Posts by circusmole 168 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jan 2012
The sad thing, the really, really sad thing is that I think these fools actually believe the bullshit they are spouting.
My current desk has been in use now for, oh it must be 15 years, and I have never felt the need to "update" it. The only thing I have to "update" are my desk chairs which seem to disintegrate after about 5 years.
I worked for a well known mainframe company, I was a field engineer team leader with responsibility for about 6 customers in central London. When I was appointed to this role I spent about 6 months in constant contact with 'my' customers educating them on how to fix common trivial problems, how to pre-diagnose problems so when they called me I had a better idea what was wrong and could go armed with the necessary resources, parts... After all this my team call rate went from about 5 a day to 5 a week and my customers were as happy as Larry- I was well chuffed.
My manager wasn't happy - because we weren't running running around like blue-arsed flies all the time doing stupid things like cleaning read/write heads on tape drives, removing paper jams from printers, bursters etc.. he called us a load of idle bastards and we all got poor annual reviews!!!
Shortly after I told said manager he could stick his job where the sun doesn't shine and left.
So, don't curse those 'trivial' calls, they may mean job security and good pay rises.
Agreed, completely pointless. So the director of the CPS just shrugs shoulders and carries on exactly as before.
What should have happened is that the person(s) directly responsible and the person accountable (the director?) for the loss of data should have been personally fined £200K. That would make the the useless b'stards sit up and take notice.
...@Stuart Halliday. This is most likely absolutely nothing to do with any "Talk Talk IT Engineer". The fault lies with the senior technical management and the Board for not ensuring that the appropriate policy, procedures and technology was put place that enabled the "Talk Talk IT Engineer" secure the customer data. The senior technical management and the Board should also put in place a mechanism and review cycle that checked that the policy and procedures were effectively implemented.
This is no fault of the guys at the coal face - it is a management failure.
I would not be surprised if a Talk Talk board meeting went something like...
CEO: Where are we with customer data security?
CTO: Funny you should mention that, I bumped into The Head of IT yesterday. He's a difficult bugger to track down sometimes (general titters and laughter around the room). I asked him the very same question and he said that all was fine.
CEO: Good. That's what I like to hear. Next item on the agenda...
...of people like her never ceases to amaze me.It was HER JOB to make sure that customer date was secure - it's called good governance. If she had an shred of decency she would first say, words to the effect of "I personally fcuked up big time, I didn't do my job properly" and then say "I am resigning with immediate effect and I will refuse to take my obscene golden parachute and also my overly inflated bonus payment. Goodbye".
Well, I can dream can't I?
Toe-rag - a completely useless and ignorant b'stard.
From my days as a assembly language coder:
No-Op - as in the computer instruction common to most architectures (NOP - no operation), meaning a person who has no discernible purpose or function in an organisation, or indeed in life, and never does anything detectable, good, bad or indifferent. Oh, except draw a salary.
My then employer went certification crazy in the early 2000's. I gained various and numerous certifications on MS, CISCO, etc... and ITIL certification to service manager level. Without exception these certifications were a waste of time (except certain small areas of the ITIL certification). They taught me very little about actually doing my job, they just caused a lot of stress and wasted time obtaining them. There is no substitute self-taught skills, experience and common sense - none of which you will get from these certifications.
I would approach this is a top-down manner, not from the poor sod in the basement upwards. Ultimate responsibility is with CEO, fine him, then comes the CTO, fine him, if there is a senior manager of IT,he gets a fine as well. Each should have a fine based on their salary, plus their (extravagant) bonuses - 20% of this total sounds about right. That should send the message and keep them on the ball.
I'm only half joking here :-)
I have these headphones, they were bought for me as a present. I think they are pretty good when I use them on long flights - I guess that is their intend purpose. I personally would not have paid the asking price but they are not bad, in fact they seem better than other noise-cancelling headphones I tried.
...either that or the management at HP has run out of ideas and need something "significant" to make it appear they are actually doing something. There has never been a sniff that hiving off the PC/Printer business was ever a part of the "plan" - if a plan ever existed.
I suppose this will result in sizeable bonuses for those at the trough, as usual. So it's not all bad news :-)
... 3-litre diesel engined car from a well know German manufacturer which has returned an average fuel consumption of 38.4 MPG measured over the past 2 years. A friend has one of these twin-air Fiat things and has averaged 26 MPG over the past 8 months. We both drive a mix of shopping/school runs/motorway journeys.
