* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25246 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

Page:

FTC approves $61.7m settlement with Amazon for pocketing driver tips

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Wage theft

"but because it's a corporate decision, nobody gets prosecuted? One law for them, another for the rest of us."

It's funny how corporations are "people" when it comes to claiming "rights" but never seem to be "people" when it might disadvantage them. All the rights, none of the responsibility.

UK tells UN that nation-states should retaliate against cyber badness with no warning

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

D'oh!

"Prior notice may not be a legal obligation when responding to covert cyber intrusion with countermeasures or when resort is had to countermeasures which themselves depend on covert cyber capabilities."

Responding to covert attacks with a covert response? Since when has any States ever announced that in advance?

Dealing with the pandemic by drinking and swearing? Boffins say you're not alone

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Me too! I'm sick of these lazy bastards and their cheap shitty fucking surveys masquerading as fucking research. Cunts!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Devil

Re: The 5 rules of problematic drinking

Heathens! Although I suppose it helps the bar owners profit margin if there's no glasses to buy, wash or get broken.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: rule nr. 4

"Depends on the size of your glass"

I remember the old days when you could buy a glass of wine in a bar and there's be about 5 glasses per bottle. That's about the same as the glasses we use at home. These days, it seems the glasses in the pubs are so large, if you order two glasses of wine, they give you the bottle because there's barely a 1/2 glass left in it.

So, the question is, what do these figures mean when they talk about a "glass" of wine.

Shuttered call centre sours Capita's £58m contract extension with Tesco Mobile

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Customer Services???

"Which, at that time was forbidden by the Covid regulations."

Which branch of Tescos and where is it? I don't recall any supermarkets being closed due to COVID. Or was the customer service desk classed as a "non-food aisle" and closed in Welsh branches? :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A shame, but only to be expected

Yes, and they probably looked at a map and decided those who need/want to be in a call centre and not work from home only have a little over half an hours drive from Bury down to Warrington. Apart the trip including the bit of the M60 guaranteed to have long delays on it every day in rush hour.

BT sues supplier for £72m over exchange gear that allegedly caused wave of ADSL outages

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Thus I am pretty sure that this was a mistake that occured between the design phase and the manufacturing phase."

Built to cost in a Chinese factory with no one bothering to check any of the productions runs after the first test samples were produced?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Fortunately I got a really good BT engineer who fixed it, put me on a different set of terminal blocks that were not rusty and even set the exchange to retrain the line."

Or he was aware of the internal discussion re a "known fault" and knew how to fix it, one way or the other.

I've been doing break/fix for years and "known faults" are never communicated to customers until the shit hits the fan. And that can take years while the blame is apportioned and bounced around, re-apportioned and bounced around again and again.

Ireland warned it could face 'rolling blackouts' if it doesn't address data centres' demand for electricity

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Clearly...

...the people using the power should be paying for the power they use. And the people supplying the power should be investing those profits in suitable levels of generation based on current and future demand. Anyone know where the profits are?

The Eigiau Dam Disaster: Deluges and deceit at the dawn of hydroelectric power

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Where is it?

If you put the name of the village into Google or your search engine of choice, there a pretty good chance there will be a link to the one and only place in the world by that name. Or. better yet, put the name into a mapping programme or SatNav.

It's possible that by using Google from a UK IP address, that I only saw the village of Dolgarrog as results on the first page, but I suspect it's because, like Tigger (or the Highlander), there is only one.

Blue passports, French service provider: Atos bags £21m UK Passport Office deal

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "become completely digital"

It's more likely to mean 4% of households, not 4% of people. Otherwise that would be a much larger percentage. As an example which is probably not unusual, the broadband into our house is in my name, as are the mobile phone accounts. My wife doesn't have 'net access in her own name.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "become completely digital"

Yes, there'll always be an option to go collect a paper form from the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard, which you then fill in and post to the relevant office.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: barely delivering a lorry.

Or, more likely, Del Boy.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: backdoor identity card

Unless the only utility bills you get are "e-bills", ie an unauthenticated PDF anyone can edit and print out.

Whatever you've been doing during lockdown, you better stop it right now

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: 3wise would hate Diamonds are Forever

Send them a copy of a Chubby Brown video. But do it anonymously because it could be classed as a DoS attack!

