coincidence?
I noticed that gnucash.org was offline yesterday too ... could this be just a coincidence?
Posts by Version 1.0
5416 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009
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Barclays online banking falls over in outage riddle
'Dated and cheesy' Aero ripped from Windows 8
Monday 21st May 2012 16:22 GMT 
Dated and Cheesy
Nope - it was that when it was released ... seriously - does anyone think that metro is going to make inroads into the main commercial installed base?
The UI is getting to be really stupid for many applications - I was watching the teller at my bank entering a deposit last week ... keyboard, mouse, keyboard, mouse, keyboard, mouse, cashdraw, mouse, keyboard, mouse .... print receipt ... duh!
Virgin straps on phone masts for the flying upper classes
Tuesday 15th May 2012 19:13 GMT 
No worries mate.
It's a satellite link - which means a round trip delay of about 500ms in the call - which if I remember correctly from the 70's when most of my transatlantic calls were via satellite links - is just long enough to make a long conversation miserable. And that's before you have a couple of drinks....
I did try the Lufthansa satellite data link when they were running that and while it was acceptable for browsing, checking your mail via IMAP was so slow (I assume due to the link delay) that it was mostly unusable.
Indian callers could see bills DOUBLE after spectrum auction chaos
Apple blocking Dropbox SDK over in-app buying
GCSE, A-level science exams ARE dumbed down - watchdog
Wednesday 2nd May 2012 17:37 GMT
Who gets the job interview?
My standard interview is very simple - I chat with them, ask them what they've read recently and what they thought about it - then I give them a simple two chip analogue schematic from one of our products and ask them to tell me how it works... it's basically the same interview technique that I received when I applied for (and got) a job at Dolby Labs in the early 70's testing Dolby "A" modules.
Almost every single applicant fails.
Facebook button triggers tidal wave of human organs
Google Street View Wi-Fi data slurper named
Freed Facebook hack Brit vents fury at $200k cleanup claim
Monday 30th April 2012 10:18 GMT
Cleanup costs
Cleanup costs are almost always exaggerated - you can't prosecute someone successfully if you have to admit that they gained access due to a dumb coding error or stupid server permission that took all of ten minutes to fix ...
So you add in the costs of the backups, the maintenance, the fact that the backup restore didn't work so you had to rebuild the server, and the costs to review your code to "check" that other security issues had not been uncovered ... and then you call in the security consultant and charge that cost to them too .... and finally send the bill to the insurance company. If you've padded it enough then you may even make money! Getting hacked can be a profit center.
Ted Nugent fined for failing to kill bear
LinkedIn edges closer to China with new Hong Kong gaff
Wednesday 25th April 2012 20:41 GMT
Re: SpammedIn
I've been on LinkedIn for a long time and it was once quite useful but recently I've started getting "invitations" for people that I've never heard of and don't know ... I've started to think of LinkedIn as a swingers party that the London Marathon is running through - not nearly as much fun as it was when it started.
Tunbridge Wells' car park bonking offered new NFC logo
El Reg posts dirty pics for old computer buffs
Nokia drops Lumia 900 price to $0 in response to bug outrage
AT&T to allow unlocking of out-of-contract iPhones
Saturday 7th April 2012 10:39 GMT
Phony Economics
I have an unlocked phone - paid full price for it originally - that costs me $50/month via T-Mobile. The phone cost me $500 originally (Nexus S) and the 2 year contract plan wanted $110/month to give me a "free" phone. So my "free" phone would actually cost me $1440!
There's no reason to ever buy a contract/locked phone - unless you want to throw money at the phone company for some reason.
Windows 3.1 rebooted: Microsoft's DOS destroyer turns 20
Friday 6th April 2012 11:57 GMT 
Fsck Word
I'll use Word if I have to but when you compare it to what WordPerfect can do, Word is a really crappy word processor - more like a mincing machine than a word processor. It was a stinking pile of shite then and it still is - a monument to programmers who had to look up kerning in a book and then implemented it while playing Solitaire in the background.
WordPerfect isn't "perfect" by a long way - but it's a tool several orders of magnitude better than Word.
Viacom's anti-Google copyright case rises from the dead
Thursday 5th April 2012 21:15 GMT
East Texas missed out on this one!
"a reasonable jury could find that YouTube had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing activity on its website." ... that would be an East Texas jury I guess?
The DMCA requires take down when notified - and given that there seems little doubt the Viacom et al were uploading a goodly number of videos this is going to be a tough sell long term to show that YouTube "should have known" that the crap they were getting was illegal.
It's YouTube for crying out loud - the biggest repository of dung since the Dinosaurs died off.
Watchdog sniffs David Beckham's wedding tackle
Star's guts turned INSIDE OUT in supernova mega-blast
O2 Wi-Fi slips into McDonalds, steals The Cloud's lunch
Cable-cutting rogue engineer caused ultra fast broadband havoc
China purges coup rumours from social media
China's budget handset makers facing mass cull
Saturday 31st March 2012 10:20 GMT
Eventually it all falls down
The writings been there for a long time - when I was in Beijing about 5 years ago I bought a few of their consumer products from the market stores for research. After returning home and stripping them down it was clear that they were heading for disaster because the quality of the workmanship was terrible and eventually the user is going to notice that the USB stick that tells the operating system that it's got 4Gb of storage can't actually store more than 512kB of data.
I'm still unconvinced that China is going to survive in the long term once the countryside starts to want what the cities have.
Top Italian OPERA boffin steps down after faster-than-light mistake
Goldman Sachs in email muppet hunt
Force Google to black out searches in new privacy law - MPs
Cameron's 'Google Review' sparked by killer quote that never was
Wednesday 21st March 2012 13:42 GMT
The sentiment is accurate
I started my own company in the USA - it's not a big one but we have a nice market share and I have to agree with the feeling that the "quote" expresses. There's no way that I could have started my company in the UK (where I lived for 25 years) - but it's got nothing to do with IP ...
1. UK banks are generally uninterested in lending money to start-up companies.
2. The UK has a maze of regulations that you have to comply with to start a company.
3. If you need tech people - engineers, designers etc - they are simply not generally available.
I could go on ...
Testicle-boiling new iPad ignites fanboi fury
Now CHINA complains of surge in cyber-attacks
Wednesday 21st March 2012 08:57 GMT
drop all
I stopped logging incoming packets a long time ago - I just drop them all unless it's a port I need. I really see no point in day to day inspection of the contents of the sewer.
As far as the Chinese attack numbers go - I doubt that they are any different from other governmental organizations and are probably missing a whole bunch of attacks - if anything their numbers look low to me.
Lightsquared cries dyslexic Havoc, unleashes 'gods of law'
Wednesday 14th March 2012 17:24 GMT
I'm still baffled
How did LightSquared get this plan up and running in the first place - even a moments thought by any competent engineer would suggest that there could be some big problems with the implementation. I guess they just started off with a good business plan and ran it from there.
After all why let reality interfere (sic) when you've got a business plan that the money likes?
LYING iPhone 4S mobes claim 4G connection on 3G network
MYSTERY programming language found in Duqu
Thursday 8th March 2012 16:51 GMT
Not FORTRAN or COBOL then?
Realistically, given the likely provenance of these babies, if I was running the project then the first thing I'd do would be write a language specifically for them ... after all, if it's a government project then money isn't going to be a big issue. And a virus^H^H^H^H^H payload specific language would offer significant advantages.
Mammoths, sabre-tooths MURDERED by second giant space boulder
Metro breakdown! Windows 8 UI is little gain for lots of pain
Microsoft's Azure cloud down and out for 8 hours
Wednesday 29th February 2012 11:10 GMT 
Sooner or later
All clouds die ... all software crashes ... and hardware fails. It's just the way things are so quit bitching about it and go down the pub and have a beer, play scrabble, chat up the girl in the cubicle next to you, go out to lunch.
Chances are it will be back up again soon and then you can get back to work - enjoy the moment.
NASA sniffs little black hole's 20-million-MPH wind
Researchers propose ‘overclock’ scheme for mobiles
Wednesday 22nd February 2012 11:27 GMT
Re: Flawed premise
Exactly! - the answer of course is to use smaller electrons! I always keep a battery in the 'fridge for long phone calls and have found remarkable increases in phone life when using the thermally smaller electrons.
I've been selling these "ultra-cold" batteries on the Internet for a while - and making a tidy packet from them ...
'Predictably random' public keys can be cracked - crypto boffins
Friday 17th February 2012 04:21 GMT
Re: Cheap solution
Pretty typical - and unfortunately it's probably not nearly as random as you think. People love to come up with these pseudo-random seed ideas but virtually never actually sit down and test their method to check their values approximate to "random"
Of course - a lot depends on what you need the random number for - in many cases "good enough" is actually fine for the original design needs - and then someone reuses the function later on for an application that it's actually worth someones while to break.
Thursday 16th February 2012 16:33 GMT
Let's go back 60 years ...
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." - John Von Neumann, 1951
It's not a new problem ... about the first thing I was taught in statistics ("A" level when that actually meant something) was that the term is pseudo-random numbers ... calling them "random" was a guarantee of the imminent meeting of a chalk board eraser and my head.
Sensitive council data sent to hundreds via PERSONAL EMAIL
Thursday 16th February 2012 11:54 GMT
Re: Re: AGAIN?
Yes - AGAIN ... because there are no real penalties for it ... Oh sure - you can fine someone, somewhere but that's about it - they've no real incentive to not do it again and the cow orkers just shrug - no lessons learned and really why should they bother?
On the other hand, hack the system and send out the same email and you're looking at personal fines on the individual and jail time.
LibreOffice debugs and buffs up to v.3.5
Child abuse files stolen from council worker in PUB - £100k fine
Doctors sick of anonymous-coward NHS feedback commentards
Hollywood gathers to pick over Limewire’s corpse
'We're totally in LA pissing people off'
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
