Posts by Alister

Cyber hostage-takers SCAMMED six times as many people last year

Personal assistants and those working in public relations were the two most targeted professions, according to Symantec's report

The solution is obvious...

B Ark.

British Gas applies to wind up UK colo outfit Alphadex

So, they haven't paid the gas bill?

UFO, cosmic ray or flasher? NASA rules on Curiosity curiosity

Re: Is there...

All right, Beatrice, there was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

Microsoft vows to save devs from unspeakable cloud screw-ups

'You appear to have just run with scissors, want to try that again?'

LOL!

Mechanical monster macropod LEAPS out of the lab

Re: What's that Skippy?

My personal favorite was a design to eliminate the pidgin problem

The solution to the pidgin problem is to learn a proper language...

Pigeons, on the other hand, are more difficult...

FCC doubles 5GHz spectrum in prep for one-gigabit Wi-Fi

Re: I'm not sure what to make of that analogy.

I have never understood what the attraction is of peanut butter and jelly.

I like peanut butter (both crunchy and smooth) and I like jams (jelly? wtf is that about) including grape, but I cannot imagine putting them together in a sandwich, it's just wrong...

LOHAN team gears up for Punch and Judy show

Isn't Herefordshire a lot closer to the "Big Wet Bit" than Berkshire, and therefore more likelihood of the Frogmanaut being required?

I hope he's got a personal locator beacon about his person...

Dutch doctors replace woman's skull with 3D-printed plastic copy

Re: "by carrying out the first skull transplant using plastic parts built in a 3D printer."

May I point out that this is an implant, not a transplant?

So medically, to be a transplant, does the replacement part have to have been part of a different body first?

Molyneux: Working at Microsoft is 'like taking antidepressants'

Re: No @ David W

Brilliant description, which nicely sums up my experiences as well.

I wish I could give you more than a token upvote

Sick of walking into things while gawping at your iPhone? Apple has a patent app. for that

Re: Or...

Man for instance have been walking into lamp posts while looking at an attractive member of the interesting sex since the invention of the lamp post.

Exactly, they're approaching this from the wrong angle (HA)

It's obvious that lamp posts, telegraph poles, cars, buses and buildings should be outlawed immediately, and removed.

Don't they know that it's Man's god-given right to wander around wherever they want to whilst staring at pointless shit on their expensive toy, without fear of let or hindrance...

Facebook taps up NASA boffins to launch drone fleet, laser comms lab

Re: Two possibilites....

someone, somewhere thinks cat videos will find a big demand in Africa.

Well, they do have much bigger cats in Africa...

LenovOUCH! Thinkpad's overheating batteries spark recall alert

"Manufacturer Imperfections" in a Chinese manufactured laptop? Imagine that!

Why do people still trot out this stupid cliché?

A large proportion of the day to day consumer electronics used round the world is manufactured in China, especially telecommunications and networking devices, and yet people still come out with the same bullshit.

Ugh! This DUNKABLE wearable tech is REPELLENT

Never mind the IT angle...

...what about the serious stuff!

When I read DUNKABLE I thought this would be an article on the far more important science of biscuit dunking:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/scientists-prove-rich-tea-biscuits-3232211

Re: The ultimate test

The cat litter can be gently heated in an oven to restore its effectiveness.

Does that also work for general use?

Yes, if you NEVER, EVER want to cook food in the oven EVER AGAIN!!

:-)

ECCENTRIC, PINK DWARF dubbed 'Biden' by saucy astronomers

Thanks

When measuring distances in space scientists use astronomical units, with one AU being exactly 149,597,870,700 meters – or the distance from the Sun to the Earth.

Is this an average? as I thought the Earth's orbit was elliptical?

Twitter sneaks in Facebook-ish photo-tagging – how to switch it off

Re: strange..

It was crap like this that made me delete Facebook.

Wait, What! You deleted the whole of Facebook??

Whitehall and Microsoft thrashing out 1-year NHS WinXP lifeline

Re: Nice to see...

Umm... yes, that was my point...

sigh.

Re: Nice to see...

