Posts by Martin Summers 1508 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2011
Oh don't get me started on the waste of bandwidth and sheer annoyance of having to watch adverts before each and every stream I play on Amazon Prime. Can't even switch it off. At least Netflix have finally had the decency to allow you to switch off their shocking auto previews when scrolling through content. I suspect though that was more to do with competition coming along than listening to customers.
People are panic buying toilet roll apparently because if you're stuck inside isolating it's the last thing you'd want to run out of (other than food) and you don't want to be mixing with lots of potentially infected people in a supermarket to get more.
In all of this intervening time no-one apparently has thought it fit to come up with a standard the world could easily adopt without the unnecessary complexity of IPV6. If it had been acknowledged early on that IPV6 is a turkey then by now we could have moved on to bigger and better things. Why so much protectionism for something so unloved? It's crap, it always has been and always will be.
I loved my Pebble watch, I unfortunately got through 3 of the things due to screen issues although happily these were all warranty replacements. I've now got a Samsung Gear 3, I still find it useful but it's way more sophisticated than I wanted compared to the Pebble. I can only get the same battery life by turning it off over night. Saying that I actually do sometimes use the phone (through my mobile) feature which comes in handy when your hands aren't completely free.
What annoys me is that the manufacturers are utterly obsessed with the health side of it and you'd think that was the only reason anyone ever bought one. I get that for marketing but it's shoved in your face constantly even if you're only in the geek part of the market like me.
I got bought a Microsoft Sculpt desktop set for work to use to alleviate my RSI. I have found it amazingly good at the job. Unfortunately it is expensive and I'm going to be working for a charity soon and don't want to burden them with an occupational health request for a keyboard such as this. Does anyone know of any proven decent, reasonably priced keyboards with the same aesthetics as the Sculpt? Any help would be appreciated.
PS: Unfortunately my old work won't let me take the keyboard and mouse I've used for 3 years even though I know it will get chucked in storage and never used again. Who'd knowingly want to use a keyboard someone has used for that long anyway!
Where have you been? In keeping with the spirit of biting the hand that feeds IT, 'El Reg have published several articles on their Landords recent woes and have declared their tenancy each time. I think they used to have better dedicated Vulture Central headquarters once upon a time...
I believe most online publishers are moving away from staff actually having to come into contact with each other. They might argue that's a good thing. I've never met a Register reporter in real life so I couldn't comment.
I'm finding myself spending more time on Reddit for some reason these days, not for lunch time surfing though, that's time for The Register. Seriously though, if the Register went down over lunch time I don't know what I'd do, it is actually an ingrained habit for what must be nearly 2 decades now.
All we need now is for Spotify to do the same thing to get into their account pages. People are crying out for it on their forums. They don't notify you if anything happens with your account they just shut the door after the horse has bolted. I had a password that had been raided from LinkedIn (yes I know, never re-use) and someone got in to my Spotify account and added 2 premium users to my subscription without me ever knowing. All I got eventually was an email from Spotify to tell me that they'd blocked access to my account as they'd detected unusual activity. I duly changed my password but hadn't seen the new accounts that had been added until I went to add someone new some time later. Everyone should now have some form of 2fa to prevent this.
I just saw this bulletin, sent it to the Reg but as usual they're ahead of me, 42 minutes in fact!
In the bulletin it says "misconfigurations are unfortunately a common error across the industry. We have solutions to help prevent this kind of mistake, but unfortunately they were not enabled for this database".
In the real world things can be thrown away by accident. Most times you have the option to retrieve whatever it was from the bin. That's the same principle as this and I think that's fine. I don't think user stupidness should always be designed around, carelessness yes but stupidness definitely not. If the user actually tried to make something of their 'important' emails disappearing from the deleted items box then they only make things look worse for themselves. I don't think something like that could ever make a HR meeting let alone a court without someone telling the person to stop being stupid and drop it. People have to deal with the consequences of their actions and sometimes IT people helpful as they are feel an unjust sense of guilt about users troubles even though they didn't cause them. It's why IT departments get shat on from a great height the world over because they don't stand up for themselves and let people think the worst of them. We are at the point now where if someone can't get something back that's important it becomes the techs issue and they're deemed as unhelpful if they didn't manage to pull off a miracle. Maybe not to their face but you can bet they've told everyone else that. A simple, 'you did the digital equivalent of chucking it in the bin and its gone forever' is sufficient for this and not looking apologetic or acting in an unsure way as if you could have done more. We as IT people need more confidence in ourselves!
I'd say he's setting him up for next time around. I'd rather not have the prisons full of guys like this who pose no danger to life and have not had a substantial impact on people's lives generally. If you put his crime against those of the utter knobs that crippled the NHS, that's all the perspective I need.
I admit, I play Clash of Clans, please don't judge me. I'm not sure how the hell you'd spend that kind of money on it without completing the game almost immediately. Kinda defeats the object of it although I'm sure Supercell aren't complaining. I did always wonder who on earth would be nuts enough to spend a hundred quid on one of their packages, I guess I know now!
Or just buy a new machine by the time you've faffed around and spent money doing all that.
Agree on the security software point. It's quite disheartening when you've got a fresh new PC on the domain and it's nice and speedy until it's processed all the GPOs and loaded up the AV. Then you're only marginally better off than what you replaced.
The problem with these jobs is that they attract every bullshiter and their dog. People who don't know what they're doing and they make a fortune bleeding the government of salary and left to carry on as the people who employed them don't understand that they haven't got a clue either. People with the real skills to go for this job won't go for it because they don't believe they'll get it as its prestigious and everyone will try, or the job description sounds too lofty for them to achieve. I imagine there's someone reading this article right now who'd do a damn good job at this and should put themselves up for it. Government needs more people that really know what they're doing. If those kind of people don't apply and try (what's to lose?), then we'll be reading about more government IT waste for years to come.
"A/c as both companies are still in business."
In which case, I strongly encourage you to report it, even anonymously with as much information as you can. If you don't work there any more then just do it. I could never live with myself knowing I'd caught someone consuming that kind of material and not done anything about it.
Teams' market is probably not actually going to be developers. I've been surprised by the take up of it at my place of work by none devs and it hasn't faded away. I can see how it can be useful, but at the same time it's a bit bloated and unintuitive to use. I don't think slack have to worry about their audience as I don't think devs will go anywhere near it by choice.
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