* Posts by Andrew Moore

1720 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2007

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

Andrew Moore

Don't get mad, get even...

A few years ago, right before Christmas, I met up with a mate of mine for a couple of pints. I had been out shopping and had a couple of bags with me. When I got up to leave I found that one of the bags had been nicked. Fortunately all it contained was a cake, nothing too valuable. I was told by the barman that a lot of stuff goes missing around that time of year because the scrotes know that people are likely to be buying presents and the like and pubs in particular get targeted. So, fast forward a year, I met my mate for a pint in the same place, and the same thing happened- the nice looking bag I'd brought with me got nicked. However this time it contained the massive output of my Labrador, scooped up in a Tupperware container and nicely gift wrapped.

Andrew Moore

Re: That's horrible.

One of the great things about astigmatism is it makes me see rn (and nn) as an m. So for years I thought that show was called "Bum Notice". Though might favourite has to be (sadly missed) Irish supermarket chain, Superquinn.

Andrew Moore

Re: That's horrible.

I know that show- It had the line "I'll Bing that for you..." and I wondered how the actor said it with a straight face...

Data cops order Ireland to delete 3.2m records after ID card wheeze ruled to be 'unlawful'

Andrew Moore

It’s gets better...

You need the PS Card to access the government web services, which use a 2 Factor Authentication system which sends a pin to your mobile phone that gets blocked because it’s considered spam.

Sleeping Tesla driver wonders why his car ploughed into 11 traffic cones on a motorway

Andrew Moore

If it was relying on lidar then I would say that the high intensity returns from the reflective sleeves were probably discarded. I’ve seen this on terrestrial scanners.

Low Barr: Don't give me that crap about security, just put the backdoors in the encryption, roars US Attorney General

Andrew Moore

Re: Grumpy

Mamma’s going to make all your nightmares come true.

Mamma’s going to put all her fears into you.

Mamma’s going to keep you right here under her wing.

She won’t let you fly but she might let you sing...

The dread sound of the squeaking caster in the humming data centre

Andrew Moore

Re: Not all serial cables are made equal...

Yeah, APC and it's propriety "serial" port.

Andrew Moore

Re: What do you think ?

We can't be sexists either: If we are going with Pascal, then we should alternate with Ada.

You like magic tricks? See this claim that IBM bungled an Obamacare IT project? Whoosh, now it's a $15m check

Andrew Moore

I think in cases where companies deny or refute claims made against it in order to stop court proceedings, then the denial should trigger the litigation. That would make them less glib about the naysaying.

This isn't Boeing to end well: Plane maker to scrap some physical cert tests, use computer simulations instead

Andrew Moore

Re: A new name you say.

The 737 Crater?

Not very bright: Apple geniuses spend two weeks, $10,000 of repairs on a MacBook Pro fault caused by one dumb bug

Andrew Moore

Re: BS

Exactly my thought- otherwise the "problem" would have manifested itself the moment the laptop was first switched on, which in all likelihood, would have been at the Apple Store because they would want to show the customer that the unit was working fine before he left.

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

Andrew Moore

I always find it funny when someone says “it was in the last place we looked”. Why, do some people continue looking after they find it???

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Andrew Moore

Re: sometimes its too secure

The fact that the criminals never returned after the serious security was put in place would lead me to think that this was an inside job.

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

Andrew Moore

Re: Cloud Storage

Classy

Dedicated techie risks life and limb to locate office conference phone hiding under newspaper

Andrew Moore

Shouty men...

...get put on the bottom of my todo list. If they repeat the shouty experience, they go to the bottom again. I once explained this to a shouty man and he got in such a fit of apoplexy he actually went quiet. Then he asked to speak to my manager, who hates shouty men more than I do. Shouty man was told to only communicate by email in the future (and, hopefully told, to lay-off the caps lock).

Techie with outdated documentation gets his step count in searching for non-existent cabinet

Andrew Moore

Re: My approach...

I did challenge someone with "and how did you arrive at that timescale?"

Andrew Moore

My approach...

When anyone asks for a “5 minute favour” I always tell them “I can spare you an hour”. This lets them know that I’m calling them on their BS and indicate to them my time is valuable.

