Posts by Shalghar

Crooks use fake emergency data requests to get personal info out of Big Tech – report

Re: IP Address in an emergency?

"In a genuine emergency, more data is probably better than not enough, especially as someone would have to sift through it to see what is relevant."

In a genuine emergency, getting flooded with irrelevant information and having to filter that heap of junk while the clock is ticking does not really help.

After all those things are officially for time pressing emergencies where there is not enough time to care about the proper processes. Losing that little advantage to excessive flooding with spam, as the retainer of that info is likely to send all he has to comply with that EDR seems a bit contraproductive to me. So why those EDR do obviously not need to define the scope or targeted information is something i do not really understand. Add the fact that every company i know sorts any data they have in their own specific way and letting an outsider (officer) wade through that heap when searching for selected info seems even more inefficient.

Imagine the following situation:

"Hey farcebook, give me every info about mister culprit ASAP."

"OK, here are 20 Terabytes with information. All family fotos, contact lists, likes and dislikes, visited forums and discussions, mothers blood type, grandfathers last will, every picture he has ever clicked......."

Yes i exaggerate as the article rather unspecified speaks of personal information like adresses, but would any company really hold back on something if that EDR only has a "give me all you have" option ?

Obviously, they dont...

BOFH: All hail the job cuts consultant

Re: Job hunting

I believe there are different kinds of consultants (all except one variety redundant and malicious,though) with different personal targets.

Here is a small list of what types of CONsultants i have met in my life:

(and i do not really care wether you read the CON in french or in american english. ;) )

- Leeches of overly inflated systems. Like those ISO9000 paperpushers, completely irrelevant and of no use at all. If a company really needs something vague, imprecise and useless like the ISO9000 rituals to construct an illusion of "quality" control, they already implicitly admit that they have no clue whats happening.

- Those with a customer defined intent. Union busting accomplices to specifically target union representatives and other workers in related fields (like the not necessarily unionized "Betriebsräte", elected representatives for the workforce in germany). Of course their "analysis" has the predefined outcome.

- The aforementioned infiltrators with the intent to "kill" for the victims job.

- The sadly useless ones. Actually the only kind of consultant i ever saw that are really trying to document issues and always fall on the same deaf ears the rest of the company has already experienced too often. Intelligent enough to actually make reports that show real issues but dumb enough to believe that those reports will change anything if the fault lies with management. Or maybe they know and just do it for the money. Either way, nothing comes from their visits.

- The simple parasites, causing damage like in the old saying:"Those who can, do. Those who cant, teach. Those who cant even teach, consult."

- Last but not least, the paid excuses. Their predefined analysis will blame anyone and his dog, the weather, "the market situation", of course the lazy, incompetent workers for any and all shortcomings that are actually management faults.

So, yeah, pretty much the well known bullshit jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Re: Management Consultants

"Does it apply also to governments that call in external consultancy firms like McKinsey?"

Who knows ? Do you talk about the renamed Arbeitsamt/Jobcenter (formerly public, now part private work agency) in germany that wasted around 60 million euros a few years ago to a search engine thats even worse that the likes of stepstone and unable to show "anything within the region" ?

Not to mention that my wife, when using that abomination, finally got a free job offer in a call center located in Dublin/ireland. Which somewhat does not match the search criteria "in or 25 kilometers around hamelin (germany)".

Or may we talk about the millions wasted for the consultants, why the job agency as unable to gain a good reputation and why employers in germany rarely waste resources to mention vacant positions to the agency. The study cost around 22 million euros and can be reduced to "because your service sucks".

There also might be a dishonourable mention, Ursula von der Leyen, concerning the excessive spending for consultants while she was occupying the ministery of defense. I am unable to remember the total sum as there where several mentions over several months thtat would have to add up but i am quite sure thats in the several hundred million euros range altogether.

There was even some kind of investigation started but as sarcastic as i am from experience thats just another place on the pork roll for the "investigators" not something i expect to have a useful outcome.

Allegories going wrong in so many ways...

The "motivational" waste of paper that was hung at our companies billboard concerned a bunch of frogs trying to climb a tower. Only one frog succeeded because he was deaf, unable to hear the constant unspecified but likely demotivational comments by unspecified onlookers.

I made "friends" by reinterpreting that "motivational" story.

All the frogs except one reconsidered the utterly useless task to climb a tower while the one unwilling or unable to actually think before climbing up (and, as management allegories go, unable to listen to reason) ended up in a harsh, dry place with no food or shelter, as the top of a tower is usually a lot less moist than those little amphibics are used to and somewhat lacks the presence of insects a frog usually feeds on.

A top example that, before beginning a task, the mandatory questions along the line of "what for" or "why" should be asked.

Android's Messages, Dialer apps quietly sent text, call info to Google

Re: Because hoarding data is their MO.

"Why do Apps Google Maps & Amazon Kindle & Google Play Store Books start at boot?"

Because you did not delete them (if possible on "your" device)?

Much of the pre installed garbage (like "child mode", chrome, "digital wellbeing",drive, gogle, "google play music" and similar crap) cannot even be deinstalled and many other apps, like youtube (which i do not use at all on my "smart"phone) but also games and third party apps that you dont need permanently ready to run, are restarted without reboot whenever you stop them.

This might make sense for something like messages but youtube ? Games ? A permanently failing display app for how much is on my bonus card ?

Quite frankly, users should be used to the fact that they may own the hardware but not the software and do not have control over what their devices do in the background.

Windows has a poweruser but no real administrator since WinXP, Android was never meant to let the users have any significant control. Apple IOs... forget it.

And yes, of course i replaced the google keyboard as soon as it kept requesting microphone access. I also killed goggle maps as far as i could and "disabled" anything that let me at least do that...

But i refuse to give in to the illusion that my device is now "safe" or "protecting my privacy" as it was never designed to be any of those two.

Apple stops censoring terms it etches onto iPhones in Taiwan

As you like it

If the "bad word" list is never published nor accessible, apple can censor whatever they like, whenever they like with the excuse of a list that nobody will ever have access to.

I do not believe this kind of behaviour is only apple and china related. Yucktube, farcebook and the like have been censoring or deleting contents and accounts due to some unspecified "breach of rules" several times already.

Please correct me if i am wrong but i seem to remember "secret laws" in the USA, created after 9/11. Pretty much the same mechanism, "we wont tell you what you did wrong"....

Testing for COVID with the sound of a cough? There’s an app for that

Re: Omicron is a game changer

.....and how will i ever know which (or - in case of asymptomatic disease - how many) CoViD variant(s) i had ?

Neither the antigen tests nor the PCR tests give any indication which variant has bitten you.

Same for the recovery certificate (which has no connection to you current health status as the RKI just slaps a full 4 weeks on the date of your PCR test to declare you recovered and disregards any negative tests which is why my recovery certificate wont be valid until april, 7th...).

Symptoms we experienced were like a common cold, albeit remarkably stronger while my (biontech placebo) "vaccinated" wife suffered for a week longer than me. The older children (also biontech) were somewhat between us two while the youngest son (neither vaccinated nor ill) tested daily but never got a positive result.

None of us had a significant number of coughs during that time so no luck for the app. Or does this app also work with "faked", intentional coughing ? And if so, would that mean that i can fake the fake cough good enough to be positive or negative as i like ?

China's top e-tailer sends sacked staff a 'graduation certificate'

Getting my coat in advance...

As stupid and crazy as it might sound, if any job loss was actually connected to receiving a "graduation" letter or any other sort of written documentation what skills might have been learned at that job, i would actually appreciate that.

Why am i so insane as to find something positive in that atrocity ?

That might be because in germany, new employers tend to accept only certified skills and if you have the usual employer here, many skills will be taught in the company but without any means of documenting this. So having the former employer doing a "graduation" letter actually benefits your CV.

Yes, german law dictates that any former employer must deliver a "qualifiziertes Arbeitszeugnis" on demand but as the law also states that this description of your former behaviour and skill at work must not be detrimental to finding a new job, many codified sentences and practices have evolved, either to actually warn prospective employers from a lazy goodfornothing or to get revenge on a former employee so the relevance and credibility of those documents is near zero.

Then again, it is not typical chinese to use improper wording to disguise something, as any "sanitary engineer" or "facility manager" can confirm.

Japanese startup makes baby carrier-style sling for 'Love Robots'

So to know i am sad i have to interact with frankensteins teddy who then sends that info to my phone so that i can then read that i feel sad ?

There are comparable "over teched" things mentioned on an appropriate website.

http://theworstthingsforsale.com/2013/12/03/egg-minder-a-wi-fi-egg-tray/

Re: it's real alright

"Some years back the Independent published an april fools story claiming that scientists had discovered an eighth colour in the rainbow. Most amusing."

Octarine ? But i thought that was only (in)visible on worlds with sufficient thaumathurgic radiation ?

Re: "cuddling up to a furry machine"

I would say that those "love bots" are just one of the next evolutionary steps after the tamagotchis crawled out of the poisoned sea of electronic waste.

I hate to remember the affection one of the girls i knew had towards that beeping annoyance. Offering to install a stop switch on the clock circuit so that she could actually live her life not controlled by the beep egg was met by considerale aggression. And no, she was not of asian origin.

Vaccine dreams: A trip to Oxford to see a biscuit tin, some bed pans and ChAdOx1 nCov-19

A dose of the pretty much useless (Israel is at the fifth dose and still not immune, germany is likely to enforce 3 doses although its already proven that biontech stuff does not immunize at all) Pfizer/Biontech stuff is around 16 to 20 Euros after their price hike. AstraZeneca around 8 Euros, J+J around 9 Euros if my current information is correct.

The last of the marketing arguments for biontech is an assumed possibility that it might lower the intensity of the disease although the EMA already disproved that in its initial report.

Not much help, though, as regardless wether you have the number of doses considered necessary for the vaccine of your choice (2 AZ or 1 J+J), german regulations will enforce 3 additionals from biontech, as pretty much all of the constantly changing regulations will not grant you the "boostered" status without 3 doses biontech, no matter if you have received one of the better working vaccines in sufficient applications.

German government really did destroy any kind of credibility to a state driven vaccination programme, constantly changing the rules and regulations which are almost all suspiciously "optimized" for biontech and enforcing silly and useless lockdowns and other atrocities like cross vaccinations, which are not deemed safe by the WHO. It does not dampen any suspicions that biontech got free manufacturing facilities on the taxpayers dime.

UK starts to ponder how Huawei ban would work

Re: Security

So why not order the hardware but do the software in house ?

Should this not also apply to Cisco spyware and every potentially compromised hardware from wherever in the world, if this really were for security concerns ?

"Obviously government systems will be exempt because that would be expensive"

I am afraid this kind of reasoning would only apply if the cost had to be paid by everyone responsible for such an utterly dumb undertaking.

I have never seen any government project that was rejected or stopped due to uselessness, exploding costs and non existing (functional) benefit (except for some private pockets).

Re: Why do you keep tip-toeing around the bush ?

"Except if it is already in use in much of the infrastructure, and someone wants it removed."

Thats absolutely unproblematic.

Just create another made up "security" or "environmental" guideline and certification that the unwanted devices cannot undergo (since they are already in place) and you´re done.

Then in step two you enforce a rule that anything in the desired field of operation must have those certifications and you can even give some certification stickers for free to your preferred product manufacturers.

Even if - by some strange coincidence - the wannabanned hardware somehow complies, you can still make a mandatory inspection at the production plant so unbearably demanding and impossibly difficult that although the hardware delivers whats demanded, the paperwork will say no.

There is definitely no need to reinvent the wheel, much less so as the current project outline seems to show some vaguely triangular shape with the axis far away from anything in the middle.

The real challenge might be to explain to the self perceived masters of the world that they got what they wanted - just named differently.

Re: Why do you keep tip-toeing around the bush ?

But where do you stop ?

Its not like only cheapskate stuff is manufactured in China. Siemens PLC components (not only the cheaper LOGO! but mid range S7 upwards), Beckhoff PLC, Phoenix PLC, Power supplies, almost every industrial component is manufactured in China.

FoxConn does a lot more than just child labour Iphones. Going away from fully assembled stuff to components:

Displays, car parts, electric parts, batteries of all kinds, capacitors, SMD components would be another target for bloomberg-bullshyte like that made up story about the spy chip on motherboards a while back.

