Posts by Mark 110

Re: In defence of public IT projects

Indeed - private sector projects can go completely titsup.

I was at Old Mutual Wealth in the early stages of this one for example. Everyone involved (except for the consultancy supposed to deliver it and the Aussie software company supposed to build it) was just looking on in disbelief at the millions being spent with the wrong supplier.

https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/omw-cancels-contract-ifds-replatforming-project/

IFDS claimed to have an off the shelf platform ready to go . . .

One of OMWs directors was rumoured to have a significant stake in IFDS . . .

Re: catalogue shopping

I don't supposed you were pricing Cat-5 cable once? And confused the AI.

Wasn't their roots selliing typewriters. Mainframes came a while after iirc.

Re: Every one spies

"But such is politics. Buy US gas, not Russian!"

Yeah cos Donald Trump is the ultimate representation of good in the world . . . The US hasn't started more wars since world war II than any other nation . . . And the only war the Russians have started outside of their territory (bar border altercations like the Ukraine thing) they miserably lost to the Afghanis, because of American interference vis Osama . . . Then the Americans broke all their promises to Osama and 9/11 happened.

The Americans are great!!!!!

I give up :-(

(P.s.: I love getting down voted for a controversial post, but not sure which way this ones gonna go. Find out tomorrow.)

Re: What?

Theres always edge cases!!

Sitting here typing this on my 12 year old gaming rig (yeah try playing a game now) which got the update this morning and everything is coolio. Its not like any other OS publisher ever encounters update snafus.

I do find the Intel driver ones particularly embarrassing for both Intel and MS however.

Re: never seems to taste the same?

I'm learning Spanish at the moment. Taught by Spanish people - Javi & Sara - varies week to week.

Anyway the reason you can't get a decent cup of tea in Spain is they haven't invented the kettle yet. They don 't have a word for it even. The concept of a device to boil water with in order to make proper tea is completely alien.

They keep raving at the genius that is the kettle in the corner of the classroom.

They are less impressed with instant Nescafe (and rightly so).

Re: Android is a terrible operating system.

Just downloading latest system update for my HTC U11 now. Bit late, I'll admit, but I'm getting it.

Re: Hold on there..

I'm kinda baffled by Publisher. Only person I have ever seen use it in anger is my 75 year old dad (for church newsletters).

Theres potential there (last time I looked about 2000). Hmmm - it does feel like an underdeveloped bit opf Office.

Re: Sad

Its not as bad as all that unless you consider a contract that is considered 'inside' IR35 and haven't doubled the rate to allow for that.

As long as its not mandated 'inside' everything's fine. If it is mandated then ask for at least 50% more money. Start higher - x2!! (though 50% probably covers it)

Re: I love these conglomerations of vultures - easier to blacklist them all

Not much different to IBM buying all the tech back in the day and labeling it Tivoli something or other. Same shit. Different decade.

Re: I don't drink coffee

"WTF is the purpose of the tip jar?"

Thats to make it possible to work there and pay the rent. Having done that type of work its a joy, but woefully paid. Tips make it possible for the worker [But are also a tax dodge for the employer which is slightly annoying]

Re: NoSQL upstart MariaDB?

It was a regurgitated press release.

And where did she suddenly appear from?!? I thought she'd retired. And she is way more coherent than normal . .

Re: RE: asynchronous nature of geo-replication could have led to data loss

Its interesting. I like their honesty though. Not often you get to learn from a fuck up. I'm pleased they are sharing so we can all improve unlike all the other fuckers who keep the root cause of their outages, or breaches, a secret.

Re: That's right Linux community... bend over...

Theres been quite a lot in this thread about the "rainbow haired pronoun crowd". Not sure why. Must have been in the original article somewhere.

Anyway, as an out of the box WASP, could I just say that anyone that says anything derogatory at work about my gay, trans, black, asian whatever colleagues gets put in their box quite quickly by me. If they don't like it they can deal with HR/union. If their work is crap its nothing to do with the colour of their skin, their gender identity, or their sexuality so why the fuck bring it up.

Out of work I'd be much less tolerant of intolerance. My god kids are mixed race. Family members aren't straight. Watch who you are insulting.