BOFH: Despite the extremely hazardous staircase, our IT insurance agreement is at an all-time low. Can't think why

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Offsite backup and stuff

And neither ever will because beancounters...

Samsung brags that its latest imaging sensor has the ittiest-bittiest cam pixels in the world

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yeah, sprinkle the magic pixel dust and they will come and buy!

Pre-orders open for the Mini PET 40/80, the closest thing to Commodore's classic around

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The PETs inspired me.

Later on, we got a PET 4004

Oops, no, that one was a 2001N IIRC, one of if not the earliest model to reach the UK.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The PETs inspired me.

"The PET was the first computer I touched. "

Same here! Although the first I ever used was some mini or mainframe at the local university. We ad an ASR33 teletype at school and an acoustic modem. We'd create our programmes offline on coding sheets, check them as best we could for errors and then punch the tapes. The teacher would stay back to use the acoustic coupler and phone after 6pm when call rates were cheaper. Sometimes, some of us would also stay back to play games at cheap phone rates too. She'd let us play Lunar Lander on the Teletype for a max of half an hour. Not exactly real-time gaming though. Type your thrust value and a few seconds later the teletype would tell you your current altitude and velocity and wait for the next thrust adjustment. Then I discovered it was written in BASIC and I printed a listing out. I learned so much from pouring over that.

Later on, we got a PET 4004 and I was spending every spare minute in that room and if availbale ought to work on this new PET. And the sound effect device I built years ago,

Just looked more closely. It's a real PET in hardware terms. Wow! I remember when I went to Uni a year later, they ad a PET lad with MuPETs, a device to allow 4 PETs to share a dual drive floppy unit and printer.

That was fun!

BT 'welcomes' whopping £2bn investment by French telco Altice

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: But what about Brexit?

"Well this deal wouldn't have been allowed by the Eu competition authority - but now free of their red tape we can have British infrastructure owned by the French"

It's got feck all to do with EU or Brexit. French owned water companies for one. EDF nuclear power for another.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Pint

Re: Living next door to Altice

Well, I think the Sub-Ed just earned the next 6 months salary in one sub-head.

Icon for him/her ------------>

Student Loans Company splashes out on 20,000 cybersecurity training courses – for just 3,300 employees

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "Mastering GDPR, Governance Security, and Compliance in Office 365" at £3,260 per head

Correct GDPR didn't appear out of the ether 5 years ago. It's built on previous legislation and many companies had to comply with that first, before GDPR came along,

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "Mastering GDPR, Governance Security, and Compliance in Office 365" at £3,260 per head

"Being fed some superficial buzz-word stuffed flannel to satisfy our 'compliance' auditors". Nobody can master anything in a week.

Employment based training is pretty much exactly that in many areas of work these days. Top-up training in particular can be a as little as a few hours on a new bit of kit with a 10-15 question multi-choice memory test at the end with an 80% pass rate. Suddenly I'm "qualified" by the OEM to go fix their kit now, often without ever seeing the real kit until on a customers site.

An anti-drone system that sneezes targets to death? Would that be a DARPA project? You betcha

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: .. spraying the whole city with small-arms fire?

Well, to be fair, in a number of the countries US forces operate in, it's not that unusual for there to be many guns fired into the air for all sorts of celebrations, including weddings. I wonder if there's any stats for injuries or deaths from all these stray bullets?

Biden cancels Trump's bans on TikTok, WeChat, other Chinese apps

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

That would an embarrassment even to Dad Dancers!!

Baby Space Shuttle biz chases dreams at Spaceport Cornwall

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's a bit big to ship back to the USA

Or even easily inside a A300 Beluga.

According to the wiki of all knowledge

"Cargo hold – volume 1,500 m3 (53,000 cu ft), 37.7 m long × 7.04 m wide × 7.08 m tall"

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: Why not land back in California?

"It could be an emergency landing site, following some incident after launch that leaves the vehicle to far downrange over the US or the Atlantic to return to California, but unable to reach orbit, so in need of an handy landing site quickly."

Being unmanned and not operated by military or emergency service, won't they need special permissions and exemptions to operate their space going drone above 400' and out of line of sight?

