* Posts by IHateWearingATie

683 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jun 2008

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Adtech-for-sex biz tells blockchain consent app firm, 'hold my beer'

IHateWearingATie

My wife thinks this is more likely to have been secretly created by a few women as a way of getting cash from *really* stupid men

She's probably right.

You're indestructible, always believe in 'cause you are Go! Microsoft reinvents netbook with US$399 ‘Surface Go’

IHateWearingATie

Re: They're clearly copying Apple.

"actually, when was the last Apple product that couldn't be described as a concept you can already get elsewhere, but with an Apple logo on it?"

I thought that's Apple's explicit product development approach? See a segment, wait for others to make mistakes, pick so good ideas and make them work better, develop a better product, charge *a lot* more for it.

Who fancies a six-core, 128GB RAM, 8TB NVMe … laptop?

IHateWearingATie
Pint

Re: Oh Come on

You're falling behind the times.

The correct question now is "Will it run Fortnite".

Do keep up :)

Sysadmin shut down server, it went ‘Clunk!’ but the app kept running

IHateWearingATie

Was told this story by a work colleague...

He was working in Germany for a telco and they were upgrading the redundant systems for a couple of data centres (electrics, hardware, software etc). The demo was set for the CIO to come and see it all working and properly test it by killing grid power supply to the data centre by throwing the breakers, simulating a power outage.

The day came, with great ceremony the breakers were pulled by him, grid power ceased and lo and behold everything worked as it needed to. Generators generated, UPSs hummed, servers shut down in a controlled and graceful manner. Seeing the success the CIO then said (in German of course), "Excellent, well done. Well, better get the power back then...." and threw the breakers back before anyone could stop him, missing several hours of carefully prepared procedure to move back to normal operation in a single swoop. The surge of current took out enough power hardware (generators, switches, UPS etc) that it was days and days before the data centre was back up and running.

Ooops.

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

IHateWearingATie
Stop

Re: Undecimate?

Websters is a tool of the colonials who are corrupting the language and is not a valid reference point.

The only source that should be accepted is the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary.

Or whatever that lovely lady on Countdown says.

HostingUK drops offline after losing Farmer vs Fibre competition

IHateWearingATie
Pint

Unknow physical paths

I worked at a corporate that had two separate paths out of the site that ended up at the same junction that was trashed by an idiot in a JCB. I suspect the network team learned the importance of tracing the physical as well as the logical paths that day.

'Autopilot' Tesla crashed into our parked patrol car, say SoCal cops

IHateWearingATie
Thumb Up

Re: Hmm

'pedantic moments' are never minor on El Reg's comment boards. They are the sine qua non of a thread.

Have an upvote :)

X marks the Notch, where smartmobe supercycles go to die

IHateWearingATie

<Pedant>

Also, it's not a Laffer curve, it's a plain old demand curve. The Laffer curve is so named as it shows attributes similar to a demand curve but specifically applies to tax and revenue.

</Pedant>

Mark Duckerberg: Second Congressional grilling sees boss dodge questions like a pro

IHateWearingATie

Not that bothered

I was asked by someone if I was bothered about the Facebook data leak. I thought for a minute then answered truthfully 'No'. When I really considered it, I had always assumed that any data that I give Facebook (intentionally or unintentionally) is for sale to the highest bidder. This just confirmed it.

I'd be annoyed if my bank did this, but Facebook? Scorpion's gonna sting, its in their nature.

UK surgeon suspects his PC was hacked to target Syrian hospital

IHateWearingATie
Mushroom

Did think this was unlikely when I read the story in the Telegraph (yes yes, I read the Torygraph - I go there for the Matt and Alex cartoons, honestly). From the article there would seem to be no evidence of a hack, just his suspicions that you can get 'co-ordinates' from a skype chat.

Probably a mix of triangulated cell phone, satellite imagery and maybe a snitch on the ground to help them properly target the operating theatre :(

No, Sierra Leone did not just run the world's first 'blockchain election'

IHateWearingATie

Re: So what was blockchain used for?

"And the result is 100% guaranteed correct."

If by correct you mean 'tallied correctly' then yes. If by 'correct' you mean 'without any kind of fraud' then no, it can't do that. There are plenty of election exploits that blockchain isn't an answer for (see Tower Hamlets mayoral election as an example).

Blockchain is a cunning technology, but lets not pretend it can fix all election ills.