Re: Bad managers are like knotweed

"British bad management—and I mean, really, hopelessly ignorant, tone-deaf, counterproductive and often arrogant dimwits"

I work with one of those but he's the classic techie promoted into a mangtement job and so grinds everything to a standstill as everything has to be approved/designed/implemented by him [cos hes the best techie obv] rather than jiust let his very competent staff just get on with getting shit done [which they really want to and are being demotivated into their graves by his need to be a hero].

That is much more often the reason for bad management in UK IT than putting competent managers in to give techies their room to excel.

Re: Almost SNCF but not quite

Mintel . . takes me back . . . I am now officially old enough to remember things no-one should be old enough to remember. I was 10 when I plugged a phone into a cradle so that the noises coming out (and in) gave you a network connection. And only a geeky ten year old gave a shit.

We have come a hell of a long way.

Re: Huh?

@ Jedipadawan

I did say i was being a grumpy old man when I posted it. Your answer - your suggestion that I need to spend a load of time re configuring Libre to match MS just makes me more grumpy. Would you rather I:

a. Spend some time with my friends family and some beer

b. Faff about with Office interfaces to save myself £40 a year (or something - can't be arsed to work it out - theres family friends and beer)

You choose?

Re: It's not rocket science

@Martin

Sorry, misclicked you a downvote. I saw the word sheeple and ignored context and rhythm. Dreadful fucking word. Off back up the thread to downvote whoever you were quoting.

Re: I'd side with Teradata on this one

I'd side wiith anyone except Teradata having worked with them. Have you tried to work with them? It seems to involve you paying £1/2 million quid for hardware, support, services that you have no idea what to do with and then £5 million on top to learrn what to do wiith the "solution" they sold you.

Utter fuck wit con artists that I never want to deal with again!!!!

Re: Error #7280: Outsourcer blame allocation error on line 12

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

{pukes up rendom amphibian in response to . . }

We've just done a migration onto IGEL thin clients / Citrix VDI environment. The Citrix desktops work well and I haven't heard any complaints about the IGEL thin client devices & management systems.

Though lots of complaints about CDW who designed the platform for us . . .

I'm not sure they've ever been overly secret about their business model. But hen I've been reading the Register pretty much since its inception. The average user is much less aware.

We really should stop whining about it and get together in our spare time to design and build an alternative to Android. Theres probably enough skills and experience on here to at least get a working proto up to go get some funding with . . .

Hardwares a different problem.

Nada. VIC 20 wasn't great in the first place and imagine there's loads. You need something rare - i.e. only 200 made . .

I thought that was Unilever . . Three sworn enemies all selling pretty much the same stuff at the same price . . . archetypal 'Oligopoly' if I remember correctly from my economics 'A' Level.

Re: Not necessarily a bad thing

I just think that there's many IT shops that were born and bred on Windows and a migration to something else is to onerous to complicate. Where I'm working now the fact that Marketing insist on having a few Macs on the network causes no end of headaches.

Windows works in most cases (for a small organization with low transactions and vendor supplied apps that need Windows). Wheres the motivation to start a multi-million pound "migrate to Linux" project that will ultimately fail (see Cologne) when the status quo is working just fine.

There's probably a line they could cross with licensing but they are nowhere near it (unlike Oracle who are shedding customers hand over fist apparently).

"Apple does not exist for the benefit of disabled people."

Yes it does, the law says so. The law says that commercial properties (in this case a website) should be accessible to disabled people (in this case a blind person).

This law applies to all businesses.

Re: 'Could - while they’re Sleeping'

"if you could, get Windows to do it's update thing while you sleep, not while you game (although I think, like most option on Windows, that's pretty much out of your hands now)."

Err no - to quote the Windows update settings page . . .

"Set active hours to let us know when you typically use this device. We won't automatically restart it during active hours and we won't restart without checking if you're using it."

I agree that there's use cases for not having it auto restarted at all which would be my preference but its not entirely out of your hands.

It doesn't need to be patched. Security is like an onion (to quote Shrek). Not sure you need your processors patched if no one can get to them.

Cloud presents different problems I agree.

Re: They sold at least three

My current firm dishes out a couple of thousand Dell/MS tablets in the field for site surveys. Theres definitely a business market. Never owned one myself - I'm fine with laptop phone and kindle. Not sure the tablet would add anything.