Posts by Justicesays

Brit military scolded for being too selfish with sexy high-end tech

Just thought I would preempt alot of posts

by mentioning the short story "superiority", by Arthur C Clark.

YW

Astroboffins spot tiniest star yet – we guess you could call it... small fry

Re: habitability of tidally-locked planets

I'm thinking that its down to this:

Odd of spotting Small planet transiting Small star > Odds of spotting Small planet transiting Large star.

As a larger percentage of the star's output would be blocked.

When can real-world laws invade augmented reality fantasies? A trial in Milwaukee will decide

Re: Actually seems reasonable to me

On the other hand, a manufacturer of Frisbees, Skateboards or Bikes has no requirement to pay off any park that might or might not allow the use of those articles. Instead it's the user of those items that have to pay attention to the laws in place, and/or request any exceptions for events etc. that they might want to organize.

Nor are the manufacturers required to modify their equipment with "geofences" that would prevent them being used in certain locations.

In addition, the people using these apps and visiting these parks are almost certainly residents of the areas the parks are in, and therefore paying for these facilities through their taxes.

Augmented reality apps normally require people to walk around looking at a smart-phone, generally no different than anyone else who visits a park these days!

IBM: ALL travel must be approved now, and shut up about the copter

Re: IBM said staff will be covered by IBM Life Assurance if they are on "approved" travel.

"Unapproved" travel is covered by IBM Death Assurance, where you are tracked down by blue helicopters and terminated.

America's drone owner database grounded: FAA rules blown out of sky

Re: How to tell if they're "evil" drones or "good" ones

http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/a24467/drone-plane-collision/

IBM CEO Ginni flouts £75 travel crackdown, rides Big Blue chopper

Of course it's easy to justify this!

If you are paid $31,000 an hour, it makes sense to spend a few $1000's to save an hour travelling into Hursley, right?

Don't ask me to justify the $31,000 an hour though....

So your client's under-spent on IT for decades and lives in fear of an audit

And this helps guys underspending on IT for 15 years pass an audit how exactly?

I mean, all they have to do is re-architect their 15 year old solutions into containers, adopt new technologies capable of being "lightweight" , discover and store and centralize all their application, switch, firewall etc. configs into their puppet/chef/ansible. In 4 days.

Way to pose a problem , then say, "well, if you had just set things up in a modern fashion 15 years ago , you wouldn't be in such a mess".

Of course they would also be super rich, being able to both see the future and use tech before it was invented.

Uber is a taxi company, not internet, European Court of Justice advised

Re: But

Well, no, they are cakes, in the UK at least, under the LON/91/0160 decision of the VAT tribunal.

Agile consultant behind UK's disastrous Common Platform Programme steps down

Re: Management Repeat after me

Agile , A Tanned Lemon Spoon!

Not what you were looking for?

Oh well.

Oracle fires Java warning at IBM and Red Hat

One party state model?

"A vote against the JSR, Reinhold warned here, would delay completion of the next version of Java and be a “vote against the Java Community Process itself.”"

Can someone explain this Community Process? As it seems like Oracles idea of this process is that they propose stuff, and people have to "vote" to agree with them (or else).

What's driving people out of tech biz? Unfair treatment, harassment, funnily enough – study

Re: "I'm being treated unfairly... Means..."

Most likely means "Didn't get a pay rise of even inflation, despite getting a good or better performance review".

As that has basically been my experience at every tech place I have worked (apart from my current one funnily enough).

Sometimes it works out due to other stuff like stock options ofc, but generally people move jobs to actually get the pay rises they didn't get for the last x years.

Amazing how all employers use some "formula" that is supposedly based on "industry averages" that magically reveals that no pay rises are needed.

Yet your new job pays lots more.

Just delete the internet – pr0n-blocking legislation receives Royal Assent

Re: Well, looking forward to the data breach

"I fail to see how that can be possible."

It's as possible as every other fucking clueless desire that comes out of their empty heads.

They decided it would happen, therefore it will.

If we are lucky they will pass the "no gravity for MPs" bill in the next session...

Well, looking forward to the data breach

That reveals which MP's and MP's family members are looking at pr0n.

And I guess you could cross reference that with the ICR database leak to see exactly what sites they are looking at.

In fact, maybe that legislation itself is some kind submissive/exhibitionist self abuse by conservative MP's!

