Posts by Gordon Stewart

Did Donald Trump really just ask Russia to hack the US govt? Yes, he did

> The US cannot act as world police

Then please just *stop* - the world would be a much better place

Re: I don't care ...

> The CIA director and several top generals have already said they'll ignore illegal orders from Trump

Pfft! That's a big fucking rich coming from the bloody CIA!

Re: It's really quite impressive.

At least Boris is fairly benign. Trump is *dangerous*.

Re: It's really quite impressive.

Court jester, perhaps?

Re: Treason

> and American nukes would really help sort out the Middle East

Surely you jest?

Re: Treason

> he's probably the only thing that stands between us and nuclear war with Russia

I honestly can't tell if you're having a laugh or are actually completely delusional??!

E-borders will be eight years late and cost more than £1bn

Re: read a passport and check it against a database for only £10 Million...

I agree completely that the solution is going to be complex, and must be resilient, secure etc.

We are realistically talking about millions, or maybe tens of millions of pounds - but absolutely not hundreds of millions. This is yet another complete piss take at the tax payer's expense.

Drunk? Need a slash? Avoid walls in Hackney

What's to clean?

> the authority spends £100k a year cleaning up after al fresco urinators

Eh? It's not graffiti, it's just a bit of piss - It gets cleaned for free next time it rains!

Startup founder taken hostage by laid-off workers

Ah, yes, we've also just had what has been referred to as both a 'right-sizing' and 'capacity adjustment'

Can we speak in private? Chat app intros end-to-end crypto tech

Re: oh noes

Great - except they'd probably make you eat sand, shove a rack of BBQ ribs up your ass (sideways), waterboard you with the beer, and... well, let's not get into what they might do with the Babes/Boys

Bloke cuffed for blowing low-flying camera drone to bits with shotgun

Nutjob?

"I had my 40mm Glock on me and they started toward me and I told them, 'If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting.'"

Ah yes, that would be an entirely rational response?!

China wants to build a 200km-long undersea tunnel to America

Re: The Chinese and Russians are going to build it??

Yeah, western firms would *never* do that... right?

Scot Nationalists' march on Westminster may be GOOD for UK IT

Re: Next stop Venezuela

It is indeed, and goes through this every 5 years or so. Everyone lays people off, then hires them back again when things pick up again.

Don't use Charlie Hebdo to justify Big Brother data-slurp – Data protection MEP

Re: Saying we should bomb $MiddleEasternCountry in retaliatiopn

"We're discussing the Charlie Hebdo cover, not western foreign policy. I see your point, but not it's relevance."

Eh, I'd say western foreign policy is *very* relevant to Charlie Hebdo

Belden buys Tripwire for $710m: Will keep network burglars out of Internet of Things things

Never even heard of Belden before.

Tripwire Enterprise is an over-priced, bloated pig of an application that tends to get foisted on organisations just because Gartner or whoever say it's 'best of breed', without any consideration being given to more manageable alternatives... let's hope Belden don't make it even crapper...

Don't be shy, we know you've got .NET code. Why not run it on our Linux cloud – Red Hat

Re: Mono on Linux is easy

Just stay away from WCF on Mono. Support is laughable at best.

Snowden speaks: NSA spies create 'databases of ruin' on innocent folks

Re: @Trevor_Pot

@Titus Technophobe

"Have there been any attacks on the tube recently?"

Well, no - but neither have there been any alien invasions or incidences of cheddar mutating into flesh devouring monsters. Ah, the NSA & GCHQ's excessive snooping *must* be the reason then!

I'd say it's significantly more probable that there just aren't many people who want to go round blowing things up, or indeed have the ability to do so.

BTW, I have a rock that keeps away tigers for sale - you interested in buying? It's always worked for me so far!

US red-tape will drain boffins' brains into China, says crypto-guru Shamir

Re: Organise one in Russia or Beijing

I've applied for Chinese ones a few times, both for personal and business travel. Application process seemed fine to me, not much different from any other countries that require a visa.

Full Steam Ahead: Valve unwraps plans for gaming hardware

Aren't we ignoring the elephant in the room?

Well, OK, "the keyboard and mouse in the living room"?

One of the great things about PC gaming is the superior controllers - the keyboard and mouse. These allow for more precise and complex interactions than console controllers.

But how do these comfortably fit into a living room environment?

First look: Apple iPhone 5S and 5C

Re: Equally tiresome...

I completely agree, it's not any different for phone tech.

But it is different for Apple products.

Apple products don't sell purely (or, it could be argued, even mainly) because of performance, features and functionality - they also sell based on hype. It gets harder and harder to create that hype, even amongst the hardcore fanbois, when there is less and less noticable difference between each new version.

One year to go: Can Scotland really declare gov IT independence?

"After that, Scotland would need to buy IT without the huge economies of scale that DWP and HMRC have used in setting up their existing contracts."

You mean we would no longer be able to purchase IT equipment for twice the price you can get it at PC World!?

Final preview of IE11 for Windows 7 uncanned

"It also supports multi-touch, and although there aren't very many Windows 7 touch PCs out there, this might be useful for businesses using Windows 8 PCs..."

What, both of them?

How many businesses are running Windows 8?!

Microsoft's Windows 8.1 secrets REVEALED ... sort of

Re: Sounds more like 8.01

or indeed, glitter on a turd

Anonymous 'plonks' names, addresses of far-right EDL types on web

Given there are, in reality, so few of them, I imagine that is a rather more difficult task...

