Posts by Sir Runcible Spoon

Prof Hawking cracks riddle of black holes – which may be portals to other universes

Re: Have you ever lost anything you wanted back

"But I can confirm that it will be in the last universe in which you look."

Of course it will, why would you keep looking once you had found it?

Sysadmin ignores 25 THOUSAND patches, among other sins

Re: Grow up!

Oh, I thought they were referring to the desire to give the previous techie a smack in the chops for creating such a mess, perfectly understandable in my book.

I agree that the path chosen to fix it all was a bit immature, but then if he was more experienced he wouldn't be a sole techie in a small company in the first place most likely :)

Re: Grow up!

"If someone worked for me with that attitude they'd get the sack PDQ! "

You mean if someone actually cared about sorting out your systems properly that they would feel frustrated enough to express this kind of sentiment you would sack them? In that case you are probably the person who hired the initial fuckwit who left the mess, you obviously can't tell the difference between venting and a real life threat.

"I mean how are we going to encourage more women to work in IT if they have to worry about this type of nonsense."

Why would a woman worry about this type of thing? They probably wouldn't have left such a mess behind in the first place if my experience of women in IT is anything to go by. Cowgirls they are not.

"El Reg, you should be ashamed of yourselves for this article, even if it is tongue in cheek!"

To steal from your own thread title, grow up.

Sir

I was on a trading course a few years back and their internet connection went down.

Now ok, this was a smallish firm, but ALL of their money was made from these trading courses, which need an internet connection oddly enough.

Since I was on the course I offered to take a look - no promises. Turns out that their router was plugged in to a UPS which was plugged in to an extension lead and for some reason the UPS wasn't on. They probably had a power outage at the weekend and they had been running all morning from the batteries. Powered on the UPS and everything rattled back into life and they thought I was some kind of magician.

Considering the rats-nest of kit in the broom cupboard which was their IT room I recommended that they get someone in to sort it all out (they couldn't have afforded me :) ) - to the best of my knowledge it is still in the same configuration now.

Cheapskates.

Even 'super hackers' leave entries in logs, so prepare to drown in data

Time for accountants

to wake up to the cost of doing business on the internet.

High-heeled hacker builds pen-test kit into her skyscraper shoes

Re: Given the size of a small mobile

"The pace of change is stunning."

'May you live in interesting times.'

Get whimsical and win a Western Digital Black 6TB hard drive

Sir

"They destroyed my home to build...this?"

All aboard the Skylake: How Intel stopped worrying and learned to love overclocking

When I bought my first gen i7-920 I never bothered OC'ing it. I took it out of the cupboard a few weeks back and bought a cheapo water cooler system and it's running quite happily on a smidge under 4Ghz and is now the happy owner of some kick-arse DDR3 OC'd memory - the whole thing is now my ESXi host with a VM container that represents the old OS that used to inhabit it.

Nothing to it - there are loads of guides out there to prevent you going too far wrong. Don't go mad (unless that's your thing) and you can get a lot more use out of older kit with OC'ing :D

Biz that OK'd Edward Snowden for security clearance is fined $30m for obvious reasons

Ironic twist?

In other news OPM is sued for $31m by discredited security check firm for breach of NDA relating to background checks shared with the OPM.

Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank becomes TV reality

Re: Yes!

I'm still waiting for the local burger van to comply with my request for a 'spinal chord in a bap'.

I've always liked Chris's attitude to life, and Partridge is a legend. The trailer made me laugh out loud, so it certainly has lots of promise!

The only character that Partridge played that I could never really get on with was Steve Coogan - he seemed so dull in comparison.

A magic bracelet that unlocks PCs, dancing robot spiders, and more in Intel's circus

Re: I, for one,...

I thank thee :)

Re: I, for one,...

please remind of the name of that film - my memory has gone to sleep

Re: All I want is a secure computing platform

As in "He hasn't a whit of wit!"

Who should be responsible for IT security?

Re: *Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeethe*

"Not much of a profit margin in selling standardised nuts and bolts tho."

You'd be amazed though at some of things you can do to secure an environment with the basic tools and a decent process. Unfortunately the skills to do this cannot be taught in a 5 days 'Cisco God' course ;)

So unfair! Teachers know what’s happening on students' fondleslabs

I was about to jump in with a..

'"By using VNC remote access, pupils can now instantly share their work with their teacher and the rest of the pupils."

what could possibly go wrong?'

When I saw that you had already provided a good example :)

Skills crisis? Not for long: More and more UK kids gain STEM quals

Re: i got your skills right here

I'm seriously thinking about becoming a herbalist and building a lab in the garden shed :)

Basically something as far away from IT as I can possibly get - although I will probably keep my hand in by rigging up solar/wind/battery backup solution to make sure my potions experiments don't get ruined mid-way!

BOFH: Why, I LOVE work courses. Please tell me more, o wise one!

Re: herding cats

all you need is a fire hose.

Re: At least you get out of the office

"They offer you all of these at-your-desk training/certification sites but nowhere to book the time, so the client account gets slugged with the cost"

Technically known as fraud. Whenever I am made to book time to a customer that didn't involve work for the customer I make a special note of it and make sure I get an email from someone saying I should just do it. It's come in handy a couple of times now.

Re: Hostage Exercise

Went on once at a paintball site back in the 90's.

We were supposed to 'hole up' in these huts and protect the hostages using effective communcation.

My leadership skills were questioned when I shot the hostages* in the head and told everyone we should go outside and lay an ambush for the idiots thinking we would still be in the huts.

*mannequins were hurt during the making of this anecdote.

Assange™ is 'upset' that he WON'T be prosecuted for rape, giggles lawyer

Re: Sweden's statute of limitations on prosecuting rape allegations is 10 years.

