Posts by John Brown (no body)

Hey Mister Prime Minister ... Scott! Can you get off my lawn please, mate?

Re: Only in Oz...

Yeah. I was up late and happened to switch to CNN here in the UK and saw this all go down live. Once the police etc went nose to nose with the protesters it was obvious they were deliberately intimidating them and trying to get them to react. When they didn't, an d the Police etc then started moving I was horrified at the what was happening. To then see this was all in aid of a photo op for Trump where he stood there with a bible in front of a church, I thought he might at least make some sort of earth shattering, inspirational speech. but no, he couldn't find a single word to say. They say a picture speaks a 1000 words. Well, if he'd managed to get just that one image released, it may have said a 1000 words he wanted to spin in the right direction. What we actually saw was a whole sequence of picture telling a very different story to what he wanted to show because we got the context leading up to the photo op. And it showed a tiny minded President trampling over a constitutional right to peaceful assembly just so he get a snapshot photo of himself.

I don't even live in the USA, have no intention of going, but on behalf of US citizens who bother to think things through instead of just emotional; knee-jerking, you have my deepest sympathy.

Global bean-counting behemoth PWC tells vendors: Now would be a great time to audit your customers

I wonder if licencing terms will change.

In the light of WFH likely to become permanent for many, at least on a part time basis, whether some s/w licencing terms will change to reflect that. eg remote working will be a different licence to local working.

Barmy ban on businesses, Brits based in Blighty bearing or buying .eu domains is back: Cut-off date is Jan 1, 2021

Re: It's what a sad, angry minority wanted

"how did a pro-Brexit party get such a large majority in the last election?"

Oh FFS, not that again. People voted Tory because Labour, also pro-Brexit, was an even more scary prospect (or vice versa). There was no realistic anti-Brexit party to vote for. You vote for the party that most closely represents your views. That doesn't mean that you wholeheartedly support everything the party stands for or has made election promises on.

California emits fine-print of its GDPR-ish digital privacy law, complete with Google and Facebook-sized holes

Corporations are "citizens" too in the USA. And in the USA, the citizens with the money get most influence over how the laws get written.

Re: Good start, could do better

Any company trading in so many jurisdictions already has to deal with different laws and regulations in each jurisdiction from advertising rules to collecting and paying sales taxes and many others.

$5bn+ sueball bounces into Google's court over claims it continues to track netizens in 'private browsing mode'

Re: Its your choice

"With Disconnect.me's strict filtering it'll block all Analytics, including Google."

Except when you need to enable something like gstatic.com so the site will work. Only Google knows how much analytics is happening through that and other "necessary" URLs you might, even temporarily, need to whitelist. You can't rely on the name of the URL being descriptive as it may be a bit like "incognito" or "private", ie just a word, not a description.

"Private browsing/incognito mode"

So, you're saying that "Private browsing" and "incognito mode" are just names and not descriptive? Like the Same Day Cleaners who take a week to clean your suit because "Same Day" is just the name not the service provided?

The UK's favourite lockdown cheese is Big and Red but doesn't require a stinking great audit after consumption

Re: "...Liz Truss...mouth-frothing speech on the subject"

I remember seeing that on the news at the time. You can see her brain reading the auto-cue where it says <pause for laughter> and the clearly confused expression at the utter silence.

Re: Apple-related cheese?

The only good cheese is cooked cheese!!

Re: Cheddar why?

"I have just got out a selection from the cellar and a nice, large glass of red wine..."

I shall imbibe a glass of Echo Falls and I think I have a bag of ready grated mild white cheddar in the back of the fridge.

Talk about a control plane... US Air Force says upcoming B-21 stealth bomber will use Kubernetes

Re: I wonder

K8s is official. And it is pronounced "Kay-eight-ess".

Ah, OK then. I grew up with CP/M and MSDOS 8.3 filenames which meant we had to be cr8ive with filename spelling :-)

Re: I wonder

"k8s"

Is that the official abbreviation? I read that as "Kates". I assumed the full word was pronounced koober-nettys, so I assume I was wrong about that at least.

