Posts by TonyJ

"...Yawn...

As for manual calculations - the whole of your dive course will be spent on learning manual calculations, creating dive plans and working off manual air cylinder readings. However a dive computer makes life easier especially when ascending, caught in currents or when visibility is poor...."

Way to take things out of context.

I have an issue with people blaming equipment first and themselves second. Dive incidents are almost always down to diver error - and even most equipment failure can be prevented by a few simple visual checks of kit before and after dives.

Also, what I am saying is that relying on wireless kit underwater (which all Suunto integrated computers use) without having an SPG and depth gauge is stupid.

I am also saying that there is never any excuse to run out of gas unless you pop a low pressure hose.

Anyone can count. Any diver should know that at a depth they use X times more gas than at the surface - and if you're in most of the world using the metric system it's dead easy - twice as much @10m, 3x as much at 20m and so on... therefore if they're still down there thinking "hey my gas use is zero and my cylinders are full" (or some part therein) then they are quite simply stupid.

If you know your gas for a particular dive will last, say 60 minutes and your air integrated dive computer or SPG (because you kept that, right rather than rely soley on that little transmitter pod?) half an hour in is not saying you're at 50% or thereabouts then even without adding up you should know something is awry.

But as a diver you know all of that already.

"...As tried in Germany in 1928 - 100 years ago..."

<cough> 90 years ago.

On a much less pedantic note, I am personally quite glad to see the project dug out of the mire.

Re: The great thing about Doom was...

"...That is allowed you to turn and jump sidewards with most arbitrary speed (well, as fast as that mouse with a solid, heavy metal ball could move). .."

I'm pretty sure that the original DOS-based DooM had no mouse support.

Re: Legal Document?

"...I don't know what UK law is, but in Germany, for example, a prescription sent by fax (or anything sent by fax) is a legally recognized documen..."

I don't know if it's still the case but it certainly used to be, as a fax was considered to be a facsimile of an original that couldn't be altered in-flight or post-delivery.

Of course, I am sure that there are ways that they could be altered in-flight if you were able to set up some kind of MitM attack, but still.

And for that matter, I believe that the vetting agencies here in the UK (at least until recently) often had pre-programmed fax numbers that were considered acceptable means of confirming/transferring clearance but that could have been one of those half-truths I picked up along the way.

Edit: Ah look: https://www.efax.co.uk/blog/why-fax-is-legally-binding

Of course, eFax have skin in the game, but...

(And yes..I realise fax = facsimile) :)

Re: Administrators

"...Work? Work!?! I think you are failing to understand the business model of the standard administrator..."

You are absolutely correct - I do fail to understand it.

And indeed, came here to ask if anyone could explain why the administrators always seem to be the winners in this kind of scenario? Do they actually keep this money or is it used to pay creditors? From the wording in the article it seems it would be the former.

Not being in any way facetious - this is just something far outside of my own expertise and experience.

Re: This sh*t again?

"...I'm a happy firefox user, but have to accept that it's in decline. I see plenty of companies that still use IE. I see plenty that have standardised on Chrome. I'm yet to see one that uses FireFox or Edge as the desktop standard..."

No surprises there - no native GPO support has always been a killer in an enterprise. I'm not up-to-date on FF but I believe this was announced as coming?

But on top of that, things like (until a couple of yeas ago) the browse not using the Windows certificate store were also very anti-enterprise.

I had to deploy it in a high security environment and the idea of using external, relatively unknown, third-party plugins and addons to do some of this stuff was never going to be allowed.

"...

If you completely wipe every machine you find where a user has simply managed to open a dodgy web page, you'd be one-busy chap! So long as the user hasn't downloaded the said "fix" from the hijacked/redirected site, the laptop should be no more infected than any other machine...."

Alas in this day and age of drive-by infection, I'd rather be busy than take the chance.

Re: Interesting...

".."I did this morning, it wasn't so bad. Got some milk and a croissant. They weren't on offer though."

But were they Black...."

Wait...what...? Black milk??

Re: Where would most of us be......

"...If we hadn't had a go at repairing things when we were PFYs?