Airbus ditches Microsoft, flies off to Google

IHateWearingATie

Re: Drank the Google Kool aid

"Google docs is more modern, it was designed bfrom the outset to be web based, office is a hybrid abomination, not very good at either."

From my direct experience, I would assume "more modern" on their spreadsheet app means "doesn't do the stuff I need it to"

Office can be a pain (particularly when Excel in its latest incarnation decides that I have been using it for too long and starts munching extra CPU cycles for no reason, necessitating all Excel windows being closed and opened again), but at least it has the functionality I need. Where was COUNTIFS for so long (a quick google tells me finally been added very recently)? Why is sorting such a pain in the arse?

IHateWearingATie

Re: Drank the Google Kool aid

Id hate to be forced to use the g suite only. My wife is forced to at her work and regularly brings in her own laptop with O365 on it to get stuff done.

A client I worked for used the g-suite so I gave it a go (brave, given how much my wife moans about it). My experience:

Email - fine. I preferred outlook but that was only because I know it well, both had their plus and minus points.stuck with Google without issue really.

Spreadsheets - the Google version is severely limited. Quickly moved back to excel in my own laptop.

Word and PowerPoint equivalent - as spreadsheets. Terrible. Quickly moved back.

Files. It was fine so stuck with it. One drive generally sucks, so hard for Google to be worse!

Rant launches Eric Raymond's next project: Open-source the UPS

IHateWearingATie
Pint

Re: What?

Post of the day right there!!

Most IT contractors want employment benefits if clobbered with IR35

IHateWearingATie
Trollface

Troll 1

Commentards 0

Don't feed the troll!

Deep in remote Oz, an antenna has 'heard' the oldest stars

IHateWearingATie
Mushroom

Utter rubbish

It's clearly that microwave oven at the Big Bang Burger Bar doesn't have sufficient shielding.

(With apologies to Douglas Adams)

New Google bias lawsuit claims company fired chap who opposed discrimination

IHateWearingATie
Meh

Re: Does that mean...

The 7th downvote comes because there are 14 upvotes, and a part of me enjoys the symmetry of seeing 14 up and 7 down.

Now, nobody touch it and the balance will be maintained.....

Icahn't get right Xerox Fuji merger spoils, cries activist investor Carl

IHateWearingATie

Just because he's a git, doesn't mean he's wrong

Complex financial shenanigans like this are rarely in the interest of the shareholders long term. Generally these types of moves are more about satisfying the career ambitions of the CEO, or a cunning plan to affect the short term stock price for options maturing.

I don't know the details of this one, and it could be a great idea, but I'd be shocked if it works out well in the long term

New Sky thinking: Media giant makes dish-swerving move on Netflix territory

IHateWearingATie
FAIL

Re: I told you years ago ...

@Andy The Hat

Erm, no.

If that was the intention then the approach would have been very very different. I was involved at the start of this in early 2010 and can confirm that your conspiracy theory like thoughts are complete rubbish

IHateWearingATie

Re: What??

Now TV has a very cut down range of channels and formats

Google can't innovate anymore, exiting programmer laments

IHateWearingATie

Thought experiment

If you were a hiring manager and he applied for a job, would you take the risk of a similar hatchet job when he left?

Mass limit proposed so boffins can tell when they've fingered a brown dwarf or a fat planet

IHateWearingATie

Units of Measure!!

Kilograms?

What happening to the accepted measure of mass on El Reg, the KiloJub

I demand an apology. And the article to be amended to a mass unit we can all appreciate.

DXC execs: Here's another deadline for skills profiling

IHateWearingATie
Pint

What about ticking everything, or at least everything that you could bullshit your way through? Probably best leave out the ones that need proper skills for them get go (gas engineer for example), but my experience is that you can get away with most things for at least 6 months...

Remember those holy tech wars we used to have? Heh, good times

IHateWearingATie
Mushroom

SPLITTER!

Clearly VIM is the champion we should support in the war against the hated Emacs

Meltdown, Spectre: The password theft bugs at the heart of Intel CPUs

IHateWearingATie

Maybe we dodged a bullet?

Given it's taken super-boffins to find this one and no one has yet reported exploits in the wild, have we dodged a bullet on this one?

Lots of fundamental development process rethinking required in the semi-conductor world required....

You mean Google updated its smartwatch OS and nobody noticed?

IHateWearingATie
Unhappy

Same her - I'd love to buy new shiny shiny but nothing has tickled my fancy yet so the SmartWatch 3 continues on...

Apple whispers how its face-fingering AI works

IHateWearingATie
Thumb Up

That is the best suggestion I've seen so far. We need to get this out as the next 'cool thing' as I'd love to see hipsters around Old Street waving a plastic 80s He-Man at an iPhone to unlock it

Donald, YOU'RE FIRED: Rogue Twitter worker quits, deletes President Trump's account

IHateWearingATie
WTF?

Re: Fake news

I suspect you missed the point of the post?

Russia, America dig into tug-of-war over Bitcoin laundering suspect

IHateWearingATie

Life in prison in the US or a safe trip to Moscow followed by .... sneaky work laundering ill gotten gains for security officials more like!

Support team discovers 'official' vendor paper doesn't rob you blind

IHateWearingATie

Re: Common English words with very different meanings.....

Telling an american about rugby can be a little fraught when describing a certain position in the front row as my Dad discovered talking to a stranger at DIsney World....

Terry Pratchett's unfinished works flattened by steamroller

IHateWearingATie

Re: I'm touched by the weirdness of this request...

I wouldn't start with Unseen Academicals or Raising Steam, two of the last Discworld series as I'm not sure they are as good as the others. Felt like he was losing his bite, particularly in Raising Steam *ducks and runs for cover*

Hard to pick a favourite, but I would probably start with Guards Guards and then follow the Commader Vimes focused ones for a bit.

Speaking in Tech: Comin' attcha live, raw and uncut from VMworld

IHateWearingATie
Unhappy

Found it difficult to hear part way in once the speaker in the hall then music started

Vodafone won't pay employee expenses for cups of coffee

IHateWearingATie
WTF?

Never worked at a company that would cover my normal lunch, no matter what I was doing or where I was. Restaurants with clients etc, but otherwise no.

Similarly for breakfast, unless I was in a hotel. Neither of these seem unfair.

Virgin Media broadband latency headaches still not fixed six months on

IHateWearingATie

This is why I refused the SH3

Moved house recently and had VM installed as it was a new build bloody miles from the nearest FTTC enabled cabinet. The engineer was reluctant but in the end let my keep my SH2 from my old place. Good thing too it looks like!

The life and times of Surface, Microsoft's odds-defying fondleslab

IHateWearingATie

Typing this on a Surface Book

Once they sorted out the drivers I've found it to be a great laptop. It's expensive, but IT dept pays so that isn't my problem!

I like the look of the Surface Pro (5) as well, but the Surface Book is more stable and I like the feel of a proper keyboard.

I had the choice of the Dell XPS instead, but the screen ratio wasn't right - the 3:2 of the Surface Book works much better for me.

If you went back to even 2014 I can't see that I would have believed that I would be happy with a Microsoft own brand laptop, but here we are!

Virgin Media biz service goes TITSUP* across London

IHateWearingATie

Redundant fibre, same duct.

Client that I worked for previously thought they had redundant fibre connections going out different ends of their main site. Turns out both fibres ended up in the same duct somewhere which unfortunately was wrecked by a JCB.

Well, that escalated quickly: Qualcomm demands iPhone, iPad sales ban in America

IHateWearingATie
Gimp

You missed the REAL story...

Apple press office actually responded to your request for comment. Is there a thaw in relations?

(probably not if you keep calling them the Cupertino idiot tax operation)

Blighty's Department for Culture, Media & Sport gets 'digital' rebrand

IHateWearingATie
Happy

Re: Keep it Simple

Health? Spending £50bn doesn't deserve its own department?

Education?

Welfare?

Agriculture and fisheries?

Just a few to mention that might be big enough for for their own department, and would still fit on the fingers of one hand for those MPs from Norfolk :)

Photobucket says photo-f**k-it, starts off-site image shakedown

IHateWearingATie

Nothing of course.

But I suspect the AC who posted this expects a service commensurate with the amount that was paid.

I.e. none!

Murdoch's £11.7bn Sky takeover referred to competition regulator

IHateWearingATie

Re: Why not just say NO?

Its all about ensuring the right process is followed, or OFCOM will have legal challenges coming out of their ears.

Rule of law is still one of the things that we try and uphold.

