* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

The IT crowd: Fiercely loyal geeks or 'inflexible, budget-padding' creeps?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

An IT dept with no drama is almost invisible.

Which I guess is why Windows got so popular.

Lots of drama there. Although I'd like to think it's all gotten a lot less stressful.

Personally I found the iSeries the least prone to "drama," and knew of one guy who was fired because he appeared to do no housekeeping on it. This was a mistake. When it did finally choke on its own data (old system using intra file pointers embedded in the DB files. Yes it sounded horrific to me as well) he renegotiated his contract.

One suggestion for the blame game. Get the management requests in writing, and keep hard copies.

I've worked with management with the attention spans of goldfish. Sometimes they don't mean to contradict themselves, they just forgot the last thing they told you to do.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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@Magister

"I feel your pain. Mine would have been handed in yesterday, but the HR manager is off sick with stress (and may not be back). "

HR Managers don't go sick with stress they cause others to go sick with stress.

The fact that yours has themselves to succumbed is a very bad sign.

Forget Snowden: What have we learned about the NSA?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: AC "It's all legal under..."

"Except it was the argument-free sheeple that were stating it was "illegal" without any form of corroboration or legal argument to back up that claim. "

You use the word "sheeple" a lot Mattie.

I don't think you know what it means. If you did you'd only have to look in the mirror to see one.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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@Titus

"All of the comments you have made contain many unsubstantiated statements which I personally believe to be untrue."

No. Just too few hours in the day to deal with his BS.

"Your failure to respond really does show up your lies"

And this I find particularly irritating. I don't lie, but I've seen plenty of your comments that show a quite infantile trust in governments. You're the sort of person who talks about "The Nanny State," but in mattes of surveillance you don't think "Nanny" will ever do harm.

It's like hearing a toned down echo of Mattie which moves in lock step.

Again Titus, why do you bother to post? We've heard your cynicism. It's easy to articulate. Do you need to tell us about it over and over again?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Johnnie Thicko John Smith 19 "If you aren't doing anything wrong.....now"

" Pretty much. Once again, show me the harm done unto you, show me the crime committed,"

Do you like living in France, Mattie, because the US legal system has effectively turned into the French one.

And BTW you're starting to crawl up the list from "occasionally worth listening to" through troll to full blown ar**hole I can ignore completely.

At which point I can just stick you on my ignore list, knowing I'm missing nothing worth reading.

The amount of signal in your noise is falling.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Can Americans get any dumber? It appears not.

"If you want to pass a law to take away their freedoms all you have to do is call it the PATRIOT act. How ironic."

You know Americans. Want to do something really despicable just tell them it's your patriotic duty to support it.

Don't forget THE PATRIOT act is all part of the backcronym.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: John Smith 19 "If you aren't doing anything wrong.....now"

"What Johnnie Thicko has failed to show is that there is any policy that affects him or anyone other than criminals and terrorists."

Do nothing and nothing happens, proving that nothing can happen, eh Mattie?

Feel free to keep up the abuse Mattie. Just remember that exercising your rights has consequences.

Now run along and calm down dear. That is basically you're attitude to this subject isn't it?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Facepalm

Re: John Smith 19 @Matt Bryant

<long dense paragraph>

I wondered if you'd pick up on that. My actual point was that that's a real shooting war where real people are dying but why bother spying on them?

" And even a cretin like you would know that the security infrastructure in Iraq has been handed back to the Iraqis. "

Careful boy if you keep up that frothing I'll think you've got rabies. You're already approaching Swivel Eyed Loon status.

That fact you whine on about this item suggests you can't handle the contradiction in your world view very well.

What this surveillance allegedly stops isn't really happening and real causes of US deaths are simply ignored. But one fits you're view of a dangerous world outside your basement and the other does not.

I suspect that better driver training for Americans visiting foreign countries, background checks before all legal gun sales and limiting magazine sizes on all firearms will save more lives than this multi $Bn programme has or ever will.

