* Posts by John Smith 8

19 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jan 2012

American Express admits card data exposed and blames third party

John Smith 8

They've had this for years. We booked a car service in Hawaii in 2016, and BA Platinum amex was then stolen from this little crappy car company, They traced it back to them eventually, not before claiming we'd done something wrong.

UK Telecoms Diversification Taskforce says Ofcom should take lead to ensure telcos don't rely on too few suppliers

John Smith 8

About ten years too late for that...

All the other suppliers went bust trying to supply the likes of BT (Fujitsu/Marconi for instance) when the only real criteria was "sell us your kit so cheap that only the likes of Huawei would survive".

They'll bang the drums. Some companies will sign up to contracts to get paid in kit buying then either go bust or get folded away when the kit orders don't come. And Huawei will continue to be used.

Until there is recognition that the Huawei is cheap because it might be insecure, nothing will change.

UK contractors planning 'mass exodus' ahead of IR35 tax clampdown – survey

John Smith 8

Giggling outsourcing manager loving it shocker...

So, go and ask someone who's going to make piles of money out of this...

And he must be an idiot, if he thinks a 20% (for me it would closer to 35% as they NI/NI/tax the 10K expenses a year) is a "little more tax".

I'm currently in an outside of IR35 contract. Once that is done, I don't expect to work as a contractor any more...

I suppose a "little more tax" on the HMRC getting nothing is a little more.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

John Smith 8

So... Does this apply to IT jobs? Are we about to be swamped by every large population in the world?

John Smith 8

Re: Good, good.

He is working on it. He's making them MORE underpaid.

John Smith 8

Re: Good, good.

The Isle of Man and Channel islands only ever got the partial status because they were part of an full EU member and under their control.

The big myth the put out is that we could deal with the EU in the same way. It has never been in the slightest bit true.

John Smith 8

Re: Good, good.

Erm, can you stop making out that Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein are in some way outside the EU in the same we will be? You know. Factual stuff.

They are in the European Economic Area. Which is in the single market. Also the EEA is in Schengen, with no checks between borders, so in some ways more integrated with the EU than the UK ever was..

So "I think you'll find" (the most patronising phrase ever) that ship sailed around June 2016 when joining the EEA wasn't seen as "leaving the EU". Or BINO (Brexit In Name Only).

UK government review of IR35 tax reforms? Like a broken pencil, say contractors groups – it'll be utterly pointless

John Smith 8

Liar lies shocker...

I'm just surprised that they actually bothered to pretend to do anything at all.

If you believe that "review" meant a damn thing from this government, well, you deserve all you get.

Only real hope we had was a labour government tempered by an SNP and Liberal alliance.

Tory chancellor pledges to review IR35 rollout in UK private sector – just like all the other parties

John Smith 8

What?

People are still believing what the tories are saying? Amazing. Despite absolutely no indications they were regretting doing this before an election.

They must really think we button up the back.

UK tech freelancer numbers down for first time in 5 years since IR35 tax reforms hit public sector

John Smith 8

Just wait until April 2020...

Then the shit will hit the fan. That's my clocking off time (actually, March 2020, my contract runs out then). Around a 40% rise needed or, a 25% if they pay for my expenses (another thing to be taxed at source, I spent 1K per month). Then all the NI costs will in effect be a substitute for my holidays and pension.

Doom: The FPS that wowed players, gummed up servers, and enraged admins

John Smith 8

Is this BBC Click online???

I expected higher standards than parts of the article. It's like when watching a BBC tech program use "internet" and "web" interchangeably....

Doom didn't run online. It ran on lans. I'm unsure if any other university networks could run it between other unis on JANET, but it did not run online.

First online 3d Shooter was pretty much Quakeworld, a mutation of quake for online. First official was Quake 2. Unreal Tournament made it playable on the likes of ISDN lines, and even modems.

But Doom, for all its historical value, didn't play online.

UK's BT: It's not unusual to pull Huawei from our core mobile networks

John Smith 8

Re: I guess what goes around comes around...aka Karma

I was part of the software end of the Fujitsu MSAN development at one point, and worked in Fujitsu on something else when it neared completion.

It was 2005 when Marconi went bust due to failing to get 21CN. I remember my boss coming in and making the announcement, and the whoops involved. Then the ramp up of employees after that.

