Posts by MGJ

Be a hater all you want, AI's here to stay

Emperors New Clothes

Were similar articles not being written 10 years ago about VR, ie Second Life etc transforming the worlds of work and leisure? How much did Meta write off from their investment in the Metaverse?

Civil servants to protest outside Capita AGM over pension shambles

Re: "unexpected case complexity"

Capita were the incumbents up until just over 10 years ago. They lost then because they were poor

UK government admits Capita pension portal was crapita at launch

In that case, why are there entries on my payslip for my contributions?

Re: we can't exclude bidders that we know are going to suck

Well the upside of the pensions fiasco is that no civil servants will be retiring any time soon...

Capita tells civil servants to wait for chatbots to fix pension portal woes

Incentives

So, the portal now doesnt even show my length of service and there were rumours before christmas that existing pensioners might not be paid in December. As a suggestion, when anything doesnt work and someone loses out, the compensation should come from the DG in the Cabinet Office that signed this contract off. From his salary, and later his pension. Might focus the mind somewhat.

Mexit, not Brexit, is the new priority for the UK

Re: Alternatives

Nonsense. I was responsible for software choice/evaluation in a government department in the 90's and we were choosing between Notes, Exchange and ICL TeamWare, after the Novell suite was sifted out early on. Ministers were absolutely not involved in any of that decision making.

No, they dont. Because most people in government wfh at least part of the week.

Focussing on the cost of something without examining what you get for that (the value/benefits) is a very odd approach, to anything, not just software licenses. If you disagree I have a set of rusty old Lada's to sell you

Trump doubles down, vows to make Chinese imports even more expensive for Americans

Re: I bet

Is this post available in English?

Re: I bet

What genocide? Compare casualty rates in the civilian population in the 1944 Normandy campaign with those in Gaza, despite the use of human shields and Hamas fighters closely embedded with the civilian population. If it is genocide, they really arent very good at it. Hyperbole more like.

Cheap 'n' simple sign trickery will bamboozle self-driving cars, fresh research claims

Re: madness

Its a solution for a problem that doesnt exist. If you dont want to drive yourself, take public transport or a taxi.

Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price

Re: "This minor niggle doesn't mean that climate models are crap. "

Speak English bot, its fewer clouds not less

One third of adults can't delete device data

Re: A Pedant Writes

Pleased to see that it has been corrected. Merry Christmas to the subs

A Pedant Writes

The word is drawer, not draw, which is a verb not a noun.

PiStorm turbocharges vintage Amigas with the Raspberry Pi

If only I hadnt swapped my Amiga 600 in the mid 90's for 2 sticks of 8Mb RAM for use in a PC

BOFH: Hearken! The Shiny Button software speaks of Strategic Realignment

Re: What do you mean, your desk?

Personal lockers, bloody luxury. Post covid attempts to coax us back in to the office have involved 'day lockers' and the removal of personal desks and storage, and they wonder why the offices remain stubbornly empty. Its almost like they are trying to have an excuse to get rid of our large listed buildings that cant ever be made energy efficient and would be much better as hotels or yet more student accomodation.

Google Groups ditches links to Usenet, the OG social network

Been A While

Where will I go for all my BC3000 news now?

BOFH: I know of a small biz that could deliver nothing for a fraction of the cost

The costs should have been for stamp duty, window tax, swamp

insurance, hen food, dog biscuits, and cow ointment

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

Re: But I DO want to know!

When I worked in a supermarket in the 80's to subsidise my student alcohol consumption, we put a bounty on the christmas tape loop. £45 was the final figure taken by someone planning to leave anyway, who ripped it from the machine and stamped on it. We cheered.

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

Re: Clockwork BOFH...

What would be so terrible about that?

Assange psychiatrist misled judge over parentage of his kids, US tells High Court

Re: Independent, informed comment

Which Government's line?

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Re: It doesn’t need a new name

Yes, we shouldnt shut down auschwitz until we've found jobs for the camp guards. Wont somebody think of the kapos too.

BOFH: Pass the sugar, Asmodeus, and let the meeting of the Fellowship of Bastards … commence

Origins?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH-E6J5TJTY

Something went wrong but we won't tell you what it is. Now, would you like to take out a premium subscription?

Re: Preemptive Ticket Closing?

EDS?

You can't spell 'electronics' without 'elect': The time for online democracy has come

Re: Electoral System

UK parliament has elections every five years under the Fixed Term Parliament Act; last year was pretty unusual. Point remains; you dont create something incredibly expensive and unsecure, with a whole new host of problems to sort an issue of rare surge demand. Different systems for different types of elections just makes that worse.

Electoral System

The electoral system used for British general elections is not FPTP, it is plurality. The candidate in the constituency with the most votes wins. No post to be first past. That is the French system, where the candidate with 50%+1 of votes cast is elected, with a second round, normally between the top two candidates, where no one got past the post in the first round. The system used in Scotland, with a mix of constituencies and regional seats balances the need to have a local MSP with broad proportionality. It was designed to prevent/make very unlikely any government being from a single party but has delivered a majority once (and on current polling will do so again next year).

Electronic voting is a solution to a problem that doesnt really exist. Building a complicated system used once in four or five years isnt worth it. These issues were covered very well in The Stainless Steel Rat for President.

Mark Zuckerberg, 36, decides that having people on his website deny the deaths of six million Jews is a bad thing

Re: So it only took this long?

And that would be bad how?

Anti-5G-vaxx pressure group sues Zuckerberg, Facebook, fact checkers for daring to suggest it might be wrong

Re: Welcome to the post-sanity world

Simple; want to do anything in public, get vaccinated and have proof.

Oh sure, we'll just make a tiny little change in every source file without letting anyone know. What could go wrong?

Re: Mail Storm

Better than the NT4 first cluster, along with Exchange 5.5. Wolfpack it was called. We called it Wolf Pair given the limits to it. All the service passwords on our Compaq cluster were clusterfuck though. Rebuilding at 3 in the morning a configuration designed by compaq and MS that had shared fibre storage that the German support team admitted was never likely to work as shared fibre storage wasnt supported, and how had we ever got it working in the first place?

Microsoft puts dual-screen devices and Windows 10X in the too-hard basket

Maybe

There just isnt any demand for flexible mobile devices when everyone has stopped travelling and is enjoying working from home with a big old proper screen and keyboard now attached to their laptop, which has become a second screen.

Microsoft tries getting touchy-feely once again with its Windows Insiders

Re: "pretend the Windows 8 Tablet Mode never happened"

Indeed. On my Surface Book 2 there is just no way of switching between tablet and desktop (ie removing the screen and turning it around) without shutting down. Too many processes need killed off. And logging on in tablet mode is tricky since it is difficult to get the on screen keyboard up. Great when you are logged in though, and still the best laptop I've ever had. Sound, graphics, keyboard, trackpad. USB ports on the wrong side though.

Drones intone 'you must stay home,' eliciting moans from those in the zone: Flying gizmos corral Brits amid coronavirus lockdown

Re: And now... the 64 million dollar question

The regulations are time limited. Must be reviewed every 28/21 days and expire in six months. If CMO declares a lull in the emergency, they stop. Or parts can be suspended if not required.

Re: Common sense, what's that?

One person doing it; not a problem.

Thousands, as seen last weekend, big problem. Not just opportunity to spread virus, but to tie up emergency services dealing with everything from sprains to major road accidents. There will be plenty of time to get out in the country later.

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

Re: Naomi Klein

Rubbish. To implement a full lockdown like that you'd have to suspend democracy. Listen to the experts; they didn't ask people to isolate in January because a) it was pointless, as no one at that point had the virus to pass on and b) because in the middle of the crisis folk will go stir crazy and ignore the rules so any self-isolation has to be for the minimum time possible; if you add two months on at the start it means its less likely that a three month quarantine period will work. Not everyone has a nice house and resources to hole up in.

Resellers facing 'months' of delays for orders to be fulfilled. IT gathers dust on docks as coronavirus-stricken China goes back to work

China is not the world

Are these mortality figures normalised for the amount of pollution in China, or indeed for the higher levels of tobacco smoking? Italy has the oldest population in Europe, so if the disease kills the old, then it will affect Italy the most. But why is Japan fine (relatively) so far, given its population is even older?

'Literally a paperweight': Bose users fume at firmware update that 'doesn't fix issues'

At Least The Manual Is Readable

I've only ever had good experience with Bose kit; maybe I'm just lucky. Try getting a Denon Receiver (ie 23-07 amplifier) to work with Dolby, HDMI and a multi speaker system for Blu-Ray, X-Box etc. It knows it has a centre speaker and left/right and sub connected but will not accept that it can use the same outputs for a different HDMI input, and the manual is completely incomprehensible.

Gas-guzzling Americans continue to shun electric vehicles as sales fail to bother US car market

Re: Elon may be right

Trump tax law changes have effectively made new enormous SUVs free to those with significant tax bills, since they can be classified as agricultural machinery and 100% written off as a tax break. My brother got a plug-in Volvo XC90 on this basis and his neighbours are picking up similar vehicles.

£1bn Brit court digitisation scheme would be great ... if Wi-Fi situation wasn't 'wholly inadequate'

Re: WiFi?

Have you been in some of the court buildings involved? Listed buildings, with huge thick walls, that are constantly in use. But try closing one and moving to a new purpose built building, and all you'll hear are complaints.

Interesting to hear that HMCTS are still having issues with digital working. I wrote them a Scoping Study 18 years ago on case management but EDS stomped on it.

Nothing's certain except death and patches – so that 'final' Windows 10 19H2 build isn't really

Microsoft Own Hardware

You would think that Windows updates would work well and be tested properly on their own hardware, but Surface Book 2 owners got this update very late and then it managed to add yet another service that needs shutting down before the screen can be undocked or moved. Given the time it takes, it is easier to switch off, change screen orientation and then restart than find all the various services that need killed before the red button turns green. Of course then it doesn't detect that it is folded back on itself and you cannot use the keyboard and have to try and re-enable the on-screen keyboard, which doesn't work until you select accessibility at which point it tells you audibly that you've chosen to use that. Does anyone at MS actually use their own equipment?

Well, well, well. Fancy that. UK.gov shelves planned pr0n block

Re: Yay!

Not many parents of teens on here, I don't think. Come back with your "its ok if you supervise their every move" talk when you have a teen actively self-harming because their wifi goes off at bedtime, and every device they have "gets broken" after Parental Controls are installed.

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

Let me guess, they have new iPhones because they don't want any 5g around them

UK Supreme Court unprorogues Parliament

No, its really not. It replaced the House of Lords as the ultimate court of appeal for domestic civil law issues. And the judges are appointed by the head of state on the advice of prime minister.

Re: Hardly surprising

Are you trying to be funny, or are you on glue?

Re: Remain MPs all broke the law and should all be in prison anyway.

Are you trying to be funny, or are you on glue?

DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web

Re: release it for the world's weirdos to use

By at least one

Kenshi: Sandblasted sword-punk D&D where the dungeon master wants everyone dead

Re: Welcome to the new column

The word is drawer.

The dread sound of the squeaking caster in the humming data centre

Re: DEC Engineer

Late 90's, about to do our disaster recovery testing one weekend. Scenario involved a power cut to the server room, which I simulated by switching off the power to the room going into the UPS, to check that it did indeed initiate safe shutdown of all the Sun, Fujitsu and HP kit in the room. It was only at that point that it became clear that the electricians had run the electrical supply in parallel to the UPS rather than in series... It all went very quiet. Except for the UPS.

Bonkers British MPs rant: 5G signals cause cancer

Re: It is hardly surprising that there is a problem with Brexit

And the cost of doing nothing on the climate emergency is? Strange how some people only like science when it supports their exisitng views.

No backdoor, no backdoor... you're a backdoor! Huawei won't spy for China or anyone else, exec tells MPs

For the real view of the British civil service/Government of Chinese telecoms companies, perhaps do an FOI for instructions on what to do with IT equipment that has been used in China outside of the secure room in the Embassy. It's always hacked into in minutes and cannot be used again for connection to a government network. Private Offices used to have piles of Blackberry's and laptops that had been in China for staff to take away with them at their own risk. The vast majority of hacking threats to the UK (used to) come from those at least pretending to be the Chinese military.

BOFH: It's not just an awesome app, it'll look great on my Insta. . a. a. AAAARRRRRGGH

Re: I think I met him

Developed using Agile?

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Re: Is this the best that the USA can come up with ?

So was it a fiesta cat; who grabbed the carrots and onions (obscure Gilbert Shelton reference)