Posts by Anonymous South African Coward

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

In the old days when visiting clients, you'd consult a paper map, make mental notes where to go, and you'll arrive safe and sound at your client/destination. This also have the advantage of you "optimizing" your route especially if you knew which shady parts of the city/country to avoid.

Nowadays you just plonk your destination into your GPS, and if you land up in the middle of a squatter camp late at night.... (Happened to me once).

I prefer the old way of doing it, by mentally plotting and remembering your route, gives them brain cells a good workout.

Perfect timing for a two-bank TITSUP: Totally Inexcusable They've Stuffed Up Payday

Nice way to start off payday....

...NOT.

Pain spotting: Russia's Aeroflot Docker server lands internal source code, config files on public internet

If you try to hack Aeroflot's website, you'll get a prize.

One-way ticket to the Gulag.

Leaving for a safe house at an undisclosed location post-haste.

Android Phones are 10: For once, Google won fair and square

I must admit that I'm a bit tired and jaded from too much Android, and would like to see something fresh and new.

Maybe a *BSD or Ubuntu version instead of Android...

One can only dream...

Your specialist subject? The bleedin' obvious... Feds warn of RDP woe

So wanting to stick a PC with RDP open to the WWW into a DMZ and see what happens :)

Amazon Alexa outage: Voice-activated devices are down in UK and beyond

Re: "Are you affected by the outage? Leave us a comment and let us know."

Huh? What outage?

I don't believe in IoT tat. And this is as good as any reason why I don't want such things in my hosue.

Sneaky phone apps just about obey the law, still have no trouble guzzling your data, says Which?

Seriously thinking of going for a very basic phone that can do calls, emails, whatsapp/telegram and nothing else.

WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigma until long after the war

The Bourne Codecracker? :) (after the Jason Bourne series of films)

Fascinating.

Thanks for this!

Did the Germans ever got clued up that their supposedly encrypted message system have been compromised?

Amid Trump-China tariff tiff, Cisco kit prices to resellers soar up to 25%

Re: How about ...

We are going to pay for firewalls and the Mexicans are going to build them!

And in other news, all jobs in Mexico have been outsourced to India, and Mexico have been importing Indians to do slave work in factories.

Good news: Sub-surface life on Mars possible, moons from big impacts. There is no bad news

"Sign on tunnel leading into moon's/martian depths : "Abandon hope all ye who enter here - Morlocks be skulking here."

Jokes aside, this is very interesting. We always thought the moon/Mars is cold and lifeless, but a microscopial examination may tell something different.

You're alone in a room with the Windows 10 out-of-the-box apps. What do you do?

Lob a Tsar Bomba at it.

Only way to get rid of that sort of abomination.

Spent your week box-ticking? It can't be as bad as the folk at this firm

Friday. Tick!

Software blunder. Tick!

Clueless manglement making things worse. Tick!

Beancounters ruining things. Tick!

Underpaid staff working too hard on pointless shit. Tick!

Well known company that shall not be named. Tick!

Ticks all my boxes, and it didn't take me all week.

Totally Screwed Bank?

Curiosity's computer silent on science, baffling boffins

Commitstrip need to update their "Meanwhile on Mars" series... maybe the Rover is catching a case of the sulks because nobody dropped by for its birthday? :)

See : http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2017/08/08/meanwhile-on-mars-12-birthday-party/

Or maybe they (JPL) can outsource the task of physically going to Mars and fixing the Rover to one of the many call centres in India :p

Fallover Friday: NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank go TITSUP*

Yay for outsourcing! Let's outsource some more!

And when all the IT techs have done a Brexit and left for greener pastures somewhere else, where will they get local IT support from?

The Reg chats with Voyager Imaging Team member Dr Garry E Hunt

Fascinating read, thank you very much.

Ubuntu flings 14.04 LTS users a security lifeline, chats some more about Hyper-V

Kind old Microsoft helped out again with the metadata necessary to get Ubuntu into the Hyper-V gallery.

Microsoft? Kind?

Something's wrong here.

Garbage collection – in SPAAACE: Net snaffles junk in first step to clean up Earth's orbiting litter

This is a job for Roger Wilco. Period.

Microsoft: Like the Borg, we want to absorb all the world's biz computers

Nope nope nope nope.

Revealed: The billionaire baron who’ll ride Elon’s thrusting erection to the Moon and back

Will it have a Paranoid Android?

Check out this link! It's not like it'll crash your iPhone or anything (Hint: Of course it will)

T-t-t-t-triggered!!!

Sysadmin misses out on paycheck after student test runs amok

Re: sci-fi ships were the order of the day at my first job.

No one likes the test server Rimmer though...

Rimmer Dall (Scions of Shannara)?

Nah, I tend to stick to boring, functional names.

A basement of broken kit, zero budget – now get the team running

Emnador noticed this heap of objects.

The map and keys are lost forever.

Re: HMSO

I would've commended you for that... and told the rest of the staff to look at increasing their productivity.

A boss pinching pennies may have cost his firm many, many pounds

Migrated over from 2k3 to 2k16 at last, with new hardware to boot.

2k16 and powershell is heaven in comparison to 2k3... you can do diddly squat!

Google's 'other' phone platform turns up in post-apocalyptic mobe

I was pondering this. And realize I don't use my smartphone to its full potential.

Excel? Work on a laptop.

Word? Laptop.

Email? Mostly on laptop, but there are one or two (Schlock Mercenary etc) that I can peruse on the go, as well as reply to some emails when neccessary.

Games? Meh, not really into games. I do play flow free and word puzzle games.

Boos? Yes, reading a lot.

Just code a whatsapp and telegram client for kaiOS. That's all I need.

