* Posts by ElPedro100

35 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2020

PayPal is planning an ad network built off your purchase history

ElPedro100

Re: You just bought a kettle...

Thanks. That's a great read and explains a lot.

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

ElPedro100

Re: Good news....

Many years ago, when I was working for the British Met Office, I had to go to the top of the tower to fix the wind measuring system. On top of the tower was a mast with the anemometer on top and I had to go up the mast to fix it. I later found out that at the top of the mast I was at the highest point in London as that was above the height of the NatWest Tower. The views were amazing but I was grateful for the safety harness and hard hat that I was wearing. These days I just sit and program computers all day. Not quite so exciting.

Politicos demand full list of Fujitsu's public sector contract wins in wake of Post Office scandal

ElPedro100

Re: "what processes the department has in place to measure the performance of any contracts"

"It is the *Post Office*, who bought a faulty system from ICL,"

While I agree to a certain extent, it was Fujitsu that developed a not fit for purpose system for PO and PO accepted it knowing full well that it didn't work properly. PO then went on to unjustifiably victimise their employees while Fujitsu just covered their own arses. This was not an off the shelf product. It was specifically built for a task that it didn't do properly.

Equally to blame IMHO.

Elon Musk actually sits down and talks to 'government-funded media' the BBC

ElPedro100

Re: "he would have walked away from the takeover deal if he could"

It's always going to be the way when the lunaics take over the asylum.

Kremlin claims Ukraine hackers behind fake missile strike alerts

ElPedro100

Upvote for probably the most intelligent and well reasoned analysis of the current situation that I have read so far.

You're right. It's a shame that we don't have a real world leader who can open discussions using reasoning like this.

ElPedro100

War crime? Ok, let's go and illegally invade another country, kill loads of their people but hey chaps, make sure that you stick to the rules eh? Wouldn't want anyone to think we were cheating.

This is not a game. The whole "special military operation" is a crime. Maybe 500 years ago it was acceptable. Not now.

ElPedro100

Upvote for remembering so many of them that I had forgotten. Unfortunately what is going on now is not the first time and more than likely won't be the last.

Windows Subsystem for Linux now packaged as a Microsoft Store app

ElPedro100

Re: Big fan here

And if you want it to be more bashy then simply install Git

Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything

ElPedro100

What's left to laugh about?

Let's face it, with Everything as a Service all being managed externally with a browser interface to do everything there are no interesting disaster stories in IT any more. "My cloud provider fked up" doesn't make a very inspiring read.

We're all doomed.

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

ElPedro100
Pint

Re: You get what you order

Had an experience in Greece this year when I had rented a scooter. Stopped at a zebra crossing and was rear ended by a truck. Called the police as instructed by the rental company and their response was that if I wasn't hurt then they were not interested. Told the truck driver and he said we had to wait for his boss. When the boss arrived his first question was whether the police were coming. I told him no and that everything was OK. He then thanked me, gave me his phone number and said that if I needed anything when I was on the island I should call him directly. I often wonder what was in the back of the truck that made him so keen that the police weren't involved. I guess his offer of help was the cheapest insurance policy I have ever had though.

A Magnus beer for the boss of the idiot who drove into me =>

California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

ElPedro100

Re: Saving water for more abuse?

Could install electric lights under the panels?

Crooks steal NFTs worth '$3m' in Bored Ape Yacht Club heist

ElPedro100

Re: Dumb and dumber

I actually thought about a similar idea. Walk up into the Scottish Highlands with a case full of empty bottles, take the lids off, leave them for 5 minutes and then put the lids back on. With a nice label on them I'm sure they'd sell on certain well known auction sites as "Fresh Air from the Highlands". Then I thought why go to all that trouble? Just sell empty bottles with labels and a disclaimer saying that opening the bottle may compromise the quality of the product (so that no-one can smell that you didn't wash the fizzy drink residue out of the bottle before they bought it). I'm sure they would have sold.

It seems some people have more money than sense and it would also appear that they don't have a lot of money, at least not now...

Cybercrooks target students with fake job opportunities

ElPedro100

Re: Got this one, some years ago

Exactly. It's not rocket science.

Also, if they are targeting graduates then I guess that says something about the current state of higher education. What exactly are they learning on these courses? Obviously nothing to do with common sense.

Journalist won't be prosecuted for pressing 'view source'

ElPedro100

Re: Politicians and "computers"

That's a great story and sadly totally believable.

Cheeky chappy rides horse around London filling station, singing: 'I don't need petrol 'cos he runs on carrots'

ElPedro100

Re: "He runs on carrots"

In the old days of horse drawn deliveries people used to rush out with a shovel and collect the byproduct of the horses digestive system to put on their rhubarb.

Personally, I preferred custard on mine.

Microsoft solicits Clippy comeback – later reveals it had already decided to bring back the peppy paperclip

ElPedro100
FAIL

So sad that they are basing their decisions on what Twatter and Instagram (aka Farcebook) users want instead of asking real people. "Oh, yes, let's have a new icon that we can send to all of our imaginary friends who are only our friends because they are as stupid as we are!". I genuinely dispair for the future of humanity unless "social media" is banned from influencing important matters like the abomination that was Clippy. Let her (or him) RIP.

Facebook CEO puts picture of himself wearing too much sunscreen on new board

ElPedro100

Re: No such thing as too much sunscreen

I genuinely sympathise with your friends who have skin cancer. It's no joke. If Suckerbergs stunt had been a real attempt to encourage followers (Facebook sheep) to wear suncream then I would be all for it. Sadly he says "it wasn't thought through". Is he implying that he was wrong to wear suncream? If so then expect an army of Facebook droids to die of a preventable disease.

With great power comes great responsibility...

Australian ponders requiring multiple IDs to sign up for social media, plus more crypto-busting backdoors

ElPedro100

Re: Hmm ...

Hopefully, at least until they are smart enough to know what they are really signing up for.

NurseryCam hacked, company shuts down IoT camera service

ElPedro100
Facepalm

Re: There is another story here...

Absolutely agree. We are living in an "App for Everything" culture. Just another thing for people to stare at on their mobile phone screens.

In addition I would guess that many of the affected users are already sharing the video of their little cherubs throwing a tantrum at the nursery on Facebook or Twitter (other antisocial media networks are available) in order to gain more followers and become influencers.

Seems to be the way the world is going. I despair for the next generation or even this one in a few years time.

Scottish Environment Protection Agency refuses to pay ransomware crooks over 1.2GB of stolen data

ElPedro100

Nice idea and I completely agree in principle but what it the point of the web when 99% of the sites simply will not function? Only real way round it is to block all corporate and government networks from having access to the internet or external mail. Yeah right...

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

ElPedro100
Mushroom

Re: Hands up who thought it would be the cleaner again

So the cleaner unplugs the server, finds they can't plug the vacuum cleaner in so unplugs the next server and so on. Sounds like a great way to take out a data centre to me.

EU Medicines Agency hacked, BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine paperwork stolen, probe launched

ElPedro100
Boffin

Re: Don't patent COVID-19 vaccines

Open source the vaccine so we can all make some. Would solve the distribution issues. Just need to buy a colder freezer.

The GIMP turns 25 and promises to carry on being the FOSS not-Photoshop

ElPedro100

Re: 25 years and still a pain to use

Upvote for the Youtube recommendation. Been using Gimp on and off for a few years but still learned a lot from the beginners tutorial.

Biden projected to be the next US President, Microsoft joins rest of world in telling Trump: It looks like... you're fired

ElPedro100
Pint

Re: Yay! Party time!

It was worth trawling through all of the above just to get to this one comment. Made my evening.

Have an upvote and a =>

Developer survey: C# losing ground to JavaScript, PHP and Java for cloud apps, still big in gaming

ElPedro100

Agreed and anyway Lotus Notes isn't a language. Any half decent Notes/Domino programmer will need to know Formula, LotusScript, Java, JavaScript and whatever else has been introduced since I moved away from it 5 years ago.

ElPedro100

Upvoted because I love Brainfuck for code golfing but I certainly wouldn't want to write any kind of serious application with it no matter what type!

What a Hancock-up: Excel spreadsheet blunder blamed after England under-reports 16,000 COVID-19 cases

ElPedro100

Re: CSV?

An alternative interpretation of CSV is Character Separated Values

https://www.howtogeek.com/348960/what-is-a-csv-file-and-how-do-i-open-it/

Wrap it before you tap it? No, say Linux developers: 'GPL condom' for Nvidia driver is laughed out of the kernel

ElPedro100
Coat

Re: free sandwich

Or arseroom if you put the armrest up.

A tale of mainframes and students being too clever by far

ElPedro100
Pint

Ah the good old days...

...when Notes documentation was at best, patchy and debugging tools, well buggy.

Have a beer from someone who shared the pain =>>

From 'Queen of the Skies' to Queen of the Scrapheap: British Airways chops 747 fleet as folk stay at home

ElPedro100

Re: Once...

It was October 1996 and I was flying to Hong Kong with BA. I arrived at Heathrow airport suited and booted and clutching by business class Ticket. Presenting it at the checkin desk I was told that unfortunately business class was overbooked and would I be prepared to travel economy for a refund of the price difference and £100 compensation. Yes I said (£100 was worth having in those days!) as long as I could still use the business class lounge. No problem.

Shortly before boarding I was called to the gate. "Sorry sir, we still haven't managed to find a business class seat. Would you like to go first class?". I ended up flying into the old Kai Tak airport upstairs on a 747 drinking a rather agreeable red wine and enjoying the view out of the starboard window. A one off experience never to be repeated. Fond memories of the 747.