Perhaps the victims of the aforementioned pensionable age entertainers might feel differently, even though it was 'a long time ago'.

Re: generic comment form

"They also sell scotch eggs. The perverts!"

I used to think they were called 'scotched eggs' until someone pointed out that this would make them flat.

Flying Spaghetti Monster spotted off Angolan coast

Re: "Jones’s colleague Philip Pugh then nailed the creature..."

Hugh Jones? nice one :)

Re: They call it an ROV.

So who's the midgit [sic]?

Re: Heretics!

I noticed his noodly-appendageness had some bodyguards along (a few eels - not sure who his enemies are at that depth though)

Riddle solved: Do bears crap in the woods? No – they're stressing out over drones instead

Bears & Eagles

You just reminded me of the old Salmon advert..

http://www.adweek.com/video/advertising-branding/funniest-commercials-john-west-salmon-bear-132698

Re: What is natural?

Animals use tools that naturally occur, they also build structures from natural materials.

Man tends to use man-made tools and build structures using man-made materials.

I guess the clue is in the description.

Budget UHD TVs arrive – but were the 4Kasts worth listening to?

Re: What can you watch?

a PC?

Re: Sky and UHD

"As long as you can see the players and the ball clearly, do you need to be able to identify individual blades of grass?"

If you ever watch any of the old classic games from the 70's you will notice that you actually see more of the players than you do with the current 'shot from a passing satellite' view that seems to be the norm.

Couldn't you run two widescreens in portrait mode?

Cheers, Bill Gates. Who wouldn't want drinking water made from POO?

Re: Trivialised

Yet they still covered it where others haven't.

second verse that no-one remembers

"drink piss and live" :)

Drone racing sells robot soul to Mammon with launch of racing league

Sir

Watched the video...

Oh..

My...

Fucking...

God...

'There may be trouble ahead...'

Want Edward Snowden pardoned? You're in the minority, say pollsters

Re: I'd like to see a trial.

I'm not convinced that Ed published anything. Didn't he make the information available to journalists who did that all on their own?

Moronic Time cover sets back virtual reality another 12 months

Re: Solution in search of a problem

"It appears not to have moved on significantly since then"

Are you kidding?

I tried VR back in the 80's - trust me, it's come a long way.

Windows 10: Buy cheap, buy twice, right? Buy FREE ... buy FOREVER

Et tu?

I also reckon he got paid a lot more per word than you did for your asinine comment as well. Is your blood actually boiling?

Hark, the Hacking Team angels sing, it’s not us who’ve actually sinned

Sir

"complained that the controversial outfit is “being treated as the offender, and the criminals who attacked the company are not”."

Well Boo fucking Hoo.

Is this guy really so deluded to not see why he is being treated like the villain by people who find his behaviour reprehensible (even if it is technically legal)?

He is a disingenuous turd-bot that's out of control.

Lottery IT security boss guilty of hacking lotto computer to win $14.3m

That's been done - see Bruce Almighty for results

"If the chances of ever winning were 0:∞-¹ then nobody would bother playing it at all..."

Unless the prize was becoming a god or something.

Re: Are you saying...

"impossible to cheat due to the physical nature of the draw"

Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No.

Give one of those machines to a decent stage magician to work on and he will come up with a way to do it.

Re: I live in the state, there's more to this story

If the guy was *really* clever he would have given himself tickets for decent value payouts, but not the jackpot. He might have gotten away with that forever if it weren't for those pesky CCTV camera's.

Security tool bod's hell: People think I wrote code for Hacking Team!

Re: I don't publish my actual name here...

You're only saying that because you don't want people to look to closely at what happened to the other 11 !

Re: not possible

Could he put in a clause that says that any use of the code for profit making ventures needs to obtain permission from the author, subject to being sued?

Dough! Dominos didn't register dominos.pizza – and now it's pizz'd off

Re: no pizza in name

The guy who owns the domain should open a little games shop in Pizza and sell...oh I dunno, dominoes.

It would be worth it for the publicity alone :)

Are you a Tory-voting IT contractor? Congrats! Osborne is hiking your taxes

Re: Annoys me sooo much

"Not unless they have a useless accountant"

The more people there are taking the piss (aka the low hanging fruit) the better.

I try not to take the mickey and cross my fingers I don't get audited, because no matter how well you try and run your accounts they are bound to discover some rule infraction (or at least make your life hell whilst trying to find one if rumours from people subjected to an IR35 audit are true).

Re: Yes, they will emigrate

I'm sure you could pick some things up quickly, like 'scheisskopf' for example :P

Also, in this context I think it might be 'Die Computer', but it's been a while so I'm probably wrong.

Re: Annoys me sooo much

"but how many contractors pay employer's NI?

Most pay themselves the tax free allowance as salary and take the rest as dividend or leave it in the company until they fold it."

Citation required.

I pay myself a 'normal' wage and pay employers NI and tax etc. Anyone leaving money in a company until they fold it is probably breaking the law, tax evasion at the very least? ianal of course.

Re: Upvote from me as well

Don't most contractors pick up contracts through the jobsites which involve an agency? The agency take a cut so the end customer pays a lot more for the contractor than if they dealth with them directly.

Doesn't this limit the amount you can be undercut? Also, if you are employing people on a fixed salary (and not salary+dividend) aren't your labour costs lower? (I know you have pension contributions etc. to cover so I understand the differences aren't cut and dried).

An EPIC picture of Earth, sunny side up, from one million miles out

Excellent idea! Time to start buying shares in Bacofoil.

Re: Eclipse.

Solar eclipses don't cover the entire planet at once you know!

Re: Sir

"If you need an analogy it's a bit like buying a car with a stated mpg of 37 mpg and finding it actually does 37.1 mpg."

I can't argue with a car analogy, that will do nicely :)