* Posts by big_D

6775 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Nov 2009

Why are fervid Googlers making ad-blocker-breaking changes to Chrome? Because they created a monster – and are fighting to secure it

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Re: Or, simply...

Banned on my DNS and blocked by NoScript.

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Re: Or, simply...

That doesn't bother me as much. I'm not blocking adverts per se, I have nothing against them, in general. I'm against the external sites tracking me across the internet and delivering malware to my device.

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Re: Or, simply...

I don't use Chrome and I don't use Google for search.

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Or, simply...

move ad-blocking outside the browser to the DNS level.

On my mobile PCs I have all the major tracking, advertising, malware and Facebook sites (the later around 1,500 on its own) blocked in my hosts file.

At home I have a more extensive list, using Pi-Hole.

FYI: Your Venmo transfers with those edgy emojis aren't private by default. And someone's put 7m of them into a public DB

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Re: Can someone tell me why Venmo is a thing?

Isn't that what online banking is for? Ask them for their account number and just transfer the right amount over.

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Re: Can someone tell me why Venmo is a thing?

And over here (Germany), the waitresses are used to splitting the bill 4, 6, 12 ways etc. They just go to each person in turn, cross off what that person had, tally it up and tell them how much they owe.

It isn't difficult, it is just basic maths.

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Re: Can someone tell me why Venmo is a thing?

Over here, Germany, you generally each pay your part of the bill. The waitress just crosses off what you've paid for and tallies it up and gives you the bill for your portion. You then pay with either cash or debit card.

Or if one person gets the bill, they "get" the bill, as in they have invited the others at his expense. With one group of friends, we take it in turns to pay - but we don't have a selfish sod in the group, who chooses the most expensive fish on the menu, just because he isn't paying. Sometimes I'll eat a salad, sometimes a steak, the others as well, over time, it evens itself out.

On a couple of occasions we've been out with the company and you either pay back the next day/week or you transfer the money from your bank account to theirs. Often, on a Friday, someone will go to the take-away and often somebody will have no cash, so the person collecting fronts for them and they pay back the next week.

This isn't Boeing to end well: Plane maker to scrap some physical cert tests, use computer simulations instead

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Boffin

Re: A new name you say.

Only if it can take to the air again after crashing and bursting into flames...

Hmm, a rubberised undercarriage?

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Facepalm

Re: It all works fine in theory

PHB: "So, we've proven we can't write reliable software, what shall we do next?"

Technical Section: "Replace hardware tests with more unreliable software!"

PHB: "Great! Next round is on me."

Dilbert: "Erm, does nobody see a flaw in the plan?"

PHB: "Don't be a downer Dilbert, my grandson told me software is the future!"

10 PRINT Memorial in New Hampshire marks the birthplace of BASIC

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Re: In the UK...

Yes, Beeb BASIC was great, although I only experienced it later on an Electron.

I had a ZX81, VIC=20, Memotech MTX500 and an Amstrad CPC6128, before moving to Amigas and MS-DOS/Windows PCs.

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Re: In the UK...

Yes, a plethora of CP/M machines. My first weekend job, I think I was 14 at the time, was refurbishing and repairing computers for a company dealing with bankrupt stock. I got to play around with a lot of great kit, that I would otherwise never been able to use/afford.

A lot of Apple ][s, some with CP/M boards, a Shelton Signet, a little UNIX box and a dozen different makes of CP/M, even one using a 5" (no, not a mistype) disk. I have fond memories of playing Colossal Cave, Mugwump and StarTrek (on a VAX 11/780).

I used my home computers for programming a lot and learnt machine code and, later, assembler - back then, with 1K, there was no room for assembler, you just entered the byte codes.

At school, we never got Apple, RM or BBC, we had PETs and the accounts teacher bought a bunch of C64s with accounting software. At college, they still had PETs, then switched to MS-DOS IBM PC clones

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In the UK...

In the UK, Sinclair computers and later the Acorn/BBC Micro both used versions of BASIC.

And the Acorn Atom, before the ZX80, and the Oric 1 and Atmos, the Elan, Amstrad, Memotech and dozens of others, plus the usual US import suspects, Atari 400/800, Tandy TRS80 / Color, Commodore, Apple, Sharp... I can remember typing in listings from C&VG, Practical Computing and Your Computer back in the day. Or even the Japanese MSX brigade.

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

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The Swordfish was a great plane and useful in many sea battles. I remember the one in Hendon, when I was a kid.

I'd like a De Havilland Beaver. I've just rediscovered "The Most Dangerous Game" as an audio book - loved the story as a kid - and would love to fly up and down the Finnish/Russian frontier with one.

