Posts by James O'Shea

My fortnight eating Blighty's own human fart-powder

Re: Where's the meat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0

Did webcam 'performer' offer support chap payment in kind?

Re: At a FE college...

Ah, Disney porn... The office's operational area extends as far north as Orlando, so we cover Walt... ah, Orange, County. it's amazing what some in the Land of the Mouse will put on their computers. I don't know which is worse, the Disney porn where the perp thinks that Bambi is a girl or the Disney porn where the perp knows that Bambi is a guy. And then there's the Lilo and Stitch porn. And the Mowgli and Baloo porn. And the Ariel and Melody porn. And, in one memorable case, the guy Bambi, Ariel and Melody porn. Note that any porn involving Lilo, Mowgli or Melody would be, by definition, kiddie porn...

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you don't know how lucky you are. The House of Mouse is very aware, and so are those of us who have to cleans things up.

All aboard the warship that'll make you Sicker

more apropos

"The phrase was memorably used by Alistair MacLean in his classic Second World War historical fiction novel Where Eagles Dare, during the climactic fight scene on top of an Alpine cable car some thousands of feet above a deep valley. MacLean’s protagonist, Major John Smith, who had been shot and wounded while on the roof of the cable car, was trying desperately to evade the Schmeisser-wielding double-crossing British spy Carraciola inside the cable car, who, as MacLean wrote, had climbed out and was “coming to mak’ siccar.”"

MacLean used that phrase, or similar ones, multiple times, not least in his very first and probably best book, _HMS Ulysees_. Quote:

'The Stirling died at dawn. She died while still under way, still plunging through the heavy seas, her mangled, twisted bridge and superstructure glowing red, glowing white-hot as the wind and sundered oil tanks lashed the flames into an incandescent holocaust. A strange and terrible sight, but not unique: thus the Bismarck had looked, whitely incandescent, just before the Shropshire’s torpedoes had sent her to the bottom.

The Stirling would have died anyway—but the Stukas made siccar. The Northern Lights had long since gone: now, too, the clear skies were going, and dark cloud was banking heavily to the north. Men hoped and prayed that the cloud would spread over FR77, and cover it with blanketing snow. But the Stukas got there first.'

- HMS Ulysees, A MacLean, Chapter 17, Sunday Morning.

For those unfamiliar with the book, 'tis the tale of the last voyage of HM Cruiser Ulysees, escorting FR77 to Murmansk. 'Tis a tale of submarines in Scapa Flow, of carriers mined, stranded, wrecked by storms, torpedoed; of air attacks, of submarine attacks, of surface actions; of ships, and I quote, 'driving to the black floor of the Arctic, their own engines their executioners'; of Uylsees charging at full power, 'A' turret out of action due to a Stuka crashed onto the forcastle, 'X' and 'Y' turrets knocked off their moorings by the wreck of a Condor aft, torpedoes out of action, 'B' turret firing starshell because that was all that was left in the magazine, battle ensign flying from what was left of the foremast, going in to ram, in the middle of a snowstorm.

Mr. MacLean certainly liked to pile it on, didn't he?

In any case, somewhat more naval than a commando operation in the Alps.

Police raid India call centre, detain 500 in fraud probe

Re: Bah!

"(*) The Empire State Building was hit by a B29 in heavy fog, so there was precedent for this concern."

The Empire State was hit by a B-25, not a B-29. There's a substantial difference.

Re: Silly buggers

"Have you checked the canal?"

We have a fence up. you can't see much in that canal, just occasionally a pair of eyes tracking a dog, usually some snowbird's pet. Those of us who live here year round know that when the ducks refuse to go out on the canal there are gators, and keep our dogs away from the public way behind our back fences.

It's been my experience that deputies are at least as smart as ducks, and, besides, gators will usually show professional courtesy to something as cold, reptilian, and vicious as the average deputy.

Silly buggers

A while back I got a call from someone with a distinct Indian accent who said that he was calling from the IRS, and gave an IRS agent number, and said that I owed $2,531.37 in back taxes, interest, and penalties and that if I didn't pay up immediately over the phone the sheriff would be sending a deputy to arrest me within the hour. I told him to send the deputy, the gators in the canal behind the house look hungry. He hung up. For some reason no deputy showed up. Funny, that.

'Toyota dealer stole my wife's saucy snaps from phone, emailed them to a swingers website'

Re: that name

""being stuck with multiple saints' names myself..."

O'Shea was a saint?"

certainly, for not saying how he really felt about Scotsmen and Frenchmen and especially Englishmen. only a true saint could possibly show such restraint.

that name

His name is Matthew Luke Thomas. He, allegedly, stole pix from a pastor. He's naked for two writers of the Gospels and an apostle, and he does naughty things to one of m'man Jesus' fishers of men. And said fisher of men is also named for an apostle. It's just too bad that wifey isn't named Mary.

being stuck with multiple saints' names myself (hey! Irish!) I noticed the names first thing.

