Posts by ISYS

FCA mulls listing rules after Hauser blames 'Brexit idiocy' for Arm's New York IPO

Re: Herman Hauser and his views

TBF, most of the voters who voted for Brexit have since died of old age ;-)

Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment

Try signing in to an iPhone without an Apple ID or in to an Android phone without a Google account. Same thing with Windows - use a Microsoft account.

It's the way things work nowadays.

Awaits lots of downvotes.......

Windows 11 usage stats within touching distance of... XP

Is this a thing?

Given that Windows 10 is still supported until June of 2024 and most Enterprises (most Windows installs) still are running on Semi-Annual Channel, Windows 11 (21H2) will not start to roll out en masse yet. As the deployment rings move from semi-annual to General Availability things will pick up.

Thousands of taxpayers' personal details potentially exposed online through councils' debt-chasing texts

Tax Payers?

If they are debt chasing texts then the recipient is not a TaxPayer surely ;-)

India flies Mach 6 scramjet for 20 whole seconds

Love the countdown guy

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Now!

Right I'm outta here - my work is done.

UK.gov shakes hands on cloud agreement with 'non-cloud service provider' HPE

No surprise

I have been working in the Govt space for quite some time and although moving to the cloud is a great idea - it forces different departments to standardise and use the same platforms (which makes support simpler and therefore cheaper) - the amount of legacy platforms that are old, bespoke and un-documented means that there will be a need for on-prem for quite some time.

I don't think this should be excuse for not modernising these systems though. The reason Govt IT is so expensive and always gets a bad press is because rather than using COTS products as they were intended, they always try to bastardise them or put limitations around them so they no longer work as intended.

Microsoft admits pandemic caused Azure ‘constraints’ and backlog of customer quota requests

Must be regional

I have been using Teams (Video calls) all day, every day and not come across any issues. I'm UK based and working from home.

Rugby legend Will Carling tells El Reg: Techie stats bods will love this year's Six Nations

Not of any use to a true fan

A true fan would know how well each team is doing and doesn't need the points conversion rate inside the 22 displayed to them. Equally we all can see when a kicker is getting more of them over than not. We use our eyes and our memory to achieve both of these amazing feats using real intelligence (not artificial).

Next thing they will be telling us about the 'Winningest' team and 'yardage'.

As it was explained to me by a great coach - Rugby is dead simple - get the ball from one end of the field to the other and put it down over the line. He also said it is a game of evasion that just so happens to involve contact but that is a whole different discussion.

Bloodhound gang hits 1,010kph, retreats to lab to work on smashing the land speed record

Re: Minor nitpick

Sort of - Some of the air that is 'dawdling around' is accelerated (to just over 130mph) and it is this that is supersonic relative to the vehicle.

Tesla has made a profit. Repeat, Tesla has made a profit – $143m in fact

Leasing versus sales

Leasing is perfectly sensible when talking about cars - Remember, when you are talking about big price items buy things that go up in value e.g. house and lease things that go down in value e.g. car

Y2K, Windows NT4 Server and Notes. It's a 1990s Who, Me? special

Oh god the memory!

I remember the day a third party company were engaged to audit the datacentre where are servers were. They were mainly HP DL variants and the serial number was on a sticker on the side of the chassis. So these guys were undoing the knurled locking nuts, sliding the server carefully out of the rack until they could read the sticker and log it and then sliding it back again.

All was going well until they found a rack with lots of 'servers' in it that had no sticker on the side. That rack was an HP EVA SAN and they were sliding out the disk trays. The EVA did not respond well.

Don't panic: Dixons Carphone's share price crashes 30% after statutory losses hit £329m

Shops?

Isn't that where people used to go before the internet was invented?

Airbnb host thrown in the clink after guest finds hidden camera inside Wi-Fi router

No shit!

"Airbnb's official policy is that hidden cameras are prohibited" - they really have to state this?

Silent Merc, holy e-car... What is that terrible sound?

Geneva Airport

Having been through many times I can offer the following advice - NEVER buy food or drink on the Swiss side of the airport. Once you have converted the price from Swiss Francs to Pounds or Euros you will probably have some sort of medical episode.

On one occasion I was travelling with my wife and kids and we bought sandwiches and a drink each (the sort you can get in a meal deal) and I nearly fainted when I worked out I had just spent nearly £50

That's a nice ski speaker you've got there. Shame if it got pwned

Re: Because skiing or snowboarding aren't dangerous enough already?

Absolutely,

I Ski and can confirm that part of collision avoidance on busy slopes is hearing what is in your blind spot -you can definitely hear other peoples skis/boards and sometimes the cries of 'look out!' or 'oh shit!' from out-of-control people.

Wait until you have stopped for a break, order a glass of something nice, admire the view and then listen to music.

Is your kid looking at GCSE in computer science? It's exam-only from 2022 – Ofqual

I think that is the point - coursework was cut and paste of badly written code from t'internet. So, as they can't prove the students work is original, they are resorting to a closed exam at the end of the course.

