Posts by Norm DePlume

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Re: Proper lash up

Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK is named for the castle built in 1080.

Bleeping Computer sued by Enigma Software over moderator's forum post

Re: One of two outcomes...

Even if the above is true, case (2) is worth doing anyway, to discourage these ways of doing business.

Thankfully, due to the publicity garnered and the promise to donate excess funds, (1) is unlikely to happen.

Health and Safety to prosecute over squashed Harrison Ford

I have a bad feeling about this...

Ofcom spent £10m in past 2 years desperately lobbing away sueballs

But ...

We've seen with the rail regulators that the government can get it badly wrong, so some legal redress is necessary. It's just a pity that it then involves large sums of money disappearing off to lawyers.

Amazon's Lumberyard invaded by zombies

So will the machines be our overlords before or after The Zombie Apocalypse? One wonders what they will make of each other.

Fired Norse Corp CEO blames the media

Re: Sales weasels.

It says something that the one time I know of where a sales weasel lost their job for promises that couldn't be delivered, I didn't believe it to be true until we got the e-mail.

It turned out he'd made the mistake of lying to the company as well as the client. "Oh yes, I've got *loads* of customers if we just develop it like this". After a lot of development work, we discovered, guess what, no customers.

El Reg nips down to the Hewlett You Inn?

Last photo

Has someone forgotten to do some red-eye reduction or does Clare Loxley really have eyes that colour?

NSA’s top hacking boss explains how to protect your network from his attack squads

Is he making his own job harder...

... or does he know that at the end of the day much of this stuff comes down to the time and money an organisation is prepared to devote to IT security, which is not going to change?

Still, I'd rather have him out there saying this stuff.

BT puts new head on 10-year-old network arm Openreach

I always suspected BT was run by a bunch of merchant bankers.

CMA to review BT whinge over superfast broadband price setting

Balance

So, in the modern era, is it the case that you know a decision is fairly balanced if both opposing sides appeal it?

Half of UK financial institutions vulnerable to well-known crypto flaws

Re: And The Banks Don't Care

I'm not sure whether they care or not. Quite possibly not. However, this may be an instance of the wishful type of thinking that goes:-

Anyone doing that should be fully competent. Our people are doing that. Therefore our people are fully competent.

Ruskie rats selling Choose-Your-Own-Adventure love scams

Black list for white hats

So if you annoy the vermin, they make sure you're not pestered again in future? Win-win!

Big Brother is born. And we find out 15 years too late to stop him

Wow. I assumed the black helicopters would have got Duncan Campbell by now (he's been embarrassing the more sensitive branches of government for decades). Glad to see they haven't.

Donald Trump wants Bill Gates to 'close the Internet', Jeff Bezos to pay tax

Next up: those people who wrote the constitution

Foolish, foolish people.

Weather finally cooperates with NASA, ISS resupply launch successful

It's fascinating the things that need addressing. Thinking about this and other, less pratical, mitigation strategies has made me realise for the first time that, in a centrifuge hotter air must 'gravitate' (for want of a better term) towards the centre.

Most businesses collecting data they never use, survey finds

I wonder, on a purely academic level, how much of the data that intelligence agencies collect is actually used.

Booming Ballmer bellows 'bulls**t' over Microsoft's cloud revenue run rate

Last week Andrew Orlowski published something I agree with and now Steve Ballmer is talking sense. Have I connected to an alternate reality?

Is Kazakhstan about to man-in-the-middle diddle all of its internet traffic with dodgy root certs?

And, of course, I'm sure Kazakhstan has the technical resources to prevent attacks on its own systems compromising those certs and leading to anyone being able to decode anything sent in the country.

'Hacked by China? Hack them back!' rages US Congress report

Kids in a playground

"He hit me first."

"No, he hit me."

Still, I'm sure the diplomats will appreciate sorting it out when the proverbial hits the fan and some large corp is caught hacking something sensitive in China.

Some like it hot ... very hot: How to use heat to your advantage in your data center

Bowmore have been heating the next door swimming pool with the waste heat from the distillery for years. The IT connection? Apparently it's computer controlled.

Why the 'Dancing Baby' copyright case is just hi-tech victim shaming

Re: What about separation?

If you distinguish between the rights of corporations and the rights of individuals, sooner or later the corporations will lobby for, and get, more rights than the individuals.

Let's keep them the same, please.

Thousands cut off from email after EE bungles domain renewal

Re: all ee domains seem to be 1 yr renewals

> But on the other hand this is EE we are talking about. You would have thought they would have

> let all their domains expire every year to see which ones people complain about.

There. FTFY.

BOFH: Power corrupts, uninterrupted power corrupts absolutely

Only me

Call me a pedant (I know you want to), but how do you get a heater with low efficiency? Everything ends up as heat eventually, even matter.

Rosetta probe spots Comet 67P being buzzed by boulder

So, in Vulture Central Units, that's between 7 linguine and 9 double-decker buses? Or somewhere between the length of a wolf and an Olympic swimming pool. Good to know they can narrow it down so much.

Skills crisis? Not for long: More and more UK kids gain STEM quals

Great news

However, I do wonder how much of it is actually due to the fact these children have spent much of their lives in a recession and would like to be employable at the end of their education.

Facebook casts a hex with self-referential IPv6

Sounds like a challenge

Admittedly a bit difficult to cram into IPv6 addresses:-

bedded 10c0 c1ass1e55 d011faced babe

0ff10aded 5eed f100d

ALIEN SLIME SHOCKER: Approaching comet probably NOT inhabited, say boffins

Alien vs

So how will those future Aliens get along with our machine overlords?

BBC veterans require skilled hands to massage their innards

Fixing beebs

I once did some voluntary work at a special school fixing beebs. I cannibalised 15 non-functional machines to get 14 working. If that figure sounds high, it's because mostly the faults were that some ingenious s*d had got inside many of them and reversed connectors to the board. Tough old things worked fine when put back the right way.

Sadly I live too far away to help this time.

Slippery Silk Road spook will plead guilty to duping dealers

I am suprised, nay, astounded that anyone in the intelligence community could have behaved unethically.

Ah ... wait ...

45% of UK data centres have suffered a natural disaster. Really?

Re: Earth tremors...

It's alright if the bodies are discovered pour encourager les autres. They just have to make sure no one can pin the blame on them,

It must be Friday lunchtime, look, a beer.

Apple LIGHTSABERS to feature in The Force Awakens

Re: Retrogression of the "Force".

> Sadly, as this same courtesy wasn't extended to their own citizens (or allies) this meant that

> after a decade our former enemies had a better tech base than the allies who won the war.

This is an unfortunate myth: in fact Britain was the largest recipient of funds under The Marshall Plan. We just blew it all on post-imperial dreams instead of investing it in useful infrastructure.

> Still, better than what happened after WW1...

I find not disagreement with that sentiment, however.

TalkTalk and Three want to make it easier to switch mobe networks

PAYG wins

Strangely they don't put much effort in if you want a PAC when you're on PAYG. Orange just sent it me, no hassle. Now I'm with 3 and enjoying the appalling notoriety EE seem to be getting themselves these days.

A Norsified Linux for Windows and OS X wobblers

A good Freya's Day article.

Bizarrely it's Saturn's day tomorrow.

Researcher details how malware gives AV the slip

The solution

So all I need to do is make my computer look like a virus researcher's machine and viruses will turn benign?

Asteroid's DINO KILLING SPREE just bad luck – boffins

Avian dinosaurs and mammals

Surely these days the interesting question is not "why did dinosaurs die out", but "how did other higher life-forms survive". Warm blood? Small size? Mobility?

Samsung threatens to cut ties with supplier over child labour allegations

Weasel words

"It is unfortunate that the allegation surfaced despite Samsung’s efforts to prevent child labor at its suppliers," Samsung said.

So it's unfortunate that the allegations surfaced, not that they might be true?

Anonymous plans hacktivism against World Cup sponsors

Re: Festival of Money Not Sport

Perhaps we should start calling it 'The Profitable Game'.

French Hacker Legion is West's foremost snoop squad says Robert Gates

Re: UK Eyes Alpha - or not

I think the difference is that we don't currently have a highly visible official telling embarrassingly obvious fibs about it.

KILLER SPONGES menacing California coastline

Considering how long crustaceans and sponges have been around, it'd almost be surprising if shrimp-eating sponges originated as late as the Jurassic.

T-Mobile US cuts overage charges, dares rivals to follow suit

EE aren't interested in Orange or T-Mobile customers. They seek only to force everyone onto 4G ('EE'). I suspect their competitors are picking up market share right now.

Say CHEESE: Samsung files patent for transparent camera

Re: Transparent display?

@DougS: being able to maintain eye contact is very useful with young children as they don't know to look at the camera. Instead they'll look at practically any human face (which may, of course, be in completely the wrong direction).

At the moment I hold the camera next to my face and hope that my hand is coordinated enough to keep the camera pointing at the child.

BOFH: Attractive person is attractive. Um, why are your eyes bulging?

Re: Heh. I'm exempt.

Ah! I read an article once about how colour blindness can help when detecting camouflaged animals and might have conveyed an evolutionary advantage when a small proportion of the (male) population were affected. Now I am beginning to see that there may be a whole other reason linked to increased reproductive opportunities.

Give hackers your data, says former RSA man

The power of misinformation

On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog, two cats and a goldfish.

Pay-as-you-GONE: Help! T Mobile's swiped my phone credit – customers

I had a number of lesser issues with Orange after they became part of EE. I think EE may have dropped the ball whilst concentrating on integrating the two companies.

Undeterred by Snapchat's snafus, upstart Confide punts self-destruct selfies

I wonder whether this comes pre-compromised by the NSA or is on their to-do list.

Boffins claim battery BREAKTHROUGH – with rhubarb-like molecule

Bob Godfrey

Anyone else got theme tunes from 70s children's TV shows suddenly going 'round their heads?

Oh you have now.