Posts by Chris 239

Manchester, UK seeks IT-slinger: £235m for number-plate-and-fines system to clean up vehicle emissions

Re: Northwest

That may be true, but it's far more entertaining point out mistakes in the forum! :-)

When a deleted primary device file only takes 20 mins out of your maintenance window, but a whole year off your lifespan

Re: You know you've been reading El Reg too long…

The real measure you've been reading Register forums too long is when Amanfrommars posts start to make sense!

Hey, Boeing. Don't celebrate your first post-grounding 737 Max test flight too hard. You just lost another big contract

New laws needed

For many years the higher ups in big companies have used the concept of the legally responsible entity being the company to hide from the consequences of their actions.

So saying the company does not deserve to be in business is saying the company is responsible and while that may be right it's also ignoring that actually it's people that are responsible and should be made accountable. And the people that would be worst affected by the company failing would probably not be the people responsible.

One or two scapegoats will or have been found in Boeing but I bet a lot of the people that are responsible for MCASgate have escaped any reckoning.

We need new laws to make higher management personally responsible for the behavior of the company they run, that way they might take the "safety first" or "Your privacy is important to us" mantra as something more than marketing BS.

Barclays Bank appeared to be using the Wayback Machine as a 'CDN' for some Javascript

You should have left the image and logged the traffic and after a while presented them with an invoice for the service. Could have made a killing!

Apple: We're defending your privacy by nixing 16 browser APIs. Rivals: You mean defending your bottom line

Horrified

So any web site can start a pwa that sits there hovering up data and draining my battery.

Marvelous! What douchbag thought that was a good idea!

BT and Serco among bidders competing to run Britain's unfortunately named Skynet military satellite system

"some that do a reasonable job" um..., maybe the office cleaner?

An Internet of Trouble lies ahead as root certificates begin to expire en masse, warns security researcher

Re: What time is it, please?

Thyme dilation ! love it! :-)))

Microsoft's own operating system should finally start working on its own hardware ... 'in the coming weeks'

Wtf are you talking about

This is not about some weird edge case homebrew hardware it's about hardware designed and built by M$, you know, the same M$ that make this OS!

NASA's Human Spaceflight boss hits eject a week before SpaceX crew launch

Re: Going while the going's good

Um...it's a lot more than 250 metres, miles or even brontosauri between an LEO station and a moon orbit station.....

(But I agree with your concept whole heartedly.)

Car crash: Uber axes another 3,000 jobs, closes 45 offices as punters snub app during coronavirus lockdown

Pesonnaly

"each of whom I want to personally thank" - yeah, really!

Redefining the meaning of the word personally!

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Bit late to this party but...

Redmond Turd Polishers

CPU Performance Destroyers Inc

BSods-r-us

Briny liquid may be more common on Mars than once thought, unlikely to support life as we know it

Note to Elon

Best take a barbie with you to cook them brine shrimp mate!

Re: @Paul Johnston - Life is more tenacious than you would expect

Try asking Alexa why the chicken crossed the road....

The answer always cracks me up.

Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket's tanks just disintegrated in Earth's orbit

Re: Musings from the group W bench...

@ Chozo

Hmm? No! That would be like stopping your family from catching Covid-19 by shooting them.

The debris would make LEO unusable for a very long time, it would not grind itself down to particles, many space station/satellite killer size objects will remain, even if it did how is your play doh satellite going to catch more than a tiny sample?

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Having some Tiles to help finding lost keys my expectation is that this simply won't work.

With a tile you are supposed to be able double click the button on the tile and the phone will ring so you can find it, my experience is that that does not work unless the tile app is running in the foreground.

Bluetooth tooth is great but not all it's cracked up to be.

Bezos to the Moon: Blue Origin joins SpaceX and Dynetics in a three-horse lunar lander race

Why airless?

Just put 15 psi less than usual and Bob is a relative. Make 'em run flats incase of punctures.

Possibly tongue in cheek but why not?

Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style

Re: Pineapple good. Pepperoni bad.

I like thin, thick and deep pan but thin is the original genuine article first created in Italy and still the best IMO. The reason thick ones are popular in the UK (and I'm guessing the US) is that the thin ones here are mostly limp floppy things that fail to satisfy (oh er!). Proper thin ones are not floppy, they have bite and a bit of crunch.

Re: 56!

Or it orders 255 or 655365 pizzas!

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Re: Common use machines should always use pigtail extension leads for USB

Yeah, I had that twitch too but at least Blackjack didn't call it the "hard disk" which both my mother and mother-in-law do.

Disk stuck in the drive? Don't dilly-Dali – get IT on the case!

You must be new around here!

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

@Phil

Except that their testing was on some sort of large unused lot with no hazards so 85 was not an unreasonable limit for the "road".

OTOH What is the highest limit on any public road in the US?, I'm guessing it is less than 85 and you would expect it to know that therefore ignore a sign that says 85

Hmm, how fast does a Tesla go on an unlimitted autobahn in Germany?

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

Re: Alternatives needed

Language like "completely reduced" really gets my goat in a post otherwise written in adult language! It's nonsense! either just "reduced" or "completely stopped" is valid.

Blimey I'm losing touch! I thought 400gb SD card must be a typo but then I googled for it! Christ on a bike how feck do they cram something like 2 trillion capacitors into an SD card!

Re: @Dan 55 I disagree...

So disadvantaged wherehouse employees deserve to work at slave wages so rocket engineers can get a decent salary and pay taxes, stikes me he could afford to pay a semi decent wage to all his employees rather than only where the employment laws or job market conditions force him to.

I don't think the hostility is against how rich he is it's how his business exploits the weak in the name of profit. Of course the same is true of almost every other mega corp or super rich business owner, unfortunately it's part of the human condition.

As an aside I've noticed that prices on Amazon have been rising and often it no longer has the best prices for things. You can often find a better price by going to the web site of a specialist supplier. Amazon is banking on people either not noticing or being willing to pay a premium for next day prime delivery.

Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees

Re: Trolly dolly?

You mean I can't refer to them as "Tart with a cart" any more? Please say it ain't so!

I was told this alternative by a stewardess so I reckon it's ok.

NASA is Boeing to get to the bottom of that Starliner snafu... plus SpaceX preps to blow up a Falcon 9

Re: Kaboom required

So would that be a kablooey?

Anyway, in the actual test the Kablooey was much later, after the capsule was well away. It looked more like a self detruct than a break up to me.

I guess thay have done lots of analysis and as you say Boeing are not doing an IFA test at all.

Re: Kaboom required

But this Space.com item :

https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-launch-abort-test-critical-milestone.html

says the IFA will be before the Falcon 9 engines shutdown:

"During Saturday's test, that will happen about 90 seconds after liftoff, after which the Falcon 9's first stage engines will shut down. "

i.e. the opposite of this Registem article which says the early engine shutdown will trigger the IFA.

I'm guessig space.com is the right one.

Kaboom required

The IFA Test does not seem totally realistic to me.

"programmed to shut down its engines" AFAIK most RUD events for rockets taking off are not normally preceded by a shutdown of the engines - don't they normally start with a "kaboom"? Even the CRS-7 event where there was an obvious issue before the kaboom (which was a self destruct I think) it looked like the engines were on all the way to the self destruct.

Surely for a realistic test the booster should be made to malfunction in a spectacular fashion to trigger the IFA.

BOFH: You brought nothing to the party but a six-pack of regret

Re: Learnings

And I hear that commentards that complain about others use of English should be very, very careful about speeling and homophones in there post and also it's punctuation. ;-)

I'm the queen of Gibraltar and will never get a traffic ticket... just two of the things anyone could have written into country's laws thanks to unsanitised SQL input vuln

Maybe handy

if you have some old UK pound coins and are visiting Gib - I have a few found down the back of the sofa and in little used trouser pockets.

Humans may be able to live on Mars within halls of aerogel – a wonder material that can trap heat and block radiation

Re: Aren't we missing something ?

The atmosphere on Mars is thick enough to stop small meteroids. Ones big enough to survive Mars reentry are presumably pretty rare, after all none of the Mars landers have been hit by meterites have they?

Mars atmosphere is actually deeper than Earths due to the lower gravity so that helps.

Yes the odds of being hit by a metorite must be higher on Mars but probably still negligible I would have thought.

Shock! US border cops need 'reasonable suspicion' of a crime before searching your phone, laptop

Re: America has always been weird about visitors

3 hour long queue at Atlanta the one time I visited there!

SpaceX flings another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit in firm's heaviest payload to date

Re: I'm glad my late grandfather is no longer around to see this...

Oh! so YOU are the source of all the cat pictures/videos that clog up the internet! Damn you!

PS PM me, I missed last weeks installment of " Fun with Felix"

Watch tiny swimming magnetic robots suck up uranium in a droplet of radioactive wastewater

Seems a bit arse backward to me.

If these collect the uranium by it simply sticking to them as they randomly move about would it not be simpler/more effective/economic to just coat some sort of surface or filter with the stuff the uranium sticks to and move the water rather making zillions of these robots which I presume would be dificult.

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

Re: Show this to the Mexican police

Of course they do you ass whole!

Every one knows you have to drive BMW to have the special rules! ;-)

Second MoD Airbus Zephyr spy drone crashes on Aussie test flight

Re: This Wingspan ....

Yeah, it's the diet down there .. lots of beans...

Spacecraft that told us 'you're screwed' finally gives up the ghost after doubling its shelf life

Re: Sea level rising

Wel duh!! Turtles can swim so obviously it doesn't need to stand on anything.

NASA Administrator upends the scorn bucket on Elon Musk's Starship spurtings

Re: The NASA guy is right

But isn't Starship and super heavy funded privately by SpaceX mostly from income earned with Falcon 9 not investors money *.

And SpaceX is owned by Elon - all lock, stock and (unfortunatley sometimes smoking) 2 barrels no other investors to please. I think it has to be that way, if it had shareholders then the priority has to be making a profit and Elon seems more interested in, as they say, " gettin his ass to mars" than any short term profit.

* I know there was presumably some money from that rich Japanese guy for the trip round the moon but thats pretty small compared to the total cost and technically it's just a payment for service to be rendered and I'd have thought he has some refund clause built in.

I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

Re: Chalk missiles

My step dad was left handed and got forced to write right hand at school (by the sadistic means mentied here I expect) and the surprising result : not only was that he was able to write well with both hands but could write mirror wrting with either hand just as well.

Generally he chose to write right handed because writing with the left hand can casue issues smudging what you are writing when your hand slides on the paper.

Sometimes he would write mirror writing just to confuse people!

We've Falcon caught it! SpaceX finally nets a fairing half after a successful Heavy launch

"We've Falcon caught it"

Descending to tabloid headlines! Shocking. What is this? a red top ? - ah hang on, yes.

Anyway, nice job. That's what I call cricket! or maybe baseball what with the size of that mitt!

Does this mean they will be renting/building another Mr Steven?

Hi! It looks like you're working on a marketing strategy for a product nowhere near release! Would you like help?

Re: Tell sales and marketing nothing!

Well, I guess in Chemistry you really can sell vapour ware!

Yes, my coat is over there.

@Roopee

Amanfrommars is clearly an alien and a bit of a fixture here, I used to think the same as you said.

Now I just go with it.

I tend to read the comments without seeing the poster name first and I judge how awake I am by how far I get through an amanfrommars post before checking the poster name. It's a bit worrying when they start to make sense!! :-)

Mods I have known, Mods I have loved, Mods I have hated: Motorola's failed experiment is now a savvy techie's dream

Same here

first time I've heard of the Mod.

Oddly enough, when a Tesla accelerates at a barrier, someone dies: Autopilot report lands

Re: Not an "autopilot"

Holy carp! I followed your link, the woman that turned on the cruise control and got up to make tea lives in a place called CRETINgham !! you couldn't make that up!

Attempt to clean up tech area has shocking effect on kit

Re: Flickering lights / previous life bah!

You whippersnapper - making me feel old!

HDMI is not old enough to count as a previous life - VGA maybe, but Composite Video to really qualify.

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

Re: QLC? It's not the one for me

"Samsung wouldn't be shipping QLC without a large level of confidence in their product"

what you mean like they did with the Galaxy Note 7 ?

Re: switched from analogue to digital computers 70 years ago

Indeed, the F16 fighter aircraft enterered service in 1975 and it had analoge computer flight control systems. They eventually changed to digital.

Almost 1 in 3 Brits think they lack computer skills to do their jobs well

Re: Only a third?

My wife did that exact same thing (open doc from email and just clicked save) when in a internet cafe!

When asking "support" i.e. the clueless (or maybe just unhelpful) oik there for help finding it she got the brush off and had a row with them.

Eventually she calls me (still sobbing from the row). Obviously Explorer was locked down, I had to talk her though opening a document from email then using the Save As ("No don't click save.", "Oh?, I did", "OK, try again") to get a file dialog and using that as a cheat file explorer to copy the document she saved in temp to her USB.

Creep travels half the world to harass online teen gamer… and gets shot by her mom – cops

Re: "Flew halfway around the world" = "Auckland to Sydney"?

Yes, getting zero thumb ups and over 200 thumb downs is highly embarrassing!!

You've heard that pop will eat itself. Boffins have unveiled a rocket that does the same

Thrusting

Not enough mention of thrusting ones rod for for a Register article.