Posts by Frogmaster

It is 20 years since the last commercial flight of Concorde

I worked at BAe in the late 80s and remember when the Concorde needed to take off. They would push her right back to the start of the runway which had the A38 dual carriageway just behind. The A38 then had to be closed as when the Olympus engines were spooled up for full take-off thrust they would have blasted the cars away. It was a wonderful sight seeing her accelerate down the runway and into the blue yonder.

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

Window tax - love it!

Malware and Trojans, but there's only one horse the boss man wants to hear about

Re: In a previous career

Yup, when the brown stuff starts hitting the revolving blades there can be some strange behaviour. I was working at a major UK Building Society in the early part of the century when word got out that some major systems were down, and unofficially some colleagues asked if I could help. Rolling up sleeves and walking across the floor I met the system admin who was responsible for said outage acting very busy - tidying up the software cupboard, arranging all disks/CDs/etc. in alphabetical order! So we had to completely bypass them, let them get on with what made them happy, and fix the issues. Weird how pressure can affect people in strange ways - in this case CYA mode "Let's look busy and I won't get asked to do anything useful...."

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Fujitsu tells 80,000 of its Japan employees: From now on, you work remotely

I can see the appeal in what you say, and the upvotes, but under the new regime with Slack, Teams, etc. and everyone getting a mobile phone the pressure will be on to extend those hours well past 5pm. My daughter made the mistake of leaving her workphone on at the weekend and picked up messages from a senior Partner on Sunday morning asking for some info :(

We need those proposed workplace rules such as turning off email servers after 6pm, no mobile/chat interactions out of normal hours, etc. so that folk do not feel so pressured to respond.

It's National Cream Tea Day and this time we end the age-old debate once and for all: How do you eat yours?

Re: Too much arguing = not enough eating

Next we'll be debating the Devon vs Somerset Cider Wars as fought out by yokels over centuries. I'll nail my colours to the mast as Devonian, having married a Somerset lass, and this is still the subject of much debate at home (over a glass or three, of course)....

Germany prepares to launch COVID-19 contact-tracing app 'this week' while UK version stuck in development hell

So track and trace is useful or even necessary to control the spread of the virus, the announcements from BJ and MH are of the order "Look, we are doing something, working really hard, ...." just to divert attention, a la "Look into my Eyes". Like the 750,000 volunteers that signed up in March the tracers seem to have nothing to do, one I know who is on it full-time had not yet had a single call. And they didn't take furloughed people.

What really galled was Her Highness Dido, when asked what the learnings had been, saying that they were getting better at calling people at convenient times. Ye gods.....

<sarcasm>wonder if we need someone Trump-like here to drain the swamp</sarcasm>

Tory chancellor pledges to review IR35 rollout in UK private sector – just like all the other parties

Re: reform will be welcomed by contractors who have understandably lost trust in this government.

Er, a reading of the quote shows that he has promised diddly squat. "I want to look at" translates into.....zero. There are many things he should be looking at and his redundancy needs to be top of that list.

UK parcel firm Yodel plugs tracking app's random yaps about where on map to snap up strangers' tat

High Street vs Online + Yodel

Ok, so you nearly paid the real price of buying online. Sure, 25% cheaper, getting the service gratis in your High Street, and then moaning about Yodel. I'm not completely innocent in such matters but acknowledge your choices as listening to it in the High Street may not be possible much longer.

HP CEO: Help us save the world one tree at a time... by printing stuff (with our kit, of course)

Re: CO2 uptake ... then takedown

Quite agree - forest management is a thing. but I don't think it's a core competency of HP management practice, although they often seem to specialise in dead wood.

Re: CO2 uptake ... then takedown

And more besides - including processing CO2 to remove it from the atmosphere. So your acronym should be CCSP (Carbon Capture, Storage and Processing). But....unfortunately this is all stopped when felling and pulping the trees.

Must consume more.....

So his answer to being carbon-friendly is to consume, consume, consume ignoring all other factors involved in the printing process? I might ask on what planet is he living on (pun intended)?

A History of (Computer) Violence: Wait. Before you whack it again, try caressing the mouse

Pain and Fear

I has a colleague who left a cricket bat dangling on a piece of string by his PC. To "encourage it to behave". His view was as soon as computers could be given feelings the first should be pain, closely followed by fear.