In which case we should ban that filth.

Just how screwed is IT at the Home Office?

So how are these aging systems going to handle

the at least 10x uptick in British citizenship applications by all the long term EU citizens that have married UK citizens, lived here for 20+ years etc but never bothered applying for citizenship as they didn't previously have to?

Year to March 2016 Applications: 148,497 Grants: 134,659 On basis of residence:68,415 On basis of marriage: 28,323

I see the latest figures are so far from before the Brexit vote, and even then were up 139%.

UK drops in World Press Freedom Index following surveillance and anti-espionage threats

"laws passed by well-meaning people are being misused"

If you think the people passing those laws are "well-meaning" then I'm afraid things are worse than you think!

Normally, the obvious flaws and ways in which those laws can be abused are brought up well before they are passed.

Those concerns are ignored , or dismissed with something about "guidelines" or "intent".

Subsequently, the law is abused exactly as predicted.

Turns out they don't poll the MP's who voted on it for the "intent" of a law when it's being applied, I mean, it's pretty black and white. If they didn't "intend" it to be used in a certain way they could have put it in the law.

And guidelines are only guidelines after all, I mean, if they were actual rules then the law would have included them , right?

So either voting politicians are somehow surprisingly naive for a profession known for it's infighting, backstabbing and flexible application of both rules and morals. Or they know exactly what they are doing.

CompSci boffins find Reddit is ideal source for sarcasm database

Ok....

Training systems to detect sarcasm by looking at examples of sarcasm that have to be in tags to be obvious to the reader.

Seems smart to me.

Sorry

<sarcasm> Seems smart to me </sarcasm>

(You can't) buy one now! The flying car makes its perennial return

Sadly requires

A (short) airstrip to get airborne, and land, so this isn't a VTOL helipad job.

Mastercard launches card that replaces PIN with fingerprint sensor

Maybe I'm not as smart as these card tech guys...

But I'm pretty sure the card will have copies of your fingerprints on it somewhere! Much like your (touch screen) mobile phone that also features a fingerprint sensor.

Make sure to only handle the card with one hand, and use a fingerprint from the other...

Or have a special "wipe-down" wallet with fingerprint removal slots.

Hey, something to take over from the "tin foil" wallet to (not) block NFC.

Zuckerberg's absolutely mental: Brain sensors that read YOUR MIND at 100 words a minute

Bunch of mealy mouthed morons

What they really think:

"Give everyone us the power to share get anything with from anyone."

"That will require AR glasses and those will be much more technologically challenging than VR headsets. In fact, the set of technologies needed to build them doesn't yet exist."

I'm sure Hololens and Google Glass are fascinated to discover that they don't exist in the FB world.

And their idea of an alternative sound feed is haptic sound translation done via skin and intensive training?

Sure, that might have, perhaps, medical applications for the seriously disabled (or military applications...).

But really most people just want subtitles or a dub (subtitles would work for deaf people as well) ...or some way of injecting the entire language directly into their brains without all that tedious learning!

How to breathe new life into your legacy kit now you've gone hybrid

"You could even decide that now you have several terabytes of slow storage, it's time to throw away the old tape backup system and move to disk-to-disk."

Yeah, switching your backups to a bunch of ageing disks in an array approaching EOL , with no offsite/duplicate/archive option, is definitely the best idea.

Just ask KCL.

30,000 London gun owners hit by Met Police 'data breach'

If any crims want to know if someone has a firearm in your area...

Ask someone at the (undoubtedly morally upright and well protected ) YDM agency.

Or maybe just pay someone over at the Met, looks like they are in the business of providing that info for cash.

Or you could just check the local recycling bins for leaflets.

Chap 'fixes' Microsoft's Windows 7 and 8 update block on new CPUs

Re: So? - Addendum

Maybe the key thing to having an OS that "people recognize" is having your new OS actually being recognizable as the same OS?

And making an OS "easy to use" might involve having, I dunno, a single place for settings, a single application style , obvious icons for performing tasks rather than expecting people to click and prod the edges of the desktop.

Linux window managers now bear much more resemblance to windows 7 than windows 10 does at this point.

But in any case, ChromeOS is apparently what is being given to kids in US schools now, so presumably that will be what the future spenders there are familiar with...unfortunately this means Google will also be familiar with them.

