* Posts by Boris the Cockroach

3404 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2008

Microsoft: Come and play in our Windows SandBox

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Windows

And how

long before the news headline "You know that m$ sandbox you thought was safe... well guess who has all the data from it... thats right... everyone!"

Brexit-dodging SCISYS Brits find Galileo joy in Dublin

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: != Brexit dodging

Quote:

I am currently working for a UK company which is owned by a company HQ'd in Germany which in turn is owned by a company HQ'd in the Netherlands.

Which ends up playing less corp tax than companies stuck fully in the UK.

Its that sort of corporate piss taking that encouraged quite a few to vote out.... especially when you're a low paid PAYE employee who cant get out of paying any taxes ....

'Bomb threat' scammers linked to earlier sextortion campaign

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Mushroom

Re: The gang that could not shoot straight

Quote: They upped their game from fraud to terrorism with all the expected legal consequences.

And all the expected extra-legal consequences of course, and all the consequences where the legal profession is not involved at all (although the human rights people may complain that leveling 14 city blocks was perhaps.. a tiny bit over the top)

Spending watchdog points finger at Capita for 1,300 shortfall in British Army rookies

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: How?

It takes a lot of skill and dedication to be able to build an efficent system capable of coping with 100s of transactions a second

Crapita dont have that, so thats why they charge so much

Windows 10 can carry on slurping even when you're sure you yelled STOP!

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Happy

Re: Bah!

Quote:

Raspberry Pis to swamp Redmond's digital ear trumpet with (to them) misleading gibberish.

Given the latest quality of updates, I'd say m$ are flooding themselves with misleading gibberish and have no need of assistance....

Thanks to UK peers, coming to a laptop near you in 2019: Age checks for online smut

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Unfortunately...

What those in charge are doing are pandering to the 'daily wail/the stun" reading sections of the population.

Why?

To get them to vote for the incompetent bastards under the guise of "we're protecting the kids" from all the evils of the internet, and with your kids protected , nothing harm them.

Nothing at all... what? they cant access a sexual education/sexual health site? well they're 14 and shouldnt know about such stuff anyway......

Microsoft, you shouldn't have: Festive Windows 10 Insiders build about as exciting as new socks

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Windows

A CLI??????!!!!!

What is this sourcery? a linux build or something?

Or an admittance by m$ the only way to fix the steaming pile of poo that is win10 is a CLI and not the shiney happy GUI we've come to know and loath

Privacy, security fears about ID cards? UK.gov's digital bod has one simple solution: 'Get over it'

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Big Brother

But you need

ID to access things like the NHS.....

OK... this is the chat had when I had a TIA and managed to get a friend to come round and help me.

<m8> This is Boris, he managed to call me, found him collapsed on the sofa with a severe headache and unable to speak, I called 999 instantly

<paramedic> hello Boris. blah blah blah... nope... very confused and unresponsive, you got his full name and DoB?

<m8> yupp its ******* ************** and dob is ********

<paramedic> ok details done... lets get him to hospital ASAP

The hospital took those details and was able to look up my medical record including what drugs I was on and what treatment I'd had in the past few years..

SO WHAT IS THE FUCKING NEED FOR AN ID CARD FOR THE NHS?

Anyway... the bunch of numpties in parliment cant even organise a brexit so whats the chance with something simple like an ID card project?

And knowing this sort of project how long before it says "Buttle" on the arrest warrent when you're really after a guy called "Tuttle"?

"We've got the right guy and we have the ID card to prove it"

Ecuador says 'yes' to Assange 'freedom' deal, but Julian says 'nyet'

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

What will mostly

likely happen when they finally get sick of him and move the embassy 4 doors down the street in the middle of the night without telling Julian is that the british police will arrest him, he'll get charged with bail jumping and done for that, at which point we'll ask the swedes if they want him, if its yes , he'll be sent there post haste, if no, the US 'may' ask for him to be sent there.

In all cases , he'll fight it in the courts as far as he can, but due to jumping bail the first time , he'll be deemed a flight risk and held on remand.

Assuming neither sweden or the USA want him, he'll get deported to Australia so he can go relive old times by locking himself in his mom's basement with nothing but a mobile phone and a cat for company....

BOFH: State of a job, eh? Roll the Endless Requests for Further Information protocol

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Thumb Up

This shows

there are still things I must learn.....

Incoming! Microsoft unleashes more fixes for Windows 10 October 2018 Update

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Windows

Well I'm

off to apply to m$'s new quality control department

Just need to learn howto write using crayon to sign off the QC report

And spell 'tested' correctly

Apart from that.... I've no other software qualifications........ just like m$'s current kwality control department...

Awkward... Revealed Facebook emails show plans for data slurping, selling access to addicts' info, crafty PR spinning

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
FAIL

I'm on faceborg

And signed to be a mindless drone.

Actually its to stay in touch with old friends who've scattered to the four winds. and the USA.

Having a fairly decent mobile, I thought "how about the FB app for android"

So I looked at the download page, and clicked 'permissions needed'

Zuckenburg.... you can f... right off. (for those who've never looked, the permissions are for EVERYTHING on your phone to be accessible to FB.... )

Oh and the targeted ads on FB are laughable... ranging from washing machines just after posting "I've got a new washing machine".... dur.. I've just spent 400 quid on a new one why the hell do I want another? to age based ads for the sort of problems faced by elderly people (and no I'm not ready for a stairlift/tena pants/equity release/care home yet!)

Tumblr resorts to AI in attempt to scrub itself clean from filth

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: Child porn

Then we need to ban heads!

To the guillotine with them...

Wheres the puritian loony icon?

YouTube fight gets dirty: Kids urged to pester parents over Article 13

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Facepalm

Perhaps we should

send a time machine back 20 yrs to the time of napster, and point out to the music companies(and movies too) that if they invested in on-line streaming of their copyright material, inserted a few ads every 30 mins or went subscriber model, they could make a shit ton of cash on their archives.

Instead they went down the copyright lawyer route which has resulted in the article 13 thing now...

GCHQ pushes for 'virtual crocodile clips' on chat apps – the ability to silently slip into private encrypted comms

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: And just how does this

Quote

The elephant rides at midnight ???

You got the wrong group mate, this is the syndo-cryptic revolutionary party(Leninist), you want the Free radicals of Marxist-Hofferists (Trotskyist) , they communicate over on the Daily mail forums.

Where the ravings of a bunch of loons and splitters would never be noticed....

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Big Brother

And just how does this

protect us from terrorists when the event is already pre planned and just needs the 'go' signal with a time

for example....

E.mail

<from: Religious nutgroup leader>

<to : All>

The swallow flies north in winter, but the coconut does not migrate.

Q: If Pesky Pepper had a peek at patient papers, at how many patient papers did Pesky Pepper peek? A: 231

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Devil

Re: Please let me know where you work...

Quote:

I understand how you feel but you're living in a fools world (sorry, no insult) if you think that information like this is hidden and only seen by you and your doctor.

Well after reading this, I called up the bored receptionist at your doctors to find out you had an AIDS test 3 months ago, as well as a check up at the sexual health clinic.

ANd the details have leaked up because you think everyone hoovers up all of your details

BTW , your wife wants a divorce because "WTF were you doing at a sexual health clinic, let alone having an AIDS test", your employer has said "Oh an AIDS test... you must be a druggie, you're fired, and your health insurance co just found out and raised your premium by 500%.

Oh and having a 4" penis is a bit on the small side too.

Microsoft suffers the Tuesday shakes as Exchange Online continues to be wobbly for UK users

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Facepalm

Its strange

how us techie types can yell "The cloud is not a good idea as we're going to get outages in service."

And its as if the manglement put fingers in their ears and go "lalalalalalalalala we cant hear you" (I think the offsite snake oil salesman put spells on them to make them to that)... then fire all the doom mongering tech types.

Until today when the senior manglement say "wheres our emails?"

Great Scott! Is nothing sacred? US movie-goers vote Back To The Future as most-wanted reboot

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Did'nt

the film spaceballs have the bit where they were already making the sequel before the 1st film was finished?

