* Posts by I'm Brian and so's my wife

179 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2009

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Excel's comedy of errors needs a new script, not new scripting

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Excel is already the single most dangerous tool to give to civilians.

And those workstations are thundering their way through the overnight processing every night under the traders' desks - no testing, no source control, no backup...

Meta iOS apps accused of injecting code into third-party websites

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Block, block, block

I've set up pihole via a Docker image on my Synology NAS that acts as the DNS on the home network. It's a bit fiddly (and potentially pointless as we use WhatsApp), but at least regular web browsing is a tiny bit safer.

John Deere tractors 'bricked' after Russia steals machinery from Ukraine

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: "one upside is that Ukraine receives transport fees for gas"

I saw a YouTube video that laid out some very plausible reasons for the invasion and the need to stir up trouble in Transnistria. In summary it relates to sizeable gas deposits off the Crimean peninsula.

The YT channel is RealLifeLore and the title is "Why Russia is Invading Ukraine", published on 26 Feb 2022

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram deplatform themselves: Services down globally

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: folks might actually be more productive then

> the Facebook

Prefixing it with "the" is a classic - thanks for the chuckle!

If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is: Nobody can decrypt the Dharma ransomware

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Can someone explain.....

That is absolutely disgraceful!

Astroboffins baffled as Curiosity rover takes larger gasps of oxygen in Martian summers

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Easy option

You can't handle the truth!

F-B-Yikes! FBI bod allegedly hid spy camera under desk to snap coworker's upskirt pics

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: FBI

"Thanks, I just had it stuffed"

British ISPs throw in the towel, give up sending out toothless copyright infringement warnings

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Follow the money

The Expanses was an excellent series - I'm looking forward to the next one, although I'm wary of how they do it.

Internet imbeciles, aka British ISP lobbyists, backtrack on dubbing Mozilla a villain for DNS-over-HTTPS support

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: I have a small amount of sympathy with the police etc.

Do you have a link please?

Game of Thrones author's space horror Nightflyers hitting telly

I'm Brian and so's my wife
Thumb Up

"[blah, blah] Gretchen Mol" - sold!

Tech firms reel from Leave's Brexit win

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Brexit will never actually happen

Check your passport and tell me if it doesn't say "European Union" anywhere on the front cover. If it does, then yes, I'd say you missed something.

As another example of the kind of suite of institutions that comprise the EU, you may have heard of the Common Fisheries Policy? The Council of Ministers was advised that the Treaty of Rome did not give any authority for the CPF to operate, yet they continued with it and failed to admit this to member states. This was only sneakily corrected twenty years later in the Maastricht Treaty.

No thanks.

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Brexit will never actually happen

When the next Euro crisis happens, the begging bowl will be out.

Euro army - they may respect our veto, but the begging bowl will be out.

Migrant crisis - the begging bowl will be out.

Our economy does better than the continent - the begging bowl will be out.

At some point they'll be suggesting harmonising tax rates (with no consideration of the consequences for individual countries), starting with VAT and with half a percent reserved for EU funding. The EU never, ever shrinks.

The harmonisation will move on to corporate rates.

Why stop there? Income tax rates next.

When a smaller group moves to completely integrate, we'll be left on the periphery anyway.

All of this will take place with the backdrop of increasing regulation, with Juncker having already stated that there was no opportunity for further reform or compromise.

I am a British citizen and want to remain a British citizen. I don't want to be a European citizen, so voting Leave was the only real choice. Of course I'm pissed off, they made me gamble my union for theirs!

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: London Falling

No one has mentioned the reduced turnout in Scotland, only the percentage that voted in favour of the EU. One can only assume the remainder were too busy trying to score some skag or cheap lager.

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Bah

What's your tech profile & where are you looking?

