* Posts by J.G.Harston

3710 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009

UK tech industry pushing up salaries – but UI devs out of luck

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: How are these going rates?

Because the UK sneers at technical skills and pays us dirt, sadly.

I've just been emailed this job:

"Senior Business Support Officer, playing a crucial role in ensuring smooth operations and providing exceptional support to our clients and internal teams. Your dedication, attention to detail, and strong organizational skills will be vital in maintaining the high standards we set for ourselves.

£10.90 per hour"

This is 45p more than minimum wage.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: IT is like being a footballer, you only got so much time to get your wedge!

2023 and people are still going to university in order to get jobs resetting passwords and unjamming printers.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: The only role category to see earning fall was mid-level UX and UI designers

1a: Grey out inactive options, DON'T REMOVE THEM FROM THE DAMN INTERFACE!!!! I have mother***** had it with these mother****** snakes programs that remove options they think you don't want to know about, so it's impossible to discover that they are there until you have done some unexplained esoteric operation that magiclly adds the option to a menu.

The future of digital healthcare could be a two-metre USB cable

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I had my final ENT post-surgery consulatation via video conferencing, using a 1/4-inch USB camera I happened to have taped to a wooden splint so I could guide it around the back of my mouth.

Intel mulls cutting ties to 16 and 32-bit support

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Re: ARM Comparison?

I've examined the ARM64 archetecture in the context of writing an assembler for it, and I can't say that ARM64 is simplified compared to ARM32.

NHS England spends £8M to extend Microsoft deals by a month

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Re: Maybe not Linux but Office maybe ditchable

Gets CD backup out...

accuRx - a prescription lookup system

barcode scanner - scans barcodes

cardiolink - connects to sensors that measure heart "stuff"

cardioview - views the data collected by cardiolink

crescendo - dunno

digiscript - transmitting presciptions electronically

dssplayer - dunno

dymolabel - driver for dymo printer to print labels on sample tubes

easylog - logs something

EMIS - patient records system

fujiscan - driver for fujitsu scanner for scanning barcodes

ib4w - can't remember

iMail driver - a printer driver that sends the "printout" as email

inrstar - again, can't remember

JayExDisplay - controls those big dot-matrix signs that say "Mrs Jones, see Dr. Smith"

LogTag Analyser - analyses logtags?

microlife - you tell me

numed intelligent interface - errrr

ecgviewer - views ecgs

scriptswitch - alternative to accuRx, prescription lookup system

SecaCario - alternative to cardiolink

spacelab - errr...

spriometry - errr....

SSV Radar - errr....

icg endpoint - ....

lexacom - dicatation software

sophos - virus control

systmone - the other patient record system

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Re: Maybe not Linux but Office maybe ditchable

You do SystmOne, I'll do EMIS. It'll be a batch file with one line run C:\Programs\SystmTwo\SystmTwo.exe -skin EMIS ;)

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Maybe not Linux but Office maybe ditchable

In my installation archive I have (counts....) 44 seperate clinical applications installation archives. To switch to a different operating system you'd need all of them to run on that other operating system. And that's just for GP practices, it doesn't include hospital stuff.

The clincial applications writers write for Windows because that's what's there.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Exactly what are they extending licenses on? I completed the roll-out of Windows 10 in my bit of the NHS a couple of years ago, and was made redundant because, well, we'd completed the roll-out. So, what's left that's still outstanding?

Cheapest, oldest, slowest part fixed very modern Mac

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I have some USB hardware where one version will not recognise hubs, so devices must be plugged directly into it. The other version recognises hubs, but as soon as something is plugged in the hub it collapses itself under continuous interupts. It's a documented problem, and the recommended fix is "don't use hubs".

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Its always the simple things

yea glods! Lights on the same circuit as power? Is this where the phrase "spanish practices" came from?

Don't panic. Google offering scary .zip and .mov domains is not the end of the world

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Isn't some of this down to the nonsense of expanding domain names outside the 7-bit ASCII/ANSI character set,

Cisco: Don't use 'blind spot' – and do use 'feed two birds with one scone'

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And what adjective do they suggest for a connector that has external contacts that is inserted into a connector with internal contacts?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

But the *whole* *point* is *NOT* to feed the bloody birds, but to *KILL* them, get rid of them, remove them, destroy them. Not preserve and encourage them.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Ah, so it's if you *build* a house, it must have x, y, z. That's very different to what the OP said.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Ooohh! Those waistcoat-suit combos! It's like going back in time!

J.G.Harston Silver badge

So what happens, do I get fined if I don't have a detector in my kitchen? I get fined for not living my life as the authorities demand I do? Isn't that..... that political fad that was popular in the '30s that we must not name.

Your security failure was so bad we have to close the company … NOT!

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Re: Keyboard issues

Nope, not Win-SPACE here. Win-SPACE ;'# Win-SPACE ;'# no change.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Keyboard issues

There's a key combo that cycles through keyboard layout/keyboard language which I can never remember and accidently press often enough to think "not again!" and have to hunt out the taskbar control.

