Posts by ITMA

WAN router IP address change blamed for global Microsoft 365 outage

Re: Waffle

Do you mean "inside job" as in deliberate? Or "inside job" due to incompetence?

Re: Waffle

So basically a failure to have and use proper change management.

Who do they think they are? Royal Bank of Scotland?

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

Re: I want to talk to a REAL LIVE PERSON.

Sad, but all too true.

All the hyperbole about "caring about customers" etc really translates as "All we care about is you go Mooo and shit ££££ notes (or $$$$ bills for our cousines across the pond) when we squeeze you".

Re: Standing on the shoulders of giants

" Sure, there are times when a paradigm shift comes along and people have to relearn a skill or set of rules (such as when a country changes the side of the road its drivers drive on)"

That's not how paradigm shifts really work.

A shift in paradigm is best desribed as like "taking one set of glasses off, then putting on a different set wich give you a very different view of the same world". A very good analogy (or example) is the Rubin Vase optical illusion. Viewing it through one paradigm, you see faces. Exactly the same image viewed through another paradigm, you see a vase. It is very hard to see both at the same time, it is one or the other, yet always the same image you are looking at. All you are changing is the way you interpret it and it is a radical change.

That is pretty much how Thomas Khun defined it when he coined the term.

AI to replace people? NO

There is one fundamental concept all organisations looking to replace customer facing people with AI "chat bots" need to take on board.

If I am a current or prospective customer of yours and I contact your company, I want to talk to a REAL LIVE PERSON. Not some effing bot.

If all I get is an effing bot or you make it difficult to get through to a person, I'll take my business elsewhere.

It really is as simple as that.

It is bad enough phoning up some organisation for assistance with something and having to wade through shit loads of shite "automated assistants", which 99% of the time are able to do nothing I can't do myself online - ERM THAT'S WHY I'M PHONING UP because your automated systems aren't helping!!!! - without getting put through to "a plastic personality".

Microsoft to move some Teams features to more costly 'Premium' edition

Re: SatNad's move to everything being subscription

I take it you've not had to use AutoDesk products - all subscription only - or optical modelling software such as Zemax.

When checking the prices of Zemax, especially single user network licenses to get around the "locked to one user for 30 days at a time" bollocks, be sure you are sitting down.

Something like £10K per year! For ONE user.

Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged

Re: We all traipse into the office for that critical meeting that HAS to be face-to-face..

"Icon: can remember corridor trains like on A Hard Day's Night"

Corridor trains! You posh so-and-so.

I had to put up with the non-corridor slam door class 312 for many years when working in banking IT in central Londinium.

http://www.geocities.ws/jamesstearn/trainstoday/312gallery_A_.html

I swear the seats were stuffed with horse hair and coiled steel springs.

One trip took over 3.5 hours to get home from Liverpool St (normally takes 35 minutes) after the one I was on brought down the overhead wires with a BANG!

Re: We all traipse into the office for that critical meeting that HAS to be face-to-face..

To quote a line from Bridge of Spies:

"The boss isn't always right, be he is always the boss".....

Re: We all traipse into the office for that critical meeting that HAS to be face-to-face..

"But what would the poor party donors and VIP lane loiterers do?"

The polite answer would be - they can go ***k themselves. HS2 is monstrously expensive vanity project.

New research aims to analyze how widespread COBOL is

Re: it lives!

Unless of coure you are using Jackson...

Re: it lives!

Sadism?

Re: it lives!

And COBOL guys tend to not like gibberish being passed off a code.....

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

Re: My voice assistant doesn't understand me....

I think that is directly proportional to how much falling down water you have had....

Re: My voice assistant doesn't understand me....

" spend more time yelling at the assisant for failing to carry out a verbal instruction"

I find exactly the same thing with voice controlled phone menu systems to the point where almost the only thing I ever say to (or more increasingly scream at) them without hanging up is "Agent".

If I'm phoning up a company about something, I wasn to speak to a human being, not some f***ing bit of poxy software that understands sweet FA.

San Francisco investigates Hotel Twitter, Musk might pack up and leave

Re: Self inflicted by Elon's stupidity

If he went back on his "no working from home" decision, he'd probably insist on installing cameras in employees home so Big Bro Elon can watch you.

Ideally ones with Tasers built in for "prodding" those he doesn't feel are working hard and long enough.

Re: Working, eating, and sleeping in the same building?.. respect the cleaners...Amen Brother..

I strongly believe there is a correlation between this and wealth.

Those who don't have to do their own cleaning at home, because they employ "minions" to do it, often overlook the work the "little people" do anywhere else including in companies they run.

Re: Working, eating, and sleeping in the same building?

"> you don't want £200k/year specialist employees hoovering the floor.

Yes I do."

I've got news for you - many of just such people, even those who do know one end of a vaccum cleaner from the other, are SHITE at cleaning.

Re: Working, eating, and sleeping in the same building?

"> Given he just sacked the cleaning staff

If true, I totally support that. Clean up your own shit."

My mum was a cleaner for most of her working life - offices, schools, colleges - and when young I was occasionally "roped in" to help from time to time.

Some of things supposedly "very well paid" people do at work that one "hopes" they would never do at home, you woudn't believe. Absolutely disgusting.

Even were I work today with a bunch of well paid, supposedly very intelligent (PhD) people, the state they have left some things in is absolutely disgraceful. Not just their working areas (more usually described as "tips") but also horrible skanky food left out, uncovered, on bench tops over a summer weekend and out of date/mouldy/rotting food left in the fridge.

Yes! You DO need proper cleaners.

Look like Bane, spend like Batman with Dyson's $949 headphones

Re: Great

I like them, but there is one important thing I need to know:

Do they come with fava beans and a nice chianti? LOL

UK.gov threatens to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

Re: Dead Cat

"Just as 3-Mile Island went critical. (See Icon)"

ALL operational nuclear reactors go "critical". That's how they work.

UK lawmakers look to enforce blocking tools for legal but harmful content

Re: This "shield" already exists

There is quite an active scene on the interweb debating what is the correct/best collective term for of a group of punts LOL

Re: Grow a brain

As the best way to ensure kids want something is to ban it, maybe "banning" parenting might not be a bad thing LOL.

Eat up, Windows 11 users – this is your last non-security preview update for the year

Re: The "Last" preview update?

Is that "Last" in the same way Windows 10 was supposed to be the "last" version of Windows?:

Re: WINDOWS 11 is NOT ready for main streams use....

"So was Windows 10. Widely despised, enough to where there was a group of 'Never 10' people who did all they could to block the 'up'grade."

That's not quite accurate

As one of those who rolled out Gibson's "Never10" on our estate I can tell you exactly why we did.

It wasn't because Windows 10 was terrible per se - it was because brain dead Microsoft were trying to FORCE the upgrade out whether you wanted it or not and at a time of Microsoft's choosing, NOT ours. That could be construed as possibly even illegal in some countries.

When to move our platform from 7 to 10 was going to be our decision NOT Microsofts as it should be. Microsoft broke that rule deliberately and willingly and deserve all the shit they got for it - and more.

Windows 11 still not winning the OS popularity contest

Re: A hint from the future

I humbly suggest you check your Flux Capacitor....

Artemis I isn't just a test run – there's science to be done

Re: Another first for America's space agency!

"Yes, that is NASA-speak for 'We just sent fake boobs to the moon!' "

C'mon, wouldn't be the first time we've had "tits in space" - and I'm not referring to parts of female anatomy.

Alexa - emergency thrusters NOW!

Sorry I can't do that, I have a migraine.

World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course

Re: I'm going to need more popcorn

Be civil now... Call the right honourable gentleman by his first name... "Warwick"

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Re: Well, manglement ....

My favourite response in such situations - when I am the customer - is to explain it to them simply and clearly:

"I'm profit, you are overhead".

I had an exerpience with a very good sales rep for a local Compaq dealer in the early/mid '90s.

I wandered in almost "off the street". I was in my early to mid 20s, not in the traditional suit (can't abide wearing suits) or anything. Certainly didn't look like a serious business customer. Just wanted to ask about desktop PCs for a potential upgrade.

The salesman, to his eternal credit, treated me as a serious customer and within 2 months I'd placed orders through him for hardware, software and trainng to the value of £234,000.

Upgraded the entire company IT from mixed DOS/Windows 3.1 on dreadful "build it yourself" smorgasbord hardware, mixed Lotus 123/Word Perfect to all Windows 3.11, standard Microsoft Office platform and 95+ new Compaq PCs. Training for the staff and brand new server.

OpenPrinting keeps old printers working – even on Windows

Re: Resource use?

Oh no! Not the HL-720!

