Posts by JimboSmith

Re: Too many "heads in the sand" technophobes run the BBC

I worked for a commercial broadcaster who didn't like the license fee. However they also didn't want the BBC taking advertising or sponsorship. Neither did the idea of encryption/subscription go down any better. People apparently might find the idea of two monthly charges unwelcoming and ditch the commercial one.

One of my current colleagues had complained recently about the license fee. With the cost of living going up he was worried that the family was paying for both Netflix and now Disney too. As an experiment they made a note of what the family watched over a typical week. After looking at everything he decided that they could do without either Netflix or Disney as those weren’t used as much as freeview. Can’t live without Eastenders, Strictly, Masterchef, Top Gear etc.

Re: Little people

Well 100% of something is better than 100% of nothing I suppose. If the regulators don’t have the powers they can’t do anything to curb or try to stop things. I assume the other person was referring to this: Huge NatWest Money Laundering Fine when they talked about bin bags. They did do checks and had systems in place to flag up large deposits and suspicious transactions. They stopped doing the checks and disabled the alarms when they were too frequent.

They are going to have a problem in the future then, everything now is 2 engined

That’s why they went with the 747-8 this time and I believe have a maintenance agreement with Boeing for parts going forwards. The reason they were keen to replace the VC-25A is because in part, of the cost of keeping them in the air. These are essentially 747-200 planes although heavily modified for the USAF. There aren’t many of those still in service and they’re all carrying freight. Making parts for very few planes is expensive. So despite these being the best maintained 747s in the world with comparatively very low hours they aren’t cheap to keep flying as a result.

Hence why a replacement was sought and i believe a deal on parts.to avoid a similar situation to the one they have now.

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

The only picture of me that graces the internet is on Workday. I was told that as a condition of my employment I had to provide a picture for my ID card. Well I say picture of me but my ex boss described what I uploaded as looking nothing like me in the slightest. Unsurprising really, as I manipulated it in Photoshop so much that I no longer look like Rab C Nesbit and resemble closer to Pierce Brosnan instead.

Re: Track record..

This is why sales people should never be asked to work their notice period.

Pro tip: when you fire a salesperson, have security escort them directly from your office to the street. Have someone else (not a salesperson) pack up their desk and forward their personal effects to them.

Yeah the funny part about it was he didn’t take anything like that with him when he left though. He only posted that he was up for redundancy on LinkedIn (I think it was). He did also email a few people after the first consultation to say he was likely to be off. The clients just followed him of their own free will.

Re: What!?

Yep my passwords for work and there are 3 different ones for three different systems are 15+ digit strong passwords. I have to change them every 90 days which drives me mad because it’s so unlikely someone will be able to guess them. I don’t use random public WiFi and don’t enter them whilst visible to anyone else. Plus the systems are supposed to and do lock you out after 4 wrong guesses.

However there is a flip side to that coin, there are people in the organisation who fall for test phishing emails. It’s damned annoying.

Re: increased positioning accuracy is deemed to be worth the cost

Unless there is a good reason for the app to connect to the Internet you can use a no root firewall and block it from doing so.

I was trying to use a Sonos a long while ago which same as yours required the location switched on for everything (including Bluetooth) set up. Not sure about usage as I didn’t get that far as you’ll see. It didn’t say that this was an OS requirement and I got the feeling it was their choice. I wasn’t keen about this anyway so I stuck it on a spare phone to be certain. I have a firewall on that and also no SIM card in it either.

I tried to run setup and the app didn’t like no internet or location, in fact it refused to work full stop. I couldn’t see why it needed internet access in the first place it’s a just a bleeding wireless speaker after all. I spoke to Sonos who were not vey good with explanations for these requirements. They were happy to tell me that it was only during set up but not able to explain why it needed it.

I didn’t own this kit it belonged to my then housemate who thought it was brilliant. Instead I bought a Bluetooth adapter and just used that to connect to my HiFI instead.

