Posts by Neiljohnuk

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Re: Why do they need a submarine?

"I would hope that a 500kV 2kA electric cable would have slightly more mechanical strength than a bundle of optical fibres, and would thus be more resistant to being damaged by a boat dragging its anchor, but I may be wrong."

Subsea Optical fibre cables have a steel core 'king' wire and steel wire over-wrapping, along with serious waterproofing layers, so not 'weak', but against a dragging anchor from a big drifting ship like the Rubymar most cables will break. I worked on BTMarines cable repair jointing system 30 years ago, I still work in the fibre field and subsea cable construction hasn't changed significantly since.

Aviation regulators push for more automation so flights can be run by a single pilot

Re: AI to the Rescue?

If the reports of AI learning and from doing so wants to kill us are correct deliberately crashing a plane full of passengers into a metropolitan area for maximum ground/tower block kill as well potentially awaits. SKYNET exists, did the MoD name it that as a joke, or a warning?

Is it a bridge? Is it a ferry? No, it's the Newport Transporter

Brings back memories.

Commuting between Uskmouth PS and my alma mater at Allt-yu-Yn in the late 70's the transporter was very convenient when time allowed, queues varied and sometimes waiting for several crossings worth of vehicles to cross took too long so the Green Street bridge was the only viable option. With the ever increasing M4 delays caused by the Brynglas tunnels the A48 City bridge takes more through traffic than local at times I'm told, so getting the transporter sorted makes a lot of sense, especially for cyclists.

The kids aren't all right: Fall in GCSE compsci students is bad news for employers and Britain's future growth plans

Yet another P.C. fuster cluck?

Having been a secondary school governor in the recent past it was very much a direction from the 'Education Authorities' that schools should produce more females with STEM and computing qualifications, with F.E. following suit, Universities already being driven to do likewise. Working in a Uni CompSci dept the quality of undergrad candidates has diminished noticeably over the last 10 years and more, with lock-step the STEM feminisation drive in schools, we still get the geeks, male and female, but they aren't as well prepared now nor as skilled as the schools teach to a lower more female attracting level.

Microsoft takes tweaking tongs to Windows 10's Start Menu once again

More shite?

If the latest 'update' is anything to go by it'll screw things up. My reasonably fast lap-top and my work tower have both slowed down significantly when started/rebooted, now instead of ~15 seconds it's over a minute before it's possible to login, then often several more before you can do anything with it. ITS SHIT Microshite!

DBA locked in police-guarded COVID-19-quarantine hotel for the last week shares his story with The Register

Re: And this is why the Aussies are on top of it

The reports of those instructed to 'self isolate' and failing to do so having flown into the UK from high risk areas (Indian and Pakistan especially) shows the Australian enforced quarantine measures are probably required here.

Internationally it's reported that in Bobcaygeon Ont. a retirement home owner having flown home from overseas ignored the Canadian 14 day stay at home and self quarantine order, the owner was initially asymptomatic, at last report 27 of 65 residents had died from Covid-19, as have family members who'd visited them before the place was locked down, the health body declared a Covid-19 community outbreak 'incident' in March, and unlike others it's still ongoing:

http://www.hkpr.on.ca/category/my-community/outbreaks/

https://www.centraleasthealthline.ca/displayservice.aspx?id=51212

https://www.kawartha411.ca/2020/03/28/wife-of-pinecrest-nursing-home-resident-dies-of-coronavirus/

Still if 14 days is too hard for some to do, along with all the potential spread as they travel 'home', they should be thankful it's that short, quaranta giorni the original Venezia quarantine was 40 days long.

I do hope Boris has the balls to stand-up to the PC brigade and bring in a strict 14 day enforced secure quarantine, and close our borders properly to the undocumented...

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Re: Dreaming up barriers to adoption...

Ah yes knowing the corkheads, and I do know quite a few having worked on the island, it's unsurprising.

Who's going to pay for Britain's Aunty Beeb to carry on? Broadband users, broadcaster suggests to government

Re: Ha

Whereas the BBC only does self promoting adverts, well stuff the braindead brainwashing colusionists scrap the licence fee and make it a selectable level of programming and subscription. There are lies, dam lies, and the BBC.

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

Re: But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone.

"Sounds like WHO sees China as a model to follow." Unsurprising considering just how much 'influence' China now has with the WHO.

Neuroscientist used brainhack. It's super effective! Oh, and disturbingly easy

Re: Tin foil helmet

Should be standard issue in US embassies perhaps?

UK government buys off Serco lawsuit with £10m bung. Whew. Now Capita can start running fire and rescue

Got to keep the 'little' people in their place, taxed to the hilt paying for all this crap if their enslaved (working), living on the barest minimum benefits (unless from a 'protected' group with lots of free legal help) if not.

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

IBM BOHICA...

5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1... Runty-birds are go: 12,000+ internet-beaming mini-satellites OK'd by USA

Not the first time they've tried.

Motorola wanted to put up a sky-net LEO system some years ago, only to be stopped by the FCC, I wonder if this one will actually happen.

They grow up so fast: Spam magnet Hotmail turned 22 today

Still using it.

Started using Hotmail in its first few weeks, been using it ever since, yes it suffered when microshite took it over but it works. Biggest issues have been when the spammers caused it to be black listed with other ISP's and companies.

Not too many years ago my employer warned us about using Hotmail for webmail use, now they recommend it as a way of not drawing attention to yourself when on trips to the more hazardous areas of the world as you would using our .ac.uk account!

Disk drive fired 'Frisbees of death' across data centre after storage admin crossed his wires

Re: Recycle platters from modern hard disks

"I am not sure what I will do with the magnets" if you drive of ride a motor vehicle with a metal can type oil filter stick a couple on that, you'll be amazed at how much debris they'll catch.

Flying discs,bad, exploding drum, worse!

During training I had to repair the PCB's of the 4 computers at work, 1978-80 room filling machines based on discrete transistors. These machines had magnetic 'drum' stores of a few hundred Kb, wire video recorders were bad enough to be operated remotely in securely locked rooms, flailing wire had shredded recording engineers, but the drum stores with a row of heads that were driven up and down the drum were considered safe. Until one day the top bearing of the head translation shaft failed and the heads were jammed against the spinning cast iron cored drum the size of a large dustbin, which failed explosively, the shrapnel passed through both computers in the room, smashing lots of boards on the way through, thankfully the only other two, bought as scrap from Farnborough, enabled them to be repaired. The concrete walls bear the evidence of the impact to this day. From that day on no-one was allowed in the room if the machines were on, when the first 5 Mb 'Winchester' drives arrived it was a revolution!

Pickaxe chops cable, KOs UKFast data centre

And hope the UPS is properly installed and maintained so it works when needed and doesn't fail to deliver, or worse cause a multi-million pound fire, like one I know of, £175,000,000 claim and more not covered...

UK border at risk of exposure post Brexit, warn MPs

Proper border control, yes please.

As a caravaning motorcyclist I really want effective border control and searching of freight trucks, given the number of both caravans and motorcycles stolen and illegally exported, not just by the "itinerant stolen caravan dwelling thieving b'stard do-as-they-likies" though stopping them would be a very good thing too.

As for lack of investment, having travelled by Eurostar Border 'control' is a farce at present, but flying into Heathrow is a whole lot worse, when only 5 of 20 plus 'electronic' passport read and compare you to your likeness units were working and intermittently going over to the 'blue screen of death', the words fucking hopeless were uttered by more than a few...

80-year-old cyclist killed in prang with Tesla Model S

Really, and it can't be circumvented? Like the Academic who I regularly saw watching the BBC new's on her Merc sports cars flip out screen whilst driving, even though it wasn't supposed to be able to do that. Never underestimate the ingenuity of a determined idiot...

It's time for a long, hard mass debate over sex robots, experts conclude

Re: "I still don't understand why pseudo images are illegal."

As you can only 'own' the catholic churches officially supplied images of the Sistine chapel, the Vatican's security literally will jump on you if their spotters catch you trying to take a photo, perhaps that church needs investigating? Again.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: IBM sheds more workers – this time, tech sales

Re: For Those of Us not Working in the States

Or simply BOHICA!

IBM: Voluntary redundo offer? Ticked. Min stat terms? Ticked

"Oh dear, how sad, never mind".

So Idiot Bleeding Management have finally realised they can stiff their direct I'm Bloody Marvellous employees almost as well as they stiffed us whilst using their usual "your only a fucking contractor" refrain. Well suck it up buttercups, be you computer grads, sports science grads, ex-services forelock tuggers, there's a whole world out there and it doesn't owe you a living, be grateful your going to get the statutory minimum, not as much as the 'packages' of old, but a bloody lot more than the sweet fuck all we got.

PM hints at legislation stick to force blue-light services to share IT

Ambulance crews have enough problem with low intel people as it is, if the plod and amb have shared IT things will get even worse.

Investigatory Powers Act signed into UK law by Queen

Just ask any of the smuff skate-bait...?

CompSci Prof raises ballot hacking fears over strange pro-Trump voting patterns

"Halderman is clear; the only secure form of voting is on paper, with a viable audit trail. This works well in the UK and Australia, where election nights are busy times as officials index paper ballots on camera. But the US moved early on electronic voting and many machines don’t provide a paper receipt for auditing."

Works well when someone demands a recount when a TV cameraman catches suspicious activity at a count, and the public see it.

Tesla autopilot driver 'was speeding' moments before death – prelim report

Re: Mansfield bars???

Also known as rununder bars, most work well at shopping large debris getting jammed under the trailer or chassis, the impact however is often just as fatal. If Tesla are serious about safety ditching the autopilot and fitting a 12" spike in the centre of the steering wheel might be a good start for focusing the drivers mind on driving...

Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'

Microshite, a bunch of twunts.

I had the inevitable phone call from my 75 year old mother in law last week, a very happy win7 user with lots of stuff on her PC set up for easy use she'd clicked the red X close button when Microshite suggested she update to 10. Through her tears of distress and angst I realised the machine had uninvited updated it's self to win10, sending my son the following day to undo said deed was the easy part, though her distress and tears continued as she feared she'd lost the lot. Backing up her system is beyond her so we do it every so often for her. Thankfully it rolled back when instructed to do so, and all the favourites, e-mail and the rest were restored...

Now who's going to start a 'class-action' for all the older people, and their families who are their I.T. support network, for the distress that's been caused? It might just teach those twunts not to do it again if it costs them!

Cambridge boffins: STOP the rush to 5G. We just don't need it

4G FIRST!

Having spent a week in Henley on Thames recently, a wild remote outpost of humanity apparently, we had no 4G or even G, and sometimes barely E, until the mobile infill cell mast went live for the Regatta, then it was 4G and full strength signals all the way. Time the current standards were put in place so users can actually use the tech they, or their employers, have paid for!

Have your users managed to force iOS devices on you?

Here it was ipad forced upon me, hateful bloody thing, rather have had something that doesn't think for it's self and loose data by auto-saving and trying to negotiate every frigging time it 'see's' a WAP...

Virgin Media site goes titsup in Pirate Bay payback attack

Refunds for lies time!

Service Disruption

Reported on: Mon 07 May 2012, 07:27 PM

Estimated fix time: Tue 15 May 2012, 06:00 PM

Fault reference: F001989870

This fault first developed on Saturday 5th and by adding time everyday putting the fix time back ever further Virgin media are proving to be less than honest. I hope we will get a refund for the month of May, as the service provided does not even match the slowest dial-up I can buy!

Met thumbed through Oyster card data up to 22,000 times in 4 years

I wouldn't bet on it...

Look through the gates into Downing Street, past no 10, to the red brick building that sticks out at the end, have you ever seen those curtains open, no, what's behind those curtails has a withering field of fire...

Boffin's bot spots red light jumpers before they kill

It doesn't help that councils seem to install them almost on a whim, slowing traffic that once flowed to a stand-still. Southampton City Council's traffic lights were turned off (with warning signs) a few years ago and traffic flow improved, then they installed the 'go slow mode', to be used when traffic diverts from the M27 due to accidents etc, its aim is to put drivers off ever entering the City again when the motorways stuffed, a 10 minute journey becomes a 45 minute ordeal...

And a lot of red light jumpers do it because they know the system has extra dwell time before giving the green to another direction, because of red light jumpers!

Then there are the bus drivers, who already have the advantage of advanced/fast flow trigger units on the buses (AKA green-wave) that on seeing any other light change start off, often crossing the STOP line whilst the lights are still red, whilst others are still clearing the junction.

The arsehole factor also applies.

BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps

Only carrier installed?

Hummm, not convinced, I've had non-droid phone's tracked as well as my Nokia sending real time location updates, until I reconfigured it, because someone in the Police has a grudge against my brother, whom I've not seen in years. The 'security-services' love having the ability to track people without any oversight, and with the ongoing mission creep I'm not surprised...

It's not the end for stop and search

No change, just make up a suss on the spot...

S44, S43 or just good old BS, the power trippers will continue abusing their position until they get bored...

Home Office promises spycam review

Good!

And what about the 'parking scam' ANPR systems to log you into and out of car parks, 30 seconds too long, or not recognised when leaving, that'll be £100 'fine' !

IBM hands out malware-stuffed USB at security conference

IBM had again!

Back in the '80's when I worked for IBM they had really bad V rus problems in a hard-drive plant, turned out to be a peado in the dept duplicating discs to post out... Idiot Bloody Management then as now, with their heads up their arses and the I'm Bloody Marvelous attitude.

The iPad: Unsubsidised, unaffordable, unloved?

A toy for computer scientists...

Well thats what the head of one "Electronics & Computer Science" school/dept. in a UK university described it as... And as an Apple user I wouldn't want one, non-upgradeablity of Apple products sucs

Just don't drop the bloody thing, iPhone dropped 3 feet onto a carpeted floor, cracked screen, £130 to repair it by Apple, how much for an iPad screen???

Mobe-wielding drivers getting away with it

No surprise really...

Saw a member of the serious crime unit in an unmarked car, possibly his own, in traffic the other day using a standard mobile, one rule etc...

Still he had more control than the woman in her renal smegan senile on the M27 yesterday, drinking coffee with her right hand, changing gear with the left, or the festa driver doing her nails at 70 using 3 lanes at once. But when scameras are the easy answer and 'traffic divisions' have been replaced with scamera and 'accident investigation units'.

TfL signs £27.6m road CCTV deals

Great...or not.

Just what the councils need, then they can read the number plate of bikes being parked without payment and issue fines...

Westminster Council's punitive tax on motorcyclists, and the protests against it, seem to have been ignored by the mainstream press... I suppose the cagers who are the editor's don't like motorcyclists much, too independently minded for their liking. .notobikeparkingtax.com

Apple bets on Mac-only photo land grab with Aperture 3

Yup iTunes is carp.

Got an older PC, with most you can run a windows version of iTunes, got a Mac of similar age, forget it, iTunes won't work on anything more than one generation old, O.S. limited by processor locks you into new Mac or else... IME

Nokia's free Ovi Maps scores a download every second

Typical pratnav really...

Installed it on my 5800 and its works ok most of the time, bit late with instructions and got its self lost in East Sussex (I knew where I was and going so I didn't get lost). And if used like most pratnav users use their devices it'll cause just as many accidents, where the device is god and the user follows its instructions without looking or allowing for other traffic... However as its a phone and touching it is illegal for a driver when driving... And as it connects a mobile to networks how long before your phone is reporting back your exact location?

Police have more than 10,000 ANPR cameras

Really?

"The number of police cameras is significantly more than the 6,600 ANPR units run by the Highways Agency and Trafficmaster. These do not transmit full numberplates, as they are used to calculate the speed of traffic over sections of road."

Er, I don't think so, IIRC they used the information from Traffic Master to successfully support a murder case against a contract killer who'd driven up from London to Glasgow, killed the target, then drove back, it was after that the HA and Police started to really into ANPR.

Lord Carlile: Police are taking the proverbial on terror

Really?

Does Lord Carlile of Berriew expect the plastics to take any notice of the law when they are on a power trip? Old heads in the Police knew their job meant being human and having 'discretion', the current bunch led by graduate entrant control freaks however...

Flickr!: Now! with! added! Yahoo!

Decent community?

Well yes a pretty good community, and a few do-gooders who object to quite innocent photo's:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nieljohn/3470868253/

UK council forced to swallow dick

I wonder if that would include me...

"will be asked to behave properly or will be refused service"

So if I asked for a portion michael jackson and custurd they might get upset?

Oxfordshire reveals ANPR traffic camera sites

encrypt or delete, never.

The problem here is mission creep, its not going to stop, ever since that hitman was tracked from London to Scotland (for the hit) and back using the encrypted TrafficMaster data that they claimed couldn't be used that way. The Police couldn't beleive just how easy it might be, hence the grubby-mits own nation-wide ANPR system...