I do not know whats the situation in your vicinity but last time i checked, most of the corona gadgettery was also made in china - from tests over facemasks to IR thermometers.

You are right,in one main point of course, the US grip on SWIFT/international banking is one factor that cannot be ignored. It might be interesting to see what the rest of the world thinks and does about that, once this specific blackmail is abused too often.

File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

Re: Users!

"They'd have to change the "Type" dropdown to "All Files"

And does that not make "perfect" sense ? Of course you would want to see "all files" when searching some file, wouldn´t you ?

As much sense as the panicked cry "my files are gone" ?

"Where did you save them"

"in Word !"

"I do not care what software you used to make them, where did you save them ?"

"In Word !!!"

And Word(pad) does not show an unlimited list of the last processed documents so once you have pushed the suddenly sought after document from the recent file list, its "gone".

Do not ask me how often i had to teach the difference between "saving" to a "recent files" list and saving to wherever on the harddisk....

Re: Competition time!

"If they're hidden then they can't be changed. It removes the opportunity for fuck ups."

They can still be changed when not using the Desktop UI. Command line, "save as" or any script will do.

In addition, the issue mentioned in the story is quite likely caused by hidden filename extension, which means the OS not showing the "credentials.txt" as "credentials.txt" but as "credentials" which quite likely caused the addition of the surplus ".txt" which was then duly (and hiddenly) rejected by the software searching for "credentials.txt" and not "credentials.txt.txt" which then made the diagnosis a bit harder on a system that refuses to correctly display file names with extensions.

Re: Well...

Thank you for being so BOLD to type the obvious. That is exactly the point where any "operating system" turns to malware.

Re: It is transparency what is going on below!

Its really overdue that this kind of file type hijacking can be blocked for good so that any new invading program would have to ask (and flawlessly accept a denial) to claim what it is never intended to have.

Re: Still humans in the mix here not just machines

"Trusting the OS to identify it is recipe for disaster and doesn't work in a text interface."

Which is correct if you speak of primitive MSDOS PCs. Name anything command.com and/or MSDOS.SYS, replace the aforementioned files with the junk you named so and watch the PC crash without a single sign of what went wrong at the next reboot.

Try this on a RiscOS System and you will be rewarded with the information that the desired file is not executeable.

Try it on an Amiga and there is the nice error code 121: file is not an object module.

File headers are there for a reason. Wether you "trust" the OS that it can associate the file header/file type with your desired application or "trust" the OS that it will at least know how to handle a falsely named file (*.COM instead of *.txt as described above) is sadly not up yo your choice anyway.

Re: RISC OS

The original RiscOS ADFS:: albeit some less nice quirks like that inconvenient 77 items per directory limitation indeed had lots of merits and avoided quite a lot of issues.

AmigaDOS also has filetypes embedded in the header, eliminating the need for name extensions, although most programs still used extensions for convenience. This could lead to opening a picture *.IFF (DeLuxe Paint) with audio software and vice versa. Still does a better work on things named *.exe and not being one with error code 121: file is not an object module.

This is a challenge any MSDOS PC known to me is sure to fail.

Back to C64 times, the endings were seperated from the filename, although readable in the directory, and not necessary to access the file, if not different filetypes with same name existed. Still it was useable to know wether to open a PRG,SEQ,REL or whatever type although the LOAD "name",8 command would automatically select the *.PRG file, even if a *.SEQ file with the same name existed..

File headers did indeed implement some additional information, though it would not always be used. Load one of the then most used "soundmonitor" files with "name",8 would load it from address $0801 while loading the same file with "name",8,1 would put it rightfully upwards from $c000 / address 49152.

So, in short, visible file extensions if the OS does not already show the correct filetype via icon or other means were never useless.

PS: Of course there are can bee unwanted situations when the OS will not allow the user to change filetypes, no matter what (looking at YOU, Apple macintosh, as all your disciples came to us puny amiga guys to re-set corrupted filetypes because your "i know better than you" OS would not allow them to...).

No, I've not read the screen. Your software must be rubbish

Re: Simples...

Out of the depths of my failing memory, that sounds like one of the earliest BOfH episodes.

"There you go, you now have 4 meg available".

"Wow, 8 meg in total, thanks"

"No" savouring this like a fine red at room temperature, "4 meg in total"

"huh" ?

I say nothing, it will come to him.

Please forgive any mistakes, those lines are remembered, not quoted. I still have the earlier BOfH episodes as a normal textfile from the early days of mailboxes and my trusty ZyXel U1496E modem rotting somewhere on one of my ancient diskettes.

IBM looked to reinvigorate its 'dated maternal workforce'

Re: PR BS

Is it not interesting that the word "intentional" is so precisely avoided ?

Would you really need to develop a system when the intent is there, the desire to discriminate is clearly communicated to everyone - including the victims - and everyone in a position to discriminate is let loose in that general direction ?

Re: The perils of MBAs

And what will the mismanagement do if standard tech is no longer known by the fresh and cheap human resorces ? What might happen if - after several cycles of "optimising" for the youngest and cheapest workforce possible - older standards and informations are no longer accessible because the schools and universities have "moved on" to what is considered todays tech ?

Maybe something i sadly had to experience would happen with slight variations in the tech affected but not the dumbness shown even after the issue was resolved and explained.

Imagine an access control system, acceptable software, useable even, that connects to transponder reader/keypad units (via a PoE interface) as well as the respective doorlocks (via another PoE interface). So far, so good. Software interface shows the respective interface units as active and running. To connect more than one keypad/transponder reader the old and proven RS485 (EIA/TIA-485) serial bus is used. Now imagine my surprise when this straightforward solution "somehow did not work" (tm).

To cut a long, depressing story short, the main issue was in the RS485 part. Not only did the respective "engineer" not read the manual, not only did he not know what termination might mean, he also misinterpreted the installation sheet with deceptively named bus lines "data a" and "data b" in such a way that "data a" was connected to one keypad while "data b" was connected to the other one.

Age does not matter here. Anyone unwilling to consult proper documentation and anyone not tryingto get the information necessary when confronted with an unknown system has non age related issues.

That "engineer" is still managements golden guy in spite of leeching off of others knowledge and work on a regular basis while not really contributing anything apart from his body heat to any project. At least its somewhat funny how quickly he disappears once a discussion gets more technical than explaining how to use a toaster.

Re: Millenials

Quality of training and quality of certificates is lacking more and more. I am pretty sure that this is not the fault of those who get improper training.

When i passed my Gesellenbrief ( i believe the english equivalent is called journeyman level) some certificate that needs three and a half years of work and training, my three phase motor had to turn in the right direction, my electronics test board had to work properly and my PLC program as well as the pure relais control board had to function as intended. Fail one and you do not pass.

Two years ago one of our trainees passed a comparable certificate with his control board not functioning but got a stunning 87% test grade because he documented his failed approach to diagnose the unresolved issues.

Whats also a bit embarassing more IT wise, is the lack of acceptable "real" BASIC programming languages (not talking about a RasPi with RiscOS but the generally used hardware) or any incentive to actually still use assembler anywhere. Its all about C and C-Alike with the occasional tendencies to abuse Java and suchlike. Same for pure transistor projects or even low integrated circuits like TTL/CMOS 4XXX/74XXX IC. Using an arduino or ESP8266 surely is easier than going soldering iron trigger happy but it also keeps beginners from experiencing in depth issues.

Which then can lead to situations where fault diagnosis needs knowledge that a thyristor will not reset when triggereded by DC voltage. That special brake rectifier isnt broken, its just the one for AC control voltage. Identical casing, only one slight difference in part number, on that partly unreadable sticker....

Microsoft Teams unable to send and receive calls for some after update

Re: "Something went wrong"

Guru meditation error unavailable because guru is having a nervous breakdown.

"Something went wrong" is something that the user is already aware of but says a great deal about how much effort was going into error handling when not even a simple error code is displayed.

Also says quite a lot about how motivated microsoft is to actually help and diagnose in case of failures.

That at least on the visible user side, maybe all the useful information is sent home via the rest of all those intentionally implemented backdoors, security leaks and other kinds of not user controllable "telemetry".

FTC celebrates after Nvidia-Arm deal collapses

Re: I thoroughly welcome this not happening.

Especially when looking at the x86 architecture compared to the now sadly irrelevant 68k or powerPC processors, the need for something different like the ARM technology is evident.

Merging everything in some misguided melange would kill much needed diversification and optimisation and cement a state of stagnant one overpriced size fits nobody tech for everything.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

Re: Nobody told me I wasn't allowed to do it.

"The problem isn't the bad engineers. It's the MBAs and accountants with NO engineering or QA training at all"

That is indeed the bane of each and every company. I cannot count the times our manglement tried to "optimise" (AKA: prohibit) any kind of real testing as long as the documentations were according to ISO 9000++ (AKA: falsified). This might come out a tad unhealthy, considering that our machines handle up to 30 tons/30000 kilograms with interesting speed.

I also cannot count the times that manglement allowed only time for a perfect path and timeframe for an also perfectly new prototype. This realitiy incompatible over optimistic approach failed each and every time, as predicted. Those predictions were naturally brushed aside in sheer arrogance, no matter how often (every time) the writing on the wall was glowing so hard that it could be seen galaxies away.

Bonus points if this nonsense timeframe was already contractually agreed to (of course without checking on the nominal delivery time for special components, which often exceeded the agreed on delivery date of the finished product) and suddenly bears the danger of not only an angered customer but also hefty penalty fees.

But as always.... it does not hurt where the decisions are made and the decisions leading to the issue cannot be influenced where it hurts most.

In such occasions, i really wish for Marx... Not Harpo, Groucho or Karl but the nice little high voltage generator, contacted at the correct place where the issue of the false decision constantly happens.

Semiconductor market correction could come in 2024

Re: "2023/4 looks like being a rocky year for the industry"

I am somewhat astonished, considering the actual issues with temperature independant clock signal generators, that underlying issues with everything needing a clock signal should have more impact.

(Sorry german only, i did not find the respective translation)

https://www.red-frequency.com/download/presse/INT-402-21P02-RedFreq-Website-Support-Presseartikel.pdf

I seem to remember that a facility for the ceramic housings for smd clock components burned down around 2 years ago but am unable to find the respective article. Maybe someone else has better search engines and/or memory.

Reality check: We should not expect our communications to remain private

Re: Privacy. We've heard of it.

No, there is no privacy if a misguided enough and big enough criminal organisation or criminally acting organisation wants your data, speech and snores.

Apart from "pure hardware" surveillance like LASER resonance devices that turn each and every glass surface into a giant microphone membrane, every internet and (mmobuile) phone provider is already forced to give access to everything and anything that is coming to and from your access points if asked by authorities. Some of those keep selling your location to everyone and his dog, as mentioned here on the register, even after a nice collection of court orders that prohibit doing this.

No need to mention the full scale security issues from google/android or apple here.

The only thing preventing full scale real time surveilllance is the greediness of all those "security" organisations. The respective organisations in france needed over three months to actually process the communications information from those murderers that slaughtered the charlie hebdo journalists. France is using complete data retention but the relevant information was stuck so deep in the collection that even with the mobile phones of the murderers hacked, they still needed that insane amount of time to actually find something useful in that pile of data dung.

If you are OK with spam and obsessive data greediness being your only real privacy protection, thats fine by me. I tend to be a bit more paranoid, not "because i have something to hide" but because my business is MY business and also because accidents and misinterpretations do happen and i would really hate to be in the dragnet just because my name does not differ enough from a hardcore drug baron plus any data clerks typo.

BOFH: What a beautiful classic car. Shame if anything were to happen to it

Re: Oh, boy...

"Blackmail is such an ugly word…"

...and so is - by decree of those professionally and permanently offended unindividuals who are unable to stand normal language that has evolved over eons - blacklist, whitelist....

It will be interesting what the word "blackmail" will be force evolved to. "Denymail" or "allowmail" does not really allow a precise interpretation.

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us

Sometimes you can punish annoying pests by giving them exactly what they desire.

The main challenge is not to laugh, grin or otherwise warn them.

Re: Deranged

Just take look at how long anything printed with any inkjet is supposed to last, then put such prints somewhere sunny, like in the front of the car where it is supposed to multitask as parking slot ID.

Its a bit like those thermal paper receipts, although with some "pigment" inks the fading out seems to take a bit longer.

Well at least you will not need any expiration date on such kind of ID cards.

Re: Deranged

Much more so with the regulations on biometrically compatible photos. I really cannot get rid of the impression that this silly "look at this spot" mark in the photo booth is either not in the correct place or they forgot to tell you at what height your head shold be to look at the aforementioned spot without tilting your face to absurd angles.

I had the questionable luck that i needed to sit in a booth with a steel chair for one certain company. Unable to adjust the height, the outcome looked very much like one of those 1980 cheap movie villains, only lacking the red flashlight from down below....

Re: Ever alert

Double Sneaky Points (DSP) bonus if you hide the unofficial cameras within the official ones.

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

ISO 9000 ad other signs of uselessness

Quite frankly i never saw any benefit in ISO 9000 ff.

I never encountered a single "Inspector" of that "certification" smoke and mirror parasitism who actually understood anything apart from paperworks shown to him/her.

As far as i have experienced, the papertrail must seem genuine, some test stickers must be visible on the respective equipment but the actual products, processes or methods fictitionally "documented" in said papertrail are totally irrelevant and need not adhere to reality.

There is not even a single incident i can remember where more than "where are the environmental rules kept" or "how do you fill out the test certificates" was ever asked from anyone.

After 20 years of regular visits, those ISO "certifiers" still have not figured out that we do not have any system of collecting ideas or any system of improving or at least monitoring processes.

Not that we dont do that, we just cannot be motivated to fill out useless paperworks. We have the documentation from the previous machine and only need to compare it to the addendum and modifications for the actual one. Why fill out another silly form to document, where the changes have been documented when everything linked to a machine number is in its respective folder (including prior versions when something was changed) ?

Same goes for what is so misleadingly called "quality control".

We do the mandatory tests, some more intense testing on prototypes and thats all.

The ISO guys get their pile of irrelevant cosmetic papers and have so far been happy with that.

They stay in their world of paper unicorns and silly rules, we stay in reality. Those two worlds have nothing in common.

Re: Back in the early 90's

WIMP..... Anyone here remembering RiscOS ?

Archimedes, RiscPC nowadays reincarnated as RiscOsOpen to the raspberry.

*WimpMode> X720 Y576 C16M LTRGB

For actual reference concerning BBC BASIC VI+ / RiscOs on Raspberry see

https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Extended%20Framebuffer%20Format%20Specification

MediaTek's flagship 5G chip for top-of-the-line Android smartphones is coming right up

Re: Going to bat for MediaTek

Still using the Blackview BV5900 "outdoor" phone for work, Mediatek inside.

While it may seem somewhat slow and not "up to spec" in 3D games and graphics compared to broadcomms of similar age, the multitude of built in sensors and no throttling at all make up for it. Using that thing for three years now as most manufacturers of inverters and motor controllers as well as battery manufacturers rely on NFC and BLE more and more and its far more convenient to dabble with the parameters through the respective apps than drag around any kind of notebook iinto confined spaces.

If mediatek releases some chips that are on par with broadcomm, better for the customers. Hey why not release a mediatek Raspberry ? With all those arduino and ESP8266 clones around that would be funny.

'We are not people to Mark Zuckerberg, we are the product' rages Ohio's Attorney General in Facebook lawsuit

Never logged into Facepalmbook but sadly i cannot say they have nothing on me as some friends and relatives "like" to "share" photos with world, dog and his tapeworm.

The inside story of ransomware repeatedly masquerading as a popular JS library for Roblox gamers

Re: JS?

May i object that MBR protection has been part of most phoenix and even some ASUS BIOS options for at least a decade ?

Sadly, not all versions and surely not the stripped down versions from Abit and the like.

In any case, you do not need atrocities like UEFI to protect the MBR.

Survey shows XP lingers on while Windows 11 makes a 0.21% ripple in the enterprise

Re: Adieu but not goodbye XP

Personally i have one WinXP, one Win2k and even a murky old Win98 computer sitting around...

Along with all that hardware that cannot cooperate with later windows versions because the proprietary and never updated drivers just cannot be installed there and the likewise proprietary software also wont run.

We also have some off the net WinXP computers at work, exactly for the same reason. While the price for a new computer with a newer windows is not much of a concern, the price to replace the specialised hardware the WinXP machines are attached to is quite exorbitant and in one case would mean we had to construct that kind of specialised plasma cutter from scratch as that model is no longer manufactured and the manufacturer also does not exist anymore.

Take a look at other software collectors. Gamers for instance will still have XP around as none of the more invasive "copy protections" will accept or be accepted by a newer system. If the games run at all on newer hard/software.

Magnanimous Apple will allow people to fix their iPhones using parts bought from its Self Service Repair program

Re: A good step

This is exactly why i have invested in a collection of tools and buy the necessary parts for my aged whatevertronics from sources that specialise in them.

I have also made poor experiences with those "tools and spare parts in one box" offers and prefer to be able to choose any part and any tool i might require from appropriately specialised - and different - sources.

Those one in a box offers always seem to lack in quality, either of the tools, the parts or even both.

Re: Apple will allow people to fix their iPhones

"Wow, I believe the Christmas ice-skating rink opened in Hell today too."

You might ask Lucy but i believe the skating rink is always open in hell.

Lets see if Ebag had his hands in Apples T&C.

(For those not getting the reference, Webcomic "Adventures of God", published un Webtoons.)

Korea gives Google and Apple another kick for requiring their own payment systems

Re: Good for South Korea

With Olaf Scholz the designated new chancellor, i highly doubt that germany will follow suit.

He has some sort of finegrained Alzheimers, not only when it comes to suspicious activities like "forgotten" tax claims against companies but also he has long forgotten any kind of tax for financial markets or digital services he once advertised to climb the ladder.

With Ursula von der Leyen as queen of consultant fraud in the EU commission and Macron at the head of france, the chances that anything EU will anger big US corporations are already slim on normal days. With he aforementioned individuals in charge, those chances are no longer existant.

Re: I have an idea

"All big tech companies should be fined 5% of their turnover automatically until they're no longer big. It's the only language they understand."

That would be a tax they cannot evade.

But ultimately its always the end customer who pays and who says that they will not get creative to form some sort of business alliance of officially smaller companies while everything inside stays the same ?

CIOs across Europe add their VOICE to chorus of calls to regulate cloud gatekeepers

Will be interesting to see who will be served

The current scoreboard for anything EU is not really in favour of small or smaller companies. While there have been several national fines against google and suchlike and even the government of the netherlands managed to let microsoft defuse quite a bunch of the phone home functions of office 365, the public sector is politically aimed at serving US companies, no matter how intense the predictable data theft will be.

The city of Munich was totally (SUSE) Linuxed once, now is back to software as extortion AKA Microsoft.

Sorry to pop the illusions all those victims organisations still have about the EU "authorities" and "laws" but at least since the total pseudo-"protecting" fail called "GDPR", everyone should know that whatever might or might not happen will be mostly decoration and cosmetics with neither bite nor will to bite at all.

BOFH: So you want to have your computer switched out for something faster? It's time to learn from the master

"Somebody with a suspicious mind would think that Microsoft deliberately fucks the performance of older PC's with patches that deliberately eat resources to make the latest version of Windows look comparatively better."

"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" surely applies here.

Then again, Microsoft is not at all adverse to malice so maybe its both.

Re: not by a long shot!

Once in a while you need to avoid an overflow in the carmic variables. The universe might disintegrate if the evilness factor of any BOFH suddenly flips into the negative.

Why that carmic variable is not unsigned, remains a mystery, but bad coding is inherent everywhere in this universe.

Although in this case, i believe the carry flag might carry some carpet roll somewhere remote....

Well i expect...

If i believe that thing was not thrown put merely pushed over the edge, the velocity should be something across building height/window height from place of impact multiplied with the usual acceleration of 9.81m/sec if i remember correctly. Any effects from air resistance should be negligible.

If its faster then the starting velocity has been "augmented".