Posts by Rich 11

Motion detectors: say hello, wave goodbye and… flushhhhhh

Re: "the smartphone will need to install and run a specific scanning app and media player"

You already have an unknown name

Rubbish! They're very well known. I buy all my handbags from them.

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

It may be hard for you to follow but everyone else seems to be coping quite well.

Patch blues-day: Microsoft yanks code after some PCs are rendered super secure (and unbootable) following update

Re: t's best to try them on a test machine before allowing them anywhere near production

Useless advice - are we now supposed to keep parallel, identical computers running?

I do. They're not identical in terms of content or scale but they are identical in installed software and general configuration. They're close enough to be a canary in the coal mine, for my software development QA as well as for vendor patches and upgrades. I accept it might not be achievable in everyone's environment, and certainly not even in all of mine all of the time, but I always aim to get such an arrangement agreed in the original project plans and budgeted for. If the project manager or the beancounters turn it down and something subsequently goes wrong, my arse is covered.

Woman calls cops on shadowy baddie barricaded in bathroom... to discover: Roomba gone rogue

I have learnt the little sod's foibles

It's got you well-trained, then.

How does it lock the door behind it?

Telekinesis.

Free online tax filing? Yeah, that'll soon be illegal thanks to rare US Congressional unity

Re: Oh, it's a new tax year here in the UK

Except it didn't actually cost £0

OK, so on average it cost each of us £10-15 a year, or whatever that actually works out to when spread across the population with an income. And if you're earning less than the personal tax allowance it only cost you a thousandth* or so of whatever you paid in indirect taxes in a year. Sounds like money well spent to me.

*I've no idea what it costs to run PAYE but £700m out of the Government's annual spending of ~£700bn should be on the right order of magnitude.

Re: If ever...

Does anyone know if the cost of the privatised tax filing service is tax-deductible?

Are brown dwarfs stars or planets? Boffins find evidence for proto-suns in a solar system

Re: Surrounded

How about outflanked?

MoD plonks down £2m on table in exchange for anti-drone tech ideas

Re: Throw money at the problem?

I'm thinking of a biplane and a very large butterfly net. Maybe several biplanes. Call them Vulture Squadron.

I know what EU did last summer: Official use of Microsoft wares to be probed over slurp fears

Re: My Workstation, My Data

the inevitable trudge towards DaaS

Death as a Service?

You were warned and you didn't do enough: UK preps Big Internet content laws

Re: OK, Zuck...

the whole human race is being weakened for a reason

Harvesting.

Re: Meh...

Do you think they wouldn't be worried to lose the UK market?

The UK is all set to make it's own market smaller in four days' time, so there'll be less for FB and Gooooogle to worry about losing.

Overzealous n00b takes out point-of-sale terminals across the UK on a Saturday afternoon

When was the last time your over-zealous attempt to fix a problem back-fired heavily?

Well, there was that time when I got so pissed off with my creations that I drowned them, babies and all. I thought I was doing the right thing by letting one good, righteous man and his family survive, along with a bunch of animals, but no sooner had the waters gone down than he got drunk and flashed his willy at his kids. Useless tosspot.

As the UK updates its .eu Brexit advice yet again, an alternative hovers into view

Re: About to join the queue

Try and focus on the positives

Yes, definitely do that if you've just been diagnosed with cancer and your first course of therapy starts in three weeks. Don't forget to bring your own radioisotope.

i

Only real registrants can have one.

I expect to have many, many applicants for my .imaginary TLD. I've already gathered a few: harrypotter.imaginary, thenightking.imaginary, iwontcomeinyourmouth.imaginary, brexitwillbegreat.imaginary...

All's fair in love and war when tech treats you like an infant

Re: There is yet another level of hell in these thinigs even beyond this.....

Our education system seems to turn out highly qualified numpties who can't even make a cup of tea properly and have no conception of how their actions affect others.

Are we talking about Boris Johnson again?

Re: No standards

There are plenty of international standards to choose from.

Re: Modern grownups

What's a chicken nugget?

Re: Modern grownups

Our social event is leaving the boss and his toadies in the Donner Pass.

Stop us if you've heard this one: Microsoft UK enjoys a jump in profits, pays a bit less in tax

Re: Margins

And just when the taxman is already kept busy trying to rewrite rules and redesign forms to suit an ever-changing Brexit.

Prince Harry takes a stand against poverty, injustice, inequality? Er, no, Fortnite

and kids have to stay home where it is safe

I pity your kids.

Re: Ignore

Why do we continue to report the uninformed witterings of the terminally idiotic?

To rip the piss out of them.

Google UK forks out £65m tax in 2018, a boost of 40% on previous year

Re: One fair tax rate

I probably should have been clearer: I want the rich to contribute more, just as they're supposed to do now. I don't want to see the end of tax bands or the end of personal allowances. Your same-rate system proposes that, and I don't think that would be good for the many, only the few. Unless, of course, you've got a clever proposal no-one has tried before. Have you?

Re: One fair tax rate

So someone earning £10k a year should pay the same final percentage as someone earning £10m a year. Is that also regardless of age? Is that going to include asset appreciation and/or capital gains over the course of that year? Will there be any write-offs or business expenses? Ownership transfers to other reporting entities?

The problem with ripping up current tax regulations and starting again is that you quickly end up reintroducing additional rules to handle the same situations which arise as before. It's generally better to look at fixing existing loopholes, not that there's often the political will to do so.

Non-citizens already effectively pay more tax, since they're not eligible for the same services as are citizens. You probably don't want to start scaring off the doctors and nurses we need by telling anyone thinking of working here that they will be visibly taxed more heavily than the locals.

Just the small matter of the bill for scrapping Blighty's old nuclear submarines: It's £7.5bn

Re: But one day...

Look on the bright side. After Brexit we'll be rolling in cash and free to re-commission them to patrol the crucial new cucumber trade route between Ipswich and Vanuatu.

Ex-Mozilla CTO: US border cops demanded I unlock my phone, laptop at SF airport – and I'm an American citizen

Justified

I'd love to know how these TSA goofs can openly and wantonly violate the Fourth Amendment.

It's all justified in the cause of stopping the people who, in the words of that intellectual giant Shrub, 'envy our freedoms'.

Bit nippy, is it? Hive smart home users find themselves tweaking thermostat BY HAND

Crippled by technology

Thermostats are for wimps. I just throw another log on the fire.

Dutch director cops roar deal after selling off lion-based schlock to China

Filmfe(a)st

Clearly the next Sharknado is going to be set in Shanghai. It'll be souper.

Stop us if you've heard this one: IBM sued after axing older staff, this time over 'denying' them their legal rights

Re: Using IBM..

the next bunch of sea gull managers.

Are they the ones who can be seen early on Saturday and Sunday mornings pecking chunks out of pavement pizzas?

Re: When I was a wee lad

Until they decide that they are just paying the statutory minimum.

It's written into my contract. If they try to force me into accepting a new contract I walk, taking the money with me. That's why I said it was a weight off my mind.

Sorry the part of the company that paid the pension went bust.

My pension fund isn't managed by my employers. This is why I said I pity the people younger than me, who've not been given the option of having similar arrangements.

I'm going to guess that you are one of those younger people, never knowing the level of security which your grandparents (and probably your great-grandparents too) fought for. That's why you find it so difficult to recognise what I described. It's not really your fault because it's all you've ever known. However, you and your peers can try for something better. I hope you do.

Re: When I was a wee lad

I am very very glad my pension gets paid in less than a year!

I become eligible for early retirement this summer, which by happy coincidence is the month after my length of service qualifies me for the maximum possible redundancy payment. I don't want to ever have to rely on either condition but it will be a weight off my mind.

I feel really sorry for the people 20+ years younger than I am, who've seen their employment terms and pensions gutted and have never really known the expectation of any sort of future stability. Sadly too many people have forgotten that there was a reason why we as a society introduced pensions and other safety nets, while other people have been only too eager to replace long-term stability for the many with short-term gain for the few. My only consolation is that I've never voted for any of those bastards.

Re: But are the morally correct?

Yeah, but by then the current bunch of board-level arseholes will have claimed their Golden Goodbyes and pissed off to find another company to loot.

In the West, we're worried about shooting down drones. In Russia, drones shoot you

Re: RE: Jeremy 'Two-Face' *unt

He goes by many names. Take care not to speak the same one three times in a row. Trust me on this.

Re: Personally

Better an immortal than a scuttling shapechanger, Boris. Even with six legs you can't run from me forever!

Re: Personally

I understood that Aids/HIV was an early attempt by a letter agency to eradicate certain sections of society

Damn, now you've let the cat out of the bag! Quick, tell me, I need to know who led you to understand this. Was it the Illuminati or the Zeta Reticulans? I'll soon put a stop to their plot to undermine me.

Traitors, every blasted one of them.

Re: one Quaffle, the two Bludgers, and the Golden Shotgun

If it's even been within spitting distance of ethanol, Russians will drink it.

Re: We're doomed.

And the fact Jeremy 'Two-Face' *unt is trying to get Germany to lift their ban on selling arms to the Saudis.

This is not, repeat, not an April Fools' Day joke: 5 UK broadband vendors agree to pay YOU daily rate for fscked internet

Re: Wow, so generous

when BT decided to replace a pole which apparently had problems.

Had he hurt his back again? Poor bloke. They push him too hard.

Boffins may have found something more salty than Brexit Brits' tears this week: Underground pools of water on Mars

Call me Morlock

It could also provide clues to what our own planet might look like if the Earth were to lose its atmosphere and/or magnetic field

That would be interesting, but purely academic for those of us who didn't make it into the bunkers in time.

HP deployed 'Truth Squad' in post-Autonomy PR blitz to defend Meg Whitman

Re: Too much leader, not enough crowd.

Or fire Carly six more times. Some people would find that quite cathartic.

Re: "defend the board from attacks"

And non-execs to hold the board to account.

VP Mike Pence: I want Americans back on the Moon by 2024 (or before the Chinese get there)

They'll be perfectly safe in the hands of God. It's not like He's ever dropped the ball before.

"Er, Houston, we have a problem."

"Understood, Colonel. Turn to checklist 17A."

"Copy that, Houston. 17A... Here we are. Step one: pray like a motherfucker. Our Father, who art in..."

Er, what?

“Just as the United States was the first to reach the Moon in the twentieth century..."

The Russian Luna 2 mission was the first probe to land on the moon, in 1959; the American Ranger 4 didn't make it for another three years. Even if you only count soft landings, the Russians got there first in 1966. But naturally Pence was referring just to manned landings, 'cos that's the only thing which counts, right? That's why nobody's bothered for the last 47 years.

Spyware sneaks into 'million-ish' Asus PCs via poisoned software updates, says Kaspersky

Re: Same file length?

Smart money says you are looking for the recently separated employee who has an extremely nice house, hot car, good liquor and no debt...

Or who shagged the wrong Natasha on a drunken weekend in Macau and doesn't want the photos sent to his family.

Top personnel general joined Capita months after firm won its Army recruiting IT contract

Re: And who will lose out?

(and most definitely not human either).

Long pig?

Geiger counters are so last summer. Lasers can detect radioactive material too, y'know

Re: Not a nuclear scientist here...

simply pack your radioactive material in some material that will readily grab that electron

Or just shield your radioactive material as normal, so that the alpha particle doesn't get as far as air in the first place.

This does seem more like a way of scanning for leaks rather than for looking for contraband materials, especially given the potential distance component. Not to say that contraband couldn't leak, but you'd expect considerable precautions to be taken by the smuggler anyway.

Techies take turns at shut-down top trumps

The problem was soon addressed by changing it to a red button

Rimmer: "Step up to red alert."

Kryten: "Sir, are you sure? It does mean changing the bulb."

Not quite the Bake Off they were expecting: Canadian seniors served weed-infused brownies

Re: Re. Space Cakes

Water is toxic in large doses. So is oxygen.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

I bet the fee-paying parents would go absolute ape if they realised

Actually, with that much money going to waste, I was thinking that for a posh school it sounds more like a launderette. You know, the sort of launderette which takes the children of Russian oligarchs on the understanding that the grateful parent will donate very generously to the registered charity providing the educational opportunity, and possibly even use their extensive international business contacts to recommend a service agency capable of handling outsourced IT and administrative functions for the school, all with no questions asked about the surprising scale of the multi-million pound contract. But I could be wrong.

Re: I'm lazy. Really fucking lazy!

Things have reached the point where I often don't need to follow the link. I just recognise the XKCD number.

(Of course it helps that that particular one has been pinned to my office wall for the last three years.)