Flew through Boston a few times this summer both internationally and domestically. They’re using these new scanners there and it takes longer to check each piece of hand luggage. I was travelling with quite a lot of electronics and volunteered to remove some of it to speed things up. The bloke manning the start of the line very firmly told me and another bloke to leave everything in our bags. As a result it took about two minutes each to scan our bags which was annoying and twice as long as anyone else’s. Nice technology but it didn’t help speed things up when I’ve had experience of it.

Re: Well, manglement ....

I was once depositing money into a cashpoint one Sunday afternoon. I had stuck my card in, entered the amount of cash I was depositing, and then put the envelope in containing ~£200. This was where it went wrong. The machine accepted the money but didn’t acknowledge it had had anything deposited. It asked if I needed more time which was a worry, so I called the phone bank and queried it with them. The first bloke I spoke to was helpful but clueless. He said the money was registered as being in my account and I could end the transaction. I said that it was only showing as there whilst the transaction was still in progress. He disagreed so I asked to speak to a manager who was quickly on the line.

He said the same thing which was annoying and I told him I knew a bit more about the processes involved than he apparently did. I said if I ended the transaction then the system would reconcile the fact that it thought hadn’t had an envelope with cash and delete the money from my account. He said that’s not how it works sir and told me I could end the transaction. When I did so the money showing on his screen disappeared to his utter amazement. I was apologised to and told they’d raise a customer service complaint and to visit the branch the next morning to get my cash back.

I went into the branch and spoke to a lovely Polish lady who I knew there who dug out my unmarked envelope with the cash in. She manually deposited it into my account and apologised for the machine’s failure. I had a call from customer service the next day who apologised profusely for the problem. They had listened to the recording of the call and said I was quite correct as to how the system worked. They gave me £50 in compensation for the inconvenience and the cost of the call. I contrast that with some of the work issues I have dealt with where the external people I’ve spoken to have been obstinate and downright rude or hostile in one case.

Re: I've managed without Twitter this far

I read twitter.com/RAF_Luton because it’s

a) a parody account and says so prominently.

b) it should be obvious it’s a parody account from the content of the tweets

c) some of the comments from people who don’t understand it’s a parody account are very funny. These are usually retweeted.

I work in retail and even we have rules about using personal email accounts for work purposes. There are consequences and penalties where I work for doing so. These include gross misconduct which will unsurprisingly result in you losing your job. For the Home Secretary to breach the rules where she works is utterly unacceptable.

Re: You don't use removable media?

I have a Sony TV to which I have connected a 1TB hard drive turning it into a DVR for time shifting tv shows onto. The file systems supported are FAT32, eXFAT and NTFS, the former up to 2TB and the latter two up to 16TB. However the system can go wrong occasionally with a problem on the hard drive meaning your shows are inaccessible on the existing hard drive. The contents are also encrypted though to prevent copying of shows. You therefore have to register the hard drive with the TV before it can be used for this purpose. If that drive does fail you can just register a new one on the TV, I made mine a larger one at this point.

Then using a Linux (or possibly Mac) but not Windows computer, you can connect the two hard drives to it. Copy the contents of your old one to the new one and plug back into the telly. I performed this feat in front of an astonished audience of a mate of mine and his other half who had found all the recorded but unwatched Strictly episodes and some Sandi Noir series or other were unwatchable. That bought me a few drinks in the pub and undying praise from his girlfriend who had recorded those. When she asked what I’d done and I started mentioning file systems she said “Stop right there, I actually don’t give a sh!t, let’s just say it was magic - do you want another drink?”

Re: This isn't about starlink

A family member who will remain nameless recently said that they couldn’t see the problem if all the satellites were destroyed. We had been discussing solar flares etc. and other natural phenomena that could affect them. They said aunty Maude* wouldn’t be able to use her sat nav and Sky tv would have to come over the web - big deal.

When I explained exactly what relies on satellites in this day and age they became a bit more concerned. I mentioned the issue of one satellite creating a debris cloud that then destroys more satellites and so on. They admitted being very ignorant to the problems we’d face and how reliant we’d become.

I see the Russian government have yet again made more wild claims without providing any evidence whatsoever to back them up. Amongst today’s unsubstantiated claims is that British Troops are in Ukraine and participated in an attack today.