Plastic fiver: 28 years' work, saves acres of cotton... may have killed less than ONE cow*

Re: Is there a petition to insist that we DON'T change the new £5 note?

I have signed up for the petition.

IPv4 is OVER. Really. So quit relying on it in new protocols, sheesh

Re: Consumer routers?

Every single consumer-level DOCSIS 3.x device I've seen in the last three years has supported IUPv6. All of them.All consumer router/WAPs which have 802.11ac also support IPv6, or at least all that I've seen. The very first router/WAP which supported 802.11n that I saw didn't support

IPv6. All subsequent ones have.

Your milage may vary.

"Good luck standardising exclusively on something that almost every home ISP on the planet cannot yet support."

Perhaps there is limited support in the UK, but I can tell you quite clearly that the major ISPs in the US support IPv6. All of the cellcos do: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, the riff-raff like Boost and Cricket and Virgin. A&T and Verizon support it on their DSL/FIOS/U-verse/whatever connections. Comcast, Time-Warner, and Cox support it. I have, right now, a combination VOIP/TV/Internet/WAP/switch/router thing from AT&T which supports IPv6. I got it quite some time back, maybe two years, maybe longer, and it replaced a similar thing which did NOT support IPv6. My elderly aunts have a device from Comcast which supports IPv6, and have had it for a year or so now. I used to have a cellphone from Sprint; it supported it. That phone was replaced by one from AT&T. It supports it. I also have a phone from T-Mob. It supports it. I'm in Palm Beach County, Florida, not exactly a high-tech wonderland.

And, furthermore, I recently had occasion to visit Jamaica... and the cellco I bought a SIM from there Digicel) supports IPv6. Are you really saying that _Jamaica_ has better Internet service than the UK? Really?

Password reset warrior arrested for popping 1050 student accounts

'complex' password nonsense

I have been known to teach the occasional class at the local community college. They require everyone, students, staff, adjuncts, whatever, to have a 'complex' password. You know, at least three of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols, a minimum of eight total characters. The usual. They also insist on users changing their passwords every 90 days. Their IT department was not amused when I pointed out that P@55worD01 exceeded their 'complexity' requirements, and that merely changing the trailing two digits would give me 100 changes of password, or 300 months worth. They went to the trouble of adding code to detect P@55worD01, et al, and banning the use of numbers as the last two digits. So I use an equally inane password, this time with the two numbers that I change every 90 days buried in the middle of the password, the rest of which never changes. My only problem is remembering how which two numbers are in use this month. Now, if they were serious about password security, they'd bin the 'complex' crap and allow passphrases. you know, stuff that can be easily remembered but is hard to guess or to crack using normal password cracking methods. Things like, oh, tennoheikabanzai. ('May the Emperor reign 10,000 years.' Yes. Really.) No need for 'forgot password' crap if you remember the passphrase...

British defence minister refuses to rule out F-35A purchase

for those who really want large cargo and tanker aircraft, you should know that the SN once demonstrated that C-130 Hercules aircraft can land on a carrier _without_ a tail hook, so no need for arrestor cables, and take off again without using the catapult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-poc38C84

When I last looked, the RAF still had a few C-130s. Perhaps the RN might borrow one or two.

Perhaps the RN could also conduct landing trials in sight of land, and let me know when and where, so that I could sell tickets to view the inevitable disaster.

Trump vs. Clinton III - TPP looks dead, RussiaLeaks confirmed

"Why do we have 17 intelligence agencies? I find that in itself kind of alarming."

There are 17 agencies 'cause everyone has to have their own take on things.

CIA: umbrella for foreign intel

DIA: umbrella for foreign _military_ intel

FBI: among other things, umbrella for local, in the US, counterintel

Bureau of Intelligence and Research: US State Department's very own foreign intel

Office of Naval Intelligence: US Navy's very own foreign military intel

US Army Intelligence and Security Command: US Army's very own foreign military intel _and_ local, in the US, counterintel

US Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency: US Air Force's very own intel

National Reconnaissance Office: satelitte pix and stuff

NSA: sigint

United States Secret Service: among other things, foreign and local economics intel (Treasury Dept...)

That's ten. I know that I'm leaving out at least three more. I see no reason why there couldn't be _more_ than 17 intelligence agencies.

Report: UK counter-terrorism plan Prevent is 'unjust', 'counterproductive'

I wasn't in uniform when I had grand-grand-uncle's rifle. It was a still working Short Magazine Lee Enfield Mark 3 Star, the very finest battle rifle ever made. With a bayonet. Ex-RN, sorta. I've got a lot of pix of it, including me (and lots of others) actually firing it.

