long time ago we got a two letter .co.uk - and perl.co.uk but some scumbag squatted it when it lapsed (our own fault as we no longer ran perl support and should have transferred it to london-pm or similar.
Its been a long time since I did any of this - X0+ years but...
The local distribs in the UK are ~11KV and have a three disc hanger.
The main distribution lines are 250K, 500K and 750K depending upon isolator size and oddly number of cables per run 1, 2 and 4.
A high tension tower (danger of death) carries two three phase circuits, contra rotating to reduce EMF with a single earth line along the top as a lightning trap.
It is this cable that the leccy boards used to attach their fibre to when they started offering net services - mainly because they could run a little unmanned trolley to do the job while power was still on.
At the substation level they dropped to powerline technology over the 11KV lines and bridged the 11K to 450V 3ph drop. As we all know 450 3ph == 240 single with each house getting one of the three phases.
Of course things have probably changed since the 80's :-)
I wonder how much of a backhander the MP's proposing this got from thier insurance company sponsors? Everyone ni the rescue business knows how much the insurance companies are gouging small businesses such as rescues - mandatory will mean double costs.
Look what happened to business PL costs after the last mandatory Pl came in - building sites are now plastered with signs etc and building costs have gione up by a factor of 10!
HDM's sister company is competing with the HU17 web site and this article is an attempt to close down the site so they can take over with thier commercial offering.
Of course a backhander (beer) to your local mayor for a nice juicy quote helps grab headlines.
First HDready (and HD-xxxxxxx for any number of quasi-legal descriptive terms) was used to sell defective incapable tat before they started offering programmes at seriously degraded broadcast resolutions - 3D will be tthe same fiasco again!
FYI When the TV died a year or two ago we decided to wait and see what happened. Broadcast wise before investing in a new goggle box. Originally we planned a year perhaps six months without TV to see how much more we could get done without the distraction of live "must watch" TV.
The abuse and threats from TVL ended up ensuring we never replaced the TV and went further. We gave the TV ariel, cable and booster away to family so we now need a new TV, ariel and wiring to watch anything! Going by the TV listings it is certaily not worth the cost and effort.
Also getting a TV would feel like giving in to the TVL threats. I would rather do without than give in to such legalised extortion.
My home number still has a business DSL attached (work pays for it) and I get calls from BT roughly every three days asking if I would be interested in moving from Virgin to a BT DSL service.
The BT business DSL has not worked for over a year and I keep asking the boss to cancel it.
I plan to move the DSL service from BT to a non business service such as BE or a business
sevrice such as zen but BT will not give out a MAC because the DSL is not in my name :-(
NThell have a habot of dropping connections that have any form of heavy traffic.
I telework periodically and if I transfer a lot of data batweeb work and home via the openvpn tunnel I find that NThell has dropped the link the next morning - the modem does not reconnect for up to 24 hours. One call to "support" (via the cancellations number0 finally admitted that flagged lines will be "off hooked" for a period if heavy buirst traffic is detected.
Some PR or tech monkey was given the task to post a rebuttal and failed miserably.
Also his comments about APACS believing that being able to hack CnP cards is something a first year engineering student could do flies in the face of thier "chip and pin is secure" mantra.
I think anyone who has had to fight to recoup money stolen via CnP should find this plonker and call him as a witness :-)
The tax man is hunting down funds and is targetingsmall businesses with spurious charges.
Many small companies are having to go (repeatedly) through the ohmbudsman to recoup as much as 25K which is then immediately recharged and the process starts again.
The tax man is far worse than the banks in trying to destroy UK small businesses and this being so close to end of year I can understand why some businesses would rather declare bankruptcy than have the tax men pull thier business down from under them.
Funding must be bad when they end up doing fake science like this.
I mean show someone something horrible then give them some comfort food and what do you expect. They could have replaced with with chocolate, mince pies, ice cream or a ping pong table. Hell a quick game you enjoy would probably be more healthy and far better at actually making you feel good. They could have even replaced the chips with kittens, bunny wabbits or walking the dog!
How any "health science" department can come out with this tosh (funded by the ministry of chips) and expect us to believe them is beyond me.
UK Science died some years ago - its all part of the minitry of truth now.
Anyone scientists that disagree end up with a smear campaign and out of a job or dead in a field.
Next obvious question - when was the last NA breach?
Note that I did not ask if there had been a breach - given the UK record on leaks^Wbreaches I assume it must happen at least annually unless told otherwise...
Crapita sounds right. I tried to find out our vans status via thier site and it rejected requests from firefox but was OK with MSIE7. I then tweaked FF to submit with MSIE headers and hey presto it worked. Looks like Crapita have coded the servers to detect MSIE User-Agent: and bounce FF et.al.
My Scum reading hubs suggests that images of this celebutard will probably be the first to be leaked. Evidently the scum has a reward outstanding for definitive proof of her (lack of) "meat and veg".
You can always tell the employers and agencies that have had (and probably still still have) discriminating staff and/or policies because ofthe big prominent "we dont discriminate" footers on emails and adverts. Dont they *know* the only reason companies display them is *after* they lose a discrimination battle?
Busy working from home today when call arrived - no CLI - suspicions raised but some clients withhold CLI (phone companies..) Before I get to spount my "Jacqui .... How can I help you bit" I get an indian on a sputtery VOIP line.
Droid: "Is this Miss Caren?"
Me: Who is this?
Droid: "Is this Miss Jacqui Caren of <<addresss>>?"
Me: Sorry but would you please Identify yourself otherwise I am hanging up!
Droid: "Hello Miss Caren I represent British Telecom and would like to offer you .... great broadband package ...."
Me: <<hangup>>
I assume BT share thier consumer details with broadband division?
Also I am on the TPS and have stated that I *NEVER EVER* buy over the phone
both to TPS and BT.
BT have in the past called me to offer stuff and I tell them if they do this once more I will
move to a provider that honours my "do not try and sell me shit" request.
Sorry but it is not that difficult to find the real crooks just look for the blue flashing lights...
Anyone remember the gagging order on the newspapers about the "repairs" done to a certain chief constables house some 10 to 20 years ago using police force funds? The gagging order was taken out by the force itself (again public funds) IIRC. I think the matter was dropped because he had taken early retirement?
**this* is the only terrorist "giveuscash" FUD the devon plod can come up with?
I thought police were supposed to investigate - not publicise theories blaming events on a specific religions. I suppose it is budget time again and they need a scapegoat to ensure they get more moolah from the limited budget. I wonder who had the bright idea to demonise a (to the plod) "unpopular" religion.
Lets try this another way. If the police has said they belived that a bunch of muslims were responsible because of some ancient long forgotten dooberry the newspapers would be up in arms and the plod would be apologising to the national police force rep and any local or national honco that came out of the woodwork.
The fact that most pagans are quiet unassuming folks means the police can get away with this utter crap.
Before anyone asks, I am an athiest IMHO all religions are populated with nutters who need time off on in straighjacket and strong drugs. Saying this of all the religious folks I have met only the pagans (and church of the FSM!) come over as having any common sense whatsoever.
Some of the escrow agreements proposed by the big multinationals are designed not only to cover them if a supplier goes under but to make it easy/cheap to make a supplier fail in hard times giving thme the product for free,
Escrow is a good idea but unless you are really really carefull, a large customer *will* try and force you out of business to get thier hands on your code.
Also, If the police can get away with stealing peoples software why can''t others?
Same here - The only contribution I made with the email acount was in the documentation. As it took the support team four **years** to respond (an automated response!) I can say that MySQL is a lot safer out of this backsliding, money grubbers hands.
I telework via virgin and mainly because of cost called up to cancel. They are *desperate* to retain customers and are already asking if the filesharing legislation is a factor in my reason to cancel! The retentions bod I spoke to admitted that this is now a major problem for them.
My worry is the rumor that BT wholesale are installing DPI on the backbone so providers such as Zen are going to have clients data viewed by third parties irrespective of contract terms. A lot fo my work is under strict NDA terms and the idea that someone could be trying to crack my encrypted VPN connecting is a possibility.
We recently received the NHS "patient audit". A couple of little old biddies I know assumed they *had" to fill it in, others asked the local doctor or nurse and were told to fill it in - they likewise assumed it was mandatory. Only when I told them (when asked) that it said it was on behalf of the NHS but went to the address of a private company, was not mandatory and there is no guarantee this information would be kept private (conditions on the form allowed the processor to pass details to "relevant third parties") did they finally realise they had been conned - they all promised to shred them next year...
Not sure if ti was actually on behalf of the NHS or not - they would not talk about it to me and hung up when I got through to someone in the know.
Similar thing happened - all "consultants" were fired at once. Then someone read the contracts realised that all the major contracts have a fixed amount of consultancy included and they had to *beg* the now embittered consultants to please come back and work for us - people had been frogmarched(some beaten!) out of thier offices by hired thugs.
This was a database designed around the premise that large numbers of processors would be available. This has not happened and other shortcomings on the design have led to it not taking off as well as it could have. OK its now oold tech but ther are other server techs out there that could easily make use of GPU's for real world apps.
The other issue with GPU's is the "inbred" need to keep the API's a secret. Until Nv and co start opening up to the linux crowd, us server folks will try but expect GPU's to be "out-of-reach" in terms of stability and support even if we are some of the folks they should be trying to get on board.
An example - we develop billing and near time configuration management systems for telcos and altough we are a very small business we often work with pre-release software and are often the technology deciders for large and very large system designs.
Often a technology supplier simply looks at our turnover and our "non existent" VAR sales record (our customers are big enough to have thier own purchasing and contracts departments so sales never touch us) and decide we are not worth talking to - I have been told by tech vendors to literaly "piss off, you are too small to count" in the past, only to have the same vendor call back a year later when they found they were excluded from a number of large scale projects with "so who the f*ck are you people"? Yes, salesmen get angry with anything they dont understand :-/
Nv and co have been ignoring "alternative" markets for years and will not talk to people like us - the ones who can "sell" thier tech (if we/they can prove it is stable)!
I am afriad the technology for a GSHP is very simple and reliable but because you have to buy a certified system from a certified supplier to get your ~2K government handout, all of this certification effectively doubles the cost.
So ~10K to 15K for a uncertified system or 30-40K for a certified system and supplier and you get 2K back from .gov.uk. not exactly a saving is it?
IMHO Just another nasty money making scheme for some .gov.uk cronies, making what could be a seriously good idea just insanely expensive for the rest of us.
Another (virus laden?) site ran through a godaddy domain under DBP! Godaddy are quick to take down any domains offensive to MS or google but if you are an individual or small business forget it.
These days my mail systems run a whois check and if the domain was provided through godaddy I bounce em - this eliminates almost 70% of US spam from my home mail server (spamtrap).
Or when you call the AA, you find that although they have been taking you annual direct debit, they have your card logged as invalid as you asked to be removed from the membership database.
You explain that you DID NOT and ask when and who asked for you to be removed and they say that they do nto know - because you are no longer on the database.
And I am not the only one they have tried this on - effing thieving bar stewards.
The original DNA matching scheme assumed that DNA samples would be limited and targeted for a specific criminal investigation - such as people involved or related to a specific murder. Originally a DNA sample would on avergage match say one in 500K people.
If you have only two or three thousand "targetted" samples you chance of hitting a false positive is reasonably low.
Using the same/very similar matching scheme with millions or random DNA samples *Must* result is a very large number of false positives - and given the number of cases where some poor sod spends five years in jail for some crime before they either find the real crim (he confesses) or someone (usually a TV journo) finally manages to prove he is innocent is growing.