Greatest threat facing IT? Not the latest tech giant cockwomblery – it's just tired engineers

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Re: That's why when importing data...

Just to add, the my user account doesn't even have local admin rights on my own PCs.

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Re: That's why when importing data...

I am a domain admin, but my user account is a normal user. We have secondary administration accounts for administering and we don't log on locally with those.

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Facepalm

Re: Estimating Software Projects

Yes, back then you wrote reams of code (Assembler or COBOL anyone?) and you really felt like you had achieved something.

I still get some of that with modern languages, but these days a lot of it is just threading together a bunch of library calls. A lot of it is rinse and repeat using templated code, which just isn't the same.

My first day at college was great. We had to write a simple program to calculate the minimum number of coins a person would receive in change. A task that took all of 10 minutes. What to do with the remaining hour of the class? We were using PETs and I had used them at school, so I just bashed in some machine code to draw a border around the screen, split it in 2, display the input amount in 8x8 graphics at the top of the screen and draw little piles at the bottom to represent the change.

The lecturer looked at my screen and said "wow, I didn't know you could do that with a computer!" Oh, boy, and I was the one there to learn something!

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I can remember a month of 80+ hour weeks to get a project released (and driving an additional hour and a half to the office each day, and back home again). I was in a daze by the end of the month, but the project was released on time.

I then took 3 days off and slept for over 30 hours! My tax bill that month was also more than my normal gross salary!

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Been there, done that...

We had an Essbase OLAP cube. Back in the day, Essbase couldn't calculate a full cube, or rather it could, but it took bloody ages! (In a cube with just bottom level data, it took an hour to caluclate, to re-calculate a filled cube, it would need 8 hours+).

So, obviously, the standard procedure was a bottom level export, clear, import bottom level, calculate, job done.

Only, I got distracted and started at step 2! I sat there with a P45 flashing before my eyes. I was new on the project and I asked a colleague who had been on the project for a couple of years what the procedure was. His answer wasn't very helpful: take the previous export, load it up and blame the missing data on the users!

Instead, I went to the finance director, explained that we had a mishap with the process and I would have to load up the previous export and re-run the journal and it would take longer than usual. He okayed it and I informed the users that the "re-calculation" would take 2 hours, instead of 1.

The journal file worked, we re-calculated and the users were told to double check their last edits. We lost seemingly 2 transactions.

Honesty works.

IT pro screwed out of unused vacation pay, bonus by HPE after judge rules: The law is a mess but it's still the law

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Re: Bar Stewards

Thanks for clearing that up. It doesn't sound like a very healthy environment.

Makes me kind of glad I don't work in the US.

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Facepalm

Re: Bar Stewards

It was under TUPE, but they didn't do new terms or out. Those on the old contracts were with the new employer for several years in some cases. The manager I wrote about above was made redundant about 18-24 months after the takeover - he took voluntary redundancy and nobody did due diligence on his role before signing off!

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Re: Bar Stewards

The old employer had it in the employment contracts that those were the redundancy conditions (a great employer to work for!) and the company that took over was more services orientated and wanted to keep conditions to the legal minimum where possible, so they tried to remove those redundancy conditions from the contracts of people transferring over. Those of us relatively new to the company (I'd been there less than 2 years) accepted the new contract, as we didn't have anything to lose, those with years of service and a high payout in view refused to sign and got the redundancy payment for their service in the old company paid at the old rate, as far as I can remember.

One manager was made redundant after 35 years of service, got his massive payout, then the new employer worked out he was the only person with any knowledge of around 30 different systems in the company, so he came back for around 18 months on a good contract to teach up a replacement! Nice money, if you can get it.

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Re: Bar Stewards

That wouldn't be valid here. For an employment contract, you can only sign for what is in the contract, any additional clauses regarding remuneration, holiday etc. have to be in the contract or they are null and void.

Any changes to the conditions need to be signed by both parties, before they can become binding.

At one takeover, some employees were on very good conditions (E.g. one months salary for each year of service, in the case of redundancy) and the new employer wanted to use standard terms (one week per year of service, after 2 years, up to 10 max years, ISTR). For employees with 20 - 30 years service, that was a huge reduction in redundancy compensation, so they refused to sign new contracts and carried on with the old ones. It was very expensive, when they finally had to make some of them redundant.

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Re: Bar Stewards

Do you not get a signed copy of the employment contract, when you sign in America? Over here, both parties get a copy, so just handing over his copy should have resolved the issue...