Most interesting

I'm sure that I have a pic or two or twelve of me and grand-grand-uncle's SMLE. He was issued a SMLE Mk 3* while serving on a cruiser in the RN in 1918 for reasons which no doubt made sense to the RN, and when demob time came around they didn't want the rifle back, for reasons which again no doubt made sense to the RN. Cousin Pat inherited it, and there are pix of us, and assorted cousins and friends, with it. Complete with bayonet. Exactly what use a bayonet was on a cruiser was one of the things we wondered about. One friend was a Vishnu Singh. No doubt these idiots wouldn't have objected, seeing as he wasn't Muslim... (No, he wasn't Sikh, either. Not all Singhs are Sikhs, though all male Sikhs are Singhs...)

Memo to the Admiralty: if you dozy lot want your rifle back, you owe us nearly a hundred years worth of upkeep for it. I'll take it in cash. Nice crisp 100-euro notes, not pounds, thanks.

Criticize Donald Trump, get your site smashed offline from Russia

Re: Hmmm...

bob, m'man...I was getting 524s all weekend. If I moved from one page to another on El Reg, sometimes all would work, sometimes, I'd get a 524, with a message from CloudFlare stating that El Reg had timed out. If I refreshed the page, it would load. I consistently had problems with El Reg. I had them using Safari on a Mac, and using Firefox on a Mac, and using Firefox on a Windows machine, and Chrome on a Windows machine. I got them connected by Ethernet to my home net, I got them connected by wireless to my home net, I got them connected by wireless to the office net when I went in on Saturday morning. I got them when using IPv6 as my primary connection. I got them when using IPv4 as my primary connection.

I did _not_ have any problems connecting to sites other than El Reg, using the same machines, the same browsers, the same connections. I suspect that experiencing the same problems using four different web browsers on two different machines running two different operating systems and experiencing said problems only with one particular site is probably not going to be because of caches or cookies. This is especially so when, as was noted in my original post, I contacted El Reg's web people and they confirmed that there was, in fact, 'bad data' hitting one of their servers. And, further, the problems have vanished now... and I haven't done a thing to the caches or cookies.

No, there was an intermittent problem at El Reg over the weekend. If you want I can send you a screen shot of one of the 524s so that you can see for yourself just what CloudFlare had to say. I find it... interesting... that El Reg dares to criticize the Orange One and then... That's just one hell of a co-incidence, laddie.

Re: As predicted

"Trump , the American Putin."

More like the American Peron. Melania wouldn't do for a new Evita, though, she's nowhere near smart enough, given that she's looking upwards at Sarah Palin. Maybe when he trades her in for a new model, the new one will be smarter...,. Nah, each one has been sillier than the last.

Exits, singing "Don't cry for me, Argentina".

Hmmm...

Did anyone else have problems connecting to El Reg over the weekend? I kept getting 524s, and a note from CloudFlare that there was a timeout at El Reg's end. I sent in a note to the webmaster, and got something back to the effect that there had been a lot of 'bad data'.

Hmm. Now, just how many articles are there currently on El Reg which might annoy the Orange One? Hmm.

Will US border officials demand social network handles from visitors?

'just look at the US baseball "World Series". See any non-US teams there?'

Sorry, but that's a bad example.

1 the Toronto Blue Jays are, last I looked, from Canada. The Montreal Expos moved to Washington, DC and changed their name to the Nationals. The Blue Jays are currently fighting it out with Boston and Baltimore and Detroit to make the playoffs. They have a chance, not a good one, but a chance, of being in the Series this year. They have been in the Series a few times, winning it all in 1992 and 1993. (The Expos were, well, pitiful... until they moved to Washington. Now they're pretty good.)

2 a considerable percentage of the players on the various teams come from Japan, and Korea, and Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic (hint: that's not Dominica) and Cuba. And even a few from Canada.

3 the 'World Series' was first thought up as an advertising stunt by the New York World newspaper. It didn't work, there is no more New York World newspaper and hasn't been for a very long time.

RAF Reaper drone was involved in botched US Syria airstrike

Re: Armchair Warfare

Has any government, anywhere, been anything other than corrupt and/or inept to some degree? Some of the more inept I can think of were not particularly corrupt; some of the more corrupt were not particularly inept. Some, of course, were spectacularly corrupt and even more inept at the same time. Those tended to not last long. Well, except for Mexico under the PRI. The PRI managed to stay in power for, what, 70 years? Something like that, despite being unbelievably corrupt and inept. It helped that they were propped up by el colosso del norte.

T-Mobile USA: DON'T install Apple's iOS 10, for the love of God

Re: Hmmm... not around here

I thought that it'd be something like that.