Andrew Moore

Plus, he’s the type of manager that’s liable to note in your performance review that you are slow at doing basic tasks and how it took you 4 weeks to do a 5 minute job...

Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register

Andrew Moore

So long...

Thanks for the graft and good luck with whatever comes next.

Now you can officially dox Scrabble players, thanks to the new dictionary definitions

Andrew Moore

"Ok we're being told "nerfherders" isn't allowed. "

And highly difficult to play given that it's 11 letters. You'd need someone to have already played "herd" or "herder(s)"

A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'

Andrew Moore

Funnily enough, that didn't stop him. Would get a regular ping from our AV when it blocked him from some dodgy URL.

Andrew Moore

Last place I worked had a guy that would print every single email he received (yes, including spam); read the printouts; and then shred them.

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

Andrew Moore

Re: 1.2M or 1.44M?

Ah yes, i still remember "Click Death"

Strong-willed field support op holds it together during painful customer call

Andrew Moore

Flashbacks...

Back in the day when I used to do tech support for Psion Kit, I would regularly get Palm Pilot and Apple Newton owners ringing for technical support because: a) the support lines from the manufacturers of their kit were useless; and b) we did support for Psion and that’s a PDA so they are the same thing...

Most of them would get very belligerent when I point out that they had not paid me for any technical support as they had not purchased our equipment. For the real arseholes, I learnt early on how to do factory resets on a variety of competitors gear.

User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?

Andrew Moore

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

I’d say it’s happened to nearly everyone who worked in tach support in the 80s, 90s. It certainly happened to me- as well as the “compliment slip stapled to the 5 1/4” disk”

London's Metropolitan Police arrest Julian Assange

Andrew Moore

In other news...

...I heard the Ecuadorians are keeping the cat.

Hello, tech support? Yes, I've run out of desk... Yes, DESK... space

Andrew Moore

Re: *BEER* shouldn't be 'cold cold'

Also, macro lagers tend to be brewed and bottled/kegged very fast, so not drinking them cold would reveal the acetalydehyde (green apples) and diacetyl (butterscotch) notes that indicate the beer was taken off the yeast far too quickly.

Andrew Moore

Re: *BEER* shouldn't be 'cold cold'

Guinness have been nickel-and-diming their ingredients for years. If it wasn't served cold, you'd notice that it doesn't have much flavour anymore.

Netflix wants to choose its own adventure where Bandersnatch trademark case magically vanishes

Andrew Moore

Re: Cursed name...

Ditto.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

Andrew Moore

Re: The Emperor's New Clothes

..."when they decided the one thing they couldn't stand was a smart-arse."

Andrew Moore

Re: No good deed...

The death knell was when you demonstrated that you knew more than the "expert". There was on way he was keeping you around after that.

Andrew Moore

Re: Sometimes it is indeed better to do whats right ...

Management will always make you suffer for it, but that's far outweighed by the reputation to get from your clients.

Andrew Moore

Re: not neccessarily very good at brown-nosing...

'having no ambition' is usually shorthand for 'not making me look good often enough' with mid-level manglement.

Andrew Moore

In the same vein...

I worked for a company that was a distributor for a big multi-national. One day I got a call from the big boys- a customer of theirs was having an ongoing issue with a piece of comms software that would not talk to an expensive bit of hardware they'd sold him and they knew that I have good experience with RS232 kit and would I help them out? So I was flown from Dublin to Glasgow and dropped to the customer site by their local rep. I quickly worked out that the issue was that the RX and TX lines on the 9 pin connector was crossed over. So a quick solder and everything was good to go.

And then the shit hit the fan. Turns out the customer had been waiting for nearly a year for the big company to fix this problem and all they'd done was send in a series of level 3 support guys who would hang around for a day and then wander off, usually with the excuse that the issue was outside their remit. And I got into trouble with the local rep who said that I should not have fixed the problem so quickly as it made the big company look bad. But on the plus side, when the customer heard that the big company had flown me over on the cheap (Ryanair flight to Preswick) he called his secretary and got me a first class ticket on Aer Lingus out of Glasgow International. He told the rep that he would be billing him for the ticket.

All good, leave it with you...? Chap is roped into tech support role for clueless customer

Andrew Moore

Re: "This will only take a second..."