In many of the above cases, investigating officers have *known* the suspect was innocent and have hid, destroyed, doctored or ignored statements or evidence to ensure a conviction. How can anyone ever trust a police officer when this sort of thing still routinely goes on?
I use a encrypted VPN traffic to both work systems and into clients systems.
I have to say that I know just how much extra logging is done (for "quality research") which will mean my work traffic will be in the hands of a now private company - who can/will sell this onto my clients competitors.
Lets look at this from a tourist coming from say the US.
You arrive to armed guards at the airports with machine guns. The people behind the borders agency desk are worse than the fat pigs behind the desk in new york. Hours later you are crammed in a train into london, arrive at a fleapit of a supposedly first class hotel where you can see/hear rats roaming in the garbage at night - you take some pictures...
Next day you go out to visit the "sights" and have your expensive cameras taken off you by a very aggressive pair of plastic plod. You go to the station with the paperwork and are told that your camera has been sent off for "forensics" and it will be at least three months before you will get it back.
You are told it is probably best to report the camera as stolen and claim on your travel insurance - you decide to cut short your trip and return home.
The police force then sells your camera at a "proceeds of crime/lost property" auction and some plod gets a brand new D40 and your compact for almost nothing.
Her brother works in US customs and has flagged her cameras serial numbers as "aggravated theft - extreme caution". If the plod who stole her camera ever visits the US with it he is in for some serious payback.
I helped out building and giving machines to people who have no money, no internet access etc. We stick lunux on old school machines and teach people how to use Ooffice etc.
All of the machines were donated by schools as 'junk' - half of these were 'appropriated' by debt collectors in less than a month! Contacting the DCA was a complete waste of time - the machines had nice bright labels stating they were on loan and "property of xxx" but the DCA's still take them and (try and) sell them on - most were scrapped when the DCA found they were of no resale value.
As of today out of 20 machines I helped build, only one is where we put it - the rest have been stolen by DCA's and junked - sometimes with the people who we handed them to being charged for their disposal!
"if they can't work out which box to tick on the form, then should they even be receiving a voting form in the first place?"
My hubs has reading and writing difficulties but can listen to the arguments of the imbeciles in politics and decide who he likes and dislikes. He told me that he would never vote for an utter moron like you. Does that make my point?
Last years champions at crufts had to be helped (one was carried once out of sight of the cameras) out of the ring - they could hardly walk never mind run!
IMHO Show breeders are responsible for the need to hip-score so many breeds for well over 20 years and are still at it - they breed son to mother to "strengthen lines" and end up introducing genetic abnormalities.
Thankfully our GSD's were german imports and "Working stock". - Where "working stock" is used to mean never been near a "deformed mutant" as Mark Evans RSCPA top vet calls show dogs...
And the IT angle? I offered to write a database program for The Kennel Club (free) that unlike thier then MS_Access based system would report when impossible litters were being registered (how can the same mother have two litters a month apart and at different ends of the country when she is still in quarrantine?) and would detect puppy farm breeders by volume and breed rates - no dog should bred more than once every two years.
They declined and said they were sticking with access...
FYI most common sense bredder policies are very very easy to detect/report once you have an accurate breed register.
Finally requiring breeders to supply dna via a vet would help with the many many bredders who falsify sire and dam when registering pups... The KC is part funding astudy taking DNA from BAGSD members dogs to try and trace a (large) number of serious "genetic" problems in UK GSDs.
Now the good news...
The KC missed thier chance and there is a publically accessible breed register - NOT affilliated with them.
I helped someone pick a GSD recently and a breeder who was not registered with the KC breeders list was the only decent one we found. So my advice - if a breeder is "recommended" by the KC avoid them as they probably breed mutants or worse...
My hubs used to buy hundereds of CDs every year - he likes things such as country, 60s music and Abba but neither of us have bought a CD for well over five years.
Is this because of filesharing - do you "get yer music free" these days? No...
Ok then what is the reason?
1) We no longer have a stereo.
2) New CD's do not play on our computers CD drive (or try and infect the machine) The cleanup costs too much!
3) Even our cheap aldi based car stereo will not play many CD's we now have. One sony disk even managed to trash the previous car stereo!
4) There is very little music we want that we have not already bought - or should I say will not buy unless we can be sure will will nor wreck our car stereo again.
5) Many recent production CDs bought recently have 'died' whereas older CD's are still going strong - this leads me to assume they are designed to fail.
My question is - when will it be **safe** to buy music again?
I *do* use filesharing - to download linux distros and other work related FLOSS software. but dont see the point in trying to get music this way - to slow and expensive!
So Mr Sony et.al Pllease let us old folks know when it is safe to buy CD's once more.
We are being kinds and you get *one* more chance with us!
Come on - lets have a playmobil stop motion version or just the VC staff doing thier happy dance - with yourself standing just off camera with a whip to keep them in step :-)
Said it before - change the system so that if you lose a patent or copyright you lose any others (make thisbroad enough to cover companies that set up a company per patent.
This will stop MS, Google and IBM and the patent trolls because they have more to lose if they decided to hit a small one man band over the head with a dicey patent claim.
Politicians expect people to work for nothing and treat anyone who does so as a skivvy.
Anyone who does voluntary work for any patr of government is a fool.
In my home town a many years ago the head of radiography wrote a report detailing how to move the department out of the "age of steam" and save money at the same time. He was ignored and eventually quit. A few years later a consultancy he worked for was asked to report of the best way to modernise the department. The same managers paid 50K for the *same* report but this time read it and accepted it.
I am afraid that in the UK we are often run by PHB's and to a PHB the value (and accurancy) of information is directly related to its cost. Thankfully I do not have any current clients that are PHB's but have had a few in the past . They are often told what to do by the IT people but it takes us to come in and charge for the same advice before they accept it.
