Posts by Jamtea

Broadcom has brought VMware down to earth and that’s welcome

Esxi and VMware are deader than dead. Access to licensing is missing on the portal, there is no way to access patches and ISOs properly. I was going to invest in VMware certification before the acquisition, I'm very glad I didn't waste the money now.

Ransomware scum launch wave of attacks on critical, but old, VMWare ESXi vuln

Re: Why there may be unpatched versions around: money

This will be the perfect reason I shall present to the MD as to why we need to get rid of all the virtualisation hosts that are forcing us to stay on 6.7 instead of upgrading to 8.0. Even not exposed to the internet it's far too risky to bet the farm on saving a few grand that we'll need to spend anyway.

Protip: No, the CIA will not call off a pedophilia probe into your life in exchange for Bitcoin

Who on earth thinks this? Clearly it is targeted at non-tech savvy people who DON'T understand bitcoin nor basic email scams.

I can only assume you have an axe to grind with cryptocurrency that you want to attribute criminals to it?

Someone's spreading an MBR-trashing copy of the Christchurch killer's 'manifesto' – and we're OK with this, maybe?

Re: Reading between the lines...

This stance tends to depend on how stupid you consider your fellow man. Most people who lose touch with the common folk seem more and more to think they're just unthinking future political ideologues in waiting, just ripe to be picked by the first radicals who get to them first.

Definitely, more people have been curious and rushed to view it after it was censored than were even aware there was an offline version of the stream since it was basically advertised by the NZ and other govs.

On balance, what harm has been actually mitigated vs caused by the censorship and banning of this content? Because I'm positive it has resulted in just more harm being done.

Brexit text-it wrecks it: Vote Leave fined £40k for spamming 200k msgs ahead of EU referendum

Re: Vote Leave fined for promoting Brexit

Do you really care what Nigel Farage has to say on the matter? Last I heard he wasn't the supreme authority on how our government is run.

Re: It's OK

That's a false dichotomy. You can support the outcome and disavow the methods used by some campaigners... you could also be against the outcome, but be permissive of any tactics, scaremongering or lies told in the pursuit of either outcome (though that WOULD be odd).

Re: What I don't understand

True democracy at work, ask as many times as it takes to get the correct result.

Re: What I don't understand

Is this the standard by which you would have all our votes decided? Nothing would ever pass, especially given that it would give scaremongering so much more weight. People seek comfort in the status quo, even if it is to their detriment, it's very easy to tempt people into the stability of keeping people in the safety of what they already know rather than the scary uncertainty of what they don't.

If it's accepted as fact that leave made 'promises' that weren't factual (they aren't the gov so they couldn't make promises - they aren't the ones who could actually enact them), then it should be also accepted as fact that remain did engage in Project Fear. It was pretty much constant doomsaying and preying on the innate fears that come with uncertainty. People were told there would be no medicine, prices would go out of control, we'd not be able to travel, food would be scarce and that we'd become a 3rd world country overnight.

Also, if the vote came out the other way, 52% remain, should we keep going until there is a supermajority for remain? What would we do in the meanwhile? After all, it could go to votes ad infinitum, but the turnout would never go higher. Would we be half-in/half-out whilst it's decided?

One and done, simple majority is the only way to answer the yes/no question. 2/3 is just an arbitrary standard, plucked out of thin air. You may as well ask for a 4/7ths majority or a 5/9ths majority for as much sense as 2/3rds makes.

Re: It's amazing how it sticks

Should their votes not be counted because you see them as too stupid to understand their own decisions? Perhaps we should have a government IQ test before people are allowed to vote, making sure only the correctly learned and government approved citizens are given the rights to vote.

Re: Dodgy behavior by Vote Leave? @Snowy

How many times does it have to be done though? Does a vote for remain just count as a draw so we go best out of three? Do we just wait long enough for enough leave voters to die before the issue can be redressed onto a fresh electorate? Do we wait for voter apathy to take hold having voted so many times that their vote is seen as meaningless?

John Bercow actually made a very good point in parliament in reference to May bringing her deal to vote multiple times, the decisions made should have weight. What does it say to the electorate if the results of the first referendum are garbage canned? That their vote was wrong the first time. It didn't matter because of the actions of some campaigners? That they were too stupid to understand the decisions? That they're all secret Nazis and their vote should be discounted because they're obviously evil?

I know many people who voted remain, and many people who voted leave. None of either side made up their mind because of leaflets, text messages or the sides of buses. Each of their respective votes should be taken seriously and respected as such. Giving weight to one group but not the other shows a lack of respect for the electorate and is indicative of the unhealthy narrow view of politics that seems to have pervaded into our cultural conversations.

Re: Vote Leave fined for promoting Brexit

That's not how voting works... the electorate was 46500001, of which only 71% actually count because they turned up to vote. The final 29% abstaining or not bothering to vote cannot and should not be taken into account because not voting is also a choice.

Also, a 3.8% differential is a decisive one in an election. A close result shows a healthy democracy where the people are free to cast their decisive votes. Landslide victories are achieved by states with high amounts of control over their populations or where there is a huge imbalance between the parties/policies on offer. Just look at the results of the US elections by state and the nation, elections in EU nations and other national votes and the most free/democractic nations tend to have very close elections.

Like the result or not, it's indisputable that the raw numbers in the vote are representative and do show a healthy democracy.

Google recalculated its wages, and yup, raises for underpaid fellas. So can you forget those gender discrim claims?

Re: Lies, damned lies and statistics

Well... go on then?

UK tech has a month left to bare gender pay gaps, but less than a fifth of firms have ponied up

Re: Love the handle, BTW Mr Longshaft

Unfortunately the average El Reg reader seems to have a few more braincells between their ears than the easily duped Guardian readership. I think you'll possibly find that most commenters formed their own opinions on this matter quite a while ago without having to be guilted or manipulated into it.

There's something about the tech industry that really wakes people up to the fact that it's how good you are at your job and what you can do, rather than who you are and what you pretend that you can do.

Fake fuse: Bloke admits selling counterfeit chips for use in B-1 bomber, other US military gear

Re: Treason

Easy there buddy, no need for the nuclear option straight away. There are plenty of civil servants who do far more negligent and wilfully bad things on the daily who would get away with a slap on the wrist.

Facebook didn't care if your kids ran up gigantic credit card bills – lawsuit

Re: Returning digital goods?

Sounds reasonable. Any kid who spends that much to then have it charged back should lose the account (and their allowance). The company facilitating it should also lose the money. It's the perfect win-win/lose-lose scenario where both parties are at fault and both should be punished.

We did Nazi see this coming... Internet will welcome Earth's newest nation with, sigh, a brand new .SS TLD

Poe article?

Is this seriously an article about the usage of .ss as a tld being evocative of Nazis? Looks like 2019 is going to be a rehash of 2015/16/17/18.

Get a grip, honestly.ss

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

Re: @ Dabbsy

"Yes, I know it's meaningless. It always was. But it was what a fraction of the nation voted for."

It's a bigger fraction that has ever voted in anything than has voted for anything else in British history. If you want to diminish the voting majority by trying to disparage it as an insignificantly small fraction, no vote ever has tallied the numbers that Brexit has, and there are many elections that have had smaller majorities.

Agree or disagree with the outcome, campaigning or whatever you like, the legitimacy of the actual referendum vote itself is indisputable. 72.2% of voters turning out with over 33.5 million votes isn't too shabby for any vote. With a 3.8% majority in favour, it's a clearly legitimate majority also.

Intel hits target: 27% of staffers are female? Apparently that's 'full representation'

Re: How about this

"How about this for a wild idea: rather than giving overpaid executives more money in order to get them to hire more women, why not offer more money to female candidates instead?

It's not especially fair, to be sure, but it might help to compensate the women against the rather female-unfriendly work environments that seem to exist in the IT-world."

How do people write this kind of drivel, thinking that it's anything other than creating a problem in and of itself?

You do realise that women are not a monolith. They're not a team trying to score more points than "Team Men". Arbitrarily paying women more because of their biology is wrong in almost every conceivable metric, from the immorality of doing so right down to the actual business practice of paying them more for no actual reason.

Only a moron would actually think such an awful idea has any merit whatsoever.

Stroppy Google runs rings round Brussels with Android remedy

I trust Google more than the EC

At least Google are honest about their data collection intentions, whereas the EC just demands ever increasing control over every aspect of people's lives and only seems to exist to regulate more and more people and companies.

Google devices ship with Google gear baked in? No, you don't say!?

Anyone inclined to do so can quite easily unbundle Google's apps, install 3rd party stores and sideload APKs. This requirement from the EC is a power grab and an ever increasing creep of legislation and power reach. Remember that anything that applies to the major players applies 100x fold to the smaller companies who have no means to effectively fight against the EC overreach.

Better the devil you know, and I'd rather have the ability to choose to not use the services of a company I disagree with than be legally hamstrung by the EC we have no ability to hold to account whatsoever.

Euro bureaucrats tie up .eu in red tape to stop Brexit Brits snatching back their web domains

If it exists...

If it exists it must be regulated. This is the mantra of the EU commission.

For any and all of the benefits of an integrated economic and cultural zone, the over-regulation and bureaucratic-to-a-fault nature of the EU machine are the actual reason a lot of people did want to leave the EU.

With the lumbering great giant nature of the institution now it's basically incapable of doing anything meaningful and pretty much looks to things like this to justify it massive expense, leaving many people wondering how it can achieve anything other than to endlessly regulate things out of existence.

VMware 'pressured' hotel to shut down tech event close to VMworld, IGEL sues resort giant

Re: Convention contracts

Okay, but there's only so far that this can go. Holding an event at the same time in the same place due to most of your prospective customers being there is not exactly a bad idea. Being forced into noncompetitive business practices due to attendance at the VMWorld event is all the justification they need for holding their own event nearby. Bullying venue owners into doing your corporate bidding by threatening their existence is unethical if not illegal.

IGEL literally did nothing wrong in circumventing Dell's restrictive rules by holding a separate event here, and Dell via MGM Resorts and Border Grill are the only ones who have actually done anything wrong. They should definitely be taken to the cleaners for this.

Ah, um, let's see. Yup... Fortnite CEO is still mad at Google for revealing security hole early

Price gouging is not particularly nice, but at least some of that 30% does go a towards paying for the whole android show and future development. Without the play store there is no android. People have to accept this fact.

Also, despite Google flying within spitting distance of being evil on occasion, I'd rather know if I'm staring down the barrel of a gun by having certain apps installed rather being oblivious and kept in the dark by developers who want to keep their security flaws hushed up.

Either way, better the devil you know.

Apple laughing all the way to the bank – with profits of $5.3m per hour

Re: Tax

Believe it or not, workers are paid through salaries and wages which are actually pre-profit expenses to the company. Beyond that they don't get a slice of the profits... which are paid through dividends. Do people not know how companies work?

Fork it! Google fined €4.34bn over Android, has 90 days to behave

More money for the EU coffers then

You just know this money will be spent wisely on behalf of everyone in the EU. I'm sure that'll pay for a lot of Brussels dinners, socialising and holiday homes.

As far as the gender pay gap in Britain goes, IBM could do much worse

Re: At the risk of being branded misogynst...

@lusty Am I wrong or are you saying that seniority, loyalty and experience shouldn't be rewarded in companies... because that's what it sounds like what you're saying.

Also Bill Gates OWNED and created Microsoft. I don't think there was much contention for the position when he gave it to himself.

Re: At the risk of being branded misogynst...

If you think equality of opportunity is the most important thing, then we already have that enshrined into law.

If you think that all that matters is the numbers at the end of the day, i.e. equality of outcome, then these companies can just do the progressive thing, hire women into token positions or skip them ahead of their male colleagues for promotions and hire women into positions on the basis of their gender.

Actual ability to do the job/merit doesn't really play a role in the second option, one which appears to be gaining social traction.

Creep travels half the world to harass online teen gamer… and gets shot by her mom – cops

GDPR got me good...

The source link is GDPR blocked :(

Hot NAND: Samsung wheels out 30TB SSD monster

If you gotta ask... it's too expensive for you.

White-box slingers, Chinese server makers now neck-and-neck with US tech giants

Tut tut... wrong picture

Oh Reg, using a Japanese temple picture for a Chinese article...

Maplin Electronics demands cash with menaces

Maplin are garbage. I feel extraordinarily lucky to live near enough to Farnell in Leeds that I can shop at the trade counter.

London Mayor election day bug forced staff to query vote DB by hand

Assume that the 'software' in question was some official's nephew straight of college who said it would be 'easy' as he runs a Minecraft server.

Honestly, I question the abilities of this so called tech company, when a simple SQL query on pretty much any client would have totalled up the votes in a matter of seconds.

Bacon as deadly as cigarettes and asbestos

Well inconclusive or not, either way I'm totally in the mood for a delicious bacon sandwich.

Gamer claims complete console collection

Pah, not even!

Sega Teradrive, Dreamcast special editions (any of them), Famicom or any associated hardware such as the Disk system, Famicom Box Hotel edition, Super famicom (inc satellaview etc): 64DD, Gen 1 Neo Geo CD, MSX, most of the game and watch games, gameboy light... the list of missing consoles is rather exhaustive!

Not to say its not an impressive collection, but this guy is further away from a 'complete' collection than he is close to completing it!

Calling all readers: Want some new icons?

So where is the...

Lindsey lohan angle?

(and how do the mobile device users post with icons anyway!)

Dixons aims high, medium and low with own-brand blizzard

Japanese?

Actually, Saisho means a number of things in Japanese. So does Matsui. Why DSG were trying to trick people into thinking these are Japanese brands is beyond me.

Man jailed for sex with donkey and horse

Farmy Army

I would have thought a 'stable' address would be easy for him to come by.

Robo soup chefs wrangle ramen

Knives

Shouldn't they be doing throwing and catching knife tricks? That would be impressive. I could do the slow knife and shield thing myself.

Pocket Universe 1.7

A not so secret Trekkie?

From the design of the interface shown in the first screen, it is pretty obvious that the application designer has borrowed heavily from the Star Trek LCARS interface designs. Now to wait for the letters from Paramount's lawyers to come flooding in...