work from home. The calls kept dropping, some before ringing, some after 1 ring. Same for incoming. That lasted for maybe an hour. Missed calls did show up.

Later I figured it must have been network overload because of the volume of these texts that were flooding out.

Also have a 1pMobile phone - it got the text around 5pm last night.

After reading the message, saw the bit about "more info & exemptions at" so browsed to that, but couldn't find anything about exemptions.

I know France allows exemptions for techies organising work-from-home (for others), so was trying to find any guidance on that.

All the IT ladies (all the IT ladies), all the IT ladies (all the IT ladies), now put your hands up! Oh, still not many here

even in retail

Many years ago I ran retail computer shops.

I always made a point of at least interviewing every female who applied for a job. The percentage of applications was very low.

Still, even when trying to 'positively discriminate' the proportion of female workers was tiny.

It's not a lack of ability. I have to assume the industry does not appeal to women. I don't know why.

Ofcom: Rule change to force UK comms providers to tell you when your contract expires

monthly deals

So how would this affect people who are "out of contract" - on rolling month to month ?

Is the ISP going to have to notify them every month ?

Don't tell us to go Huawei, Chinese ambassadors tell UK and France

one law for ...

"His comments did not explain why the Chinese state is mounting a multi-nation diplomatic effort to back said private company."

For any sake, the USA sends warships to other areas for precisely the same reason.

The UK would too, if they had any working ones.

123-Reg is at it again: Registrar charges chap for domains he didn’t order – and didn't want

There's charging and there's charging

There's a difference between "charging" the customer - aka invoicing, and then "charging" - aka taking payment by card or paypal.

I have long since transferred away all my .co.uk domains from this nefarious shower. There was one .uk domain I couldn't transfer. It was a .ltd.uk and somehow the transfer got messed up. I just let it expire and forgot about it. And recently let a .org.uk expire as well.

One important point - I made a point of cancelling all payment methods on record with them, card, paypal, maybe direct debit (can't remember if that one existed). That was not straightforward though either.

Of course they've been sending mountains of emails about "my" various .uk domains, which I just ignore. And then loads of reminders and warnings from Nominet for the same. All getting ignored.

If you have enough of this type of gut microbe, you can get drunk for free after eating carbs

non alcoholic ???

Back in the 1990s a bunch of us would often go to a Chinese restaurant next door after late overtime. One schoolboy got pints of cola because we wouldn't allow him booze. He was always the first to roll around drunk. We just accepted that was how it was for him.

Trade union club calls on UK.gov to extend flexible working to all staff from day one

employment rights

This all academic now anyway.

Given a government who are talking about ignoring laws passed by parliament, which they don't like, do you really think they're going to care one iota for the work/lifestyle worries of the plebs ?

Yeah, yeah, PCs are dead? Ask Texan Mick and his Dell empire if that's the case

PC sales

I suspect Dell are just getting a larger share of the overall PC market.

I don't see any sign of great demand for new PCs.

Army Watchkeeper drone flopped into tree because crew were gazing backwards

So, the usual "pilot error" then

Ofcom 'fair deal' action: UK mobile networks agree to slash contract charges when lock-in ends – except Three

the market has improved

Been on a sim only deal for maybe 3 or 4 years. My "contract" is so old it was a Tmobile deal. Have been getting 'data fair usage' warnings for a while now, so phoned them up last night. Had already researched online. Got them to change me to a £10 a month deal, data, calls, and texts way more than I need. I did have to agree to a 12 month contract but that's ok.

£10 a month covers most of my comms needs, except broadband. That's a heck of an improvement since I first started paying for mobile phones.

PC shipments back in black: Desktops to the rescue, aided by Win10

A computer is a computer, right ?

Client's online app reported it would stop working on anything less than Windows 8.1 . So client went out and bought a number of new PCs. Happily I got the job of setting them up ...

Of course he went to Curry PC World. Hells bells. New PCs - Dells - guaranteed to do the job. Come with 4 GB of RAM. Yes a full 4 GB of RAM in this day & age.

Two of the office people took the law into their own hands and took back the old PCs and replaced them on their desks. I bought in 8 GB RAM upgrades for each of these new machines, and now they're working adequately.

It's the same old story - vendors pushing crap. Anything to make the sale. The 3 year old desktop PCs on Windows 7 performed better than these brand new Windows 10 units.

UK.gov pledges probe into tourists' 'motivations'

hostile environment for visas

UK government interested in tourism ? What a laugh. Tourist organisations know that's a lie for a start.

"In 2018, organisers of more than 20 festivals issued a joint letter raising their concerns about the impact of the UK’s visa system, saying the costs, delays and refusals for writers, musicians, dancers, technical crew members and more mean artists are now “much more reluctant to accept invitations to come to the UK”."

The Edinburgh Festival in particular has seen lots of acts cancelled this year because the artists are being refused entry to the UK. Particularly people from North Africa, it seems.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/17675126.fiona-hyslop-calls-for-an-end-to-edinburgh-festivals-visa-embarrassment/

Having a bad day? Be thankful you don't work at a Russian ISP: Kremlin signs off Pootynet restrictions

the all controlling civil service

And next in line comes the UK, no doubt. Watching how it turns out in Russia. And as they have done so spectacularly with EU rules, the UK will take the Russian 'experience' and apply it with bells on. Of course, there will be optional opt-outs for the City of London money laundering industry, just so long as the plebs are kept in their place.

It's an Easter Jesus miracle: MS Paint back from the dead (ish) and in Windows 10 'for now'

agreed

As others have said, Paint does a job. Easy, straight forward, graphical cut-edit-paste work. Resize an image - takes seconds, or less. Save as a different format - takes seconds, or less. Crop - same. Take a screenshot and add a caption, quick & easy.

It works.

Leave it alone.

Teen TalkTalk hacker denies flogging stolen personal data for Bitcoin

bling

Lost any sympathy for him as soon as I saw he'd spent money on a Rolex

UK tech has a month left to bare gender pay gaps, but less than a fifth of firms have ponied up

Job preferences matter

Many years ago, I ran a retail business - selling and servicing computers.

The employees were overwhelmingly male.

I had a policy of at least interviewing every applicant who was female. A very high percentage of them got offered a job.

Even at that, females were at best 10 percent of the total.

The office was different - polar opposite.

Make of that what you will.

Canadians moot methods to embiggen moose monument and make Mac great again

Go visit

I can heartily recommend Moosonee or Moose Factory for a holiday. Great for getting away from it all. Basically drive north till you run out of road, then take the Polar Bear Express for a few hours.

You'll need to search - I'm not allowed to post links :-)

Openreach to heap faster broadband on UK's media-heavy hubs

It's not one size fits all

The story names "Greater Glasgow" as one of the benefiiting areas. Hahaha.

I live in "Greater Glasgow" - have had an EO line since moving in to a nearly-new house. No plans at all in the pipeline for that to be rectified, it seems.

I've got a Virgin cabinet outside the house, but I actually want real broadband with options for fixed IPs and all that.

We did Nazi see this coming... Internet will welcome Earth's newest nation with, sigh, a brand new .SS TLD

It's time

Time to let go. Europe has moved on - that's what the EU has always been about. Time to accept that bad things happened but we can work together to be better in the future.

Just updated Windows 7? Can't access network shares? It isn't just you

Logged out overnight

Left this Win 7 PC on overnight. Had noticed yesterday it wanted to be shut down for installing Win updates.

But this morning I find I was logged out of Windows, had to log back in. That's not usual.

Time for another coffee, and then see whether anything else has gone wonky.

For fax sake: NHS to be banned from buying archaic copy-flingers

still alive and kicking

I've got a Brother MFC-J5330DW new, sitting boxed beside me, ready to take out and install on Thursday afternoon.

Client wants this one because it includes fax. Seemingly they still get "a few" faxed drawings from time to time.

