Posts by IglooDude

New Chinese space plans are all about security and strategy on Earth

Sure...

but "the centre of the umbrella" really isn't a targeting solution for any ordnance short of a larger nuclear-tipped missle.

AT&T hits back: 'T-Mobile USA merger will be great, actually'

"The document is so obviously one-sided that any fair-minded person reading it is left with the clear impression that it is an advocacy piece, and not a considered analysis,"

Funny, that's what I thought about ATT's merger proposal in the first place.

Voyager probe reaches edge of Solar System's 'bubble'

Wonder if they sprang for the extended warranty?

Snowbound Alaskan survives on frozen beer

He's right - he was an idiot for not being more prepared for driving out in the Bush, and he's lucky to be alive.

Duff Mars probe team sweats under Medvedev menaces

"He added that the agency would double its efforts."

What a fantastically typical spokespersonish thing to say. Instead of "we'll continue to dig and figure out more ways to troubleshoot and fix this problem", it comes across as "we'll shout twice as loud".

Hacker cuffed in job interview sting with hotel he blackmailed

Is there a job with any organization that you DO blackmail your way into?

Erotica 2011 stands firm against rise of the sex machines

"Being a dominatrix is, er, an acquired skill?"

Certainly. A fair bit of psychology, varying amounts of physical technique, and throw in some theater as well.

US nuclear aircraft carrier George Bush crippled by toilet outages

Pity the poor A-gangers that are having to deal with those outages...

Dud Mars probe's explosion will spare Earth's cities

I hear you, but I'd imagine that there are very few big pieces of anything around when seven tons of rocket fuel goes bang. The Russians may be having bad luck getting anything to Mars, but blowing stuff up is something at which they have tended to be successful in the past.

US doctors demand right to advise on gun ownership

"I agree - you can own any style of firearm that existing when the constitution was written. I think that means upto black powder / flint lock is ok."

I don't think you have any right to say that using a communication medium that didn't exist when the constitution was written. It's not speech or press if it is being delivered electronically, right?

Errrm... Firearms are sold with warning labels, too. But similarly to hot tubs, cars, and household chemicals, the warnings go unheeded by the usual suspects.

US.gov: We aren't hiding any space aliens

Whew!

Glad that's sorted, then.

China outraged by US cyberspying fingering

Clearly...

they were hacked!

Breathe life into your cyber security campaign

On the other hand, a 50-buck (or 50-quid) gift card might get some positive attention.

Bank of America website disrupted for 4th day in a row

Hmmm

"Burke said the access problems are a result of the bank taking measures to manage traffic volume during peak use."

Which, interestingly, could be a euphemistic way of rephrasing "fighting DoS attacks".

If it isn't related to the new fees, or certain protests, it's certainly a pretty coincidental coincidence.

Air traffic control data found on eBayed network gear

Hmmm

It's one thing to discard it without thinking (which certainly happens too often) - it's quite another to have thought about it and paid money to have it purged/destroyed/etc and then found out that the folks you paid the money to have not only failed to do their job, but in a way that nets them more money and makes your security more vulnerable than if you'd taken five minutes and gone out to the parking lot with a hammer and some pent-up frustration.

This case (if it is as reported) is effectively one of criminal theft.

Man who blasted five million text spams gets wrist slap

Hmmm

I eagerly await his being targeted by Anonymous. Surely they would enjoy making his life miserable via electronic means?

Mars trips could blind astronauts

Hmmm

If memory serves, Arthur C. Clarke came up with the concept of communications satellites too, so I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss his stories as not-technologically-feasible.

Smut domain scores big bucks for not handling smut

Hmmm

or .local for that matter - I can think of a dozen networks using it for internal-only DNS.

Skype: Microsoft's $8.5 billion identity tool

Hmmm

That must be why Skype has put a daily-or-upon-login "Skype Home" welcome-to-social-networking popup window into its latest version, and backfilled it to all 5.x installed versions, and provided no option for disabling it despite widespread user dissatisfaction at the "feature".

Or maybe not.

Ex US internal-security overlord bigs up cyber menace

Hmmm

Fun, or practice/preparing for the "flight crew disabled by really nasty in-flight meals" Hollywood movie scenari? Or both, I suppose.

TomTom fights falling satnav sales with iPad app

Hmmm

It seems to me that TomToms are to smartphones as typewriters are (were?) to PCs.

Kernel.org Linux repository rooted in hack attack

Hmmm

I can't imagine a Linux kernel developer running Windows on their personal machine any more than I can imagine a Windows developer at Microsoft running Linux on their personal machine.

DoJ files antitrust suit to block AT&T's T-Mobile buy

Hmmm

The DoJ is suing... the FCC? Gawd, this makes my head hurt.

(Paris, because nobody gets in the way of her mergers.)

A Farewell to Oates: Adios, El Reg

Cheers!

Fair winds and following seas to you, you'll be missed.

Fort Knox military cops disgusted with solar patrol carts

Hmmm

Unlike most police, overmatched solar-kart-driving cops and bicycle-riding Mint Police can call on the 16th Cavalry Regiment and 194th Armored Brigade conveniently based nearby and probably more than willing to help chase down any serious gold thieves. They have vehicles of an entirely different sort of green.

Q: Why do defenders keep losing to smaller cyberwarriors?

Hmmm

Stuxnet is the proverbial 'exception that proves the rule', to my mind. With all the cyberwarfare going on over the last decade or so, has there been any other actual real-life damage/injury directly caused by a malicious blackhat sitting at a keyboard or their evil electronic pets?

Google points finger at human after robo car accident

Hmmm

A highly relevant answer would probably be found in the logs/black-box.

Hard to distract a machine?

I take it you've never installed McAfee or Norton antivirus, then?