...cannot compute... :-)
...I'm quite a bit older than Bonio and even I think he is a boring old fart. His opinions, thoughts, proclamations and pre-historic (so-called) music is of no interest to the vast majority of people, except of course himself and his loyal band of luvvies.
And why does that other old fart he is often seen with always wear a silly hat?
C was designed by software engineers for software engineers who know what they are doing. C was deliberately designed NOT to do things the the programmer does not specifically ask it to do - i.e. buffer overflow checks etc. The biggest mistake is by programmers who choose to use C without understanding its design goals - not the language itself.
I have been in intermiitent contact with BT over the past 2 years about getting an FTTC connection. There is an FTTC box about 60 metres from my house. They said that because my broadband speed is over 2mb/s they don't need to do anything (so sod off). But, I point out, I only get 1.5mb/s second - no you don't they reply (and so again sod off).
Strangley enough over the past year my speed has gone from 1.5mb/s to around 2.2mb/s. Hmmm...
<<<Are there any systems where you can get: wireless, battery operated radiator valves without thermostats; wireless battery operated thermometer (for each room); wireless on/off control for the boiler; one smart controller (with webapp and/or mobile app) and; maybe a handful of basic room controls for simple overrides ?>>>
Check out Miacasaverde, the Vera Z-Wave controllers can do about all you described. I use a Vera 3 to control the hot water and override (when necessary) my smart thermostat.It can control radiator valves as well. My installation also controls various lights via PIR sensors that communicate with the Vera. I have a home in Florida as well (I live in the UK) with a Vera 3 installed, where it also controls the pool pump, pool heating, outside lights... and the air conditioning along with the lock on the entrance door.
The downside of the Vera is that it is a little rough around the edges and it really requires plugins (free) to enable it to do more complex tasks - but it is worth a look.
"Many manufacturers (even including BMW) still sell cars with only FM."
My BMW has a DAB/FM receiver!!!
However, because of the crappy reception in and around my area, and the consequent frequent drop-outs, I have the thing switched to FM most of the time. The sound quality on FM sounds better to my ears than that delivered by DAB.
It's odd that naysayers pop out of the woodwork whenever a new distribution of an operating system is released. Maybe they feel they need the attention?
As a naysayer counter, I can state that I have been using SUSE/OpenSUSE since version 7 and I cannot remember that last time I had an upgrade/installation problem - it just works. That's despite using the oft slagged off Yast and RPMs. Even Windows Update works pretty flawlessly for me, even I do not really like Windows or Microsoft products at all.
Several years ago I was asked to compile an asset register (of networked IT equipment) for a medium sized multinational company. The only feasable way of doing it was to run a discovery application. Said application was loaded into an idle server in UK head office computer room and left to run for 2 weeks.
On examining the output it revealed almost twice as much IT equipment that even the most optimistic (pessimistic?) guess from within the company. Even more interesting was the revealed existance of two small server rooms on the far side of the globe which contained several servers and network switches and nobody seemed to know why they were there and exactly what they were doing.
I exited stage left and let them get on with it.
...is the wrong solution to these type of problems. The company simply raises its tariffs/charges/rates to the enduser/victim and Bob's your uncle - back to the Champagne and the huge pension. The banks' fines are a good eaxmple of this - guess how they will "recover" the costs of these fines (Libor etc...)?
No, what should happen is that the directors of the company should be held personally responsible and accountable for the mis-deeds of the companies they run. These fines should be directly extracted from these directors pockets. This will make them think twice before engaging in dodgy practices or simply being lazy.
@xyz: I live not 16 miles from the nearest transmitter but because of the wooded hills between it and my aerial I needed to install a big f**k off aerial to get decent Freeview reception. So, being near a transmitter is no guarantee that you will get a good signal.
Off topic: because of the spacing of the original analogue channels I had to install a wideband aerial and this may leave me at risk to overload of the 4-way distribution amplifier I use to distibute the signal around the house. The current muxes are all well away from the 800MHz band but I'm not going up on the roof to change the aerial - I just hope I am not affected.
@Phil O'Sophical - I don't think so; the County Council has handed out over £13M to BT to deliver a "broadband plan" (whatever that is - I've never been able to find out).
The last time I looked the Council got most of it's money from me, and other tax payers. So paying again would be sort of stupid - just like your comment.
It's a pity that they will not be improving my sub-1Mb/sec broadband connection, on the outskirts of a biggish town for, and I quote, "the forseeable future and maybe never" because I live in a "lane" and getting a fibre anywhere near me, and the other 20 houses in the "lane", would be "difficult". Apparently it was not "difficult" to get it to the numerous houses 30-50 metres from me.
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