'5G for Five Eyes!' US senator tells Parliamentarians the world would be better without Huawei

Re: Another nutjob hiding behind the flag

First, I should correct my text. It should have read "It's not just Joe bloggs and his semi-automatic rifle". Secondly, yes, a lot of that military hardware is unable without the the full support crews. That applies to both sides. And then don't forget that the National Guard is controlled by each State Governor and are general;y citizens of that State. They have some pretty neat kit too. The Air National Guard is both Federal and State controlled. They also have some neat kit. I very much doubt it would ever come to actual civil war, but don't think that it can't happen and that "the people" and/or States would be well armed to take on "loyalist" Federal Forces or other States forces.

Not forgetting, of course, State and City Armouries, well stocked with things up to missiles and tanks. It's not that long ago someone in the military drove off in a tank around city streets causing mayhem. There's no need to sell military grade weapons to Joe Public when the military and National Guard *ARE* Joe Public too,

Oh, don't get me wrong. I didn't mean other Commonwealth countries might be spiteful. Just that they have no reason to favour the UK. As you say, things have changed a lot in 40 years and those countries no longer feel the same loyalty nor the need to trade with the UK because they have already filled the gap left 40 years ago.

"You can try to collaborate with all peoples in the Commonwealth, but my thougth would be that even the Commonwealth would be better off with the UK firmly working together with EU and have a vote on the worldstage instead of being voted on by the rest of the world."

Many of our Commonwealth trade partners got shat on when we joined the EU. They may not care too much to offer any sort of advantageous trade deals with the "mother country".

Re: Another nutjob hiding behind the flag

"in the second case, the State has access to aircraft, a navy, missiles, bombs and even bigger guns - so good luck resisting oppression with your rifle, no matter how powerful it is."

The people with their hands on those military weapons are also "the people" and may choose to not come down on the side of the repressive government. Some will, some won't. That's how civil wars start. It's just Joe bloggs and his semi-automatic rifle against well trained, well armed government forces. Just be glad you are not called Will or you may be fired at.

Indian app that deleted Chinese apps from Androids deleted from Play Store

Re: Isn't this what Antivirus / Anti malware software does?

The same applies to all those systems and registry cleaners for Windows. I'm failing to see the difference. You run it and it either just goes off and deletes stuff or it might give some general idea of what it's about to do and ask to OK it's actions, or may have an "advanced" mode where it's list loads of stuff for you to select.

Re: What horrid security Android has to allow this in the first place

How is that different to any other OS? The user has permission to delete any user data. An app is just user data that the user chose to install. If the user choose to install a "clean up" app, then that app can do anything a user can do. There are plenty of apps out there that will tell you about unused or iffy apps and suggest that you delete then if you don't need them and will then do so when you authorise it by clicking OK. As mentioned further up, this apps seems to have a number of faults which take it outside the Playstore T&Cs, but the ability to delete apps is not one of them.

"or slips in a Victorian draftsman's pencil."

It's just local planning decisions writ large. You'll even find neighbours ending up in court or at fisticuffs over a fence that's been built an inch over the boundary.

Staff in a huff, personal call with Trump, picking fights with Twitter, upsetting civil-rights groups – a week in the life of Facebook's Zuckerberg

Who would quit?

"despite complaining bitterly about the failure to hold the president to account for his words on the Facebook platform, very few Facebook employees have quit"

With 40,000,000 USAians out of work, would YOU quit a paying job at short notice? The only people quitting jobs are those who already have another job lined up, can afford to retire or are at the top the tree and have skills which are in demand so can move easily to a new job. People are going back to work now, but many, many businesses will either not re-open or will be cutting back, including staffing levels. The US has shitty employment rights even under good employment conditions. With so many out of work I can see wage levels dropping as employers see the huge pool of applicants they now have available to pick from.

Lenovo certifies all desktop and mobile workstations for Linux – and will even upstream driver updates

Re: How much money off do you get for not buying Windows?

On consumer grade, kit, none. You may even pay more. Consumer grade kit is full of crap apps and demos which the suppliers pay to have pre-installed and thus subsidise the end user price tag.