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Paris Hilton

Copy?

Whenever I sign a contract, there are always original signed copies for each party involved. Surely all White had to do was show the judge his original employment contract, signed by HP and himself?

Hongmeng, there's no need to feel down: It's patently obvious this is Huawei's homegrown OS

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Re: Interesting...

Again, when this first broke, they said customers would not be affected, Google Play Protect and other Google services would continue to work on existing handsets.

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Interesting...

Google has said that a lack of Android updates after the August exemption expires would be a massive security risk to consumers – and is reportedly "concerned" about what a Huawei-modified version of Android would look like.

Because when the ban was first announced, it said that updates wouldn't be a problem, Huawei would continue to get their updates through AOSP, so no problems. They just wouldn't be able to provide version upgrades or new devices, other than what is already on the market.

So, what has changed their tune?

Germany and South Korea go nuts for 5G while Blighty subsists on test bed crumbs

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Nope, I have to walk about 200M up the road to get a usable (Edge) data signal. I have 4 bars 2G in the office.

But yes, I know I am talking about coverage. I'd like to see them get the 4G coverage (or even 3G) right, before concentrating on 5G.

It feels like they are enthusiastic about one technology, but before they can roll it out properly the next "hot thing" comes along and they just drop implementing "yesterdays" technology in favour of the next thing, without getting it implemented fully/properly.

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German telcos might well have paid over the odds for 5G, but I just wish they'd get 4G working first.

I have an "up to 500mbps" LTE contract. At home I get a whopping 10-15mbps, at work I get between 112 and 350bps (no, I didn't forget the "m") and the Speedtest app usually complains that there is no Internet connection.

Alexa, are you profiting from the illegal storage and analysis of kids' voice commands?

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Alexa record a bit before the keyword - and Amazon submitted a new patent last week, where Alexa will send several seconds of voice to the mother-ship before the keyword is spoken (presumably for "what is the weather outside, Alexa?").

Also you have kids playing around, chatting and somebody asks Alexa something, even in another room, the kids don't suddenly stop talking, so their voices are recorded as well.

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Childcatcher

Re: Will someone think of the children

It could be a case of parents who don't use the technology, don't trust it, don't have it in the house... But their children have friends, their children visit their friends and the friends' parents have Alexa.

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Childcatcher

And if my little Jess is visiting you and you have Alexa in your house? As her guardian, I have not consented to Amazon capturing her voice!

Nope, we're stuffed, shrieks Apple channel as iPhone shipments enter a double-digit spiral

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I've pretty much always had 2 phones, since around 1999, when I have had a company phone.

With my private phone, it is mine, has my contacts on it. The company phone has a company number and the company and my business contacts know the number. It I were to use the company phone privately, I'd have to give all my private contacts a new number every time I changed jobs and the company and business contacts could contact me out of hours.

With 2 phones, I keep my private number, so don't have to keep giving people my new number. When I leave work, I can leave the company phone at home when I go out or I can turn it off altogether.

It is with a heavy heart that we must report that your software has bugs and needs patching: Microsoft, Adobe, SAP, Intel emit security fixes

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I get them in Germany. The hilarious thing is, they only speak English!

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Facepalm

Why Google?

Why the arbitrary 90 days, without taking in feedback. If there are extenuating circumstances, surely it is better to keep a lid on the issue, until it is resolved. I mean, look at Meltdown and Spectre, they kept a lid on that for a year, until everybody, including Google, was ready to release patches. Why didn't Google go public 9 months earlier?

If Microsoft hadn't responded, I could understand Google going public.

If Microsoft had responded, but was still working on it and Google discovered an active exploit, I could understand Google going public.

If Microsoft has responded, is actively working on a fix, but requires another 30 days to properly test the fix doesn't cause other issues, I don't see why Google can't wait 30 days to release their information.

Google actually makes the situation worse in these circumstances. There is a fix in the works, but now Google has given malware developers a heads up to where to look, whilst the systems are still vulnerable.

Not very bright: Apple geniuses spend two weeks, $10,000 of repairs on a MacBook Pro fault caused by one dumb bug

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Re: BS

Except, he probably took the machine with the replaced mainboard / the new laptop home, plugged it into his setup, turned down the brightness and the next time it restarted, the problem had manifested itself again...

Mystery GPS glitch grounds flights, leaves passengers in the bar

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Re: Time

It isn't up to date, but the roads have been there for several decades. It just won't use the direct route or the fast route, it always diverts to Frankfurt. This is / was also true of Google Maps and Nokia Here. They all seem to throw a wobbly at this route.