Computer Science has always been a weird subject to teach in schools - when I was in school (1980s) we all knew more about it than the teachers. The course was a complete farce as we had to demonstrate we knew how to write a For Next loop (when I say write I literally mean it - on paper with a pen) and the rest of the course was identifying a Mouse, a Keyboard etc as input devices and a Monitor and printer as output devices.

Looking at what my kids are taught today it isn't much further forward and as ever, the kids know more than the teachers.

Spending watchdog points finger at Capita for 1,300 shortfall in British Army rookies

Re: TBF...

One of the challenges the MOD has is that in the 60s, 70s, 80s and most of the 90s joining the military was a nice way of getting a career with foreign travel and a good trade qualification at the end.

THEN IT GOT REAL.

Since then, there has been a very high chance you will actually get involved in serious action.

No right to the IT system at the end of the contract?

Capita may own the IT infrastructure etc but I bet they don't have as many weapons as the Army.

I suggest they hand it all over before somebody gets hurt.

Huawei CFO poutine cuffs by Canadian cops after allegedly busting sanctions on Iran

Re: Coincidence?

Looks like I forgot to add the <sarcasm> tags ;-)

Coincidence?

Yesterday in the UK our largest Telecoms provide, BT, who look after the core comms infrastructure of the UK announced that they would be replacing all the Huawei kit in their datacentres. Today Huawei exec is arrested.

Also today the UKs second largest Mobile service (O2) is suffering a complete Data network outage....

Marriott's Starwood hotels mega-hack: Half a BILLION guests' deets exposed over 4 years

Re: Just wondering

Glad it worked out well (in the end) for you. Hopefully it won't be too long before banking switches to using MFA with an one time pad App on peoples phones. Not difficult to do. I know this won't be convenient for everyone right now but as time goes on it seems to be the way to go.

Just wondering

Don't get me wrong these breaches are bad news but I was just wondering how many people have had real money stolen or an increase in spam because one of them?

I'm not saying these companies don't deserve everything they get in the way of fines etc I was just wondering what happens to the data.

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

How are these supposed to save energy

I can see from my smart meter that I am using some electricity so what do I do?

Turn off some lights - that might save a few pence.

Turn off the TV - nope I am watching it.

Turn off the fridge and freezer - not a good idea

Turn off the oven - I only turn it on when I am cooking

Turn off the heating - I only turn it on when I am cold and if I forget to turn it off the thermostat does it for me.

I am really struggling to see what else I could do as everything else in the house that uses energy only does so when I need it to.

HSBC now stands for Hapless Security, Became Compromised: Thousands of customer files snatched by crims

Shared responsibility

I am in no way defending banks here but online banking security has to be a shared responsibility.

I agree that all banks should use 2FA for access to online services, geo-location restrictions could be implemented but this needs to be a discussion between the user and the bank especially if the user travels a lot. Restricting which devices can access an account is another measure that is not difficult to implement.

However I also know that Joe Public on the whole does not like using 2FA. Joe Public has to wake up and realise that using the same password for all their Internet accounts is a bad idea and that 2FA is there to protect their data (and money).

Microsoft doubles Azure Stack's footprint, embiggens Azure VMs

Re: Four 9s?

Exactly

Four 9s

365 days x 24 hours = 8760 hours

0.01% of 8760 hours is 0.876 hours (approx 52.5 minutes of potential downtime)

You then have to work out what that would cost in money to your business.

Five 9s buys you an extra 47.25 minutes but I would imagine the additional cost dwarfs what most business would lose under four 9s.

That's not too bad

HostingUK drops offline after losing Farmer vs Fibre competition

Users began reporting problems from 2055 UK time on 31 May

2055 is 37 years from now.

20:55 would be 5 to 9 in the evening.

Just saying..

Select few to watch World Cup in 4K high dynamic range colour on BBC iPlayer

Be careful

If you accidentally brush past the TV whilst getting a drink, all the players will fall over.

Astronaut took camera on spacewalk, but forgot SD memory card

Venera 14 mission

This story reminded me of the Russian Venus missions. They had no end of mishaps and problems but the best one was on Venera 14 mission. Part of the mission was to measure the compressability of the Venetian soil using a probe. The rover was fitted with cameras which on previous missions had failed because the lens caps got stuck. On this mission they fitted the lens with a push rod mechanism and it worked perfectly. However the lens cap fell right in front of the rover and the probe then proceeded to measure the compressability of a titanium lens cap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_14

HMRC opens consultation to crack down on off-payroll working in private sector

Shooting themselves in the foot

If they press ahead with this, most contractors would go permie as the idea of paying a lot more tax for no extra benefit (sick pay, holdiay, pension etc) is not desirable. Permie pay is a lot less than contract rates. End result will be that the HMRC net tax take goes down and the workplace becomes less flexible just when really need it to be as the loonys seems hell bent on pushing ahead with Brexit.

Flash! Ah-ahhh! WebEx pwned for all of us!

Earworm

Pint for the headline. However I have got that stuck in my head now

Guess who's still most moaned about UK ISP... Rhymes with BorkBork

Zen

Yep been with Zen for years during which time I have watched with amusement as the other Internet 'Service' Providers have battled each other to provide a worse service.