Remember Mattie once you've got wholesale data collection why not have wholesale detention? As Richleau is alleged to have observed "Give me 6 lines from an honest man and I'll find something to hang him." Due process is such an inconvenient business, eh Mattie?

Does that sound like "freedom" in the "land of the free?"

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: "If you aren't doing anything wrong.....now"

"I'm pretty sure I don't have anything to hide but.... I wouldn't want someone rummaging around in my history."

Never heart the one (allegedly attributed to Cardinal Richleau about "Give me 6 lines written by an honest man and I can find something to hang him" ?

The geniuses who think this s**t up never think about what happens if the government changes and they are on the watch list instead.

Surveillance systems are neutral. Once installed who you chase is simply a question of policy

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: What's REALLY scary

"Can't remember who is officialy entitled to the unexpurgated version."

In the UK I think that includes credit reference agencies.

But I'm sure none of them (or their staff) would misuse such information.

Yeah right.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Bah!

"Or, to put it another way, Google, Amazon et al are doing exactly the same thing as the NSA, and it hasn't mattered enough to their users for them to have stopped using any of those services. Which really shows that no-one much gives a damn about what the NSA does."

No. It means they are less concerned.

That would change if Google or Amazon had the power to order an armed team to break into your house anywhere in the world and shoot you in the head.

Peoples attitude would change pretty quickly if they did.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@Matt Bryant

<assorted stuff too long to quote>

Let me see if I've got you straight.

There is good "Big Government" which keeps you safe from "terrorists" by spying on you, everyone you know and in fact anybody they can 24/7/365. The last organized terrorist incident in the US was 13 years ago. That killed <3000 people. How many bombs has the US failed to prevent killing civilians in Iraq? Rather more I suspect. But they don't count, do they Matt?

And there is bad "Big Government" that (for example) tries to require background checks for anyone buying guns or reduce the capacity of magazines for ammunition. The last mass shooting happened a few moths ago. In a speech President Obama stated there had been 33 mass shootings in the US 1983-2013

Unlike organized terrorist attacks they show no signs of going away.

Do you never see the contradictions in your PoV? Or to paraphrase Upton Sinclair your paycheck depends on you not seeing the contradiction?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Holmes

AC@13:37

"he people killed on 7/7 were, presumably, the tip of the iceberg of those who WOULD HAVE BEEN killed if we HADN'T spent 500m on intelligence."

First off Mr AC, the draft "Data Communications Bill" has not been implemented yet, so in theory no one has spent that (notional) £500m/yr

And why should anyone presume anything?

"Plotters plan atrocity "Bigger than 7/7" Scream headlines .

No s**t Sherlock. Whoever heard of some bunch of idiots terrorist suspects sitting round talking and saying "We should try to do something maybe 1/2 as big as 7/7" and his mate replying "That's a bit ambitious, but I reckon 20% is possible."

b***ocks. So far no one has What I want to see is the list of arrests and convictions brought about solely by uncontrolled monitoring by the SS.

Because my instinct is that most if not all of those arrests were already in the process due to suspicious purchases, viewing of monitored websites or people in their community reporting them to the Police.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Civil servants can't be trusted to stay in their remit

"In this particular case, if you'd said "First Division Association civil servants can't be trusted" your title would have been closer. But almost nobody would have understood it, "

True.

In hindsight I should have included the word senior in heading. And of course I've no idea if Intelligence and Security Service senior managers are members of the First Division Association.

"There are lots of perfectly decent people out there. Some of them are civil serpents."

No doubt. And if I few more in this situation were of that type we would not be having this discussion

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: alain williams Secret laws

""I feel very uncomfortable about talk of secret laws......" Yes, 'cos RIPA was a complete secret, hidden from the public and never debated in Parliament, right? "

I think the previous poster was talking about the US situation with FISA and their so-called "court."

OTOH You pointed out that RIPA has no jurisdiction over the actions of the SS or GCHQ.

