Posts by ITMA

How to keep a support contract: Make the user think they solved the problem

I find waving one of those orange plastic "dead-blow" mallets from Rapid Racking in the air with "obvious malicious intent" in the vicinity of "problem pooters" fixes no end of problems - especially "user induced".

Re: Of course it is do you think ect ect

I used to get really annoyed every time I had to phone the Cumbernauld factory of a certain Japanese printer manufacturer only to be greeted by someone (not just the switchboard) answering with:

"O. K. I.".

It's not a bloody abbreviation like NEC! It's the name of bloody founder Mr Oki Kibatarō!

Can I speak to "F. R. A. N. K."?

Jeez

Re: Vents

K6 phone boxes (the iconic UK "red" phone boxes for those not in the UK) were designed with that "issue" in mind with appropriate drainage holes in the base and the concrete "floor" with a subtle but deliberate "fall" on it it in the direction of the drainage hole.

Re: Vents

My dad (RIP) spent most of his working life as a TV/VCR engineer back in the days when many people rented such devices (especially VCRs) and they would be repaired in your front room (on site in today's terminology).

The worst was being called to non-working VCRs. Customer would claim "it just stopped working" usually with a tape inside. My dad lifted up the VCR to have look through the front loading slot and out poured pungent yellow liquid...

"Dog must have p*ssed on it"...

A rapid exit and change of clothing was usually required.

Re: I would have sacked Keith there and then

That reminds of an old joke I saw in one of the electronics hobby mags years and years ago:

The owner of a local electronics shop (when such things existed) had become so fed up with "gifted amatuers" (one in particular) coming into the shop with burnt/charred/broken "bits" of components from his attempts at repairing stuff and expecting him (and his staff) to spend a great deal of time identifying them before offering replacements. Which he would quite often refuse saying "too expensive" that he adopted the following...

Guy comes into shop and pulls out a bag of burnt/charred/broken components, empties them onto the counter and asks "Have got some of those?"

Owner replies "Certainly sir", reaches under the counter and pulls out a handful of burnt/charred/broken bits of components.

:)

Microsoft emits more Win 11 fixes for AMD speed issues and death by PowerShell bug

Re: Sorry for the pox, but we promise no new infections!

"Its funny as I assume outlook.com is supported by the Office team"

My experience with the "front line" Outlook.com support was that it was supported by the Marx Brothers....

No, that's an unfair insult to the Marx Brothers... At least they were trying to entertain by attempting to be funny.

Outlook.com front line support were just childish, worse than amateur and insulting, And technically utterly incompetent.

Re: My laptop is supposedly Windows 11 ready

I'm sure Gibson Research are already poised to release "Never11" when needed.

Re: Upgrade?

"have been buggy and relied on the users/customers feedback and problems"

I think that is what is now laughably passes as "Microsoft Testing and Quality Assurance".

Re: Sorry for the pox, but we promise no new infections!

My experience is that Microsoft are very good at fixing problems (see my post elsewhere about Outlook.com)....

Microsoft T3 Support: "Please be assured we have definitely fixed the problem".

Me: "No. You may have fixed A problem, but (accompanied by voluminous evidence) you have most defintely have NOT fixed THE PROBLEM. Go back and try again, and this time TRY HARDER."

Oh and according to T3 support, SMTP is NOT a mail protocol..... REALLY??

Microsoft admits to yet more printing problems in Windows as back-at-the-office folks asked for admin credentials

Re: Microsoft's Effort at Being "Green"?

It was either "Personal Computer World" aka PCW, or "Practical Computing" (not "Computing").

Re: Microsoft's Effort at Being "Green"?

Who remembers the cartoon in either Personal Computer World or Computing magazine (who even remembers that magazine??) which showed a guy towing several large trolleys each loaded up with a moutain of paper.

A colleague stopped him and asked "What's that lot?"

Answer: "It's the documentation for the new paperless office"

What do you mean you gave the boss THAT version of the report? Oh, ****ing ****balls

Depends WHERE aforementioned flashlight is....

Thanks, Sir Clive Sinclair, from Reg readers whose careers you created and lives you shaped

Re: Beep

And wasn't the PET's name, Personal Electronic Transactor, so carefully and well chosen...

Unless you were French...where many a many for the European market where made.

You too will will be amazed by the things you can do with the latest in desktop microcomputers.

- introducing "The FART" by Commodore.

Who went on to make the VIC-20....In Germany, ...

Where (apparently) VIC looses translated into equally potentially offensive.

"my VIC-20 that ran out of RAM to hold the program code, let alone compile and run it"

Except of course BASIC on the VIC-20 (I had one of those as well at one point) was interpreted, not compiled.

"Tokenised" doesn't really count as the BASIC on Commodore 65X02 machines, in common with almost all 8 bits machines, did the tokenisation on entry.

Re: Well

"rather than trying to get a seat in the terminal room to share an overloaded mini."

Don't tell me you also had experience of trying to do "Computer Studies" using a Teletype Model 33 linked (via acoustic coupler) to the local town hall's mainframe?

LOL

Those were the days....

Then the first Commodore PET 2001 (8K) arrived... (BASIC v1.0 with TIM loaded from tape).

Re: Beep

Ok then, just to add some 6502 "balance" LOL.

POKE 59468,14 does......?

And which machines do you NOT do the "fast screen update" POKE on? :)

Re: Seriously off-topic

You've obviously missed a whole bunch of other comments by me on the subject.

Oh if only it was as easy as that....

On a lot of PCs, particularly desktops, you can have all the power settings correct and it STILL doesn't work because of "Fast start up". If that is ticked, then on many PCs (Dell in particular) it powers down the NIC, WHATEVER your other power settings are INCLUDING having "Allow this device to wake the computer" ON - and that other Dell BIOS stalwart, "Deep Sleep Control", which must be disabled also.

No power to the NIC, ergo NO WAKE ON LAN.

Even then, a misguided network driver update can bugger it again. Which explains why on PCs with certain Intel NICs in the Windows Update section of Settings, under Optional Updates, there is an OLD Intel LAN driver - which works!!! Some newer ones break WOL.

A bit more research into the subject first would be helpful.

One more snippet - this information doesn't come from trying to get it work on one PC. Nor the 6 Optiplex desktops at home (though they serve as a testbed). It comes from managing an estate (largely remotely) of 70+ machines.

RIP Sir Cliver

I never used a Spectrum or QL to any degree, having been seduced by the 6502 in the Commodore PET and offspring (including Tangerine Microtan 65, Acorn Atom and mighty BBC Micro).

I did use the ZX80 and ZX81 though when the main "computing war" was between Sinclair & Acorn with the gaggle of "also rans" chasing along way, way behind.

Sir Clive was the quintessential British boffin who loved inventing technically "sweet" things for ordinary people.

Rest in peace Sir Clive in the great Non-Volatile Memory which lies beyond the short DRAM refresh cycle of this life.

The man whose ideas help launch thousands of IT careers, mine included.

With just over two weeks to go, Microsoft punts Windows 11 to Release Preview

"I don't think Microsoft look on you as a customer. Customers are OEMs who ship Windows installed on computers."

Strange as it may sound, but Microsoft have an area of their website divided into sections for various products, mostly software - called A Shop.

You can buy products directly from Micosoft through the shop and I'm not refering to the likes of X Box games.

Very handy for buying Microsoft 365 licences especially if you multiple email domains without having to buy complete licences for each. Unlike buying from somewhere like GoDaddu.

That is precisely how I purchased the subscription licence foteh the specific Outlook.com services that I'm using and have the issues with.

I'm pretty sure that giving them the money in return for Microsoft providing goods and/or services makes a customer of theirs

"What is a concern is if someone contacted Microsoft with an issue that is on an unsupported system - Microsoft will simply not support it and therefore not help"

I have news for you - having a "supported system", even paying for support is no guarantee with Microsoft you will get any. At least not what any normal IT person would class as "support".

I have an outstanding issue with Microsoft with their Outlook.com service (the subscription "Premium" or "add free" as it used to be called,service NOT the free one) and the support with the issue on that has been APPALLING!

It was worse than amateurish. It was utterly childish.

I've had to escalate it TWICE by firefiring off emails to Nedella, plus the PR contacts in the US and UK to get anything to happen. The first time nothing concrete happened, despite promises when it was supposed to be in the hands of someone senior at Redmond, and then summarily closed without explanation.

The second time got further and raised with the "Engineering teams" who, without any testing, came back (via an "escalation manager") saying "It's all fixed."

Bollocks was it fixed! How the hell can anyone serious in IT claim a problem is fixed without ANY form of testing to verify it.

It has currently been re-opened again after I fired off shed loads of evidence showing that they may well have fixed "A problem", but what ever that was they had NOT fixed THE problem.

Plus a comment to the effect of "A problem is not FIXED until the customer has tested it and verified it is fixed".

BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine

Could have been worse - I've known one CEO who went out and bought one of those CALOR cabinet gas heaters (the ones on wheels) for use in an enclosed, unventilated office.

Re: A little power

Don't fret about where asset tags are positioned.

No point!

If they haven't covered some vital bit of information you can get bet your life that when the "pretend sparkies" come around doing the PAT testing they'll plaster their bloody stickers over any information that is remotely useful not already obscured.

Apple tried to patch this security hole in macOS Finder but didn't consider upper and lowercase characters

IIRC that's from DEC VMS!

Brings back memories of Bill and Ben - the twin DEC MicroVax that ran the accounting and stock management software for the printer manufacturer I worked for back in the early '90s

"Didn’t anyone code review the change? "

Who do Apple think they are? Microsoft? LOL

The magic TUPE roundabout: Council, Wipro, Northgate all deny employing Unix admins in outsourcing muddle

You didn't work for RBS Group Technology by any chance? Or one of the various IT outfits that were part of NatWest before RBS gobbled them up?

Your description sounds more than a vague resemblance to thoset events....

I remember Project Monument (the main Coutts desktop environment integration project), Monument Returns, Son of Monument and Monument Rides Again (only to fall off its proverbial horse for the umpteenth time)...

I think the small team I was in went through (at least) 5 different managers, half of them based 300+ miles away in Edinburgh (!!!) and at least as many HR "bodies" who were a total waste of space, air and flesh.

Fix five days of server failure with this one weird trick

Re: The "inspector"

God you make me feel old....

When I was little more than a toddler PC didn't exist, the first Commodore PET was still years away and TVs (my dad was a TV repair engineer/technician) were all valves (vacuum tubes for those on the other side of the Atlantic). Not even discrete transistors, never mind ICs

Colour TV was something few could afford to buy and most were rented...If they could afford that!

Microsoft suspends free trials for Windows 365 after a day due to 'significant demand'

Re: How much?

BYOD, or as it is otherwise known:

Bring Your Own Disaster

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

I still don't have a "smart meter" and refuse to have one.

Not because of any of the "tinfoil hat" claptrap reasons - simply because they are a massive con.

They are nothing to do with energy efficiency or saving consumers money. They are all about being able to impose finer and finer granular control over pricing - i.e. maximising revenue.

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

"Would you like to buy more? Additional credits are available at 3x market rate for electricity guzzlers such as yourself"

Are you talking "standard market rate" or the "variable according to demand" market rates which "so-called smart meters" are ultimately designed for:

When there's demand, the price goes up, priced by the second.

That's where it is going - and here in the UK we have a tax payer funded, government backed "smart meter roll out programme". Backed by most of the most competitive tariffs being restricted to having or accepting both a smart meter and payment via direct debit.

At least Dick Turpin made it clear he was going to rob you rather than claim was going to "save you money" (the central tenet of the marketing BS behind the UK roll-out).

Want to REALLY save money on your energy bill? Ues your eyes, read your own (standard non-smart ) meter and learn to SWITHCH THINGS OFF.

NASA fixes Hubble Space Telescope using backup power supply unit, payload computer

Re: Any fuel left?

You are absolutely correct about Hubble using reaction wheels to do the essential job of pointing it in the correct direction.

Astronomers, being picky buggers, do like to be able to move their telescope around to look at different things.

However, while safety for crews approaching Hubble during servicing missions was a factor, it wasn't a major one. After all, STS crews would deploy payloads mounted on PAMs (Payload Assist Modules) which are basically a rocket powered platform for firing payloads out of orbit and off elsewhere (to the other planets etc).

The major reason for the reaction wheels? Science....

The alternatives were small maneuvering thrusters which used propellant - typically hydrazine - for moving things about in space. Fine if you are generally moving your spacecraft from Point A to Point B.

If, as is the case with Hubble, you are not making it "go" anywhere, just slewing it around to point in different directions. Then your spacecraft can quickly end up sitting in a orbiting cloud of residue from the hydrazine.

At best this will interfere with all the optical instruments - the whole point of it being in space was to get above most of the atmosphere so the last you want if for your spacecraft to create its own.

At worst it get onto, and seriously contaminate, the surface of the single most critical component that could never be "swapped out - the main mirror.

Re: Sounds vaguely familiar.. LOL

Strangely the worst place for security I ever visited was British Shoe in Leicester - a bloody shoe factory!

My car was thoroughly searching twice going in, and THREE times when I went to leave site

Sounds vaguely familiar.. LOL

That in an odd way reminds me of a problem (years) ago when I had to go to an MOD site to figure out why a page printer (LED not laser) was producing garbled printouts from a mainframe it was connected to via RS-232.

The slight complexity was there was no separate "flow control" on the host systems serial interface, so it was all running via XON/XOFF.

Off I went down to the site in the South West - one of those with soldiers on the gates with real guns loaded with real bullets! - complete with an old "luggable" RS-232 protocol analyser with built in 5" CRT. Everything seemed ok, except a lot of the XOFFs which should have been sent by the printer to tell the host system to shut up for a bit, seemed to be being ignored or even missing.

One of our field engineers had been down to it twice and changed most of the controller boards - the serial interface board had been replaced 3 times. All to no effect.

Bit of thinking then out came the multi-meter and onto the PSU. The +12V and -12V outputs were somewhat low (less than +8V and -8V respectively). Turns out that those voltages, only used by the serial interface, (standard RS-232 signalling levels) were just too low for it signal reliably to the host system. So it just wasn't "hearing" the XON/XOFFs.

New PSU, with the correct outputs and normal service resumed.

And I got to "chaperone" one of our other printers on the same site which was going through "naval submarine" validation testing. Basically subjecting it to various shock levels (on a huge shock table) in various orientations to ensure:

1. It worked up to a certain level.

2,. Above that it didn't have to work but nothing had to fly off (simulated battle conditions).

And the last test - see just how stood up to "destruction level shock testing". Basically give it the highest level shock and see what happened. It was prettyy buggered inside, but only the main "smoked plastic" cover flew over 15 feet away, a couple of knows flew off and something cracekd. Otherwise stayed pretty intact.

Windows 10 to hang on for five more years with 21H2 update

Re: Last security update for Windows 10, when?

If they are not "home" machines, at what rate do they get depreciated?

Wen buying new PC hardware, I tend to opt, where available, for on site 3-year warrant. Our PC estate is too small to cost effectively do all hardware maintenance on standard PC hardware internally, yet too big to want to waste too much time faffing around if/when one does have a significant system failure, such as M/board problem.

Any that do fail it's a phone call and next (working) day it gets fixed on site under the warranty. After the 3 years, any that fail are "scrapped" and replaced as they have already, in accounting terms, depreciated to £0 value.

They worst for failing are laptops (no surprises there).

The coming of Wi-Fi 6 does not mean it's time to ditch your cabled LAN. Here's why

Re: Datacenter usage

"Datacenter usage

I can see a future where Wi-Fi might be used in the datacenter. Switches aren't cheap, and they take up real space. If you want failover, double both. Wire installation and management takes some extra time as well."

Sounds like a VERY BAD IDEA.... All those costly switches etc are to achieve not just redundancy and reliability, but raw

THROUGHPUT. WiFi will cripple that.

It would just be a completely unnecessary added level of useless complexity.

And I'd love to see you try and map the WiFi signal propagation in among that forest of metalwork to get even a vague idea of where the odd "hotspots" are and where the much larger number of "notspots" are. And as soon as anyone walks down an aisle and opens a (screened) rack door - your propagation map goes out of the window and lots of "odd signal dropouts" start plaguing your datacentre infrastructure.

Re: WiFi it's the future honest!

God help you if you have to manage a PC estate of any size.

With wired networking you can effectively manage your estate with the aid of WOL - anywhere from a few tens of PC to tens of thousands.

Once you shift across to WiFi - FORGET IT! Remote management of your estate is effectively crippled as there is not reliable WiFi equivalent to WOL. Then you are back to pleading and begging your users to not shutdown their PCs or anything else that may cause them to drop of the network,

And if they don't, your ability to do effective remote management, especially out of hours and at weekends is STUFFED.

A few laptops on one's network can be bad enough - I've lost count of how many times I've re-iterated "do not separate laptops from the power supplies", and the monotonous count of "lab laptops" which drop off the network because they have been left running on battery until it's drained. And the dull regular "laptop hunt" to find them, their PSUs and plug the buggers back in to get updated.

Re: Wired

The location where our main office is, there are 35+ other networks listed. None of them ours.

That is the biggest problem of all with WiFi. It was fine when you and someone else in your street had it. Now EVERYONE has it and it is EVERYWHERE.

Consequently it is very very VERY crowded.

Re: WiFi 6 may not; 5G may

"But for those who have made the change, it 'just working' anywhere and everywhere [there's coverage] is great, and quickly becomes essential."

But here in the real world, it "just doesn't", is more the norm.

Re: And security?

Precisely!

WiFi is a solution to ONE and ONLY ONE problem: a situation where it is impractical or impossible to use a cable.

In every other respect WiFi, compared to cable, is one MASSIVE kludge and nothing BUT disadvantages and problems.

IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster, sources say

Re: All good [law] firms

And many - eBay/Amazon - don't seem to know any keyboard layouts other than US.

Making them totally US (I leave it to your personal preference as to whether you interpret "US" as "uselss" or "utter shite").

Re: Dark, chaotic pit of not being able to access email or calendars

"Email is the worst method of communication"

I find that the orange plastic "dead-blow" mallets that come with industrial grade, self-assembly steel racking/shelving makes a very effective communication tool.

Especially at short range.

Re: All good [law] firms

" if you can find an old spark-plug sized keyboard connector gender-blender to USB..."

By "spark-plug sized" I assume you mean the 180 degree, 5 pin DIN connector?

Windows Server 2022: Azure Edition slips into Public Preview

Re: The white fluffy stuff

Everything Microsoft to do has for some time appeared to be aimed at driving customers to suscription based services.

Hell they even confgiured the pretty dire OneDrive Sync crap to automatically start hoovering up your files from your PCs hard to "helpfully back them".

NO F**K OFF Microsoft!! I have my own backup solution thank you very much.

"Cloud" services have their uses, but I am no fan of using them for data storage unless they are the only viable option. Cloud storage (like OneDrive) breaks one of my fundamental principles:

The best way of ensuring control over your data is to have physical control of the devices it is stored on - in other words on drives/arrays I own, locked away in my machine rooms.

Leaked print spooler exploit lets Windows users remotely execute code as system on your domain controller

Re: What the ever-loving frak ?

Unfortunately.... yes....

Re: What the ever-loving frak ?

"...but who knows what rationale people have for odd configurations"

I know.

When small company IT are over ruled by PhDs who know nothing about real world IT, but whenever they are given reasons why they can't do something in the way they want (such as "explicitly prohibited by the licence conditions") suddenly become "IT experts", scweam and shout and stamp their little feet until they get their way. And they never "lower themselves" to say "thank you".

UK urged to choo-choo-choose hydrogen-powered trains in pursuit of carbon-neutral economic growth

Re: happily drive a cat with 60-80 litres of explosive liquid in a single walled plastic bowl.

My cat wants a word with you in private - down some nice dark lonely lane with some of his feline mates LOL

Oh. He says make sure you bring your own pre-labelled body bag if you want your remnants returned.

Revealed: Why Windows Task Manager took a cuddlier approach to (process) death and destruction

Re: Why so long?

"Also, note that Windows 10 does not really 'shut down' when you select Shut Down; Windows 10 features Fast Startup... The shutdown might be slower due to the write, but it is balanced off with a faster startup as full system & hardware initialization is not required"

Except on a lot of PCs it also completely powers down the NIC.

"They figured that most people are impatient to get started, less so when they finish and are ready to walk away, so they rebalanced the two operations towards a faster startup at the penalty of the slower shutdown. Turn off 'Fast Startup' for the faster shutdown at the cost of the slower startup."

And if you manage remote estates of desktops which are affected by Fast Startup powering down the NIC (which is a lot) then, frankly, your buggered if you need to use WOL to do your job as Microsoft have fecked it!

Unless you disable both Fast Startup and Sleep.

Re: Why so long?

"Also "shutdown" doesn't really shut down the computer fully anymore"

Are you talking about "Fast star-tup" on Windows 10?

Which BREAKS WOL on a lot of PCs because it powers the NIC down totally. Not sure how that is meant to help a PC start fater....

Especially Dell Optiplex PCs.

So I ALWAYS disable Fast start-up and Sleep (on desktops).

Microsoft releases Windows 11 Insider Preview, attempts to defend labyrinth of hardware requirements

Re: Silicon Valley's post pandemic recovery plan

"But no-one, not even Miscrosoft, is forcing anyone to upgrade to Windows 11."

That was said about Windows 10 - but Microsoft went ahead and did it anyway.

That decision made "New Coke" seem like a rip-roaring success.

They just don't learn....

You would think that Mickeysoft would have learned a few things from the last time they messed about with the Start Menu to such as degree - and that went SO WELL didn't it.... NOT!

Dell SupportAssist contained RCE flaw allowing miscreants to remotely reflash your BIOS with code of their creation

Re: Just Wow! Say it ain't so!

The "right" operating system is the one which runs the majority if the apps I need.

There is a long, long, long way to go before that will be Linux.

And installing most hardware is still a bitch compared to Windows. And sorry, no actually I'm not sorry, but having to type a load of cryptic commands to install relatively common bits of hardware is NOT simple. Especially when, as I suspect most PC users are, you are not the least bit interested in HOW it works or how clever you think you seem getting to work, all you care about it is b***dy working.