Posts by Ye Gads

Microsoft, GitHub staff tell Satya Nadella: It's time to ice ICE, baby. Rip up those tech contracts

We need to remember that Github is just a tool

A bit like the US President...

TalkTalk returns to the email hall of shame as Pipex accounts throw weekend-long wobbly

So, to confirm:

Those people who have an account with Pipex can't get at their email

Those people who no longer have an account with Pipex can still access their email.

All sounds completely sensible, please carry on.

EU will have agreed a tech tax by March, says French finance minister

Re: why not

Sorry, I don't follow.

Company A writes the software in the US. Fine, got that.

Company B sells the software in the UK. I'm assuming that either Company A owns Company B or Company A has sells the software to Company B, which re-sells it.

In the first case, Company B pays corporation tax on profits in the UK and ships the surplus back to the US. In the second case, Company A makes a profit from its sales and pays corporation tax on its profits. Company B will also make a profit from selling on the software and will then pay corporation tax on its profit

I'm struggling to find a problem with this except that, perhaps, neither Company A or B wants to pay tax. Your argument seems to imply that Company A can only get money for its software/services through an IP transfer. What am I missing?

London Gatwick Airport reopens but drone chaos perps still not found

Environmental Protestors?

Sorry, not buying that one.

That's not how these guys protest. They tend to put themselves on/in the site they're protesting in. Typical of their tactics are things like the Newbury bypass protests, where they esconced themselves in the trees that were to be chopped down and forced the contractors to have them removed. The Anti-Fracking protests are another case in point. They storm the site, sometimes break stuff, but mostly put themselves in the way of what people want to do.

This doesn't fit the MO that they've built up over the decades.

Like tax? Love networks? UK taxmen have a job just for you

Re: Pay AWS?

Well, they could, but it'd only cover the first £15 million or so. I do wonder how all this lovely profit off of HMRC will be reported? Off of the UK entity or via it's low tax Luxemburg entity?

And we'll complain, but it's legal. If we really didn't like it we'd change our tax law. Or tax Amazon on turnover rather than profit as the French and Germans are considering doing...

Error Canada: Airline tells customers to reset mobile app after attack

Never joke about poutine

In fact, never mention it. Ever...

For the Brits: poutine is a French Canadian dish of French fries covered in cheese curds and thick gravy. People react to it a bit like they react to Marmite.

And it's one of those things that should never be talked about. The Quebecer in me says "ferme ta gueule" (and the Canadian in me politely adds "si vous plait")

Oh, and great pun

Oh boy: MPs prepare to probe UK.gov's digital prowess and tech savvy

Blind Leading The Blind?

Quick, someone find me a one-eyed person!

How much do you think Cisco's paying erstwhile Brit PM David Cameron?

Whatever he's being paid

I suspect he asked for payment in Euros or USD. The British Pound doesn't seem to be holding its value these days...

TSB outage, day 5: What do you mean you can't log in? Our systems are up and running. Up and running, we say!

Re: Oh come on, we can do better than that!

Try Some-other Bank...

(yes, that's cheating, but good advice)

Re: Oh come on, we can do better than that!

Terrible Software Blamed

Techies Shaft Board

Testing Saves Bonuses

Terribly Stupid Board

Try Software Backup?

Tools Sometimes Break

Totally Shafted Business

Oh come on, we can do better than that!

TSB:

Test Software Before!

Test Software Better!

Tanked So Badly

Trashed Someone's Bonus?

So many possibilities

'Your computer has a virus' cold call con artists on the rise – Microsoft

Are they still doing this?

I remember being called at home repeatedly by these guys. What finally worked was playing clueless with a twist:

"I'm afraid I don't know very much about PCs. I work as a lumberjack. Let me tell you about my job".

They hung up halfway through the second verse, which is a pity as that's when you get to the really fun lyrics.

But there you go.

Wanna work for El Reg? Developers needed for headline-writing AI bots

Indeed

Sadly, this may be an April fools, but it looks quite a bit like your standard job spec. "Developer wanted who has 10 years experience in the latest fad, can speak Swahili and is a professional yodeller."

I'll bee back: Boffin's bionic bug Band-Aid after real ones all die

Re: Black Mirror

If they're starting to make robot bees then it's time to start being much nicer to people on social media

Concerns raised about privacy, GDPR as Lords peer over Data Protection Bill

When I first read GDPR

I thought they were talking about the German Democratic Peoples Republic. Or perhaps this is just a step in that direction?

Star Wars: Big Euro cinema group can't handle demand for tickets to new flick

we're experiencing high levels of customers trying to book

As Yoda wisely said: "Do or do not, there is not try"

Electric driverless cars could make petrol and diesel motors 'socially unacceptable'

But nobody asked

What I would do if I saw a line of Hare Krishna walking in a line...

