Posts by Roger Greenwood

Britain collects new naval tanker a mere 18 months late

Re: Maggy what have we done...

Money - it's a hit

Microsoft Germany says Windows 7 already unfit for business users

Re: Planned adolescence...

Nailed it. Most adolescents are not fit for work either.

AWS, you crack us up. Rebrands Westminster 'Webminster'

Re: And of course...

But he used the Duckfield Lewisham method - not allowed on a Thursday.

Meat pies in SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Please tell me it was "Operation Growler"

With the tagline "Leaving the Earths' crust"

Lib Dems to oppose porn checks in Blighty's Digital Economy Bill

The more publicity this gets . . .

. .the more idiots will start using VPNs etc. If such folk wise up to also deleting their browser history as well it makes gathering evidence in criminal cases so much more difficult. At the moment they probably form the "low hanging fruit" for the police in all sorts of cases (e.g. Thomas Mair). Unintended consequences etc.

'Data saturation' helped to crash the Schiaparelli Mars probe

Margaret Hamilton faced this kind of problem . .

. . many moons ago.

Fascinating story here https://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/

Antivirus tools are a useless box-ticking exercise says Google security chap

" . . was not evidence . . "

Sounds like trying to argue with bomb 20

We're going to have to start making changes or the adults will do it for us

At the end of the day . . .

. . .life is too short to stuff a mushroom.

James Dyson's new startup: A university for engineers that doesn't suck

Re: Sounds like...

Exactly.

During my apprenticeship mumble years ago, we used to get folk on sandwich courses turn up for a few weeks in the summer. Some were 4 or 5 years older than us and utterly clueless (generally, not just the work). Can't beat time on the job alongside the classroom to keep you grounded.

Hell Desk's 800 number was perfect for horrible heavy-breathing harassment calls

Re: From the Archives...

I've tried that - no one rings the landline except scammers do they?

Try "Code In . . . . " a few times then ask them to hold.

If any idiot can do it, we're heading in the right direction

Re: Transceiver lifespan

Thank you - interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-aluminium_intermetallic

Also http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0038110170901723 but you have to pay (article from 1970)

Topless in-car selfie attempt climaxes with rear-end bonking

I was thinking more along the lines of the radar being switched off, but go for it.

Adventures in (re) naming your business: Fire up the 4-syllable random name generator

Brand names are tricky

When I first saw the name "Yahoo" I laughed, but look at it now.

Good God, we've found a Google thing we like – the Pixel iPhone killer

Well you can piss right off - I know the start of a Vogon poem when I see one.

British trio win Nobel prize for physics

Top boffins never retire, they just go off the payroll:- http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2016/03/founding-uncs-computer-science-department-was-an-experiment-but-it-paid-off-for-fred-brooks

But is it safe? Uncork a bottle of vintage open-source FUD

Yup, you only have to look at file formats to see how that pans out. I have 20 to 25 year old CAD drawings here with no software to read them anymore (Looking at you, Autodesk). The things we made from the drawings are still in service and will be for some time.

In years gone by every time I did a PLC program I kept a hardcopy printout - they survived longer than the equipment to do the programming and associated tapes.

Earliest ever recording of computer-generated music is restored

If they have the program . . .

. why didn't they just re-run it with a better speaker?

Virgin Media costs balloon by MEEELLIONS in wake of Brexit

Re: Note to editors

Thanks for reaching out.

Autonomous vehicles inquiry set up in the UK

"nigh on impossible for a human"

But humans don't always react according to their training and are often influenced by "lubrication" to do the wrong or unsafe thing. I would expect that the machine is programmed to "fail safe", however inconvenient it may seem at the time. Fascinating to see how this develops and how much effort is put into coping with unexpected inputs compared to making the thing go.

My Dell merger wish list

"now why did that happen?"

And when it doesn't work, we apply the WHIP (what haven't I pressed?)

Ireland taxman: Apple got NO favours from us, at all, at all

They may not pay much tax . . .

. . but I bet they tip well.

Paper mountain, hidden Brexit: How'd you say immigration control would work?

Re: 20-23 pages for EU citizens

We like you too. How's your sense of humour?

DVLA misses out on £400m in tax after scrapping paper discs

Re: This should be one of the easiest taxes to collect ...

Even better launch a game - take a picture of a car registration with your phone, check against DVLA database and if it comes back "no tax" or wrong model/colour etc then automatically report location and time to local enforcement. I could have field day in the local multi-storey. Sort of real world pokemon.

Thieves can wirelessly unlock up to 100 million Volkswagens, each at the press of a button

Re: In the 70's

Ah the old Ford takeaway - my mate had one that I could open with a Morris Ital key.

Web pages, Word docs, PDF files, fonts – behold your latest keys to infecting Windows PCs

Windows Journal is crap as well

"The file format that's used by Windows Journal (Journal Note File, or JNT) has been demonstrated to be susceptible to many security exploits. Therefore, Windows Journal will be removed from all versions of Microsoft Windows soon."