Game off: No end to official China console ban

Re: google it

I've seen plenty about South Korea... don't remember seeing anything relating to China

"they are already dealing with a pandemic of gaming addicts..."

Reference please

Twitter breach leaks emails, passwords of 250,000 users

..."the encrypted and salted versions of passwords"

Let me fix that for you:

"...the hashed and salted versions of passwords"

Health minister warns ISPs: Block suicide websites or face regulation

Re: Guidance

I don't think it's difficult at all. I think the real reason for most suicide 'failures' is that they never realy intended to kill themselves in the first place; just a 'cry for help' or an attempt to get attention.

Lawyers: We'll pillory porn pirates who don't pay up

The first time the lawyers reached out..

Did you just use the term 'reached out'?

Arrrgh, my eyes!!!!!

Chinese man blows off hands, builds new pair

Re: Now I really want to know...

Maybe something like 只 皮肤 伤口 (zhǐ pífū shāngkǒu)

Behold: First look at Office 2013, with screenshots

"Several of the applications offer a "touch mode" button above the menu bar"

Why the f**k would anyone want to use b*stard Office apps with a bloody touchscreen?!

Google Nexus 7 Android tablet

Re: C'mon guys

640K?

Chinese toothpaste biz wants £50k from Apple over 'Snow Leopard'

Pinyin

Just for completeness it's xuě​bào in Pinyin (Hanyu Pinyin, that is), and 雪豹 in Simplified Chinese

RBS collapse details revealed: Arrow points to defective part

You've never tried recruiting anyone from India then?

At least 90% of the CVs that land on my desk - from organisations like Capgemini and InfoSys - are utter lies.

You read a CV that appears to be a perfect candidate, with 7 years experience working on .NET projects, but upon interviewing it very quickly becomes apparent that they haven't got a clue.

Facebook techie strokes STEC's hot data flash drive

Is this a verbatim press release or something? Just asking, because there seems to be no technical content here, just an advertisement for STEC....

Hackers expose 6.5 MILLION 'LinkedIn passwords'

Re: Who writes this crap?

A fair point about my tone... just getting rather exasperated with El Reg lately. It's supposed to be a tech site, but it seems more and more these days the articles read like they were written by Daily Hate hacks :(

Who writes this crap?

"SHA-1 hashing is not the securest form of encryption; sensitive information should really be salted, a much stronger form of security."

Salting is not an alternative to hashing, it's something you do as part of the hashing process.

Seriously, WTF has happened to El Reg?

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Mealy pudding v migas

Re: Deep-fried pizza, anyone?

Gah, I hail from the North, and can confirm these abominations exist, and can be found in many a chipper!

As if it needed confirming, I can confirm that they really are as vile as the sound. They are normally the '10 for a £1' out of Iceland variety, and taste of cardboard made soggy with ungodly quantities of grease.

Seeing ads on Wikipedia? Then you're infected

CTR?

400,000 clicks from 10,000,000 ads makes for a click through rate of 4%.... that sounds highly unlikely.

40,000 sounds more plausible.

Nissan Leaf battery powered electric car

@Charles Manning

"This goes towards paying for road development/maintenance etc."

Yes... of course it does

Viewsonic PLED W500 portable projector

"costing half a ton"

I think you mean a "monkey" or "half a bag of sand" :)

Huawei gets charged with juicy Android handset

ZTE Blade/Orange SanFran

With light-moderate usage, I routinely get 3 days out of my ZTE Blade/Orange SanFran, but on occasion I get 5 days out of it.

It's running the FLB Android 2.2 ROM.

Nissan car secretly shares driver data with websites

"Precise" Geographic Coordinates?

Does it have a built-in GPS, or is it just using cell tower info (in which case, it's not really precise at all)?

Nokia X3 sliderphone

£130?

Nothing against 'simple' phones that don't try to pack the world into a handhelf devide - but £130 seems awfully expensive for this

Government wastes millions on redundant cycle route planner

Cost breakdown

Did the FOI response include a breakdown of the costs, or just the total amount?

It would be very interesting to see how they could possibly spend so much on this...

FujiFilm intros 'ultimate' all-in-one camera

I don't get it

It *looks* like a DSLR, it's *priced* like an entry level DSLR...

... why would I want this instead of a DSLR?!

Iocell NetDisk

Streaming

"playback of HDTV content is jerky and certainly far from an enjoyable experience"

Eh? How does that work if the ethernet speeds are so good? Is this just a firmware issue that will be resolved later?

China fingered in cyberattack on mystery high tech co.

FUD...

Sounds like yet more 'red danger' FUD from the US government who have been putting out this kind of anti-Chinese stuff for a while now.

They used a host with an address in China? Yeah, cause they'd do that, wouldn't they?

Mefinks not.

Lexus unveils hybrid

@Kevin McMurtrie

I agree - well put

Ryanair requires web check-in, shuts down website

@AC 17th June 2009 11:13 GMT

"Is there a route on which the taxes cost £20 to £30? Even one, let alone enough to justify the "usually" comment?"

Is there a route (within Europe) where the taxes cost less?!

The first one I checked, Aberdeen to Dublin, taxes are £30.16

Next up, Luton to Girona, taxes are £24.03

Next, Gatwick to Cork, taxes are £28.05

etc...