Gouranga!

His Muskiness wheels out the Tesla Model 3

Re: It will retail for just $35,000

I think the calculation would be something like

35KUSD =27K GBP

Add VAT (%20) (5.4K) which takes us to 32.5K

Subtract EV grant( 4.5K) which leaves us at 28K

Obviously, there will be extras. If you want a bigger battery you'll need to pay more (and probably wait longer as the initial car configurator only lets you choose wheels and colour. If you want to change battery, etc you'll need to wait for the production line to mature).

You will need a garage or at least a drive. If you live in an apartment block or have a flat you won't be able to charge it at home, so that probably rules this group out as purchasers.

If you do have these things then charging is cheap, costing about £2-3 for a full charge. There's also no Road Tax and you can drive in most congestion charge areas with impunity (though why anyone in their right mind would want to drive through central London is beyond me). I figure this will save me about 1.2K a year in running costs, which is significant.

So, if you've got 28K, a garage or a driveway then you can probably buy one. What you get in return is lower running costs.

Search results suddenly missing from Google? Well, BLAME CANADA!

Re: Does this mean...

Now that we Canadians are firmly in control of what Google can and can't show as search results I expect to see all pages where hockey is referred to as "Ice Hockey" are removed, as are all pages where field hockey is referred to as "hockey".

Leaked: The UK's secret blueprint with telcos for mass spying on internet, phones – and backdoors

Re: Only one question

Decisions are made by the people who turned up. You decided not to turn up.

The next time you complain that the government did something completely stupid, keep in mind that this was partially enabled by your lack of participation.

Write to your MP. donate to a civil liberties group or, God forbid, actually vote.

Humanity needs you... to build an AI bot that can finger rotten headlines

There will be shortcuts

if(story.writtenBy(new[]{"Daily Mail","Daily Star"}))

{

return false;

}

Sometimes AI isn't really required.

The sharks of AI will attack expensive and scarce workers faster than they eat drivers

Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

I think the issue will be for people at the lower levels of the firm. Imagine not having to research judgements or points of law; being able to bring up, for a given case, all points of law that are relevant and all case law that pertains to it in order of importance.

This is what Watson can do right now.

I think the issue is that it's not just simple manual process jobs that are at threat from automation, it's the complex process jobs (lawyers, doctors, accountants) that will be under threat.

Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated – just like movies

The obvious problem with this

Is that when a movie is released its content is then largely static. Nobody can suddenly insert a sex scene into Star Wars: The Phantom Menace dvd that my nephew owns. Web-sites change. Frequently. Do you have to submit the site for frequent re-classification?

And what do you do about user-content-driven sites? Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al have all sorts of dubious content/views on them Do you rank them as 18 and over?

And do they really expect kids to self-certify? And do they really expect the majority of clueless parents to know how to block this stuff (and stop their kids from secretly unblocking it?)?

Mobile phone app replaces Congressional TV as Democrats stage sit-in

Re: Unsafe Space

I agree entirely. What's more, had the occupants of the club had large quantities of C4 they could have blown escape holes in the building. That the US government is restricting the sale of C4 to the general public is outrageous: the more people that have access to this life-saving resource the more likely that they will be able to use it to make ad-hoc escape tunnels when necessary.

Sorry, must go: time for my medication...

Brexit: UK gov would probably lay out tax plans in post-'leave' vote emergency budget

Nope. Wrong....

If we vote to leave the EU on the 23rd we're not immediately out of it, nor do our responsibilities for implementing/enforcing its rules end there.

How you leave the EU is stated in the Treaty of Lisbon (Article 50). When a state says it wants to leave it has 2 years in which to agree what our relationship with the EU is going to look like, the extent and type of access we have to the EU single market, etc. Until this happens we are still subject to EU treaties.

So, will there be an emergency budget? No. We are bound by EU treaties until June 23rd 2018 and cannot change any items (VAT on fuel, etc) if they are restricted by existing EU directives/treaties/blah. Not only that, we may not be able to change them as these items may be bound up in an agreement with the EU covering future relations with it.

Brits don't want their homes to be 'tech-tastic'

Show me the money

I agree entirely.

I have 2 pieces of home automation: a smart themostat that turns off the heating when I'm not at home and a robot lawn mower (I kid you not).

the smart thermostat has reduced my heating by 1/3 and the lawnmower keeps the grass cut without me ever having to mow or rake the grass. I hate mowing the lawn.

Both pass the "wife-friendly" test, which is probably the best way of deciding if it's just a new piece of shiny or if it actually has some practical value.

TalkTalk customers decide to StayStay after £3m in free upgrades

If Only...