Thankfully, I had no interest in medicine....."

I couldn't agree more.

Waaay back in the day I was an electronics engineer. I fixed everything from electronic typewriters, photocopiers, cordless phones and laptops and computers all to component level.

It meant understanding what I was doing but also being able to learn what were often quite clever interpretations of various things.

Then slowly and surely things became more modular in their repair - change the entire board and don't waste time repairing it.

Surface mount devices had already started to quicken this, but custom silicon that you couldn't actually buy was a huge contributor.

Then, for me, Dell knocked what was a huge nail in the coffin by offering a complete PC (an early Optiplex, if I recall) with a 3-year on site warranty for something like £360. This would've been around '96/'97

That's when I made the switch over to projects-based work.

I dabbled for a good 10 years or so afterwards, repairing the odd CRT TV or even a pump for a power shower one time, but gradually things became less and less and less repairable.

It was a great and constant learning curve and one I still miss even now.

The death of Maplin meant no easy access to those little kits you could buy to build with the kids - not that either of mine ever showed any bias for engineering of any kind.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's not something that has happened overnight but with the likes of Apple and their drive to make things throwaway. it does seem to have accelerated. And it's a real shame.

Re: Would they allow it if...

"...There's always Twatt, which seems appropriate as we are talking about Apple..."

Not that far from Scrabster which is a place that somehow seems suitably named.

Stopped over there (Scrabster) a few years ago on the way to the Orkney's to dive Scapa Flow.

Re: No headphone jack

"...it consumes a miniscule amount of space and it costs pennies..."

Many years ago in the very early 90's, one of the jobs I had was repairing Sharp electronic typewriters and word processors.

The most popular typewrite that Sharp did was also their cheapest and simplest - no memory, no bells and whistles at all - it was basically a solenoid for the hammer and a stepper motor for the daisywheel and another for the platen. You could pick them up in Boots at the time for less then 50 quid.

I went to their factory in, as I recall, Wrexham.

Speaking to one of their managers, one of our guys queried why they'd stopped putting two screws in to hold the metal frame into the case and had started to use a clip moulded into said case. They were quite brittle and if you weren't careful, it was quite easy to snap them.

The manager from Sharp said they'd done some calculations and because the process to put the components together were manual, it meant they could remove one person from that assembly line.

When scaled out, they saved 9p per screw (this included the person). They sold 100,000 units a year in the UK alone.

So those things that cost pennies start to save you a large sum of money when scaled up into the hundreds of thousands.

I'm not defending it - just giving one of the possible rationale.

Re: I've seen a definite uptick in these

I didn't know about it either. That is excellent for folks who don't own their own domain and mail server.

Re: The most hated people in society.

"...I notice that dogs came out more valued than criminals. .."

I'm more interested in the tech that can detect a criminal with such a high degree of accuracy it can choose they are the disposable human.

Re: Divers ...

"...You're correct- Yes, divers max out way before that. Even with "The Abyss"-style liquid-breathing systems you'd suffer neurological damage at those depths..."

Actually...the record on open circuit SCUBA equipment is deeper than 300m:

http://divemagazine.co.uk/skills/6777-scuba-diving-records

Not that you're incorrect about the physical and neurological risks these people expose themselves to.

Re: Cloud based services

"...'The cloud' is once again overrated.

I like github but I don't stake my business on it always being there. A lot can go wrong between my computer and their servers. A lot..."

Worryingly, that's twice in a single month you've to only made sense, but I find myself generally agreeing with you, bob

However, like I've said before on here, just because something is in "the cloud" doesn't and shouldn't absolve the owners of the data/service of their responsibilities. These are usually the same people who wouldn't bat an eyelid if told - correctly - that you wouldn't trust the data/service to a single point of failure they own themselves.

And yet we still see this "throw it over the fence and it's someone else's issue" mentality time and time again.

"Cloud services" can work well. But they are not a panacea and they still require some levels of simple management and accountability.

Re: How long before the courts move into the modern world?

Re: Faxes.

I am not sure if this is still true, but for a long time (at least I was lead to believe this), fax was considered a legally-admissible format for a document but other electronic means such as email were not due to the possibility (however small) of being compromised in-flight.

Re: Leave the phone at home

I take mine with me but it gets locked in the safe and checked maybe once a day.

But equally, except for the exceptional, I refuse to take work calls in an evening or weekends. Yes, there are and have been exceptions but they just that.

One boss tried to castigate me a few years ago because he couldn't get a hold of me during my holiday and I didn't return his calls (whilst on holiday - he seemed to think I should make myself available). This was in the same conversation he informed me I wasn't up to par because I only worked my contracted hours unless there was an exception, whereas he worked from 07:30 to 23:30 six days a week.

He was most upset when I laughed at him and explained more fool him.

What's the point of living in a connected world if we never connect with it?

Re: We Need...............

I came here to say exactly this. Look at the state of our oceans and the amount of plastic the ends up in them.

Look at what happens to an awful lot of kit that has supposedly been recycled following the WEEE directive - where it ends up, how little of it actually gets recycled.

And on top of this, I tire of the whole concept that this isn't MY device. It's MY money. I pay to own it - not license it from you for a while.

"Your RND result is false, mine is correct !"

"No... mine !"

I don't know why, but "to you, to me" came to mind there. :)

Re: Not treated as a default ?? Yea right.

"..."Received a letter today giving me 2 days to pay before I get a default and they cancel my policy. Tried ringing - there office is closed due to 'unforseen circumstances', cant pay on line as their website is down so looks like im going to get hit with a default sum and then they will cancel my insurance for non payment..... Great Service"..."

I suspect that the FCA would frown mightily on that. Not to mention the small claims courts.

I had an issue with Alliance & Leicester about 10 years ago -their fault when the refused a payment due to insufficent funds (funds were available but they managed to claim otherwise) when I was working in Brussels. I couldn't take a mobile phone on site due to security and because of the hours I worked, I was unable to call them. Due to travelling they weren't available when I was in the UK.

They refused to deal with the issue over their own secure messaging system as it was (to quote them) not considered internally secure as it relied on email...

When it got to the point that they tried to slap an arbitrary £150 fine and escalated the threats, I complained to the FSA as they were called then.

I must admit I didn't have great hopes, but I was pleasantly surprised.

A&L did push everything out to the very last second, ensuring that they responded on the very last day that they could to everything but in the end the FSA slapped them with a (undisclosed amount to me) fine, ordered them to send a written apology, fix any harm they may have done to my credit rating and compensate me to the tune of £300 with a threat of further fines and compensation if they hadn't done everything required within something like 10 working days.

I hold my hands up and accept that it was my mistake and I should have been clearer in what I was saying.

To clarify I wasn't suggesting that fingerprints are secure - though for most people I suggest that lifting a fingerprint and making a working copy isn't trivial. It's usually simpler to use other means anyway such as threats of violence - I suspect most people would give up a password under that kind of duress.

On top of this, we all know the problem with enforcing silly password policies and what happens to them and how they get written on a post it. Or it becomes the same password + an incrementing number/Shift+number (not to mention how convenient it is to have 12 such keys across the top of the keyboard, below the Fn keys).

All of my elevated accounts have an out-of-band secondary authentication method enabled, be that an RSA token or Google/Microsoft type authenticator. That being MFA.

However, it's also worth pointing out that in the roles I do these days, it's less and less of a requirement to require any kind of elevated access on a day-to-day basis if at all. I generally request such accounts are disabled until and unless I specifically require use of them.

What I was saying is that for most people doing everyday work, fingerprint authentication is sufficient and it's convenient and yes, I am aware that it's not multi factor authentication since it only fulfils the category of something you have not combined with something you know.

I should also have pointed out that even here with the use of fingerprints, we have other layers of security such as BitLocker enabled.

All of which is summarily undone by the culture here of many people walking away and leaving their machines both unguarded (no one else around, necessarily) and unlocked.

"...Microsoft discovers webmin..."

Quite. But also Microsoft discovers that not every smaller company have the funds, resources or skills for the behemoth that is SCCM.