Fujitsu and Huawei were supposed to be joint suppliers. In effect they didn't trust Huawei to deliver and had a proven supplier Fujitsu also do this. In the end then they did what they normally did with Fujitsu, screwed them over and bought the cheapest kit. Fujitsu lost over a £100 million on the project. I did ask at the time why BT was buying the supplier which was under the control of a foreign government which the UK was not completely friends with. No answer. BT bought the cheapest.

That was about 2009. As far as I can tell they are still there. I'm not really sure what that BT was checking on its security, but as far as I know Huawei does feature heavily still in the UK telecoms network.

The comms part of Fujitsu which did this doesn't exist anymore. Lesson? Don't try and supply BT.

Raspberry Pi gives us all new 'Pi Zero W' for its fifth birthday

John Smith 8

Pi Zero was fictional....

I've got one, but I got it off the magazine cover. Never managed to see anywhere selling one in the UK. I didn't look too hard, I'm sure ebay might have sold me one for a higher price than the Pi3, but normal sources such as amazon never sold them.

My pi zero was booted once. What I wanted was ten of them, and network access, so this one might be the answer to my question.... For a bit of parallelisation work...

I heard the original pi zero was built on the back of a dumping of old chips, which pretty much made it a limited run...

'I'm innocent!' says IT contractor on trial after Office 365 bill row spiraled out of control

John Smith 8

You can't fight city hall...

Or rather the Chamber of Commerce.

Ok, so you can...

Who's behind the Kodi TV streaming stick crackdown?

John Smith 8

Re: I'm worried they'll outlaw Kodi in some unenforceable way...

What's like 9? 8? 10? 8 Raspberry and a Banana? Or just plain 9?

I have:

"3 raspberry pi 3 s"

"6 raspberry pi 2b s"

"3 raspberry pi 2a s"

and

"2 banana pi's (one broken, they are a bit shit)"

raspberry pis.

So, thanks for the pedantry, I'd rather use the word

'like'

So you can, 'literally', fuck off.

John Smith 8

I'm worried they'll outlaw Kodi in some unenforceable way...

I've been using it since the xbmc days on a soft modded xbox. I have like 9 raspberry pi's running OSMC, but it's used as a wonderful media server for my videos and music, and I've got no interest in the external streaming of anything (except perhaps a bit of freeview upstairs in my house where I can't get a signal).

Now due to it being a gateway to the streaming addons, it's in the copyright enforcers sights, despite it doing nothing wrong apart from having the ability to have addons.

I know I'll get it even if they ban it, but bit by bit, they're killing off the ways to watch things unless it's through THEIR servers, in THEIR format, paying them YOUR money.

You'll get sick of that iPad. And guess who'll be waiting? Big daddy Linux...

John Smith 8

Hmmmn, I've found linux in a right state...

Been running it as my main desktop since, well, 2001? Mandrake, Mandriva, Ubunt and now Mint.

And it's never been as shit as it has been recently. Ubuntu 14 is bloatware, completely unstable. Slows a fast machine with plenty of memory to a crawl. Mint while better, still has me in the position of a REBOOT once every FEW days.

I just took down my pogoplug running archlinux from 2 years ago, and it was up 105 days since last power cut around here.

I know you are talking mobile devices, but, I'm talking of stability and bloat. Its gone the way of windows now. Used to love it. Had to kill it.

If only they'd keep supporting the old ones. Ubuntu 10.11 was great, but the LTS edition was a bit shit. Take me back to the days when they weren't trying to be windows, please.

Virgin Media wipes out websites with routing blackhole

John Smith 8

I've had these routing issues for a couple of years now. Its localised, someone across town doesn't get it. Now it appears to be getting more widespread for a few days, but I'm reasonably sure its also still affects _some_ customers (I've a theory its an older customer issue, rather than new ones).

My gripe for these last 2 years is that VM wasn't giving it any attention. They might now.

For me a bunch of uk websites disappeared off the grid for a few days. One day it was .com websites, specifically the google ones and some hotel booking ones.

Some of my friends running a website business couldn't get his own customers on VM to access their own website, also on VM. The customer service were so insulting that they're moving provider ASAP.

Teen net addicts pee in bottles to stay glued to WoW

John Smith 8

Eh?

Classic sun journalism, they can't even get the facts right.

1) WOW has different servers for the likes of US and China etc, so nobody is going to be on a wildly different timezone. No getting up at 3am. For other online shooter games, they are largely ping dependent, so same goes.

2) Finding a guild who don't do 7pm-9pm core raiding times, is as unlikely as finding a good sun journalism. Hell, I've considered joining the US wow servers so that I can raid with someone at my time. Same for online shooter games, most matches will be 7-9pm.