Posts by David 132

FBI arrests satellite engineer on charges of espionage

Re: Repeat after me

Or the version I heard years ago:

"The Internet - where Men Are Real Men, Women Are Real Men, and little girls are FBI agents"...

Gigabyte BIOS blight fright: Your megabytes’ rewrite plight in the spotlight

Re: Lazy or Paid Off

Nope. Hanlon's Razor applies here, fun though it is to speculate otherwise. Lenovo copied & pasted old UEFI reference code that had known bugs in it. The reference code was replaced with a fixed version back in 2014 but Lenovo didn't update.

fMRI bugs could upend years of research

I'd have hoped most people twigged to this when that 2010 fMRI study found statistically significant activation in the brain of a dead salmon.

Now that you mention it, I did think it was a bit fishy...

Bacon is not my vodka friend

Re: @ Ol'Peculier

Real men eat Vegemite !

Seconded!

I flew through Sydney recently en route from Singapore and picked up a tube of Vegemite. Hadn't had it in years; it was a real Proustian moment when I got home and put some on toast.

My wife and friends won't go near it though and think I'm weird.

Mmm Vegemite... beer... hungry now!

'I urge everyone to fight back' – woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

Who's next?

I would imagine that all those people who were happily using Media Center on Windows Home Premium, until the Windows 10 "upgrade" killed it, would have a REALLY strong case to pursue this kind of action.

IANAL but this trend of vendors retroactively removing product functionality needs to be stopped. For precedent, look what happened to Sony with the recent Linux-on-PS3 settlement.

Microsoft hops onboard bonk-to-pay bandwagon

Re: Ah, it's finally back then?

Later, I got an email that said "We are pleased to let you know..."

Ah yes, the universal Weasel wording of big companies. Shaft the customer, but put a cherry on it and make it sound like you're doing them the biggest favour.

See also:

"To better serve you..." (we are raising our prices)

"We'd like to thank you for your loyal custom..." (by offering you a chance to spend even more money with us)

"We have some exciting news for you..." (your current service plan is being cancelled/raised in price)

Just once, I'd like to see a company be honest.

"We're not making enough money on this service, so we're raising your price. You're welcome to cancel if you want, but we know you have no realistic alternatives. Sucks to be you. Hahaha."

Admins in outcry as Microsoft fix borks Group Policy

Re: Testing?

Microsoft test their patches against a fully-patched reference system - one where every previous patch has been diligently applied. My understanding is that they don't test against partially-patched systems, e.g. where the admin has applied patches V,W,X and Z but not Y. Their argument is that the latter introduces too many unknowns. The counter-argument is that the very reason that few admins apply 100% of patches... is issues like this one.

Their intent is, I'm sure, to only support fully-patched systems - hence the move to mandatory patching in Windows 10.

Spam King sent down for 30 months

Re: If only this could have happened to Canter and Seigel

We're still suffering the Eternal September.

Wales gives anti-vaping Blockleiters a Big Red Panic Button

Re: Strange Sign

That doesn't make any sense. Lead carbonate is, and has always been, more expensive than flour. Gimme some evidence! Oh, and 'lead' isn't a proper noun.

My understanding, from dimly recalled long-ago reading on the subject, is that Back In Ye Olden Times, white bread and flour was favoured by the aristocracy - "white" being equated with "pure". The peasantry were given the "dirty" wholemeal stuff. Which is ironic, of course, given what we now know about the relative health benefits of white flour vs. brown.

Accordingly, it was relatively common for bakers to pad their flour with white lead compounds to increase its appeal. It wasn't (per the parent poster) done to save money.

Telegram crammed: Hackers find way to send massive messages

Re: Telegram?!

I agree...I'm at that age that I actually know what a real telegram is, so therefore was completely confused by this article until it was pointed out it's an app.

Same here. My first thought was that the "hack" was just to omit the word STOP at the end of the message so that everything sent thereafter would be treated as a continuation of the same message.

+++ NEW TECHNOLOGY BAFFLES OLD COMMENTARD STOP MUST TRY TO KEEP UP WITH THE KIDS STOP NOW GET OFF MY LAWN STOP +++

RIP ROP: Intel's cunning plot to kill stack-hopping exploits at CPU level

Re: It'd be nice to have a system...

"It's turtles all the way down!"

And the turtles run on Logo.

Our CompSci exam was full of 'typos', admits Scottish exam board

Re: WTF?

Enid Blyton's "Dame Slap the Teacher" in the Faraway Tree series

Not having read that particular series of books, my thought process when I read your comment went:

1) "Dame slap"? Is that a classier, more aristocratic equivalent of the expression "to bitch slap" someone?

2) If so, I really don't remember that kind of thing in Blyton books.Did my parents shield me from the ruder editions?

3) In what other ways was my childhood excessively sheltered???? Did you lie to me, Mother???

Thank you for that short existential crisis.

'Massive great big' vulture goes AWOL in Somerset

Re: About the only picture of a spreadeagled 11yo that wont get you into trouble

For bonus points on the "add me to every government watchlist ever" stakes, append other ornithological terms to your search..

"... with Tits or Boobies and possible impressive Shags"

Fetching my coat with its copy of RSPB Birds Of Britain in the pocket.

Capitalize 'Internet'? AP says no – Vint Cerf says yes

It's "The Internet"

...unless you are trying to be e.e.cummings or molesworth (as any fule kno).

I'm with Vint Cerf and earlier commentard Ignatius T Foobar on this.

Windows 10 market share jumps two per cent

Re: MS shill

Windows 10 is ace!

It fixed my truck, got my lady back and even washed my dog!

..admittedly, my truck now won't let me open the hood "for my own security" and the dash layout changes randomly every Tuesday (for some reason the gear shifter is now a sub-menu from the infotainment screen??) and I have to buy fuel for it from Microsoft at a 30% markup;

...my lady reports every single thing I do to Microsoft;

...and my dog appears to have a large LED screen surgically embedded into his side, that shows me rotating adverts for Candy Crush, Winalot Prime and Office 365....

...but still, THANKS, WINDOWS 10!!

Microsoft aren't helping matters

The PC market is slowing, so what's needed is a cool, compelling new version of Windows that makes people say "wow!" and enables really exciting new usages - instead of which, Microsoft have given us a succession of complete fusterclucks from Windows 8 onwards. Diminishing sales? Lengthening refresh cycles? A general feeling that what people have now is "good enough"? What a PERFECT time for Microsoft to decide to turn the thumbscrews on everyone, enforce mandatory upgrades/updates, introduce the TIFKAM wtf-batshittery, and generally poison any remaining goodwill towards PCs. Oh yes indeed.

How do we think Michael Dell and the other OEMs feel about Microsoft right now?

Grrr.

Facebook's newest JBOF can be yours for Christmas

Samsung SSDs?

Those look distinctly like Intel SSDs in the article photo. DC P3700 units, I believe.

Interesting that they would prototype with one vendor and ship with another.

Disk death: Three-quarters of PCs will run SSDs by 2020

Re: Disk death: Three-quarters of PCs will run SSDs by 2020

I remember when 2000 was that,

You, me, and all the other Squaxx dek Thargo.

Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'

Re: Ode to Win10

No idea. Someone further down mentions "Simon and Garfunkel", but I don't know any of their songs.

Heathen. Ill-educated oaf. Kids today, mutter mumble grumble.

It's an obvious pastiche of this:

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence [1964]

Re: F*** another fail for IT in the eyes of ordinary users

"Oh, and a small point, the CAD tool I was using to design a small boat is now broken."

Perhaps you dodged a bullet: if you were designing it on an MS operating system it would probably have sprung a leak...

No Portholes, only Windows.

Re: Rollback option still there?

Anyone rolled back a malgrade recently?

My understanding is that the rollback option is available for up to 30 days after the Win10 installation.

However, I've seen reports of some things (e.g. mail data files etc) being converted to a new format during the Win10 installation and NOT reverted afterwards. In other words, the rollback is a "best efforts" deal, and isn't guaranteed to put everything back the way it was.

Windows 10 also has a nasty habit of helpfully deleting any incompatible software it finds ("<application> isn't compatible with Windows 10 and has been removed") and I doubt those would be un-deleted when rolling back.

I'll admit I don't have personal experience of this. I installed Windows 10 over Windows 7 on one of my home PCs, but made a clone of the SSD first, and that was MY rollback strategy!

Also worth noting: after the initial 30 days, your Win7 key is invalidated. So if you use my strategy and switch back to a clone of your Win7 drive after 30 days, it won't activate.

US nuke arsenal runs on 1970s IBM 'puter waving 8-inch floppies

How utterly clueless of you to make that statement. There are plenty left,

Sssshhhh, no, the comment above is mistaken, don't listen to him, there really are very few left and getting scarcer by the day. So any company wishing to hire one must be prepared to pay them big money. Really big.

Re: Popular lore

*It may still be an alternate domain for the version with the dash, I don't want to check, since I'm out of mind bleach.

Yeah, visiting the non-hyphenated URL really takes balls.

Re: Programming skills .NE. programming languages

@ Yet Another Anonymous Coward: Thanks for the link, very funny.

Sort-of-related-to-your-link: I remember reading once that the popular (by the standard of such things) early English choral work by Thomas Tallis, Spem in Alium, which translates from Latin as "Hope In Any Other", is invariably and accidentally mis-spelled by amateur choral societies etc. as "Spem In Allium". Which means that, delightfully, musicians up and down the land have been singing a 40-part choral paean of praise expressing "Hope In The Onion".

