Posts by john oates

A Farewell to Oates: Adios, El Reg

cheers

Thanks John, and everyone else.

Funnily enough 'herding cats' was exactly how the job was described to me by Drew...

Brussels acts to ensure arrival of new, unknown legal highs

Re: Clarrification

Hello,

I meant that the continuing attempts to ban substances mean developers will simply create different ones. The changes to the law push this development. If meph was still legal then that's what people would be buying/selling.

We might be interested in a longer article - but we can only pay in tomato feed or bath salts...

cheers

john

Citibank hack lifted 200,000 names, emails, acct numbers

Re: @Colin Miller

Hello,

If it as an actual breach which we discover then we give the company reasonable time to fix it before reporting it.

In this case the breach was reported yesterday so I contacted UK PRs on the assumption that they'd have a statement from the US ready to send.

cheers

North Korea blamed for bank hack

Re: one-to-many?

Hello,

The attack was launched from one IP address - it then triggered the network to start the DDOS attack.

cheers

Halifax cuts investment accounts off from the web until April 2012

Re: You're SURE they didn't mean April 2011?

I did phone and check, honest. My first thought was that it was a typo...

cheers

Linux wins the SCO vs Novell case

Re: Excuse me...

Hello,

I wasn't trying to be snarky, just a bit sarky, and i'm not aware of any row....

cheers

john

PARIS goes to 60,000 feet, without leaving the ground

Re: Pardon

Hello,

We were worried about condensation, but aren't now. And some form of heating device might be involved to try and keep a constant temperature...

Lester will reveal all later.

cheers

john

Oz customs search lappies and mobes for smut

question

The question is something like - are you carrying pornography?

I failed to find a copy of the new incoming passenger card online - but the old version includes a list of items - you must tick if you are carrying them. These include wooden items. medicines, explosives, firearms, food etc. and now pron too...

If you answer yes to any of these you're expected to report to customs. Aussie customs are very thorough and check most food items. they also confiscate some strange stuff - like electric fly swatters....

Blacklisted UK colleges take Border Agency to court

Re: How man colleges? 90 or 142?

Figures are from the Border Agency. The total is 142 but that includes some wrongly included schools - which should never have been on the list in the first place.

cheers

john

Scott McNealy signs off in style

Re: Where is TPM ?

Hi,

Sorry to let you down - Tim is based in New York so he's probably still abed...he might have some wise words to share later though...

Gumtree gives up on dating AND casual sex

Re: Pet scams?

Pretty much. They typically get you interested in a fluffy puppy, then tell you they need $XXX for immunisations, vets certificates etc...

Kidnap fears kybosh charity car rally

value for money

hi Ian,

Secondhand cars in most African countries rarely fall much below that in price. This is partly due to scarcity and partly politics. Gambia has a 100 per cent import duty on cars - but the rally organisers managed to do a deal to avoid this.

At the border we had a couple of offers from people who dismantle cars and take them over the border piece by piece in order to dodge the tax.

Dealing with the import duties, and other hassles, means that most imports are expensive cars to make the process worthwhile.

have to admit i've failed to get in touch with the buyer to find out what happened.

cheers

john

Irish ISP downed by DDoS

P2P revenge

I did ask if they thought the attack had anything to do with their attitude to P2Pers and was told they had no evidence of that...

cheers

john

Nortel confirms fire sale

Ch 11

Sorry if i confused you Anon,

Nortel is seeking protection from bankrupcy in many different countries using many different laws.

These are known generally as Chapter 11, although this is a reference to US law.

cheers

john

Sage struggles in subdued market

Sage staff

Hello,

This is from the Sage website:

# Global company with over 5.8 million SME customers worldwide

# Over 14,500 employees

# Over 36,000 customer support service calls daily

# Global network of over 30,000 reseller partners and 40,000 accountants

cheers

john

Satyam rushes into arms of new auditors

from Reg reader Rose Humphrey

Pedantry (you may wish to correct the article) from a chartered accountant:

- Auditors do *not* produce accounts for a company, they merely certify them as being a true and fair representation (or whatever the approved wording is, as it varies from country to country, as well as depending on the size and type of organisation audited) of the company's financial situation, based on the information available to them at date of certification. Since the poor buggers (I mean the people that actually do the donkeywork, not the bigwigs) are inevitably overworked, underpaid (the company being audited hires the auditors and fixes the budget, spot the conflict of interest), hated and lied to by just about everyone they speak with - IT professionals may recognise the symptoms - yes, stuff gets past them, especially as the tests are by necessity only samples.

- Accountants produce the financial reports certified by auditors. They may not be the same people, or even the same firm; this rule is generally applied by the Big whatever's-left-of-them (was 10, which shrank to 8 over my year's postgrad course). 3 now, isn't it?

Online storage start-up pitches 'USB stick on the internet'

costs

hello,

They've not set firm prices yet but it should be about £30 a year, we've been told - prices will be set with the official launch in January.

cheers

Microsoft hires Yahoo! search boss

Qi Lu or Lu Qi

That comment is certainly not pedantic. And I'm ashamed to say I've made this mistake before.

But are you sure Lu is the first name?

I took this from the press release which refers to “Dr. Lu’s deep technical expertise" - maybe he's anglicized the order of his name?

cheers - happy to correct if I'm wrong...

john

Customs warns of killer consoles

More from HMRC

Hello,

I've just phoned Customs in response to these comments.

First of all they're insisting these are fakes, not just grey imports. But some of them are "grey dragon" machines destined for, the spokesman thought, for the Japanese market - these also had a dubious power supply.

The power supply is dodgy - a British kid was injured by a similar power supply used on a different console bought in Thailand.

As for the cost of reverse engineering such a console - as another commenter said these often come from the same factory using cheaper materials.

cheers

john

MoD admits data loss bigger than thought

Total records

The MoD have got back to us now - they hold 220m records, not 200m, and they haven't finished counting yet.

They do not know how many people this refers to - one person is likely to have several different records but they have no average figure for records per person.

the audit is due to finish at the end of the month.

Olympic Committee wins gold for foot shooting

Mark

hello,

It was a DMCA request - copyright essentially. I was unable to find the actual takedown notice, or contacts for someone likely to tell me - YouTube use an Irish postal address to receive notices in writing - but...

The video included use of the Olympic rings - the IOC keenly enforces its copyright claim to the rings

see here -

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/02/50275

cheers

Top Jock cop calls for universal DNA database

top jock

Apologies to anyone offended by Jock in the headline - it wasn't meant to be derogatory - I wouldn't want to upset our Edinburgh office apart from anything else...

eBay UK pimps users' privacy for targeted ads

missing Bootnote

Apologies Steve - should have credited you and the other people who sent us the email - thank you to all of you...

john

Yahoo! bitchslapped Ballmer's $40 a share offer

the original offer was $40

the $40 offer, or "about $40" to be precise is at the top of page 11 of the pdf

cheers

john

ITV fined millions for phone fraud

@ Mike

hello,

Just rang Ofcom - the fine goes to the Treasury.

cheers

john

MPs and Lords turn on government over data protection

Re: Error

The 4 per cent figure comes from 26 per cent who had searched for information - out of this group 15 per cent found errors, which gives us the 4 per cent... - the survey makes it clearer.

cheers

john

Microsoft signs MOU with Siberia

Clarification:

Microsoft got in touch with the following statement: "Microsoft confirm that an MOU was signed between the Irkutsk government and Microsoft to work more closely on ICT projects and training, on 23 Nov. This MOU did not include any agreement on a data centre, either in the region or in Russia or anywhere else."

Wikipedia not a publisher

Title

Hello,

Reuters says the case involved privacy and defamation.

And describing someone as gay can be libel - just ask Robbie Williams or Jason Donovan.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article331523.ece

SCO gets offer for Unix biz

Re: Not patents - copyrights, then contracts

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your comment - i've tweaked the story now to make it less wrong. This is why my sister is the lawyer in our family...

cheers

john

MySpace opens up to developers

Re: Facebook chief executive Chris DeWolfe...

Apologies for that - my fingers moving faster than my brain...it is fixed now

john

LHC@home gets new home

Re: Eskimo's

Apologies Sir Runcible, that's been fixed now.

cheers

john