Hmmm... not around here

I have an iPhone 6. It's on T-Mob. It's running iOS 10. All appears to be working normally.

Inside our three-month effort to attend Apple's iPhone 7 launch party

this isn't going to be popular, but

Given that Apple _knows_ that El Reg doesn't like them

Given that Apple _knows_ that the majority (possibly the vast majority) of those who read El Reg on a regular basis don't like them

Given that Apple _knows_ that nothing they do will change either of the above

Exactly why should Apple give El Reg access? They're going to get bad press anyway, no matter what. This way they don't help El Reg mount the attack. For those who would have El Reg buy an Apple device, take it apart, and expose all the problems... this means that Apple would be using EL Reg as their hardware beta test people, and having El Reg pay for the privilege. As the people who would be reading El Reg's ripping up of the hardware would be people who already don't like Apple and would be unlikely to buy Apple products anyway, they don't lose a damn thing. They lose nothing by not letting El Reg in... and the space that El Reg would take up can be given to someone who they_do_ care about.

And all of the posts above about 'crApple' and how the commentards would never buy an Apple device further reinforce their position. Not to mention the vast number of other anti-Apple comments spread all over El Reg. For example, at least one commentard saw fit to attack Apple in a comment about Samung's Note 7 having problems. Apple knows quite well that they simply cannot win at El Reg, and see no reason to expend any effort on the matter. Frankly, if I was at Apple, I'd simply put a filter on any mail from El Reg and dump it straight to the trash. But that's me. I'm famous for having a bad attitude.

HDMI hooks up with USB-C in cables that reverse, one way

Re: When?

"All USB 3 ports and plugs are blue"

err... no. Dell, for example, does not use the little blue tab. It uses a black tab, just like for USB2, except that 'SS' and a little USB3 logo are silk-screened next to the port, using the smallest possible font and in a colour as similar to that of the computer's case as possible, to maximise the odds of people not having clue one about what kind of port this is. Apple doesn't even do that; they ship devices which are either all USB2 or USB3. If one USB port is USB3, all are, and Apple sees no point in labeling them. I have seen several 'secure' USB thumb drive sticks which have red tabs... and can be bought in USB2 or USB3, with the same red tabs.

And all USB C devices are USB3. I have yet to see a blue USB C tab.

Microsoft thought of the children and decided to ban some browsers

Re: Nanny Microsoft strikes again

"The reason for the silence is he asked Microsoft shills to answer and there aren't any here."

Oh. My. Gawd. That's the funniest thing I've seen on El Reg in ages.

Sophos Windows users face black screens after false positive snafu

Son, you must be new here. I remember when [name of AV app redacted, they have much better lawyers than coders] ate SVCHOST. That was a fun fix.

Re: Tinfoil hats on

I see that the MS fanbois have no sense of humor.

Re: Silver Lining

"Why is every bug and mistake out there always part of some hidden conspiracy?"

'cause it is, dammit.

Tinfoil hats on

How much did Microsoft pay Sophos to cause problems for Win 7 holdouts? And this will surely not be the last 'accident'...

Sundown exploit kit authors champions of copy-paste hacking

They should all use GPLv3 and sic RMS onto anyone who steals their code.

L0phtCrack's back! Crack hack app whacks Windows 10 trash hashes

Re: Good password selection

Pah. just pick a good phrase. And use an uncommon language. Hmmm...

'Give me ramming speed'. In Latin. With a deliberate misspelling or two. Give that dictionary a nice workout. Especially as it won't have entries for the misspelled words.

Suspicious DNS activity runs rife

Umm...

It appears possible that up to 40% of tested networks have had some DNS tunneling. However... it's a stretch to say that this is, of itself, evidence of malware activity. It may well be merely that someone on the inside of the network wants access outside without the network admins knowing. There are many reasons why someone might want to do that, ranging from 'I want to collect personal email without letting company snoopers know' to 'I want some porn while at work'. Other possible, non-malware, reasons are left as an exercise for the student,

I don't do DNS tunneling. When I don't want the corporate net to know what I'm doing, I connect using the hotspot built into my iPad, over the cell phone net (T-Mobile, in this case) and don't go near the corp net. They have no idea what I'm doing as it never touches their network. Certain elements have been known to squeal that this is a security problem. I have been known to ignore them. i am, for example, connected via the hotspot right now; el Reg has been designated a hacker website and blocked on the corp net. (As to why I'm at the office at 05:46, that's a whole other story.) (Yes, really. El Reg is a hacker site. So is CNET. I'm not making this up. We got idiots in certain parts of higher-higher..)

