Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Heatwave shmeatwave: Brit IT departments cool their racks – explicit pics

Our customer partitioned off part of the kitchen for the server racks, no AC or extractor fan but lots of steam, fat and smoke - because the printers were on the other side of the wall and so they could just knock holes in it for the cables.

Re: Some years ago-

Hopefully all plugged into a series of daisy-chained extension leads back to a single wall socket ?

Re: Temperature ratings

one of the cats being sick all over the network switch.

That's because you were only using Cat-1 cable.

Cat5 can withstand upto 5 cats, Cat6 even more - obvious really

Re: I always like when people put flammable materials...

That's why you always know where the nearest fire extinguisher is

They are all currently locked away in the H&S dept because we don't have an official document specifying if the test date is month/day/year or day/month/year so the test label is invalid so the extinguisher can't be used.

Fix this faxing hell! NHS told to stop hanging onto archaic tech

Re: User story

You forgot:

4, Form committee to agree a document transfer requirement that meets health-data-2000 principles and ISO-FOO and health data standard BAR and Eu standard WIBBLE

5, Get quote from approved suppliers

6, Discover only Crapita is willing to tender - consider shooting self

7, Wait 5-10 years for solution to be delivered

8, Consider just emailing the document - consider what would happen to you, your team, your hospital if the Daily Mail find out.

9, Fax it

UK.gov agrees to narrow 'serious crime' definition for slurping comms data

Re: Serious Crime

Surely you can trust the government and locally authorities and police not to use any privacy legislation to stifle public protest. That would be like using anti-terrorism legislation to hunt journalists

Re: Yeah, yeah, yeah.... But shinny 'AI' thing

That was the success of the "Broken Window" policy in New York where they would ruthlessly hunt down every minor white collar crime. By prosecuting every minor expenses claim fraud and dodgy tax return they were able to make Wall St totally law abiding and avoid any larger damage from any much bigger crimes.

Imagine if instead they had concentrated solely on panhandlers and shooting people selling out of state cigs.

Re: Is it just me?

I assume London is now totally crime free given all the CCTV cameras in the capital

Up in arms! Arm kills off its anti-RISC-V smear site after own staff revolt

Re: It bears repeating: Building a CPU that runs C fast considered harmful.

Some real engineers* still use FORTRAN too. I have to use a "FORTRAN-like" language for some thermal modelling every now and then, but I'd far rather be using Python.

Everyone uses python - but I hoped el'reg readers would recognise

Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL

Why has it taken so long?

It's obviously not beyond the resources of an Apple or Samsung to design their own RISC cpu.

The real clever stuff comes in the process design which, at least on the higher end parts, you need to do yourself.

With opensource compilers the tool chain and so the experienced developers are there for you.

I always assumed it was that if you were an Apple or Samsung the royalties to ARM dropped to teh point where they were just less than creating your own architecture

Re: It bears repeating: Building a CPU that runs C fast considered harmful.

Real programmers with Real Work to do use FORTRAN

You're indestructible, always believe in 'cause you are Go! Microsoft reinvents netbook with US$399 ‘Surface Go’

Bargain ?

The same price as my Yoga Miix 700 with 8Gb / 256 Gb. a higher res screen, faster processor and Windows10 pro

Cops suspect Detroit fuel station was hacked before 10 drivers made off with 2.3k 'free' litres

making it rather easy to track them down.

Would that actually be a crime?

If I offer you fake $ bills that is a crime

But if you ask for a magnetic card and accept me swiping a library card and then give me the goods - didn't we both just enter freely into a contract ?

Re: Note to my fellow Yanks ...

First can we discuss the topic of describing a liquid fuel as gas?

Re: What about switching the pump off?

Pumps in the UK have physical locks to secure the handle into the holder

In case of fire write to the address below to and we will respond within 28 days

Snooping passwords from literally hot keys, China's AK-47 laser, malware, and more

Re: Is The Power Supply Portable?

So it's powered by 3kg of over stressed LiFe batteries made in China by the lowest bidder on a government contract, and then handled by squaddies.

Seems like the most effective use as a weapon would be to give them to your enemy

Will there be tarrifs on this?