Oh snap! UK Prime Minister Theresa May calls June election

Re: Crooks caught in a RAT* trap?

"It did burst their little bubble didn't it. I smiled a lot after watching that"

So you think that Ad hominem attacks are fine, and a good way to negotiate or win arguments?

Fine.

You twat.

"Unfortunately some of our politicians seem to be as petty as the ones over there"

And Farage has the distinction of being petty both here *and* over there. His action was the fucking *definition* of petty.

Re: Crooks caught in a RAT* trap?

"He would be one of the better people to negotiate with the EU "

Sure, I find that calling the people you are about to negotiate with a bunch of lazy tossers is definitely the best way to begin important negotiations.

Why Firefox? Because not everybody is a web designer, silly

Re: chrome is google spyware, and I've seen a lot of crappy software that tries to install it

Case in point, my fathers laptop got malware that ran a version of Chrome in the background in some kind of sandbox , browsing (presumably) click to pay sites automatically.

Became obvious when it's dodgy programming meant it filled the disk with literally millions of files.

Riddle of cannibal black hole pairs solved ... nearly: Astroboffins explain all to El Reg

Re: re first star to collapse into

In fact, normally the gravitational pull would become rather less overall, what with all the gas being blown off by the supernova event (in the case of mostly hydrogen/helium stars).

Startup remotely 'bricks' grumpy bloke's IoT car garage door – then hits reverse gear

Re: It's not just cloud services...

Beware, the creatures from the IoT!

Drone complaints to cops are up twelvefold in three years

Hmm...

"someone in Suffolk complained to police that a drone operator was spying on neighbouring teenage girls sunbathing in their garden"

I notice, not their teenage daughters sunbathing in their gardens, but "neighbouring teenage girls".

Drones disturbing their own "inspections" were becoming a problem?

IBM: Those 2 redundancy schemes? We need to 'improve margins' and right quick

Re: Cut staff levels to zero for maximum profit with no costs!!

" IT departments cost a lot of money, including the people who work in them. None of that money can be directly correlated with the profit that the organisation makes as a whole. Unless the organisation has IT as its core business, IT is just a necessity, just like payroll is"

In modern society, IT is pretty much core to most businesses, but those same businesses seem happy to risk their existence by trying to cut it as much as possible. Saying it's a necessity , like payroll , is kind of understating it, if your payroll doesn't run on time, you will normally be ok for a few days with complaints from some staff your could sort out on an individual basis. IT is a necessity like air for many companies, if it stops then your entire company could die out in a short time.

And suing your 3rd party provider is about as effective as suing a company who failed to maintain your life support, doesn't help you (your company) , but your relatives (shareholders) might get a payout.

Looks like you have to pay top dollar for execs, because who wants their company to be run badly?

But paying bottom dollar for IT just makes sense...to those highly paid execs.

Your internet history on sale to highest bidder: US Congress votes to shred ISP privacy rules

Re: Use https

Did you try it before posting?

Guessing no...

Coppers 'persistently' breach data protection laws with police tech

Re: More accurately...

"Police forces (excluding Manchester and the Met) don't cover much up at all, certainly not at the lower ranks."

Who said anything about "Covering up"?

I'm just going on the actually discovered violations

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8713194/Hundreds-of-police-officers-caught-illegally-accessing-criminal-records-computer.html

Looks like 79% wrist slapping, so I'll stand by the "likely" outcome.

And it seems the senior officers suspect it's happening a lot more than is being caught or reported.

But maybe they just don't trust the police eh?

More accurately...

"those types of actions are only likely to lead them into serious trouble a slap on the wrist and maybe some time off with pay"

Calling your redundancy programme Baccarat? Immense Bummer, Management

Let's see...

"IBM hasn’t reported sales growth in five years."

Suit 1: We keep firing the staff but sales aren't going up, shouldn't this strategy be working by now?

Suit 2: What are you complaining about? Just keep filling your pockets and cutting staff and it will all work out...

Suit 1: For IBM?

Suit 2: No, you idiot, for us!

Uber bans 'brilliant jerks', will train staff on Why Diversity Matters

Based on the statements of Susan Fowler, they were in the same jobs, but were then ignoring complaints, belittling staff, and covering up and complicit with the activities they are now decrying.

Home Office admits it's preparing to accept EU ruling on surveillance

Serious Crimes Act 2017

A "Serious Crime" is whatever we say it is.

Also , suspicion that you might have committed a "Serious Crime" counts.

Suspicion can be based solely on some guys opinion.

We have some super suspicious and paranoid people lined up for doing all the spying.

They suspect everyone.

Regards

Your prying government.

Ubiquiti network gear can be 'hijacked by an evil URL' – thanks to its 20-year-old PHP build

Re: W

"The only genuinely surprising thing here is that UBNT haven't acted... "

I guess the challenge of rewriting all of their PHP 2 code into PHP 7 is somewhat daunting?

Given they probably don't have anyone capable of doing it as otherwise why would they be running 20 year old PHP in the first place...

Judge issues search warrant for anyone who Googled a victim's name

Obilgitary

"Far Side" link

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Far-Side-Gary-Larson/dp/1449460046/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 *

[*]

Gary is not a fan of his pictures on the internet, but there is a funny judge cartoon in there somewhere.

Do you use .home and .mail on your network? ICANN mulls .corp, .mail, .home dot-word domains

Re: .local

I was looking for .localdomain myself.

UK Home Office warns tech staff not to tweet negative Donald Trump posts

Clarification required

What's their policy on non-home office staff stating that they are home office staff and *then* negging on Trump?

Brit ISP TalkTalk blocks control tool TeamViewer

Well here's my "recommendation"

Talk Talk should just progressively block more and more traffic until all their customers leave.

That would solve the fundamental issue here.

Smut-scamming copyright chaser 'fesses up, will do hard time

Re: God I love America:

"but he is the elected President of the US"

The "so called" Judges were also actually appointed Judges.

What was your point again?

Come in King Battistelli, your time at the Euro Patent Office is up

Well, given the Dutch courts ruling

The ILO, also being an international organization, can presumably just create it's own army/police force and invade the EPO's Dutch office. I mean, it might be against the laws of Holland , but apparently those wouldn't apply.

Linus Torvalds lashes devs who 'screw all the rules and processes' and send him 'crap'

Did you try ndiswrapper?

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/43752/how-to-install-a-wireless-card-in-linux-using-windows-drivers/

Congratulations IBM for 'inventing' out-of-office email. You win Stupid Patent of the Month

"two circular discs, one at each end of a rod mobile device"

Much more likely to get approved now.

You're Donald Trump's sysadmin. You've got data leaks coming out the *ss. What to do

Re: Secure?

" too extreme even for Mr T."

I pity the fool etc. etc.

I was authorized to trash my employer's network, sysadmin tells court

Apparently,

Don't do any disaster recovery testing, backup testing, backup scoping but just report that everything is fine with the backups to your lackadaisical management.

Then don't upgrade the firmware on your HP array, wait until a failure happens, have the whole thing totalled when the parts are replaced, and then discover you have no recoverable backups.

Seems to be classified as "Accidental" elsewhere.

In colossal shock, Uber alleged to be wretched hive of sexism, craven managerial ass-covering

Re: Not a steady state

The obvious thing would be that they hired a bunch of people, including Susan, with their VC cash infusions. And a good proportion of those were women....and they probably hired/promoted all of the founders "bro" mates as the managers around the same time.

Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

So the solution

To Fake News, and people self selecting online into extremist echo chambers (due to a combination of semi-anonymity and a wide audience allowing "like minded" people to reinforce each others minority beliefs), would be for Facebook to buy Twitter and then shut themselves down?

Because they are part of the problem, and no where near the solution.

It's like he's invented a bio-weapon and is now trying to figure out how it can "do good".

Forget quantum and AI security hype, just write bug-free code, dammit

Re: 1980s computer science

"The key concept behind agile development is all the important groups are kept in the loop as the project develops nagging people every day to stop slacking off and do their work."

FTFY

Two words, Mozilla: SPEED! NOW! Quit fiddling and get serious

Mozilla's development policy

Is to make whatever constant crazy changes to the UI they feel like, and if people complain say "Just use an add-on if you don't like it".

If you have any security or stability bugs they blame add-ons.

Then they change the API and invalidate all the add-ons you were using to undo their changes.

Then they make more crazy UI changes.

Hows about they just leave the UI along and work on an "Crazy UI" add-on themselves that you could add if you like not knowing where any specific button is every week.