IBM's homomorphic encryption accelerated to run 75 times faster

#MeToo

Am I the only one who read that as

"IBM's homophobic encryption" at first? Anyone? ...No? OK, mine's the nice black one on the left.

I'm glad it is not just me.

Russia could chop vital undersea web cables, warns Brit military chief

Re: "Can you imagine a scenario where those cables are cut or disrupted?"

"Yes. Problematic access to cat videos, grumble sites, modest inconvenience for the leeches of the city, It wouldn't be the end of my world"

Unless you keep your money under the bed and not in a bank and you have an allotment, the severing of these cables would most certainly affect you.

Thou shalt use our drone app, UK.gov to tell quadcopter pilots

Common Sense or New Laws

As far as I can tell there are two things about Drones/UAVS/Quadcopters that concern people. Safety and Privacy; you could endanger aircraft/cars/people with them and you can film other people/places with them. Both of these situations apply to many other items - Model Aircraft/High Altitude Balloons/Kites etc all carry the same risks.

So as we currently apply common sense or have existing legislation for the above why do we need new laws?

UK.gov departments accused of blanket approach to IR35

Re: Stop taking the p***

You kind of contradicted your own argument there. If a contractor gets paid the same as a permie but then has fund his own holiday pay, sick pay and pensions why should he pay the same tax?

This local council paid HOW MUCH for an SD card?!

The military can beat this

This reminds me of an old ShoeComics strip. I can't find it on Google but basically somebody was complaining about the Air Force spending $78 on a woodscrew - The General said:

Ah to you it is a woodscrew, but to us it is a M-1 8 fully-slotted, manually activated, fibre intrusive, material securing device.

Happy Mappiversary, Ordnance Survey

Happy days

I love OS maps (sad I know) and remember many a Geography lesson learning about them.

Church with a tower

Church with a dome

A Tumulus

Viewpoints

Scree - Google Maps still does not include this useful bit of information.

A pint to OS - If you need to know where to get the pint - Search for the pint pot with a handle.

If MR ROBOT was realistic, he’d be in an Iron Maiden t-shirt and SMELL of WEE

Mr Robot

Nice piece. However I am going to stand up for Mr Robot. I get that everything happens in a ludicrously short period of time - nobody can hack the jail door system from a laptop in the car park, piggy backing of the bluetooth connection in a police car - but other than that all the social engineering and the apocalyptic view of big business and everyone living on social media is dangerously close to what is happening today.

Blighty's GCHQ stashes away 50+ billion records a day on people. Just let that sink in

How long do they store the data for?

What this does not tell us is how long the metadata is stored for. 217TB sound like a lot of data but in the grand scheme of things it isn't. Banking systems hold nearly as much.

Do they slurp up a days worth of metadata from across the globe, process it and then keep the bits they are interested in?

Or do they just download the entire internet's browsing history and file it away?

My guess is somewhere between the two. As another poster mentioned, this system would have been a govt IT project. The spooks probably wanted the first option and got something nearer the second.

AT&T grabs dictionary, turns to 'unlimited', scribbles it out, writes: '22GB a month'

Dictionary attack

ISPs SELL us 'unlimited' data. Either honour the meaning of the word 'unlimited' or SELL us something else.

The situation reminds me of the rail companies in the UK who are liable for fines for running a late service. They now try to define the word 'late' as meaning a certain time after the timetabled arrival time.

Sony sends muso stratowards on vintage TV set

Great view

Could he see LOHAN from up there?

Why are Google and 'VW group' having a 'global summit' in San Francisco today?

Fake

Not the correct Google typeface ;-)

Lockheed Martin's bored with UK.gov IT and going back to fast jets

The same but different

It appears that IT services is a very different proposition to defence manufacturing & services

Oh I don't know - Endless meetings, scope creep, over-budget and late.

My top three IT SNAFUs - and how I fixed them

Those were the days

A long, long time ago when I was cutting my teeth on a IT Helpdesk I took a call from a user who told me all his work had disappeared.

After a bit of questioning about how and where he saved files I established what he actually meant was that the Word document he was currently working on suddenly had no text in it. He had typing all morning and now it was gone - and what was I going to do about it!

More questioning about had he been saving as he went along (no auto-save in them days!) and what was the last thing he did.

Eventually I wore him down and he admitted he may have changed the text colour to white. He couldn't remember how and wanted to know how to make it black again!

FFS!

Testing Windows 10 on Surface 3: Perfect combo or buggy embuggerance?

Re: Weather chart

Yellow rain means it will be pissing it down.

Drone penetrates Virgin's shapely space arse

3DR Solo

Dear Santa....

UK exam board wants kids to be able to Google answers

Poll answer

I tried googling the correct option for the poll and haven't found the answer.

Plane crash blamed on in-flight SELFIES

When I was learning to fly (about twenty something years ago now) we were all told

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate - In that order.

You see it all the time now - people walking, shopping, driving etc completely focused on their phones and not on what is going on around them.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Sizzling sag aloo

Alternative ingredient

I don't have a large onion that I can cut in half. Would a small onion be a suitable substitute?

HMRC fails to plan for £10.4bn contract exit... because it's 'too risky'

Quelle Suprise

Just Quelle Surprise