Posts by Mugs

Pentester says he broke into datacenter via hidden route running behind toilets

In the 90s I did some work in Moscow in the Central Telegraph building. I was on the civilian side, the other side was restricted military. The toilets were common to both but there was little danger of anyone crossing due to the stench which was only alleviated by the cigarette smoke

National ID cards might not mean much when up against incompetence of the UK Home Office

Personnummer

Works fine in Sweden (which isn't a totalitarian regime last time I looked). The personnummer was the universal identifier for all services public and private.

Made it easy for me as a foreigner to rent videos too back in the day.

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

Oracle got there first

Oracle's common practice was to do this every year. Tesla are doing it as a one off and it's a story?

Brit banks told to publish details of major incidents that stop punters' payments

Re: "such a metric might encourage hackers to target weaker firms"

Precisely. At the moment there's a cost saving in not staying secure and limited downside. This increases the downside, making it more likely that a bank will invest in staying secure.

Spotted: Bizarre SpaceX rocket-snatching machine that looks like it belongs on Robot Wars

Rat Thing

Assuming it's powered by a radioisotope battery with AI from a dog, it's probably a Rat Thing from Snow Crash. The kennel is for thermal management - useful to have all that sea as a heat sink.

Linus Torvalds fires off angry 'compiler-masturbation' rant

Good to see GOTO is still cool.

When Michael Dell met Chris Mellor

Always been like thta

I was a contractor at Dell in the early 90s when they'd just opened their Bracknell office. My friends (all lowly techies, not managers) who'd been to Austin and had met him all said the same thing - he's a nice guy.

Shame that being a nice guy and successful is so unusual.

Mobile phones are the greatest poverty-reducing tech EVER

Re: BillG vs Zuckerberg

In my mum's part of the world (Dhanbad, India where my grandfather was a mining engineer) malaria disappeared in WW2 when the American army arrived with DDT. Bit late for her sisters unfortunately. As you say, the link is with stagnant water not overcrowding. The Americans treated every non-flowing piece of water in the area and malaria stopped overnight.

AIDS? Ebola? Nah – ELECTRO SMOG is our 'biggest problem', says Noel Edmonds

Robert A. Heinlein was right

Waldo (1942) was based on this idea but RAH knew the difference between fact and fiction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_(short_story)

No, I won't SNORKEL in your server room at STUPID-O'CLOCK

Big bang

I worked in a gilts interdealer broker at the time of the big bang. We didn't have problems with flooding although the office was just off the south end of London Bridge. Our problem was rats chewing the cables from the trading stations. I don't blame the rats, it was the traders throwing their used food containers under the desks.

Friday: SpaceX will attempt to land rocket on floating, robotic 'spaceport drone ship'

This has slipped to January 6th

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/12/spacex-static-fire-falcon-9-crs-5/

This has slipped to January 6

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/12/spacex-static-fire-falcon-9-crs-5/

GT sapphire glaziers: You signed WHAT deal with Apple?

Nothing new under the sun

I was once stuck on a train with a colleague ranting about a similar contract. The contract was in the 40s between Woolworth and his grandfather who ran a broom factory. Woolies started off with a small order, gradually increased until they took all the output then drove the price down until the factory went bust.

The only difference is "the speed of the internet" as Google would say.

David Cameron wants mobe network roaming INSIDE the UK

Seems a reasonable idea provided it's a quid pro quo - operators get rural roaming (saving them cash) provided they fill the blackspots (costing them cash).

The government needs to add universal provision as a condition of mobile and broadband.

Let police track you through your mobe - it's for your OWN GOOD

The Swiss have an app for that

I can see no reason not to provide location data for emergency calls. It's not a slippery slope, it's a special case.

The Swiss have an app called echo112. It uses your smartphone's GPS to determine your position, call the correct emergency number for your location and sends your location over the data network or text. The emergency operator gets your location by checking the echo112 website: http://www.echo112.com/

"Field tested by Swiss Emergency services for the last two years, now available worldwide"

Foxconn mulls solar panels, sticking Apple where sun doesn't shine

Nuclear -> Solar?

Solar (and other renewables) still account for a tiny proportion of electricity (let alone energy) in Japan. Japan may be a good market for solar panels but it takes a lot of PV panels to replace one nuclear reactor. Fukishama alone had 6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_Production_in_Japan.svg

Remember that Xeon E7-Itanium convergence? FUHGEDDABOUDIT

Itanium doesn't have sufficient market share or performance advantage to survive. A rational HP would be looking to kill it off but with a defined migration path for NonStop and other customers. The money's in the software stack, not the hardware.

Star Trek tractor beam to save Earth from asteroid Armageddon

Project Orion

Will they consider the Project Orion many small nukes and a large, steel pusher plate option? It'd be great to watch in action!

BT fibre rollout reaches Scotland, Wales

Bypassed

Great headline for BT but what about all the premises they bypassed in the upgraded exchanges? Looks like there's no pressure to add the 1 in 3 cabinets that they coudn't be bothered doing first time round.

Blighty's bumpkins bemoan bold broadband bluster

The forgotten "not spots"

I'm luck enough to live in a village that's just got FTTC. Openreach proudly proclaim it as Infinity enabled. What they don't say is that they only upgraded one cabinet and have no plans to do the other. So half the village will remain a "not spot" for the forseable future. Perhaps I should do a deal with my neighbours at the bottom of the garden who are on the lucky side?

Green Berets get wearable combat smartphones

When will the first countermeasures appear?

If the kit's going to have wireless links that are frequently active it won't be long before someone starts using the signal to identify targets. Not much point sneaking around in long grass if you're a wireless beacon!