* Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

6335 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2015

X marks the Notch, where smartmobe supercycles go to die

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

but that silly notch

As copied by every high-end Android phone this year?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Apple playing catch up with Samsung

Which would be why the latest Samsung is priced similarly to the iPhone X - which came out months before the latest Samsung..

(If anything, I suspect that Samsung would dearly love to inhabit the same sphere as an aspirational brand as Apple but don't have the corporate structure to do it. They certainly have the designers and technical expertise..)

Capita reports pre-tax LOSS of £515m for 2017

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Doubt it'll happen

Big stain on my soul, never mind the CV.

That's when you *know* a place is bad - even the sales types are seeing it as a stain on their souls[1]..

[1] I thought that you all had to give up your souls as part of the induction into being a sales person? Much like an IT person has to give up their sanity to join a helldesk..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

outcome would be a completely new definition of "profit" that bore no resemblance to GAAP of any civilised lands

Your cynicism is breathtaking and entirely in the character of this fine place.. Keep it up!

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Turn around in its grave, maybe ?

rather a 'calibration point' on the scale of benchmarks

If nothing else, they can serve as a warning to others..

Petty PETA rapped by judges over monkey selfie copyright stunt

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

His tune suddenly changed when various folks took him up on his rhetoric

And proved that, strictly speaking, he doesn't own copyright either..

UK consumer help bloke Martin Lewis is suing Facebook over fake ads

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Re: Mr Angry

Yes, this could have a big impact not only on Facebook but all ad-slingers

Good. It's about time the festering sewer that is the internet advertising industry gets cleaned up. And (in other contexts) companies are starting to wake up to the fact that there are an awful lot of people that don't want adverts pushed into their faces all day long. Even the US TV networks (some of them) have realised this and one or two have announced that they are going to 'trial' reduced advert-load in programmes..

Apparently, lots of people are leaving for places like Netflix where you don't get adverts - because they enjoy not having to wade through acres of dross to actually see the programme. And enjoy not having the programme interrupted every 5 minutes.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: "You just won't believe why Dragon's Den was cancelled"

but I long suspected they are being run via some offshore loophole too difficult to close

The problem is (in part) about the various ad brokers and agencies. They get paid for providing adverts to sites and, in general, are not too fussy about the content. After all, it makes them money. And, in general, their sytems are almost all automated with very little, if any, human interaction or control. After all, processor time is cheap and people are expensive. And need things like sleep.

The ad brokers should also be included in the lawsuit.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: "... he should report any adverts ..."

taking money to push out adverts while paying as little attention as possible to who pays for them or what they contain

Even if they contain malware or links to malware. The US rules on content publishers make a certain sense but they shouldn't absolve the carrier of responsibility for infecting your machine..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: "... he should report any adverts ..."

are men not capable of buying their own clothes

Yup. And no, my wife doesn't buy me clothes[1] and I don't buy her clothes. We both realise that the other is adult[2] enough to manage it themselves.

We do, obviously, consult with each other when buying clothes - and trust each other to be honest.

[1] She doesn, however, knit/crotchet me stuff - jumpers and socks and the like. Which is nice and, in general, they are very good.

[2] I stopped my mother buying me clothes without me being present when I was about 10. The quality of clothing went up as a result.. Or at least, the bought ones did. I couldn't do a lot about the ones that I inherited from my brothers or the ones that various schools insisted I had..

US sanctions on Turkey for Russia purchases could ground Brit F-35s

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: leave increasing numbers of vital British-owned fighters grounded.

Lemons? I thought you chaps were "Limeys"?

Chacun a son fruit de citrus..

(Limes are smaller and much, much easier to grow in this country. Important when you want to supply your fleet with them and are at war with your nearest provider - France..)

Time to ditch the front door key? Nest's new wireless smart lock is surprisingly convenient

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Does a keypad lock with a good range of options *need* internet connetivity?

None of which needs an internet link.

Indeed. The company I worked for 10 years ago has a very similar system (which we sold to rental companies) that didn't involve a third-party having access to your infrastructure..

(We sold two versions - one that used RS232 comms and one that used TCP/IP... both controlled from a local PC.

Kaspersky Lab loses the privilege of giving Twitter ad money

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

few Eu by switching my subscriptions to the paid tier

I suspect that Kaspersky is suffering from a surfeit of "Won't give the US security services inside access" here..

Planned European death ray may not need Brit boffinry brain-picking

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

If you use mirrors, some of the beam simply bounces off

There fixed that for you..

(And the mirror finish will get degraded by the beam energy that gets through - either by localised heat effects or damage to the underlying layers)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

it will be fought within visual range using "brute force and ignorance" weapons

Or, as the old mantra used to be (and still is despite Bomber Harris trying to disprove it), "air power alone can never win a war".

Lack of it can lose you a war, but having grunts take and hold territory on the ground is (at the moment) the only guarenteed way to end a war.

Of course, unless you have all the other bits needed to win the resource war, you are going to need a lot more grunts than the other side. Especially if the tech and training levels are even.

Samsung-backed gizmo may soon juice up your smartphone over the air

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Re: It's only a matter of time

Soon I shall be able to shoot lightning from my fingertips.

That one's easy (for a somewhat limited version of 'lightning'). All you need is:

One 13-year old science student.

One milk-crate (for standing on - insulation and all that)

One Van Der Graaf generator (not the prog band - the belt-driven thingy).

Hey presto! Electricity coming out your fingertips!

For added bonus points, add a nearby gas tap and an unlit Bunsen Burner..

Tech bribes: What's the WORST one you've ever been offered?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

overbearing aura of enthusiasm that comes from not having been punched in the face enough

Or as the result of the drugs prescribed after the aforementioned punching..

Although, in my experience Sales and Marketing[1] types are entirely too thick-skinned and up themselves to take the hint.

Sadly, my current jobs doesn't allow me to be rude to the poor dears when they phone up to flog me the latest tat. Not that I have any ability to buy said tat.

[1] Never to be mistaken for each other apparently. Or so I've been told. Although it was a sales type that told me that marketing's job was to hold the customers down while sales screws them..

There is no perceived IT generation gap: Young people really are thick

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

"It’s about pressing a button on your keyfob to find out where you parked your car"

Which can, occasionally (OK once!) be useful. When you attend a gig at a large outside venue where parking is in a selection of unlit fields, none of which are signposted, the only way to find you car can be wandering around the field pressing the keyfob until something beeps at you.

Sometimes it's even the right car.. (and I apologise to the strangers who, apparently, had the same keyfob code as me..).

(It was Genesis, Leeds Roundhay Park in 1992. A great concert only spoilt by the shoehorning of Lisa Stansfield into the setlist.. - Runrig and Genesis were great).

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Teletypes and Moogs

ancient analog synthesizers

Which are becoming a Thing again (or at least in Prog circles - I think it's that 'authentic' 1970's sound..).

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Saracen and Roland

No, just properly educated.

"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it"..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Most people are not just thick.

Me: "You do realise some liquids aren't aqueous?"

Her: "I'm not as stupid as you are"

And then went on to offer you some French Dressing?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

and they referred to themselves as "engineers"

Yeah - but I could refer to myself as "a professional IT person" - it wouldn't mean I was!

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Same with Beowulf

Efste suþweardan strang sunu godwines

sige bið swete þin þenungwerod guþwerig

ac wyllelm se bastard is nu æt pefnesea

ond forbærnð þisne eþel þe þu gehiertest

gadra þa garan on þam hliþan æt hastingan

feoht oð deorcunge oð æfen acolað

ond þu sceol forðferan eac swa angelcynn

on þissum eard þe þu behete to healdenne

I did think of learning Saxon at one point but decided that it was too much like hard work.. So I stuck to doing IT.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Saracen and Roland - not surprised at the blank faces, too obscure

I got it, but only because I'm a history geek..

(Mind you, Roland wasn't as pleasant or gallant as the ballad makes out - he was a typical war-leader of the time).

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: So there you stand....

mere age has rendered your previous hilarious material to a mere damp squib

Which allows me to bring out my favourite depressing poem (can't remember who the Victorian author was but it's used in a song by a prog band called Cosmograf)

Growing Old

What is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form

The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?

Yes, but not for this alone

Is it to feel our strength -

Not our bloom only, but our strength -decay?

Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact

Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not

Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!

'Tis not to have our life

Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow

A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes

And heart profoundly stirred

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past

The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young

It is to add, immured

In the hot prison of the present, month

To month with weary pain

It is to suffer this

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:

Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change

But no emotion - none

It is - last stage of all -

When we are frozen up within, and quite

The phantom of ourselves

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost

Which blamed the living man

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

The Widow's Mite".***

***although there is apparently some debate

Really? It's quite simple - the rich ones were making a big song 'n dance about giving a (relative) pittance in the hope that people would think them good people because "they gave to charidee".

Whereas, the poor widow gives a (much, much larger in relative terms) donation, in quiet, because she thinks it's the right thing to do.

It's not the science of putting things into orbit to work out the moral of the parable.

CEO insisted his email was on server that had been offline for years

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Deleting emails

every email I've ever sent or received, ever, back to... pre-2000 certainly

My home email server only has emails back to ~1998 - because that's when I had a major disc-crash and had to rebuild the server from scratch.

But I keep my inbox relatively small and archive/discard stuff every so often.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: That sounds like the story of a madhouse

I mean, the part that makes money never failed, so anything else is just a cost.

And this is something that's bugged me for most of my working life - with very few exceptions[1] IT is seen a net loss in financial terms rather than a cost-of-business expense.

I mean, it's all very well having sales droids in shiny suits going out pressing the flesh, but if it wasn't for IT, they wouldn't be able to sell anything!

Strangely enough, very few sales types seem to see it in those terms. Or accountants. Or Finance Directors..

[1] And all the exceptions seem to have been companies whose main product is IT.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Many years ago..

.. I briefly worked at the corporate arm of a big mobile phone company based in Berkshire.. One day, we decided to clean stuff up around the office.

Upon opening a cupboard, we found an old Novell server humming away (and quite warm!). No-one knew what it was there for (and it didn't seem to have any data on it) so, after letting everyone know about it and waiting a couple of days, we turned it off.

Come month-end, Finance were panicing (even more than usual!) - the billing cycle hadn't completed for the last week or so. After tracing the data flows, we discovered that there was an intermediate server that no-one seemed to know anything about - the sole job that the server did was to take data from one source and copy it to another... and that said server had stopped doing the data copy about a week ago.

The data suspiciously seemed to coincide with when we switched off the old server in the cupboard. So we turned it back on again - and sure enough, after a couple of hours, the billing data started appearing again.

Since the people who had set up the billing process had long since left (they had a *high* staff turnover) we had to get some more people in to fix the billing process so that we could remove the server. It took ages.

ZTE to USA: Sure, ban us, but you cannot afford such victories

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Err, you missed the point

Yes because they would bother with an AC

Yeah - that's what "they" (TINT) want you to think..

(It's paranoia all the way down!)

Yahoo! webmail! hacker! faces! nearly! eight! years! in! the! cooler!

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

"My client deeply regrets the choices which led to him being before this court."

"Particularly the ones that led him to get caught"

Eight months after Equifax megahack, some Brits are only just being notified

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Re: Timely

you should have something from them around mid October

And it'll be a request for all sorts of data "just to make sure that we know it's you". Or, as I explained to someone who purported to be from my credit-card company (unsolicited call: "we just want you to know about some offers but first we need you to identify yourself". My response was "since I don't have a clue who you are, why don't you tell me something from my account to identify yourself first?". She got quite shirty and kept insisting that I identify myself. The phone suffered a service disconnection event shortly afterwards..)

All of which data will, undoubtedly find its way into the public view either by incompetence or greed. Or incompetent greed..

BT pushes ahead with plans to switch off telephone network

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Most people have cordless phones. How do they work in a blackout?

Which is exactly why I have an old push-button phone in the cupboard under where the cordless phone sits..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Oh well

we might need a new battery soon. I looked and my unit still had a green light

That light is meaningless unless you have a particularly advanced UPS.. I've had UPSen that showed everything as hunky-dory when powered but, as soon as the power fails, the battery lasts about 30 seconds.

From memory (and I could be wrong), the standard UPS battery tests just test the resistance of the battery and, if it's within range, shows a green light. There are lots of circumstances where the battery could have the correct-ish resistance yet have no power reserve.

OK, this time it's for real: The last available IPv4 address block has gone

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

The trick then is to beat to death with sticks anyone who suggests IPv8...

IP Mountain Lion? IP High Sierra? Will those do?

:-)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: About the only one that hasn't figured out IPv6 are enterprise & SMB

65-85% of residential users and wireless users are using IPv6 natively already

And then you woke up from the dream and had to face reality..

(In the UK, pretty much all residental ISPs use NAT. NAT and more NAT. Because there's lots of people who understand it and, in general, not many residential people need to run servers..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Personally

Get a free IPv6 address? You have got to be f- joking

Unless you happen to use a proper ISP. All it took to get Zen to turn it on for me was a quick email to their tech support department..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Personally

When I can afford a weekend to devote to this, I'll try again.

Make sure you have polenty of gin available. It's perfect for washing away the frustration of trying to implement IPv6..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: "IPv6 was designed to run alongside IPv4 from the beginning. "

So you got AFAIK, three different ways to have addresses assigned and have to ensure they are configured correctly

Indeed. So, my ISP enables IPv6 for me (at my request), which means that my router now has an IPv6 address. My firewall, that sits behind the router, also gets an IPv6 address.

Unfortunately, one that my router doesn't seem to understand, despite the fact that it's in (theoretically) the same prefix. So my devices inside the firewall can get their IPv6 addresses from the firewall and can see the firewall and all the IPv6-enabled devices inside. But nothing past the external interface of the firewall. The external interface of the firewall can see the internal interface of the router, but not the outside interface and nothing at all outside. So even manually looking up the IPv6 address of an external site and trying to ping6 it gets me a total failure to ping (IPv4 ping can reach it fine).

My firewall rules are OK (anything IPv6 can see anything outside on IPv6 - I'll get it working first then worry about protecting things). My router isn't running any firewall.

Can I work out how to fix it? No. Lots of theoretical stuff on "this is how it should work" that is totally unhelpful. And, after day of trying to make it work, several bottles of gin are starting to look mighty attractive, even though my head is already hurting trying to work my way through the broken IPv6 model..

In the end I gave up and turned off IPv6. Nothing I had needed it anyway..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Compatibility

drop-in replacement which handles both, instead of an abstracted parallel universe where we struggle to find out what our address (or block) is, or to understand if our firewall is actually protecting us

DING! DING! DI<bang!>

Opps. Broke my dinger by dinging it too enthusiastically..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Compatibility

IPv6 was designed to run alongside IPv4 from the beginning. They work independently

And thus invalidate any network security that you had in place..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Compatibility

cretins who designed IP6 had given some thought to making it backward compatible

It's quite clear from the various notes about the IPv6 design process that the people involved wanted to design a 'pure' new address methodology and so discarded anything 'old and broken'. And, in the process, managed to ensure that migration was not only difficult but, potentially, dangerous in terms of network security.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: "Nobody uses it..."

I use it!

Congratulations.

Now, image that you are a really big organisation that's invested a lot of money in the whole IPv4 pit - routers, firewalls, access control measures, all of which are potentially bypassable by a bad IPv6 implementation..

In short, IPv6 is a mess. It's a total camel[1], designed by people who really, really didn't consider about how it would get implemented in the real world.

And, when those implementation issues became obvious, made it more complicated still.

A pox on it. We need IPv7 - just add another octet at the start of IPv6..

[1] A camel being a horse designed by a committee. And not a cute itty-bitty-kitty-committee either..

Guess who's still most moaned about UK ISP... Rhymes with BorkBork

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

strong British regional accents trying to make themselves understood

You mean, like the Geordies that staff the Sky customer services? Worth ringing up for the accent alone!

(I like regional accents. Apart from the Brummie accent which, bizarrely, is where I was born.. Oh, and the Esturine (Essex et. al.) accents. But my favourites are Geordie and (internationally) South-West Ireland..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

single static IP and Zen offer one for free

And were cheaper than IDNet for my (initally 8, now 16) block of addresses too.

I like Zen. Even if the IPv6 advice they gave me didn't work - I suspect that wasn't the fault of the advice, more the carbon-based lifeform trying to implement it. And, to be fair, my home setup is a *tad* non-standard..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

migrated three customer sin

So what address do Lust, Gluttony and Pride live at?[1] And where to the other 4 sins get their broadband?

[1] What is the address of Parliament anyway? "The Big Old Victorian Building that's falling apart, by the Thames, Central London" probably won't get the post delivered..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Mere mention of the letters BT

I had a fairly good relationship with my local BT engineer in the days when my line would fail repeatedly once the line box in the road filled with water..

Which only got fixed once I moved to an ISP that actually paid BT to fix the core issue.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Yep, all over the radio.

uSwitch apparently, which is just a "pick the cheapest" website.

And almost certainly gets dosh from suppliers that it recommends. So dorkdork probably paid them the best..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Not cheap but the odd time I do need to call them, it is a fine experience

Indeed. Even when it was the call to say "I notice that on your website the price for my service has dropped, how about you apply that to my line?".

To which the answer was "sure.. <clickety-click> All done now.". No upselling, no passing off to someone else and no waffling.

I'm still waiting for my exchange to be FTTP-enabled though. My 70/20 FTTP line seems *so* restricting these days :-)

(Runs for cover from the incoming curses/hardware)

NHS given a lashing for lack of action plan one year since WannaCry

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Kick me whilst I'm down

The mother-in-law is a nurse, and they deal with a lot more shit than doctors have to

Quite often literally.

(Mum was a nurse - at time midwife[1], surgical nurse, school nurse[2], and general ward-sister. I don't hate the smell of hospitals - to me that was what Mum used to smell like so it's quite comforting to me!)

[1] In East London in the mid 1950's. As I discovered when she and my wife were talking about "Call the Midwife". According to her, the setting and methods were fairly authentic although her main comment was "we would have got sacked if we got up to half of what they seem to get away with".

[2] She hated that one. All the responsibility with none of the ability to do stuff to fix the underlying causes. And her boss was (apparently) "a right bitch". That's the one and only time I've ever heard her say anything like that about someone.