Posts by Jimboom

No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage with few limits, US senators complain

Re: Jump to the not to distant future

"Plod drives down the street, 360 roof mounted camera (mainly used for facial recognition of course) doesn't see Ring on the house, immediately adds you to database for further monitoring"

FIFY

Conspiracy loons claim victory in Brighton and Hove as council rejects plans to build 5G masts

Go Brighton go!!

But go all the way. Ban everything that uses electricity.

That way everyone who compains about Electronic/wireless related illnesses can go there. Then when all the poor afflicted are in one place we can place hidden cameras and other wireless devices that the public can vote to turn on/up in different areas. Lets see if they really can detect said electronic's.

Now that is one bit of reality tv I would watch.

Maybe even take it one step further by erecting a giant faraday cage around Brighton... then randomly place weapons in it. Last person standing gets to be the king/queen of Brighton!

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

Re: Endless recycling

"A floor is just a big desktop."

Unless you have pets or small children.. then it may as well be a to shred/destroy pile.

When the satellite network has literally gone glacial, it's vital you snow your enemy

2 Buildings with PTP link between them.

One building was the head office and the other was a warehouse. After a weekend of torrential rain we got a call to say they had no signal on the warehouse end. Checked the PTP unit on HQ end, seemed fine but no other end showing. As I was realatively new I hadn't a clue where the other side was plugged in other than being told "it's up on that side of the building".

So after much running around and being shouted at by people for the outage (as well as a quick trip around the warehouse on a cherry picker) we finally found the box that the unit connected back to, only to find a rather wet port. Turns out that it was using POE but when it was installed nobody has installed a loop in the cable.. so when the rain came down it ran straight down the cable and into the POE adapter. Took out the unit as well as the adapter.

Fun times.

Holy smokes! Ex-IT admin gets two years prison for trashing Army chaplains' servers

Re: Where is god when you need him?

>"God doesn't work, at least not these days."

FTFY

Nine words to ruin your Monday: Emergency Internet Explorer patch amid in-the-wild attacks

Microsoft Update Catalog only

Just gone and checked it out and on all the KB's I have looked at it says not avaialble on Windows update/MS Update or WSUS. Only on Microsoft Update Catalog.

Astroboffins baffled as black hole at center of Milky Way suddenly a lot hungrier than before

When a quark walks in with an itty bitty waist

Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf. Microsoft scans Chromium code, lops off offensive words

We are all the same colour on the inside

These so called offensive words used to describe different groupings of people is wrong... just wrong. I have never seen an actual black person just has I have never seen an actual white person.

I have seen pinky/peachy/cream coloured people before. I have seen Mocha/Caramel coloured people before.

Perhaps using the Dulux colour pallet to describe peoples enthnicity would be less offensive?

Trump attacks and appeals 'fundamentally misconceived' Twitter block decision

Re: Nothing new, then

At least a spoilt 10 year old bully there might still be hope for redemption.

A 73 year old imbecile with dementia would be more accurate.

Security? We've heard of it! But why be a party pooper when there's printing to be done

Worked in a company once where there was no domain policy to force users to change their passwords at all, or password complixity required. Even when we had to reset their password we were told to not force them to change on next logon. On top of that the IT manager kept an Access database with all the users account details, with passwords and they had to inform us when they changed it as well as what they changed it to, though there were a great many of them that were still set to the default password.

It's so hot, UK needs to start naming heatwaves like we do when it's a bit windy – climate boffins

Betty Swollocks?

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Re: Newbies beware

Ahh, the old screen flip trick. I still see people facinated to this day when I show them that (after one of their colleagues has flipped it usually, or if they are fat fingered and do it by mistake).

I recall back in Win98 days when the admin at a company I worked was not aware that all C$ shares were open to all authenticated users by default... which allowed for some fun little photoshopping of the company issued wallpapers as all you had to do was replace the file with one of the same name. Que a friend on mine who got it in the neck for "messing about" with his managers wallpaper and me trying hard to contain my laughter.

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

Macro's

I had my own tale when I was still in school and helping out at a company that one of my parents worked at. My job was to go delete the thousands and thousands of rubbish or dead entries at the end of a database.

So, after I had found the macro function I thought I would be really clever by just setting it to go into entry, delete, then next entry and delete, recursively until I stopped it. Then running it and sitting back. I then thought I would be even cleverer by going into the middle of the rubbish entries and start a 2nd instance of the macro (so that they didn't overlap and cause a problem). I then went to lunch very proud of myself. Came back to the desk to find that when you get to the end of the entries then it automatically jumped back to the beginning of the database and the good objects... which is what the 2nd macro did. It was halfway through the A records by the time I stopped it.

Que one rather panicked call to IT and a restore later and I was back at square one (with all the deleted entries back) with a promise that I would do it the manual way and no more macro's would be used.

Fun times.

Prodigy dancer and vocalist Keith Flint found dead aged 49

He will be missed. I was lucky to see them live a few times and they definitely knew how to rock.

On a separate note did anyone else see that in the first few hours after the fact, before the cause of death was widely known, if you went to google and typed in "cause of death Keith Flint" it came up as Fire being the cause of death.

While that would have been very ironic I think it was probably some algorithm at play. It does seem to have been corrected since though.

Facebook's inflection point: Now everyone knows this greedy mass surveillance operation for what it is

Re: I do my utmost...

You all have stuff to hide therefore you must be guilty of something. Nevermind those men in suits outside the house... and no that is not a black helicopter circling overhead.

As you were citizen.

Ocado to stock cannabidiol-infused water

Suggestions

I see you have ordered the cannabidiol-infused water.. now take a look at all these snacks and treats you can also buy before we let you check out

Secret weekend office bonk came within inch of killing sysadmin

I have also felt the pain of a wet server room.

Went in to help one of the electritians wire in some new telephones. Noticed a pool of water underneath one of the server stacks. The worrying bit was when I mentioned it to said spark he just laughed and said it didn't surprise him with that building.

Though in the end we discovered it was due to a 1st level support chap who couldn't be bothered to take the computers for cleaning away from he building when he air blasted the dust out of them. Which also was where the intake for said air conditioning was. Dust blocked pipe which in turn lead to the overflow water just dripping onto the floor.

Fun times...

That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes

Re: That probably explains..

Samsungs batteries were originally replaceable. All the way up until the S5, then they followed Apples example.

I for one am saddened by this as if a phone is misbehaving it is a lot more satisfiying to remove the battery then it is to push a button.

Beyond code PEBCAK lies KMACYOYO, PENCIL and PAFO

I/O Error = Idiot Operator

Tired of despairing of Trump and Brexit? Why not despair about YouTube stars instead?

Sorry to take it there... but

That Ryan kid opening toys and playing with them. You have to think statistically speaking a percentage, no matter how small, are peodophiles.

So basically youtube and this kids parents are enabling peodo's to get their fix.

Won't someone think of the children!!

Surveillance Capitalism thinks it won, but there's still time to unplug it

As long as something is offered for free then people get blinkered to anything else. Can't tell you the amount of times I have looked at horror at the permissions of apps some people have installed.

But I don't do facebook, twitter, uber or any of that things. Some family members look at me funny because of it. But personally I like the fact I have a very low online presence.

Home Sec Amber Rudd: Yeah, I don't understand encryption. So what?

I see what you are doing there...

Coming soon.

All websites/blogs/social media accounts with views/comments that specifically challenge or go against what the government is saying are creating a sense of fear within said officials, therefore one might say they are "terrorist content".

When all these "terrorists" are locked up Ruddy-Bottom will finally be able to speak in public once more without being sneered at.

Won't someone think of the poor politicians!

A todger, a 2.5kg dumbbell, the fire brigade... and the inevitable angle grinder

Simply a misunderstanding

You see someone told him that he should go pump some iron.

And he even thought it was working in the beginning.. after all he was promised rock hard muscles.

Amazon files patent for 'Death Star' flying warehouse

Sky Pirates?

If this ever became a reality then how long before you would have bandits taking to the skies to hunt down and rob/destroy these motherships?

Could make quite a good haul if you hit the one in the rich neighborhoods where they are stocked with lots of nice high end goods.

Zuckerberg turns his home into Creepy Robot Buddy

Hang on a tick

I recall not many years ago seeing an interview of Zuck where he said he invisioned that we would want to share and communicate with our fellow humans more and more as time goes on.... now he is telling us thats the rule for us lowly plebs, but if we want to communicate with him then we need to go through his metal bouncer. Nice.

For the record I am not on farcebook. Left it behind many years ago, and the odd occassion I see friends using it and whats actually on there I am very glad I did!

Playtime's over: Internet-connected kids toys 'fail miserably' at privacy

Re: What's wrong with just pulling a string and a dozen phrases?

Or in the case of my son if you get one of those boxes with the handle flaps then Opening down, with child inside + nerf gun = tank

Vegans furious as Bank of England admits ‘trace’ of animal fat in £5 notes

Re: what Vegans think will happen to all those animals we breed for food and dairy

@ sabroni

And to do that we would need to increase our crop manufacturing. Granted the land used by breeding livestock could in some cases be used to grow crops, but when you use the land for crops then you are killing off the little animals that live in those lands happily co-existing with the livestock. Mice, moles, insects, birds etc.... not to mention the fact that use of pesticides would have to increase( and who knows what sort of impact that could have on the environment), and as much as you may not like it, gmo's would likely also be on the rise to meet the growing demands (or just to increase yields and make it worth it for the farmers).

Next, onto the human factor. Think of all the industries that would go out of business overnight if you stopped using animal products. We would have to increase the use of plastic to fill the gap. Our oil use goes up, the price of oil becomes more expensive. Not to mention the fact that we increase the amount of plastic waste we generate.

Way to save the world!

BOFH: The Hypochondriac Boss and the non-random sample

Re: Culling the herd...

"sever talking to"

You cut them as you are talking to them? With Blade servers presumably. I prefer the cat5-o-nine-tails myself, but hey whatever works.

Spanish village mounts Playmobil extravaganza

I applaud their efforts

However, having been gifted playmobile sets in the past for my spawn I can say one thing... I hope they don't lose any of the building pieces (the plastic bits in between the buildings that stick them together)

And... that must have cost a small fortune for all those separate kits ... no wonder Spain is not in good shape financially!

Brit-American hacker duo throws pwns on IoT BBQs, grills open admin

Re: Not a big problem

While I will grant you that there is still an ongoing debate about this, you will find that the reasons they tend to use Gassers are either because they are conscious of bush fires (their parks tend to have these instead of the charcoal kinds), or from a time aspect (ie, just want a quick meal, not having to go through the whole ceremony of the other kind of BBQ). Dan1980 is entitled to his opinion, however as a South African I can tell you that the gas BBQ is heresy in all the circles I run in and every Saffer I have ever met would never use a gas BBQ unless there was absolutely no other option available to them. Even an oven is preferable (a gas bbq is just an outside oven after all)

The only people I generally have met who use Gas systems are people who A. can't start a "proper" fire. (They are out there. Once watched someone try to start a fire for about an hour, and even tried cooking over the fire lighter itself, before eventually giving up and wheeling out the gas BBQ).

B. English people and Americans

C. People who have many kids and need a quick option for cooking or want something that even the wife could do

For me though, if you are going to do it, then do it right!

Not a big problem

The only internet connected BBQ's that I could find online were gas BBQ's. And no self respecting Aussie would own one of these, let alone use it for cooking. Just doesn't taste the same as a good ol fashioned carbon-burning barbie.

HPE's private London drinking club: Name that boozer

The Blade Bar

Screwdriver not included

The Beer and Switch

Kids' tech skills go backwards thanks to tablets and smartmobes

I have a very simple rule from day 1

My son can have a computer when he can build his own one. He can have his own gaming console when he can beat both me and mum at oldschool bomberman, or Mariokart ( which a track of my choice).

I have had to more than once stop the in law from buying him a Crapple device even though I hear the same protests every time "Oh, but it helped his cousin with their studies".

But even more than that, tablet/phablet skills are not what is used in proper business! Unless he is going to go straight in at management level of course. But I would call that a personal defeat if he did and didn't know at least how to handle a BOFH.

Dad who shot 'snooping vid drone' out of the sky is cleared of charges

"I feel a drone Kickstarter project coming on."

Anti-drone drones. I like it. Take my money good sir and make it so! At the very least you would get a good tv show out of it. Drone wars.

TalkTalk attack: Lad, 15, cuffed by UK cyber-cops

Re: title

Funny, the way I read it this was meant to be some big Islamic state sponsored cyber terrorism hack based out of Russia from the site of a missile factory.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Ok. I have turned upside down and ensured the feet are resting flat... but I still don't see how this will help me change the battery!

Woman makes app that lets people rate and review you, Yelp-style. Now SHE'S upset people are 'reviewing' her

Just a matter of time?

Before this is used by potential employers to screen candidates. And then one said candidate sues the company for discriminating?

Boffins: We know what KILLED the DINOS – and it wasn't just an asteroid

pfff

Can we please stop wasting time discussing how the dinosaurs died out already and focus on the real matter of bringing them back to life already! I want my real Jurassic park!

Just think of the television show opportunities. Big BC brother where we see if the t-rex or the z list celebrities win the challenge and get to eat (the loser).

Or My big fat Cretaceous Wedding!

BOFH: I'm not doing this for the benefit of your health, you know

Re: For the nice people across the pond

@Safety Dance

Argh! Stop making reference to it! It only makes it worse! I had a hard enough time getting it out of my head after watching the latest South Park episode. Although for the very fact Mr Garrison f**ks Donald trump to death, it was worth it.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

SmartBra V.2 now comes with titty tasers that zap any males who stare at it for more than 3 seconds.

Prepared to be turned on! Just not the way most techies would like given the nature of the device.

Finally!

Hardware that if it goes Tits up means it is working perfectly!

Why Nobody Should Ever Search The Ashley Madison Data

Re: Wrong recipient?

The line that made me chuckle was this

"But is it fair to selfishly deny a person sex? No. It is not, people have a right to have sex and if their spouses totally or somewhat-totally deny them that, they have every right to sleep with other people. "

So if I or my wife denied the other some nookie, if I or she felt that I was "selfishly denying" them sex, then that gave the other carte blanche to go play away?

Isn't times like those exactly what porn was made for anyway? Are these people saying that they are too good for porn?

All I took from this article really was that if you wanted to read the AM data then go find a torrent of it and download the whole thing yourself. Instead of being lazy and relying on someone else, out of the goodness of their own hearts and not for any malicious reasons honest guv, to put the data into a new UI for them.

The Ashley Madison files – are people really this stupid?

Re: *grabs popcorn*

Well it was paid for account. And the address on the card was one owned by his family, which they regularly showed on that poor excuse for a tv show. Ok, perhaps not a smoking gun... but enough to say that it was little more than likely that this was him... plus, given his track record...

*grabs popcorn*

I just find the whole thing rather amusing. And yes, I agree that if you signed up to this site then you had already commited the crime. B*tching about getting caught is just being childish. I realize however that without e-mail authentication it does make accurately pointing the finger at someone a bit tenuous at best.

However, it did make me laugh out loud to hear that Josh Duggar (of 19 and counting ... and other more scandalous fame) had a paid for account for Ashley Madison during the time of his marriage. So not only is he a hypocrite, anti-gay and a child molester but now he is potentially guilty of Adultery too.

This just gets better and better.

Kaspersky: Freemasons coded fake malware in the Bermuda Triangle

Arghhh.. we are too late.. they have already infiltrated our Android and Mac products! Damn you rooting/jailbreaking!!

Our only hope now is to use Ubuntu phones and Linux rigs to start the campaign..... wait a sec.... does that linux rig have a pre-2011 Intel chip?!?! WE ARE DOOMED I TELL YOU, DOOOOOOOMMED!!

Texas senator Ted Cruz serves up sizzling 'machine gun bacon'

Just what America needs to calm things down in the Middle East

A president who shoots bacon wrapped guns.

I am sure he will be a big hit with the Muslim voters

HAM IN SPAAAAAACE! ISS astronaut contacted by Gloucestershire bloke in garden shed

Sounds like the original wife "you are spending too much time online" complaint

And I am sure the husbands excuse for not going out and doing something in the "real" world would be the same as any Mmorpg/Xbox/Online gamer. "But honey, I don't need to go out, I am actually playing/talking/interacting with REAL people all around the world!"

Re/code apologizes for Holocaust 'joke' tweet

Re: There's plenty of good holocaust jokes

Here here! Have an upvote good Sir!

Fact is that offence can never be given, it can only ever be taken.

Obsolescence of food is complete: Soylent now comes in bottles

Could be a world solution?

Sounds like the perfect food for Vegans/veggies. They can eat nothing but this stuff, which will then allow us to reduce the amount of vegetables we grow, thereby reducing carbon emissions from growing/transporting the stuff, also think of the water it would save, perfect for drought stricken areas.

Which would also give us meat eaters more room to be able to raise more piggies for bacon... sweet sweet bacon.