BSODs at scale: We laugh at your puny five storeys, here's our SIX storey #fail

Re: "This copy of Windows is not genuine"

I used to get that all the time on an old Toshiba laptop I had. It shipped with Vista, and every so often I'd get the 'not genuine' message, call Microsoft, scream at them, get a new license key, enter it... and everything would be good, for a few months, then it'd display the 'not genuine' message again, and I'd call Microsoft again. After a while the guys in the call center got suspicious and didn't want to hand out a new key; I'd escalate it to a 'supervisor', who would check and see that the 'suspicious' key, and the one before that, and the one before that, etc., were issued by Microsoft after the OEM key had... problems. He'd then issue me a new key. The Toshiba was upgraded to Win 7 pretty much the day Win 7 became available, and for some time showed no problems. It's back saying that Win 7, got direct from Microsoft, is 'not genuine'. And, again, a replacement key lasted for a few months before becoming 'not genuine'. Part of the problem does, indeed, seem to be that I don't connect the Toshiba to the internet any more often than I have to, and whatever frequency that is seems to be not often enough for Microsoft to check on me.

The Toshiba is now 9, going on 10, years old and has been retired, replaced by a second-hand Apple machine, running OS X 10.9. The Apple system, despite being nearly as old as the Toshiba, is much faster and doesn't try to tell me that it's not 'genuine'. It does nag about updating to 10.10 and 10.11. I ignore the nags. Which are rare, as the Apple also spends a lot of time not being connected to the internet.

Tech fails miserably in Forbes' most innovative companies

Forbes, eh?

The last time I went near their site they complained about my adblocker. In fact, they were very aggressive about showing their dislike for my adblocker. Haven't been back since. Really don't care about anything that they might have to say.

An end to rude emails?

I remember Eudora & the Peppers

Many years ago I use Eudora for email. No, I _obsessed_ over using Eudora for email. Then the boyz who made it went off the rails. One of the first symptoms was when they added a feature which no-one had asked for: code which read your emails and assigned little pepper icons to them if the emails got too hot. For some reason this was more important than adding features many, including me, asked for, such as proper IMAP support. Eudora found all kinds of things to be too hot; at the time I was a member of a mailing list discussing medieval history in general and the behavior of, umm, 'gentlemen' such as Basil Bulgar-Slayer (look him up, he's a nasty one) and William the Bastard of Normandy and England (another nasty piece of work, though not up to the level of Basil). Eudora put up the max three peppers at the mention of either, and certain others. After a while people would try to see if they could rack up max peppers without actually using profanity or obscenity... and it wasn't just possible, it was easy.

i predict that if this thing ever actually sees the light of day there will be people, and not a few of them, who will try to see just how high a naughty rating they can get.

Microsoft can't tell North from South on Bing Maps

"Microsoft Windows, Where do you want to go today ?"

I once saw a sig which read something like:

"We are Microsoft of Borg. Where you want to go to today is irrelevant. What you want to do is irrelevant. We will take your currency and add it to our own. Bend over right now. Resistance is futile."

Somehow I don't think that he was a fan of Redmond.

Re: Tsk @Bloakey1

Joe Rocheforte and his boys did their jobs, and did them well, allowing Nimitz to send out what was left of the American fleet to engage. Problem: Yorktown had been severely damaged in the previous battle. It should not have been possible to make repairs in time. They almost sailed with civilian dockworkers on board; the last repairs were made by the crew, en route to Midway. Problem: Halsey was sick, with a severe rash. They needed a replacement, quick. The only one available was a career cruiser man named 'Spruance'. Spruance was senior to Fletcher, the other admiral available, and so had overall command despite being a career surface forces man. No-one knew, then, that he was the greatest carrier admiral there ever was or would be.

The bad luck for the Americans started when a PBY patrol aircraft spotted the Japanese alpha strike going in towards Midway, and radioed in 'many planes headed Midway', notably leaving out minor details such as overall strength and composition. The good luck started when the cruiser Tone, one of the escorts for the Kido Butai, had a problem with it catapult and was late launching it recon aircraft. By sheer luck, the area that Tone's aircraft was supposed to patrol was the area containing the American fleet. The recon seaplane was late getting there due to the late launch, and when it did detect American ships didn't see a carrier... and so reported back. For over an hour Nagumo didn't know that there were American ships at sea, and for another half hour he didn't know that there was at least one carrier. That turned out to be critical.

Further bad luck for the Americans followed when the Japanese alpha strike hit Midway, and effectively destroyed the American air defense; only two out of 28 fighters remained airworthy when the Japanese left. The alpha strike suffered some loses, and other aircraft, including that of the strike commander, were damaged.

Additional bad luck for the Americans came when all of the B-17s based on Midway attempted to bomb the Kido Butai, scoring no hits. Next came the Midway-based torpedo bombers: two B-26s and five TBFs. Three TBFs were shot down, and all the other aircraft damaged. One B-26 attempted to ram the Kido Butai's flagship (what, you thought that it was _Japan_ who invented the Kamikaze?) but failed when the pilot lost consciousness from loss of blood and the co-pilot didn't think that it was a good day to die.