Didn't the founding fathers guarantee my rights to buy Chinese ray guns without any pesky government interference ?

And in current affairs: Rogue raccoon blacks out city power grid after shocking misstep

Re: Furry Vengence

But if these are Canadian Racoons then a small wall with a polite "keep out" notice would be enough

Canadians do sometimes accidentally invade America and have to be dealt with by force.

Re: Furry Vengence

Is there any proof that these Raccoons didn't come from Canada?

We need a (very low) wall to protect America from Canadian Raccoons

Sysadmin cracked military PC’s security by reading the manual

Re: Physical access beats all

"Physical access beats all"

Orange book security standards allowed you assume physical security

Windows NT claimed to meet C2 level security, except for the network susbsystem.

So the machine was perfectly secure, so long as it wasn't networked and you could control physical access !

Not actually that silly, C2 required you to log certain actions in a secure manner. One other manufacturer we tested did log these events, but provided no way of viewing them. The Orange book just said they had to be logged, it didn't mention retrieval.

Re: Exploit?

and is in the manual?

Can you think of a better place to hide a secret on a computer ?

Re: Their part in his downfall

John Pertwee's biography recounts a story of being asked if he spoke French when in the army. He was from an old French family in the channel islands and spoke it like a native - but of course kept quite.

He later met the fellow officer who had said yes - and had been posted as military liaison on Tahiti for years

Re: Windows

Don't even need to remove the harddrive.

Boot from windows installer usb key, select repair, select command prompt and Robert is indeed your father's brother

'Toxic' Whitehall power culture fingered for GDS's fall from grace

Re: Bracken, what an ass

"Hire 50 people under 30 who know what an API is."

But don't allow them to use any API written by anybody over 30.

Hoping for Microsoft's mythical Andromeda in your Xmas stocking? Don't hold your breath

Re: Drawing BOARD ? Isn't There SOFTWARE For Drawing ?

Especially because CAD is one of the last things we need to keep Windows desktops around for.

Hurry up and make a deal on post-Brexit data flows, would you? Think of UK business – MPs

Re: Policy

"Fuck industry" was the principle of the last Tory leaderess,

Nice to see the financial and service sector getting the same treatment

Not entirely sure what that leaves for GDP .... Royal Weddings?

Re: Ha

"Food won't get cheaper."...yes it will due to the protectionist tariffs no longer applying.

Because there won't be any new UK protectionist tarrifs

Because the farmers and landed gentry have absolutely no political power in the conservative party.

Re: Court of Justice of the European Union

Is this a red smelly fish on both sides?

The [prime minister as a good ex-home secretary froths at the mouth at the idea of a court that can over rule her and so hates the ECJ.

The various "we can't agree a technical standard on X because that would require the ECJ as the ultimate authority" stories seem to confuse having the ECJ as the ultimate authority on standards in Europe and it having authority over you.

I work on the left-pond, we sell medical devices in europe and presumably the ECJ are the ultimate court on matters of CE marking and medical device classification - but it doesn't mean our current great leader has surrendered to Brussels.

I recently flew into London on Saudi Airlines. Since we weren't shot down I assume SA have some sort of agreement to fly into Europe - presumably ruled by the ECJ - but I don't think the Saudi regime accepts the ECJ as the ultimate authority over their domestic human rights

We might be skimming the Surface, but it looks like Microsoft's readying a wallet-friendly device

4:3 is the correct ratio for a display

if any monitor manufacturers are listening.

And 1.85∶1 is the correct ratio for TVs to watch proper movies on

Security guard cost bank millions by hitting emergency Off button

Re: Is your EPO button NC or NO?

For systems where an accident would leave people looking into the resulting crater you normally have NC - so that any wiring break will trigger the alarm.

One place I worked had a continually sounding alarm, a bell every 2 seconds so that you knew the alarm was working. If the alarm stopped - you ran

Re: "The Security guard and his boss of course both got fired"

it's commonplace to fire the company and give the contract to a new one.

Who quite often end up hiring the same security guard

Certainly my experience in firing cleaning companies for not actually cleaning anything - you end up with a new company that employs the same cleaner

Re: Kim or Ken?

That's the common sense that was applied at Chernobyl.

More accurately the common sense that was applied for Piper Alpha

Turn off the automatic sea water fire pumps because divers might be injured - health and safety you know

Have other rigs feed masses of high pressure gas into the blazing rig because they hadn't been ordered by senior management in Houston to stop production - you never want to stop production

Re: most emergency buttons provide [..] no information on what, exactly, they are supposed to stop

And will detonate when the large LED countdown clock is at 17 seconds and the hero is still doing their hair

Xiaomi's Wang: We're coming to the USA

Re: Eh?

, it's competing with Google, which means it's competing against free stuff."

Google hardware is far from free

Xiaomi phones are generally the specs of high end Samsung, the looks of Apple and half the price.

Looking forward to them disrupting the market a bit

Re: Why not?

Sorry, didn’t realize I bungled the edit process.

We could turn it into a new reg game.

Xiaomi might be building a Trump tower in Shenzhen. Or a resort. Or a golf course

Your move

National security

Xiaomi is only selling handsets - not carrier infrastructure

It might be tricky to ban them on the grounds of being made in China while allowing Lenovo and Apple.

US Declaration of Independence labeled hate speech by Facebook bots

It is rabble rousing hate speech by any definition other than "we won"

UK.gov IT projects that are failing: Verify. Border control. 4G for blue-light services. We can go on

Wouldn't it be quicker to list current government projects with an IT part that was on target?

I think the tea kitty at the NAO is running on a BBC micro and is working well

Re: £5.1 BILLION ?

For that price I would expect a home grown radio network and huge break through in the field of radio communication

For that price I would expect not only police phone boxes on every street corner - but they should travel through time and space AND be bigger on the inside

Re: £5.1 BILLION ?

The question wasn't why - that is obvious - it was HOW !

Are they employing 100,000 programmers on £50K pa for 10years?

Are they supplying managers with fresh Lamborghini company cars every month?

Are they serving Dutchy original shortcakes at meetings?

Re: Amber Rudd's old department got an amber-red warning

Not at all - this was a plan to give the contract to the lowest bidding charlatan in order to save billions on the cost overruns of the previous contract that was given to the lowest bidding charlatan.

£5.1 BILLION ?

How the Belgium do you spend £5.1bn on giving the police/fire/ambulance cell phones?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just give everyone in the country a nice £100 ZTE from alibaba and then if a passing policeman wanted anything they could ask a member of the public?

A fine vintage: Wine has run Microsoft Solitaire on Linux for 25 years

Re: "…anachronistic."

"Anyway, most of the grunt work on desktop systems",

Ironic that Microsoft has now had to create Linux on Windows in order to let people develop for the cloud on their Windows desktop

IBM fired me because I'm not a millennial, says axed cloud sales star in age discrim court row

Re: He was the top salesman in the group

BM found that Boomers were the least likely to understand IBM’s business strategy,

We have a business strategy?

Of course how else do you think the business is planned?

The business is planned? - I thought the plan was to fire everyone competent, alienate customers and drive the company into the ground?

He found out the grand strategy!

'Plane Hacker' Roberts: I put a network sniffer on my truck to see what it was sharing. Holy crap!

Re: What about the Toyotas that get sold to the Middle East ...

I thought you said 'pringle-mounted' and wondered if that would extend the range. /nerd

I thought you said 'pringle-mounted' and wondered if they had fitted machine guns to neds

Bill Clinton's cyber-attack novel: The airport haxploit-blockbuster you knew it would be

Would you be able to resist

Making the first letter of the last few pages spell out

J F K W A S K I L L E D B Y

And then end it there ?

London's top cop isn't expecting facial recog tech to result in 'lots of arrests'

promote her to a position which requires the trust of the community?

He was a slightly brown person that came out of a council tower block and went on public transport.

She was promoted by a community that isn't remotely brown, would never dream of visiting a council tower block (except after it burned down) and thinks everyone on public transport should be shot as a matter of hygiene

Re: The spectre of Charles De Menezes has no face...

If you think about it logically

The current system has 98% false positive rate, Charles De Menezes was falsely identified.

So if we set it the system to hunt down and kill Charles De Menezes, he would have a 2% chance of escaping - which was better than he got.