I could push

"There has never been a clearer space for a trusted value champion and our learnings from and experience since the cyber attack have helped to focus our plans for the year ahead"

through Google Translator ("marketing gibberish" to "English"). I suspect I'd get the following:

"People don't seem to care or understand about security and have short memories. We've given some people a bung to stay with us and now it's business as usual. I'm looking forward to my bonus."

And what the heck does "our learnings" mean, anyway?

Microsoft to make Xamarin tools and code free and open source

Re: Pointless

Not really. I'm a WPF developer by trade and have written several Windows Phone and Store apps. Having done this I've had to pretty much re-write the front end of the app to take into account different form-factor layouts.

Different form-factor layouts hare not fun to write in XAML. If you're looking to spend all your time writing different screens for different size views, go with Xamarin. if you want to write one app and then apply a bit of styling to manage different layout sizes, you'll go down the HTML 5 path and use something like AngularJS.They're embarrassingly easy to write in HTML.

Adding in employability: I know of nobody that writes all their mobile apps in C# or Xamarin. Most business doing LOB apps have gone down HTML 5 (no installs, no having to learn a device specific language). If you're writing apps for external customers your situation may be entirely different, but at that point I'd expect you to have experts who will write the app in app-specific languages where you have to or give you a Cordova app.

So, I'm going to say it again. Pointless.

Pointless

If I want to do cross platform development I can use Html 5 for most things. I can use Cordova and AngularJS to build and package an app on Windows, IOS and Android using a single set of code and still have access to the underlying OS.

I also get a website out of the deal.

Why would I choose C# to do this? Especially when I still have to buy a Mac to compile IOS code in this circumstance?

Look out, Windows Phone 8 users – yes, both of you – here's ... Windows 10 Mobile

And what do you get from W10 mobile?

Well, one my Lumia 1020 I got:

1. A slow phone

2. Here Maps and Drive vanish in June

3. A less good camera app than 8.1 (from a 1020 owners point of view)

4. A less good email client than we had in 8.1 (why can't I just link my folders and view multiple accounts in one folder - I loved that).

I could go on...

With heavy heart I moved to Android 3 weeks ago.

Your anger is our energy, says Microsoft as it fixes Surface

I think they're channelling Public Image Ltd

"Rise" to be specific

And, typical Microsoft: They're doing a bad job of copying someone else. It's not "Anger is our energy", it's "Anger is an energy".

Good song, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq7JSic1DtM

Universal Credit: The IT project that will outlive us all

The Taxpayer in me agrees with you

The IT Contractor in me wants to know how I get a contract on this gig.

Government in-sourcing: It was never going to be that easy

Yeah, right

So let me get this straight:

You want your project managers to manage outsourced teams and vendors, you want to have architects who design but never actually do and you want to keep your existing procurement.

Cost in time and money increases when you put organisational lines between people trying to develop systems. It's hard enough when internal teams collaborate; having inter-organisational teams is even worse.

And as for buying in talent from large consultancies... Really? I mean, come on. Really? Do they really still believe that?

I await even more government delivery fail.

Blighty's Parliament prescribed tablets to cope with future votes

Re: What happened to austerity?

There will be hi-jinks here:

How do we tell the difference between the person and the "tablet" voting? Can an MP give someone their password so they can trigger their Surface to vote when they're not in Parliament?

How do we confirm that the MP who owns the Surface is the one who actually cast the vote?

What happens if/when an MP breaks their tablet? Does this mean they are unable to vote?

Does this mean MPs are no longer constrained by being in Parliament to vote?

The whole voting in secret thing is a red herring: MPs votes are a matter of public record. If they're doing this I'm waiting for the first scandal where an MP is found not to have actually been there when a vote has taken place and has instead given his tablet to another MP/a whip/an assistant for them to cast their vote.

TalkTalk Business email servers titsup for days after DNS config snafu

Ha

I recently got a letter from TalkTalk about the data that'd been nicked when they were hacked. Their letter stated that the data theft had included:

•Less than 21,000 unique bank account numbers and sort codes

•Less than 28,000 obscured credit and debit card details (the middle 6 digits had been removed)

•Less than 15,000 customer dates of birth

•Less than 1.2 million customer email addresses, names and phone numbers

Their own words: Less than 1.2 million customer email addresses, names and phone numbers.

So, when they say "just a handful", I suggest people take that with the appropriate levels of salt.

Windows 10 growth stalls during October

Re: Interested to see how this turns out...

Linux is at 1.55%. This puts it behind Windows Vista (2.46%) and "Other" (2.8%).

This is from StatCounter and is their September 2015 numbers.

Ex-Microsoft craft ale buffs rattle tankard for desktop brewery

How is it that everyone missed the fact

That it looks like Microsoft employees are now trying to arrange a piss up in a brewery. By making the brewery.

This won't go well...

Laid-off IT workers: You want free on-demand service for what now?