More here:-

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3161102

Zen loses its chill: UK biz ISP falls offline for four hours and counting

Re: Argggh

Same here - all connection issues at home are down to "that dodgy wi-fi" or me.

With regard to Zen, they get top marks from me for reliability over many years.

What keeps former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani awake at night?

Point to point . . .

or walky talkys as we used to call them.

An anniversary to remember: The world's only air-to-air nuke was fired on 19 July, 1957

July 19th - the day the ice age ended:-

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=138515152830639&id=375976384677

Shelfware wars should be conceded, admits Microsoft compliance boss

The future . . .

. . . is pay for use, not per licence or per install. That's real use - a better analogy would be renting an aircraft - I pay for flight hours not hanger hours, that way we can control the costs and be more flexible with workloads. Small businesses need to know the costs, that's why they often still use forms of HP (hire purchase). I know some suppliers do this already but not enough and I know this is not so good for the supplier, but they can aggregate etc. Innovate or die.

As an aside, we dumped Microsoft for all business/office software some years ago partly due to fears of an audit - the terms were so arcane and obscure we felt it was impossible to prove compliance unless starting again - so we did!

Student Loans Company burns £50 million in IT project superfail

Re: How the fec....?

"Could we please have some sackings."

No.

It was a long time ago.

People move around.

etc

UK.gov's hated Care.data project binned

Just rebrand it data.care - sorted.

Europe's UK-backed Unified Patent Court 'could be derailed'

It would be more viable as "Europe" rather than "EU" - over time allowing more countries to join as they like (think Eurovision with less noise).

Gun-jumping French pols demand rapid end to English in EU

"GPS is often of little help finding an address much outside Dublin"

All you have to do is ask.

You might not get where you want to go straight away, but the chat will be entertaining.

GPS works fine, but google doesn't yet know everything - try finding "Thovnock" on a map.

Hey cloud lawyer: Can I take my client list with me?

It was so much simpler . . .

. . with a roladex and a filofax.

BOFH: Follow the paper trail

"black A4 photocopy paper"

Sweet.

Sneaky brown dwarf gives us a bright flash and astroboffins are confused

240.6667 Hiltons

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html

Let's play: 'IT values or hipster folk band?'

Still my favourite so far:-

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/05/siemens_healthcare_madness/

Do you have a 'co-working mindset' and 'ephemerally involve others' in work?

Re: Lock-in

" . . will probably be incompatible when they release a new version."

Which is why the description includes "ephemeral" ("Short lived, transitory" according to my dictionary). We've been warned.

Meet the man who owns his own piece of the internet

If I was him . .

I'd buy .head

'Impossible' EmDrive flying saucer thruster may herald new theory of inertia

It was on a recent UK TV program (Horizon?). I seem to recall the tests in Germany did measure some thrust. Unfortunately when they rotated the thing 90 degrees, the thrust stayed in the same direction! So obviously it's an anti-gravity machine :-)

BT hauled into Old Bailey after engineer's 7-metre fall broke both his ankles

Re: Questions to be asked/answered

"proper risk assesment"

As per UK HSE rules, the fact that the accident happened is proof that the risk assessment or associated control measures were not adequate. The court case is therefore to apportion blame and penalties.

NASA prepares to unpack pump-up space podule

There's only one soundtrack to this . .

Brothers and sisters!

Pump up the volume

Pump that beam

Prof Hawking to mail postage-stamp space craft to Alpha Centauri using frickin' lasers

Agree - I had the same thought - blink and you miss it, no way to stop.

Reusable autonomous swimming microbots soak up 95% of spilt lead

I can just imagine them being launched:-

"Eat lead, suckers"

Water treatment plant hacked, chemical mix changed for tap supplies

Many water companies who abstract ground water (like ST) use superchlorination - they add a lot of chlorine to guarantee to kill any bugs then reduce the chlorine levels before it hits supply, without needing an intermediate tank/reservoir - it goes straight down the pipe. A mechanical/electrical failure at any point in the dosing system could allow high chlorine levels to get through to supply without the system getting hacked.

What to call a £200m 15,000-tonne polar vessel – how about Boaty McBoatface?

Two things

1. It was Usain Boat (also brilliant)

2. My serious vote was for Eric Melrose Brown (who also explored the limits of man and machine).

Flying blind: F-35's radar software fails in the air

I like to think that the pilots all carry a paper clip to be unfolded in an emergency.

Photographer hassled by Port of Tyne for filming a sign on a wall

Re: Photo competition

. . . and one of the judges is Port of Tyne Director of corporate affairs.

http://www.reflect-tyne.com/judges/susan-wear/index.php

Windows 10 claimed another point of desktop share in February

1% rise is a jump?

More of a crawl in my world.

ICO fined cold-call firm £350k – so directors put it into liquidation

Good luck with that - LTD = limited liability and they probably already have the successor up and running. Prodial never filed any accounts it was that new.