Change to front page
I noticed that the link to these forums at the top of the front page has disappeared. Why? Just curious. Not even sure anyone will even see this as the list of forums also appears changed.
Posts by Roger Greenwood
1073 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Sep 2006
Change to front page
Windows 7 and Server 2008 end of support: What will change on 14 January?
Thursday 9th January 2020 11:31 GMT
Re: A repeat of XP?
Still got 2 XP in the mix of about 20 desktop machines, one 14 years old, one 12. When they break they will be replaced. No problems but also not used for general web browsing so relatively low risk. One never changed because inertia, the other is "cold dead hands" kind of reason/person. It may well come to that.
iFixit surgeons dissect Apple's pricey Mac Pro: Industry standard sockets? Repair diagrams? Who are you and what have you done to Apple?
Doogee Wowser: The S40's a terrible smartphone, but a passable projectile
Friday 6th December 2019 09:56 GMT
There was a time....
.. when teachers would launch the blackboard rubber (eraser - a lump of wood the size of a brick) at any kid reverting to ankle biting annoyance. They usually missed but it woke us up. A rugged phone sounds like it would do the same job though.
I used to look forward to history, now it's just a memory.
Take a Big Blue cheque and go: IBM settles 281 UK age discrim cases
Space-wrecks: Elon's prototype Moon ferry Starship blows its top during fuel tank test
Thursday 21st November 2019 10:54 GMT
Sometimes a test is done to find the weak spot and where the effort should be going. This may not have been their intention, but I bet they learnt a lot.
I've been told many times that any fool can make kit unbreakable, but if you don't break something then it was overengineered :-)
Yes the lab coat please with the copy of "Ignition!" in the pocket.
Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election
Friday 15th November 2019 18:30 GMT
Re: Ye Gods - back to the dark ages.
I'm conflicted. When I bought a house in the mid 80's I was treated as not worthy to own a telegraphic connection without extensive vetting, signatures and payment in advance, even though the line and phone were already installed.
But I also knew some folks who worked for the GPO/BT at the time, excellent and conscientious engineers who worked very hard and gave fantastic customer service. They were made redundant.
You're right, you can't turn back the clock.
Friday 15th November 2019 10:41 GMT
The bigger picture
As well as all the numerous problems mentioned above, a major aim seems to be to enable the poor downtrodden consumer (you and me) to have better internet so we can stop at home and buy more stuff easier. At the same time we need to "save the high street". Have they thought this through?
One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark
Reaction Engines' precooler tech demo chills 1,000°C air in less than 1/20th of a second
Criminalise British drone fliers, snarl MPs amid crackdown demands
Watch out! Andromeda, the giant spiral galaxy colliding with our own Milky Way, has devoured several galaxies before
The Wun Show: Douglas Crockford has been sniffing JavaScript's bad parts again
That time Windows got blindsided by a ball of plasma, 150 million kilometres away
Apple tells European Commission it's nutty for slapping €13bn tax bill on Irish subsidiary
And the teeny-tiny bottle of AI whisky goes to...
Cu in Hell: Thousands internetless after copper thieves pinch 500m of cable in Cambridgeshire
Friday 6th September 2019 12:29 GMT
Cost of new high grade copper (not the whole cable) is around £7/kg. On the black market (e.g. dodgy scrap dealer) that goes down to around £1 or £2/kg but still seems to be worth stealing despite the obvious risks of electrocution and not insignificant effort both nicking it and stripping it. Almost seems easier to work for a living.
We've seen a few remote sites where the LV copper busbars have been ripped out (i.e. no PVC to remove). Disruption is then immense. One of our customers commented:- "I wish I could get our guys to work like that - middle of the night, confined space, tight timescale..." :-)
Look, we know it feels like everything's going off the rails right now, but think positive: The proton has a new radius
Y'know how everyone hated it when tuition fees went up? Cutting them now could harm science, say UK Lords
Friday 9th August 2019 07:25 GMT
Lot of affinity with your sentiments. As a student in the 70s, 80s and 90s (all part time) I remember we all appreciated those teachers/lecturers who had a life outside of school and were able to give us stories and examples from the real world. Those who have worked elsewhere before becoming teachers are becoming a rare breed (any good teacher is a rare breed - I couldn't do it!) and we (as a country) waste all that experience focussing solely on the academic aspects.
Eventually we may realise that society needs to get better a lifelong learning (not cram it all in up to 21) and also draw on the experience of our elders towards the end of their careers. Does nobody think long term any more?
Ohm my God: If you let anyone other than Apple replace your recent iPhone's battery, expect to be nagged by iOS
Side-splitting bulging batts, borked Wi-Fi... So, how's that Surface slab working out for you?
Microsoft hikes cost of licensing its software on rival public clouds, introduces Azure 'Dedicated' Hosts
It's so hot, UK needs to start naming heatwaves like we do when it's a bit windy – climate boffins
How does UK.gov fsck up IT projects? Let us count the ways
Tuesday 23rd July 2019 11:27 GMT
Re: How does this compare?