So they are quite literally beyond British law, althouth the fact that most of this information has been collected without any evidence suggests in any other context it would be illegal.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Old News ...... @Titus

"On your other point personally I would trade a degree of privacy to stop at least some of the bad things."

Why should they ask to take part of what they already have all of? Do you not get why most people find that somewhat annoying?

"Impassioned rants on Internet forums may have no effect whatsoever."

That's "will have no effect whatsoever."

On a personal basis only directly contacting the relevant representative will begin to make a difference. Judging their response and deciding will you support them at the next election. Letters to national or regional newspapers when they write the (rare) articles covering this subject. Practically switching ISPs and service providers to non US suppliers and moving to end to end encryption and not even considering going to "T'Cloud."

"Civil Servants want to go to work (and keep their job) then go home (as early as possible) and I can't quite see how the manic spy on and arrest everybody fits."

Funny how you tend to miss the part about senior civil servants out, isn't it?

I always mean the Oxbridge, fast track PPE graduates (except in the case of the former head of GCHQ who did particle physics) who did or do head up MI5/MI6/GCHQ and whatever SOCA is called now. Not the field agents or desk analysts, the types who decide "policy" and who always somehow get promoted (even when the last project was rubbish). People with no technical background, but a desire to preside over an ever larger fiefdom, ever higher salary and ever larger pension.

"I tend to think that "nations don't have friends or enemies...nations only have interests?"......."

True. But really this debate has nothing to do with spying on other governments it's about spying on populations (their own and others) who present no threat to anyone.

They are being spied on because during some moments of fear (12 and 8 years ago respectively now) weak minded politicians gave into their BS about "Let us do this and we will catch them before another outrage occurs." Despite the fact that problem is effectively impossible to solve.

But really, it's because they can. The tech exists and they wanted to use it.

I'll just repeat the rough numbers in the UK. 2000 "Jihadist" suspects (out of a population of c66m) . 57 dead in 7/7/05 (I cannot find a cost figure for the collateral damage, which would be interesting) and £500m/yr to the ISPs to run the visible part of the spying system.

That's £8.77m a life saved or £250k a suspect to watch. 50-70 is also about the number of deaths from a)Botched DIY in the UK (ROSPA) or farmyard accidents (ROSPA).

And BTW suspects in the 7/7/05 and Lee Rigby events were already known to the SS before they committed their offenses, which are all criminal and arrestable.

On a personal note Titus I'm curious why do you bother posting? As a true cynic you seem to feel all of this is "Just what spy agencies do." So no real point in making a fuss. And as a true cynic you don't think anything can or will changes, so just keep your head down because, afters all, you have nothing to hide.

Or am I missing some part of your motivation?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: This secret law shit has to stop

" it occurs to me that all this might be some sort of terrorist-creation program "

While it all certainly helps the bit one in this area is your charming holiday home in Cuba.

A study of the 38 year period of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland found that "internment without trial" as the British called it, was a highly effective recruiting tool for both sides of the conflict.

To any country that claims to abide by the "Rule of Law" this is an offense.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: DEFCON

"The FEDS are going to go to DEFCON this year, they are going to be sitting outside photographing everyone"

You forgot listening by over riding peoples mobiles phones.

Planet-busting British space bullet ready to bomb ice moon Europa

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

M1 is a bit slow for orbital entry.

If one of your goals is to eliminate any pesky parachutes and other decellerators.

Mars (for example) with an atmospheric pressure of 0.1% that of Earth is not likely to slow it down much from orbital velocity.

Venus is interesting. It's real hot so there's nowhere to dump the heat to and the atmosphere is very corrosive. So a fast entry might stop the capsule being eaten before it gets to bury itself in the ground and if it gets deep enough to start dumping heat into the soil.

Transmitting data back may be a bit difficult.

Thumbs up for this. But remember this is still low TRL. It's a long way from flight test.

Anon Coward votes not counting towards pretty badges

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Anon Coward votes not counting towards pretty badges

"My thought is that sometimes when a person wants to post something which is closely linked to their specialist subject they can't use their real identity due to possible problems with their employer.

Obviously I am bringing this up on behalf of the community as a whole not because some of my best (IMHO) posts have been as an AC..."

It seems a fair rule to me. The badges are partly # of posts and I think the Gold entries are a personal selection by the staff. Not number of down votes or up votes (but it's been along time since I read the email introducing them).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@TeeCee

"Yes, I would also miss the regular game of "upvote the Eadon slapdown"."

Sadly no more.

Thumbs down and Comments

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: Thumbs down and Comments

"As a frequent receiver of "Thumbs Downs", and yes I admit to the fact that I push things in that direction, I would like people to be forced to give a comment as to why they have given the negative feedback."

An admirable and instructive idea.

Sadly this is a British website and that, and the somewhat low social skills of IT staff can make getting such coherent feedback difficult.

"Also I often get the impression that there are some commentards who go on "Thumbs Down" missions whereby they will actively search out any of your posts in order to click that famous red thumb."

Had that experience. I've even wondered if some of these trolls have automated the process.

"What the fuck people, if you don't agree with someone at least have the courage to say why or give a counter arguement. "

True. Of course the question is could they provide a counter argument? Or has tweaking their (metaphorical) tail caused a "pacifier ejection event?" :-)

"Thinking out of the box is one of the luxuries that we still retain, don't lose it...."

Agreed.

What happened to Eadon??

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: What happened to Eadon??

"I'm all for free speech. As an internet troll I am doubly cautious about the idea of "censorship from the powers that be" on websites. "

Yes. That's the problem.

Everyone is on someone's death list. Once people start banning where does it stop?

It seems even I have made a few enemies despite my usually good natured posts. :-) .

However picking a fight with an article author is about as wise as a defendant picking a fight with a judge in their courtroom. You're likely to get a quick lesson in what the phrase "I am the law" actually means. I've only ever had one posting for borderline libel. I think it would have skated if I'd just included "allegedly."

It's Monday (so I'm hopeful) that Eadon will reform, rejoin under another identity and no one ever realizes it's him.

Well it could happen.....

Why Helium

John Smith 19 Gold badge

IIRC big weather balloon payloads *are* hydrogen.

I f you want to take a metric ton of prototype Xray or gamma ray telescope to the edge of space you need something pretty substantial and if swept up further (the outer atmosphere can expand and contract by a factor of 10) it can burst and down comes your hardware. This needs a big balloon and on that scale H2 is a much better deal.

I'm not sure if they tank it in or generate on site however. On site GH2 generation is quite simple (with the right materials) and highly controllable. None of the starting materials are a gas either.

Lewis Page: Space Marine

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Lewis Pages.

Well....

I think US company "Space Adventures" organized most of the trips to the ISS but I'm not sure how many free seats Russia has left

By "free" I mean available. IIRC the stated price was $20m but most who went have claimed actual prices are a bit lower (but not saying how much).

Aside from spending 3 days in a chair (if they use the "standard," rather than fast docking process) you'll also need to have about 18 months free to train in Russia and a working knowledge of the Russian language would certainly help and may be mandatory (I suspect Lewis may have have acquired this already).

Of course 18 months is an awful lot of global warming stories to not cover....

Pure boffinry: We peek inside Nokia's miracle cameraphone

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If it's easy *anyone* can do it.

It's tough to push the limits and this thing does.

Now if you could only dump Windows....

But thumbs up for some serious technical trickery.

Unmasked: Euro ISPs raided in downloads strangle probe

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

1 - Lots of providers probably have over-capacity networks

WTF?

2 - A few chose to deal with this by managing traffic, on any parts of any network owned/operated by them, from certain competitors giving it a lower priority on those areas of the network thus making competitors x,y and z look shoddy.

How is Cogent a competitor? How big are these companies US operations?