Pornhub walls off Utah in age-verification law protest

J.G.Harston Silver badge

we may even get a chance to vote the numpties, who think the crap is OK, out of office

But the other two parties also think this crap is OK.

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How do they know the client machine is in Utah? The IP address just tells you its IP address, not its postal address. Google claims my IP address is in Barnsley.

CERN celebrates 30 years since releasing the web to the public domain

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Re: *EVERY* form of communication

The first printers were idealistic dreamers dreaming of making information free. (as in free speech)

J.G.Harston Silver badge

*EVERY* form of communication

We've got this great invention called "printing", which will be able to break down infomation barriers and spread knowledge...

Ooops, who would have though it would transform into a mix of a tabloid, a sex-shop, a dark street and a branch of Hatred Inc.

Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

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Ok Lords, *you* demonstrate how anonymous age verification is possible, within a universe where human beings have the capability to lie.

Shocks from a hairy jumper crashed a PC, but the boss wouldn't believe it

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Re: Not quite the same

I once worked in a 1970s council ziggurat where every morning the cleaners had to spray the carpets with water after vacuuming them to get rid of the static buildup.

UK PM Sunak plans to allocate just £1bn to semiconductor industry

J.G.Harston Silver badge

What do they mean by "government support"? The best support any government could do is get out of the damn way.

UK becomes Unicorn Kingdom, where AI fairy dust earns King's ransom

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Re: How many times?

Steve Radford.

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Why would I be a maths teacher when I can make more money as a plumber and not have to deal with 30 screaming self-entitled brats?

Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real

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Re: Buying time

One of my teaching jobs involved clipping round the ears kids attempting to destroy the computers they were on by flipping the power switch as fast as possible. There is ABSOLUTETLY *NO* other reason for flipping a switch as fast as possible other than attempted destruction.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Buying time

Shutdown is a noun. You need a verb there, such as shut down.

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: How secure *IS* your system

Six characters isn't Econet, that's Level 1 and Level 2 *Fileserver*. Econet is agnostic of what you send over it, as is the NetFS filing system that talks over the network.

Level 3 and SJ fileservers uses 10-character passwords, and SJ introduced NetFS_Op 66 GetEncryptionKey which allowed you to use encrypted passwords bound to the requesting client.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: How secure *IS* your system

What was in queue one?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: How secure *IS* your system

Oh god, not the execrable Amcon E-net?

More ads in Windows 11 Start Menu could be last straw for some

J.G.Harston Silver badge

In some of the organisations I've worked in, adverts in Windows itself would breach the *users'* terms of employment.

Automation is great. Until it breaks and nobody gets paid

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Payroll, not automation...

That's a long queue.

Tupperware looking less airtight than you'd think

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Re: Probably too late now but

You've invented the sticky label!

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Re: The death knell ...

How the hell does hand washing warp 1/8 inch thick high-stress-resistant glass?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: That's put the lid on things

My wife dragged me to a "networking" event. It turned out to be a marketing thing selling advice on how to advertise products....

Why Microsoft is really abandoning evaporative coolers at its Phoenix DCs

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Re: Phoenix

Corsists hot, it's the boiling point of water!

South Korea fines Google $32M for using market power to stymie rival app store

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Your bread is for sale in the Co-op? Sorry, your bread won't be sold here in Asda.

Ok, I'll just go to the Co-op.

Is it time to tip open source developers? Here's one way to do it

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Good luck with it, but

Yes, the only way software writers are going to get any money from software users is if the providers refuse to ptovide until the consumers hand over money. You can't live by giving stuff away for free and hoping people volunteer to pay for it, you have to force them to pay by refusing to give them the product until they do so.

Techie called out to customer ASAP, then: Do nothing

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Re: Seems there would be an easier solution

I keep an old length of 15mm PVC piping in the back of the car for just such problems. It's got just enough flexibility in it to bend through a removed floorboard into the floor void, and is long enough with the addition of the Mark One human arm to get across about 16ft of floor.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: The BOFH had a term for this

Or the old "stretched feet under desk, network no longer works". I fixed that one with the simple expediant of putting the damn router on the damn desk.

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Re: This is a job for .... Justin Case!

I've had a few jobs where I was paid to do nothing, because the work was in a secure area that required two people present, but the work only required one person. Usually overnights in banks. I would take a book and some teabags.

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The big loss is the 30-year archive of decent stuff.

Bank rewrote ads for infosec jobs to stop scaring away women

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Re: The last interview I had

It's affected the STEM courses as well now. £30,000 degree courses in order to get a job changing printer cartidges.

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verb-noun count failure

"*are* april fools" or "is an april *fool*"

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Jobs in "cyber"

I'm getting recruiment emails for the following jobs "in cyber": Field Service Engineer, IT Engineer, Desktop support, Service desk engineer, Multifunction printer/copier engineer.

"Cyber" is the new "uses something that uses electricity"

Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it

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In Rod we trust?

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Re: Well

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