Posts by ITMA 1217 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2019
This is an approach I use often which I think of as "tiptoeing through the minefield".
You stand far greater chance of making it out the other side with all your bits and appendages intact if you spend some time proactively trying to work out where the mines are first.
All too often the approach is "let's steam ahead and deal with any problems as we hit them".... BANG!!! Oops that's your legs gone. Not going to make good progress now are you?
That reminds me of a story my mother told me about her and one of her brothers. She had a fiery temper.
They had an argument and she throw an "offensive bladed weapon" at him (it was a hand axe - quite why she had one to hand, I've no idea) which stuck in a door frame beside him.
When he exlaimed "That could have hit me!" her reply was - and this was in her own words - "I was aiming for your head".
"I have lost count of how many times I told various people around me that software engineers are not paid to write code. They are paid to think. Writing code is trivial effort in comparison"
I still irks me how much the media just doesn't understand that "coding" is not the same as "programming" or "software development".
Coding is a sub activity of the other two. They encompase a lot more than "coding".
I've had a couple of calls like that.
Oddly they didn't get very far:
Scammer:
"Just press the Windows key and...."
Me:
"I can't see a Windows key on my keyboard"
Scammer:
"What is the make of your computer?"
Me:
"Erm... It says BBC Microcomputer"
Strangely he asked several more questions trying to identify my "PC" before the penny dropped LOL
Now a TRUE storeman would keep a hidden stock of broken, burnt out components under the counter.
Then when some clever cloggs turns up, emptying a handful of burn components on the counter and asking:
"Have you got some of these?", he would reply:
"Certainly, here you are" and pull of some identical looking burnt components from his secret "clever cloggs" stash.
;)
One of two possibilities, beyond not paying their internet provider bills....
1. They had decided to try and send all their internet traffic through a satellite launched by Virgin Orbit. Oh, wait. That failed to launch didn't it.
2. Someone put the wrong bit of Virgin into receivership and accidentally tanked Virgin Media instead of Virgin (not in) Orbit.
Hi Gene,
The "Send Corrections" link is near the top of the main Comments page on the same line and to the right of "Post you comment" and "House Rules" (on the full web version at least).
I've missed it before when wishing to point out errors.
;)
"That has to be in the running for the most-pointless-dialog-box ever award"
No no no no....
The most two most useless (recent) dialogs by Microsoft have to be during installation of Windows:
"Please wait while we work our magic..."
and:
"Leave everything to us...."
You must be effing joking!!! Leaving everything to you Microsoft ?!?!?!?!?
Most of the "switches" probably users trying to find stuff that someone in Microsoft has decided to move within Teams from where it usually is to some stupid place for the usual reasons - i.e. no damn reason at all, simply because they could.
Not because any, you know actual customers, thought the UI needed to be "fiddled about" with for the millionth time.
After you've done all that is when they will tell you the only way to disable it is to "request" your tenant is added to an "exclusion list".
Having raised said request it will then take them ages to get around to doing it.... And then keep pestering you to review their "very helpful" support....
I really hope that Microsoft are not going to roll this out wihtout a mechanism ALREADY in place so admins can kill it stone dead.
Something tells me after the "fiaso" of "Reactions" that they will roll it out without a way of killing it.
What data does it collect and what does it do with it? There could be major privacy issues using this.
I take it you don't have a cat?
The hours of fun that can be had endlessly ejecting/re-inserting (if your DVD player allows you to do that via the remote) the disc tray while watching your cat try and grab or "bat" it is awesome.
Be prepared to have to replace it though if you cat is quicker than you and you end up with a "feline vandalised" machine.
Talk about "Paws of Fury" (just without Hank).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js3xUgNICNY
Unfortunately this is all too common.
End users (both home and business) sleep walking into a security quagmire and privacy fiasco all in the name of "convience". They're becoming addicted to controlling things via apps on their phone (laziness?) which almost invariably require some sort of "cloud" service to work.
Manufacturers are equally to blame by encouraging it - realesing products which do not work, or are hard to make work, except via some (usually the manufacturer's) "cloud" service.
All business MUST have a policy for internet connected and IoT devices, as part of or in addition to their IT and security policies. It is grave mistake not to.
And a recommendation to everyone - STOP making or wanting everything under the sun to be "connected". There are even internet connected ovens FFS! It is getting ridiculous.
One of my biggest "bug bears" about Windows 11.
The change from a single place to change the default web browser in Windows 10 to God knows how many individual file extension associations you have to change in 11.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft don't want people to change the default browser from something other than Egde.
"but I also reckon that there are some problems with it that previous entrepreneurs might have run into, such as the uneven demand for heating throughout the year"
Which could well be the (or at least a significant) reasoin why the radiators idea failed. Great in winter, but what do you do with all that heat from the "server on your living room wall" during a hot summer?
Not exactly a new idea.
From 2015:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-32739497
"The server that could heat your home at no cost
A radiator fitted with a computer server could help provide free heating for homes.
The heat generated by servers has been exploited on an industrial scale to warm buildings, but this is the first time somebody else's server has been used to heat a home.
'The eRadiators are not being used for permanent storage,' said Boaz Leupe the CEO of Nerdalize, 'They are really meant for firms, or universities, or research institutes that have a need for computation power.'
Mr Leupe said the amount of electricity the Eneco eRadiators used was monitored and the home owners reimbursed for the running costs."
I can imagine it now.
Rocket sends the ISS off into the "inky-black beyond".
Several years later very angry alien arrives with interstellar lawyers and written off "flying saucer" in tow wanting to know who is responsible so he/she/it can sue their asses off. And the thing that pisses him off the most - it's cost him his no-claims bonus.
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