* Posts by Stuart Castle

1710 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2007

Yes, I did just crash that critical app. And you should thank me for having done so

Stuart Castle Silver badge

A long time ago, I, along with a couple of friends, were learning NT system admin. A colleague had learned about setting up log in/out scripts on NT. Then, one day, I got a message sent to my PC. I didn't think too much about it, but a couple of days later, I started getting messages repeatedly. After getting the same message about 30 times in two hours, I asked my friend about it. He denied all knowledge. But I'd seen the machine the message was coming from in his office..

I told him this, but he still denied it. The messages kept coming and were affecting my ability to work, so I reported it to their line manager (who was also indirectly, mine). They still denied the message but it stopped happening.

I asked about it later, and they claimed they were messing around on the machine, and had written a script that when run on log out, amongst other things, sent a message to my machine. It was meant to be a debugging thing and one of my friends was actually developing the script on my machine, and testing it remotely. Apparently, he forgot he'd set the script to message my machine.

Please install that patch – but don't you dare actually run it

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Nine nines and an explosion

Unfortunately, redundancy can be a difficult sell to the bean counters.

After all, it costs money, and if implemented properly, will not make a visible difference.

Yes, I know if it is implemented properly, it will increase reliability, but they would probably look at the the complete lack of downtime they have as evidence the expense of redundancy is neither jutified, nor needed..

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Uptime

Re: (we couldn't download it as you required the floppy* for the security key, not sure why it was secured as the software would only work with their machine).

I used to support a Uni computer lab with the same problem. We had proper, broadcast quality, capture cards in ten of the machines. These cards were essentially high end pentium based PCs on a card. They even required their own SCSI hard drive.

It was interesting how they handled drive access.. These drives appeared to the host PC as NTFS formatted drives, with several folders on the root. JPG, PNG, AVI and a few others.. They each had folders inside for individual projects. In these folders, you would find the video for each project, in the format with the folder name. So, the JPG folder would have the individual frames of the video in JPEG format, the AVI folder would have the video in AVI format. All conversion was done on the fly. It was actually a very neat system, once the user got used to it.

Anyhow, I digress. The cards were directly supported by both Adobe Premiere, and a custom version of a little known video editor, called "Speed Razor". This was a commercial application, but rare enough that when I logged a support call, I was told our ten machine lab was the largest installation in the country.

This Speed Razor required a dongle that plugged into the parallel port.. This was a massive pain in the arse, because it meant we had to install parallel port extension cables, and run them back into the machine so we could lock the dongles inside the machines. As if requiring access to a £5k video capture card wasn't enough of a restriction.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

Stuart Castle Silver badge

As a long term support guy, with a lot of Mac experience, I've also got a lot of experience of dealing with creative people. They tend to assume that because a way of doing things works for them, it will work for everyone.

I'm not actually singling out the creative industries here, as a lot of users from all industries do this, but my experience is with the creative industries.

A few times I've had to stop users using their own budgets to buy Mac Minis, with USB drives to stick in the corner of the office, and use as a file server..

The correct procedure if you want a shared area is to prepare a business case, then request it from a our systems team, who, assuming they grant the request, will ensure it is properly backed up etc.

The lack of thought for enterprise situations often extends to the design of the hardware/software they use..

I've seen a *lot* of design software that cannot be easily installed automatically, often not supporting any form of command line silent install, and having copy protection that is tripped by any attempt at a snapshot based installed (I don't like doing these anyway, as they can cause problems, but sometimes you have no choice).

I've also seen some applications that require Administrative rights over the machine to run, despite not doing anything that *should* require admin rights.. In my experiences, this is usually because they need to write to their own installation folder. I had to deal with one DVD authoring system (which was a low end professional system, not consumer) that insisted on storing user projects, and all their media in a Library, the files for which were in the Application install folder.. This had two problems. First, it needed write access to it's own folder, which is a no no.. The second is that users used our computers on a first come first served basis, so we couldn't guarantee that any given user would have the same computer they had last time, so they wouldn't necessarily have access to their projects.

I could resolve the Admin rights one easily enough.. Just reset the permissions on the Library folder to give users full control (modify did not work), but that does not solved the missing projects problem. I probably could have resolved that by moving the folder elsewhere (perhaps to a server) and replacing the library folder in the install with a symbolic link, but that would have introduced other problems, such as file locking and possibly corruption. Thankfully, after a couple of years, Adobe released the first version of Encore, and I was able to persuade the users to switch to that. Encore had it's own problems, but it did work better in our environment.

