Posts by Jess--

Cisco email accidentally sent to 1000s of employees causes message list MAYHEM

worst one I came across was between 2 mail servers within the same company which had no attachment size restrictions in place.

everything worked perfectly (for years) until an idiot decided to send a 30gb file as an attachment before leaving on a friday evening.

the initial mail server accepted it and started sending it onto the 2nd server.

the second server started to receive the email with no problems and everything appeared fine... for 5 minutes.

5 minutes after the initial sending from one server to the other had started the first mail server went back over its outbound queue and found this 30gb email that hadn't been delivered (because it was still transferring) and resent it.

5 minutes later it found 2 undelivered emails and started resending them

<5 minutes per step>

1 email (30gb)

2 emails (60gb)

4 emails (120gb)

8 emails (240gb)

16 emails (480gb)

32 emails (960gb)

64 emails (1920gb)

128 emails (3840gb)

256 emails (7680gb)

512 emails (15360gb)

1024 emails (30720gb)

2048 emails (61440gb)

4096 emails (122880gb)

<end of 1st hour>

By saturday morning the second mail server had died completely having used up 4tb of previously empty storage while the 1st email server was unable to display how many emails were in its oubound queue.

Vulture 2 autopilot reports for duty

Re: Pushrods!

Most 2.4 ghz systems I have come across react to loss of signal by setting the throttle below 0 (ensuring that any engine / motor is shut down) and if set the receiver puts all other controls to a pre-programmed failsafe position, on my aircraft its set to bank slightly to the left and trimmed to glide as slowly as possible (it worked perfectly when I fell in a lake complete with tx)

the apm system that el-reg has gone for uses this signal to trigger whatever its programmed to do (Return to Base, circle over position etc)

Universal Credit CRUNCHED: Dole handouts IT system to be rebuilt

Re: Re:

in reference to milking your taxes, I did to the tune of £289.20 over 8 weeks (£36.15 per week) and that money was used to buy wondrous luxuries like food, electric, water or pay rent & council tax.

in those 8 weeks the business paid for the following...

1. put my friend through his driving test (he passed first time luckily)

2. something that resembled a car, it was an old X reg austin metro that you could see the road through the floor in (I believe that we paid around £60 for it which was the amount that could be reclaimed from the tax disc in it's windscreen)

3. Insurance for my friend to drive the car (third party only)

4. a roof rack

5. 2 sets of ladders (so we didnt have to keep borrowing the neighbours)

6. buckets etc

getting that lot together took the 8 weeks, at which point the business had certain work to ensure £80 per week coming in (I signed off and took £40 per week of that leaving the other £40 to cover the business costs).

Still not sure whether it would be legally classed as fraud because until I had signed off I was not receiving any money for the work because any money generated was used on what was needed for the business.

comments invited

Re: Re:

I beleive that they took that approach with me because it was cheaper / less bureaucracy than going through the official channels to gain a small business grant to set up the business etc etc.

I went in there with the expectation of having to apply for some form of grant to get the business off the ground.

I was raised in the classic benefit trap, Only child in a one parent family existing on benefits from a very early age

once I left school (with crap results) the situation I was in was young enough to not have transport, no income to either get a license or vehicle (even a moped) and then no way of insuring any form of vehicle.

that's not too bad if you happen to live in a town or somewhere with sensible transport links (sorry but the earliest bus each day being at 10:45 am is not sensible, neither is the last bus being at 3:30 pm)

I joined up with someone else in the same situation and started a small business (window cleaning of all things) while we were both still claiming, the money from the business was ploughed back into the business and to get the pair of us transport (which in turn meant we could expand the business).

While we were doing this I was honest with the dole office (I cant remember what name they were using then) and the adviser I spoke with said simply "I didn't hear any of this, but I will mark you as very actively seeking work", as soon as the business was able to support itself and one of us I signed off, once the business grew further the other person also signed off.

now (almost 20 years later) I run 2 successful businesses (in 2 completely different sectors so if something affects one the other is likely to continue without problems) and I have worked for a company not owned by me for a grand total of 4 weeks.

Just saying "there aren't any jobs" and carrying on claiming is entirely the wrong attitude, if nobody is offering you a job then make yourself a job, people will always be willing to pay for others to do what they see as menial tasks like cleaning windows and similar (you would often be surprised how much they will pay).

there is almost always a way of getting off benefits if you want to.

Microsoft's $7.1bn Nokia gobble: Why you should expect the unexpected

I predict that sales of my dog turd powered phone will increase by 100% over the next year (someone might actually buy one)

just saying an objects sales have increased by a percentage quantifies nothing (a million percent of nothing is till nothing)

Ministry of Sound sues Spotify over user playlists

So MOS are trying to sue spotify because I could create a playlist that recreates their collection of tracks by sourcing the tracks from either the original artist's singles or albums, some other publishers compilations or even tracks held on my own computer.

Given the amount of different club edits or mixes available for a given track the odds of me exactly replicating a MOS compilation are pretty slim.

if I then choose to call my playlist MOS ultimate collection (or whatever) then it is still none of their business UNTIL I share that playlist with others, about the only thing they can ask is that spotify prevent the sharing of playlists that exactly match their compilation names

Tesla cars 'hackable' says Dell engineer

"And there's the issue : how long can we avoid it ?"

for about as long as you can keep your current vehicle operational, in my case it's almost 23 years and coming up to 999999 miles (not too bad for a bit of rubbish from longbridge)

Boffins harvest TV, mobile signals for BATTERY-FREE comms

Re: And is illegal in the UK

That would probably have been somewhere around borough hill in Daventry when the bbc world service used to transmit from there.

it used to be hell to avoid listening to it for about 5 miles in any direction at 6pm when they cranked the transmitters up to full for the news

stereo amplifier (no tuner) check

gas cooker check

false teeth check

dogs chain check

barbed wire fence check

BT Telephone check

You used to hear the news in english (with about 4 other languages in the background) on any / all of the above, especially if you lived on the southbrook estate (parts of which were well within 500m of some of the masts)

given the field strength in that area I would think that a nice resonant length of wire would easily light a tube or 10

Facebook's request to the flash industry: 'Make the worst flash possible'

I would go with a slightly different approach for a drive that would suit my needs perfectly...

small section of high grade flash + massive section of prom (programmable read only memory)

have the drive make any initial writes to flash and allow it to stay there for a period of time (30 days), anything that is unchanged over those 30 days move into prom (Write Once Read Many)

this moving of data would be handled internally by the drive speed of transfer from flash to prom would not be an issue since the user would be unaware of the change and read access would be similar speeds regardless of whether the drive was pulling from prom or flash.

It seems to me that the controllers for such a system already exist in the current generation of hybrid drives where commonly used files are held in flash with the remainder held on spinning platters, my suggestion would replace those platters with prom

Oracle Team USA sailors admit breaking America's Cup rules

Hmmm

If i had the money to finance a winning team in that race I would make certain that it would be the last team to ever win, Simplest way I can think of is to make use of the rule that the winner specifies the location for the next race, anyone up for a yacht race in nevada?

So, you gonna foot this '$200bn' hacking bill, insurance giants asked

Re: Nothing is impossible...

based on your example insurance in the event of a terrorist attack the answer is normally bugger all protection from insurance.

most policies have exclusions for terrorist activity, strikes, riots and civil commotion plus physical damage incurred during a process of mass social uprising, revolt or military coup

BOFH: Don't be afraid - we won't hurt your delicate, flimsy inkjet printer

Don't forget the Bell

Ah the infamous fx-80, the printer so basic it's driver would control any other printer just fine.

Ibm equipment of the same era was so over-engineered that it was near indestructible, remembering the original PS2 Towers here where the only way to kill them was to clean the dust out of them (as long as the 6 inch layer of dust was present inside they worked perfectly)

Indian military pondered attack on Venus and Jupiter

@Jake

In the 60's would be about right, when both the US & the UK were watching the skies for anything unusual coming from the general direction of another secretive nation with nuclear capability, In our case it was the Soviets, in India's case it's China.

Wonder how many times soviet fighters were scrambled to shoot down venus.

PHWOAR! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, Prime Minister

Re: Missing the point

As a child (around 7 years old) I knew the mechanics of sex and already understood that not all relationships were male & female, this was taught to me along the lines of "not all people are the same, if what they choose to do is not harming you or anyone else is there any reason to have a problem with it?)

with it being taught as a question rather than the more common "this is wrong" approach it left me to make up my own mind about what was acceptable or not.

Porn came up a few years later with the usual hedge find of a magazine, my parents approach was "If you enjoy looking at it then look at it"

a couple more years pass and a copy of a copy of a betamax video fell into my hands (showing my age here) and my parents approach was "watch it if you enjoy watching it... But be aware that what you are seeing is all done for the camera and you are never likely to experience sex similar to what is on the tape"

on the whole I think my parents approach was very balanced, allowing me to make my own decisions (and mistakes) while always being there to answer any questions I had (or discuss possible answers if there was no right answer"

WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters

I got to this point....

"Cops will build a database of child porn images, which can be referenced and used to "close the net on paedophiles"

Who is going to police the police database

Watch LIVE tomorrow: LOHAN team attempts second pop at SPEARS

Re: I thought you weren't allowed aero mobile?

the frequency in use IS within the 70cm ham band which is allocated to ham radio on a secondary basis (the primary user is the military) another secondary user is ISM (Industrial, Scientific & Medical) which are allowed to operate from the air, license free but have a max power limit of 10mW.

those of us that launch balloons and hold ham licenses have to make sure that the balloon does not identify itself using our callsign while it is in the air since that would be an instant breach of our ham license conditions

US gov SMASHES UP TVs and MICE to nuke tiny malware outbreak

This is probably more accurate...

Love in an elevator.... testing mast: The National Lift Tower

Another local name for the tower was Murphy's Well

Retired 4-star general probed over Stuxnet details leak - report

Re: Thieving, Lying Politicians deserve no rights, consideration or respect

because "We the People" have already voted that the current bunch represent the peoples wishes.

Only answer is to find a more suitable bunch to vote in next time around...

good luck with that one.

Charlie Miller to tell Vegas punters how to hack your car

with the bus being used for more and more things it would be possible to attach a device to it without needing to gain access to the engine compartment, a few possibilities that spring to mind...

ABS Wheel sensor

Rear light cluster

pretty much any sensor on the transmission

suspension sensors (on cars with active suspension)

towbar electrics? (not sure on this one)

Using encryption? That means the US spooks have you on file

Re: So.....

great stuff

into the "not american" and "not english" lists you go

suppose the same argument could be used for Birmingham for someone to end up on both lists

Thousands of fingered crims, informants spaffed in web security COCK-UP

try entering your name as Fred,Bloggs and check the csv in the root idea

You've seen the Large Hadron Collider. Now comes the HUGE Hadron Collider

Re: Question

I think the problem with the LHC and other circular colliders is the amount of energy expended in making the particle change direction constantly (how it goes in a circle) increases the amount of extra "noise" in the experiment. A linear accelerator eliminates the problem by not having to change the particles direction (apart from minor corrections).

Imagine how hard it would be to get a car up to 200mph while continuously driving around a roundabout, it would take huge amounts of energy and it wouldn't take long before bits were flying off the car, Now take the same car and accelerate it down a straight road, far less energy would be needed.

iPHONES and 'Pads BANNED in US for violating Samsung patent

Re: Never understood this kind of spat

nope...

it does not come down to whether a chip (or any other part of a device) is capable of infringing it is whether that capability is used in the end product.

Using your argument Ford should be paying a lot of speeding tickets because they manufacture an engine that can be used in a car that is capable of exceeding speed limits

Vodafone set to splurge £2.5 MEELLION a DAY building 4G network

bugger the 4g network, it would be nice if voda would get the 2g network running here in lincolnshire, then they might like to have a look at what seems to be a non-existant 3g network before worrying about 4g

BBC suspends CTO after £100m is wasted on doomed IT system

we won't know until the inquiry into the inquiry has been completed

Paul Allen buys lovingly restored vintage V-2 Nazi ballistic missile

hadnt they done the exact opposite with the V1's?

thought they managed to leak that the bombs were short of london and over time manages to get it to the point that a lot of them were overshooting

Curse you, old person, for inventing computers!

I have plenty of respect for the older generation in computing (after all they taught the current generation what to do).

yes the younger generation may be able to bash out "code" at a rate of knots but few have a real understanding of how it all works behind the scenes, the older ones know exactly what's happening because they built what is behind the scenes and as a result know a lot of tricks that never made it into the documentation.

IT bloke publishes comprehensive maps of CALL CENTRE menu HELL

Re: This will be useful...

on a lot of call systems Zero is an unmentioned option, usually drops you straight to a human

Plusnet's 'Everyone's a winner' claim is a plus-sized whopper

I fell out with plusnet many years ago on dialup when they launched surftime - anytime

sold as a cost free dialup connection (cost free = no call charges) 24-7

they threw me off after a week because I had been connected almost 24/7

I moved from them to eclipse who offered the same package (at a slightly higher cost) and they gave me assurances that me being on 24/7 was no issue whatsoever

Police arrest suspect in BIGGEST DDoS ATTACK IN HISTORY

Re: bollocks

"IF it's sent from an american server"

there just happen to be hundreds of thousands of servers outside the US you know,

even if it is an american server and you unsubscribe then congratulations you removed yourself from one list "the does this email address get read list" and got yourself added to 20 more "lets sell these confirmed active email addresses" litst

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

Re: Hard to know where to start...

it doesn't have to be a seperate usb dac

pretty much anything apart from on-board audio will generally give a vast improvement (on-board is generally there for office usage error beeps and maybe a few video calls)

this was highlighted to me by doing like for like comparisons between my computer and my business partners

both in the same room

both with identical motherboards

identical speaker systems

the only difference between the systems is that mine has an obselete sound blaster audigy and his is using on-board audio, words do not describe the difference in audio quality (and I know the audigy is far from perfect)

Re: Amstrad Faux Hi-Fi

I used to do a roaring trade in modified amstrad stereos by turning them into slimline wall mountable units, people thought it was amazing that they could be slimmed down to 4 inches in depth (with the loss of the turntable) and still work perfectly, very few realised that the rest of the box was normally empty on un modified stereos.

my system at the time was various sony tape decks, a cd player unbolted from the bottom of a combined system (cant remember the make on the outside but it was sony innards) a pioneer sa-706 amp (still have it in the loft) and some sony APM-101 speakers.

Euro states stick fingers in ears to Huawei, ZTE tech 'dump' claims

this sounds to me like a few companies have got together and complained that someone else is selling similar products cheaper.

if someone can make a product that does everything they claim it does they can choose to sell it at whatever price they choose (even if that price represents a loss to try and establish a user base)

if they are selling at a loss then they must have some plan to recover that cost elsewhere just like every other company that sells products for a loss, Printers etc recoup the money on consumables, supermarkets (which did sell some product at a loss years ago) recoup the money by driving smaller competitors out of business.

if you don't like a manufacturers strategy don't buy their kit (of course your competitors can buy it and then undercut you due to lower overheads)

it's simple market forces at work, the value of a product is set by the lowest price somebody will sell it at, those that can't afford to match (or come close to) the price suffer

T-Mobile UK ordered into humiliating Full Monty strip

Re: Blocking access to Remote SMTP servers?

since I run my own smtp server I just told the server to listen for connections on an extra (non standard) port, using this port has successfully bypassed the smtp blocks imposed by every mobile operator I have come across

LOHAN chap to launch Raspberry Pi eye in the sky

Re: No aerial APRS? I did not know that.

Hi DaveAke

I can confirm as a ham that airborne operation of any sort is specifically excluded from the UK amateur license

Geolocation tech to save 60 Londoners from being run over next year

I wonder whether a fall in the number of road deaths in london would also correlate with a fall in average road speeds in london and an increase in traffic amounts (it's a bit harder to hit something hard enough to kill someone in a traffic jam)

Malware-flingers target gullible corporate bods with office printer spam

Re: News?

because Sophos thought they had been out of the spotlight for a while and now we're into the new financial year (in the uk at least) corporates heads might have a little bit of budget available to protect themselves from this new threat that they have never seen yet (because the spam filter already takes care of it)

Gov report: Actually, evil City traders DIDN'T cause the banking crash

Re: So umm.. Who decided to lend the money?

I was taught from a young age to always allow 30% of any income as the cost of keeping a roof over my head.

luckily I ended up in a situation where my wages were far bigger than the cost of where I was living (10% cost not 30%), rather than do what most of my colleagues did and spend the extra / buy a bigger house etc I carried on paying my usual amount and dumped the extra difference into a savings account (20% of my wages).

after a few years the dot com crash happened and we all lost our jobs and there were no quick prospects for new work. I switched over to running from savings. those savings kept me afloat with no income for just under 2 years, bills got paid as they should and I still had my house etc etc, without exception all of my colleagues lost their homes.

fast forward to now... my housing expenses are around £1000 per month with an income that averages 9000 per month... 2000 per month still gets piled into savings and I am back at the point where I have a 2 - 3 year safety buffer, anything over the 3 year safety buffer gets pulled out and used to pay down the mortgage earlier.

as in the article a lot of the problems were caused by lending to people that it should have been obvious couldn't afford to pay it back (I liken some of the lending decisions to lending money to a drunk on a park bench)

RAF graduates first class of new groundbased 'pilots'

Re: next step - outsourcing

thin air... just like a lot of the figures quoted from that address

Re: next step - outsourcing

Hmmm crowd sourced target selection for a drone could be an interesting proposition....

10,000,000 people seem to think that a particular house in central London (Black door with No 10 on it) is a prime target.

ok it would cost a lot to set up the first CSGD (Crowd Sourced Government Drone) but it would streamline the removal of members who insist on the most unpopular policies, but over time I am sure that savings could be made from reduced pension payouts

SimCity owners get free game, EA will get A NEW CEO

Re: I upvoted you

in my current location there not even edge available let alone 3G (tested O2, Voda, Three, Tmob and Orange)

Mobile for games that require always on connections is a joke

Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story

anyone else remember the Plus D system on the spectrums?

3.5" floppy interface and a centronics printer port, 4 seconds to load a full game from disk seemed amazing

Virgin Mobile doffs its cap: Web speed limit axed after outrage

still better than 3g on vodafone

I just tried loading the el reg homepage via vodafone (5 bars / 3g so it should be ok) I am in a rural area so not heavy loading on the tower.

3 minutes 46 seconds (& 2% of my battery) to load the homepage

Google to offer 'same-day delivery' Amazon Prime killer - report

Re: Same goes for the high street. Why do they open at 9am and close at 5.30pm?

one slight downfall with this plan...

if the majority of business switched to a 2 - 8pm opening times then where would the majority of people be between 2 - 8pm?

Google reveals Glass details in patent application

I would imagine the camera needs to be on the same side as the display so that the camera gets as close as possible to the same vision as the eye seeing the display.

Satanic Renault takes hapless French bloke on 200km/h joyride

Re: No brakes? - Range Rover

Older range rovers have an inertia switch under the back of the passenger seat, its designed to shut the fuel pump off if the vehicle is in an accident, well within reach of the driver and can be tripped by pulling or pushing the plunger on the top (cant remember which) of flicking it with a finger.

unfortunately a lot of people found it can also be hit by children's feet from the back seat, it was quite common to see them "broken down" on the side of the road because a child had been waggling feet in the gap under the passenger seat

Forget wireless power for phones - Korea's doing it for buses

wouldn't there also be an increased drag imposed on the vehicle as a result of the induction based charging