Watchdog slams Pentagon for failing – for a third time – to migrate US military to IPv6

It sounds like any transition process of such magnitude and with such a large customer should be starting with looking at the infrastructure and software, determining what doesn't support IPv6 and immediately putting that out to tender for stuff that does support it. If the incumbents want to remain the incumbents then they have to update their kit in a similar time-frame to those who can deliver working kit now.

You're 3 billion years too late to see Mars' impressive ring system. The next one will be along in 40 million years or so

Many SF books

...have used the odd orbit and size of Mars' moons, especially Deimos, as story lines or plot points because "hey! That's no moon, it's an alien spaceship/space station/monitoring device/stargate/early warning system" (and people thought that was a new trope invented for the johnny-come-lately Star Wars film.)

If you bought a CRT monitor, TV 13+ years ago, hold on a little longer, there may be a small check for you

Last two bits of article sum it up nicely

The lawyers see it as a long term investment. There will be few, if any, claimants to pay out after all this time, the lawyers have just been "ticking over" on this case while dealing with other cases. More for them from the pot as time goes one.

Contact-tracer spoofing is already happening – and it's dangerously simple to do

Re: It changes daily.

No one is claiming things are perfect nor denying that some aspects are farcical. But we don't need people inventing fake complaints to drown out the real and valid ones. I'm starting to wonder if maybe this is not an invasion of Sun readers but an invasion of Tory spindoctors spreading mis-information to hide the mistakes.

Re: I feel left out

I agree, the system isn't perfect and there are many and varied valid criticisms. And while agree that saying he is "well over 60" implies that he doesn't know the cut off point for age related shielding or that he's under 70, but over 60 and still doesn't "qualify". Either way, it strongly implies he's ranting with incorrect facts and as I already said, there are actual and valid concerns without adding "fake" ones.

"People seem to think if they use the app they'll be rounded up and shot."

Don't be daft!! The "sheeple" will install the app. Anyone independent enough to refuse will be shot.

Re: Easy to fix..

"Don't install the app, then you know with 100% confidence that its a scammer.""

You do know that the track and trace system doesn't rely on the app, has already started operation and that the app is not yet available anyway, don't you? You not having the app doesn't stop someone else from reporting you as one of their contacts (assuming you actually are one). If you know for sure you've never met the conditions to be a contact, then yes, any call is likely to be a scammer.

Re: I feel left out

"What am I doing wrong?"

Well, the first probably appears to be that you are chronologically challenged. If you were 10 years older you'd probably have heard from them. Likewise, you need to be in the clinically at risk group and have a medical professional aware that you are. If you are, and they ought to know, you may be one of the few who fell through the cracks.

Re: This is not how security works

I tried https://www.phe.gov.uk/ and got Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

Re: Jumping the gun a bit, aren't they ?

But considering it's been all over the news for weeks now, including details of how than manual contact tracing works and that the app is still not ready/being tested on the Isle of Wight, I'm gobsmacked at the numbers posting here who clearly have no clue and are ill informed. Have we been invaded by Sun readers?

"The whole thing is a fucking farce."

It may well be, but clearly you have no idea what a "contact" is or you'd not have mentioned the 90 people you passed in the street and *may* have been within 2m of you for a second or two. After 2 months of being told constantly what a "significant contact" is, you still haven't got yet.

Office supplies biz owned by UK council shrugs off ransomware demand for 102 Bitcoin

"read-only backups"

The Guinness trial showed why that could be a bad idea for some companies :-)

All-electric plane makes first flight – while lugging 2 tons of batteries aloft

Why?

"a drop-in replacement for traditional piston or turboprop engines"

Unless you can also do a drop-in replacement "fuel" tanks too, then there's still going to be significant re-engineering involved. This feels like a short cut to certification instead designing a purpose built airframe. (and yes, the same applies to cars, as we are seeing nowadays, unlike the early "conversions" of existing chassis)

Re: Compulsory El Reg commentary moan

The downside being whether they can be re-charged inside an economical turnaround time. If not, then it#s going to be a batter-pack swap out. And since every manufacturer is "special" they'll all have their own unique and compelling reasons for their battery packs being different to all the others.

'Beyond stupid': Linus Torvalds trashes 5.8 Linux kernel patch over opt-in Intel CPU bug mitigation

Re: El Reg faux pas

"Finland doesn't have school buses so why would one be on the blackboard?"

Because it's a Google Captcha and everyone knows that Google thi9nks the whole world can solve US based street scene Captcha 'cos we all use the term "crosswalk" and school buses are ALWAYS yellow.

As the US maybe gets serious about coronavirus-tracking apps, Congress wakes up to the privacy risks

Re: Matt Gaetz Antifa

Is this all the same AC posting or more than one?

Boffins step into the Li-ion's den with sodium-ion battery that's potentially as good as a lithium cousin

Vague memories of chemistry lessons, but was it the Na that fizzed and floated on a cushion of hydrogen while the Li did the same but produced enough heat to ignite the hydrogen?

Twitter, Reddit and pals super unhappy US visa hopefuls have to declare their online handles to Uncle Sam

Re: not all speech is protected

Agreed. But DT isn't normal at the best of times and has the bestest, bigglyest lawyers.

Watch an oblivious Tesla Model 3 smash into an overturned truck on a highway 'while under Autopilot'

Re: I get that the cameras may not have picked out the truck...

Maybe the AI just needs to pass the same driving test a human currently has to. I mean a proper test, not one like in some places where driving forwards 100yds and then reversing 100yds successfully is a pass. I mean one with a proper theory test identifying hazards etc as well as a proper drive out on the road with an examiner. Although an additional factor would be that the AI has to be able to demostrate a learning capability too. People incapable of learning at a reasonable rate or level are unlikely to pass a driving test.

Re: I get that the cameras may not have picked out the truck...

"just have the car shout at the driver."

Maybe the car should be playing a constant tone where the frequency varies by numbers of decisions made and the assess accuracy of the decisions based on the earlier and later observations of the system and/or other detections constantly happening. This would train the "driver" to realise what is happening and learn when and how often things are going wrong. Many people, even non-techies, could tell when the dial-up modem was going to connect or fail to connect or even when it connected at a low speed and to manually hang up and try again, just from the noises it made. It will even have the knock on effect of keeping the driver more attentive.

Bite me? It's 'byte', and that acronym is Binary Interface Transfer Code Handler

Re: Colour me square

"It was an interesting learning curve for the callow 20something year old me. About people, not computers."

The lesson, of course, being that people don't like change. If the new system doesn't work the same as the old system then it's too much effort to have to learn it. This applies doubly so when replacing a manual system with an automated system. Step one when designing a new system is to ask the users what they do, how do they do it and why do they do it then make sure the new system works the way they want it to.

Re: FUCKED

Oz? Or maybe NZ? It's fact mate!

SpaceX Crew Dragon docks at International Space Station

That logo

That America Launch logo still renminds me of an 80's 8-bit game box cover. Top Gun? F15 Strike Eagle?

Watch SpaceX's Starship SN4 prototype accidentally self-destruct in a rocket test burn

Re: The video doesn't show the full story...

Whoa! Facts always end up stranger than fiction! Thanks for the heads up on that.

Re: The video doesn't show the full story...

"it appears the igntion point of the explosion is external to SN4:"

Lesson learned: Memo to all ground crew. No more sneaking around the back of the shed for a crafty fag during testing.

They've only gone and bloody done it! NASA, SpaceX send two fellas off to the International Space Station

Re: Perfect

Fake news! Of course they did. Intelligent life, on the other hand....

Re: Pretty little dot..

If they'd launched on Weds, I was hoping to see that too. But after a beautiful sunny day, it clouded over just enough that the moon was the only visible object in the sky. Today, I was able to watch the launch live but by the time there was a likelihood of the ISS and or the Dragon being overhead, the sun was still shining in another beautiful clear sky.

There does seem to be some sort of higher power conspiring to hide anything interesting happening above our heads. Meteor shower? Cloudy. Eclipse? Cloudy. ISS? Cloudy. Our Great Lizard Overlords doing a flypast? Cloudy.

Remember when Republicans said Dems hacked voting systems to rig Georgia's election? There were no hacks

Re: Obviously

How to identify a witch

Re: Just one nose-picking minute

lasher or lashee?

is that you ------------------>