* Posts by sabba

306 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Dec 2009

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One more beancounter given a spanking over Tech Data chicanery

sabba
FAIL

If malfeasance is found, and it sounds like is was, why are they not sitting before the beak and facing the prospect of a custodial sentence?

Kentucky lawmaker pushes smut filter law (update: maybe not)

sabba

Re: Seriously?

Alternatively, perhaps they are people who also enjoy it but believe that its propagation needs to be controlled in order to protect weaker elements of society (children, republicans etc.)

sabba

Re: Seriously?

I think the point is that the presence of porn has become all pervasive and younger and younger children are getting exposure to it. If you can't rely on responsible parenting (and that includes parents being sufficiently cognisant of technology to apply filters to their children's devices) then perhaps we do need to consider some degree of internet control. I appreciate that this goes against all the principles of Freedom of Information (and it is perhaps only one small step from there to greater censorship). The question is, which is of greater import to the health and wellbeing of society as a whole?

Hells door-bells! Ring pieces paralyzed in horror during Halloween trick-or-treat rush

sabba

Getting a metal box to travel from A to B makes sense since it (a) enables you to travel faster/farther, and (b) allows you to carry a greater payload. Using a device to enable you to answer the door when you are not there seems a little like a solution looking for a problem. Assuming it's a miscreant. What next? Ok, it can take a photo but that's the domain of a security system (I have no problem with that) but why link it to your doorbell? KISS

sabba

Re: So

Same applies to Valentine's day. Can someone have a word with my wife? :-)

sabba

Re: Hmm ...

You're lucky. Our dogs usually respond before any possible caller has even entered our driveway (and often before they have even entered the street - or thought about setting off to call on us).

Kubernetes bug ate my banking app! How code flaw crashed Brit upstart

sabba

Re: Rolling update causes outage

Yeah, cos' everyone knows you never get similar problems with proprietary systems/tech.

Get real, the fact it is open-source bears no relevance here. Even in a homogenised environment (single source for all solutions) there are often incompatibilities between different versions of inter-connected applications (since few organisations feel the desire to uplift their entire enterprise landscape every time a single application is updated).

Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

sabba

Re: Possible Solution

Good idea but I think the hire company might have got a little upset if he had ;-)

Vietnam bans Bitcoin as payment for anything

sabba

Re: dodgy dealings

Would also be a great way to lauder your dirty 'cash'.

sabba

Re: Tulips again

And surely the fact that BC can be mined implies that there's a system of perpetual quantitive easing in place. Since I am not familiar with the processes by which new BCs can be introduced without them devaluing the existing ones so I am prepared to be corrected here.

sabba

Re: Please enlighten me.

Your point is valid, which is why most countries want people to adopt bank transfers rather than use cash payments. I would also argue, perhaps tenuously, that cash payments are perhaps slightly easier to track than BitCoins (if you raid a premise and find 200k of undisclosed cash you can probably be sure that something dodgy is going on; with a similar amount of BC you'd probably not even be aware).

Dear America, you can't steal a personality: GDPR godfather talks privacy with El Reg

sabba
Pint

Re: Actual result

You, sir, would have been upvoted solely for "Any resemblance to that cunt Farage is entirely intentional"!!

Xperia XZ1: Sony spies with its MotionEye something beginning...

sabba

Re. your comment on network coverage...

I'd say that the planning office were perfectly correct to stop a god awful telephone mast being erected in woodland. Might be best sticking to the subject next time :-)

Elon Musk says Harry Potter and Bob the Builder will get SpaceX flying to Mars

sabba

Personally, I'd rather we stay away from other planets...

...at least until such time as we have developed some sense of environmental (and social) responsilbility and stopped trying our best to destroy our current one. It seems to be that we are very much like those people who head out to enjoy the countryside complete with a bag full of delicious snacks. The wrappers for which they then proceed to litter over that pristine wilderness.

Google bins white supremacist site after it tries to host-hop away from GoDaddy

sabba

Re: As much as I hate nazis...

Once you start to remove the voice of someone whose message you find distasteful, you are no longer living in a democracy. If this were Trump trying to remove the web-sites of his opponents, there'd be an outcry (and quite rightly). It cannot be one rule for one and another for those you dislike.

sabba

Re: As much as I hate nazis...

Do you think that banning old Adolf's web-site would have removed him from the equation? Highly unlikely. In all likelihood, he and his supporters would have found it empowering. They'd have then used the fact that they were being censored as proof of their being right. And this would have driven more of the disenfranchised to their cause. Removing a medium of publication is analogous to putting a t-shirt on over a skin lesion. The cancer is still there, it will still spread, you just cannot see it.

Google and its terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week in full

sabba

Ok, perhaps I am missing the point but are we now saying that there are not any biological differences between the male and female elements of the human species that might make that gender better suited for some tasks than their counterparts? Things like for example, greater muscle mass in men (and strength to weight ratio), greater empathy in women. Have all of these things now been disproven? Just curious.

Microsoft's Surface Pro 2017, unhinged: Luxury fondleslab that's good...

sabba

Why would I potentially spend close on 3 grand for a portable computer and then have to fork out more for a pen and a keyboard? In theory it looks like a very appealing device, even allowing for the fact it's running Windows, but it's not practical at those prices. Personally I think the iPad Pro is over priced but compared to this it starts to look positively cheap. Think I will stick with my Macbook Air and a low end iPad for now.

At last, a kosher cryptocurrency: BitCoen

sabba

I think I will stick with cash and credit cards. Perhaps it is just me but I still do not see the business case for bit coin unless you are trying to perform dark financial operations (and even then it's apparently not quite as dark as you might like it to be). Are they not just the digital equivalent of bearer bonds (only slightly less flexible)? Does the introduction of yet another 'service provider' add anything?

Foot-long £1 sausage roll arrives

sabba

Waiting for Greggs' to fire their opening salvo...perhaps, a one square foot cheese and onion pasty for forty five pence!! It's roll-wars!!

Forget sexy zero-days. Siemens medical scanners can be pwned by two-year-old-days

sabba

Re: Same impression here

Nothing wrong with using vi to create a GUI based application. X-Windows and Motif, however, were a whole together different kettle of fish. Did the job, but buggy as hell, and highly idiosyncratic. If it weren't for the flakiness of that particular platform, I doubt that O'Reilly publishing would be the power house it is today. They were the only ones who published any halfway decent books on the platform.

Linus Torvalds pens vintage 'f*cking' rant at kernel dev's 'utter BS'

sabba

There are ways and means. Linus is a throwback to the bad old days when IT was king. He needs to learn some social skills.

sabba

Re: As I've said before ...

I have no problem with the kernel being written in C. Good, and bad, code can be written in any language. I do take exception to Linus' approach to handling anything he deems to be critical of his work. That smacks of a God complex and that rarely works out well for anybody. Over the years I have heard many bullies justify their actions by saying it gets things to. The question is, does their approach cause things to get done in an expedient (fast delivery) or appropriate (robust) manner and at what cost?

Apple appears to relax ban on apps fetching, running extra code – remains aloof as always

sabba

Apple seem to be damned whatever they do...

If they don't allow download and execution of code they are accused of being too draconian. Conversely, if they do allow it and something goes awry they are also castigated.

Personally, I'd go with not allowing hot-patching. As noted elsewhere, this often causes more problems than it solves. I'd rather not have to rely wholly on developer' ethics or QA diligence.

Amazon granted patent to put parachutes inside shipping labels

sabba

Re: This is Getting Out of Hand

There are likely two reasons for this patent. Firstly, it keeps the competitors guessing. Secondly, it's a market disruptor. Are they ever likely to use it? I doubt it. But if they do find some way to make it feasible then the presence of the patent makes it harder for their competitors to copy and probably dissuades them from exploring similar avenues. To be honest: enclosing a parachute in a container - how is that even allowed as a patent?

Virtual reality upstart UploadVR allegedly had in-house 'kink room,' drugs, rampant sexism

sabba

If Beavis and Butthead moved into IT...

...this sounds like the kind of company they would run.

What the hell is happening to our industry? Is this what happens when you give self-indulgent boy-men shed-loads of cash and leave them to their own devices?

I am not what might be called PC, and sometimes I think that people are becoming overly sensitive. This place, however, sounds like a particularly corrosive environment.

Gay hero super-boffin Turing 'may have been murdered by MI5'

sabba
Gimp

I thought Tatchell had gone quiet.

He's obviously not been getting the attention he feels he deserves lately.

sabba

Re: New Inquiry.

What about the aliens? Don't forget the aliens.

Canadian family gives up modern tech to live like it's 1986

sabba

Only on the men!!

sabba

Do you mean to tell me...

...that it's not still 1986 in Canada!!

NSA security award winner calls for hearings into agency's conduct

sabba
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Go back to how this started.

And very few had taken the impact of a fully laden commercial jet plane.

Selfridges dreaming of a snot-themed Christmas

sabba
Paris Hilton

I truly hope they have some restrictions...

...on which body parts they will scan!! :-)

'Do the right thing and tell on a pirate' - software bods

sabba
FAIL

One in four...

...how on Earth did they manage to come to this 'alarming' figure. Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me.

Throwing arms let humans rise above poo-flinging apes to play cricket

sabba
Holmes

Let's pick on NASCAR next...

...a racing sport, which requires that your steering wheel turn in one direction only (usually to the left). <<yawn>>

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

sabba
Joke

Re: Dear Mods

Or you could just stop reading the ones you deem childish!! Just a thought.

Hello!! Hello!! Are you there....did you get my message? Hello!!

sabba
Gimp

So let's all start...

...encrypting huge blocks of random text and sending them via email (or other means) over the net.

Won't serve any great purpose but it should start to ramp up their server and associated storage costs.

Why are scribes crying just 'cos Google copied their books? asks judge

sabba
Holmes

Re: My Preciousssss...

Thank fuck you Yanks only **think** you rule the world then :-)

sabba
FAIL

Re: Seems counterproductive...

I think the biggest problem is with the definition of part. Assuming I scan in your book and then remove the title page, the frontispiece, and perhaps the author's acknowledgements both I post the remainder on my web-site. The main content of the book is still complete but I have only published part of the book. So am I covered by the law? Perhaps not in the spirit of it.

sabba
WTF?

Re: Seems counterproductive...

Doh!! you seem to be assuming that the book is already published on a website. Did you miss the bit where it said that Google was digitising print books. Not sure where you'd stick a robots.txt file in a print book.

John McAfee talks of sex, drugs, and bad coding

sabba
Paris Hilton

Perhaps it would have been better...

...if they'd applied the hammer to the other end of his anatomy!! Think head - not foot!!

I bet the current owners of McAfee are well chuffed at being associated with this mad man. Presumably they are now wishing they'd bought Norton instead.

I am not convinced he hasn't been involved in the code for over 20 years; I am sure I can feel hints of his madness in their products.

Facebook crashes into networking with open switch

sabba
Holmes

At the end of the day..

...it's a free market and you should be perfectly at liberty to buy, or not, an FB designed switch. Whether you (or I) do is in fact buy it is to some degree immaterial. What is important is the message it sends out to the big boys who have had the game field to themselves for way too long. I hope this takes off; I hope it's a success; and I welcome the increased competition. Does it really matter if your box says Facebook, Cisco or Wang Tu Industries so long as it does its job? After all, I am assuming you don't go around flashing your routers to all and sundry.

Boss of Irish-based R&D hub: Man, this place is the back of beyond

sabba
Paris Hilton

So that'll be...

...a Savage report on bottlenecks at Cork!!

Pyongyang Photoshop tomfoolery shows wet Norks, skirts blown up

sabba
Devil

Re: Space programme

On that note. How's our, and by that I mean the UK's, space programme coming along?

MI5 undercover spies: People are falsely claiming to be us

sabba
Holmes

MI7 and three-quarters

are even more secret!!

Furious Stephen Fry blasts 'evil' Reg and 'TW*T' Orlowski

sabba
Trollface

TGINFD -

Thank God it's not Fry-day, perhaps!!

GoPro accused of using DMCA to take down product review

sabba
Trollface

Re: This comment is protected by DCMA

I am afraid I have had to downvote your posts, not because I do not find them amusing, but simply as an act of defiance. Viva le revolucione!!

Young model ruthlessly fingers upskirt iPad petshop pervert

sabba
Coffee/keyboard

If she can be recognised from blurred shots of her nether regions...

...then she's probably doing the wrong kind of modelling.

Saying that: I am surprised she didn't just give the idiot a slap and be done with it. It seems a pretty sad way to spend your free time; guess the risk of being caught is probably his main motivation.

sabba
WTF?

I am impressed...

...I have never managed to even take a photo of a whiteboard with my iPad without (a) nearly dropping it, (b) getting a totally blurred or dark image, or (c) accidentally swapping to some other app at the last second. This guy must put in the hours practising that 'edge' grip. Hats off to him.

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

sabba
Unhappy

Re: Silent Running

Damn, you beat me to it. I was going to mention Silent Running. Excellent film.

Philips pushes out SDK for multicolour Zigbee LED lights

sabba
FAIL

Christ, what next...

...programmable toilets? £50 quid a time for a bulb? I think I'd rather have a more expensive control network and lower cost bulbs.

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