Tanks for the memories: Building a post-Microsoft Office cloud suite

IHateWearingATie

My wife's work use the G Suite , but have so many exceptions (particularly in marketing where she works for Excel and Powerpoint - files going back and forward to agencies etc) that I do wonder if they are saving any money and would just be better off going for a 365 licence per user.

I was forced to use the G Suite working at a previous client - it was okay but not great. Couldn't go over to it permanently - you'd have to prise Excel from my cold dead fingers!

Ex-NASA bod on Gwyneth Paltrow site's 'healing' stickers: 'Wow. What a load of BS'

IHateWearingATie
Pint

Why I'm a consultant.

Most on here get annoyed when they read stuff like this.

I think "how do I get the contact details of their customers so I can sell equally expensive useless tat to the rich morons"

I've been told I have no morals - too right, I sold them years ago.

Wowee, it's Samsung's next me-too AI gizmo: The Apple HomePod

IHateWearingATie

Apart from being connected to Apple music, this seems to be a real me-too product that really doesn't do anything more than the Echo can.

Maybe the sound quality is a little better (not that i would be able to tell though). But that's it? Pretty poor effort from apple.

Much-hyped Ara Blackphone LeEco Essential handset introduced

IHateWearingATie
Go

With 128GB as standard, few people will need an SD slot

My guess is that with 128GB in as standard, there are going to be few people who will miss the lack of an SD card slot.

I'm surprised at the lack of a headphone jack (probably a deal breaker for me) and no version with a second SIM card slot though (targeted at bits of the Asian market).

El Reg straps on the Huawei Watch 2

IHateWearingATie
Gimp

Scuba diving with a smart watch??

Unless you're tech diving and tracking run time against your deco schedule, most people generally use some kind of dive computer rather than a watch. You'd have to take it off anyway to get your arm through the wetsuit / drysuit sleeve. And given large mound of kit needed for diving you're not saving much in the way of weight or hassle.

Even when tech diving, I used to use a Suunto (plus a spare, depending on what I was doing) in guage mode as having depth and time in the same place was useful.

Not sure that criticising a smartwatch for not being able to survive a scuba dive is that fair a criticism !

IHateWearingATie
Stop

Re: Reasons to be Wear-y

I'm seriously annoyed that nothing to beat the smartwatch 3 has come out yet. I want new shiny shiny!

Its an ugly thing, but it does have some plus points that a lot have but few bring together in a single watch:

- Uses the same cable to charge as my phone (micro USB) - no proprietary cable to lose or forget

- Lasts 2 days or more

- All the usual notification goodness

- Inbuilt GPS so not relying on my phone for Strava tracking

- Always on screen for looking at the time that doesn't kill the battery (why aren't there more using the transreflective approach - seems to work well on this)

- Costs less than a mid range phone

To be honest, I want a smartwatch 4 - everything this one does but better looking (and for Sony to start making the steel straps again so I can find one that costs less than the watch itself)

Faking incontinence and other ways to scare off tech support scammers

IHateWearingATie
Gimp

Damn it.

I only get these damn calls on my work mobile during the day, never at home.

I suspect purring "what are you wearing, I hope it's black leather" when sat at a desk in the clients office may be a career limiting move...

PC repair chap lets tech support scammer log on to his PC. His Linux PC

IHateWearingATie

Re: For the phone scammers ...

Ah. For those guys you need to give the address 4 Poets Way, Harrow, HA1 1SG.

Poets way is a very short connecting road between two others just behind the Harrow council offices. There are no houses in it, but the road and postcode is correct and they won't know that till they get there :)

IBM: Customer visit costing £75 in travel? Kill it with extreme prejudice

IHateWearingATie
Pint

Re: Hmm

Ah Cobalt

What a miserable hole in the ground that was. I can only imagine the panic that set in when the car refused to start and you thought you may be stuck there.

Hope you claimed for the resulting mental trauma as well.

Unpaid tech contractor: 'I have to support my family. I have no money for medicines'

IHateWearingATie

The wife is a contractor and the national retailer for whom she works regularly screws the payment and she finally gets the cash weeks after it was due as the accounts department mainly employs zombies from Shaun of the Dead.

As a result she keeps a good reserve as I thought was the case for all contractors? It's a bad situation to be in and they have my sympathy but I thought all contractors keep some cash in reserve for situations like this?

PS in case you're wondering, she stays working there as they agreed to part time hours that work for her and it's 5 mins from the kids school. Some months they do pay on time. Even if it's not the right amount!

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