From experience, I can only assume the dev/test budget is ~500K and the rest goes on hardware (rental?), networking costs, admin costs, training planing, actual training, installation and config rollout planing and testing etc...
I have to say we were invited to help plan a rollout of a similar sized system for housing authorities.
Instead of each H/A paying independant consultancies for the same changes, they would collectively own the software and share dev and test costs, funding thier own rollout costs.
Sad to say the scheme never took off but it woud have saved them millions and given the
relatively small customer base (there were ~100 H/As at the time) change management
Samsung UN55B8000 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
LG Electronics 42LH30 42" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Samsung UN55B8500 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Samsung UN46B6000 46" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Sony BRAVIA KDL-40EX400 40" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
143 posts • joined Monday 13th August 2007 13:36 GMT
Page:
Jacqui
rules → #
Posted Monday 15th March 2010 11:41 GMT
In Nominet to release super-short domain names
long time ago we got a two letter .co.uk - and perl.co.uk but some scumbag squatted it when it lapsed (our own fault as we no longer ran perl support and should have transferred it to london-pm or similar.
Jacqui
Jacqui
voltages → # ↑
Posted Thursday 11th March 2010 15:34 GMT
In Virgin signals start of telegraph pole broadband test
Its been a long time since I did any of this - X0+ years but...
The local distribs in the UK are ~11KV and have a three disc hanger.
The main distribution lines are 250K, 500K and 750K depending upon isolator size and oddly number of cables per run 1, 2 and 4.
A high tension tower (danger of death) carries two three phase circuits, contra rotating to reduce EMF with a single earth line along the top as a lightning trap.
It is this cable that the leccy boards used to attach their fibre to when they started offering net services - mainly because they could run a little unmanned trolley to do the job while power was still on.
At the substation level they dropped to powerline technology over the 11KV lines and bridged the 11K to 450V 3ph drop. As we all know 450 3ph == 240 single with each house getting one of the three phases.
Of course things have probably changed since the 80's :-)
Jacqui
more MP graft → #
Posted Wednesday 10th March 2010 10:08 GMT
In UK pol touts canine chip implants
I wonder how much of a backhander the MP's proposing this got from thier insurance company sponsors? Everyone ni the rescue business knows how much the insurance companies are gouging small businesses such as rescues - mandatory will mean double costs.
Look what happened to business PL costs after the last mandatory Pl came in - building sites are now plastered with signs etc and building costs have gione up by a factor of 10!
Jacqui
competion → #
Posted Friday 5th March 2010 18:50 GMT
In Man of God backs Beverley porncoder
HDM's sister company is competing with the HU17 web site and this article is an attempt to close down the site so they can take over with thier commercial offering.
Of course a backhander (beer) to your local mayor for a nice juicy quote helps grab headlines.
I bet Mr Mayor now feels like a complete tronk!
Jacqui
Jacqui
Roll on → #
Posted Friday 5th March 2010 10:43 GMT
In Brain scanners to be used to 'design' political candidates
blipverts
Jacqui
3D = HD fup handled three times as badly → #
Posted Wednesday 3rd March 2010 09:27 GMT
In 3D TVs to drop below £1000 in 2012
First HDready (and HD-xxxxxxx for any number of quasi-legal descriptive terms) was used to sell defective incapable tat before they started offering programmes at seriously degraded broadcast resolutions - 3D will be tthe same fiasco again!
FYI When the TV died a year or two ago we decided to wait and see what happened. Broadcast wise before investing in a new goggle box. Originally we planned a year perhaps six months without TV to see how much more we could get done without the distraction of live "must watch" TV.
The abuse and threats from TVL ended up ensuring we never replaced the TV and went further. We gave the TV ariel, cable and booster away to family so we now need a new TV, ariel and wiring to watch anything! Going by the TV listings it is certaily not worth the cost and effort.
Also getting a TV would feel like giving in to the TVL threats. I would rather do without than give in to such legalised extortion.
Jacqui
BT spam → #
Posted Tuesday 2nd March 2010 10:32 GMT
In BT blamed for Davina McCall spamcalls
My home number still has a business DSL attached (work pays for it) and I get calls from BT roughly every three days asking if I would be interested in moving from Virgin to a BT DSL service.
The BT business DSL has not worked for over a year and I keep asking the boss to cancel it.
I plan to move the DSL service from BT to a non business service such as BE or a business
sevrice such as zen but BT will not give out a MAC because the DSL is not in my name :-(
Jacqui
traffic shaping → #
Posted Thursday 25th February 2010 14:11 GMT
In Virgin to offer 100Mb/s broadband by year's end
NThell have a habot of dropping connections that have any form of heavy traffic.
I telework periodically and if I transfer a lot of data batweeb work and home via the openvpn tunnel I find that NThell has dropped the link the next morning - the modem does not reconnect for up to 24 hours. One call to "support" (via the cancellations number0 finally admitted that flagged lines will be "off hooked" for a period if heavy buirst traffic is detected.
Jacqui
Nthell is still 2Mb/s ro over 20UKP/mo → #
Posted Thursday 25th February 2010 14:10 GMT
In Virgin to offer 100Mb/s broadband by year's end
NThell is still only a 2Mb/s package for 20UKP/mo and has recently underwent a 50p price increase. Time to jump ship methinks.
Jacqui
PR gone bad → #
Posted Wednesday 24th February 2010 13:55 GMT
In Banking industry worker faces cosh over anonymous rant
Some PR or tech monkey was given the task to post a rebuttal and failed miserably.
Also his comments about APACS believing that being able to hack CnP cards is something a first year engineering student could do flies in the face of thier "chip and pin is secure" mantra.
I think anyone who has had to fight to recoup money stolen via CnP should find this plonker and call him as a witness :-)
Jacqui
chuckie ducks → #
Posted Tuesday 23rd February 2010 11:27 GMT
In Chuck Norris botnet doesn't infect routers...
"noted for playing Russian Roulette with a full-loaded pistol and winning"
Playmobile or it did not happen!
Jacqui
end of year tax → #
Posted Monday 22nd February 2010 10:38 GMT
In Mixed messages for UK small biz
The tax man is hunting down funds and is targetingsmall businesses with spurious charges.
Many small companies are having to go (repeatedly) through the ohmbudsman to recoup as much as 25K which is then immediately recharged and the process starts again.
The tax man is far worse than the banks in trying to destroy UK small businesses and this being so close to end of year I can understand why some businesses would rather declare bankruptcy than have the tax men pull thier business down from under them.
Jacqui
Jacqui
UK science === fake science → #
Posted Monday 15th February 2010 13:34 GMT
In Chips make you chipper: Official
Funding must be bad when they end up doing fake science like this.
I mean show someone something horrible then give them some comfort food and what do you expect. They could have replaced with with chocolate, mince pies, ice cream or a ping pong table. Hell a quick game you enjoy would probably be more healthy and far better at actually making you feel good. They could have even replaced the chips with kittens, bunny wabbits or walking the dog!
How any "health science" department can come out with this tosh (funded by the ministry of chips) and expect us to believe them is beyond me.
UK Science died some years ago - its all part of the minitry of truth now.
Anyone scientists that disagree end up with a smear campaign and out of a job or dead in a field.
Jacqui
Jacqui
Yes but → # ↑
Posted Monday 8th February 2010 10:45 GMT
In Google doppelgänger casts riddle over interwebs
only because (you missed a step) DNS A for this name is configured - the above does not mean you can expect this name to point to the same IP...
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: iw-in-f147.1e100.net
Address: 74.125.95.147
Jacqui
national archives → #
Posted Monday 8th February 2010 10:45 GMT
In Pupil database claimed to be breach-free
Next obvious question - when was the last NA breach?
Note that I did not ask if there had been a breach - given the UK record on leaks^Wbreaches I assume it must happen at least annually unless told otherwise...
Jacqui
Jacqui
ICL again → #
Posted Tuesday 2nd February 2010 10:20 GMT
In Windows 7 RC 'buy a copy' shut downs start next month
ICL removed a mainframe with council data when the council did not pay for the machine.
the council sued ICL because under UK law while the machine belonged to ICL the data
belonged to the council and ICL had no right to deny the council access to their data.
ICL lost big time.
MS may be much bigger than ICL (now) but this case means MS are taking a risk
in denying access to data or possibly corrupting data with this new behaviour.
Jacqui
BEthere → #
Posted Tuesday 2nd February 2010 10:17 GMT
In Virgin hails 'free' landline-to-mobe calls
Went to BE web site to purchase a new DSL connection (migrate from a dead BT DSL.
Filled in loads of forms (had to hack the phone number cos BE do not accept short
<11 digit phone numbers). After 20 minutes of trying various extra digit combos' finally
got the to DD screen - odd that they will check valid short numbers but will nto accept
valid short numbers in thier sign up form.
Yup as well as a DD form, they want a credit card as well. F* that.
So I called the sales number to see if they really want my non existent credit card...
Crackle, Crackle splutter splutter - WTF my phone line has iced up!
Called family in NE of england and neighbours - clear line - no problems.
Tried BE again - could *just* hear over the third world crackle the "select one for..."
Pressed one four times to get redirected to "ravindra" who kept repeating the
same script no matter what I said. I hung up.
A+A/Zen may be more expensive but at least I can call sales and get a human been.
Jacqui
tfl.gov.uk site → #
Posted Monday 1st February 2010 23:56 GMT
In UK.gov unmoved by Internet Explorer 6 security concerns
Crapita sounds right. I tried to find out our vans status via thier site and it rejected requests from firefox but was OK with MSIE7. I then tweaked FF to submit with MSIE headers and hey presto it worked. Looks like Crapita have coded the servers to detect MSIE User-Agent: and bounce FF et.al.
Jacqui
Lady GAGA → #
Posted Friday 22nd January 2010 21:08 GMT
In Airport scanner staff object to vetting
My Scum reading hubs suggests that images of this celebutard will probably be the first to be leaked. Evidently the scum has a reward outstanding for definitive proof of her (lack of) "meat and veg".
Jacqui
Equality Disclaimers → #
Posted Friday 22nd January 2010 09:58 GMT
In The Equality Bill: Hidden agenda?
You can always tell the employers and agencies that have had (and probably still still have) discriminating staff and/or policies because ofthe big prominent "we dont discriminate" footers on emails and adverts. Dont they *know* the only reason companies display them is *after* they lose a discrimination battle?
Jacqui
Lying Sales driods → #
Posted Thursday 21st January 2010 18:35 GMT
In BT reveals faster broadband pricing
Busy working from home today when call arrived - no CLI - suspicions raised but some clients withhold CLI (phone companies..) Before I get to spount my "Jacqui .... How can I help you bit" I get an indian on a sputtery VOIP line.
Droid: "Is this Miss Caren?"
Me: Who is this?
Droid: "Is this Miss Jacqui Caren of <<addresss>>?"
Me: Sorry but would you please Identify yourself otherwise I am hanging up!
Droid: "Hello Miss Caren I represent British Telecom and would like to offer you .... great broadband package ...."
Me: <<hangup>>
I assume BT share thier consumer details with broadband division?
Also I am on the TPS and have stated that I *NEVER EVER* buy over the phone
both to TPS and BT.
BT have in the past called me to offer stuff and I tell them if they do this once more I will
move to a provider that honours my "do not try and sell me shit" request.
Time to move to a decent phone service provider!
Jacqui
police force reputation → #
Posted Friday 15th January 2010 23:17 GMT
In UK BitTorrent admin acquitted on fraud charge
Sorry but it is not that difficult to find the real crooks just look for the blue flashing lights...
Anyone remember the gagging order on the newspapers about the "repairs" done to a certain chief constables house some 10 to 20 years ago using police force funds? The gagging order was taken out by the force itself (again public funds) IIRC. I think the matter was dropped because he had taken early retirement?
Jacqui
Event horizon → #
Posted Thursday 14th January 2010 16:59 GMT
In Swedish Weight Watchers bring down the house
Forget CERN it's the lardy congregations we should be worried about.
Jacqui
terrorists → #
Posted Thursday 14th January 2010 12:46 GMT
In West Country pagans tie horses in knots
**this* is the only terrorist "giveuscash" FUD the devon plod can come up with?
I thought police were supposed to investigate - not publicise theories blaming events on a specific religions. I suppose it is budget time again and they need a scapegoat to ensure they get more moolah from the limited budget. I wonder who had the bright idea to demonise a (to the plod) "unpopular" religion.
Lets try this another way. If the police has said they belived that a bunch of muslims were responsible because of some ancient long forgotten dooberry the newspapers would be up in arms and the plod would be apologising to the national police force rep and any local or national honco that came out of the woodwork.
The fact that most pagans are quiet unassuming folks means the police can get away with this utter crap.
Before anyone asks, I am an athiest IMHO all religions are populated with nutters who need time off on in straighjacket and strong drugs. Saying this of all the religious folks I have met only the pagans (and church of the FSM!) come over as having any common sense whatsoever.
Jacqui
Pork varrel → #
Posted Tuesday 12th January 2010 10:43 GMT
In Brown offers free laptops to deprived UK schoolkids
Like every other government scam^W^W^Wcheme its just a way to distribute the pork barrel.
Jacqui
Escrow and the application of force → #
Posted Wednesday 6th January 2010 12:28 GMT
In Recession forces software escrow releases to jump by 150%
Some of the escrow agreements proposed by the big multinationals are designed not only to cover them if a supplier goes under but to make it easy/cheap to make a supplier fail in hard times giving thme the product for free,
Escrow is a good idea but unless you are really really carefull, a large customer *will* try and force you out of business to get thier hands on your code.
Also, If the police can get away with stealing peoples software why can''t others?
Jacqui
Spam → #
Posted Monday 4th January 2010 15:27 GMT
In Monty's 'Save MySQL' mudsling gets 15,000 backers
Same here - The only contribution I made with the email acount was in the documentation. As it took the support team four **years** to respond (an automated response!) I can say that MySQL is a lot safer out of this backsliding, money grubbers hands.
And yes I did report the mail as spam.
Jacqui
Virgin sinking/rats leaving → #
Posted Tuesday 29th December 2009 17:10 GMT
In ISPs slam Digital Economy Bill's multi-million pound price tag
I telework via virgin and mainly because of cost called up to cancel. They are *desperate* to retain customers and are already asking if the filesharing legislation is a factor in my reason to cancel! The retentions bod I spoke to admitted that this is now a major problem for them.
My worry is the rumor that BT wholesale are installing DPI on the backbone so providers such as Zen are going to have clients data viewed by third parties irrespective of contract terms. A lot fo my work is under strict NDA terms and the idea that someone could be trying to crack my encrypted VPN connecting is a possibility.
Jacqui
NHS "patient audit" → #
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 16:53 GMT
In Surveying anonymity and the public good
We recently received the NHS "patient audit". A couple of little old biddies I know assumed they *had" to fill it in, others asked the local doctor or nurse and were told to fill it in - they likewise assumed it was mandatory. Only when I told them (when asked) that it said it was on behalf of the NHS but went to the address of a private company, was not mandatory and there is no guarantee this information would be kept private (conditions on the form allowed the processor to pass details to "relevant third parties") did they finally realise they had been conned - they all promised to shred them next year...
Not sure if ti was actually on behalf of the NHS or not - they would not talk about it to me and hung up when I got through to someone in the know.
Jacqui
Jacqui
Anyone remember the Ingres takeover? → #
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 12:37 GMT
In EDS mainframe goes titsup, crashes RBS cheque system
Similar thing happened - all "consultants" were fired at once. Then someone read the contracts realised that all the major contracts have a fixed amount of consultancy included and they had to *beg* the now embittered consultants to please come back and work for us - people had been frogmarched(some beaten!) out of thier offices by hired thugs.
Jacqui
firebird → #
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 12:23 GMT
In Nvidia boss: Intel suit to 'transform computer industry'
This was a database designed around the premise that large numbers of processors would be available. This has not happened and other shortcomings on the design have led to it not taking off as well as it could have. OK its now oold tech but ther are other server techs out there that could easily make use of GPU's for real world apps.
The other issue with GPU's is the "inbred" need to keep the API's a secret. Until Nv and co start opening up to the linux crowd, us server folks will try but expect GPU's to be "out-of-reach" in terms of stability and support even if we are some of the folks they should be trying to get on board.
An example - we develop billing and near time configuration management systems for telcos and altough we are a very small business we often work with pre-release software and are often the technology deciders for large and very large system designs.
Often a technology supplier simply looks at our turnover and our "non existent" VAR sales record (our customers are big enough to have thier own purchasing and contracts departments so sales never touch us) and decide we are not worth talking to - I have been told by tech vendors to literaly "piss off, you are too small to count" in the past, only to have the same vendor call back a year later when they found they were excluded from a number of large scale projects with "so who the f*ck are you people"? Yes, salesmen get angry with anything they dont understand :-/
Nv and co have been ignoring "alternative" markets for years and will not talk to people like us - the ones who can "sell" thier tech (if we/they can prove it is stable)!
Jacqui
GSHP → # ↑
Posted Monday 14th December 2009 20:05 GMT
In GSHP: The green tech even carbon sceptics will like
I am afriad the technology for a GSHP is very simple and reliable but because you have to buy a certified system from a certified supplier to get your ~2K government handout, all of this certification effectively doubles the cost.
So ~10K to 15K for a uncertified system or 30-40K for a certified system and supplier and you get 2K back from .gov.uk. not exactly a saving is it?
IMHO Just another nasty money making scheme for some .gov.uk cronies, making what could be a seriously good idea just insanely expensive for the rest of us.
Jacqui
Plasma cutter → #
Posted Thursday 10th December 2009 23:47 GMT
In German electropulse energy drill bitchslaps lasers
These are very very effective up to half inch plate ~3- amp single phase and you do not need to design a new coil assembly for every hole shape.
Robotic plasma cutters have been around for what feels like centuries.
http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/clarke-plasma-king-30si-plasma-cutter
Jacqui
godaddy → #
Posted Thursday 10th December 2009 22:17 GMT
In Vigilantes R US: Private enterprise takes over
Another (virus laden?) site ran through a godaddy domain under DBP! Godaddy are quick to take down any domains offensive to MS or google but if you are an individual or small business forget it.
These days my mail systems run a whois check and if the domain was provided through godaddy I bounce em - this eliminates almost 70% of US spam from my home mail server (spamtrap).
Jacqui
Jacqui
AA → # ↑
Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 22:26 GMT
In Mars rover faces icy death
Or when you call the AA, you find that although they have been taking you annual direct debit, they have your card logged as invalid as you asked to be removed from the membership database.
You explain that you DID NOT and ask when and who asked for you to be removed and they say that they do nto know - because you are no longer on the database.
And I am not the only one they have tried this on - effing thieving bar stewards.
Jacqui
statistics → #
Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 14:04 GMT
In New DNA rules may still breach human rights
The original DNA matching scheme assumed that DNA samples would be limited and targeted for a specific criminal investigation - such as people involved or related to a specific murder. Originally a DNA sample would on avergage match say one in 500K people.
If you have only two or three thousand "targetted" samples you chance of hitting a false positive is reasonably low.
Using the same/very similar matching scheme with millions or random DNA samples *Must* result is a very large number of false positives - and given the number of cases where some poor sod spends five years in jail for some crime before they either find the real crim (he confesses) or someone (usually a TV journo) finally manages to prove he is innocent is growing.
In many of the above cases, investigating officers have *known* the suspect was innocent and have hid, destroyed, doctored or ignored statements or evidence to ensure a conviction. How can anyone ever trust a police officer when this sort of thing still routinely goes on?
Jacqui
Work traffic → #
Posted Monday 7th December 2009 16:20 GMT
In Spook firm readies Virgin Media filesharing probes
I use a encrypted VPN traffic to both work systems and into clients systems.
I have to say that I know just how much extra logging is done (for "quality research") which will mean my work traffic will be in the hands of a now private company - who can/will sell this onto my clients competitors.
Time to move to a non DPI ISP.
Jacqui
Jacqui
London - terrorists everywhere? → #
Posted Friday 4th December 2009 16:42 GMT
In Lord Carlile: Police are taking the proverbial on terror
Lets look at this from a tourist coming from say the US.
You arrive to armed guards at the airports with machine guns. The people behind the borders agency desk are worse than the fat pigs behind the desk in new york. Hours later you are crammed in a train into london, arrive at a fleapit of a supposedly first class hotel where you can see/hear rats roaming in the garbage at night - you take some pictures...
Next day you go out to visit the "sights" and have your expensive cameras taken off you by a very aggressive pair of plastic plod. You go to the station with the paperwork and are told that your camera has been sent off for "forensics" and it will be at least three months before you will get it back.
You are told it is probably best to report the camera as stolen and claim on your travel insurance - you decide to cut short your trip and return home.
The police force then sells your camera at a "proceeds of crime/lost property" auction and some plod gets a brand new D40 and your compact for almost nothing.
Her brother works in US customs and has flagged her cameras serial numbers as "aggravated theft - extreme caution". If the plod who stole her camera ever visits the US with it he is in for some serious payback.
Jacqui
Free computa = DCA fodder → #
Posted Thursday 3rd December 2009 12:26 GMT
In Govt promises unemployed free laptops, net access, websites
I helped out building and giving machines to people who have no money, no internet access etc. We stick lunux on old school machines and teach people how to use Ooffice etc.
All of the machines were donated by schools as 'junk' - half of these were 'appropriated' by debt collectors in less than a month! Contacting the DCA was a complete waste of time - the machines had nice bright labels stating they were on loan and "property of xxx" but the DCA's still take them and (try and) sell them on - most were scrapped when the DCA found they were of no resale value.
As of today out of 20 machines I helped build, only one is where we put it - the rest have been stolen by DCA's and junked - sometimes with the people who we handed them to being charged for their disposal!
Jacqui
Jacqui
Voting rights == ability to read → # ↑
Posted Tuesday 1st December 2009 19:03 GMT
In UK.gov may abolish edited electoral roll
"if they can't work out which box to tick on the form, then should they even be receiving a voting form in the first place?"
My hubs has reading and writing difficulties but can listen to the arguments of the imbeciles in politics and decide who he likes and dislikes. He told me that he would never vote for an utter moron like you. Does that make my point?
Jacqui
Jacqui
PHP Secure? → # ↑
Posted Monday 30th November 2009 04:51 GMT
In Web host Daily recovers after Tux-themed defacement
This is a joke right? insecure PHP apps and the inability to bind values to SQL queries is one of the basic infection vectors into many web servers.
OTOH perl apps provide the ability ot bind values by default - it is clueless wannabees who ingore the and fail to use strict, tainting etc.
IMHO PHP is insecue by design - Perl code is insecure because of incompetent coders...
Jacqui
GSD show dogs running? → #
Posted Friday 27th November 2009 14:19 GMT
In Replace Bulldog gridiron mascot with robot, PETA demands
Have you seen the GSD's in a UK dog show?
Last years champions at crufts had to be helped (one was carried once out of sight of the cameras) out of the ring - they could hardly walk never mind run!
IMHO Show breeders are responsible for the need to hip-score so many breeds for well over 20 years and are still at it - they breed son to mother to "strengthen lines" and end up introducing genetic abnormalities.
Thankfully our GSD's were german imports and "Working stock". - Where "working stock" is used to mean never been near a "deformed mutant" as Mark Evans RSCPA top vet calls show dogs...
And the IT angle? I offered to write a database program for The Kennel Club (free) that unlike thier then MS_Access based system would report when impossible litters were being registered (how can the same mother have two litters a month apart and at different ends of the country when she is still in quarrantine?) and would detect puppy farm breeders by volume and breed rates - no dog should bred more than once every two years.
They declined and said they were sticking with access...
FYI most common sense bredder policies are very very easy to detect/report once you have an accurate breed register.
Finally requiring breeders to supply dna via a vet would help with the many many bredders who falsify sire and dam when registering pups... The KC is part funding astudy taking DNA from BAGSD members dogs to try and trace a (large) number of serious "genetic" problems in UK GSDs.
Now the good news...
The KC missed thier chance and there is a publically accessible breed register - NOT affilliated with them.
I helped someone pick a GSD recently and a breeder who was not registered with the KC breeders list was the only decent one we found. So my advice - if a breeder is "recommended" by the KC avoid them as they probably breed mutants or worse...
Jacqui
made me smile → #
Posted Friday 27th November 2009 13:30 GMT
In 'Alienated' gamer sues WoW for ruining life
"** Yes, we know this isn't usually how this paper is referred to. What of it?"
Jacqui
CD's → #
Posted Thursday 26th November 2009 11:04 GMT
In Virgin Media to trial filesharing monitoring system
My hubs used to buy hundereds of CDs every year - he likes things such as country, 60s music and Abba but neither of us have bought a CD for well over five years.
Is this because of filesharing - do you "get yer music free" these days? No...
Ok then what is the reason?
1) We no longer have a stereo.
2) New CD's do not play on our computers CD drive (or try and infect the machine) The cleanup costs too much!
3) Even our cheap aldi based car stereo will not play many CD's we now have. One sony disk even managed to trash the previous car stereo!
4) There is very little music we want that we have not already bought - or should I say will not buy unless we can be sure will will nor wreck our car stereo again.
5) Many recent production CDs bought recently have 'died' whereas older CD's are still going strong - this leads me to assume they are designed to fail.
My question is - when will it be **safe** to buy music again?
I *do* use filesharing - to download linux distros and other work related FLOSS software. but dont see the point in trying to get music this way - to slow and expensive!
So Mr Sony et.al Pllease let us old folks know when it is safe to buy CD's once more.
We are being kinds and you get *one* more chance with us!
Jacqui
Jacqui
banks books → #
Posted Sunday 22nd November 2009 15:04 GMT
In eBooks: What to read on which reader
It is odd that bank's books are almost all available as audio but almost no e-books exist.
Until they do, I will stick to both paperback and audio books - the fullcast audio versions being quite brilliant and well worth the money!
Jacqui
Jacqui
@Sarah Bee → #
Posted Wednesday 18th November 2009 17:04 GMT
In MS store staff in spontaneous electric boogie
Come on - lets have a playmobil stop motion version or just the VC staff doing thier happy dance - with yourself standing just off camera with a whip to keep them in step :-)
Jacqui
Jacqui
Lose one lose em all → #
Posted Thursday 12th November 2009 06:51 GMT
In US Supremes prod software patent law
Said it before - change the system so that if you lose a patent or copyright you lose any others (make thisbroad enough to cover companies that set up a company per patent.
This will stop MS, Google and IBM and the patent trolls because they have more to lose if they decided to hit a small one man band over the head with a dicey patent claim.
Jacqui
Jacqui
Charge 'em! → #
Posted Wednesday 11th November 2009 10:53 GMT
In Three more quit over Nutt sacking
Unpaid!
Politicians expect people to work for nothing and treat anyone who does so as a skivvy.
Anyone who does voluntary work for any patr of government is a fool.
In my home town a many years ago the head of radiography wrote a report detailing how to move the department out of the "age of steam" and save money at the same time. He was ignored and eventually quit. A few years later a consultancy he worked for was asked to report of the best way to modernise the department. The same managers paid 50K for the *same* report but this time read it and accepted it.
I am afraid that in the UK we are often run by PHB's and to a PHB the value (and accurancy) of information is directly related to its cost. Thankfully I do not have any current clients that are PHB's but have had a few in the past . They are often told what to do by the IT people but it takes us to come in and charge for the same advice before they accept it.
Jacqui
Jacqui
No BBC → #
Posted Monday 9th November 2009 15:55 GMT
In Ofcom balks at Beeb's HD DRM dream
I would *love* a non BBC set top box!
I would also hope this would be BBC (TVL/Capita) tax free?
IMHO the BBC are just shooting themselves in the foot here...
Jacqui "No Tv" Caren
Jacqui
scale → #
Posted Tuesday 3rd November 2009 14:34 GMT
In MPs give offender system drubbing in scathing report
From experience, I can only assume the dev/test budget is ~500K and the rest goes on hardware (rental?), networking costs, admin costs, training planing, actual training, installation and config rollout planing and testing etc...
I have to say we were invited to help plan a rollout of a similar sized system for housing authorities.
Instead of each H/A paying independant consultancies for the same changes, they would collectively own the software and share dev and test costs, funding thier own rollout costs.
Sad to say the scheme never took off but it woud have saved them millions and given the
relatively small customer base (there were ~100 H/As at the time) change management
would be "noddy" compared to some projects...
Page: