Posts by Roger Kynaston

The UK's favourite lockdown cheese is Big and Red but doesn't require a stinking great audit after consumption

Je suis Le Grand Fromage

CIO/Head of IT etc.

For choice, a good slice of manchego pour moi.

Spending watchdog doubts UK is capable of managing Brexit and coronavirus info campaigns at the same time

Re: And?

I think you overestimate the plummy accented Trumpy junior's intelligence. Whenever he is confronted with proper questions he flounders and falls back on petulance and sulks.

A few latin phrases don't a genius make. I think that the same goes for his evil side kick who is not a svengali genius either but a lazy ideologue who pads out a paucity of ideas with 20000 bullshit words instead.

Both of them lack any capacity for true critical thought and to weigh up the evidence before deciding on a course of action.

Watch an oblivious Tesla Model 3 smash into an overturned truck on a highway 'while under Autopilot'

what is really scary

The IMO is rushing towards enabling autonomous ships at the moment. I went to a talk and the person was getting all excited about how a gopro type camera can be hooked up to 'puter and will have incredible target discrimination. I envision lots of fishing/pleasure boats being mowed down.

Made-up murder claims, threats to kill Twitter, rants about NSA spying – anything but mention 100,000 US virus deaths, right, Mr President?

Re: You supported a system...

>he's one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Did he work for the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation? If so, your wish will come true as they were a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first agains the wall once the revolution came

Source - A copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica that fell through a wormhole in space.

If someone could stop hackers pwning medical systems right now, that would be cool, say Red Cross and friends

Securing/Ask People(scumbags) To Play Nice

it is easy to scoff at what the ICRC and others are trying to achieve here. Others, more conversant with the specifics of both security and medical IT have pointed out that the former is woefully inadeqate in the latter. I am sure that many in the medical world still see IT in general and security in particular as a cost centre to be minimised rather than a core part of the business. After all, good security is a pain as it stops you doing things. We can also observe that many players do not respect the international law that attacking medical facilities is not allowed. No one is immune from this. There are more egregious examples and less so but it happens all the time.

On the other hand, by making it a crime, it at least forces the bad players to try to hide it and gives a chance after the atrocity to take the neer do wells to the Hague. Everyone knows that they shouldn't do it even if they do. It is just that it is acknowledged as a bad thing which may give some people some pause before firing a rocket into a hospital or launching a bot attack on their IT systems. However useless the framework of international law may be, it is still there which is better than it was in the past.

Maybe the state players encouraging the phishing, spearphishing and outright attacks on medical bodies at the moment will, at least once in a while, think twice.

Bionic eyes to be a thing in the next decade? Possibly. Boffins mark sensor-density breakthrough

We have the technology

I wish they would remake the Six Million Dollar Man!

Windows Terminal hits the big 1.0: Fit for production?

late to the party

Others have pointed to xterm.

I remember when my Windows colleagues were getting excited about 64bit Windows. We pointed out that we had been running 64bit Solaris for years. Then along came Linux and back to 32 bit at that point. Mind you the issues with applications getting confused with /lib and /lib64 was a right pain.

Meteorite's tiny secrets reveal Solar System's sodium-rich, alkaline liquid past – a clue to formation of life

Intriguing

Top class boffinry. So have one of these though not a Molson.

IBM to GTS staff: Not volunteering to leave with a redundo cheque? We'll give you a helping hand

Re: my proudest moment

Work is something I do to pay for the boat. I don't mind it and am OK with being a lowly sys admin but I much prefer sailing - especially when I can have rum punch with Martinique rum in it. So, yes, persuading an outsourcing company that I was surplus to requirements was a proud achievement.

<pompous git>

I don't solely measure my self worth by the work I do but how I live my life

</pg>

Penny smart and dollar stupid: IT jobs slashed in US, UK, Europe to cut costs – just when we need staff the most

IT is like HR (should be Personnel though) in some respects

Both are essential to the operation of the organisation - it is the same for both public sector and private - but are not perceived as delivering any value so are always for the chop when any cost cutting is deemed necessary. Once day the manglement will realise this but I suspect the heat death of the universe will come first.

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

It may have already been suggested

There are too many to wade through to verify.

My suggestion is: Winzilla

Surprise surprise! Hostile states are hacking coronavirus vaccine research, warn UK and USA intelligence

spooks

The disconnect between fictional and real ones has always flabbered my gast.

Paris because 007. Or is she Anne Smiley?

Tom Cruise to increase in stature thanks to ISS jaunt? Now that's a mission impossible

orbital velocity

Should the documentary not be called Speed - Cruise Control?

I've got it and am off!

NASA signs deals to put a rocket under Artemis flights until 2029

Artemis?

What are they hunting for?

Also, I know that this is rocket science but weren't the Space Shuttle engines very complicated and hard to maintain?

Academics demand answers from NHS over potential data timebomb ticking inside new UK contact-tracing app

nhsxxx

when will the pron version that collects sexual history come along?

Sometimes one can go a little too far in search of isolation

different sort of bug?

Perhaps it is an engineered bug and is sniffing out all the details people input to then allow nefarious miscreants to empty the victims bank accounts. I seem to remember something like this in The Fifth Element!

</tinfoilhat>

Travel advice for the week ahead is just: STOP

Re: Really?

Playmobil or it didn't happen

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

It didn't affect us

Though we were entertained once.

There was a furniture shop on the other side of the road to our office - back when you had computers under your office. Anyway, one day some of the local ne'er do wells had 'jacked' a car and were being pursued by the local plod. They crossed the main road at speed and parked it in the doors of the furniture shop.

I don't remember if plod picked them up straight away or whether they managed to reach the posh back streets.

My experiences with RS232 were rather mundane and I won't bore the commentariat with them.

Beer because Friday

Web pages a little too style over substance? Behold the Windows 98 CSS file

Re: Ha Ha Ha...

> (even if the OS was about as stable as a deranged US president.

Is that the answer? Is President D'Orange running on an outdated MS operating system. If we just upgrade it to a newer one (linux for my preference but I don't insist) will it suddenly work like a real president?

In case you need more proof the world's gone mad: Behold, Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels

Re: Re Cycle Wheels

many years ago when I was both slimmer and fitter I dabbled in falling out of airplanes for a while. A guy there had just bought the latest in jump suits. This was was tight fitting and made of smooth material except for the ends of the arms and legs. This was supposed to give you more friction at the extremities that made in freefall maneuvers easier to execute.

I didn't have the physics to use bernoulli's equation to show that he was talking bollocks.

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

Anti 5Ger

Am I not right in thinking that the frequencies used by 5G were repurposed from broadcast television until all our TV content was first re-tuned and then pushed on line. So, if he is worried about this stuff cooking his brain, he is several decades too late.

Beer because this wilful nut jobbery drives me to drink.

Also, as others above noted

* or as people outside the UK know him, "Who?"

I still went who despite being a limey

Upstart Americans brandish alligators at the almighty Reg Standards Soviet

time standards

Northern Line minutes are almost infinitely variable if you are a denizen of the big smoke (London to non Brits). Of course no sane person will be putting this to the test at the moment.

First it was toilet paper. Then pasta. Now Broadcom suspects hoarders are behind its surprisingly good-looking Q2 sales

Roll on pocket PC

I look forward to the day when they can get similar levels of storage and such like into a mobile sized device. Then we can attach a proper screen and keyboard when needed and the days of the pocket PC will have arrived.

Will that lead to the discovery of bistromathics though?

US prez Trump's administration reportedly nears new rules banning 'dual-use' tech sales to China

Re: It doesn't matter anyway

I shouldn't rise to this but ...

First caveat IANE (I am not an Epidemiologist) so this is probably all bollocks anyway.