The alpha strike commander had radioed in that there was a need for a second strike at Midway. The B5N heavy attack aircraft ('Kate' to the US) could carry bombs for land attack or torpedoes for anti-shipping. The dive bombers could carry thin-skinned bombs for attacking buildings or heavy bombs for anti-ship. The Kido Butai had retained some of both types when sending out the alpha strike. They were configured anti-ship. Nagumo ordered them reconfigured for land attack... before the bombers from Midway arrived. And before Tone's seaplane reported in that there was at least one American carrier at sea. While they were in the middle of all this, the torpedo planes from the American fleet started arriving. The 'American samurai' showed every intention of bringing their torpedoes as close as possible before launching, and, like the B-26 driver, several showed a definite intent to ram. Torpedo Squadron 8, from USS Hornet, sent 10 aircraft out, each with a crew of three. There was only one survivor. Not one surviving aircraft, one surviving aircrew. The American carrier torpedo planes pressed home their attack against everything the Japanese could throw at them. Torpedo 6, from Enterprise, sent 14 aircraft. They got back 4, all damaged. Torpedo 3, from Yorktown, sent in 12, got back 2, all damaged. Some American fighters were close enough to have supported the torpedo planes, if they had been so inclined. None were. One of the Torpedo 6 aircrew had to be pulled off a fighter pilot when he got back to the carrier. So far the US had lost twenty-plus fighters over Midway and another few damaged, plus all of the Midway-based torpedo planes either destroyed or sufficiently damaged as to be no longer airworthy, plus effectively all of three complete carrier torpedo squadrons and had zero hits from air-launched torpedoes. The only hits, three submarine-launched torpedoes from USS Archerfish, were duds. Japan had light losses.

Nagumo, badly scared by at least two attempts by American aircraft to ram not merely his flagship but the bridge deck from which he was watching the battle, ordered his carriers to stop rearming with bombs for land attack and rearm with torpedoes for anti-ship, and he did so while the last of the carrier torpedo planes were still attacking. Which meant that when the dive bombers of Scouting 6 and Bombing 6, off Enterprise, and Bombing 3, off Yorktown, arrived, the Japanese carriers were packed with aircraft being refueled (part of the alpha strike had returned) and rearmed. Perfect targets for heavy bombs. At 10:24 AM, 4 June 1942, Japan was winning the war. At 10:26, they had lost. It just took three more years to convince them.

When the Kido Butai was lost, it was more than just the ships. It was the aircrews, the best carrier aircrews in the world, the men who had owned the sea and the sky above it from China to Hawaii to Ceylon. It took fifteen months or more to train aircrews to that level. Japan didn't have 15 months to burn. In addition, all the deck crews who serviced the aircraft were lost with the carriers. They were as highly trained as the aircrews, and as completely irreplaceable. And, oh, the commander of the alpha strike took off in his damaged Kate to hunt American carriers, knowing that he only had fuel for a one-way trip. Japan lost a lot of their best commanders, too. (They didn't lose Nagumo. Pity. He should have been awarded the Medal of Honor for all that he did to make the American victory possible.)

The Americans took heavy loses: Yorktown was sunk, as was a destroyer, and they lost a lot of aircrew. But the Americans were already starting to mass-produce the Essex-class carriers, and they could turn out aircrew in six to nine months. Their crews weren't as good as the Japanese, but there were an awful lot of them, and in the words of Stalin, quantity has a quality all its own.

Japan had to cut corners on the training program, and it showed. By 1944 the best Americans were as good as most Japanese, and there were a lot of Americans. Spruance would send his aircraft up into the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot where hordes of Americans flying superior aircraft wiped out Japanese carrier air. By 1945 Japan was reduced to desperate measures; Saburo Sakai, one of the old hands from China who had been severely shot up over the Solomon Islands and lost an eye in the process (and flew back nearly 500 miles and made a successful landing just the same) was dragged out of retirement after 18 months on the ground, promoted to an officer (the severely class-conscious Japanese very rarely promoted enlisted men into the officer ranks) and told to fly escort for kamikazes. His flight had two other escorts, both green newbies, and a dozen or so kamikazes when they were intercepted by 18 Hellcats from US Pacific Fleet. Sakai told the newbies to get the kamikazes home, and held off the Hellcats by himself, shooting down three, before escaping back to base. Remember, he was blind in one eye... that's the calibre of the Imperial Japanese Navy's aircrews in the late 1930s to early 1940s. The best there ever was.

Spruance got them, anyway. With a lot of luck and a lot of assistance from Nagumo.

