Re: Wot abaht GDPR then?
Nah, you have to do ROT13 twice for added protection.
Posts by J.G.Harston
3719 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009
Page:
Brexit trade deal advises governments to use Netscape Communicator and SHA-1. Why? It's all in the DNA
Monday 4th January 2021 10:12 GMT 
Re: 20 year old tech...
"You didn't ask about divergence and the big fucking tariffs the EU would wallop the UK with if it does diverge"
The EU is only able to wallop EU consumers with tarrifs. Whatever their delusions they can't control how foreigners (to them) wallop their own citizens. What they gonna do, send the gunboats in? Telling furriners how to run their own countries went oh so well in the 19th century didn''t it?
Monday 4th January 2021 10:11 GMT
"(b) nobody gets round to updating the documentation."
That's why I work so hard to get our Parish Council documents to specify outcomes not methods. And that's sometimes a hard task.
Me: Recommend a total number for the borough such that our town is allocated an whole number.
Q: What would that be?
Me: Something between 45 and 49.
Q: So we're going to pick a number between 45 and 49?
Me: No! We're recommending that *they* pick a number which would give our town a neat whole number, which would be between 45 and 49 for the whole borough.
Q: So, we're recommending between 45 and 49?
Me: No! We're recommending that *THEY* pick a number that gives *US* a *WHOLE* number, *NOT* what that number should be.
Q: So what number are we recommending?
ARRRRFGFGGHH!!!!
My website has raised its anchor and set sail into the internet oceans without me
The curse of knowing a bit about IT: 'Could you just...?' and 'No I haven't changed anything'
Wednesday 30th December 2020 20:15 GMT
Re: Sorting other people's stuff
About five years or so ago my graphics card borked, so I took the PC to a shop to get a replacement card. The fitter expressed amazement that it booted to working in less than five seconds. Fairly ordinary no-name PC with WinXP, but regularly "cleaned" and de-crufted.
Today, at work, I'm often waiting half an hour to even get to the logon screen with Win10 on the PCs I maintain, and then another five minutes to log on.
Buggy chkdsk in Windows update that caused boot failures and damaged file systems has been fixed
Sunday 27th December 2020 15:51 GMT
Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......
My virus checker detects me modifying a ZIP file and kills the running application - AND DELETES THE ZIP FILE!!!!. I have to turn it off for a couple of minutes while doing it. It's lately spotting another application creating RTF files and kills that as well. Grrr.
North of England NHS buyers name IT consultants who got in on £200m framework deal
Windows might have frozen – but at least my feet are toasty
'Following the science' rhetoric led to delay to UK COVID-19 lockdown, face mask rules
Tuesday 22nd December 2020 12:49 GMT
Another nonsense is how tiers and lockdown levels have been *negotiated*. You don't negotiate how much snow has fallen, or how much rain there is, it's a fact. Things like tier levels should be a simple case of adding up numbers, fn(cases,speed,facilities) or something. Not "ooo, we don't like five feet of snow, we insist that it is four feet of snow".
And you thought that $999 Mac stand was dear: Steve Wozniak's Apple II doodles fetch $630,272 at auction
What does my neighbour's Tesla have in common with a stairlift?
Friday 11th December 2020 11:43 GMT
Re: Summon the lawyers!
It's a serious point. Running a power cable over the public highway is strictly speaking illegal, and it is contrary to The Regs (exporting power outside the equipotential zone), so will invalidate your buildings insurance. I remember this being discussed back when the 16th Edition was being drafted back in the early 1990s when I was doing my sparks training.
This product is terrible. Can you deliver it in 20 years’ time when it becomes popular?
Friday 18th December 2020 12:33 GMT
"All the modern burglar needs today is a photo of you holding your door keys outside your house"
Cruise, Kidman and an unfortunate misunderstanding at the local chemist
Up yours, Europe! Our 100% prime British broadband is cheaper than yours... but also slower and a bit of a rip-off
Leaked draft EU law reveals tech giants could face huge 6% turnover fines if they don't play by Europe's rules
Tuesday 15th December 2020 12:46 GMT
Re: So what's the actual aim?
But this isn't the equivalent of holding The Sun to account for what's in The Sun. This is the equivalent of holding The Royal Mail to account for what somebody wrote in a letter.
If Richard Cranium posts something foul on Facebook, Richard Cranium is the culpable person not Facebook.
Oh, no one knows what goes on behind locked doors... so don't leave your UPS in there
Pure frustration: What happens when someone uses your email address to sign up for PayPal, car hire, doctors, security systems and more
Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain
Friday 4th December 2020 11:50 GMT
Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"
Years ago I heard Waiting... on the radio and in my head they were the Daily Express tramps.
That ages me. ;)
There are two sides to every story, two ends to every cable
Friday 4th December 2020 11:50 GMT
Re: IT Guru
I've done similar where as I walk up to the desk I can see the slightly off plug, and as I approach the user I push it in with my foot while asking them to explain the problem - which miraculously no longer exists.
The more common one is a user has reported some "computer won't work" issue, I sit at the desk, turn everything on, get to the logon screen* and ask: so, what's the problem? And they say: what? how did you do that?
*or open the printer dialog, or the file-open dialog, or the file manager, or the etc. etc.