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: V'Ger

Maybe in a couple of hundred years, it will come back as part of a massive space ship that essentially absorbs everything it encounters?

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: "make their websites dependant on Google's proprietary features"

When I was taught web design, the web was a much simpler place, but we were taught to code and test our sites on as many browsers as possible. We were taught to minimise the use of plugins as much as possible.

I don't design websites much in my day to day life, but when I do, I still test those sites on as many browsers, and as many platforms as I can. The experience for the user should be the same whatever browser or platform they are using. Practical considerations such as screen size aside..

Network Rail steps back from geofencing over safety fears

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: because...

It also may not be that reliable in areas with lots of skyscrapers..

The S in IoT stands for security. You'll never secure all the Things

Stuart Castle Silver badge

There is an old saying, the more they complicate the plumbing, the easier it is to block up the drains.

I'm all for giving internet access, where it is both justified and required.

But, too many devices have (or require) it.

Take, for instance, doorbells..There is no reason that even "smart" doorbells require internet access. There is no reason your ring doorbell couldn't store it's video on a local server. Perhaps offering remote access via the cloud *as an option*.

Or kitchen appliances. There is no need for app controlled kitchen appliances. I like things like Smart lights and heating etc. But it is handy if you can turn your heating on so it's warm when you get home. The same with lighting. Any kitchen appliances, at some point while using them, you will need to physically interact with them, even if it's just to load or unload the appliance.

All devices that connect to the internet can potentially be a security problem. It's one thing if your devices are made by a large company with a good record of supporting their products a for a long time, but how many IoT devices are being built by a cheap, noname manufacturer who is going to stop supporting the device with updates pretty much before it leaves the factory? That said, even the large, known manufacturers have been known to stop support quickly.

Any out of date device is a security problem.

To mitigate the effects of this, I'd like to see, where feasible to do so, an option on every smart device that enables you to use it on a local network with NO internet access. Your CCTV system and any "smart" doorbells can store video on a local server. Your smart TV can stream video from a local server.

Yes, that would be difficult for your average joe to manage from technical point of view, but, TBH, it's not beyond the abilities of the big tech manufacturers to develop servers that can do this in a standard way and are easy to set up and use. They just aren't willing.

British Library pushes the cloud button, says legacy IT estate cause of hefty rebuild

Stuart Castle Silver badge

The cloud may enable them to simplify their systems, which can help security. Guess what? So does investing in new on prem systems. The Cloud isn't inherently more secure than on prem (on the contrary, it may be less secure). What enables you to secure it is the systems analysis you should do when moving to any new system, on prem or cloud.

Windows 10 failing to patch properly? You are most definitely not alone

Stuart Castle Silver badge

FFS. Another Windows Update that is failing? I'm thinking Microsoft need to look at their testing process.

Microsoft drags Windows Subsystem for Android into the trash

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: There goes......

I've not really used WSA. but my motherboard came with a free version of Bluestacks android emulator..

I did muck around with this for a while, but I found that the few games I wanted (I'm not really a mobile gamer) were generally already available on Windows. I tried a few apps, but, TBH, I found these painful to use. Mobile apps should stay on touch screen devices..

Supermium drags Google Chrome back in time to Windows XP, Vista, and 7

Stuart Castle Silver badge

We have that problem at work. We have a couple of Windows 7 machines. Thankfully, they do not need internet access, so they have been physically disconnected. The offices the PCs are in do not need any data access, so we have just disconnected the network sockets at the patch panel end.

The PCs themselves are connected to (and controlling) large, expensive (> £100k to replace) scanning machines This large machinery is controlled by software that requires Windows 7. The manufacturer does have a Windows 10 compatible version we can download, but this does not support the model of the machines we have, so we'd need to replace them. Apart from the out of date software, the machines are still fine.

The fact the PCs are connected to these large scanners does a good job of discouraging people from moving them to a room with an active network port. That, and the fact that that department has a good supply of PCs that are up to date, and are allowed on the internet, so if any staff need internet access, there is probably a machine free.

Health system network turned out to be a house of cards – Cisco cards, that is

Stuart Castle Silver badge

This is sort of related..

A few years ago, when I first started learning Mac administration, I was given an old Mac Pro and a copy of OSX Server to put on it. I had a lab full of Macs to manage, and so I installed a few admin tools on this Mac, using them to administer the lab Macs. They authenticated agains Active Directory, so I didn't have to worry about access control.