Not the worst GDI printer I've ever came across (I used to own one until I could afford a PROPER printer) but still a God awful GDI printer.

Re: in business it is the applications that matter.

Here here....

Re: The problem is usually with printers Linux never had drivers for...

The same bullshit that means it is very hard to buy new PCs with Windows 10 or even drivers for Windows 10.

Meanwhille the ridiculous hardware requirements for 11 are all about selling more new tin boxes and throwing out perfectly good ones for no reason other than Microsoft's shite.

Re: The problem is usually with printers Linux never had drivers for...

So you would rather people throw out perfectly good, working printers and add to the mountain of WEE waste choking the planet. Plus further pilliage the resources of the planet for raw materials to build and sell new ones instead?

That's the sort of attitude destroying this planet.

PCL5 works perfectly well for the job of printing,

Please do enlighten us as to what earth shattering developments PCL6 and beyond bring to putting marks on paper that PCL5 doesn't that the world simply cannot live without.

"We know that some Reg readers still actually prefer Windows"

That's rather condescending...

I take it the author is a Luinux fanboy...

Is it horses for courses Liam. And for many business situations Linux just doesn't cut it because of a lack of applications in very particular area which Windows does have available.

Why do some people in IT forget that the OS is a tool to run application software. In business it is the applications that matter. If a particular OS (Linux or Windows) doesn't have the ones your business needs, then that OS is crap for your business.

Re: The problem is usually with printers Linux never had drivers for...

"As long as the printer does PCL or PS then you should be okay."

PS maybe, PCL definitely NOT so.

Using (say) a PCL5 printer with any current version of Windows should be easy - but it isn't. For some reason Microsoft, who let's be honest bully hardware manufacturers to "toe the line", don't want anything lower than PCL6 to work.

FFS WHY????

Microsoft hits the switch on password-free smartphone authentication

Erm..... Yup

Ah yes - BYOD

Otherwise known as Bring Your Own Disaster...

Demand for software experts pushes tech salaries higher in UK

Re: Diversity should be a consequence, not a goal.

Positive discrimination is still discrimination....end of....

Chinese researchers make car glide 35mm above ground in maglev test

Re: Cough

Just watch.... Today it will be a car, next week it will have morphed into a military grade rail gun.

Software fees to make up 10% of John Deere's revenues by 2030

Re: Are thjere no other tractors available

"They got out of that game and into what became British Leyland. The rest is, um, historical."

You mean hysterical, surely..... LOL

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

Re: Software Engineering - NOT

Can explain why across on the other side of the pond (North Amercia) they call train drivers "engineers"?

LOL

You've stopped taking your medication again, haven't you?

"That's why you never see Lizard People astronauts"

Don't get David Icke started FFS!

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Re: 07734

Did it ever work? LOL

Early Sinclair electronics were not exactly known for their reliability. Especially containing Sinclair specific ICs

Amazon has repackaged surveillance capitalism as reality TV

Re: Sorry, but Benny HIll casting the first scone...

I used to have that as a 45 single when I was young! (back in the late Precambrian).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e1xvyTdBZI

NASA builds for keeps: Voyager mission still going after 45 years

Re: Multiples of less

"And also recommended, just in case one pops up on ebay:

https://haynes.com/en-gb/large-hadron-collider-manual

You never know!"

Just in case anyone was wondering - yes I WAS referring to a Large Hadron Collider popping up on eBay, not the book ;)

Re: Multiples of less

Surprisingly this is quite good:

https://haynes.com/en-gb/nasa-voyager-1-and-2-manual

And also recommended, just in case one pops up on ebay:

https://haynes.com/en-gb/large-hadron-collider-manual

You never know!

This is being a bit ambitious for an "Owner's Workshop Manual" LOL

https://haynes.com/en-gb/mars-manual

Re: Spacetime

And do you know why the BBC is only the BBC with the UK?

Elsewhere it is the British Broadcasting Company to avoid trademark infringement with Brown, Boveri & Cie

Early BBC micros had BBC on the clear plastic speaker/function key overlay strip. Later ones, including the Master series have British Broadcasting Corporation for that very reason.

Mouse hiding in cable tray cheesed off its bemused user

Re: Mice? pah....

THREE mouse buttons???

I've not seen three "mouse buttons" on a laptop for decades!

Especially Dells

Re: and if you answer "No" they are killed, TOTALLY.

Don't give the buggers ideas!!