Posts by Coastal cutie

Brit IT firms wound up by court order after fooling folk into paying for 'support' over fake computer errors

Re: Hold Music

I just decide it's time to test the smoke alarm

Whatever you've been doing during lockdown, you better stop it right now

Well I suppose the cakes could be a less than subtle way of telling the office **** what you really think of them when they leave. Link definitely NSFW but very funny.

Door-opening insect mega-swarm emerges in Eastern US, descends on Washington DC

Re: Personal portable FlameThrowers...

This sounds like a way to achieve regular customer status with the local fire department https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-28340978

BMA and Royal College of GPs refuse to endorse NHS Digital's data grab from surgeries in England

“The new programme for collecting data has been developed in collaboration with doctors, patients and data, privacy and ethics experts to build on and improve systems for data collection."

Whose views and concerns we have promptly ignored.

Ubuntu, Wikimedia jump ship to the Libera Chat IRC network after Freenode channel confiscations

I think Lee must have been taking PR lessons from Comical Ali.

File this next to Mars bars under 'things that should not be deep-fried': Marks & Spencer's Colin the Caterpillar

Re: Corby

Apparently the original Neapolitan pizza does that - the dough is fried and then topped with tomato sauce, basil and mozzarella

Michael Collins, once the world's 'loneliest man,' is dead. If that name means little or nothing to you, read this

"We're made of star stuff" - but some shine so much more brightly than the rest. Godspeed and rest in peace.

George Clooney of IT: Dribbling disaster and damp disk warnings scare the life out of innocent user

Not the slightest bit funny - I do hope the little word included grasping said perp warmly by the throat.

BOFH: Postman BOFH's Special Delivery Service

Cures the Friday blues

Ah, a new episode of the BOFH - the perfect antidote to crappy meetings and some users that I could do with borrowing Simon's carpet and caustic to deal with.

Japan accuses Chinese military of cyber-attacks on its space agency

It doesn't just do space research/exploration - it's involved with aerospace more widely including aviation, so trying to hack it would fit in nicely with Chinese originated tech attacks elsewhere.

To have one floppy failure is unlucky. To have 20 implies evil magic or a very silly user

Re: The endless story

I learnt from my policing gigs that it's much the same for the Constabulary's finest.

I take it you haven't spent much time with end users...……...

Vote to turf out remainder of Nominet board looks inevitable after .uk registry ignores reform demands

Re: The sooner

I don't think they are capable of embarrassment or even shame - it's clear their sole interest is in clinging to the gravy train. If the EGM can't get them out, hopefully the next AGM can. Then bring in forensic accountants and make sure the M&AA are changed to prevent a farce like this ever happening again.

Nominet ignores advice, rejects serious change despite losing CEO, chair, half its board in membership vote

Second EGM just galloping over the horizon.......

Thousands of taxpayers' personal details potentially exposed online through councils' debt-chasing texts

Re: Public Sector reporting

A "Who Me?" story by any chance...….

Sure, Dave might seem like he's avidly listening to this morning's meeting, but he's actually doing a yoga routine

Not really - when we had a normal world, the London commute was crap if you were doing it at 5.30am or after a lie in at 9.30am due to evening meetings (in fact the latter could be even worse as the tourists had all woken up). And don't get me started on the homeward bound leg of it...….

Google patches WebView component to end unexpected Android crash fest

Re: "For about seven hours on Monday"

It may surprise you to know that some people actually use their mobile phone for work, me included - and it's no fun when your email etc. have all gone west.

Chairman, CEO of Nominet ousted as member rebellion drives .uk registry back to non-commercial roots

Good - now time to open the books to the Fraud Squad and see what steps can be taken to disqualify them as Directors.

Desperate Nominet chairman claims member vote to fire him would spark British government intervention

Just when you think they couldn't sink any lower...... I'm inclined to think that Mark Wood wouldn't recognise the truth if it whacked him over the head with a 14lb hammer.

OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable

Re: Seriously odd

Hence my question marks - I would not be the slightest bit surprised if so many corners were cut they ended up with a circle.

Seriously odd

This is seriously weird - every DC I've ever been in had fire suppression systems to remove the oxygen element from the fire triangle, whether that was halon or one of the newer compounds - which is why of course humans have to get the hell out with extreme rapidity, as it isn't just fires that need oxygen. Be interesting to see how the building was fire compartmented as well, did someone skip on the proofing, like in the Twin Towers? Or do we have a cladding issue that's fuelled it and assisted the spread to the second DC?

Whistleblowers: Inflexible prison software says inmates due for release should be kept locked up behind bars

Don't know about that but every project I've worked on in the last few years has had a contact with a clause in it requiring the supplier to incorporate any legislative changes, either as part of the routine software update releases or as a an out of cycle release. No change request required.

Mobile World Congress to run this year's Barcelona event in June with 50,000 attendees. We're speechless

Just one word for this even being proposed - stupid

48-hour strike action: Openreach repayment project engineers confirm it's on

I've worked in unionised and non-unionised workplaces in my career. Without exception, the unionised had better terms & conditions, better relations between staff and management (counter intuitive as that might seem) and better health & safety. At the moment this is aimed at new staff - if it follows the patterns I've seen elsewhere, give it 2 years and Openreach will be going after the existing employees' contracts as well. I wish them well.