Blighty: We spent £1bn on Galileo and all we got was this lousy T-shirt

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
IT Angle

The whole

brexit thing has been a clusterfuck of unimaginable proportions.

Take migration... (actually migration problems are really caused by westminister doing things such as not bothering to check how many people are coming here vs the expansion in services/housing to cope...BOTH parties are equally as guilty of this as the other.)

What should have been said is "EU nationals working here pre-brexit have an unlimited time to remain here, post brexit, EU nationals get the same rights as the rest of the world"

If the EU wanted to play silly buggers around that, we restate the 1st phrase

Sadly the 'government' (read 300 cats in a sack) decided to do things differently, then have a leadership election.... then an actual election (needing the support of some northern irish throwbacks.. when will they realise its not 1689 anymore!!) hence we're in clusterfuck.

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

give it

a couple more years and there'll be plenty of tales of

"The smart meter said I used 100 quids of electrickery, the supplier adjusted the direct debit to match, the bank rejected the debit as there was only £50 in the account, therefore the supplier automatically switched off the power..... all this took less than 3 seconds and we're left sitting in the dark"

Thats the real reason for smart meters, because at the moment you have to do expensive things such as going to court for a warrent and getting people in to cut off the power for non payment....

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Quote

Bah humbug. When Black Friday comes, I'm gonna dig myself a hole.

You'll need the queue for the shovels, then queue up at the official hole digging area (might be a bit of a wait due to all the MPs/cabinet ministers currently digging)

In Space, Still: 20 years since Russia hurled first bit of floating astronaut hostel into orbit

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: 5 of those with one BFR

The could have rolled out 5 saturn 5 rockets, and used those to launch the entire thing....

Sadly , the US government prefers to spend 600 billion on blowing shit up and complaining about the cost of NASA at about 22 billion.....

Britain may not be able to fend off a determined cyber-attack, MPs warn

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Strange

after last nights blackout here... I'm surprised they invest in infrastructure , let alone cyber security

Congrats to Debbie Crosbie: New CEO at IT meltdown bank TSB has unenviable task ahead

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Flame

Have

threatened more regulation.....

So that means when the banks systems go TITSUP , they'll be called into the office and told they were very naughty and not to do it again instead of the current system of doing fuck all

If at first or second you don't succeed, you may be Microsoft: Hold off installing re-released Windows Oct Update

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Flame

I think

its time for the phone call to our CAM software suppliers and ask them a very important question

"Do you do a linux version yet?"

Flames... because m$ seem intent of burning themselves down

Six critical systems, four months to Brexit – and no completed testing

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: How about scrapping them?

Quote:

I don't really know what the article means by "notifications" but it may refer to the system to track food.

That comes in handy when suddenly a bunch of people start falling violently ill and it is discovered that all of them had lamb the day before. We currently have a system where we can trace (across Europe) every piece of meat in the supermarket to see who packaged it, who cut it, who slaughtered the animal and who reared it.

And it still didnt stop us getting horse burgers and horse lasagna dressed up as beef....

And those huge sausages were very suspicious....

French president Macron insists new regulations needed to protect us all from Facebook's claws

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: maybe the REAL problem

Quote

"for the children - for their own good. because we're good people and we know better..."

Which begs another observation from Pterry

The king at the top is good.... lets hope his 2nd is good too because he rules in the name of the king.... and lets hope his assistants are good because they also rule in the name of the king and it only take 1 bastard to bring the system down.....

Palliative care for Windows 10 Mobile like a Crimean field hospital, but with even less effort

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Devil

Re: plan of action

We talking about the phone or all of M$ here?

Windows XP? Pfff! Parts of the Royal Navy are running Win ME

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Facepalm

bleedin obvious aint it

quote

But how can it work reliably without a load of IT people tinkering with it all the time?

BECAUSE it doesn't have a bunch of IT people tinkering with as directed by a PHB who doesn't know any better.

Its as bad as the bright spark who decided to make us save all our data on the backup server in order to make his life easier when it comes to doing off site backups.

Only thing is.... the server has gone dead and needs a reboot.... and hes the only one with a key to the server room and hes on holiday until Tuesday......

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: Oh goody

The EULA does not take away your rights under the consumer rights act to having a decent product that works.

After all... Ford could make you sign an EULA saying that any accidents are the fault of the driver....

However , if you manage to beat the M$ lawyers , all you'll get back is the cost of the win 10 licence

GCSE computer science should be exam only, says Ofqual

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: There are no teachers

quote

It would be possible to go on a recruitment drive for CompSci teachers (there's enough software engineers out there who don't pass the age test for most jobs). But solving the problem (instead of hiding it) costs actual money.

And more than likely , dont have exactly the right piece of paper to show the education department's HR people

"But I've been programming for 30 yrs everything from flight control software to mentoring the web-dev team"

"Sorry.... you need certificate 456252-TX-665c section 5 to teach basic programing....no certificate, no chance of an interview"

Has science gone too far? Now boffins dream of shining gigantic laser pointer into space to get aliens' attention

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Happy

Re: This won't end well...

Quote

("We shall wait for the ignorant monkeys to blow themselves off the face of the planet, then begin negotiations with the cockroaches")

Hoorah my time will come.

UK.gov to roll out voter ID trials in 2019 local elections

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: Awesome...

I wonder if you read the story.... especially the 44 counts of voter fraud bit

Now Europe wants a four-million-quid AI-powered lie detector at border checkpoints

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: British implementation

I know.... but given my experience of immigration officials... I can quite easily see the post brexit officials asking those questions in order to prove that you are indeed , a citizen of the UK.

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: British implementation

African or european?

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Terminator

Once they've

got this working well enough (IE getting less than 90% false positives)

Its time for the next stage... replacing the border guards with automated border drones

"Drop the purple donkey... you have 20 seconds to comply"

"Drop the purple donkey or you will face lethal force.. you have 10 seconds to comply"

"Drop the purple donkey or you will be shot.. you have 5 seconds to comply"

"Non-compliance with order , you have been shot....... please enjoy the rest of your visit to the EU"

BT: We're stocking warehouses with kit ahead of Brexit to avoid shortages

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: Why not import from America or else where?

Quote

"How long does it take to train a customs drone?"

Ages, you have to teach them to read every line of the form and be able to nitpick and then reject anything they dont like

Like for example the export form says "routers" , the import form says "router", that means your shipment is stuck in customs for 3 months while they sort out if the shiper is one router or many.

And god help you if the contents of the box dont match up.. "sorry mate.. theres 25 routers in the box, but the paperwork says "routers" without saying how many... I cant let that in.. its more than my jobs worth"

When dealing with customs and excise, you're always far better off headbutting a wall..... repeatedly, it does'nt take as long and the long term effects are pretty much the same...

US Republicans bash UK for tech tax plan

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

An easy solution

would be making it illegal to charge for IP transfer... unless its being sold to a independent 3rd company.

eg Google cayman islands cannot charge Google UK 4 billion quid/yr for using Google US's IP when both companies are fully owned by Google US.

But if someone like Search UK (an example company) wants to use Google's IP, then they can be charged 4 billion quid for it....

But then the lawyers/accountants will quickly find any loopholes in the tax code, helpfully inserted by tax officials/politicians who later goto work for the multi-nationals....

If you have inner peace, it's probably 'cos your broadband works: Zen Internet least whinged-about Brit ISP – survey

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Virgin Media.

Had my superhub 2 'upgraded' to a 3 a few weeks ago.

What a pile of poo

Plus the phone only seems to work for about a week after the engineer has 'fixed' it again (looking at the local phone cabinet.. I'm surprised any of it works..)

But why dont you switch?

Because openretch supplied BB is even worse....

Budget 2018: UK goes it alone on digital sales tax for tech giants

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: Taxes on "profits"

They dont always spend the cash flow on R&D.... it goes in 'Buying IP from suppliers"... in other words, google UK buys intelectual property from google US in spite of the fact that google US own 100% of google UK..

Which is a bit of a piss take.

Especially if search engine UK based here in dear old blightly has to pay MORE in tax than google

Heck looking at some of figures I bet the small co I work for pays more in tax than google et al

Woman who hooked up with over 15 spectres has found her forever phantom after whirlwind romance and plane sex

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
IT Angle

I wondered

what I was doing when I spent a couple of hours dead a few years ago.....

And why I have no memory of it.....

Pain in the brain! Kaspersky warns of hackable brain implants

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: While I believe security is important (very much so),

And yet there are people who would...

Lets just say a defector has a pacemaker fitted.... much easier just walking past him and reprogramming the pacemaker to ignore any problems than to say , smear his front door in nerve gas solution....

Assange catgate hearing halted as Ecuador hunts around for someone who speaks Australian

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Perhaps

hes not staying in the embassy because the US will try to nab him once the british have lost interest (about 3 days after fining him £100 for jumping bail), but hes staying there because hes hiding from the people who DO want some harm to come to him.... I.E the people he stiffed for 1 million quid when he jumped bail...

Pity he hadn't taken refuge in the Saudi embassy..... couldn't see them putting up with his cat crapping on the carpet for long.... ;)

'BMW, Airbus and Siemens' get the Brexit spending shakes

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: BMW and Airbus have more to worry about...

Quote:

buying the brand, the IP and their customer list is very valuable for your business. You buy the lot, incorporate the brand and some of their product lines but close the production in the Midlands.

this went on well before the in/out vote.

Company A spends X number of millions on R&D, suffers a share price fall because the share holders wanted all that R&D money for themselves, Company B (a competitor) moves in with an offer to buy the shares at Y price, current shareholders sell up, Company B promises to keep on production at Company A's site....... 12 months later Company A is shut down and everyone fired.

Company B now has a monolopy, and all of company A's IP.

Or Company B takes over company A, and needs to shed staff, Company A is based in a country where its easy to fire people..... Company A is shut down.

Thers no brexit angle to that behaviour because it goes on all the time regardless of brexit, german re-unification or greece's economy imploding

Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Windows

Re: Excellent article

OK I'll admit perhaps I didnt define critical system too well

But given m$'s attempts to muscle in on the robot market (something that fills me with fear)

Quote: "After all, it's not like people die because of a bug in their system."

PCs ARE used in critical systems ... MRI scanners, Radiotherapy machines, industrial robots to name a few.

A bug in win 10 introduced by automatic updates CAN kill in those circumstances... its not like "Oh I've lost the power point document I've been working on for 2 days" , its more like "Opps I've just given that cancer patient 10 times the gamma ray dose I should have"

Which is why those sort of machines have "For gawd's sake dont let windows update run" signs on them.

Or in the sector I deal with "Welcome to Linux, booting machine application, have a nice day"

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Windows

Excellent article

And put into words many of us feel windows is currently a shit show

On the QC thing.

I work in aerospace manufacturing........ how many of you would be happy to fly on a plane where the only people to have done any QC work would be the plane spotters brigade?

No takers..... why does something critical as a desktop OS have no real QC ?

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
Windows

Is there

any way we can sue M$ under the consumer rights act?

Eg... I go out and buy a new PC loaded with win 10, 2 weeks later a m$ update borks and bricks the thing.

Surely then the PC becomes defective goods and must be replaced or refunded by the supplier

But would we (being us consumers) put up with this behaviour from any other customer/business goods supplier? Oh I've just got a new car/tv/washing machine/toaster....... after 2 weeks it doesn't work because the manufacturer 'updated' the software ...

UK defence secretary ponders £50m hit to terminate Capita recruiting contract

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Re: Word of mouth.

ANd once the system is built and ready to be tested , the civil servant in charge will hand you a piece of paper completely changing what it is you have to do.

The the minster hands you another piece of paper telling you to disregard the first 2 jobs specs and build a bridge across the Thames....

Softcat warns of Brexit cloud forming over UK tech, vows: If prices rise, we'll pass them on...

Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

Dont worry about

Brexit.

Exchange rate goes down. Prices go up

Exchange rate goes up. Prices go up

Material costs up. Prices go up

Material costs down. Prices go up

Profits go down. Prices go up

Profits go up. wages go down.

Cynical? Moi?