"I've never used Windows 10, it's completely different and I don't know what to do."

I’m happy to find out I’m not the only person to do this.

OK, team, we've got the big demo tomorrow and we're feeling confident. Let's reboot the servers

Andrew Moore

Re: Another Robin in the 'Hood

One of the products I look after has a perpetual license on it. Which has to be renewed every year.

Crash, bang, wallop: What a power-down. But what hit the kill switch?

Andrew Moore

Sounds familiar...

Was in a client's comms room with my boss, sometime during the 80s. Suddenly the power goes dead and we all turn round and there's my boss at the kill switch. His response was along the lines of "What? I just wanted to know what it did." Needless to say, he was barred from the comms room and that ban still exists today.

Hold horror stories: Chief, we've got a f*cking idiot on line 1. Oh, you heard all that

Andrew Moore

"2) Why is your support phone line so poor they can't even answer a phone, which is their one, primary and sole purpose?"

Have you considered that some numpty with a 100-link SIP trunk might be tying up all their phones?

Andrew Moore

Re: Oooops, dropped

Something similar- we got our phone system upgraded and I didn't realise the new system auto answered internal intercom calls. So my boss got to hear me say "Now what does he f*cking want?"

Cop films chap on body-worn cam because he 'complains about cops a lot'. Chap complains

Andrew Moore

Re: I'm actually half on the officer's side here

It's an officers job to enforce the law, not interpret it.

Andrew Moore

Re: How covert was it?

A number of these cameras (and dashcams; and bike cameras) have a "Covert" or "Do Not Disturb" mode which switches the LED off.

Andrew Moore

Re: No wonder

My mother's house was broken into and when she reported it to the police they basically said "You have insurance don't you? Why are you bothering us?"

Fujitsu pitched stalker-y AI that can read your social media posts as solution to Irish border, apparently

Andrew Moore

Re: WTF?

Apparently it breaks "Data Protection" rules, but when you press them on which DP rules exactly it breaks, they go very quiet.

I won't bother hunting and reporting more Sony zero-days, because all I'd get is a lousy t-shirt

Andrew Moore

Re: Sony - Never buy

My boss got a Sony Vaio many years ago, and the motherboard blew on it. Thankfully it was within the warranty period. The downside was the boss had been storing all his photographs on it, in a non-backed up area. Next problem- the hard drive was not accessible without dismantling the machine (first for me). I rang Sony support (after paying for the privilege) to be told by a passive aggressive little shit, that I was to backup any data before returning it to them as the drive would be blanked; and that opening the machine to get at the drive would void the warranty. I kept pointing out that the motherboard was fried, but he just kept repeating about backing up and voiding the warranty.

In the end the boss decided that the photographs were more important. And he also issued a decree that the company was not to buy any more Sony products.

Facebook didn't care if your kids ran up gigantic credit card bills – lawsuit

Andrew Moore

Re: Is there a scammier corporation

I'm currently checking out Line and I'll be transferring my family to it.

Hubble 'scope camera breaks down amid US govt shutdown, forcing boffins to fix it for free

Andrew Moore

Re: Shutdown

Sorry, I was trying to think of the other American corporations that pull the same practice. Thanks for the clarification.

Andrew Moore

Re: Shutdown

I'm thinking that aren't the likes of Walmart, Costco et al reliant on the government giving their employees food stamps because they don't pay them a living wage? In that case, the large corporations will be affected.

Amazon Mime: We train (badly) an AI love bot using divorce bombshell Bezos' alleged sexts to his new girlfriend

Andrew Moore

Calling Mrs Merton...

"So.. Lauren, what first attracted you to the multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos?"

My 2019 resolution? Not to buy any of THIS rubbish

Andrew Moore

Re: It's an age thing...

I enjoyed it. Though I would like to point out that "hotshot" Spectrum game programmers didn't use Sinclair BASIC- we were using Z80 machine code.

Until now, if Canadian Uber drivers wanted to battle the tech giant, they had to do it in the Netherlands – for real

Andrew Moore

Re: If it weren't so crappy it'd be funny...

Worse is- Uber gets defended by people whose only desire is to have low cost taxi fares- they couldn't care less about poverty or working conditions, as long as they get their "cheap".