Post-silly season blues leave me bereft of autonomous robot limbs

Welcome back to forn parts, Dabbsy. We missed you and your delightful columns.

Premera Blue Cross hacker victims claim insurer trashed server to hide data-slurp clues

Recently had a compromised computer on the network. It was replaced with a good, clean PC, and the offending PC now awaits the proper code to initiate its own self-destruction cycle which should wipe out all life on this planet.

Huawei Mate 20 Lite: A business mobe aimed at millennials? Er, OK then

Have two Wawee devices - both MediaPads. T1-701u and its larger sibling.

Still going strong despite the 701u having a cracked screen. And no bloatware to boot.

Happy camper here.

Microsoft sharpens its claws to cut Outlook UI excess, snip Ribbon

The best office was Office2003. Or LibreOffice/OpenOffice of today.

No meh ribbon or the such cruft. Only now am I starting to get used to that piffle of a ribbon.

Meh.

Silence! Cybercrime's Pinky and the Brain have nicked $800k off banks

They're Pinky and the Brain,

Yes, Pinky and the Brain,

One is a genius, the other's insane.

To prove their mousey worth,

They'll overthrow the earth.

They're dinky.

They're Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain!

Software dev-turned-councillor launches rubbish* chatbot

Wot? No more "Skippy McSkipface with a fresh captain's log on the seat in an open field/cul-de-sac/somebody's front yard" news then?

Thunderstruck: Azure Back in Black(out) after High Voltage causes Flick of the Switch

The Day after Tomorrow...

Wot? Don't they have Hyper-V replication or clustering in place for their customers' valuable VM's?

Strewth! Aussie ISP gets eye-watering IPv4 bill, shifts to IPv6 addresses

IP address hoarding

Those who hoard and guard their IPv4 addresses jealously should do well to sell it off soonest, because once world+dog make the shift/jump/move/transition over to IPv6, then nobody'll want to buy IPv4...

Nevertheless, it will be interesting going forward.

Most IoT tat still runs on IPv4? Let's hope it stays so, the less IoT tat is on IPv6, the better :)

Go Pester someone else: TSB ditches CEO over bank's IT meltdown

Elephant in the room...

...just how much will TSB have to pay IBM for consultancies? Have they accounted for that?

Or hope that IBM will write it off and everybody will be happy and live in La La land thereafter?

TSB goes TITSUP: Total Inability To Surprise Users, Probably

Re: The Apocalypse Gathers Steam

Nowadays world+programmer is expected to use "programming libraries" to glom something resembling a working program together without having any idea what happens in the back end.

What the hey.... as long as it works and delivers correct input/output then all must be well even though said glommed program runs at glacial speed and need a whopping terabyte of RAM....

*applause*

For finding more wossnames for TSB... I've quite exhausted mine!

Trainer regrets giving straight answer to staffer's odd question

Coke in a printer? Will that not leave a sticky mess and give some Clue?

Fast food, slow user – techie tears hair out over crashed drive-thru till

Re: Havening fun yet?

I'm havening fun on the Georgening forum, it be a noice place to be.

Re: Do you want fries with that?

What do you expect from the staff at McDonalds?

What is a compoota?

Experimental 'insult bot' gets out of hand during unsupervised weekend

replace 'b' with 'w' in 'bank holiday'...

Windows 10 July update. Surface Pro 4. Working fondleslab. Pick two

At work I use a win10 craptop for work, m$ software included.

A major ballache for us IT admins is that you cannot install office2013 (office, project, visio) on win10 without busting your balls.

Install Office2016, it's much worse - you cannot install any Office2013 stuff at all...

Luckily I have a Mint desktop, it's a pleasure and joy to configure and use in comparison to Ickdoze10.

Chap asks Facebook for data on his web activity, Facebook says no, now watchdog's on the case

This is going to be very interesting going forward.

Now if only you can find out how to block that faceboob pixel from "phoning home"...

Luuuuverly fresh and hot popcorn orders being delivered via non-trackable drones.

Our unique technology will pop the popcorn prior to delivery, so you'll get it instantly fresh and hot without having to faff around with cold or stale popcorn!

Also offered are a range of assorted sprinkle flavours!

Place your order NOW to avoid disappointment!

It liiives! Sorta. Gentle azure glow of Windows XP clocked in Tesco's self-checkouts, no less

Uhm, but the versions of POSReady2009 I've played around with does not have CHKDSK installed... so what gives here?

It's a real PITA, especially when it reboots and the file system's dirty, and there's no CHKDSK installed.

Maybe I'm missing something here somewhere...

Microsoft takes another whack at killing off Windows Phone 8.x

Eish, going from bad to worse... WinPhones was announced with as much fanfare as possible, then distributed for next to nothing.

TBH Android is getting a bit too long in the tooth by now - if only they can develop and distribute a Google-free (sans any Google apps) Android version for most of the 'droids out there.... or something different like FreeBSD...

Connected car data handover headache: There's no quick fix... and it's NOT just Land Rovers

"When I buy a car, I want to be able to make sure MYSELF it is no longer accessible to previous owners, not rely on their goodwill or attention to detail," IT worker Mike Walters‏ told El Reg, summarising the feelings of many drivers we've spoken to about the issue.

This. Well said.

London's Gatwick Airport flies back to the future as screens fail

Oh dear.

So which one's the more resilient?

The oldstyle split-flap display (which cannot display advertisements or lewd pictures *ahem*), or the newfangled one with wide-screen monitors (which ne'er-do-wells can have fun with by displaying pr0nz and other unsavoury stuff, not to mention boring advertisements)?

Not to mention displaying bluescreen errors for world+dog to see and comment on (preferably on El Reg).