Arm at 30: From Cambridge to the world, one plucky British startup changed everything
On the 11th day of Christmas TalkTalk took from me... the email address of my company
Tuesday 1st December 2020 12:57 GMT
Re: "...own domain raises a flag with me"
In Sheffield there's been a long-standing shop frontage claiming it's phone number is 01142 2xx-xxxx. Yes, they've put the 2 *both* on the dialling code *and* on the local number, completely destroying it.
Just yesterday I spotted a second one. A take-away. Too thick to notice they have actively gone out of their way to prevent any potential customers contacting them.
Mysterious Utah monolith mysteriously disappears without trace
Calls for 'right to repair' electronics laws grow louder across Europe
Considering the colonisation of Mars? Werner Herzog would like a word
Wednesday 25th November 2020 12:37 GMT
Why do you want to colonise Mesopotamia, we're perfectly fine here in the African Rift Valley.
Why do you want to colonise Europe, we're perfectly fine here in Mesopotamia.
Why do you want to colonise Sicily, we're perfectly fine here in Greece.
Why do you want to colonise Britain, we're perfectly fine here in mittle-Europe.
Why do you want to colonise America, we're perfectly fine here in Siberia.
Why do you want to colonise South America, we're perfectly fine here in North America.
Why do you want to colonise Micronesia, we're perfectly fine here in Papua.
Not sunshine, moonlight or good times – blame it on the buggy
When even a power-cycle fandango cannot save your Windows desktop
Friday 20th November 2020 10:32 GMT
I got everything sorted, saved a copy of the desk.ini (or whatever it was called), put a line in autoexec to copy it back, and - crucial part - set a timer to log off after 30mins inactivity. That saved loads of heartache, morning logon everything was neat and tidy; turn off the monitor and wander away, eventually the machine closed itself down.
I also replaced the shutdown screen, replacing "You can now turn the power off" with "You can now turn the power off **or press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to restart**" (my emphasis). Way way way too many times I'd see people approach a logged-off machine and in order to log on they'd turn the power off.
Compsci guru wants 'right to be forgotten' for old email, urges Google and friends to expire, reveal crypto-keys
Not on your Zoom, not on Teams, not Google Meet, not BlueJeans. WebEx, Skype and Houseparty make us itch. No, not FaceTime, not even Twitch
Tuesday 17th November 2020 11:18 GMT
But "share your screen" isn't "share your screen" it's "take over everybody else's screen - which is ****NOT********what I want. I want to...... share my screen (or ideally, just a window). That is, just place an image in my image window ****NOT****** force myself onto everybody else's computer.
See ZoomQs
Tuesday 17th November 2020 10:45 GMT
There's the other flaw - you can't learn how to use it without using it for live. You have to actually be in an actual meeting for any of the "levers" to be visible for you to learn what levers exist and what they do. You run it to experiment with it and it just sits there saying "waiting for host to start a meeting". But the meeting's tomorrow, I deliberately ran it *today* to find out how to use it *BEFORE* tomorrow's meeting specifically so that I wasn't messing about in tomorrow's meeting trying to work out how to use the meeting software.
I don't need to be in an exam hall before being allowed to learn how to write, I'm not forced to write a dissertation before the word processor displays the menu options and responds to keypresses.
Monday 16th November 2020 12:23 GMT
Hear Hear! I'm glad somebody else is saying it. I've been wanting to throw Zoom through a window if I could.
There's no damn title bar, so HTF do I move windows?
I can't "select" a speaker to see what they're saying.
The only way for zoom into a speaker's picture is for *them* to rape forbibly take over your screen and push everything away - and f o r c e y o u r c o m p u t e r t o a c r a w l.
I can't show other people something in my window, I have to either hold a printout in front of the camera, or set a virtual background and hold a blank sheet over the camera.
There's too much extraneous crud. If I resize the window so I can see something else, it resizes the empty bits to keep the empty bits, so I lose about 25% of my screen estate.
And the only way to experiment with it is to participate in an actual meetings. It is completely functionless outside a meeting, so you can fiddle with it to find what the controls are and how to use it, until you're in an actual meeting when you're supposed to be in the actual meeting not fiddling with the computer.
ARRRRFGHH!!!!!!
Panic in the mailroom: The perils of an operating system too smart for its own good
Shock news: NASA lunar ambitions might be a bit too... ambitious
Tax working from home, says Deutsche Bank, because the economy needs that lunch money you’re not spending
Python swallows Java to become second-most popular programming language... according to this index
Microsoft warns against SMS, voice calls for multi-factor authentication: Try something that can't be SIM swapped
Mr President? Donald?! Any chance you can actually decide if Oracle can buy us or do we have to leave?
Tim Berners-Lee asks everyone to do new biz a Solid and let him have another crack at fixing the Web's privacy
Wednesday 11th November 2020 17:58 GMT
But that is *exactly* the issue we are seeing.
Somebody invents writing. Hey, people can communicate with each other, stop that! Well, at least it's difficult as you need to grow loads of papyrus and grind up the ink, so it's difficult for people to use this annoying technology.
Hey, somebody's invented paper, stop that! Well, at least reproduction is long and tedious, so it's difficult to use this annoying technology.
Hey, somebody's invented the moveable type printing press, dammit, now somebody can produce a whole book in ten minutes and now any peasant can afford to communicate any information they like, dammit, STOP IT!!!! STOP THINKING FOR YOURSELVES!!!!!!! DO WHAT WE TELL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