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Re: Time

Yeah, I hate that my nav system can't seem to cope with the multiple ways, it usually sends me on a 90KM detour when going north/south around Würzburg, it will try and send me over Frankfurt, even though it is in the wrong direction, adds additional kilometers to the journey, is full of road works and traffic jams...

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Re: Time

It was more a comment that we are making things needlessly complicated and often (not specifically air travel) dumbing things down so far that many people can't function without their technological crutches.

I know people who won't leave the house without turning on their navigation system. I use the navigation system in my car maybe 3 or 4 times a year.

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Time

for the pilots to get their maps and sextants back out...

Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings

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Re: Hire immediately

A mate was an op at Plessey on the night shift. He was bored.

He wrote a space invaders on the VAX in DLC, using a spawned process for each sprite and the main routine killing the processes as the sprites got hit.

That was harmless. What wasn't so harmless was another night op getting bored (what is it with night shift and boredom?), he ended up playing Essex MUD, using the modem over the PSS network... That was costly, back then, on its own. Only he was playing a complete team and had 6 sessions going.

Luckily he was good friends with the person responsible for the telephone bill, who managed to spread the 3 figure cost across various projects. Slapped wrist and told not to do it again!

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Re: Hire immediately

I got one of those chats, although it wasn't my fault.

Another student had sabotaged my mates program and they had a small fisticuffs sessions in the corridor. As a witness, I had to join my mate in the professor's office for a "chat", which involved the prof saying the other student was a git, here, want a fag and a glass of scotch?

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Re: Hire immediately

I agree totally.

And I've also managed to bring a few mainframes and minis to their knees over the years.

The classic, related here before, was on a DEC VMS Admin course in Reading. I was bored, the course was covering stuff I already knew, so, for a laugh, I did show users and started logging people off our VAX (each course had their own VAX). It worked fine, so I knocked up a quick bit of DCL that exported the user list to a file and went through the file and logged everybody but big_D off...

Worked a treat. So I went one step further, I turned it into a self-submitting batch file. Submitted it and sat back and relaxed and looked around at frustrated faces as people kept getting logged off...

Only I then made the fatal mistake of logging off myself. That was when I found the fatal flaw in my logic. During the login process, you don't have a username, but you do appear in the "show users" list as <login> and a process ID. ZAP! The login process just wasn't quick enough to get me from <login> to big_D before the batch job had killed my process.

Luckily the instructor saw the funny side, even when he couldn't log onto the console in the computer room. In the end, we had to do a hard reset.

Firefox fires blockers at trackers, Exim tackles command exec flaw, and RDP pops up yet again

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Re: Problematic?

Yeah, I use the strict blocking and I use Pi-Hole for DNS at home, with most tracking sites blacklisted. So far I haven't had any problems with day-to-day surfing.

My daughter did complain that my Internet wasn't working - she said she couldn't get onto Instagram; I told her that Facebook is an untrusted destination in my house, she argued "but it's instagram", I then pointed out that Instagram was also Facebook and she said she would think about using it in the future.

When it comes to DNS over HTTPS, it's privacy in excess, frets UK child exploitation watchdog

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Exactly, and just changing your DNS provider and using DNS over SSL and DNSSEC will also accomplish the same thing.

I use my own DNS server and DNS over SSL and DNSSEC to a backbone DNS provider. My DNS server will also provide DNS over HTTPS to clients in my network.

Praise the lard! Police hook up with Microsoft to school us on National Phish and Chip Day

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Re: Puntastic way to end the week

Here, in Lower Saxony, I've never seen a chippy, let alone a traditional English one.

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Pint

Puntastic way to end the week

Shame we don't have any chippies over here. :-(

Have a beer and think of me as you scoff your cod and chips!

Could you just pop into the network room and check- hello? The Away Team. They're... gone

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Re: BANG!

In Germany electricians have to do an apprenticeship and the head an electrical firm has to have his Meister Certificate (Master Craftsman).

The guy who did the wiring was a Meister, but accidents happen... Unfortunately, the company had been out of business for over a decade when I "discovered" the problem - in all that time, nobody had (luckily) ever plugged anything into that socket!

There's a reason why my cat doesn't need two-factor authentication

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Coat

They keep out the nasties and foil the mischievous.

Ah, well, there's you answer Dabsy, they knew you are mischievous!

The best and worst of GitHub: Repos wiped without notice, quickly restored – but why?

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Re: There's a problem with giving 'value' to aged accounts....

If it is critical, don't outsource it and don't outsource it to a free service or the lowest bidder.