As a right pondian I am cooped up in my house along with some large fraction of the world human (and simian - chimps, bonobos and gorillas) population. This virus had it's origins in a province of China. Yes, the Chinese government made some serious errors in the early stages of the epidemic that may have facilitated its spread to being a pandemic. The government here has made some serious errors as well that look to make the outbreak worse. It seems to this non expert that all governments have made mistakes Donald D'Orange's as much as anyone.

On a specific point you mention - the WHO is not criticising the Peoples Republic as strongly as it should. One reason for this is that it is very dependent of funding from that country because a certain other head of state has been very late in authorizing payments to the WHO.

As always in international affairs, finger pointing and point scoring rarely work out well for anyone. The Chinese and US governments have shown a woeful lack of understanding of this principle recently. Thus, tit for tat trade disputes are bad for all.

</rant>

Slack hooks up with Microsoft Teams and Zoom VoIP calls

Slacking off

So we can zoom off and team up with other slackers all from the comfort of our home while speaking in pidgin then.

You're not fooling anyone on that vid-conference call: Walmart says shirt sales soaring, pants not pulled up

this is an April fool right?

Tell me it is. Has the hallowed El Reg been had by a retail giant?

Talk about ill-gotten gains: Coronavirus KOs Xerox's $30bn months-long hostile takeover bid of HP Inc

Re: Ugh...

If HP made disks they could fry them on old disk platters!

Are you extracting the urine, ESA? Why, yes it is, from Moon dwellers to build homes out of lunar regolith. Possibly

current UK political angle?

Given that our illustrious but virus infected PM has been know to talk about spaffing stuff up a wall could he be used in this project?

Astroboffin gets magnets stuck up his schnozz trying and failing to invent anti-face-touching coronavirus gizmo

New Keyboard needed

And my wife is getting annoyed as she has some tickly thing to do with setting an exam paper on Moodle at the moment!

BT Openreach prepares to declare UK MBORCed* as all new phone line installations halted over coronavirus

MBORC

The next time a server falls in a heap because crappy java application is being shit I am going to use that one

Asterix co-creator Albert Uderzo dies aged 92

Always there are millions like me

When I was at school my friends and I used to compare notes on HHTTH knowing that we were a select few who understood these gems where no one else did at all. In a more private way I always felt the same about Asterix. Now, in later age it turns out every other bugger who was the tiniest bit geeky had the same interests.

When a student, the Asterix books in Spanish provided a new perspective on them.

I think that in time, Rene Goscinni, Albert Uderzo, Anthea Bell, Herge and Douglas Adams will come to be seen as the giants of mid and late twentieth century literature that they deserve to be.

PC owners borg into the most powerful computer the world has ever known – all in the search for coronavirus cure

got to work now

Tasks: 310 total, 2 running, 250 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

%Cpu(s): 8.9 us, 9.5 sy, 65.5 ni, 16.1 id, 0.1 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st

KiB Mem : 16005364 total, 8189480 free, 3927256 used, 3888628 buff/cache

KiB Swap: 999420 total, 999420 free, 0 used. 10942376 avail Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND

5623 fahclie+ 39 19 428184 173880 13548 R 292.4 1.1 11:14.56 FahCore_a7

4679 rkynast+ 20 0 2905864 283376 123000 S 25.7 1.8 11:39.29 Web Content

4504 rkynast+ 20 0 4159288 503024 207480 S 7.3 3.1 37:57.16 firefox

FYI: You can trick image-recog AI into, say, mixing up cats and dogs – by abusing scaling code to poison training data

classic GIGO

Or, at least, it looks like that.

All roads lead to Bork in Kansas as Windows puts on a show for motorists

road in Kansas

Inquiring minds want to know if the road was paved with yellow bricks.

This home working thing is getting a bit much. I'll get me coat but can't go anywhere though.

Yanking on the space supply chain: Rocket Lab goes Interplanetary with Sinclair acquisition

Sinclair

What price a spectrum? Or a C5?

Corporate VPN huffing and puffing while everyone works from home over COVID-19? You're not alone, admins

Uptick in remote S/W sales

I should imagine the likes of Cisco and others are mobilising sales teams if they are that forward looking. Will this establish a trend for much more remote working?

BOFH: Here he comes, all wide-eyed with the boundless optimism of youth. He is me, 30 years ago... what to do?

Re: A better essay on the state of IT I have not read

Deep insight is often buried in the best humour.

You'll get your money – when this bank has upgraded Windows 7... or bought extended support

Cash machine borkage

I suspect that Sainscrap are having issues with their cash machine network. The one near my work and home have been unavailable for the week. Also, the dodgy one outside the tube station rebooted with XP as others above have noted. Is it a plot by the merchant bankers to stop us using cash by shutting down the cash machine network?

</tin foil hat?>

Sadly, the web has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'nothing is true; everything is permitted'

oh how things have evolved

When you think about the origins of the internet it is both amazing and depressing to see where things have gone to. Given that the ARPAnet was a military project to create a robust communications platform for when the shit hit the fan, the designers assumed it would be a trusted network. Now, it is for entirely (don't laugh) peaceful purpose that the lack of trust has exploded.

What I find infuriating is that I have no idea what the solution is. The idea of getting rid of smtp and replacing it with a secure authenticated mail relay service so you know who and what is being sent never happens. As to antisocial media - Bleurghhh!

Come kneel with us at UK's Cathedral, er, Oil Rig of the Canal: Engineering masterpiece Anderton Boat Lift

good article

just one observation - could you provide an OS six figure grid reference as well as GPS Lat/long coordinates. Us old school geographers like such archaic nerdiness.

Death and taxis: Windows has had enough of clinging to a cab rooftop in the London rain

linux version

"I had that Linux Torvalds in the back the other day. Strange geezer 'e was. Started out ever so nice but then 'e lorst it near the end. Still at least he committed it all before checking out."

BOFH: Gosh, IPv5? Why didn't I think of that? Say, how do you like the new windows in here? Take a look. Closer...

Can I propose that we skip IPv6 and implement IPv20

After all with IoT we are going to need more addresses and we don't want to be in the situation that IPv4 is in again.

That way we will be OK till the heat death of the universe.

First class BOFH though.

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

giving up for lent

I always give up giving up.

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now: Brexit tea towel says it'll just be the gigabit broadband

hedgehogs

Shirly they would want to watch Ice Road Truckers or reruns of that I like trucking song by Not the Nine O Clock News.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago

Two things

I used to work at a University and the space planning department had some ancient plotter that printed serial. My job was to replace their Windows 3.1 machine with new ones running NT4. imagine a 21" CRT monitor and how much that weighed. Amazingly, their CAD sw installed OK all we had to do was get the plotter to print room plans. I got a mate in the ops team to make up a new one and ti even worked.

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

Mix it with one of those goop candles

I'll leave it to commentard imaginations to fill in the rest.

We need a puke icon!

Galileo got it wrong – official: Jupiter actually wet, not super-dry: 'No one would have guessed that water might be so variable across the planet'

Re: Dodgy analogy

I am very hesitant to cast aspersions on the boffins doing this work but I sort of agree. What would said aliens have made of a scan of Chile though. Atacama = cold and _very_ dry. A bit further south towards Chiloe and the temperatures rise slightly but are much much wetter

Private equity ponies up £2m to help launch satellites from sunny Shetland by next year

Re: iScotland!!??

Very OT I know but I didn't know that La Sturgeon was proposing the sale of an independent country to the fruity giant.

I've got it and am off.

Google lives in an Orange submarine: Transatlantic cable will get by with a little help from some friends

Re: Les grèves sur la côte

Ah but, will the ghost of Jacques Cousteau be in said vest?

How the US-China trade war is felt stateside: Xilinx trims workforce after lucrative Huawei sales pipe blocked

Re: Isn't It Ironic?

More upvotes. Have one of these though ->