* Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

6335 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2015

Fujitsu set to be preferred bidder in UK digital ID scheme

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Also... you can not have a passport. My brother's literally never had one.

We both had one (hard to fly without one!) but when I stopped needing to fly for my job I let it lapse (and my wifes' had lapsed years before). Which *slightly* complicated getting a new picture card license..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: More control freak bollocks

Not sure what the criteria is now for brand new passports for people that have never had a photo ID

Dunno about passports but when we applied for new driving licences recently (finally decided to get the new-fangled picture card licences, complicated by the fact that our passports expired years ago!) the picture had to be signed on the back by someone who knew us and could attest that it was us..

Obviously, could be easily open to abuse but (from memory) the penalty for falsely attesting is somewhat equivalent to purgery.

The UK Digital Information Bill: Brexit dividend or data disaster?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: create a more business-friendly regime

"Financial engineering" Is that a new synonym for money laundering?

Dunno.. Paging Mr R-Mogg, paging Mr R-Mogg..

London Clinic probes claim staffer tried to peek at Princess Kate's records

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Is this really a breach?

In GDPR terms - yes. The attempt to access information that you are not authorised to (even if unsuccessful) is one of the (many) things defined as a breach. Even when unsuccessful, the hospital is still required to take it seriously (although, if their systems prevented the breach they'll get a pat on the back)

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

I blame Vesta boil in the bag curries

I remember those. And the Vesta Chow Mein (Beef?) with the 'crispy' noodles..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

but am I to understand that you people have food potentially even worse than McD?

sadly, it happens in every country where the food providers put profit before quality.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Correct me if I'm wrong...

I've no idea where my nearest branch is any more

I know exactly where mine is. That's because it's not a bank, it's a building society.. (and yes, it's the one that promised not to close branches)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

What's the blandest thing on the menu?

Goodness gracious me! I can't believe you asked that!

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

But the best are in the bakeries of Cornwall

Or the ones my wife makes (her Dad was Cornish). Which reminds me, must commit the heretical sin of using chicken tikka filling next time she makes some..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Most of the food here is shit though compared to almost anything

You've obviously not been eating anywhere where they actually cook the food themselves rather than relying on a franchise system of "here's your grey, soggy and overprocessed food"..

The UK in general has some *really, really* good small food providers, gastro pubs and restaurants. Sure, we have nonsense like Greggs et. al but so does every country I've visited. The labels might be different but the methods (cheap food, indifferently cooked) are the same.

*Proper* UK cuisine isn't bland pap like foreigners imagine (generally on the basis of howe things were post-WW2 when food had to be nourishing and cheap and little attention was paid to flavour). As someone pointed out on a wine course recently (specifically about wine but the same is true about food) - the UK has the widest availability of foods and wines round the world. In France, you will find French food [1] and wine. No curries (or at least, very rare), no British [2] cuisine, no Scandanavian cuisine etc etc. Likewise in Germany (curries there are mostly inedible - what a German curry-house considers hot a baby in the UK could eat without even a twinge).

So take your "food here is crap" and shove it where the sun don't shine. The food *you* eat is crap because you don't bother to look for stuff that isn't.

[1] I've had good French food in France and I've also had terrible French food in France.

[2] Yes, there is a distinctive, emerging British cuisine. It's not all roast beef and Yorkshire puds (not that there's anything wrong with those) any more and only idiots think there isn't. Idiots and people just looking to bash the UK for spurious reasons. You want to bash the UK, fine - do it for something *we* are guilty of - like electing a self-serving wannabe facist Government time and time again. Or selling off national resources to the lowest bidder just so that our political and wealthy classes can get richer.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Ok adding my not so consipracy take...

"dead cat bounce"

Oi! We'll have none of that round here y'know!

Five Eyes tell critical infra orgs: Take these actions now to protect against China's Volt Typhoon

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

n the form of the wreckage of infrastructure, repeatedly reported over the last few years, so why the fuck is nobody doing anything about it

Easy answer - it costs money and the dumb MBAs that seemingly run most of the US industry can't see the benefit of spending money (because it reduces your profit margin and hence share price) on something as nebulous as "security" (unless its for them - to keep the proles away and making sure they don't have to breathe prole-tainted air).

Start making jail sentences for senior company officers for network breaches where the company hasn't complied with basic security rules and it *might* change. But that'll never happen because the US Governments corporate overlords won't let it.

Climate change means beer made from sewer water, says North Carolina brewery

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Oh please!

there's probably not a molecule of water (exclusive of whatever small amount of cometary water may have landed here since thier extinction) that hasn't been processed through the urethra of at least one dinosaur

Which is why I prefer mine to be part of a barley-brewed spirit or, at a push, grain alcohol with juniper in it. With tonic.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Oh please!

even if there's a dead animal in it upstream (just don't tell us....)

There's a whole 'natural water' (also called 'raw water') movement in the US - people go to 'unspoilt' springs and rivers to drink the water or drink bottles of 'unprocessed' water from rivers and springs. A number of people died drinking water that supposedly came from a 'pure' spring when if fact it came from an aquifer thoroughly contaminated by animal carcasses and faeces.

Hint: There's a reason why drinking water have very stringent rules about what it can and cannot contain.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Just like the old days..

... when it was safer to drink the beer than the water (even the small beer) - even when said beer was brewed with the water that was unsafe to drink. Turns out that yeast waste is fairly good at killing bugs!

(And most of the brewing was done by women - the alewife was the woman responsible for making sure that there was enough beer for the household/street/village so that they didn't all die of dysentry or cholera.)

Linux for older phones postmarketOS changes its init system

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Let Me Check ...

So, what legitmate reasons, if any, do they have for wanting systemd? It appears the answer is, "None."

I have a couple of Ubuntu VMs that include systemd (Ubuntu because they had a specific package that I needed that Devuan (my normal distro) didn't. I probably could have downloaded the source and compiled/installed it from scratch but it's for a minor project and I really couldn't be bothered..)

Other than the 2 Windows VMs that handle AD for me, all the rest of the VMs are FreeBSD or Devuan.

Sadly, Proxmox *does* use systemd - which when it crashes handling VMs (which it does every so often) means a server reboot because, once the VM unit crashes, it stays crashed and I can't manage the VMs at all. Even kill -9 on the unit just restarts it and allows it to crash some more.

I suppose I could put devuan on both the proxmox servers and just install the proxmox packages but I suspect that would fail because of the lack of a systemd infestation.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Its design is completely and fundamentally wrong.

that’s why systemd has become so popular

Au contraire, systemd became 'so popular' because it became the only init system supplied with Redhat and then Debian, foolishly, tied their horse to it. Which meant that, for those that use Rh Enterprise linux, THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE.

It's like saying that the Windows 11 GUI is so popular because everyone that used Windows 11 uses it. Circular logic at its finest.

Trump, who tried kicking TikTok out of the US, says boo to latest ban effort

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: US politics is basically

I guess the TL:DR is that US voters are old farts

Or don't know anything about their own history. Not unexpected given the state of the US 'education' system.

Is Russia using Starlink in Ukraine? Congress demands answers

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Should be (relatively) simple...

Ah, deep state. Good going...

It'll be wittering about Soverign Citizens, WEF refugee soldiers and little grey men soon.

As mad as a box of (Liz Truss) frogs.

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: I don't need new features...

MacOS Dagenham

"We coded it on a Friday"..

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

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Re: Biased Judge Kathaleen McCormick ..

You may want to read better sources than Zerohedge...

Especially as the person involved is clearly a far-right white power racist. I *very* much doubt whether it was the just act of putting up stickers/posters that got him put in pokey.

Health system network turned out to be a house of cards – Cisco cards, that is

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Heading off after completion of a task

Quite often the fault will miraculously disappear the moment the techie sits down without touching a keyboard.

Happened to me several times.

Likewise..

"But it wasn't working 5 minutes ago!" has featured a fair bit in my long and inglorious support career..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Heading off after completion of a task

Schrödinger's Hardware Failure.

Only occurs if no techie is there to observe it.

Or if a cat wanders near the shiny and oh-so-expensive new kit..

Which is why I buy 2nd hand servers. Immune to the cat-effect. Which, given that there are two cats currently sleeping on top of the acoustic server case, is just as well.

NASA's Mars Sample Return Program struggles to get off the drawing board

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

"mostly due to known process problems"

We know that the technology exists, we also know it's not simple.

What? Those commie ooropeens use different measurements from us? But we use good ol' Freedom Inches, just like the British Empire used to!

Chinese 'connected' cars are a national security threat, says Biden

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Long live dumb cars!

Mine’s as stupid as an ox when it comes to the Inter-Tubes.

The Morris barely has electrics, let alone electronics..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Who Is Listening In To Cars Phoning Home???......

Morris 1000 Traveller

One of the few cars that can fail their MOT due to woodworm rather than wireworm..

(Ours is a 1966 2-door saloon - currently listing slightly to the left at the front because it's parked slightly nose-down to the left and the suspension bushes have compressed..)

It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Can't be building pyramids in winter

Or, more accurately, can't be building pyramids during the Nile flood and the month or so afterwards..

(That was when the farmers planted their crops in the nice rich mud that the floods had left. There isn't a huge amount of seasonal variation in the weather there!)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

who want to get rid of Daylight Saving Time/Summer Time

[Waves hand}

They had a clear purpose at one point in time but, for a lot of the world, that purpose has long since ceased to be as agrarian requirements get less in the northern and southern parts of the world..

Husqvarna ports Doom to a robot lawnmower – not, thankfully, its chainsaws

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

I want to play on the dash of the 74hp motorcycle...

Someone has a deathwish..

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: I don't get it either

it took me twenty minutes just to work out how to start the bloody thing

Niece has some VW monstrosity - in order to start you have to insert the 'enable' key *before* the start button becomes live..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: I don't get it either

It randomly beeps at me: But none of the high-tech screens give me a clue as to why it's beeping at me.

Mine did that for a while - yurns out I'd left the 'speed camera detection' turned on and the definition of 'detection' was 'within a 1 mile radius'..

Nevada sues to deny kids access to Meta's Messenger encryption

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: The modern Internet is dangerous to kids

I have no interest in social media (except El Reg, of course)

That's OK - El Reg is antisocial media..

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: there are plenty of alternatives to Windows 11 out there

You can't bring your existing precompiled binaries from any other OS to Linux

Not entirely true - there are emulators like WINE (which is, obviously Not an Emulator) that can run a fairly diverse set of Windows applications on linux or MacOS. But it's not guarenteed that your stuff will run or, if it does run, will do so effectively..

(I've got an old game called "Steel Panthers: World at War" running under WINE but just occasionally, it starts in a very odd screen resolution and the sound is really glitchy..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: If he thinks that's bad he should try MacOS

use macOS daily and it's never tried to upsell me anything.

Likewise.. (3 Macs to be precise - my work ones (1 Intel, one Apple Silicon) and my home AS MBP).

Amazon hopes to avoid labor regulation by simply abolishing national watchdogs

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Just... bullshit

hard left leaning Supreme Court that made that particular ruling

In the US? Don't make laugh, it'll wake up destructo-pup..

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Why?

but really, they were sold a pup to begin with

We've just got one of those. Expensive, craps everywhere, high running costs and loves destroying stuff.

Sounds a lot like Saleforce/Oracle..

Aircraft rivet hole issues cause delays to Boeing 737 Max deliveries

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: >but the problem may also exist in 737s already being used by airlines

see what sticks the landing?

"Any landing you walk away from is a good one" - but not all of them result in a usable airframe..

iFixit tears Apple's Vision Pro to pieces

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Cnnot use with glasses so need prescription lens inserts

going full face with these infernal devices displaying mindless eyes

Apparently, drivers in the US have to be warned not to drive while wearing their Apple Vision Pro:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68215614

Only in America..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Cnnot use with glasses so need prescription lens inserts

They don't deform the eyes (I wear soft lenses, maybe hard ones do what you say I have no idea)

Hard gas perms do (I wore them from age 18 to about age 50) - they act as a jelly mould for the front of the eye and conform the cornea into the shape of the lens. Which is why, when you stop using hard lenses and go back to glasses, you need several sight-tests 3 months apart. At the end of which your eyes should have reverted back to their normal shape.

In my case, that resulted in my eyesight getting *slightly* better but the cylinder orientation of astigmatism in both eyes shifting by a noticable amount.

It's also why soft lenses don't automagically fix astigmatism (they mimic the shape of the front of the eye) whereas hard ones do because they force the front of the eye to be more spherical.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Solution:

Soft contact lenses are also an option

No good if you have more than a cylinder or two of astigmatism..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Cnnot use with glasses so need prescription lens inserts

My last pair were over £600

Likewise - although, because both my eyes breach the -10 dioptre limit I get a grant from the Government of an amazing £5 per lens. [1]

The optician doesn't bother to apply for it - doing the paperwork would cost more than the £10 they would get so they just give me the discount and move on.

(I have to have two sets of glasses - one for close work and readong and one for driving or anything else that needs longer vision - my prescription is such that they can't make a lens that allows me to do both especially when you take presbyopia into account..

I did wear contacts (hard gass-perms) for many years - gave me pretty much perfect vision and automagically fixed the cylinders of astigmatism that I have in both eyes. But I was getting to the stage of needed reading glasses anyway and wearing the lenses all day was becoming more and more uncomfortable so I went back to glasses full time.

I really envy people that can wake up and just *see*. You really don't know how lucky you are. My sight gets notably worse if I have a headache so I think my brain is doing its best to make sense of the images it does get!

[1] I don't count as partially-sighted because, with the glasses, I do get a fair degree of vision (I can read down to the 4th line of the sight test). The chromatic abberation is somewhat of a pain though - especially at night with oncoming car headlights.

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Military IT Moves

but it wasn't the persons job who was shipping them to make sure they worked on arrival, just to make sure they arrived

I had a similar experience sending some Sun servers to Bergen with Air Chance France - they didn't even do the "make sure that they arrived" bit. So we had an enjoyable 3 days there waiting for them to arrive (had ended up in Munich apparently) and, when they did, trying to get them to work. From the state of the pallet that they had been shipped on, I'd say that they literally fell out of the back of the cargo truck taking them from the airplane..

Dell said to be preparing broad Return To Office order this Monday

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

We'll hire the greenest, most inexperienced cheepo, straight outta uni kids and still charge the customer as though we're offering *actual* service

Well - it worked for Infosys/Crapita et. al. for years (although the cows are now coming home to roost..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: "if they want to keep their tax breaks"

no way in hell would I ever pay the ridiculous price coffee shops charge!

November 2021 I bought a bean-to-cup machine.. looked at the stats 'tother day - just over 4600 shots of coffee dispensed since then.. Sure, I've had to buy beans, provide milk and the electric to power it but, working on £5 for a cup of coffee in a shop, even when the £700 cost of the machine is factored in, I've saved a *lot* of money. And made the coffee how *I* wanted it, not how some indifferently-trained barista thought it should be made. It's arguable that I probably wouldn't have made or drunk that amount of coffee without the machine though.

And I know how often my machine is cleaned..

(I even maintained it - the steam unit developed a crack so that, every time milk got frothed or the milk contained got cleaned (the milk goes into a container and is auto-frothed to whichever degree I choose) it would pee over the work surface. I resisted the urge to buy a NEW SHINY (my wife was watching me like a hawk) and just paid £45 for the part then £5 for the 'security' bits required to undo the screws holding everything together.. Works fine now, even though the case is only held on by two screws instead of four..)

Tesla power steering probe upgraded after thousands more incidents reported

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Power what now?

Two Austin

Boo hiss. The evil opposition of the humble Morris Minor!

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Lucky for them...

Old cars were light weight, had narrow tires, and they had a lower steering gear ratio

I take it you've never driven a Morris Minor? There's a reason why the steering wheel is huge - a small Mini-style steering wheel wouldn't let you get the leverage required at low speeds..

(I remember having to steer a Citroen XM after it had peed its hydraulic fluid (again) all over the road and the power assistance for steering/brakes/suspension had all disappeared. "Heavy" is too dismissive a word. )

Windows 10 users report app gremlins after Microsoft update

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

I suppose my SiL still on W7 will be OK

Not if she uses it to connect to the Internet..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: time to start investigating linux installs :)

As regards Windows 11

Surely it doesn't exist? I distinctly remember Microsoft proclaiming that "Windows 10 was the last version of Windows that they would ever make!" Surely, being the honourable and ethical company that they are, they wouldn't have lied?

Wouldn't they?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

as much sense as the potato people from the Salad Nebula traveling thousands of light years so they can cause Type 2 Diabetes in people by getting them to eat too many starches

[Crosses off "potato people from the Salad Nebula" from the list of "things that caused my diabetes"]

Now I only have 1200 other things on the list! Oh noes!

LockBit shows no remorse for ransomware attack on children's hospital

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Okay, that tears it

A short lifetime sentence of Vogon poetry readings. I like it!

There - ftfy..

But consider this - autostrangulation by ones own bowels may consitiute cruel and unusual punishment!