We've
invested in a wood chipper for the dumb employees and signed it up saying "Please reach inside for your P45"......
Partly because its quick and cheap but mostly because the lift cant get to the ground floor any more
Posts by Boris the Cockroach
3423 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2008
Page:
Let's... drawer a veil over why this laser printer would decide to stop working randomly
No, your software ideas aren't copyrightable, US judge tells SAS amid its long-running feud with Brit outfit
You only live twice: Once to start the installation, and the other time to finish it off
Monday 2nd November 2020 18:49 GMT 
Airports?
Hate them (and the moronic 'security' types that infest them)
Went back to the US a few years ago after a previous trip pre 9/11 had educated me about airport metal detectors
Walked upto the scanner, put keys, belt, money in the tray and walked through the thing "BING!"
I said "wheres the guy with the wand?"... and duely led over... with slightly paranoid trigger happy loons lurking in the background (and this was at Gatwick)
"You'll find the metal triggering the scanner on my right leg"
Guy wands me all over without paying attention "BING" when it gets to the right leg
"Its several pieces of metal holding my thigh bone together"
Steely hard glare from plastic plod... "Ok off you go"
However all far better than the TSA.... who helpfully put a note inside my extra large backpack explaining they cut the straps to open it..... while ignoring the easy release plastic clips next to where they cut..........
Fancy building to-spec PCs for the Bank of England, and more? A £46m end user support contract is up for grabs
Luke Skywalker used to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 on Tatooine. But Star Wars: Squadrons misses the mark
Saturday 31st October 2020 10:56 GMT 
As a past
player of the excellent Tie fighter(die rebel scum!) I could look forward to something like this as another adventure in the Star wars universe.
But a short story mode, then into the types of battles that elite dangerous can provide (with all the fun of those who have "git gud" ), I can see no need for buying the game.
Sure graphics look pretty, the sounds are excellent and the writing/voice acting can be immersive, but at the end, just like a movie, all that wont make a great game that players today will look back in 20 yrs time and go 'why cant they make a star wars:squadrons type game again?'
5 months later, 37.7% of Windows 10 PCs are running the May 2020 Update... Wait, people are still on 1809?
Wednesday 28th October 2020 00:28 GMT
Re: @AC - No choice but to remain out of date
2009 toshiba laptop here.... had vista on it until I got hold of it... wont even look at win 10
Runs the latest linux mint happily enough to be a usable machine for basic surfing/shopping/e.mailing and playing halflife 2
Wonder if I could change the HDD for a SDD to make it quicker as thats the only thing slowing it...
PS I hate the forced e.waste because companies bloat the software up then EoL it .. and make the new version unable to run on older machines..
RIAA DMCAs GitHub into nuking popular YouTube video download tool, says it's used to slurp music
The engineer lurking behind the curtain: Musical monitors on a meagre IT budget
Today's tech giants won't be as naive as I was in DoJ dealings, says former Microsoft chief Bill Gates
UK state of the Internet report: Virgin Media 'fast', BT's PlusNet last
Wednesday 21st October 2020 17:12 GMT
Vermin media here
Good : Speed, hardly ever drops out (glares at a 16 yr old trainee JCB driver on a local bridge resurfacing project... that happens to have the vermin media feed for the entire city running over it too... )
Bad : price
ugly : 'customer service' (to be fair its not their fault, stuck in a call center reading a script at a point of a gun .... just pray you get escalated to 2nd level help)
Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined
Tuesday 20th October 2020 17:27 GMT
Re: Will people learn?
This is the reality I work in
The company was founded about 30 odd yrs ago, using old manual machines, at its highest number of employees , it had 55 , 10 people doing setting and about 40 spinning handles/loading parts of some sort
All those old machines are long gone, apart from the toolmakers lathe, replaced by robotic machining cells, when they're all up and running* we do little more than swap raw part trays in and out and unload the finished stuff
The company employs 18 shop floor ppl over 2 shifts and we pump out about 100% more than when it was 55
Those jobs are NOT coming back, whatever some politician blathers on about.
*thats a fat chance given the reliabilty of one of the robots and the speed the cells chew through the work orders
Will there be no end to govt attempts to break encryption? Hand over your data or the kiddies get it, threaten Five Eyes spies
Samsung aims boot at Apple's decision not to bundle a charger in with the iPhone 12, foot ends up in mouth
Sunday 18th October 2020 10:50 GMT
Reduce the e-waste?
Engineer a phone that does'nt need throwing away because the battery is fooked, also can have the screen replaced by a 3rd party
And stop convincing people they need the latest shiney shiney thats 0.01% better than the shiney shiney they got 12 weeks ago...
Well its sunday and I can dream.... reality is those ideas will cut into profits too much
Hey Reg readers, Happy Spreadsheet day! Because there ain't no party like an Excel party
Saturday 17th October 2020 18:33 GMT
Re: VBA
Quote:
" Problems occur when a quick lash up becomes a production system."
Been there, done that, screamed and pulled out all my hair as a result before repeatedly headbutting a wall yelling "I want to die"
Saving the data, and then deleting the whole f'ing thing was the best solution....
Wheres the 'nuke it from orbit ' icon?
To stop web giants abusing privacy, they must be prevented from respawning. Ever
Friday 16th October 2020 15:22 GMT 
The
politicians can bang and complain all they like, in the end it wont make a scrap of difference because they're the ones who decide how much tax farcebork et al have to pay and how much state aid the likes of farcebork get from national governments.
Force them to incorperate in each nation, then force them to declare how much money they trade and how much profit they make and tax them accordingly (with the stick in the background of a tax per trade system if they try any shifty IP purchasing stuff to try and reduce local profit)
But then it wont happen anyway because the local politicians have farcebork accounts and farcebork knows exactly where they were on the evening of sept 1st ....
Politician: I'm going to pass laws to make you accountable
Farcebork: We have all the data on you including your little side trips to Putney, it would be a shame if anything.......... happened to it.....
Five Eyes nations plus Japan, India call for Big Tech to bake backdoors into everything
Monday 12th October 2020 16:57 GMT 
Oh god
the stupidity... its hurts us my precious..... it hurts us
Given the code for your typical public/private key encoding algorithm is already widely available, how long would it take for a reasonably competent programmer to knock up a bit of code to run the encyrption on say , a message of 500 characters, then decrypt it at the other end, after generating an on the fly key pair for it, and deleting all data on exit.
30 mins maybe? an hour? maybe a day to stick a quick and dirty GUI on the the front, connect to a prearranged server's IP and away you go.
And yet public grade stuff for transmitting bank info/transfers is to have a backdoor in it (if such a thing can be achieved)... and how long do these people think it will be before every major criminal cyber gang will be tearing apart the code to see where the backdoor is...
And in any case for my regular followers
"The eagle flies south in summer... the eagle flies south in summer"
Britannia should rule the (cyber) waves, minister tells Singapore event in bid to drum up Commonwealth support
Monday 12th October 2020 09:32 GMT
Quote:
"That's pretty rich from a country that spies not only on the Russian and Chinese, but also on Brussels (including compromising Belgacom's telephone network) and Germany."
You'll also find that France spied on Germany, the UK and the US, Germany spies on the UK, belgium, France and the US, and the US spies on everyone.
And that before we get to countries like Russia/China/Iran
Its the nature of the game that everyone spies on everyone else.
IT Marie Kondo asks: Does this noisy PC spark joy? Alas, no. So under the desk it goes
Saturday 10th October 2020 10:02 GMT
Re: Loudener
Thats easy nowadays
Install something like MSI afterburner that lets you set up overclocking
Then modify the fan option from 'auto' to 'max speed at all times' , set that to default profile and hey presto, a nice noisy fast machine to impress the managler.
And a quieter time for the poor IT staff...
PS... and just to be annoying , set all the cpu clock/memory speeds to 50% .......
Selling hardware on a pay-per-use or subscription model is a 'lie' created by marketing bods
Saturday 10th October 2020 02:09 GMT
Re: Cashflow & tax rules
Quote:
"So I looked at AutoCad, and discovered that was 'sold' with annual licences, and cloud 'credits' for doing rendering or CFD in the cloud. "
We looked at that sort of thing recently, a very good idea someone thought until it was pointed out that we'd have to make sure the internet connection never dropped out, that where our data went was'nt exactly known (goodbye any government/military stuff we do) and that we'd be at the mercy of someone who was happy to low ball the price to lock us into their system,then jack the prices when their system was all we could use and our data was in their format.
So we stuck with what we've got now, a rival to autocad loaded onto the 4 laptops used by the setters with 4 licences(well 5 .. bulk discount on 5+)
From the Department of WCGW: An app-controlled polycarbonate lock with no manual override/physical key
BOFH: Rome, I have been thy soldier 40 years... give me a staff of honour for mine age
Wind and quite a bit of fog shroud Boris Johnson's energy vision for the UK
Tuesday 6th October 2020 16:59 GMT
Or
They could build 12 dual reactor nuclear power stations for base load
and then top up with pumped storage powered from the aforementioned wind turbines.
Sadly this plan falls flat in 2 important areas
1. mention the word 'nuclear' and you'll have every green eco-freak landing outside in protest with "CO2 better" and "I prefer being cold and in the dark" signs
2. Pumped storage is only usually much good for 6-8 hrs at full power (see el-regs article on a tour of the UKS pumped storage station) and sometimes the wind wont blow...... or blows too hard to make electrickery......
Oh well... I can look forward to a glorious future of being cold and bugger the lights gone out again... better start the petrol driven genny...
Big IQ play from IT outsourcer: Can't create batch files if you can't save files. Of any kind
There ain't no problem that can't be solved with the help of American horsepower – even yanking on a coax cable
Friday 2nd October 2020 22:16 GMT
Re: The mythological wire stretcher
Quote
"One of my friends is in charge of a fabrication workshop. He told me that sending the apprentices down to stores for a long weight or grinder sparks is now forbidden as it may hurt the apprentices feelings....."
No it is'nt , I quite often get rid of an annoying operator by doing that...
Friday 2nd October 2020 11:44 GMT
Re: Closest I've had to that ....
Vermin media installers....... told the idiots that I did'nt know where the power lines were in the walls
1 decides to drill through the wall from front room to cupboard under the stairs...
BANG out go the lights.
Stupid fekker went straight through the power feed to the lighting distribution box... was lucky his lights didnt go out
Ring glitch results in global ding dong ditch: Doorbell bling flings out random pings but they're not the real thing
What price your home delivery? Amazon accused of hiding real injury rate in its overworked warehouses
Thursday 1st October 2020 09:22 GMT
I work at the sharp end of industrial production involving 1000's of widgets spread over several machining cells.
We hire operators to do machine loading/moving pallets around/general factory duties (some are excellent.. some are average, some lets say are'nt as good)
All operators are told on their first day not to do unsafe stuff, not to bypass safety cutouts etc etc etc even if they could work faster without the guarding being in place (it takes time to open/close guards per cycle).
This is basic health and safety stuff and if its not enforced in the event of an accident the company can have its arse sued off(the insurance companies tend to go 'f you' in such cases)
even supervisors like me have our own padlocks to lock the cell down when we're fixing and setting stuff(I'm purple... for some reason)
If our managers told us to do stuff that outside of the above rules, we'd demand it in writing because of the the aforementioned dangers and liabilites because usually any case would go like this
Coroner :why was boris inside the the cell when it began moving?
Manager: Dunno , he went in to fix something and failed to follow the rules
Gets a bit harder to defend that when the union rep follows up with
"Heres a written order for him to go into the cell without powering down everything written by you, and in spite of Boris warning you it was an unsafe practise"
Bill Gates lays out a three-point plan to rid the world of COVID-19 – and anti-vaxxer cranks aren't gonna like it
Wednesday 30th September 2020 17:28 GMT
I often
wonder just how you'll get chipped when you get vaccinated.
Partly because we're already tracked to the nth degree already, but mostly because of the size of chip compared to the needle that delivers the vaccine.
You dont believe me? ... goto your local vets and see what size needle injects the ID chip into your pet... then ask why the vets prefer to have the patients sedated before they do it.... because a huge ass needle hurts like f**k
Whereas a vaccine needle does'nt hurt that much (unless you're a wuss)
Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs
Spain's highway agency is monitoring speeding hotspots using bulk phone location data
IT guy whose job was to stop ex-staff running amok on the network is jailed for running amok on the network
Saturday 26th September 2020 10:49 GMT
Re: 5 years?
Its how fast the wheels of justice turn in the US... all geared to making the accused do a plea deal.
Sadly you can end up in jail for 3yrs while waiting for a trial on your case involving theft of a mobile phone from a tourist if you refuse to do a plea deal.... a crime that could only involve 6 months-year in jail if found guilty...
Brexit travel permits designed to avoid 7,000-lorry jams come January depend on software that won't be finished till April
Microsoft will release a web browser for Linux next month. Repeat, Microsoft will release a browser for Linux – and it uses Google's technology
UK govt urged to bolt tough legal protections onto Arm and protect jobs – or simply veto Nvidia's £31bn acquisition
We don't need maintenance this often, surely? Pull it. Oh dear, the system's down
Monday 21st September 2020 17:26 GMT
I put
a bomb in the RS232 comms program I created.
The demo version had a 30 day limit on it, and it worked off system date of install vs current system date.... then threw an error message up such as "30 day limit reached"
Of course you could always reset the PC date..... only thing was if it ever showed the 30 day message it would delete the module that did the actual RS 232 comms.... good luck using it after that ..
But the guy in the story.... should have had a decent contract written up for customers to sign saying "no monthly maintence fee , no software "
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 debut derailed by website glitches, bots, lack of supply
Amazon gets its tax excuses in early amid rising UK profits – but leaves El Reg off the press list. Can't think why
Friday 18th September 2020 12:57 GMT
Re: You can add another
OK take this example
Amazon employs a person , agrees to pay them £10 000 yr, £1000 of that going on income taxes
Government gets voted out, and the ebil socialists take over and change income tax rates to 90%
Employee approaches amazon and asks for another £8000 per year to cover the rise in tax, amazon responds your contract is 10 000/yr tough luck.
The cost of taxation on an employee's income falls on the employee not the employer
Friday 18th September 2020 11:34 GMT
You can add another
objection to amazon including employee taxes as 'tax paid by amazon'
It isnt paid by amazon , its taken from the money amazon pays its employees with (whether said employees want the government taking 30% of their wages or not)
The only employee tax is employer's NI contribution
But as previous comments have said the only thing enabling the likes of amazon to move its profits out of the country are the very politicians who are saying how immoral it is that they are moving profits out of the country......
Woman dies after hospital is unable to treat her during crippling ransomware infection, cops launch probe
Friday 18th September 2020 12:09 GMT
Re: Why?
For us here in the machining/widget bashing game, the thought of 'patching' and 'upgrading' fills us with terror.
why?
well apart from notices in the maintence manuals saying 'if pc is patched/upgraded, then the machine tool manufacturers with not be liable for any borkage'
The thought of having an upgrade applied which causes different motion(s) to be applied to the robots can result in parts being ejected from the machining cells.
We had a case of that 2 years ago where a fixture broke and 0.5kg of aluminium plate was spun upto about 4000-6000 rpm before being fired out of the machine and hitting the wall 40 feet away, safety screens not withstanding.
Now you imagine that happening because of an 'upgrade' and the legal borkage that would result if anyone got injured....
But just get another PC..... ok... maufacturer has to certify that then attatch it... then charge 1000's for the service
But back to the subject in hand, the hackers who crashed the hospital systems in the first place... their punishment should be a go in the radiation treatment unit.... will they get off with a trivial dose or a screwed up lethal one... lets see how fast you can debug the control.....
We want weaponised urban drones flying through your house, says UK defence ministry as it waves a fistful of banknotes
Wednesday 16th September 2020 19:47 GMT 
I bet
BAE systems put a bid in... although it will explain how their drones are the best drones ever, made from the finest stuff possible and cheap at the price of 12 billion pounds each.(and take 25 yrs and another 25 billion from start to deploying 1 drone)
Anyway.... we all know how this ends once 1000s of drones are on the loose
"The system became self-aware at 2.37 PDT"......
Brit MPs to Apple CEO: Please stop ignoring our questions about repairability and the environment
Tuesday 15th September 2020 17:29 GMT
Blah blah blah
BS BS BS
Lets issue some waffle instead of actually doing something about it.
It would be better to see MPs announce that from Jan 2022 All personal hi-tec stuff (phones/watches/pads) must be able to have their batteries removed and replaced using a standard screwdriver in the way of tooling, and the suppliers make such parts available to buy at a reasonable price.
I've got a cheap android pad thats completely good to go... except the battery is dead, and its impossible to get at it without destroying said pad...more e waste
Typical '80s IT: Good idea leads to additional duties, without extra training or pay, and a nuked payroll system
Monday 14th September 2020 18:27 GMT
During my time
solving RS232 problems(oh god noooo)....
Unit gets broken into, and some of the PCs get swiped.....boss is all in a flap, junior boss is in a flap, admin are in a flap, sales are in a flap with variations on "OMG my data my data" all around.
Boss cant believe my calmness and generally relaxed attitude...... "well they did'nt steal the production PCs" (covered in oil, fingerprints, coffee stains and unmentionables) "They're the most important part of your company since they contain over 10 yrs of various programs saved at a rate of about 3 a day"
Their Boss believes in backing everything thing up off site now ..
QR-code based contact-tracing app brings 'defining moment' for UK’s 'world beating' test and trace system
Saturday 12th September 2020 09:39 GMT 
Pity
the idiots in charge dont think this through better
Example 1 :my smartphone does not have a QR reader installed (minor point)
Example 2 : Attending the covd test center, they asked for the QR code sent to me..... the text message sent to my phone did not have a QR code in it.
30 mins after getting home, an email arrived bearing the QR code...
I'm beginning to think that the practical test during the interview for a senior government position consists of a large brewery , and a party of 100 people.... if , after 6 hrs none of the party are drunk and none of the beer has been consumed, then the candidate is ideal material for a government position..
Beer because as Nanny Ogg remarked "Alcohol cures many things."
The power of Bill compels you: A server room possessed by a Microsoft-hating, Linux-loving Demon
I can 'proceed without you', judge tells Julian Assange after courtroom outburst
Thursday 10th September 2020 17:49 GMT
Re: Tactical mistake
I think it was 2-5 yrs with time served on remand and time off for good behaviour. IF convicted
Then deported to Aussie.
His big mistake was jumping bail (not a good idea) and then pissing off the embassy he was hiding in after 7 yrs....
Hopefully one day he'll come to his senses and realise just what a dumbass he actually is instead the smartass he thinks he is...
Tech ambitions said to lie at heart of Britain’s bonkers crash-and-burn Brexit plan
Tuesday 8th September 2020 17:36 GMT
Re: Sigh
Quote:
"As a country, for various reasons, we are not very good at risk, early business growth and long term market ownership. However, we've got some very smart guys who drive real innovation and deliver engineering excellence that brings the whole world to our doorstep. That suggests that we should think carefully how we handle funding and finance."
The the problem with finance in this country is where do we get it from, its hard enough at the moment to lever a 200 000 quid loan out for the bank for a new machining cell, the fact we turn over millions, and have a site worth 20 times that does'nt matter to them or the fact we've always broken even for the past 10 yrs (dont ask about 11 yrs ago : ) ) , so where does some random innovator get some start up cash from.
As for engineering excellence and Qinetiq, a recent interview with them for a top of the line CNC/robotics programmer revealed that they wanted to pay 22K a year for the recruit. only about 8K below the market rate...
But the government want to plough on with state aid, of course the cynic in me says that they want the state to pay start up costs for the next google/intel/ARM, then privatise it in a sell off to their mates who then go on to sell it off to the USA/Japan/China/India/Venezuela for 4 times the price they paid for it 6 months previously..... but thats just the cynic in me
Apple commits to support human rights - 'We believe in the critical importance of an open society'*
Saturday 5th September 2020 09:24 GMT
Apple remains
committed to human rights*
*except where money comes before morality**
**especially when it comes to the workers actually making our products in aforementioned regimes***
***and paying taxes in regimes that allow freedom of speech
Apple inc. would like to comment , but are too busy counting their profits before stashing them in an off shore tax haven where nobody can get at them...
As Amazon pulls union-buster job ads, workers describe a 'Mad Max' atmosphere – unsafe, bullying, abusive
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 20:01 GMT
Well the
victorian industrialists would feel right at home in today's Amazon,
All it needs to be complete is housing provided by Amazon for its 'fulfillment operatives'(why can I not stop hearing the voice of Cave Johnson from the game Portal 2 when I hear that phrase from amazon) tied to having a job at the company, a nice couple of company stores , and paying the workers in scrip that can only be spent in those company stores would complete the picture (although I fear I may just have given amazon execs an idea too good to pass up....)
But in all honesty, the only reason for having a job like that in an amazon warehouse is money, and that you live paycheck to paycheck.
But I guess the old saying "If you treat people well, they'll go the extra mile for you, treat people badly and they'll do exactly whats in their contract " does not really apply anymore
Biting the hand that feeds IT