Cubesats to go interplanetary with tiny plasma drives

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Nick Ryan

"Generally speaking, it would have to be a dish style communications method, "

No. AMSAT have quite a lot of history doing radio relay using ribbon aerials, essentially multiple steel tape measures unrolling in orbit. With minimal loads on them they can unroll to 10m easily. Operating in the 2GHz band you can get substantial gain from such a design.

"However the smaller the dish (generally the tighter the "beam" as a result and the lower tolerances) the more accurate the direction needs to be to hit the target"

No. Bigger the dish, tighter the beam. Smoother the dish above the transmission wavelength the better, but strictly it's how accurately it fits the curve that matters.

"I believe this is similar to the problem where smaller consumer satellite dishes have to be more accurately aligned."

True.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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I'll have a go at some of those questions.

Being so tiny the power level is 10W, not 10Kw and the thrust is 2mn, with a 20mn "burst" mode.

The design is actually a 3 cubesat unit, which allows space for swing out solar panels. IIRC the current record for these is 43% but at huge expense. That would be around 670W at Earths orbit,

This is a proof of concept for JPL so part of the experiment is what level of comms can you put on a 3U cubesat and get a decent data rate. JPL spent a lot of effort developing much smaller RF telemetry for things like their DS1 probe. Others have used the guts of mobile phones.

Steering could use electro magnets to re-shape the field and deflect the plasma but that's likely to be expensive. At this size you can change the attitude of the whole probe, using things like magnotorquers interacting with the Earths magnetic field (or later the Suns field), or Control Moment Gyros (if you can get them small enough) which are spun up on Earth (high power) and only need low power to deflect their access (exerting a counter force that shifts the probe axis)

As regard experiments well studying deep space conditions in terms of radiation, solar wind etc. If they fly in formation you can start to map fields over larger areas with more accuracy. Gamma ray sensors have been used to identify elements on the surface and map water deposit.

If this comes up you could change the way JPL does exploration totally. If it works instead of 1 launch a decade they could be looking at 1 JPL launch per commercial launch, because with an engine, once it's in orbit it can start to change orbit. Instead of one bet-the-budget launch of a new probe multiple launches can carry multiple copies for better map building of phenomena. Designs can be refined with a 1 instrument on 1 cubesat philosophy. If it's ready it launches, if not it does not.

It may be a light step, but it's a bold step.

UK.gov fines itself harshly for hurling NHS records to the winds

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Another victory for bean couters.

ICO.

Name the f**king company so people can know a)Who does cheap deals b)Who will pimp out your data to anyone they can. Otherwise this is an accounting excercise. And you can bet NHS England will lawyer up and spend another few £100k fighting this case.

Actions without consequences --> BAU.

Of course as a public body isn't the ICO subject to FOI requests?

ElReg would you care to name the outfit?

Universal Credit: ONLY 6 job centres to get new dole system in October

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"the whole service will have to rely on clerical data entry, "

Why do I feels some of these scum managers will see "feature" not bug.

Universal Credit? Universal DISCREDIT, more like, say insiders

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"HP, Accenture, Capgemini and IBM." According to ComputerWeekly

It all begins to come clear.

Good point about agile contracts (Set time and cost, but not features)

But it seems they were "waterfall" contracts.

Guess what. Waterfall contract (all stages, budgets and features agreed on day 1) --> waterfall development.

Who would have thunk it?

And holy s**t costs £2Bn --> £12.8Bn.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Re: The governments policy@ Tom Welsh

" BR managed a few hits (like the HST), but only because Brunel had laid the tracks straight almost a hundred years earlier, and on routes like NE-SW they built the HSTs but then failed to straighten the line."

Wrong.

Brunel did not lay "straight track. He laid flat track that avoided hills as much as possible because trains (in his day) were rubbish at gradients and flattening hill without JCBs needed 1000s of Irishmen and was a general PITA.

Old solutions become new problems and HST's genius was accommodating high speed using the existing track, not the TGV solution of simply laying a new straighter network.

Should you have any interest in the real reasons why BR was so s**t I'd suggest "Blueprint for Bankruptcy" by EA Gibbins.

Please feel free to continue your rant.

Yes it's an anorak.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

AC@09:25

" Sometimes I think it would be good for the public sector to sell up to the private sector for almost anything and then reintroduce services piecemeal and properly."

Not really been keeping up with this have you?

Most UK public sector work is outsourced already.

Software development being a big part of this.

The actual software for this is not in fact being developed by civil servants by the oligopoly of conslutants we call "The Usual Suspects."

The results are as you see them.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Whoopsie.

"Who cares? Minimum wage is just a twisted way of keeping a whole set of jobs off the market."

Your PoV may depend on wheather you're talking about the US or the UK "Minimum wage."

They are not the same.

JPL wants to fire a laser at MARS!

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

why and how.

Why. Better distance measurement --> better values for anything that changes with distance. So tighter distance measurement (and presumably tighter range rate measurement) means having to carry less reserves for spacecraft going there. Obviously this would count for more if going to Saturn and Jupiter but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

How. The article points out they can use COTS lasers for this. It's the receivers that have to work hard. I'll take a wake and filter spec will be very tight to ignore most ambient light and they will use some kind of lockin detection to.

There's lots of subtle problems here. Constant offsets can be cancelled out but things like the Earths atmosphere are constantly changing (the biggest correction in GPS is for pulse delay through the ionosphere. The civilian code uses a model, the military system uses 2 frequencies to give something like 10x the accuracy).

Thumbs up for this. I suspect this will enable a whole lot of stuff to be improved.

Pity about the shark though....

Boeing batteries back under spotlight as 787 burns at Heathrow

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Comets and bean-counters

"In a sense, the Comet crashes were the result of penny-pinching. The engineers had come up with an elaborate (and expensive) technique for fixing the panels together which involved chemical bonding, drilling and riveting. The bean-counters then stepped in and decided to cut costs. After all, we're joining two bits of metal together. What's complicated about that? What could possibly go wrong? Their solution was to omit the chemical bonding and then bang in a load of self-piercing rivets (basically nailing it together). Sure they left a few cracks around the sides of the rivets, but think of all the money saved! Of course, when it all came apart at 35000 feet, the engineers got blamed for not anticipating this, and not building in enough margin of strength to allow for it."

It started long before that. De Havilland wanted to keep the engine work in the group.

Trouble was they did not have a decent sized engine to do this. So they reduced the wall thickness a lot. Not quite tin foil but not much thicker.

DH then were terrified Boeing would be in the market before them so they skipped the fatigue tests. And of course that saved quit a bit of money.

Bad idea as it turned out. . By the time they got their s**t together and fixed the problems Boeing was well entrenched. Couple that with Duncan Sandys death warrant to the UK miltary aircraft industry in 1957 and the rest is history.

DH always seemed to have a problem with their structures once they left plywood.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re. Screamliner

"I hereby request that this meme is used to refer to all future posts about the Dreamliner."

That's really unfair on Boeing, who will probably take years to live down this second problem.

Unfortunately for them "Screamliner" is damm funny.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Pirate

Meanwhile a shadowy international financier with an accent shorts Boeing stock *again*

It's important to ensure a good rate of return on ones investment. (...)

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Re: Looks a

""fun repair job on that.... no cutting the skin panels out and rivetting in some replacements

And just how far has the heat damage gone.....

"Nahh mate, few layers of fibreglass, bit of epoxy and a quick once over with some cans of paint and it'll be good as new. No one will know it ever happened. Knock a bit off for cash? Don't see why not."

New draft cybersecurity law: US Senate hits ctrl-alt-del, reboot

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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NIST have a handbook on computer security.

Perhaps one day someone might IDK read it?

I'm kidding of course.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"the security and resiliency of public and private communications and information networks"

Hahahahahahahaha.

But not of course, the privacy of those networks.