It said the move was "in connection with the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces, which were led by British specialists" and that these actions "were directed... against Russian ships that ensured the functioning of the said humanitarian corridor".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63439760

Re: DisplayPort in 2003?

We ended up at the Genius Bar after speaking to other staff first. Whereupon the first ‘genius’ I spoke to said they didn’t make monitors. Boy was he surprised when I showed him a picture.

Re: It goes far beyond that ...

The late great Barry Cryer RIP defined bacchanalian as

To bet on an outsider in the space race

Re: Bring back the Harmony remotes and Squeezebox

Another very happy Harmony One user here.

Re: Biometrics

I wouldn’t be using this as none of my phones have dedicated biometric readers on them and I keep the cameras covered. I realise some people reuse passwords but not me, yet.

Re: "VERTU ENGLAND"?

The actual company who now own the rights to the Vertu name, designs and Branding etc. are Vertu France. They got them from Vertu UK in a corporate restructuring and have a website that says everything else is a fake. The Turkish businessman behind Vertu when it went belly up has an ‘interesting’ past https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/12/turkish-exile-snaps-smartphone-maker-vertu-50m/" It has been suggested that this intellectual property should not have been transferred and instead have been included in the bankruptcy sale. Was this just an attempt to keep the company going in another country or was it something else?

I’ve played with a few Vertu Phones when they were still going in England, and the only thing about them that really stood out was the build quality especially the sapphire screen. I was given a phone, they said my keys wouldn’t damage the screen and I did give it a really good go but I couldn’t scratch it even with a determined effort. I now have access to the same concierge as they used and it’s not bad. Don’t think that comes with the new phones though.

Actually the clock widgets were very nice and integrated with the calendar.

Re: Press the button

Trained someone to use a system where there was a large KVM switch in use. Something like five computers were going in to a six port KVM but there was definitely one free one. First time they’re using it on their own and I get a call to say it isn’t working. The empty port was being used by this employee and they’d forgotten that they needed to select 3. They’d watched me select 3 but I’d only pressed the button once to get to 3 so that was exactly what they’d done, pressed it once. I pointed to the KVM counted three LED’s along and said to make sure the correct one was lit, pressing the button enough times to get it there.

Re: So which is worse

Should have stuck to Shortwave Numbers stations for transmission to the spies instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincolnshire_Poacher_(numbers_station)

Re: They admitted to it...

I’m slightly surprised no one has created an encrypted banking chat app. You’d have an auto purge for messages after a set period of time and possibly a self destruct/delete of the of the program if the wrong password is entered. Then these people could easily continue their nefarious behaviour on a burner device without worry.

Re: saying ...

Going a bit Twilight Zone……….Submitted for your approval

Carry On Up The Death Star https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3NS84flTYc

Re: I wonder

The people of Salisbury will doubtless be pleased to know they’re not using Novichok at the moment.

Re: Chrome on desktop

Elder (i.e. over 40) members of my family believe the browser is the internet. I discovered this when I was helping one of them over the phone and asked what browser they were using. The response was they were using the “internet” and it too a while to understand what they meant by that. Further enquiries one Christmas determined that this wasn’t an isolated case.

My parents are using Firefox with NoScript and an adblocker. This is because my mum will click on anything accidentally or deliberately which is a worry. She clicked on a link in an email which took her to a bank phishing website. Only when she got to the site did she remember that she didn’t bank with that bank.

Re: Haven't they seen Mr Robot

I watched a couple of videos on YouTube where someone used a 50 cal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sATeFlLk-Y and someone else a .458 SOCOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rCNqrdcX_A to destroy a few hard drives.

Re: Here we go...

I’ve been to Martha’s Vineyard as I had a friend who lived there (now sadly dead). Out of season as it is now most of those with money have buggered off. Those still there are the year round residents and are not those rich people who own large properties. They’re often blue collar workers and they’re the ones who have had to help these migrants.

I was and still am proud to have her as my Queen and Head Of State.

Somebody I know was given an honour and the investiture was done by the then Prince of Wales. They told me in private that they’d much rather have had Her Majesty. She outlived them by more than a decade.

Rest In Peace Your Majesty

Oh come on... who here hasn't ordered a lap-dancer's pole or a bouncy castle to liven up the office

You are Boris Johnson and I claim my peerage.

Re: Yet IPv6 networks were built to rely on and assume both BGP and DNS work perfectly.

"The real question I would like answered is: was this really an accident or an attempt by Russia to start screwing the global internet? I am not about to start throwing mud, but if Russia is trying to play games then I can see it being cut off from the wider community with extreme prejudice."

Not necessarily screwing the Internet, but simply stealing (copying) data from Apple Engineering?

They’ve already fleshed out and tested cutting themselves (Russia) off from the rest internet so that’s not too far of a stretch in thinking. Copying Apple’s data…….who knows.

Re: Green screens were great!

"all your software and data is stored "in the cloud" - just like it was in the 1970s. You just have a browser to access it."

Yes, great, until it's a cloudless day (as in, the internet is down or the supplier goes TITSUP). Then you can't do anything. Call me a grumpy old git, but I like having my stuff local so that it runs when I want it to independent of anyone else. External storage (potentially even "the Cloud") is great for stuff like backups, but imho not a substitute for local.

I worked for a firm that was keen for everything to be in the cloud. They had no idea how things were used on the office floor and whether the move would bugger things up. So they move everything to OneDrive and Microsoft Office online with internal servers still going to allow the easy transfer of needed files. Then someone pointed out that you couldn’t access files on one program via OneDrive the cockeyed way they’d set it up. The solution according to IT support was to download the file onto your desktop. Then access the file and do whatever you needed to do and then reupload it to OneDrive.

The Rolling Stones actually got $3m for the use of the song in MS adverts. Not bad going but a friend of mine who was having issues with Windows at the time thought it should have been “Sympathy For The Devil.”

Re: an account number was accidentally entered into the payment amount field

I was paying my tax one year on January 30th at some late hour. I was self employed at the time so it wasn’t a small amount. I was doing so via the phone bank as I didn’t then and still don’t do internet banking. I called up and spoke to a very nice lady who got the amount and that I’d be paying the HMRC which I had done before. She then read me the statement that the transfer would take approximately two hours and was not reversible once made. I said I’d understood that and she says

"Well that{s all done for you”

to my horror whereupon I said

"No it can’t be done I haven’t given you the new account and sort code for HMRC. They changed this year.”

She then said (as I’m hyperventilating and feeling faint)

”Oh I haven’t done the actual transfer yet."

She was very apologetic but that didn’t help my panicking much.

I met a bloke whilst waiting for a delayed flight in the USA who commuted weekly by plane. His large company had offered him a new job in in a different state across the country, if he wished to remain with them. He said he suspected that it was a way of getting him to quit without needing to pay severance. They were apparently very surprised when he said yes on the spot. His suspicions were confirmed a few days later when he was told that he would still need to do one day a week in his current office. He still said yes because company policy meant they would pay for his flights and accommodation. He did 4 days a week on the West Coast, one on the East Coast and the weekend with his family. Said he was building up the frequent flyer miles and well on his way to lifetime vip status with the airline. As soon as he had that status he was going to switch jobs.

A company I worked for made most of the people redundant in my department after a the firm merged with another. They didn’t want to get rid of me and my skills they said and I was moved to another department. That lasted a year, the company was bought and I was out. A mate said his company tried downsizing by removing a layer of management. They said they didn’t want to lose those affected but people believed this was a sham. They were only advertising jobs during this period lower paid non management jobs which in effect meant staying on was a demotion. They screwed up though as most of these people took the demotions which didn’t give them the wanted and expected headcount drop.

Re: Clever catch

To quote Wallace of Wallace and Gromit fame……Now that’s clever. Are you reading this Baroness Harding, that is a sophisticated attack.

Re: Sorry, but Benny HIll casting the first scone...

Poor Ernie!

Vlad the inhaler obviously saw this coming declaring a special military operation not a war when he invaded and started targeting civilians in Ukraine.

Re: Preaching to the chior

You mean Dido “sophisticated and co-ordinated cyber attack” Harding?