What on earth makes you think that N.I. payments go anywhere near the NHS??

I bet you think the Road Fund Licence goes to the councils for maintenance, as well, don't you?

Microsoft exec: I don't know HOW our market share sunk

'can't put adjectives behind the why'

I could think of a few nice adjectives...

Google's Larry Page: DeepMind 'discovered CATS on its own'

Re: So they...

So they...

let an AI loose on the Interwebs and it started playing games and watching cat videos.

So... It's already achieved the same level of sentience as most internet users then?

Scary!

Amazon wants me to WEAR NAPPIES?! But I'm a 40-something MAN

Re: World-class data-mining.

Jake, is that you?

Re: Are you sure it's the wrong conclusion ?

Absolutely.

Amazon has clearly determined that your progeny are now of child bearing age, and therefore are making you this offer to help you support your grandchildren...

Not sure if you're STILL running Windows XP? AmIRunningXP.com to the rescue!

Re: Typewriter and Abacus are not running XP

I've not been able to work out to connect them to the phone line let alone the Internet!

Oh come on...

Acoustic coupler, obviously!

You just need to type or click the beads at 9600 baud...

Object Storage suppliers: Bikers? Dentists? Or Biker Dentists?

Re: Biker Dentist

As soon as I read "Biker Dentist" that's what I thought of...

BuzzGasm: 9 Incredible Things You Never Knew About PLIERS!

Re: Pliers, Wiring, No 2.

I thought it was Screwdriver No.2 and Pliers, Wiring No.81.

It was in my day...

Show more Canadian made porn, insists Canadian government

Re: Closed captions?

I suspect the subtitles are intended to fill Quebecóis language requirements

So... what's the french for

OoooooooooooooooHHH YEEEEEEEEEESSSS YES YES OHMIGOD

??

(and in case anyone thinks that's a serious question, I offer)

AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHH OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUIH OUI OUI OH MON DIEU

Very fabric of space-time RIPPED apart in latest Hubble pic

Re: OUT OF THE WAY!

It's an Emergency Galaxy...

You can't hear the NEE-NAH NEE-NAH but you can sure see the Blue Lights!

Dark matter killed the dinosaurs, boffins suggest

Nice idea, until you remember that Dark Matter is a made up fudge to explain a failure in our theories of gravitational attraction...

Labour calls for BIG OVERHAUL of UK super-snoop powers in 'new digital world'

Re: Outrage

I don't know why you got downvoted for that, you are absolutely correct, in the UK, other than a few commentards, there has been very little fuss, and most of the media have actively pushed the party line - surveillance is good for you. As far as the man in the street is concerned there is no story, no problem.

But... you work in IT... Why aren't we RICH?

Alistair, I'm the same a you, I'd never heard of Whats App, no-one I know uses it, and the only reason I became aware of it was that I've been receiving some particularly persistent spam claiming to be from them for a couple of months, and the name caught my eye, as we use a piece of software called What's Up, and the similarity made me look twice.

Until the big hoohah about it, I'd no idea what it was for, though...

Insecure hipsters with BEARD ENVY spur facial hair transplant craze

Re: I ain't a hipster then

Just to clarify...

Are you getting rid of your face fungus, your follicles or your hipsters??

And if the first, why are you paying!!

Frenchman eyes ocean domination with floating, mobile Bond villain lair

Re: Shurely Shome Mishtake?

Beat me too it, I was going to say the same. All you need is the helipad under a glass dome.

Stuff the delays! PM chuffed to have BT's superfast broadband in his constituency

Potential QoTW

'It's great', says David Cameron...

However, his leased line is probably only 2Mb/s synchronous, if it's a standard copper offering.

IT'S ALIVE! China's Jade Rabbit rover RETURNS from the DEAD

"It's not dead, it's just resting..."

WD My Cloud EX4 four-bay NAS

Re: I keep looking at these NAS devices

Are you saying they are creating 40-50GB a day or is that just the overall tally after say 5 years?