Transcribe-my-thoughts app would prevent everyone knowing what I actually said during meetings

I'd upvote you more than once if I could

Next meeting, cut your Zoom/Teams/WhatsApp/insert other meeting tool at regular intervals and blame company firewalls/your router/power cut/4G signal cutting out/software update you couldn't pause with a restart you couldn't stop/atmospheric conditions/full moon/next door's microwave. A few of those gets even the windbags fed up of repeating themselves when you do reappear and very soon you won't be asked any more.

Very little helps: Tesco serves up 3-for-1 borkage special to self-scanning Tesco shoppers

Re: Actress/bishop

Oooooooooh Matron!

Four cold calling marketing firms fined almost £500k by ICO

Only problem with that is when the police or other emergency service/hospital need to get hold of you in a hurry and can't because unrecognised numbers aren't allowed.

Police drone plunged 70ft into pond after operator mashed pop-up that was actually the emergency cut-out button

3 points and To Count (if you know, you know) and definitely cake fine time

Cats: Not a fan favourite when the critters are draped around an office packed with tech

Re: Best wire cutters ever

I used to work with someone who had a Persian cat with a penchant for chewing cables - only it did that when the Christmas tree lights were plugged in. There was a flash, a bang, all the lights went out and the cat was flung across the room. When the lights were restored, the cat was found in the corner, with all its fur standing on end, making it resemble a static infused furry bowling ball with an equally static infused tail. Remarkably it suffered no serious injuries - but they bought battery operated lights after that.

Backdoored SolarWinds software, linked to US govt hacks, in wide use throughout the British public sector

"The normally talkative cybersecurity sector has been practically silent about the FireEye hack, which sources suggested to The Register was because smaller firms are scared of being seen to criticise one of the industry's largest players."

Or could they just be too busy desperately scrabbling around in their own vaults to see if the nasties have been in there too?

Oh, no one knows what goes on behind locked doors... so don't leave your UPS in there

Re: It was the cleaners!

A builder at our offices took the whole tower block off line by bending over and in so doing, hitting the big red emergency power off button with his bum. It was at this point the UPS was discovered to be faulty. There is now a flip cover over said button (but alas, attempts to stop the workforce being exposed to builders bum have proved less successful).

Reading El Reg while working from home? Here's a pleasant thought: Kaspersky says 1 in 10 of you are naked right now

Well I suppose viewing balls would make a change from listening to folks spouting them......

Wireless screen in estate agent window just begging for someone to fill it with mischief

Re: Wireless Display

They seem to be floundering here.....

US Air Force deploys robot security dogs to guard base

Re: No offensive capabilities?

No, but I've been flattened by 80lb of German Shepherd - and he was just playing. 120lb worth of Irish Wolfhound that still thinks he's the size of a puppy doesn't end well either.

Millions wiped off value of Capita outsourcing deal with English councils amid 'further contract variation agreement'

Re: expected savings of £18m in the shared services deal had not come to pass

At least either of those would deliver things on the specified dates, not months later

Billionaire's Pagani Pa-gone-i after teen son takes hypercar out for a drive, trashes it

Re: Ask any actuary

The successors to the 850 T5s from back in the day - jeez did those things take off when the accelerator was floored

BOFH: You might want to sit down for this. Oh, right, you can't. Listen carefully: THIS IS NOT AN IT PROBLEM!

Welcome back

So good to have the BOFH back - even if I did end up spitting Diet Coke all over my keyboard (other soft beverages are available)

Halt don't catch fire: Amazon recalls hundreds of thousands of Ring doorbells over exploding battery fears

Re: I was dead set against these Ring things

Well it would probably be the last time you ever got a visit from Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormon missionaries!

Tech support scammer dialed random number and Australian Police’s cybercrime squad answered

I find these calls very useful for testing the smoke alarm - hopefully it deafens them for at least the next hour

The engineer lurking behind the curtain: Musical monitors on a meagre IT budget

Works on printers too

In those far off days when we went into offices, a colleague regularly had to threaten our temperamental printer with ejection from a 6th floor window to get it to work properly

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

Access woes

It does - the trouble is that isn't usually the place you find it. A few years ago I was involved in a project to change platforms - the new one had stricter security rules and Access was banned. Every so often, the hideous memories of migrating the Access databases that emerged from all the dark corners into SQL come back to haunt me and the Data Architect. All were locally constructed by enthusiasts, not one was screwed together properly - if there was a convoluted, long winded way of doing something, they found it. On the other hand, it does a very good job of cataloguing my huge collection of cookery books.

BOFH: Rome, I have been thy soldier 40 years... give me a staff of honour for mine age

The BOFH out operated!

There ain't no problem that can't be solved with the help of American horsepower – even yanking on a coax cable

Re: Never work with children or animals?

That must have been a rather smelly solution

He was a skater boy. We said, 'see you later, boy' – and the VAX machine mysteriously began to work as intended

Re: Static

Way back when in my banking days, when mainframe terminals were the size of a small desk, we had a records clerk who carried enough static to trip the overload switch. They might have found the problem sooner if they'd listened to all of us who complained of getting nasty shocks off her and had witnessed metal handrails sparking as she went to touch them. New (less cheap and nasty) carpet and a change of footwear sorted it.

What the hell is going on with .uk? Dozens of domain names sold in error, then reversed, but we'll say no more about it, says oversight org

Nine bob note

Bent as a.........

AI assistants work perfectly in the UK – unless you're from Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, Belfast...

It's not just smart speakers

My boss is from the North East - the result of Teams attempting to transcribe a voicemail message he's left is invariably gibberish, though usually quite amusing. His smartphone can't understand him either.

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

Too much arguing = not enough eating

Personally I take the Somerset view - arguing about it is a waste of good eating time.