And no, it's not the NHS, not even a government office of any sort, it's a real live small business operating in the real world of small business to small business.

Anyway, no real price difference between that and a non-fax printer/scanner.

Former headteacher fined £700 after dumping old pupil data on server at new school

teachers

Goodness sake folks, this is a school teacher we're talking about.

Some of you actually expect him (or her) to have an understanding of how computers work ...

Reverse Ferret! Forget what we told you – the iPad isn't really for work

all about marketing

Have you noticed on how many TV programmes the actor's "computer" displays a big lit up apple ?

And I'm talking about situations in a normal home or normal workplace, where most real people would have bought the cheapest laptop that the big shed store had in stock that day.

Merry Christmas, you filthy directors: ICO granted powers to fine bosses for spam calls

Be careful what you wish for

First off - I hate the cold callers as much as everyone else does, and wish the fires of hell upon them, but ...

Justice is very different from revenge.

Once you open a circumstance where directors of some bad practice businesses get hammered, you leave open a precedent. What about, if in 10 years time, some quango decided to go after the directors of corporations who show these annoying christmas jingle ads on TV ?

Or why is this different to companies who cause serious harm ? Whether intentional or not ? Without making light of a horrendous disaster - where are the moves to take the assets of the directors or local councillors of organisations that were involved in the terrible Grenfell fire ?

Rule by quango bureaucracy is no substitute for rule by law. If cold calling is bad, let there be a law against that - (is that actually against a law right now ?). Then let the forces of law & order follow the procedures honed over centuries to go after those responsible - and if there is a proven case against named individuals let them be hammered by the courts.

Once you start moulding reactions to suit your own morals, it's the thin end of the wedge that cracks civilisation.

Data-nicking UK car repairman jailed six months instead of copping a fine

one law for the ...

No sympathy at all for the miscreant, but jail time for the little guy versus a throw-away fine for any sizeable company. Justice ???

NHS*IT: Welsh system outages put patients at risk

the real end game

Is this one of these reports designed to bad-mouth a system which can later be "saved" by influx of money - i.e. privatisation ???

UK.gov to roll out voter ID trials in 2019 local elections

Sledgehammer for the wrong nut

As others have pointed out, the only problem is with postal voting.

There are many checks around the system, and the parties are generally very relaxed about it the way it is.

BUT - postal voting is entirely different. There is really no scrutiny from the political party system around postal votes. There are so many loopholes.

Apocryphal stories abound about nursing homes etc, where bundles of postal votes are filled out wholesale by the manager with no oversight.

There are recorded examples of areas with large military bases where the voting register swelled by thousands in the runup to an election or referendum.

One serious problem from my POV concerns the counting of postal votes. In polling booth scenario, there is a register of voters which gives numbers of actual voters at any station, which is compared to the numbers of ballot papers in the box. This count is overseen by reps from all the parties. Pretty transparent and a lot of work for anyone to corrupt.

However the postal votes are dealt with by council workers away from the count. With the percentage of postal votes now being very high, that is a huge problem area for satisfying democratic concerns.

Microsoft liberates ancient MS-DOS source from the museum and sticks it in GitHub

PC DOS and all that

My first experience with an IBM PC was where I worked, my department got the company PC one day a week. I made sure I became the department's expert on that.

Its first upgrade was a full size 5.25" floppy drive. Woo hoo. I think that drive was equivalent to about a month of my wages.

I've still got (somewhere hopefully) PC DOS 1 (or maybe 1.1 ? ) on floppy.

That's the way the cookies crumble: Consent banners up 16% since GDPR

Since GDPR I've found a big increase in spam. Mainly to my business email accounts.

Looking at these, it appears there are "single use" domains being setup for spamming, probably used only for a day or two. Many have the word mail, or email, or e , in the domain name. I can block them but the same rubbish comes through the next day "from" another domain name.

Typically applies to first aid courses, news sites, water coolers, staffing, business finance.

There's no doubt in my mind that this increase is a direct result of GDPR opt-ins. Somebody somewhere got my email address verified as a real live one.