It is with a heavy heart that we must tell you America's richest continue to pay not quite as much tax as you do

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hang on

"I am sure if the secretary had to pay $23.7m (s)he wouldnt consider it less (I am guessing)."

Percentage of earning, not absolute numbers.

EE and Three mobe mast surveyors might 'upload some virus' to London Tube control centre, TfL told judge

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Open door policy?

"I did hear a tale that this resulted in the equipment operating London's traffic lights becoming homeless as it required access and attention. One plan at the time was, I gather, to acquire nondescript private premises to accommodate it. I'm assuming that wasn't the full extent of the security measures."

Oh yes. The last thing you want is for some gang of cheeky criminals driving Mini Coopers to have access to the traffic light control systems.

That thing you were utterly sure would never happen? Yeah, well, guess what …

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Better would have been "no matter what you are working on, assume a customer will see it". Single sign, single policy, and no mater the rush, safe to take without checking first.

No digital equivalent to the impulse aisle found as online grocery shoppers buy fewer sweet treats than in real life

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: .. baking popularity

Have been making my own bread for years and was mortified to find so many others suddenly decided to do so too!!! Luckily I always keep a few weeks worth of bread flour in the cupboard and managed to be lucky enough, often enough to get a 2Kg bag or two when they came in before they sold out and at one point early on got a huge sack from a supermarket that kept me and a few neighbours in bread for a month or so :-)

As for the rest of the article, the jist of it seems to be that people spend more in online shopping sessions than at the physical shops, but they spend on different things. Is that even news? I'm not sure why the shops care what people buy, so long as they can sell them more.

On an IT related note, I remember when I first saw a 3D shooter and wondered if it might be possible to do a simulation of the supermarket aisles where people could then buy stuff online by browsing the shelves instead of the clunky search by name and hope it shows what you are looking for in the results or the related items. There could be a version that includes weapon s and looting for release in certain gun-totin' parts of the world :-)

Three thousand sea birds abandon nests amid nature reserve drone crash hullabaloo

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why do they need a warrant?

Even if it's lost or abandoned on Federal property? Surely their "duty of care" would require them to try to identify the owner?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Why do they need a warrant?

"the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has retrieved one of the downed drones and is seeking a warrant to allow it to be examined, in the hope of identifying its owner."

Surely if it's lost or abandoned property found on California Department of Fish and Wildlife land, then the Department would be within in it's rights to try to identify the rightful owner?

Proof-of-space cryptocurrency Chia triggers HDD sales boom in Europe

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: So what else can be wasted

"What's next, a cryptocurrency that relies on huge amounts of RAM to blow up the DRAM market? Maybe one that relies on driving long distances so we can run out of gasoline and tires?"

The only people guaranteed to get rich in a mining boom are the people selling the shovel.

To expand on that, if you happen to have a big shovel manufacturing operation, it might seem like a good idea to "create" mining opportunities.

I wonder who might be instigating all these new "coin mining" schemes?

<Takes tinfoil hat off and slinks away>

Version 8 of open-source code editor Notepad++ brings Dark Mode and an ARM64 build, but bans Bing from web searches

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Censorship? In an editor?

"he is using HIS write of free speech"

Assuming "pun intended", well played sir, considering the topic :-)

Uncle Sam recovers 63.7 of 75 Bitcoins Colonial Pipeline paid to ransomware crew

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: FBI has been busy

They killed Kenny. The bastards!

Australian cops, FBI created backdoored chat app, told crims it was secure – then snooped on 9,000 users' plots

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Ah......backdoors again...........

"Have I mentioned this before.....but since we all know about "backdoors" (you know....Cisco, NSA, Snowden, etc., etc.).....why are sensible people not encrypting their messaging BEFORE their messages enter ANY public channel?"

For exactly the same reason no one else does. Convenience and lack of knowledge/skills. Crims, like the rest of the \Joe Average world, are not techies. They just want it work and will trust the higher ups/suppliers to have made it easy to use and secure. They make assumptions because they don't have the tech knowledge to know what questions to ask. They assume their criminal techs have done their jobs properly and rely on the fact nothing untoward seems to have happened to other users, therefore it must be safe to use.

US House Rep on cyber committees tweets Gmail password, PIN in Capitol riot lawsuit outrage

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: IT Security

Yeah. Like learning to use the PrtScr button or whatever Windows does these days to capture a screen image instead of using a $1000 iPad to achieve a poorer result :-)

Thanks, boss. The accidental creation of a lights-out data centre – what a fun surprise

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A&E light switch

Those who work there probably know how the doors work :-)

Sold: €15k invisible sculpture that's a must-see for art lovers

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Invisible artwork stolen

And mime artists. It was a strange aversion, but there you are. Anyone in baggy trousers and a white face who tried to ply their art anywhere within Ankh's crumbling walls would very quickly find themselves in a scorpion pit, on one wall of which was painted the advice: Learn The Words.”

― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Should get a better dictionary

I thought he used them to pay his bar bills? Or was that just a Dr Who episode?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

In the void there is a container of positive and negative possibilities

Surely by definition there is nothing in a void. A void needs something around it for there be a void in. In this case the "void" can't exists because void has air in it, exactly the same as is surrounding it, ergo there is no void.

Since his "void" is a "container of positive and negative possibilities" it can't be a void because it contains something. But the "somethings" in the void are only possibilities and therefore may not exist, it could be a void. Or not.

Is your head hurting now too?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: drummer =/ artist

Drummer: <noun> A programmable metronome.

Remember Anonymous? It/they might be back, and it/they are angry with Elon Musk

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Everyone knows that, given the size of the various programmes of the last few years, both interest rates and taxes are going to have to go up at some point. The only real questions are: when and by how much."

Yes, you and I know that. Most people know that. But when it happens, you just KNOW the market traders are going to be "caught unawares" and go into met-down.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I thought ...

"3 thumbs down"

<waves> Hi QAnon! :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I thought ...

Qanon is probably why Anonymous has been so "quiet". They all became Qanon instead. Conspiracy Theory followers are easily swayed :-)

There are a lot of people out there who'd like to fire Jeff Bezos into space – but he's doing the honours himself

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

10 whole minutes?

...and only a few minutes micro-gravity? That's the ultimate roller-coaster ride and the price is out of this world too. I do hope the plans for these jollies by Bezos and Branson are just the beginning and they are planning to go higher and further.

I know both have plans for orbital launches, but I don't really see these barely-to-space jollies being profitable enough to fund future expansion. They'd need to be significantly profitable to be worthwhile. The further and longer ventures are already funded from other sources, like NASA grants, advance sales of satellite launches and so on.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Over to you, Jeff

"disposal of his assets to the betterment of the planet and it's inhabitants, and renounces all wealth and goes off to live as a hermit monk"

Well, apart from the fact that the lions share of his assets is Amazon itself, that ain't going to happen. But his disposable wealth, on the other hand, is still vast enough that he could easily spend the rest of his life distributing it to worthy causes or new projects. It's actually quite difficult to give away that amount of money while making sure it gets to the right people/projects and isn't wasted or skimmed from. (Not speaking from experience here, mind you!)

Apple settles with student after authorized repair workers leaked her naked pics to her Facebook page

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: How?

"I'm assuming they require the owner to supply it which in itself should be a very large flag as in most cases (new battery, screen etc. ) just switching on should be sufficient to validate the repair. Sorry if the question seems to be a silly one but I am genuinely interested whether these repairers routinely seek the unlock code."

One of the strings to the bow of the company I work for is being an Apple dealer/authorised repair centre. Yes, the users access codes are required. Replacing a broken screen and simply confirming it works by turning it on is no substitute for doing a full diag of the system to make sure nothing else broke at the same time. If they refuse (some do) the warranty repair will be completed if possible and returned "as is" if only limited further diags are possible. The vast majority of what we deal with is corporate though, so in most cases a device, Apple or otherwise is either returned with a clean OS image or the customers specified OS image. All firmware is updated by default where applicable and all the hardware is checked so it goes back "as new" (in terms of functionality, case scratches ain't our problem), no unreported faults left unfound and unfixed unless, as above, the customer refuses required access codes or passwords.

And no, the guys in the workshop don't really have time to go rooting around in customers data. Diagnose, fix, test, onto the next one. Anyone caught doing anything untoward with customer data would be marched out of the door. Some of our customers are the type you occasionally see in the press as having left unsecured data on trains, so that's the sort of data that would be on some of the kit we fix. That sort of contract customer is too lucrative to risk.

Page: