Bit of a sod for those forced to maintain XP machines due to third party application compatibility issues.
Posts by BongoJoe
1327 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Apr 2010
Script kiddies pwn 1000s of Windows boxes using leaked NSA hack tools
Microsoft raises pistol, pulls the trigger on Windows 7, 8 updates for new Intel, AMD chips
Mark Shuttleworth says some free software folk are 'deeply anti-social' and 'love to hate'
Printer blown to bits by compressed air
Put down your coffee and admire the sheer amount of data Windows 10 Creators Update will slurp from your PC
Friday 7th April 2017 10:23 GMT
Re: "T he owner of the documents agreed to the privacy policy.." (sic)
Precisely. I own very few of the documents I work on; they belong to the authors of those documents. I merely manipulate them so that they can be handed off to a bureau for film, or more often these days for printing direct to press. It's worth noting that the documents I hand off don't belong to the bureau either.
I produce .docx documents each night. Or, rather my applications which I have written do. I have a load of code written in Visual Studio 6 running on a series of XP machines. I use Word 2007, via COM, to write the documents as a report generator tool. Each day there could be around eight or nine documents containing about 150 pages each of proprietry data.
My data.
Using a version of Visual Studio which I haven't given up any rights to the data it produces, on an operating system which is still 'mine' and doesn't have these new, fancy arrangements with Microsoft as to whom owns what or when it can be updated (actually being 'obselete' avoids this particular headache) and I am sure that under the terms of Office 2007 I still own the rights to the data that I create.
Now, from what I understand about copyright law it's quite simple. I own the data within the document but when I send someone the report the document is theirs but the contents are still mine. And they have no rights to distribute the data whatsoever without my express permission, particularly to republish the data.
So, when my customer has a machine crash on a Windows 10 machine and they are sending up the data, perhaps without either knowledge or understanding, they are effectively publishing my data (which is similar to where the legal issues of torrenting comes in, for example). Now, is here that is my customer breaking copyright law is the first question but the second question, which is undoubtably a resounding Yes is Microsoft doing the same having written the code expressly for this purpose.
Note as the copyright owner of the information within the document I haven't given any permission for this data to be transmitted at all. Yes, I know that under copyright laws the data within the document is mine but the document itself (the container, if you like) now belongs to the customer. So, legally, if the document is to be uploaded to Redmond then all the data should be stripped along with the meta-data and the be sent as a zero byte file.
Anything else has to be simply be copyright theft. I can't see it any other way because to assume that every document read or worked on on a Windows 10 machine was created on that same machine is utterly preposterous.
Friday 7th April 2017 06:36 GMT
Re: "T he owner of the documents agreed to the privacy policy.." (sic)
I asked because the owner of the document need not have written it on a Windows machine (think CSV files for the simplest example) and well have been created by someone else.
That document gets sent to someone else whose machine then posts it to Redmond completely without the owner's knowledge or permission.
Microsoft wants screaming Windows fans, not just users
Ex-broadband biz 186k hit by major outage
Tuesday 28th March 2017 19:52 GMT
I used to enjoy the services of Mailbox Internet back in the day and they were a fantastic little company; everything they did was superb and if there ever any issues then a quick call would be straight to one of the guys, seemingly in the server room.
Then 186k took them over and everthing went downhill. My website service was nothing short of a total disaster and I would be on the phone constantly trying to get hold of someone in Leeds. Then, one day, one of their smaller outfits, based in Dublin, appeared to be looking after the technical side picked up the phone.
Within minutes my site was moved to their servers across the Irish Sea and, even though it was still being run by a firm under the 186k umbrella it was looked after by a small firm who appeared to know what they were doing. Even on Sundays a query of a technical matter, even non-urgent ones, were answered straight away. The guys there did a sterling job and the memories of the Mailbox Internet takeover faded away.
And then there was the broadband outage as reported some months ago. People here recommended that I leave them and it was with a heavy heart that I did. I found a good hosting service elsewhere and I moved a few sites and domains over. Just in time as all of the requests for assistance went unanswered. We were back to the days of 186k again.
The sites were still being hosted and three of four of them moved over without any issue. The fourth was a major problem and I had to go via Nominet to get them to intercede when they could have done the task in seconds. The hosting machines were still running until recently, I understand. And they still tried to invoice me for hosting even though the sites and domains had long gone.
The techies in Dublin have been silent for a while now. I do wish them well as they did a cracking job and if they are reading this then Thank You for all of your efforts and work that you did over the years Above And Beyond to make your one little corner of 186k a pleasure to be with. If you are reading then then you know who you are. Thanks.
If you can't beat AI, join it: Boffinry biz baron Elon Musk backs brain-machine interface biz
Nuns left in limbo after phone line transfer hell
UK digital minister Matt Hancock praises 'crucial role' of encryption
Lloyds Banking Group to hang up on call centre staffers
FYI anyone who codes outside work: GitHub has a contract to stop bosses snatching it all
Microsoft cloud TITSUP: Skype, Outlook, Xbox, OneDrive, Hotmail down
Face down in a Shoreditch gutter: Attack of the kickstarting hipster
Monday 20th March 2017 07:03 GMT
Re: Not only the lasers
In the original Star Wars films, when they used models for everything, they got around this by filming the explosions from underneath the model so it appeared that the debris went evenly in all directions. Or so it appeared.
Then, of course, their space had sound which to some extent ruined this sterling effort.
UK Home Office warns tech staff not to tweet negative Donald Trump posts
User lubed PC with butter, because pressing a button didn't work
Google to Chrome-plate our shops with creepy mood-sensing AI signs
Watt the f... Dim smart meters caught simply making up readings
Amazon's AWS S3 cloud storage evaporates: Top websites, Docker stung
Smart meter firm EDMI asked UK for £7m to change a single component
Thursday 2nd March 2017 18:13 GMT
My Ideal SmartMeter
Would be one that changes supplier automatically to the cheapest supplier, without penalty, and without a lock in period.
In an ideal world if my smartMeter decided that those five hours on ScottishPower were good value, but there's a cheaper tarrif if I moved to VirginElec and then, perhaps tomorrow, it would flip to LincolnLeccy for half an hour before deciding that OrkeyPower is better value and so on...
Then I could see the case for one.
Licence-fee outsourcer Capita caught wringing BBC tax from vulnerable
Tuesday 28th February 2017 08:41 GMT
I rang them back saying that I was unable to receive a TV signal except only from The Republic of Ireland.
I asked whether I needed a licence or not and of course they couldn't give me an answer. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway as I don't watch television. But it's always fun to appear willing and unable so that one falls out of the little boxes they put you in.
Big blues: IBM's remote-worker crackdown is company-wide, including its engineers
Want to come to the US? Be prepared to hand over your passwords if you're on Trump's hit list
Canadian telco bans a little four-letter dirty word from texts: U B E R
Who do you want to be Who? VOTE for the BBC's next Time Lord
God save the Queen... from Donald Trump. So say 1 million Britons
Monday 30th January 2017 18:15 GMT
Re: Where were all these virtue signallers...
@boltar - "Where were all these virtue signallers... when the president of china with its horrendous human rights record visited the UK?"
On the News, outside Buckingham Palace, protesting. Don't you remember?
And behind screens so that they couldn't be seen by the visiting party.
Naughty sysadmins use dark magic to fix PCs for clueless users
I'm deadly serious about megatunnels, vows Elon Musk
Cisco: We know what you all want – a $10,000 70in whiteboard with a $190/mo cloud sub
Wednesday 25th January 2017 07:59 GMT
Um...
... to an invitation-only audience of 1,000+ VIP guests, partners and customers, and streaming the keynote live.
If the company is able to can pass on all the relevant information on this chalk-free blackboard via streaming then that kind of negates the need for one of these gizmos in the first place.
Batman v Superman leads Razzie nominations
Tuesday 24th January 2017 18:56 GMT
Re: Not LaLa Land?
Anyone who leaves a movie after the first ten minutes is pretty silly.
I have done this with the cinematic mess that was HHGttG. In fact, this was the only time I left a film before 'half-time' as I would normally hang on for the lady to come around with the ice-cream tray before beating an hasty exit.
Microsoft posts death notices for Windows 7 sysadmin certifications
US Marines seek more than a few good men (3,000 men and women, actually) for cyber-war
Let's go ARM wrestling with an SEO link spammer
Ransomware scum: 'I believe I'm a good fit. See attachments'
Thursday 5th January 2017 14:27 GMT
Re: Macros
I write macros because the things I need to calculate are either difficult, cumbersome or impossible to express in terms of the built in functions of Excel, but translate rather elegantly into VBA.
That's me too. In some of my spreadsheets it's more than just mere 'macros' but properly constructed code and I would say that 99% of the stuff I write code for just isn't practical or possible with the front end of Excel.
Sometimes I use the COM interface to get the data out but quite often it's better to have the code within Excel and run it there. It also has the advantage that I can give the sheet to someone else and ask them if they can see the Date/Time in a certain cell. If they can then I know that it's "installed correctly" and it will run without having to go through endless installation routines and the like.
Anyway, as far as I am concerned macros isn't the same as VBA: it's not even in the same league and this morning I was working on a circular linked list with three sets of pointers and try doing that and what it's used for by anything via the Ribbon.
China to Donald Trump: Twitter diplomacy 'undesirable'
Gov claws back £440m for rural broadband
Non-existent sex robots already burning holes in men’s pockets
Could a robot vacuum cleaner monitor your data centre?
WINNER! Crush your loved ones at Connect Four this Christmas
Thursday 15th December 2016 16:08 GMT
Re: Monopoly
Actually, the best way is NOT to build hotels but to keep everything at four houses if you can afford the repair bills.
The name of the game, Monopoly, comes from the potential monopoly of the housing market and if there's not enough houses in the box then people can't build hotels. And, no, you can't just sling down £750 to build three hotels straight on the light blue set if there isn't twelve houses available in the box.
That's one of the many rules that Most People Don't Know in the game which Everyone Thinks That They Know The Rules Of. And it's handy to spring on people after they've sat there for half an hour wondering why I never buy hotels.
Thursday 15th December 2016 14:21 GMT
Re: Monopoly
If you're in jail you still have to throw the dice. If you roll a double then you're out and you move the number of spaces shown. So, a double three or double four will get you into trouble.
And the Chance within the red set may send you back three spaces to Vine Street.
My favourite set is the Old Kent Road/Whitechapel. They just nick Go Money nicely.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