Part of my job was re-imaging the machines at least once a year (or if needed due to corruption/drive failure etc), and I'd set up a fairly reliable system that used the now sadly departed freeware "Deploystudio" to deploy the base OS, and Munki to deploy the application (Munki provides a sort of internal app store, but can be set to install software automatically).

This system was pretty much automatic, but did require that we run round with boot usbs, and click a few buttons to start the deployment.

So, looking for a way to simplify this, and having read about netbooting (for the Windows heads, Netbooting is essential PXE), I clicked the option to turn it on, disabling DHCP in the process (we had an existing DHCP server on the network, I didn't want to put a second on the network and risk serious network issues..

Half an hour later, I got a visit from a friend. Our Networks team had noted that there was network disruptiion, and noticed a new machine that appeared to be trying to be a DHCP server. They gave him the IP and told him to remove it.

I showed him the setup, but while he agreed that it the machine did not look like it was set up to serve IP addresses, he had to remove it from the network until we'd removed any trace of the DHCP server.

The sad thing is, had I been given a little more time, and access to our IP database, I could have found a solution that would have not involved macOS setting up it's own DHCP server, and would have allowed us to use Microsoft's Deployment system for windows, and Netboot for the Macs.

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Heading off after completion of a task

The problem is a lot of systems seem to have some sort of technician detector. As soon as the tech leaves, the system fails.. I've had that many a time. Even waiting behind for an hour or two doesn't seem to help always.

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

Stuart Castle Silver badge

This is what has gone wrong with capitalism. While I don't want to defend lawyers, they *are* going for a percentage of the case, which is apparently what they would be normally paid. The problem is that Elon was paid a ridiculously high amount in the first place.

What did he do that has earned that kind of bonus? Bear in mind that it's likely that Tesla has not made that much in profit since it was created.

I'm all for bonuses.. I think they do encourage innovation, which can increase profits. If they are sensible. If they are too high, you run the risk of starving the company of much needed finance that can be used to improve the company resources, and hopefully, profit. $55.8 bn is a *lot* of finance..

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Posted this a couple of months ago, but it fits here as well

When I was a student, I needed a part time job to earn some cash. I got a job as a shelf stacker in my local Sainsburys.

It was a crap job anyway, paid crap wages, but it was work.

We got the stock in what they called "outers". A "outer" was a cardboard tray, usually with 24 cans or bottles of whatever the product was. wrapped in plastic.. We had to load 40 outers every half an hour to reach target. If I didn't work in an old store, with shelves half the size of the modern ones, this would not be a particular problem. As it was, for most products, we had to remove the packaging, and put the product on the shelf directly, arranging them some the labels were at the front. We also had to tidy up existing products. In an apparent effort to minimise time wasting, we were not allowed to talk, unless it was work related, or we were on a break. Even though I was in my mid 20s, I used to go home aching, barely able to move and needing a shower at the end of every shift.

We only hit the target on one occasion I am aware of.

One day, one of my colleagues actually did hit the target, and he went to the boss, expecting at least a "Well done". What he got was "Why are you telling me this? You could be stacking shelves and working on your next 40 outers.

Then, Blockbuster opened up a store near me. I applied for the job, and got it. While the job itself wasn't great, I enjoyed working there. I had a good team.

Anyhow, the minute I heard I got the Blockbuster job, I walked straight in to Sainsbury's, found my manager, walked him to the busiest part of the store, told him he could stick the shelf stacking job up his arse, and walked out.

Thankfully, for the current staff, that store has long since been refitted, and has full size shelfs now.

It's crazy but it's true: Apple rejected Bing for wrong answers about Annie Lennox

Stuart Castle Silver badge

So, let me get this straight. Apple refused to use Bing in 2015 because it was shit. They met up with Microsoft in 2018, and hadn't really changed anything, but came to Apple with a list of stuff they were planning to do? Apple walked away because Bing is still shit.

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

Stuart Castle Silver badge

I'm not sure we ever will get full self driving. There is too much processing required for it to happen in car, and I'm not sure our various mobile networks will take the strain of hundreds of thousands of cars transferring potentially an awful lot of data per second. QoS won't help much as most of the data will be urgent, so have a high QoS priority..

Part of me would like to see it. I quite like the idea getting in my car, pushing a few buttons, then sitting there for a couple of hours as I am driven somewhere. But, I can also see it would be unsafe. For a few reasons:

1) Computers (even AIs) tend to work better when all the variables are predictable. IE, not really variables. People are not generally predictable. How is the AI driving your car going to cope when some person thinks it's funny to dash out into the road in front of your car?

2) Software, even AI based, is prone to bugs. Whether in the code itself, or in the training material given to the AI. What if a bug causes the AI to decide that the road on the other side of the crash barrier is where it wants to be?

3) Unknown situations. How does the AI deal with the unknown? I don't have a lot of experience with AIs, but from what I've seen, they tend to perform better in situations where there is a lot of data to back them up. One example I saw of an AI failing was in an article I read about the Law said that while one of the AI's (ChaptGPT I think) was good at passing the bar exams (because it had previous exams to go by), it did not do well when fielding general law queries, because it was dealing with situations not really covered by it's training data.

Microsoft's February Windows 11 security update unravels at 96% for some users

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Here's radical idea.. How about Microsoft tell us what didn't go as planned? Windows Update really doesn't handle errors well from a user point of view..

I had an error on a couple of Windows VMs. Windws gave an error code and a generic install failed error. Windows Update Troubleshooter kept on telling me it had detected and fixed the problem, but did nothing.

When I googled the error code, I did get a well written blog post on the Microsoft website explaining that the error was likely to be that my recovery partition was too small, and giving a script I could run to re-create it at the correct size..

Note: With Window being a Microsoft Product, for the hell of it, I used Bing to search for the error. I didn't expect a good result, and I didn't get one. The error didn't really bother me, but if, instead of some random error code, I'd been told my Recovery partition was too small, I'd probably have sorted it more quickly.

Starting over: Rebooting the OS stack for fun and profit

Stuart Castle Silver badge

I think, thanks largely to a lot of users switching to devices rather than computers. While even mobile devices do have seperate RAM and storage, from a user point of view, the lines between the two are bllurred, and the devices themselves encourage you to switch between apps, rather than start and stop them. At work, I use a Mac, PC and my iPhone. I could tell you how much RAM my Mac and PC have, but would have to look up the RAM on my phone.

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

Stuart Castle Silver badge

He has a point, but it’s a bit rich when he owns a platform that earns it’s money by selling user data.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Where I used to work, before we got sensible and started enforcing logical names for our PCs, I had an already elderly 486 based PC. It was woefully underpowered for doing anything remotely useful on NT4 (in fact it's specs were the listed minimum for NT4) , so was painful to use and frequently complained it was running out of something, whether that something was disk space or RAM.

But, I loved that PC. I think it's because it was the one I learned NT on. I think the fact it failed so much, and I had to help it through the most basic things, humanised it for me. I felt as though I was nursing the thing through troubles. The boss was very relaxed on naming at the time (we only had a few PCs to manage, so had no real need for a coherent naming scheme). He called his machine "Chelsea", and I called mine "Marvin", after the paranoid android from HHTTG. Some others that spring to mind were Atlas and Zeus, Lister, Mickey (after the mouse), and Snow White, which was the main PC in a department where they named the other ones after the various dwarves.

At that time, we did allow the users to chose their own name, but if they didn't, we would name the machine with their surname, then their initial.

Where I work now, we just name them after the asset tag stuck to them. Much more logical, and functional, but not nearly as interesting.

Employees saved Musk from himself over Twitter Files

Stuart Castle Silver badge

In theory, I think Elon was probably trying to do what he thought was right. After all, he proudly touts free speech*. The best way to at least appear to support that concept is stop blocking anything.

The problem is that some of the info Twitter held is private, and needs to remain so. For legal reasons, and in some cases, safety. We don't (and can't) have totally free speech. We have free speech with restrictions. That applies in the UK, and it applies in the US as well (try posting something classified in America, and see how far the 1st amendment gets you).

*I know he touts it, but his own actions suggest he doesn't really believe in it because although he says he will allow people to post even if he disagrees with them (a laudable aim and something I try and do when in a moderating role), a surprising number of people he doesn't agree with have been banned from X.

Microsoft Publisher books its retirement party for 2026

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: and users can expect the same experience as today

The problem there is if a vulnerability is discovered. If Microsoft are still supplying it, there will be an expectation they will update it, even if they put a notice on the download that says it is not being updated.

Any while Windows security has improved massively since the early 2000s, there *is* still the possibility that an application, running with the current user rights, contains a vulnerable component that could enable something else on that machine to do serious damage.

It's easier to just discontinue the product. Personally, I don't use it, but I do think if there is nothing proprietary in it, they should open source it. But I understand this also implies they will be offering a level of support they are unwilling to do.

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Went there for a "training day"* a couple of years back. It was a good day. We had a decent lunch in what was the revolving restaurant. Sadly, it wasn't revolving, although the organiser assured us the mechanism still worked, it just was not switched on. I got some amazing photos of the surrounding area. The lifts were originally designed to carry tall equipment to the top of the tower, so, unusually, were nearly 15 feet tall, and bloody fast.

*They called it a training day. While we did get some instruction in how to introduce Macs and iPads to enterprises, it was basically intended to sell us services and products offered by BT. In this case, BT were trying to both sell us extra iPads, and a service whereby they would manage our existing fleet of Macs and any iDevices we had..

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Nothing to do with IT, this...

When I was a student, I needed a job. I got a job as a shelf stacker for my local Sainsburys while I looked for something more interesting.

I used to work Friday and Saturday nights from 10pm to about 3am.

The money was fairly crap, and the job was awful. The stock was arranged into cardboard pallets, and we had to put out 40 pallets an hour. Difficult to do at the best of times, but made even worse by the fact that our store had shelves half the size of the standard Sainsbury's ones at the time, so every pallet needed to be repacked to fit. I used to go home drenched in sweat and aching, despite being in my 20s.

In the month or so I worked there, one of my colleagues hit the target once. He went to the manager, who just looked at him and asked "Why are you telling me this?",adding "Instead of telling me, you should be putting out more pallets".

At the end of the month, Blockbuster opened up a shop about a mile away. They advertised for staff. Being a film buff, I applied for the job and got it. The job still involved a fair amount of physical work, but I was paid slightly more (still a crap wage) and worked with people (including management) who I liked.

One of the greatest pleasures I've had is when I told my manager at Sainsburys. I didn't just pull him aside and tell him (as I would have normally). I waited until the shop was really busy, took him in to the middle of the area where people used to queue at the checkouts, and in full view of dozens of people, told him to go fuck himself and stick his job up his arse, then walked out during the stunned silence that followed.

TBH, I'm surprised I wasn't banned.

Oxide reimagines private cloud as... a 2,500-pound blade server?

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Ooh, I'm the first to ask if it runs Crysis..

Actually, I read the problem with Crysis is that while it's quite efficient on single core systems, there is a bug that causes it to perform badly on multi core systems. This is he original version. I believe the remake fixes that bug.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

Stuart Castle Silver badge

The fact the “intelligence” is artificial is , imo, irrelevant. It was still employed by the Airline, and still gave the wrong advice.

As such, the airline is liable. If the AI Is responsible, they need to take it up with their suppliers.

Drowning in code: The ever-growing problem of ever-growing codebases

Stuart Castle Silver badge

I agree about the bloated software. Part of me would love to see what the demo coders of the late 80s/early 90s would make with a state of the art gaming rig. That said, I think the main reason they got such amazing results with the 8 and 16 bit computes was that they knew the hardware inside out, and didn't have to fight the OS for control of resources. That meant they could force the hardware to do things it wasn't designed to. They still may know the hardware inside and out, but would an effiect designed (say) for an MSI RTX 2080 work on a 2070? 3090? 4090? Would it work on one of those cards designed and manufactured by (say) Asus? What about a Radeon? Probably not, if the effect relies on access to a specific design fault in the MSI 2080. That is assuming the OS would allow them to hit the hardware directly.

I would like to see software better optimised though. it's not likely to happen though..

I think there are a few reasons it is bloated though. One is code re-use. It's often more efficient, therefore cheaper, to re-use code, perhaps in external libraries and runtimes. The problem with that is that is they aren't coded for a specific pupose, so will likely include a lot of redundant code. Unless you have source code access, it will be almost impossible for you to remove the code you don't need. Even if you do, you may not bother to remove any code, because you'd need to spend extra time doing this, and, depending on how much work it is, you might have been better just writing your own code..

In every case, the developer is likely to go for the cheapest option, which, in most cases, is leave the bloat and hope your application is still quick enough to be usuable.

I think there is another good reason that current improvements don't appear to add as much speed. They don't. If you go from 250MHz to 500, your speed is doubling. If you go from 4GHz to 5GHz, your speed is going up by 4 times the jump from 250 to 500MHz, but it is not doubling. Not that clock speed is a reliably indicator of processing speed anyway. My Ryzen 5 CPU is about the same speed as the last P4 I had in terms of raw clock speed, but is an order of magnitude faster in terms of actual work it can do in a given time..

Europe's largest caravan club admits wide array of personal data potentially accessed

Stuart Castle Silver badge

The problem is, even if you have the best security systems on earth, there can still be flaws in the system that expose your data to a skilful hacker (or even a trojan written by a skilful hacker). Even if there aren't, all they need is an operator with a weak password or that falls for a phishing attempt. If that operator is an admin, then that is better for them.

The problem is that ideally, all companies handling any kind of data they don't want in the open, should have secure and up to date tech (this includes all software and devices that the data might be stored on, accessed by or travel through) that is thoroughly locked down, and regularly security tested. All staff that have any access to the data should receive proper training on keeping that data securie, including anti phishing training, and should be regularly (and anonymously) tested.

I should note that even the most skeptical, security minded people *can* be fooled into falling for scams.

That's the ideal world, from a security point of view. We work in the real world. What is ideal is often costly and inconvenient, so tends to get forgotten.

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

Stuart Castle Silver badge

I've got a Sandisk Extreme Pro 512 gig USB. I might have the spec wrong, because I lent it to a family member a year ago, and haven't got the damn thing back. It is bloody fast, unlike a lot of cheaper USB sticks I've used. It's the third one I've had though. The first one failed just out of warranty, so I bought another. That failed, but was in warranty.

But, I generally use external SSDs, as they do tend to be faster, and I have to have a bag for my work laptop anyway, so don't really have a requirement for pocket size storage. I use the Samsung T range of SSDS. A couple of T5s and a T7.

The T5s are good, but I bought the T7 because it was faster, had 2TB of storage and could optionally be encrypted, with a finger print reader for access control. I also have an iodd st400, which is a 2.5inch drive case that can take an SSD or HDD, but offers the advantage that it can emulate a USB CD/DVD/Blu Ray drive with ISOs, multiple hard drives (using VHDs) and apparently a USB floppy (using IMA files). The emulation happens on the device, so it appears as those devices to the PC (including in the firmware).

Anyhow, the T7 offered incredibly fast access in the gigs per second range on a USB C gen 3.2 connection, and finger print security.

One day, I was backing my T7 up, so I could reformat it. I put my hand near it, and could feel heat radiating from it, so I touched it, and burned the palm of my hand. There were no smart warnings. I unplugged the drive, and let it cool down. It didn't start up I sent it back to Samsung, who did replace it.

I got a new T7 back, but it's noticably slower than the old one. It still averages hundreds of meg per second, but not gigs..

Dell said to be preparing broad Return To Office order this Monday

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Tracking

I've no doubt Dell does have staff who tell on other staff like that. I've seen it in other companies, and they aren't always paid to do so.

I do suspect, however, the Dell tracks whether each user is logging on from a Dell office or not though. Even through systems like Microsoft Office 365, they probably have access to IP logs.

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: "if they want to keep their tax breaks"

The free market isn't necessarily the best thing for society.

The fact is that some people who physically go to work will spend money in the area where they work. This helps ensure jobs in that area (maybe just a little).. The people in those jobs will have money to spend in their own local areas, which helps other businesses and so on.

This is related to why I believe any tax breaks the government gives should be given to the poor, not the wealthy. Because the poor won't just shove whatever they get back into off shore accounts. They are more likely to spend it in local businesses, and therefore improve the economy..

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Tracking

In my experience, enforcement of this sort of policy, even if the policy is company wide, tends to vary from department to department.

I work in a large company, where the support is divided in to teams. One of the teams, the manager insists on no talking in the office unless it is discussing company problems, and preferably with a user. Other teams are a little more relaxed, in that we can have a bit of a laugh. Note that the company does not have a policy in place forbidding technicians from talking about things apart from work.

The rise and fall of the standard user interface

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Interesting article.

I find it weird that both Apple and Microsoft spent mllions on research to develop their own common UI guidelines, then largely ignore them.

Case in point: The Windows 95 UI looks properly designed. It's simple, and generally efficient. The Windows UI carried on with pretty much the same layout until Windows 8. Then, as Windows 95 approached it's 17th Birthday, Microsoft decided to abandon years of tweaking, and threw up (literally, IMO) the Windows 8 UI. While I like Windows 11 a lot more than I did 8, the UI still isn't as good as it was. I know I can install Classic Start Menu, but I shouldn't have to install what is essentially a hack that might stop working because Microsoft have decided to change whatever CSM hooks into to change the start menu.

Also, while I am a Mac fan, Apple don't get off scott free here. They are better than Microsoft in that they don't make massive UI changes, but they have made some changes I don't like, particularly to System Preferences.. I used to be able to navigate System prferences relatively easy. On the main window, look down the window until you see the preference pane you want, click it, and change any options you want.. Most preferences are available in 2 or 3 clicks.

Now, you either have to use the search (which, admittedly, has always been an option), or you have to know which category they've put stuff in. Your account details. Are they under Users or iCloud (for instance), and the staggering array of privacy and security permissions you now have to grant, sometimes having to quit the app so they take effect.

In both cases, applications rarely follow the design guidlines written by the OS manufacturer, although Apple are better at this than Microsoft. I'm a long term PC user (since the 80s), an I don't think I've seen any MS application that follows the official Windows Interface guidelines since at least 2000.. Office certainly doesn't.

Linux doesn't really have any standard interface, and while the various Distro makers may have their own UIs and guidelines, the fact the user can just replace the UI negates the whole idea of UI guidliness..

As a user, I think it's important that applications on a given platform have a consistant OS.

GCHQ's NCSC warns of 'realistic possibility' AI will help state-backed malware evade detection

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Not so sure it's a "realistic possibility", more a realistic probability. Even if the tech isn't there now to do this, it will be at some point.

What Microsoft's latest email breach says about this IT security heavyweight

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Wonderful............................

They mention that an account was used to access a test tenant. This suggests the system was hosted on the cloud. This makes it difficult to totally isolate the system from the Internet, but they should have put things like IP restrictions, and account lockouts on the system. At least MFA..

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: "their substantial egos"

True, I did realise it was more the media coverage, but the effect was the same.

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Not in the original case, and certainly not with the rubber keyboard. But given a decent case, and a better keyboard, it could have. Of course, a better case and keyboard would have raised the price, but Amstrad managed to build the PC1512 and 1640 for a lot less than the IBM cost, so there is likely no reason Sinclair could not have done it.. Cases and keyboards can be changed. The question is, whether it is feasible to do so.

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: "their substantial egos"

Re: " their ego crashes the company (you don't hear about those in the news)."

I think Gerald Ratner counts here.. Another I can think of (although this wasn't in the mainstream news) is Adam Osborne, who developed the Osborne 1. For those who don't know, this was the first "portable" (put in quotes as the thing was the size of a large sewing machine, required a mains supply and weighed 11 kilos, so more luggable). While the sales were already dropping thanks to competition, The sales of the 1 were not helped by the fact that 2 years after the launch, he started talking about how their next computer, the "Executive" was so much better.

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Excellent article. It's amazing to think that the Spectrum could have been a business machine, but thinking about it, it wasn't that much less powerful than the first generation IBM PCs, but it was about a 20th of the price.

Of course, those IBM PCs were so well built that I always thought if you threw one at a brick wall, the wall would come off worse, and they had the advantage that at the time there was a perception that no one was fired for buying from IBM. I think if Sinclair had developed a standard floppy drive (I know other companies did have floppies for the Spectrum, but they had all sorts of formats), and possibly even a hard drive, with a reasonable DOS, the Spectrum could have been a contender business wise. The problem is, both would have cost too much.

I love both my Speccy 48K and my ZX81 (with the wobbly RAM pack and ZX Printer), but being honest, Sinclair didn't have a great rep for reliability.

Atari 400 makes a comeback in miniature form

Stuart Castle Silver badge

I remember, as a kid, playing with these in a local store. Never had one (or any Atari hardware apart from a trackball).

As my parents owned a shop, they had access to a cash and carry called "Makro". For those who don't know, Makro is a trade only cash and carry, and (in the 80s at least), each branch usually consisted of the cash and carry (which sold food, confectionary and drinks in wholesale packaging) and a department store (which sold normal department store things, but was only open to members)

My local Makro had probably the best AV department I'd ever seen. They had all the then new technologies (VCRS, Picture In Picture, NICAM etc) and a wide range.

The AV department also included a computer shop selling probably the widest range of platforms I've seen. You could buy everything from the Sinclairs to the Osborne 1, including the Acorn machines, Commodore machines, Atari machines, Aquarius, TI99/4A and various other ranges. They also had one of each machine set up that you could play with, and they had consoles from all the major suppliers as well, including Atari, Coleco and Mattel.

As a young geek, I could spent hours in that department, and could probably have bankrupted the family if given free rein to buy what I wanted..

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

Stuart Castle Silver badge

One day, I got a call from a user. He was rather insulted that one of our websites had called him "Thickyhead" and told him to "Get Back". I asked what site was giving the message , and what he was doing to trigger the message.

I can't remember what he was doing, but the site was one we'd created to enable users to have their own MySQL databases, without accessing the server directly. For security, this server had IP restrictions.

I knew the tech who designed the site, and asked him about it. He said that was a joke error message, and should not have appeared. About 7 different things needed to have happened before the site would display that. I never found out what, but the user had somehow managed to trigger all 7.

Note: The phrase was actually an in-joke within our team. I forget the reason,

He replaced the error message with one that actually did explain the problem,

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Don't forget NPfIT

The funny thing is, when i studied systems analysis, one of the things they reminded us of constantly was the need to lock down the spec of the system early. To prevent feature creep, and the inevitable costs it generates.

I don't know whether the government employs it's own systems analysts (even contractors if not full time), or relies on the provider to provide systems analysis. Because, of course, if the contractor installing the system is the one providing the systems analysts, it's in their interest to alllow changes to the system.

Top LLMs struggle to make accurate legal arguments

Stuart Castle Silver badge

I was listening to a lawyer talk about the AI passing a bar exam. He said the problem was that while it is hard to pass a bar exam, apparently, if you have a large enough selection of previous exams, you find they don't change much. So, a reasonably good AI, given access to a decent pool of previous exams could easily pass the current exam, because all the questions in it have probably been answered in one or more old exams.

Law in practice is different. Cases may have similarities to other cases, but they won't be precisely the same, and while I am no lawyer, in my Computer Science degree, we did a module on Contracts law. I've read through the notes of enough cases to know that even if two cases appear to be the same on the surface, they may not be when you dig under the surface.

It's not all watching transparent TV from a voice-commanded bidet. CES has work stuff too

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Fidget Spinner charged keyboard?!?

I had a logitech K750 for years. Eventually, the battery degraded and I went back to wired keyboards. Not that I didn't like the K750. I loved it. I just never used the keyboard further than one metre away from my PC, so there was no point spending the extra on a wireless keyboard.

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

Stuart Castle Silver badge

I agree that the likely cost of manufacturing printers probably hasn't changed much. How can it? The mechanics of computer printing haven't really changed since the 80s. Sure, the electronics have got cheaper, but how much do they contribute to the cost of the printer? I bet it's a lot less than the mechanical parts that move the paper and printhead.

I'd like to see printer costs raised a little, and the ink cartridge cost to go down. I don't think it will happen though.

While I don't know the actual costs, say HP released an Inkjet printer that cose £250 to make. Add in a reasonable profit for them, and costs and profits for any wholesalers/retailers involved in the sale. So the consumer pays £350.

HP then charges £5 for ink. This likely what it costs, plus a generous profit margin. This, to me, is what they should do.

Instead, they sell that printer that cost £250 to make for £50, and charge £20 for each cartridge. Fair enough if they charged that £20 for the first (say) 8 cartridges (or enough to pay off the loss they made on the printer) then charged £5, but they don't, so once you've paid off the loss, they are making profits on each cartridges of over 300%.. Cha Ching. It aint going to change unless one (or more) governments step in and make it change.

Open source's new mission: To boldly go where no software has gone before

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Exploitation

Sadly, while the principles of Open Source are good (I use it myself, and even contribute to some projects where I can, even if that contribution is cash to the project), there are those who will take advantage. I suspect plenty of large companies have proudly boasted they are open source advocates and actively contribute to their projects. Then you analyse their contribution and despite using the project extensively in their systems, they've changed one single thing in one source file.

I think this can backfire though. I remember the OpenSSL fiasco a few years ago. IIRC, OpenSSL was in use on a lot of corporate webstores, sites, and internal system, but was hacked because maybe 2 people were updating it. Open Source is good, but if developers feel they aren't getting much back for their effort, they may walk away.

Fujitsu wins flood contract extension despite starring in TV drama about its failures

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Re: Historical effects.

The problem is that a lot of our government departmental IT, while it has nice looking user interfaces, uses sometimes quite elderly mainframes on the back end. Replacing these would involve significant cost, and cause significant disruption, so they tend to repair them when they fail, and upgrade them slightly to connect to more modern systems. This may involve purchasing new machines or parts for existing machines.

The problem is, pretty much the only mainframe manufacturer left is Fujitsu. So, they get the contract more or less by default, because the various government departments probably don't have the money or the resources to rip out and replace their core IT infrastructure. Even if they do, and possibly migrate their mainframes to the cloud, they may still need Fujitsu to help get the data and software off the old machines.

Personally, I think whoever allowed the mainframe industry to effectively become a monopoly was an idiot, and Fujitsu should have been stopped from buying up pretty much all the competition.