Re: US nuke arsenal run by 1970s IBM 'puter using 8-inch floppies

And famous for their massed charges when an English officer inadvertentley ordered Jones to attack that position

Good 'Evans, you're right. It Wrexham every time.

Re: Addendum

The book comes up first search result (pdf).

For me, at least, that first PDF copy seems to be corrupted - many of the pages from #3 onwards are blank. Try another result; if all else fails I have a good quality PDF and would be happy to share it.

Re: US nuke arsenal run by 1970s IBM 'puter using 8-inch floppies

Hmmm, weren't the Welsh one of the many enforcement arms of the British Empire (thinking of many likely now merged Welsh regiments)?

You're correct. Even more than other regiments, they weren't afraid to Dai and would usually Wyn. Red uniforms, khaki ones - all Huws, basically...

Re: Programming skills .NE. programming languages

It's not that difficult to learn a new programming language. Even easier to learn an old one.

Exhibit A.

(although I'm not sure if that particular example supports your assertion or argues against it...)

The Nazis managed to target ballistic missiles with a clockwork computer.

Because the electronic ones suffered from Braun-outs?

(while on the subject: a thousand thanks to the forgotten Reg commentard who mentioned, many moons ago, John D Clark's book Ignition! - An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, thereby introducing me to one of the most well-explained, informative, and hilariously witty (yes, really) books ever written about the history of rocketry. Seek it out.)

Re: Would you like to play a game?

4. Premium Freecell - Only $9.99 with your Microsoft Account!

Re: Programming skills .NE. programming languages

I'd use experts-exchange from work and not the one you gave.....

(Insert Rainier Wolfcastle "That's The Joke".gif right here.)

Popular lore has it (and it's too delicious a story to risk ruining it by googling for the truth) that Experts-Exchange didn't have the hyphen originally, leading to a certain amount of, um, ambiguity.

See also PenIsland.com, Therapist.com, etc.

Re: US nuke arsenal run by 1970s IBM 'puter using 8-inch floppies

It should be running on Windows 10 so MS can collect some real telemetry.

Oh dear Lord, I know you're joking, but no no no.

"General?"

"Soldier.. the balloon has gone up. This is the big one. We're at war. Set the coordinates for Cardiff and Llandudno* and LAUNCH!"

"Sorry General, the launch control system is installing Update 7 of 944 and we can't interrupt it. Also, LAUNCH.EXE doesn't pass SafeScreen and UAC has prevented it from running."

*Footnote: I know, right? Who'd have thought that tensions with Cymru would have escalated so quickly?

Re: Programming skills .NE. programming languages

you just search on GitHub and pull in the first library with "fitting" in the title.

Or if it's more complicated just copy the data to Excel and use that.

Or like most "programmers" these days, just post your problem to StackOverflow or ExpertSexChange and rely on others to give you a solution, which you can c&p into your project with minimal understanding of its concepts.

Thai bloke battles jumbo python in toilet todger thriller

Re: Movement

CoTW?

I second that Motion.

Um, let me rephrase that...

Re: Skilled

It does make you wonder where they release wild toilets these days...

In Japan, they disguise them so that they blend into the natural environment before releasing them into the wild.

I believe the local term is Camo-Khazi.

Re: Skilled

Bognor?

Pepper robot acts like real teenager, gets job at Pizza Hut

Re: I was just waiting for it to say

"Share and Enjoy!!"

Unfortunately, while porting the code from Big-Endian to Little-Endian architecture, the lower half of each byte was lost, and the robot now cheerily exhorts customers to "Go stick your head in a pig!".

Re: Dentist near my office has one

while (patient_is_alive)

{

speakf ("Is it safe?")

}

'Grey tech' broker DP Data Systems has gone titsup

Re: Vowed to go clean rather than shut up shop. Shuts up shop

As I've said before around these parts (translation:copying and pasting an old rant...)

This is what really irks me about the way "globalization" is practiced at the moment, in theory it's great - shopping around whether you're a customer or supplier, using global arbitrage to take advantage of localized economic strengths.

In practice, the big companies have got the second half of that locked up - a supplier will make widgets, gewgaws or IT kit anywhere in the world where it's cheapest - but they've lobbied to get the laws structured so that we, the customers, can't do the same thing.

If HP or whoever choose to set lower prices for their kit in (say) Vietnam to account for local conditions, why shouldn't I be able to buy it there and import it into the UK?

Ah, right, "grey market", and it harms UK suppliers by undercutting them. So how come companies can harm local workers by moving production offshore? If one's allowed, the other should be too.

Ok, rant over. I'm sure someone will now explain how my grasp of economics is flawed.

French authorities raid Google's Paris HQ over tax allegations

Re: SOP

I agree (and have upvoted you) but at time of writing this I'm in a 1-4 minority.

Presumably, the downvoters have never had an ISA, or a pension fund, or taken advantage of tax deductions after donating to charity or when filing a tax return. All of those and many more are perfectly legal tax avoidance measures. I assume also that the downvoters are paragons of moral rectitude who have never paid a tradesman in cash and have scrupulously reported every single one of their eBay sales to the tax authorities - because those are examples of tax EVASION, and are the sort of thing we're all supposed to froth about.

Re: OxFam are dodgy with their tax affairs too

indeed. Given their own practices, it's a little hypocritical of Oxfam to complain.

There's a good article here about it:

http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/oxfam-on-tax-avoidance-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do

Hey, Oxfam? Voluntarily surrender a greater proportion of your turnover to HMRC than is required (because, obviously, keeping that money for yourself is only something EVIL TORIES would do)... then I'll, maybe, start listening to your posturing on the subject.

Photoplethysmography up

Are we playing Headline Scrabble here or something?

Admit it Mr Sharwood, you've been waiting your whole journalistic career for an opportunity to use the word "photoplethysmography" in a headline, right?

Reavers! Google patent would affix pedestrians to car hoods

Re: so the documentary... er, movie was only off by a few years...

Actually, all I could think of when I read this was the "Pedestrian Harvest" mode from Carmageddon:

http://carmageddon.wikia.com/wiki/Pedestrian_Harvest

You wanted innovation? We gave you Clippy the Paperclip in your IM client

"Irony"?

Mr S. Baldrick was the first thing that came to my mind.

AWS chucks 2TB X1 instances at SAP memory hogs

Re: Must stop glancing at headlines

Indeed, one RAMpack wobble and your SAP data is toast.

Do Amazon charge extra if the ZX81 instances are in FAST mode vs. SLOW, I wonder?

(Sorry, I didn't mean to take this discussion off-topic. I shall now return you to the discussion about SAP for which you came here!)

Must stop glancing at headlines

I read the headline for this article in my newsreader, and my poor feeble brain mis-processed it as

AWS chucks ZX81 instances at SAP memory hogs

which meant I just had to read the article to figure out, WTF?

Sorry to interrupt.

Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise salute EU flag, blast Brexiteers

Re: So what?

Therein is an all together different issue but maybe that much different. Follow the money and ask yourself "why would the corporates care?" Same for the politicians.

Well, there's at least one explanation for that.

Large corporations love the EU, because they can afford to lobby and construct a cozy little regulatory environment that suits them whilst raising high barriers against smaller competitors.

Rejected politicians (see Kinnock, Mandelson, et al) love the EU because it gives them far, far more power over their electorates than they would ever have achieved otherwise. And they get wonderful, guaranteed, copper-bottomed pensions - provided that they never say or do anything to bring the EU into disrepute, or criticize it. Bear that in mind next time you hear Mandelson loftily pronounce on how we're all stupid for not joining the Euro and voting Remain.

That's quite apart from the fact that the EU has firehosed money everywhere, so there's now scarcely a single ex-MP, charity or educational establishment that isn't suckling on the teat of EU largesse. It's our money, of course, but they do a very good job of taking it from us and distributing it to their chums.

Re: So what?

“We appreciate and respect that there are a range of reasons that motivate people on both sides of the debate ...”

Funny how all the "position guidance" missives we've seen from the big companies have such eerily similar phrasing. Almost as if they've been given a template to work from by Cameron, Rudd and their mates.

Did Microsoft also include veiled threats of doom if the peons dare to defy their masters?

Personally: If any cause is enthusiastically espoused by Cameron, Hague, Mandelson, Blair, Goldman Sachs, Roland Rudd and Vince Cable (to name just a few) I know EXACTLY which side to take, thank you very much.

Help! We're being crushed, cry billionaire cable giants

Cry me a river.

Um, yeah. I don't have a massive amount of sympathy for the cable companies.

My interpretation of Michael Powell's complaint is:

"We thought we had the regulatory environment nicely sewn up into a cozy little cartel with our bought-and-paid for legislators and huge barriers to entry that ensured we were the only game in town, and now this new Chair of the FCC has come along and is messing up all our carefully-constructed oligopoly. Who does he think he is, the horrible little man? Does anyone know if he's amenable to some carefully-deniable 'campaign contributions'?? If not, what sort of Federal employee IS HE???"

Sysadmin paid a month's salary for one day of nothing

We HAVE made progress as a society since 1999...

...reading down the list of comments, everyone seems to have spelled "millennium" correctly.

Around the time of Y2K, half the populace of the English-speaking world thought it was spelled "milenium" or some permutation thereof with insufficient Ls and Ns.

So, if nothing else, the Millennium raised awareness of how to spell it.

Good job.