Christ no not an extra 40GB / day :)

No, that's what each daily backup tops out at with a few of the businesses which have been going a few years. Some more, some less. I'm talking building supplies, plumbing contractors, network contractors, a couple of restaurants, that sort of business.

I would say though that any business which uses Microsoft products (Word, Excel etc), which a lot of them have to because that's what the firms and customers they deal with use, will generate a lot more data simply 'cos of file sizes...

I would be very surprised if those businesses could do less than 8GB.

Re: I keep looking at these NAS devices

How much data should a IFA or a small plumbing firm have then? Do tell.

Well, the ones I support usually backup their accounts, their correspondence (ie PDFs, Word docs, Excel sheets), their email...

I would say the average small business - and by that I mean < 10 employees, generates 40 - 50GB of data which requires daily backup.

Re: I keep looking at these NAS devices

Very few businesses have more than 8GB of data let alone 8TB.

What?? Which century are you living in? Did you really mean that or is it a typo?

Survey: Just 1 in 3 Euro biz slackers meets card security standards

Maybe they should make the PCI compliance requirements consistent so that is is actually possible to meet them all and still run a functional public website.

We are not currently compliant, as we refuse to turn off SSL 3, TLS1.0 and TLS 1.1. If we do that, most legacy browsers will be unable to connect to the sites. (and by "legacy" I mean Firefox < v27, Chrome < v29, IE < v11, Safari < v6, etc, etc) so basically a large proportion of our client base.

Also, in order to be compliant with the BEAST mitigation requirements, we offer RC4 level ciphers first, but that's not compliant either...

James Dyson plans ROBOT ARMY to take over the world

Re: In the UK?!

Using the term headsup whilst discussing the digestive system...

EEEEEWWWWWWW

Think British weather is bad? It's nothing to this WOBBLY ALIEN planet

Sounds to me like Trenco.

Any purple vegetation??

ChewBacca point-of-sale keylogger SLURPS your CREDIT CARD data

Re: Sir

Sir, how the fuck do you expect a PoS machine to work if it can't talk to the outside world?

UNBREAKABLE bendy phone screens built, thanks to SHELLFISH

Re: Goodbye Gorilla Glass

And I was just going to ask if Gorilla glass was therefore based on some part of the gorilla's anatomy...

MP 'shocked' at failures 'at the top' of the BBC over epic DMI tech fail

Re: How on earth...

So how in heaven's name can they spend £100 million?

Consultancy...

Walking while texting can – OUCH! – end badly, say boffins

Re: No shit, sherlock!

Ah but you see anecdotal evidence is not the same as a very expensive year long scientific study. It's now PROVED!

Everyone knows that Popes are Catholic, and Bears poo in the woods, but if no-one has done a scientific study, you can't say that those are facts...

UK smut filter may have sent game patch to sin-bin

@AC 10:43

There is no "national" filter: each ISP implements their own, in their own way.

Afaik, none of them look at filenames. The government requirement is to block access to specific domain names, not to specific filenames.

Look, will you stop being rational and serious about this, it spoils the story...

Our Milky Way galaxy is INSIDE OUT. Just as we suspected, mutter boffins

I must be reading this wrongly...

Gaia's evidence shows that older, metal-poor stars inside the orbit of the Sun at the centre of the galaxy are far more likely to have high levels of magnesium

So if there are stars inside the orbit of the Sun at the centre of the galaxy, how can it be "The Sun at the centre of the galaxy"?

Good news: 'password' is no longer the #1 sesame opener, now it's '123456'

Swordfish

What number in the list is swordfish?

"The password is always swordfish"

Twitter WLTM UK-based pro lobbyist with GSOH - is ready for ads

As Twitter prepares to become an ad-stuffed content free network

FTFY

FCC net neutrality blueprint TRASHED by US appeals court

Re: monopoly is when one firm has control of an entire market.

Tom 13 wrote: So you really are economically illiterate....

It's the price setting power that is the problem, not the number of firms in the market.

It appears to me that you have a lack of understanding of language. The definition of the word Monopoly is clear:

A monopoly (from Greek monos μόνος (alone or single) + polein πωλεῖν (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity