There was a presenter on Scottish BBC who claimed that he went to school two children in the class were called Donny McCloud so the teacher to call roll would say Donny A and Donny B McCloud. Donny B stuck for the rest of his life.
Posts by WanderingHaggis
143 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Nov 2019
Cops visit school of 'wrong person's child,' mix up victims and suspects in epic data fail
The batteries on Odysseus, the hero private Moon lander, have run out
Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite
Europe's data protection laws cut data storage by making information-wrangling pricier
Sounds good but ...
The laws for handling the P.O. scandal already exist: starting with contempt of court, perjury, plus other things that a lawyer can update you on. In the end the problem was not the tech failure but the cover up and deceiving the courts. P.O. management, Fujitsu management and the experts who said everything was secure should be charged and not allowed to hide behind the corporation..
United Airlines’ patience with Boeing is maxed out after repeated safety issues
Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered
Re: Compensation?
I don't know how the PO did their accounting but I would have though the yearly audit should have been showing that while X stock and services had been sold they took X+Y income. For example my shop has 100 pens in stock and at the end of the sales period I've sold 110 pens. Accounts should pick this up and ask questions shouldn't they and also be able to say the equivalent of 10 pens is owed?
Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal
Re: A scandal of epic proportions
I fear it relates how people get and process information. The drama appeals because you don't have to think just react emotionally. Panorama is work you need to think and be analytical (as with Private eye and computer weekly)-- the dispassionate "I say old bean isn't there something wrong" never quite has the same effect of "You what, mate" outrage.
UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims
Re: How is Fujitsu not in the dock?
Failed to edit in time -- did Fujitsu inform the PO that only the sub-post master had access i.e. PO management and employees didn't but not say that Fujitsu super users did because that was not what they were being asked. I saw that Fujitsu engineers are being investigated for perjury did they also mislead / lie to the PO as well. This is not an excuse for the PO as they should have realised that there was a change in the patterns of fraud and levels were not "normal". Odd behaviour is a sign that something is going on. The PO IT staff should have the awareness of opsec realities even if the board didn't and asked the relevant questions.
How is Fujitsu not in the dock?
The cry out against the Post Office is loud and valid, what is terrible is the feeling that Fujitsu has only been named in passing when they are a central player. In my experience user don't understand the power of the sysadmin to access systems and over ride restrictions. That is why there needs to be audit trails so that "back door" access is at least logged. Management in the Post Office should have asked questions why the number of fraud detection increased so much once Horizon was deployed. The post office should have asked who had access though I suspect from experience if you tell management that you don't have access they tend to believe you. A person with sysadmin experience would ask what do I need to do to have access and how is it logged. Fujitsu should be front and centre here, and liable to compensate just as much as the Post Office is.
You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused
Paper / email trails sadly can be necessary
I had a similar experience where I was blamed for seriously delaying a project. Fortunately I had had a bad feeling about the whole thing and was careful to document and save emails which I was able to produce to show I'd been chasing the third part for months and had fulfilled my side of things. Sad that you have to do this but it can save you a lot of grief.
Bank's datacenter died after travelling back in time to 1970
Chromebooks are problematic for profits and planet, says Lenovo exec
Elon is the bakery owner swearing in the street about Yelp critics canceling him
Ex-school IT admin binned student, staff accounts and trashed phone system
What was the reason for him being sacked
If he was sacked there must have been something already going on so why wasn't he locked out first? Basic opsec. As suggested he might have had a back door -- audits may have been his responsibility so he can hide but still... The guy needed to go so check that your car isn't beneath the chosen window.
Suits ignored IT's warnings, so the tech team went for the neck
The power of controlling the internet
As a charity we used to have board and trustee meetings where it became apparent people weren't paying attention (in the course of one meeting I received an email stating we had policy which contradicted what IT had recommended and I knew hands on leadership were pushing for and as well hadn't been voted at that point.) Very awkward for us getting the job done and telling recalcitrant volunteer workers to comply. From that point on I got the GDs permission to have a wifi outage during meetings. Attention increased, and under table chat was curtailed.
Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making
Lesson 1: Keep your mind on the ... why aren't the servers making any noise?
Aliens crash landed on Earth – and Uncle Sam is covering it up, this guy tells Congress
Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris
Re: Faux AZERTY
Having been introduced to keyboards while working in France I love my azerty, though I am bilingual and can use a qwerty. Living now in the UK my laptop is qwerty and my wireless keyboard azerty (I still do some French user support) -- being the only decent (and rude) French speaker in the technical team. Though the windows habit of defaulting the keyboard to UK layout at login is annoying. I would love it if I could set the keyboard layout independently i.e. without having all the Microsoft apps changing language.
That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse
Backup spares
One of our offices had a literal server meltdown. Although we had backups the server was the backup machine and the ancient tape drive was end of life. Getting the data from a no longer existing model of tape drive proved very difficult and time consuming. When it comes to back up equipment two is better than one so you can fall back before you have a fail. (And have the second off site.)
Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real
Wrong time to weaken encryption, UK IT chartered institute tells government
Turns out people don't like it when they suspect a machine's talking to them
NASA fixes solar observation spacecraft by turning it off and turning it on again
News Corp outfoxed by IT intruders for years
Glasgow staff form UK's first Apple union after historic vote
BOFH and the case of the Zoom call that never was
We used to give people (mainly trustees, directors, big boss types etc) from foreign parts a loan of necessary adaptors to use in the office. No-one every returns them but don't have them with them next meetings. In the end we now say we used to have a lot of adaptors but can't do anything as we're waiting for them to be returned. Cue embarrassment, sometimes, but to fair they were decent people just typical in this area.
Artificial pancreas successful in type 2 diabetes tests
Exciting news
As a MODY (https://www.diabetes.org.uk/diabetes-the-basics/other-types-of-diabetes/mody#:~:text=MODY%20is%20a%20rare%20form,of%20inheriting%20it%20from%20them.) and a teckie I look forward to not having to do endless calculations for injections to then end up for some reason (weather, wind direction, mood ...) having them go wrong. It definitely gets harder to control as you get older.
London cops break into gallery to rescue lifelike art installation
KmsdBot botnet is down after operator sends typo in command
Two signs in the comms cabinet said 'Do not unplug'. Guess what happened
BOFH: We're an industry leader … in employing idiot managers
NASA's Artemis mission finally launches after faulty Ethernet switch delayed countdown
Why I love my Chromebook: Reason 1, it's a Linux desktop
Set my mother in law up on a chromebox
Fed up with the various viral and backup failures she had experienced I got my mother in law a chrome box. Cheap and her stuff is safe - I don't have to keep explaining why windows has changed since 95. It's simple and easy to use, I can even remote to her fairly painlessly without having to install extra software. In short it does everything she needs with out buying / subscribing to lots of extras. Added bonus is the local bodgers don't install all sorts of junk she doesn't understand or need telling her she must have it leaving her upset that her machine is so slow and does weird things. Chrome is a really good option for challenged users.
Children should have separate sections in social media sites, says UK coroner
Re: Why is age verification an invasion of privacy ?
Real information can be abused and sold on -- true that is why GDPR exists. Our problem is enforcement of data protection so that some kind of ID may be used without fear of abuse in an unregulated global context. The valid credit card seems a good way (granted cards can be copied or cloned but it should reduce the number of children exposed and put power / responsibility into the parents hand to keep their information safe).
The other issue freedom of speech is tricky -- Alex Jones and others demands freedom of speech with terrible results. Is this acceptable? How can we police the harm done by these people of bad faith?
Tetchy trainee turned the lights down low to teach turgid lecturer a lesson
Queen's shooting star was actually meteor, not SpaceX junk
Amazon has repackaged surveillance capitalism as reality TV
Re: Apathy is the problem
I suspect as far as the neighbour is concerned the camera points at her garden path everything else is just an accident. Also it is the outside of the front door of the house which isn't really pervy. Surveillance is a possibility see who is visiting or keeping logs on when people go out and when the house is empty but I would seriously doubt it.
Australian wasps threaten another passenger plane, with help from COVID-19
BOFH: HR's gold mine gambit – they get the gold and we get the shaft
Amazon can't channel the dead, but its deepfake voices take a close second
That time a techie accidentally improved an airline's productivity
Keeping your head as an entire database goes pear-shaped
Re: Backups
Almost right. I once had to persuade management (and the web developer) after a bad SQL injection attack on our main website that it wasn't enough to simply restore the site but that it had to be offline while the failings in the code were fixed otherwise we would be on line for 15 minutes before crashing again (leaking all sorts of confidential information and your truly cleaning up the mess again). You can restore the data but you must fix the hole or the ship sinks again. Fortunately I succeeded but only just.
Zuckerberg sued for alleged role in Cambridge Analytica data-slurp scandal
The buck stops at the boss.
I get the impression that US law protects the people who are breaking the law by hiding them behind the company. I don't understand how the decision makers avoid the consequences of their choices. To be honest I'm not sure British law is any better. In France I seem to remember the CEO can be held responsible in court for actions of the company. I may need an update.
Beware the fury of a database developer torn from tables and SQL
Bank had no firewall license, intrusion or phishing protection – guess the rest
Software upgrades help Mars helicopter keep flying
Driver in Uber's self-driving car death goes on trial, says she feels 'betrayed'
Software to arbitrate between two soldiers -- haven't they heard of rank?
Don't really don't get this one, you don't have time in combat to make decision making protracted so usually the army has very clear hierarchy such discussions usually end with yes sarg or sir not lets boot my laptop and see what the AI thinks once everything is entered in.
We have redundancy, we have batteries, what could possibly go wrong?
I'm not slow -- you just have to explain for a long time.
I remember our big outage -- phone alert -- rushing to the site and knowing most of the battery life would have gone by that time I got there. I start shutting everything down cleanly until I suddenly realised that the lights were on again. (It was during the day so there was some excuse.)