Atlantis computer goes down: Fixed by 'nauts

Ummm

The mp3 bit was a joke, just for the record.

Hmmm

"no one straps the latest-and-greatest desktop computer..."

Surely there's a little daylight between "the latest-and-greatest desktop computer" and a computer with the processing power and memory of a circa-1980s IBM 286? Not that it matters now I suppose *sob* and it is simply representative of the shuttle's late-70s construction. But it is promising in a way (for the likes of Elon Musk), that one could replace it with one solid-state smartphone containing fifty thousand times more processing power (and an ability to play mp3s so as not to require Elton John to pipe his music up to the astronauts live) and so much smaller and lighter that one could insulate it enough to enable it to survive conditions that would turn the astronauts into reddish mush.

US Marine gets date with Meg Griffin on YouTube

Hmmm

To say nothing of her role in the soon-to-be-released (in the US) Friends With Benefits:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632708/

ISS and Atlantis crews face 'daunting' box-shifting job

Hmmm

You know you're reading El Reg when half the comments on the article are weight-vs-mass related.

El Reg to unleash rocket-powered spaceplane

Hmmm

No advice here, just a wish of fair winds and following seas for the worthy endeavour.

Atlantis crew prepare for the 'Final Countdown'

Hmmm

When I think of Final Countdown, I think of the American movie where the USS Nimitz nuclear-powered carrier travels back in time to December 6th 1941 and can potentially sink the Japanese fleet approaching Pearl Harbor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film)

It is Lewis Page's wet dream come to the big screen (and I say that without any malice or offense to Mr Page intended).

eBay calls for cheap 4G networks

Hmmm

So eBay is actually opposed to auctions of spectrum? I wonder if actually auctioning the frequencies on eBay would change their tune any?

Endeavour spacewalkers come face-to-face with VADER

VADER?

I hear VEDAIBDZTCESFRS getting casually abbreviated to VADER all the time, rather like William to Bill.

ACS:Law fined for data breach

Hmmm

As he apparently did not concern himself with whether the people he was sending notices to had "limited means", I see no reason to not hit him with the full £200,000 fine.

Cell site data sinks into black hole of local bureaucracy

Or...

The operators could provide it on their websites and save local authorities the entire effort of receiving it and ignoring/deleting/publicising it? No one is trying to weigh down local government with additional responsibilities; but it seems to be what the operators are forcing through their intransigence on this.

Cross-dresser kills goat while high on bath salts

Hmmm

I only request that there NOT be any Playmobil reenactments of this story...

Revealed: Secret security plan should Kate leave Wills at the altar

A round for the El Reg folks

who drafted this. Simply brilliant. And +1 to Playmobil reenactment here, too.

No, iPhone location tracking isn't harmless and here's why

Hmmm

It seems like if they want to nail down whether the locations are of users or of towers, all they'd have to do would be to take a boatride (a fair bit away from shore) and then examine the resulting data points?

Multimillionaire's private space ship 'can land on Mars'

Indeed...

If Mr. Musk is trying to be a real-life version of Del Harriman (The Man Who Sold the Moon, Robert Heinlein), he's so far doing a brilliant job of it. I only hope that he manages a longer stay at his ultimate goal (whilst still breathing) than his fictional counterpart did.

Cisco Flips consumer unit out with trash

To be fair...

when you cut away the BS, it comes out more like "we're going back to our core network business" rather than "we don't know what to do next".

"We are making key, targeted moves" = "We are"

"as we align operations in support" = "axing some business divisions"

"of our network-centric platform strategy" = "that aren't core-network related".

Brain boffins in cortex mapping breakthrough

Hmmm

I'm surprised El Reg didn't translate into IPv4/6 speak the hundred billion neurons (25 times the number of addresses in IPv4) and one hundred fifty trillion synapses (some substantially smaller number than the available addresses in IPv6).

FCC gives cautious go-ahead for signal boosters

Ummm...

You mean like "Some operators will now provide femtocells, which use broadband internet access for the backhaul"?

Robo-warship sub hunter: Free DARPA crowdsauce game

And actually...

it'd properly be griefing more than trolling, so belay the irony...

And hmmmm

"In any case, an ACTUV chasing a sub could easily be said to be engaged in "underwater operations" and thus claim the status of a vessel "restricted in her ability to manoeuvre" under the Regulations - other ships would be obliged to get out of her way."

This would raise the potential of maritime trolling of the internet sort rather than the (original) fishing sort - one or better yet two or three submarines could thereby disrupt a port's relatively narrow shipping lanes by 'towing' their pursuers through those lanes in semirandom zigzagish paths.

That being only one of several downsides, I (as a former surface line naval officer) agree that complete 100% autonomy just doesn't seem to be a worthwhile goal for these platforms.

It's the oldest working Seagate drive in the UK

Geekiness?

My geek claim to fame is having a failed drive out of my mail server's RAID5 array as a footrest. No, it isn't a very good footrest (it is an old SCSI drive, but not THAT old), but whenever some piece of hardware or another annoys me I can just kick or stomp on the old mail server drive rather than taking it out on a production bit of kit. Though I have found that less issues have been cropping up since I took the drive platter out of a range target (I mean "drive disposed of via nontraditional data wipe methods involving various firearms") and set it on my desk as a warning to the other hardware. Apparently being stepped on daily doesn't send a message, but being ventilated with .45caliber-sized holes does.

Go Daddy CEO under fire for 'elephant snuff film'

Hmmm

As GoDaddy's primary market is male geeks (thus its vaguely softporn-ish commercials), and PETA's main membership is whatever the opposite of that is, it is not difficult to imagine that a PETA-led boycott would actually help GoDaddy's bottom line...