Posts by Furbian

You receive some 'visitors'....

They tell you that you need to put in a back door, and that even telling anyone they visited you would get you into trouble. 'You' can be an individual, a team, management etc.

A deeper perpective...

Undoubtedly working from has shown to be better, hardly a study disagrees with it, My workplace requires managers to allow one day from home, up to a maximum of four, though a manager can decide for this to be zero, which was the case, until my new one decided he'd like me two days a week, which are not quite full days either. Problem is that not all others are in on the same days, so out of the few who would be in our area, typically it's just two. Now in the old days, I worked for large consultancies, you could tap an expert on the shoulder and they'd save you hours of time, and you could do the same for someone else. I miss that, but then again they made me commute thousands of miles every year. Now my commute is a bike ride of less than half an hour, and the team, within a huge organisation, is small and doesn't have that many other experts anyway. Yes, I do get less work done on-site. My story, is probably not like anyone else's, but probably has parallels.

True, big landlords want their tenants back, but the support industry, the cafe's the shops around the office, now have a reduced income and may need fewer people. Then again home shopping might increase and shift the jobs to local shops and online warehouses (that are being automated more and more, but let's not talk about automation here).

Another angle, Covid-19 gave a unique opportunity to study mass home working and the idea of BMI (not weight index, basic minimum income). I digress here a little, it was squandered by political hubris though, simply giving everyone with an NI number £1k a month, no messing around with giving it through companies and business loans, near zero extra admin costs, but no, they had to enrich/look after their wealthy voter base with £2.5k payments, whilst those on the other end ended up with less than £400 a month, and the business loan fund was looted like an ATM throwing out money.

Oh no...

I've only just discovered what SNAFU stands for, about 30 years later... I shall not be using it in future!

10 years on....

This has been going on for so long that many a person reading this will wonder who? what? etc.

That trade deal with the US to make up for Brexit...

With gunboats ready to do battle with French, a trade war (there was meant to be deal, no?) with the EU imminent, conditions similar to those that started the troubles in Northern Ireland, there is meant to be, eventually, a grand US trade deal that would make up for all this. Someone in the US may just notice, 'hey, you appear to have blocked one of our largest tech companies from buying one based in your country that's owned by the Japanese."

Part of wished I had met him...

A computer for under £100 was just a master stroke (ours was an £80 ZX81), kicked off the entire computer revolution together with the BBC Mirco's in schools (£400 a pop, I only knew of ONE school kid who had one and his dad was always held up as the only 'professional' father of note). I for one am grateful for Uncle Clive's machine literally changing my life and setting my career path. I always hoped he'd come out with one more revolutionary idea; the bikes were always interesting, but never quite hit the spot.

It's first day of the semester next Monday; I'll share some of my memories of the man and his inventions with my students. Paradoxically, of the Acorn and Sinclair founders, it's the Acorn side that I know one of!

Tried bulk rename?

CMD rename:

ren *.jfif *.jpg

Powershell:

Get-ChildItem *.jfif | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.jfif','.jpg' }

I do not consider this a step forward. I am not happy.

.. and if you miss Bash style editing history etc. on cmd, 'mridgers clink' will do the job.

TV - Off.

Once this is implemented, will they issue advertisement and programme makers a guide so as to avoid the lines like:-

"You going out? Turn the TV off before you leave"

"This TV Offer is out of this world"

"I used to watch TV often when I had nothing better to do"

"Get that TV off my foot, it hurts"

etc. ad infinitum

I have no idea if 'TV Off' already exists, my Samsung 59" TV is dumb and defective (they won't fix it, despite confirming warranty via an e-mail they doubt they sent), and my Smart (semi?) 65" Hi-sense has no ears to listen with.

Google blocked me from buying an 80p App until I gave them a copy of my passport.

Well that's pretty it that, I can't even if I wanted to. In the meantime I use fasthosts, not for hosting but just for domain management, and it's been OK, I get reminders when a card is about to expire, I update the details and life carries on. Actually that reminds me, it was updating an expired card on Google Checkout (as it was back then) that caused the Google block in the first place, if you're bored, you can read about it here :- http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Oh I've been using Amazon App store since for paid apps, which is OK apart from most Apps needing a wi-fi connection to work, i.e. no using most Amazon Apps on a flight etc.

Shops are jsut for selling, not support.

EE, and now I've discovered 3 as well, shops do not appear to have the authority to do anything at all, other than sell you a phone. Any problem? 'Ring our Indian call centre', who will then, allegedly, authorise a repair or exchange but will argue to death to avoid doing so, expect to waste an hour on the phone. On the rare occasion they agree to an action and if you go back to the shop as instructed (sometimes they arrange a collection) the shop staff have no idea and refuse, for example in my case, to accept a return (for repair). Ring back and they'll tell you oh they should have! They behave like two companies, one with shop fronts here, and the other an Indian half, that barely know how the other works and with the Indian half conveniently holding the balance of power, out of reach in effect. Rubbish service from all providers, that lead me to go Pay as you go, which has saved me a packet, buy the phone for £400 and paying for calls has saved me loads, my monthly call/data spend has been less than £5.

Having a different skin colour...

... is a great worse, though the physical scars of my schooling are largely long gone, I haven't quiet forgotten the beatings. That's 'darker' skin colour, obviously. Not many have ever picked on my obesity and in the career I eventually had, both factors had little if any influence, though starting the career was a nigh on impossible task in the first place.

"pick over the carcass"

Quite literally, maybe they all pulled out from their deals with Phones 4u a few weeks ago precisely so they could pick up the stores on the cheap. Quite like someone doing a lot of hard work in introducing someone to a client they have good relationship with, only for the introduced party to go around the chaps back and make a deal with the client themselves, i.e. cut out the middle man. The ones who pay the price in this case are the workers left without a job. Naked capitalism as its worst, though I'm no advocate of communism either (i.e. DPRK, no thanks).

Hypocrites....

This is the same company that was busy using its Google camera cars to grab people's home wi-fi details, illegally, and now it claims to be acting in the interest of net users? It's not, it's a commercial company that operates for the sake of its own profit margins, which is after all its purpose, including that hyped up marketing slogan 'Don't be evil', read 'YOU don't be evil, but we can snoop away, avoid tax as much tax as possible etc."

No doubt being an American company it will oblige the NSA with a good number of back-doors, rather than risk its wrath (underhand or otherwise) in Google's primary market. Probably given up on China for good, or that 10% share is probably what they're desperately trying to cling on to so that they can maintain a toe hold there.

Another 140m was available...

..but it was wasted on Universal Credit instead, and that's just the write off, i.e. total waste to date.

One rule for them, another for us.

Anyone else, bar a banker maybe, loosing that sort of money would lose a lot more than their job, probably their liberty too by landing in jail. Seems like being a minister, elected democratically by the people for the people of-course, is the ultimate form of Limited Liability Company, even your job is immune from being touched, for at-least five years whilst you rake in some decent dough on a generous MP's wage until the next election. If voted out, you can then get some cushy job paying over £100k a year working a few days a week, if that, advising, more often than not, a bank, as one now has inside knowledge of government to 'help' their new employer, i.e. how get into government projects guaranteed to be cash cows, even if they are doomed to failure from the start. Nice.

Cypher

Anyone remember the film 'Cypher', where David Hewlett acts a human lie detectors and succeeds (though doesn't manage to stop the chap) where the other techniques had failed? Just thought I'd mention a good film related to lie detection as I leave the discussion forum...

Graphics card firmware...

You could stick about 128K or more of data in there.. maybe that's why they trashed the graphics card.

Yes I'm being sarcastic, just in case some Daily Fail reader thought that 128K or so is enough to stick anything worthwhile on, or that the Guardian tech staff would be clever enough to use a graphic card's firmware area in that way. Rest of it just looks like pure mindless vandalism. Oh no, hold that thought, the motherboard's BIOS could also be flash with 'stuff' though getting the data out if it's a surface mount BIOS (most are) could be one heck of a challenge.

Sounds hilarious..

... but this just isn't funny, guys in (jackboots?) turning up and trashing hardware, and the whole 'you've had your fun' etc. exchanges.

Looks like the 'government' is acting with impunity. This is simply wrong.