ZTE flagship elbows aside Xiaomi

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Orange San Fran

Exactly - I bought it specifically because I'd seen child-proof instructing on how to root it :)

I'm Brian and so's my wife

My wife growled and grumbled when I swapped her ancient Nokia for one of those Orange San Frans, but she was won over within days :)

I'm Brian and so's my wife

> Rather sooner than Huawei, ZTE realised that Chinese skins feel odd to European and North American consumers

My first thought was of "Silence of the Lambs"

Parliament takes axe to 2nd EU referendum petition

I'm Brian and so's my wife

If the issue was that important to people, they should have registered to vote earlier on. Only a small percentage would have been between houses / in a complicated situation, etc. Instead, so many left it to the last minute that the website crashed (yes, blame for that all around). They were then handed an extra two days.

For all the sound and fury north of the border, the Scottish turnout was pretty low - again, if the issue was that important to you, you should have bloody well got out and voted!

There is a quite widespread attitude that all one has to do to effect change is vote online or possibly phone in or text one's vote. What absolute balls. Get up off your arse and take your right to vote seriously!

Astroboffins find first 'wind nebula' around rare 'magnetar' star

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Humbled

I see at least one person didn't like my post. Would it help to say that I don't have anything against the Flying Spaghetti Monster, its noodly appendages nor its followers? I mean, you know, some of my best friends are Pastafarians (etc.)?

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Humbled

Those pictures of unimaginably vast volumes of space, of structures and events many millions of years old... it leaves me pretty much speechless every time.

I feel humbled and, in some ways, filled with hope that we'll overcome our obsession with the various forms of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and live up to our potential and go interstellar.

Developer waits two years for management to define project

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Signal to noise

That was such a beautiful situation it brought a tear to my eye..!

TalkTalk scam-scammers still scam-scamming

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: They are losing data from their engineer booking systems

That is absolutely disgraceful! When TT suffered a hack last year I moved my parents to PlusNet. It's more expensive and they had a couple of minor teething problems, but I was far (far, far) happier dealing with UK-based staff.

I'd never return to TT, nor would I recommend anyone choose them.

Huge embarrassment over fisting site data breach

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Bummer.

'Just give me any old date and I'll make it work' ... said the VB script to the coder

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Visual Basic

Also MZ Tools - I'd estimate a 20-30% productivity boost using that VBA add-in.

Official: Toshiba pulls out of European consumer PC market

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Why buy new?

I kept meaning to come back to see if anyone replied - thank you!

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Why buy new?

Interesting...! Any recommendations on a UK website?

Good thing this dev quit. I'd have fired him. Out of a cannon. Into the sun

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Ah, VB ... "variants"

No - never, never use CDate() since it'll happily wave through Yank dates.

Also, IsNumeric() will allow through 123,,445,,6,5,4

I ended up writing helper functions that employed regex to ensure that the values matched.

Permies sitting pretty as fifth of contractors see rates cut

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: What!?

The ratio you seek is as good as impossible with mere mortals. That said, the amount of ancillary staff (as opposed to people who actually get on with tackling the task at hand) is ridiculous.

If I didn't enjoy dev work so much, I'd become a BA and then migrate to PM. Obviously I'd stay contracting and I'd see my day rates rise from £450-£550, to £500-600 and then £550-650+. A good BA or PM can really bring things together, but good ones are rarer than hen's teeth.

Bah humbug. It's Andrew's Phones of the Year

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Don't install Samsung Knox - it just makes easy rooting more difficult.

Your 30-second guide to why Samsung is acting all Smugsun today

I'm Brian and so's my wife

How long to unlock a mobile?

I've been waiting more than two weeks to get an unlock code. The call centre guy said that he'd heard of a few people kept waiting by Samsung. Getting bored now :(

American robocallers to be shamed in public lists

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Easy Parsing Please

Or by someone who hates CSVs?

I'm Brian and so's my wife
Mushroom

Do it. Do it. Do it. For crying out loud, do it.

Then set up the stocks in town squares across the country and provide rotten fruit & veg (obviously paid for by the offending/offensive companies).

Then fine them out of existence and put the directors on a list barring them from any future directorships.

TalkTalk attackers stole 'incomplete' customer bank data, ISP confirms

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Yes, as long as you do that 1471 trick mentioned further up the comments. That's a neat way around the dial tone trick they can pull on you.

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Change my password?

I just switched my parents to PlusNet today. The cashback (I did it via Quidco) covers the overlap between the contracts - they had a month to the end of their contract.

I mentioned this latest breach as one of the reasons. They sounded ready to make all sorts of offers to keep the business. The one reason I didn't mention to them was that I wanted to support a UK-based business - it seemed a little too ranty to mention it to the overseas call centre operative.

Mind-blowing secrets of NSA's security exploit stockpile revealed at last

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: ████████ ██████ █████████████

Tru dat

Want your kids to learn coding? Train the darn teachers first

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: left hand, right hand

Why do you think that they keep rejecting you / why do you think you're qualified?

TalkTalk not talking much as systems take a tumble

I'm Brian and so's my wife

mmmm... Hyperoptic!

Fancy 10 Gbps home broadband? Broadcom's built the guts of it

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: WHY WHY WHY

Moar cat videos! MOAR!

Buffoon in 999 call: 'Cat ate my bacon and I want to press charges'

I'm Brian and so's my wife

All your pork are belong to us!

New Windows 10 Build 10122 aims to fix file association hijacking

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: "Adobe’s PDF reader is better..."

I read that about Adobe and spluttered! I'd recommend SumatraPDF - lightning-fast and very light on resources.

IBM cuts down Amazon with cloudy 10-year ShopDirect deal

I'm Brian and so's my wife
Mushroom

Re: A business first?

Productivity will be maintained (or even increased) as long as they don't start using Lotus fsuking Notes!

You like jumping out of planes? Try the new GoPro 4. Short walks? There's a Hero instead

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Battery, battery, battery

I use one of these on my cycling commute (GoPro3). They last about 1h 15m I reckon, but I believe environmental conditions have a part to play: it's sometimes not lasted a slightly slower commute of 1h 5m (I'm normally 5-10 mins faster). I have it recording a rolling hour at 720p wide 60fps.

The first thing I do is to make sure it's left to charge off my PC. This is a major part of my defence on the road (yes, I obey the rules; yes, a minority of others don't; yes, they annoy me too, etc.) so I'd be interested to see how this new model operates in low light. Still, mine's working fine and I don't fancy forking out £350+(?) for a new one just yet.

Fast And Furious 6 cammer thrown in slammer for nearly three years

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Sir

That is a disgraceful situation and outcome.

There are plenty of injustices on a daily basis, but being a cyclist, I have a particular beef with drivers who kill and get 6 month suspended sentences and possibly a point or two on their licence. If they'd used a hand-held weapon, such as a knife, then they would probably be looking at a couple of decades in jail.

BitTorrent not to blame for movie revenues, says economist

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: More probably, Hollywood (etc.) ...

Is that a metric or imperial fuckton?

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: you mean movie makers still have not realised

Netflix has the third one, but not the second - another example of the difficulties encountered when trying to do the right thing by joining a subscription service.

London commuter hell will soon include 'one card to rule them all'

I'm Brian and so's my wife

The fact that one has to engage in that split-fare bollocks to get a reasonable price seriously pisses me off.

I generally prefer free markets, but the kind of crony capitalism bullshit we seem to implement and tolerate over and over again (utilities, banking, transport) makes me wonder about alternative approaches.

I don't recall baulking at the price of train tickets when I was at uni 20 years ago and earning significantly less. I may now be older and more cynical/miserly/unrealistic, but like I said, just talking about it makes my blood boil.

Ever get the impression a telesales op was being held prisoner?

I'm Brian and so's my wife
Joke

Re: Really bad idea actually...

> daemon

Ah, the IT angle.

Tata says USA rejecting HALF of Indians' work visa requests

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Almost all of the comments here, including yours, point to poor-quality management that lets down permie staff over and over again. It's exactly that kind of crap that led me to contracting's warm bosom, where I happily reside now.

We also have a large number of off-shored staff and they aren't especially good. Probably the worst of the lot is a contractor they have out there. We regularly have to redo their work and the company is paying UK contractors' rates to achieve that - such foolishness on their part, but thanks anyway!

IBM reveals radical email interface rethink

I'm Brian and so's my wife

Re: Notes

Luxury!

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