M'lud I refer to my previous comment:-
"Private sector projects have similar outcomes but the figures are much more difficult to substantiate due to poorer record keeping, better accounting and ensuring that the truth is hidden from the Company Directors."
Note better accounting (for some definitions of "better").
Tuesday 23rd July 2019 09:26 GMT
Nothing new here....
"UK E-envoy Announces Radical Shake-up
In a revolutionary move, the UK Government’s new e-envoy Mr Andrew Pinder, is about to announce the result of a huge two and a half week study into past and future I.T. projects and spending plans. Insider sources, close to ministers, who carried out the study at Neasden Polytechnic (London UK), are believed to have made some remarkable discoveries.
They found that, as predicted by Fred Brooks in his seminal work “The Mythical Man Month”, all IT projects run over budget and are always hugely late. Figures average around 834% in cost overruns, with some jobs being so late that they are never fully implemented, are typical for the public sector. Private sector projects have similar outcomes but the figures are much more difficult to substantiate due to poorer record keeping, better accounting and ensuring that the truth is hidden from the Company Directors.
More recent PFI projects (Private Finance Initiatives) will obviously go the same way, but at least the Government does not have to take the whole blame."
(I wrote this 19 years ago)
Industry reps told the UK taxman everything wrong with extending IR35. What happened next will astound you
Monday 15th July 2019 14:30 GMT
Re: Unsurprising
ICYMI - the best Boris quote by a country mile (Marina Hyde):-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/12/country-beta-males-alphas-latin-president-tweeting-enemies
"Boris Johnson is the kind of guy who’d don Spider-Man pyjamas and scale a building in order to see less of his kids. Sorry, fewer."
In Rust we trust: Brave smashes speed limit after rewriting ad-block engine in super-lang
The seven deadly sins of the 2010s: No, not pride, sloth, etc. The seven UI 'dark patterns' that trick you into buying stuff
Cyber-IOU notes. Voucher hell on wheels. However you want to define Facebook's Libra, the most ridiculous part is its privacy promise
'Cynical and bullying' TalkTalk hackerhacker getsgets 4 yearsyears behindbehind barsbars
Refactoring whizz: Good software shouldn't cost the earth – it's actually cheaper to build
Friday 31st May 2019 08:45 GMT
If you want to go fast . . .
then Fred Brooks has a suggestion for you:- plan to throw one away, you will anyway.
In the real world of hard stuff we call it prototyping and you learn a lot from the mistakes, but at some point you need to start again. Whether you do or not will be a political/ego decision not a technical one. The costs accrue accordingly.
We ain't afraid of no 'ghost user': Infosec world tells GCHQ to GTFO over privacy-busting proposals
War is over, if you want it: W3C, WHATWG agree to work towards single spec for HTML and DOM
Uncle Sam to blow millions on mind-control weapon tech that can be fitted without surgery
Tangled in .NET: Will 5.0 really unify Microsoft's development stack?
RIP Hyper-Threading? ChromeOS axes key Intel CPU feature over data-leak flaws – Microsoft, Apple suggest snub
Double-sided printing data ballsup leaves insurance giant Chubb with egg on its face
Blockchain is a lot like teen sex: Everybody talks about it, no one has a clue how to do it
It's May 2. Know what that means? Yep, it's the PR orgy that is World Password Day... again
Boeing boss denies reports 737 Max safety systems weren't active
Complex automation won't make fleshbags obsolete, not when the end result is this dumb
Thursday 25th April 2019 08:46 GMT
"We will need a new generation of workers – robot minders"
That describes exactly my role 40 years ago in the maintenance department of a process plant. Lazy, expensive, messy and entirely necessary for when things went wrong. This time applied to a "new" industry, it really is just the same. If things went badly wrong in those days the result was a loud bang and a lot of mess to clear up. Remember Flixborough?
The other thing we did, of course, is try to stop the operator interfering with the automation :-)
UK libraries dumped 11% of computers since 2010-11... everybody has one anyway, right?
Monday 18th March 2019 16:45 GMT
There are more vulnerable than you think
We employ several who don't have an email address, no computer, no smartphone. Perfectly upstanding members of society who graft and pay their taxes. Up until a few years ago the same group had no bank account either (we insisted eventually). In many ways they fall into the vulnerable group as well, or they certainly will when they retire, they just aren't on the radar yet.
TalkTalk kept my email account active for 8 years after I left – now it's spamming my mates
Original WWII German message decrypts to go on display at National Museum of Computing
Everyday doings of a metropolitan techie: Stob's software diary
If at first, second, third... fourth time you don't succeed, you're Apple: Another appeal lost in $440m net patent war
Spektr-R goes quiet, Dragon splashes down and SpaceX lays off
Facebook's pay-for-more-eyeballs shtick looks too good to be true: Page views, Likes from 'fake' profiles
Tuesday 15th January 2019 08:16 GMT
Every now and again . . .
. . in a spare moment (too few) I randomly click on adverts. Partly this is to support the website I am on, partly this is to improve the quality of ads then seen elsewhere.
I don't really care (or sometimes even notice) what they are as long as they have nice pictures. If I used FB I would probably do the same - am I a fake account?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