You can just see how this will go

Anyone who is any good (lets call them "Bob") will tell them to get stuffed and get another job pretty quickly.

The remainder of people will fall back on one or more of the following:

1) I didn't work on that part of the system

2) Bob wrote that, I'm not sure how it works

3) That code was written after I left

4) That's not my code

5) I wrote that but it's since been updated by the outsourcers.

6) That's a feature.

7) Yes, I can look at the problem. I can give you a day in three weeks time

Microsoft's Arrow brings pane to Androids

Someone should fire Microsofts Marketers

Whether you like the idea or not, should they really be calling the app "Pane"?

The scope for puns is enormous

Windows 7 and 8.1 market share surge, XP falls behind OS X

Re: Now students, please use "free" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence.

Really?

How about:

Not having to run your OS on top of DOS?

64 bit memory addressing.

128 GB limitation of FAT disk image.

No security on a FAT file system

And, whatever you may say about the stability and security of Windows XP,Vista,8/8.1, they're light years ahead of the stability of Windows 95.

Will a data centre be driving your car in 12 years' time?

The first thing that sprang to my mind was

What happens when people are doing 140 mph on the highway and there's a data-centre failure for the cloud service controlling your car?

British banks consider emoji as password replacement

I'm still trying to wrap my head around

"Our research shows 64 percent of millennials regularly communicate only using emojis."

Really?

Amazon creating 500 ‘fulfilling’ jobs in the UK

So it sounds like

a job in fulfilment leaves the person doing it unfulfilled...

Oh, the irony

Wanna run Windows 10 Preview on your Lumia? Of course you do. Now 33 mobes supported

It's a mixed bag: the calendar app is much improved but email feels like it's taken a step backwards: you have one app for all your mailboxes but it shows each email account as a distinct entity. I rather liked the idea of linking email accounts so I could have one mailbox for my main account and have my secondary accounts in a linked mailbox.

Settings is somewhat more confusing with a series of submenus; it's harder to find what you're looking for sometimes.

I've also found that it sucks the battery dry pretty quickly.

Other than that I don't see a huge change on the overall user experience.

Meh...

HP Stream x360: Flippable and stylish Chromebook killer

Re: Where is the rest of the review?

I got my kid a cheap windows laptop/convertible for a couple of reasons:

It's got all the stuff they use at school.

It cost £250

The parental safety software is pretty good. I choose when they can log in, for how long, what sites they can go to and which apps they can use. I also get a report emailed to me each week with a list of where their time is going and which web sites they surf.

It also does the whole tablet thing with the touch screen and allows them to type up essays and homework when it's got the attached keyboard.

Granted, it's not as slick as an iPad but it's replaced the existing iPod and Kindle fire without her ever looking back and at the same time given me some proper parental controls that the other devices sorely lacked.

AI guru Ng: Fearing a rise of killer robots is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars

You'll be perfectly safe

We've got 30 cops in this building...

We all know how that ended

OH HAPPY DAY! Lawyers replaced by AI

I was more interested

In the "better search results than google" angle.

I wonder if we'll see more of these specialised search engines appearing.

Facebook, Apple: LADIES! Why not FREEZE your EGGS? It's on the company!

I think this tells us something about these companies expectations on its female staff

It sends a huge signal that this is not a company where people with children are going to be happy. If you have a family or want to start a family, don't work here.

It's also signalling that it wants people who put career and job ahead of their personal life. This is a very strong "your job is your life if you work here" message. They're asking people to put off one of the most important decisions of their lives until it's convenient for the company.

And finally, it's a huge con. How many of these people are still going to be working at Apple and Facebook in 10 years, given how workers tend to job-hop. They're saying "don't have kids on our watch".

Nokia Lumia 530: A Windows Phone... for under £50

That's a low price for a smartphone..

Granted, they've pushed some of the storage cost back on the user by expecting them to buy an SD card, but that's still very, very reasonable.

I suspect it's the kind of phone I'd get for my kid when she's 11-12. Has apps, isn't something she'd get mugged for and won't break the bank if it gets lost or broken.

Silicon Valley royalty royally slammed for 'persistent, troubling deficit' of diversity

Re: The waaahambulance of the imperfect reality

Ain't nothing liberal about this, mate.

Liberals are all about equality of process. You're equal in front of the law, you're allowed to sell your goods or labour in the market without hindrance. You're free to act as long as the person with whom you are acting consents and nobody else is disadvantaged. You have the right to own property (but not people) and do with it as you like. Liberals believe you should have just enough government, and no more, to enforce these freedoms.

What you've got here are a bunch of innumerate people who haven't given a thought about the size or source of their sample. Actually, that's not true. They probably have given it some thought but don't care. This isn't liberalism, this is just bad politics.