Posts by FirstTangoInParis

UK MoD pauses £92M Oracle Fusion contract amid project governance review

Interfaces

One hopes that a key requirement is for each cluster to be able to exchange data in some way with the other clusters should that be necessary, as I’m sure it will become after the next great government department renaming,

UK unis to cough up to £10M on Java to keep Oracle off their backs

Re: Put another way

Is I'm not a lawyer, but how does the argument go such as 'I got this under license agreement X and now it is Y, so Y does not apply.'?

Slapped wrists for Financial Conduct Authority staff who emailed work data home

Breach is a breach?

As far as personal sensitive information is concerned, surely any breach comes under the Data Protection Act and is reportable to the ICO within 72 hours of discovery, plus writing to the individuals impacted by the breach? Or does the FCA have different rules somehow? If this is corporate data, I’m pretty sure the affected businesses would want to know.

And pray why is one person now on a Final Written Warning? Didn’t they get the message the first time?

User demanded a ‘wireless’ computer and was outraged when its battery died

Re: Getting rid of a laptop to reduce the number of wires

There’s a chap on YouTube who seems to regularly rebuild his entire desk from scratch every so often starting with a chunk of kitchen worktop, and he’s big into Zen and clean desk with no wires etc. it’s really struck a chord with me and how I try to keep my desk like that but often it’s just not possible.

Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 Start Menu updates

Re: Only a small step away from having gone full circle to Windows phone

I loved my Nokia Windows Mobile, with all the tile things that you could resize. And that’s in W10. But gone, alas in W11. Good UI is hard to find.

KDE targets Windows 10 'exiles' claiming 'your computer is toast'

And some vendor needs to take the plunge and start selling computers with Linux in high street stores. Only then will the great unwashed start to understand what it is. And get kids using it in schools.

Fake IT support calls hit 20 orgs, end in stolen Salesforce data and extortion, Google warns

Installing?

Who in their right mind allows staff to download and install sh1t on their computer? Er, actually I do because MS doesn’t supply a free package manager that requires admin creds to install. As a result those on the lower tier of MS365 have to allow staff to install updates for software that doesn’t come through Windows Update.

Linux is looking very attractive from that perspective…..

What will UK government workers do with an extra 26 minutes a day?

This ^^^^^^

So many times I have seen complex process reporting or analysis done on bastardised spreadsheets instead of something written with a clear UI. One wonders where we’d be if organisations had invested in providing tools that fit the job instead of the other way around.

When everything looks like a nail, companies use hamm …. er spreadsheets!

More layoffs at Microsoft as axe falls in Washington

Whoa …..

….. Microsoft employs QA testers!!!!!!!! Perhaps they’ll show the Windows team how it should be done. We live in hope.

Mysterious leaker GangExposed outs Conti kingpins in massive ransomware data dump

Re: Avoid Moscow and check your windows

On the subject of 'never events' I've known someone be discharged from hospital still wearing a cannula, twice. I wrote to the hospital concerned after that, and at least the staff do check now.

I've also noticed theatre teams being very careful to mark limbs that need operating on, even though it is otherwise pretty obvious!

European Commission: Make Europe Great Again... for startups

Re: Surely the EU and national governments could take the lead

Well yes non US company cloud providesr is a good start, but it’s the WHOLE STACK that has to be purged. FOSS top to bottom. Then MS et al can’t touch you.

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

For times when I’m long distance commuting, I’d love to have a self driven car but I’d also like to see a lane specifically allocated to such cars. They could convoy fast as they want with only themselves to worry about. Mixing with other cars is always going to be a non starter because everyone has different driving styles.

Well my one year old Volvo is only 50% accurate on road signs. Sometimes that’s not its fault because signs are often overgrown with trees and/or filthy dirty. It has no idea what to do with a National speed limit applies sign.

Some VWs will link the cruise control to speed signs, which is bad news when the camera spots a speed limit sign on the back of a truck (20) and slams on the brakes.

In some countries in Europe there are also implied speed limit changes as you enter or leave a municipality which a car would have to be taught about.

I feel that the base data should be on the mapping software, such as Google Automotive on newer Volvos, but it needs more frequent updates as local councils change limits. Yes there will be temporary signs, but the car should be thinking ‘is this reasonable (eg sudden 20 limit in a 70 zone)?’ and ‘have I seen more signs confirming what I last saw, and why is the human driver not slowing down?’.

Still quite a way to go ……

8,000+ Asus routers popped in 'advanced' mystery botnet plot

Voice over broadband

Where Openreach are busy migrating copper POTS services to voice over broadband, subscribers are forced to take the ISPs solution if they still want a landline (kids ask your grandparents what they are) because that’s the only supported solution and the technical solution details haven’t been published.

So while ASUS are getting their knuckles rapped here, other OEMs need to take note and issue code updates.

UK tax collector puts half a billion on table for call center services

Wrong question?

So the current system has callers waiting to be answered. Exactly how is replacing the old system with new but keeping the same number of humans to answer the darned phones going to improve things? Pray what “innovation” will help here? Or will it be like warship ops rooms where the humans have a different audio feed in each ear and fit the humans with multithreaded brains so they can process two calls at the same time?

Latest patch leaves some Windows 10 machines stuck in recovery loops

Re: Surprised

Crap product v share price…. Normally I’d agree with you, but one wonders at Tesla. Nice idea but truly awful car, wallows like a water bed and it takes 6 months to get a replacement windscreen. And then of course the supposed go anywhere Tesla that doesn’t go anywhere.

Greater Manchester says its NHS analytics stack is years ahead of Palantir wares

Re: Wait...

And what happens when Palantir want to pull the Service (as will happen sooner or later) and all that data is in some proprietary format that needs processing with tools the NHS no longer have access to? Hmm? Having watched a succession of tools at $employer come and go, I’m firmly of the view that home-grown is best, and it’s not as difficult as one might think. Never mind “it’s not core business”, it really accelerates what you can do.

Many moons back $then_employer was building SDH multiplexers, and built their own ASICs using a series of third party tools tied together with company glue and libraries. This was long before commodity silicon was available, so they got to market long before anyone else.

AMD puts Intel in rear view mirror with Threadripper Pro 9000 high-end desktop chips

Re: 350 watts

So basically a Shetland Pony. I’ll never look at them the same way again. Never mind how many hands high, how many Watts?

Microsoft pulls MS365 Business Premium from nonprofits

Re: I don't understand the Hate

Well let’s see what M$ annual report says in corporate social responsibility. Ah yes we screwed over a whole bunch of charities. Is that ok, Orange Leader and DOGE meister?

Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' would create a regulation-free AI hellscape, AGs warn

The Onion

Has a great angle on this bill

https://theonion.com/republican-infighting-erupts-over-whether-trump-bill-beautiful-or-handsome/

Microsoft blows deadline for special Azure for EU hosters

Build your own

As a sysadmin of a small charity that’s just been stiffed by Microsoft by removal of our 365 license grant (with 2 months notice!) there is a quandary to be faced, pretty much in common with the hosting providers.

1. Go to Google : but they could stiff us too.

2. Go Linux / open source : good for long term consistency but needs maintaining what can’t be automated.

Oh to have something that runs and runs and updates itself (like our Turris mesh wifi boxes).

How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'

Re: A billion quid extra on postits...

I think agile really means you do a bit and then you test it on your target audience.

Yes but

Ok so fair kudos where kudos is due, but why oh why do new claimants have to wait SIX WEEKS to get benefits? What are they supposed to live on if they’ve just come off a minimum wage job which has been proven (by Joseph Rowntree Foundation no less) as insufficient to live on. No wonder food banks have so many clients. At our local one, we get someone new at least once a day who asks where they can get food and how does the system work?

Pentagon declares war on 'outdated' software buying, opens fire on open source

Re: Morons Are Governing America

> and the controls are labeled in two kinds of sharpie and a sellotaped note.

Absolutely. If you let developers get to a full fat UI without stopping for Product Increment reviews, you’ll end up with the impenetrable user experience that is the app for my washing machine.

Post Office finally throttles delayed in-house EPOS project

See also: Birmingham Council et al

There are middle managers who shouldn’t be allowed to get out of bed in the morning, because they will mess something up. Even some in top management.

Microsoft facing multibillion legal claim over how it sells software

Re: Open source?

@Doctor Syntax yes that's not a selling point, but you'd be surprised how many projects go for a second rate product from a company they could sue if things go wrong, rather than a first rate product from someone they couldn't sue (eg open source provider, own company dog food, etc). Not that they ever would sue because that costs a huge amount of money, but it looks good on their risk register.

Open source?

Microsoft wins because it has a joined up ecosystem, even if some parts are technically rubbish. Linux doesn’t, but if someone was to integrate all the bits that do what Windows with AD and office did, and you could pay for it and get support so the C suite would like it (as in they’d have someone they could sue if it all went wrong), I’m pretty sure they get a decent market share fairly quickly, especially if the hardware could be made to last longer. Oh and a management system that didn’t have a zillion moving parts exposed to the sysadmin please, and just did what you needed.

20% discount offer on Windows 365 expires around same time as Windows 10 support

Re: We users may hate Windows 365

Indeed. Microsoft? Backups? Of course not. OneDrive, SharePoint etc are just hollow vessels to keep, er for us to slurp your data. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it sir, but we're not even going to think about offering any kind of backup solution, despite zillions of small enterprises who don't have time or money to think about these things relying on it. Other companies can flog you one of those.

But MS missing yet another trick here. Why not MS Cloud PC client for FREE running on any old hardware with the cost of Win 11 in the cloud as 10 drinking vouchers a year. I'm pretty sure many would take that. Still remembering that FrameMaker on X Windows worked over a 64k link perfectly well......

The 12 KB that Windows just can't seem to quit

I wonder what's down here in the basement .....

Last I looked the screensaver control panel from long ago is still there. Most of what it tweaks is no longer used by the rest of the OS, so presumably it will be taken behind the barn when it finally surplus to requirements. Or not, judging by this article ... I wonder what else is still lurking, could explain why the installer is 6.5 GB; 6 GB of accumulated cruft, 0.5 GB of actual used code.

> One of my projects in the early 20000s .....

Hello time traveller. Is Windows still shit? Has Linux made it to corporate desktops yet? Asking for a friend .....

Blue Shield says it shared health info on up to 4.7M patients with Google Ads

Re: They aren't looking

How does Google get away with this? The information has been illegally sent per HIPPA so the data is stolen goods. Surely at least this is wire fraud in the US. Google might receive this data but it no right to use it so it should (a) not he using it and (b) alert the company it got it from and sort their configuration out.

This is Director level fines.

British govt agents step in as Harrods becomes third mega retailer under cyberattack

Re: M&S Store shopping - no stock at the best of times

About as sensible as stocking tablets used to treat backache on the bottom shelf … yes this is a real thing!

Microsoft to preload Word minutes after boot

Re: Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

So office apps on a Mac are by some distance the fattest, at 1 GB EACH for Word, PowerPoint etc.

On the works Windows box, there’s enough corporate security stuff going on to make me go for coffee after boot. This will just make me walk slower to the canteen.

And then my first word processor ran on my BBC model B. Perfectly adequate performance because it came on a 16 kB ROM. I wrote my Masters thesis on it. Now I have laptops literally thousands of times faster and infinitely more capable and it’s still the same performance. Go figure.

Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way

Re: Is Trump just not capable of grasping the concept of knowledge?

These programmes take years and yes they do cost an absolute arm and leg. Cancelling stuff now means potentially all previous spend is now wasted and there are companies across the globe that are impacted, given how the world's space agencies work together on virtually everything. Certainly US, Europe and Japan do, with others in strong support. Yes Boeing are making a hash of many things right now, likely based on old habits and the much-reported influence of C suite who court business at the expense of engineering and quality. And yes SpaceX are the golden boys and girls getting stuff done. But these sort of decision s should be thought about and worked through and not just 'oh we'll cut this shall we?'.

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: sometimes a zero or a one was read wrong at the other end

Oh so like xmodem or zmodem. The oldies are goodies.

Does UK's Online Safety Act cover misinformation? Well, that depends

Re: But most misinformation comes from the government.

GBeebies have had their knuckles rapped a few times now over political bias and failing to offer balance. But actually a court just unrapped them. See https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-standards/ofcom-statement-in-response-to-high-court-judgment-gb-news-v-ofcom

Re: Speed?

So what UK gov intend when drafting legislation versus what a court would interpret it as can be two different things, as we’ve recently seen with biological women and trans women judgement. I read an article somewhere that said the lead civil servant drafting that law was directed to make it cover biological and trans women but ministers made last minute changes that, intentionally or not, changed how a court would see it. As the minister said here, the Online Safety Act hasn’t yet been tested in court so politicians can argue all they like and it’ll make zero difference until it is tested.

Virgin Atlantic is piloting an OpenAI agent in to help with the 'customer journey'

Me: you’ve lost my suitcase

AI: ah so you want to fly to Cincinnati?

Me: Noooooooooo!

BOFH: The Prints of Darkness pays a visit

Re: Familiar!

/scratches head

Surely if it’s on a lease, the lease company have to replace it if it breaks? Isn’t this why companies lease printers? Or am I missing something?

Re: Sheer genius!!

Our office has hot desks but formed into neighbourhoods for each team. We had to lock everything to desks to stop monitors etc walking off. The only thing we can’t lock to the desk is …. The chairs. Guess what has gone missing? Now we’ll have to play musical chairs, or mount a raid on another neighbourhood

Microsoft mystery folder fix might need a fix of its own

Re: "Microsoft's testing process is under the microscope"

We’re gonna need a bigger microscope ….

India gets Google to unbundle Android and the Play Store on Smart TVs

Friends don’t let friends……

…. buy Android TVs. Just like your average budget mobile, you’ll get a couple of years of software updates at best and it’ll still be buggy as heck.

You’ll be wanting to defenestrate it at some point …..

This is not just any 'cyber incident' … this is an M&S 'cyber incident'

Re: Click & Collect

I wonder if Discworld would have a Clack and Collect service.

Only 3,000 staff jump from SAP after 10,000 earmarked to be pushed

Just the odd 10,000 …..

Oh to be a c suite bod playing over breakfast with how many thousand people win or lose. Like some Roman emperor at the games.

What about deciding an actual technical strategy and then deciding which teams need to be retrained or redirected to make the appropriate amount of dosh?

I’ve seen some really good top level strategies killed by useless middle managers, and some top managers who can barely spell strategy. It’s always the hardworking little people that get hit.

And how about that really, really awful UI?

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

Windows Mail RIP

It wasn’t broken, but someone in Microsoft Suitland decided it needed to get the heave-ho, to be replaced with a frankly awful version of Outlook. They could have just reskinned and rebranded what was there, but no, the full force of the shiny shoe brigade was felt and engineering made it so. I’ll lay odds there was some massive arguments over this, but the result was a version of Outlook that works the first time you open it. Close it. Reopen: oh no, error message saying it’s already open. AND THIS GOT RELEASED?????

The computer in question now runs Thunderbird and no longer has an Outlook problem.

IBM orders US sales to locate near customers or offices

Re: Clients

Now IBM should require prospective clients to relocate their own offices to IBM locations. Then nobody has to travel.

Microsoft hits Ctrl-Z after Teams trips over file sharing

Not only but also ….

So trying to run Windows Troubleshooting on an Azure AD joined PC, and it demands my MS account credentials. I enter my business username to be told that “doesn’t exist”. So now I can’t run said Troubleshooter to fix the small heap of dung Windows Update left behind.

Also downloaded Chrome because one of our systems demands it, with MS bleating that “Edge is built on the same platform as Chrome” (so far so correct “ but with trust from Microsoft”. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers

So I’m wondering if it is possible to build a data centre with no US content at all, in case the administration decides to pull the plug or suddenly charge some whopping fees or even claim access to or sovereignty over the data because of US stuff used to store it somehow.

ARM CPU’s, European made servers, and open source everything else. No US designed commercial software allowed. Then European network gear with non US chips.

That should make them sit up and take notice.

Microsoft total recalls Recall totally to Copilot+ PCs

Sensitive information?

I’m sorry. This is a business environment we’re talking about? And only user names and passwords are sensitive? What about ALL the other business sensitive information on the screen all day long?

I can already see US border security wanting to replay the screens to see if you’ve been saying things the present administration doesn’t agree with.

On a related note, my sympathies to the recently dismissed commander of the US base on Greenland.

Microsoft lists seven habits of highly effective Windows 11 users

Re: MS being MS. Again.

Actually I have seen worse, on a Sky TV box. It shows me loads of providers and programs from them all. Except it takes you half an hour to find something you can actually watch without having to take out yet another subscription. Even the live TV menu on my Phillips TV is buggy as heck, and I have to keep playing with the time sync settings to keep it working more than a couple of days.

But yes the adverts on W11 (today it was a stock ticker for some outfit I’d never heard of) are really annoying.