So BAU then.

Do you know what you're fighting to preserve?

Will there be anything left when you've "won" ?

"No comment" on Alex Salmond Seaside Shenanigans Ravings?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"20GW" should have set alarm bells ringing from day 1.

Well it looks damm big, but what parts were they planning to dam?

I'll also notice that hydroelectric systems (if the dam is properly constructed) can last indefinitely.

Hoover dam anyone? Around the century mark now I think.

Well Alex you should have know that no one was going to put serious wonga on the table without a thorough investigation to prove that assertion of yours.

On the general topic of "Free Scotia" they wanted to join the Euro, now reckon that's pants so can they please keep the Pound? Alex seems to want a sort of "pick and mix" constitution and economy, part of the UK when it suits him, and not when it doesn't.

I think it's time for prudent Scots people to start looking through all of his promises, assertions, aspirations and plans.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: "No comment" on Alex Salmond Seaside Shenanigans Ravings?

""Let El Reg continue to proudly offer ubiquitous comments"

It's just an experiment, don't panic.

C."

I'll admit I've been a member for years before I realized the forums were a separate section and i suspect you've been finding it a bit underused.

But putting comments straight by the article is better UI design and very convenient.

Now raising awareness of forums existing is a different thing.

When I saw the piece on Alex-the-Salmond I looked forward to being a first poster.

Now, not so much.

Asperger's and IT

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Aspergers and IT

"Eadon did know when to shut up. He didn't care. That's the difference; being an Aspie isn't a get out of Jail free card."

Interesting point. You wonder to what extent the condition controls their behavior and their behavior controls the condition.

I once had a co-worker who appeared to be bipolar. His effect on the staff around him (and his manager) was quite devastating. Wouldn't sit down, wouldn't shut up, no empathy etc.

I've always wondered if you could treat the symptoms and keep them under control who would be the personality underneath? How much of that character were simply his symptoms and how much him?

Curriculum Vitae - must rage

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Curriculum Vitae - must rage

It's interesting to get a perspective from someone who has to read these. Most of it seems like common sense to me. Which tends to mean it's very uncommon to actually see it in practice.

"Remember that this is your foot in the door - a paragraph to describe why you are right for the role, even if you don't strictly meet the entry criteria."

It's been my experience that employers seek someone who fits their requirements and will not bother to look at this. "What, he only has 18 months writing device drivers in assembly, I demand 2 years at least."

Hubble spots ALIEN NAVY world – and it's pelted with GLASS RAIN

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: If it's tidally locked .....

"Then wouldn't any atmospheric conditions settle down to an equilibrium state, with maybe a bit of mixing turbulance around the terminator line? "

With a temperature difference of 263c if there's an atmosphere (which it appears there is) there will definitely be winds.

Not so sure about the "glass rain" Pure silicates have mp even higher but actual window glass melts around 7-800c.

Like flying through permanent volcanic ash clouds.

And that's apart from the insurance premium of living there.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

"A planet with 100% beachfront property with perpetual hurricane weather. A perfect paradise to call Hades."

I vote we call it "Florida."

Microsoft: 'Google's secret government meetings let it avoid import ban' - Report

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"You can't play with *any* of my toys and they are *all* mine. No. No. No."

Is there anything much more embarrassing to watch than multi billion dollar corporations sound like badly parented pre teens?

First the Amazon/Apple whine fest now this.

I'd suggest the "look and feel" lawsuits of the early 80's started this s**t off.

One look at an Alto and that judge could have thrown everyone's claim about "originality" out the door, and them with it.

Analyst: Tests showing Intel smartphones beating ARM were rigged

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Build a benchmark using a compiler supplied by *one* of the companies being *tested*

And have the audacity to say it proves they are better?

Are you f**king kidding me?

Cockup theory says amateur hour benchmarking. Not too good for future credibility.

Conspiracy says someone (who I won't speculate on) was told "Make Intel look good."

They did.

Not too good for future credibility either.