Re: Acceptable to ridicule an entire nation

I can, and have, called Pakis Pakis. I've also been known to point out that Scotland is where men are men (except for Tony Blair, he's a poodle), women are men, too, and sheep are nervous.

And there's this, one of my fav True Statements:

In Heaven…

the mechanics are German

the chefs are French

the police are British

the lovers are Italian

and everything is organized by the Swiss.

In Hell…

the mechanics are French

the police are German

the chefs are British

the lovers are Swiss

and everything is organized by the Italians.

Stop whinging, Yank. And that goes double if you're one of those Johnny Reb Yanks, the worst kind.

I've been to Melbourne, Florida. It's just barely a wide spot on US1 northbound from Miami.

Re: Tsk

aah... John, m'man, American territory _was_ invaded during WWII. Guam was invaded early on. USS Guam, one of only two American battlecruisers actually completed (Saratoga and Lexington became aircraft carriers) was completed while Guam was occupied. Wake Island, a.k.a. 'the Alamo of the Pacific' repelled the first Japanese assault, which made 'em mad so they got out the heavy hammer for the second assault. Two of the Aleutian Islands, way up north in Alaskan waters, were briefly occupied. When the assault force to take them back, which included some Canadian troops who'd been promised to not be 'sent overseas' when they enlisted and were therefore very annoyed, arrived and took casualties during the landing, it turned out that the Japanese had had a good look around and had decided to let the Americans keep the damn useless lumps of frozen rock and had left. All casualties were from accidents or friendly fire, 'cause the Japs were gone. The only other battlecruiser completed for the US Navy was USS Alaska.

And, oh, the USN lucked out something awesome at Midway, part of the operation whereby the Japanese grabbed the above-mentioned lumps of frozen rock. That invasion was called off after sheer luck allowed the USN to sink four Japanese and so gut the Kido Butai, the Fast Striking Force. Yes, it was sheer luck; the, to quote Admiral Nagumo, 'American samurai' of the torpedo-bomber squadrons died to no effect... except pulling down the Japanese fighter CAP to low level, while completely by accident the American dive bombers came in unopposed from high level and killed three carriers. the American dive bombers got lost on their way to the Kido Butai. Some turned around and went home. One group arbitrarily made a left turn... and arrived above the Kido Butai just as the last of the torpedo planes were being massacred. The third group spotted a Japanese destroyer running at full speed to rejoin the fleet after attacking the submarine USS Archerfish, which had put several torpedoes, all duds 'cause the USN's Bureau of Weapons had had a truly monumental screw-up in the design, into a battleship escorting the carrier force. The dive bombers didn't attack the destroyer, they just extrapolated its course and arrived over the Kido Butai at the same time as the other dive bombers, but from a different direction. Even had the CAP seen them, the two separate attacks would have split the defense. But the CAP was busy killing torpedo planes and didn't see them allowing the dive bombers to pick their targets completely unopposed; most of the Kido Butai's antiaircraft guns were pointed low, to kill torpedo planes, not high, and it took time they didn't have to correct this. But for that, the US would have lost Midway, too, and _that_ was a dagger aimed directly ay Hawaii. And if Japan took Hawaii, next stop would have been the Panama Canal. (No, not the American west coast, Japan didn't have a big enough army to both invade the US mainland and hammer China, and as hammering China was the whole reason for the war in the first place, they weren't going to pull troops out of China. Panama, now, that was doable.)

'Clock Bomb Kid' family sues

$15 million in damages after the kid was 'detained' 'cause he's brown and of a different religion.

I remember building actual things which could explode in high school, mostly in an effort to make solid-fuel rocket motors, but on one memorable occasion a few of my (many, hey, we're Irish) cousins and I built a liquid fuel system using hypergolic fuels which were just a tad too hypergolic. Really big boom.

For fun we made nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin (it's easy; not blowing yourself up or dissolving yourself in sulfuric or nitric acids, that's more difficult) and we used material from our high school chemistry lab to do it. That's real, actual, explosives. The only consequence was after the liquid-fueled rocket blew up on the launch pad we got grounded for six months.

They moved out of the _county_. They still live in the _country_.

And, frankly, I'd have gone for a lot more than $15 M.

Breaking 350 million: What's next for Windows 10?

" When they buy a new PC they will not have a choice."

Sure they will.

1 reformat and install the Linux distro of their choice. Or, if they're up to additional work, BSD,

2 buy a Mac in the first place. Apple doesn't give a damn what OS you run. Install a Linux distro, install BSD, even install Windows, Apple doesn't care. They won't support you if you don't have an Apple OS running, but they don't care what you have running. They'll even provide Windows and (some) Linux drivers for you. Then you're on your own.

Re: Windows 10 did especially well

i can think of a lot of software which worked in OS x 10.8 and died on impact with 10.9. The vast majority of it was software which went out over the network, including email, ftp, and usenet systems, and all of them used a technology named 'Open Transport'. Apple had 'depreciated' Open Transport when the very first OS X versions hit the street. Developers had been on notice for years, since OS X 10.4 in 2004 or so, that it was going to go sometime. Not only did they not migrate to APIs which were going to be supported, some rolled out new versions of their software, using the old APIs, a few months prior to 10.9 hitting the streets. Others simply hadn't updated their stuff for years. When 10.9 hit, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth... tough. It had been marked as being doomed years before, and the devs had not paid attention. Open Transport had been around since 1995. It was visibly growing moss.

In the case of 10.6, a lot of the dead software depended on having the old Motorola 68000 APIs around, and some depended on PPC APIs. By the time 10.6 arrived, there hadn't been new 68000 Macs for well over a decade, and there hadn't been new PPC Macs for several years. And Apple had told everyone who was listening that the old stuff was doomed. The only thing they didn't say was when. Turned out it was 2009. That would be three years after Apple started shipping Intel Macs. Devs had three years to move on. Whose fault is it that they didn't, again?

I personally have an old eMac sitting around just so that I can play a very old game (Harpoon; I love sending in regimental Backfire strikes against imperialist carrier battle groups or flushing all the Shipwrecks, including the nukes, from an Oscar at very close range to a Yankee carrier... Slavsya, Otechestvo nashe svobodnoye! Nothing like 54 to 81 Kingfish or 24 Shipwrecks to ruin an imperialist admiral's whole day! The Glorious Red Banner Northern Fleet owns the Atlantic!) and I'd just love to be able to play it on modern equipment, but the vendor's dead and it will never be updated.

Re: Can't even give it away

"OS X is free? Care to point me to a download site so I can install it on my hackintosh?"

Yes, OS X is free. The license says that you're supposed to install it on Apple hardware. Installing on non-Apple hardware is not supported. Anyone who has a Mac which can run OS X 10.6.8 or later has the Mac App Store app; launch it, find the installer for the latest version of the OS (usually right on the front page) and download said installer. It will usually autolaunch and request permission to install; if you give it permission, when its done it will delete itself. If you want to keep a copy, quit the installer, copy it to somewhere else (the installer usually is installed into the Applications folder so that you can find it easily) and then you can have an installer you can use later. Or on another machine. Even a hackintosh. And you can create USB install media, so you can stick the installer on a USB stick and install on anything which has acceptable hardware, including a hackintosh.

And, finally, every ever so often Apple releases a stand-alone installer. The latest is for OS X 10.11.4 and is available at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1869?locale=en_US

But you could have found this for yourself by actually going to Apple's site and typing 'download OS' into the search box.

Power cut crashes Delta's worldwide flight update systems

Re: Re:Worse. Airline. I. Have. Ever. Flown. With.

I'll see your 'Delta' and raise you BWIA: Britain's Worst Investment Abroad. Also known as Better Wait In Airport. BOAC was Better On A Camel. I remember one flight from Kingston, Jamaica, to Miami on BWIA which took off five hours late and then got later. Something about having to take the long way around Cuba 'cause someone in Trinidad, where BWIA was based, had pissed off the Cubans. Another flight, from Kingston to London, on British Airways not long after it ceased being BOAC, had to divert to Bermuda 'cause someone didn't quite close the cap on one of the wing fuel tanks and we were leaking kerosene over the Atlantic. Yes. Really. That year a lot of British Airways staff went on strike, including engineering support crew, and several aircraft, including the one we flew in on and the one we were supposed to fly back on, had 'cracks' in the wings. Apparently big ones, which could be fixed, except that the guys who were supposed to fix 'em were on strike. So British Airways arranged that everyone on our flight was to fly back to relatively calm and peaceful Jamaica on Air Jamaica... except that Air Jamaica didn't have enough aircraft which could fly the Atlantic Kingston-London, and the one and only one they did have was busy on Air Jamaica's regular service, so the return flight was made with a stop in the truly wonderful vacation spot of Gander, Newfoundland. I haven't flown British Airways since... It'll be 40 years, come next year. I have flown on BWIA. They just were always late, they didn't actively risk your life flying them. They and Air Jamaica have combined into Caribbean Airlines. They're still always late.

PCs’ PCs pwned: Irish cops probe mystery malware attack

Re: Because?

Only the stuck-up ones.

Re: Because?

And one or two Jimmys. Not to mention Marys, Elizabeths, Annes, and variations on Bridget/Brighid/Brigid.

More VW cheatware 'found'

It will pass the test. That's the problem. It'll pass the test and two minutes later start polluting heavily.