Posts by Chicken Marengo

Good news: Jeff Bezos went to space. Bad news: He's back

Houston..

The ego has landed

Highways England seeks vendor to replace Windows 2003-based pavement management systems

Re: pavement == road

Highways England aren’t too bad, they are responsible for the trunk road network (motorways, and significant a roads). The rest falls under local authority responsibility and it is these that are really seriously falling apart, largely as a result of massive funding cuts.

Spent a few years working in highways maintenance systems, at both local and trunk road level, interesting field, full of the usual basket case companies and beauracracy. From what I remember, Confirm was not a bad product

SQL now a dirty word for Oracle, at least in cloudy data warehouses

Stick with it then, good sql skills (and ideally a solid knowledge of relational algebra) will be in demand long after this and the next round of low/no code bollox is history

We can't avoid it any longer. Here's a story about the NFT mania... aka someone bought a JPEG for $69m in Ether

Re: Commentard's previous point?

>So has a urinal signed "R. Mutt" (1917, by Marcel Duchamp) (the original piece has gone missing, however).

Someone took the piss(er)?

The torture garden of Microsoft Exchange: Grant us the serenity to accept what they cannot EOL

Torture Garden?

The Torture Garden was a great fun club, anyone know if it’s still going?

As for the article, well Exchange, slightly less torture than a spiked butt plug, maybe?

Gimp icon for reasons obvious to anyone that knows/knew The Torture Garden

Breathless F-35 pilots to get oxygen boost via algorithm tweak

Re: Re: You'd hope they are hackable...

With the F-35, prayer beads and a sacrificial goat might be advisable

'Alien megastructure' Tabby's Star: Light is definitely dimming

Rising energy prices

They aliens just can't put the 50p coins in the meter fast enough any more

Kotkin on who made Trump and Brexit: Look in the mirror, it's you

Re: Really?

Ah, you've met my mum? Sorry

Huge embarrassment over fisting site data breach

Inspired

Surely El Reg's best choice of stock photo ever

(Chose the gimp, it was a toss up between him or Paris for appropriateness)

How IT are you? Find out now in our HILARIOUS quiz!

Re: As its Friday

Sound advice.

I always suggest that anomalies are a result of the incorrect interferasticlation of the flop bits.

That's why I don't often get asked support questions twice

Microsoft has made SQL Server for Linux. Repeat, Microsoft has made SQL Server 2016 for Linux

I love working with SQL Server

and if they get this right, Microsoft will have removed the last barrier to me ditching Windows completely

'Hypocritical' Europe is just as bad as the USA for data protection

Good work

I'm just happy to see the spy vs. spy guys out and about

Ahmed's clock wasn't a bomb, but it blew up the 'net and Zuckerberg, Obama want to meet him

Re: Say hello to Mark for me

Is that you Mark?

It most certainly was funny, do you have any idea how difficult it is for two giggling teenagers to carry a bin bag full of water from the bathtub to a balcony. Lucky not to drown ourselves.

Apres moi, le deluge.

Re: Say hello to Mark for me

>>Say hello to Mark for me

I was reading the original post above and thinking 'that sounds like the sort of thing Mark would have done'.

Then I read your response. Now I'm wondering if I knew you at school or whether every school had a Mark who like to blow stuff up/ make stuff smell.

To be fair I was a more than willing accomplice of our school's Mark. Some of the stuff we did in a (genuinely) innocent spirit of curiosity would definitely have had us in cuffs with Ahmed these days.

And I'd like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to the guy who was nearly drowned by our experiment into how effectively you could scale up a water balloon.

For those interested in the science(?) - it turns out a black bin bag filled with water and lobbed off the top of a tower block is pretty damned effective.

CODING PEEP SHOW offers chance to hire devs as they program

What The Flash?

Followed the link, first thing I see on the homepage:

You don't have Adobe Flash, please download it.

Good job I was only morbidly curious anyway.

HP slaps dress code on R&D geeks: Bin that T-shirt, put on this tie

Re: Usual problem of drawing the line

That doesn't need a dress code to solve. It needs a quiet, non confrontational word from his line manager.

I've also found that a little mocking from colleagues usually fixes such aberrant behaviour if it's a well jelled team.

HP moves along to the next step of its suicide march

Me thinks they need to buy, read and digest a copy of Peopleware.

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-DeMarco/dp/0321934113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437726370&sr=8-1&keywords=peopleware)

Apple Watch is such a flop it's the world's top-selling wearable

Re: Apples Results

>>I just hate things on my wrist.

But would you like one off the wrist?

An Apple watch, obviously. What else were you thinking?

Reg hack survives world's longest commercial flight

Re: Auckland to Heathrow

@AC: Heathrow is the world's second worst airport. Manchester (and particularly the surly security staff) make Heathrow look like rank amateurs when it comes to human misery.

Goodbye Vulcan: Blighty's nuclear bomber retires for the last time

Re: A beautiful aircraft though

>>I can still remember the bollocking I got when I got home.

I empathize with you there. Growing up on a succession of army bases was like living in the Garden Of Eden to me as a young boy (but with more pointy explody stuff).

Remember once being caught by an MP in a warehouse of Honest John rocket launchers (cold war Europe) - got a bloody good hiding.

The MP then told my dad and I got another bloody good hiding when he got home.

Github's 'Atom' text editor hits version 1.0

Re: Still no print capability?

>>What are the most important development tools?

Can I bring my whiteboard along?

GM's cheaper-than-Tesla 'leccy car tested at batt-powered data centre

Re: What a horrible paint job

>>I thought that was more the mantra of the back seat than the drivers seat...

Not sure there's enough room in the back of that thing for those sort of antics

Microsoft: Hey, don’t forget Visual Basic! Open source and new features coming

@GeezaGaz

>>Garish, hideous UIs that look like they've been built by a six year old anyone?

To be fair, I know of many very talented programmers who make those too. UI/UX design is not programming.

Using leather in 'leccy cars is 'unTesla', rages vegan shareholder

Re: Sentient being prejudice

@Mark 85

Seeing as most apples dearest wish is to become cider, I think we should let them have fulfill that wish before we eat them.

But I guess that depends on how you feel about cruelty to yeast

Incompetence?

@returnmyjedi - please pay attention to your spelling

https://awesomebooks.com/book/9780575075337/incompetnece-bad-is-the-new-good

Windows and OS X are malware, claims Richard Stallman

@Dan1980

Bang on the mark about TPP/TTIP - this is the real area of concern raised by Stallman. Unfortunately by bringing it up with all his usual pointless whining, Stallman ensures it will be ignored.

Airbus warns of software bug in A400M transport planes

Re: Under "wraps"? Seems odd....

in my experience, real investigative engineers don't pontificate before they've got the facts anyway. So it should have no bearing on the technical investigation.

Of course, their managers and the PR dept will be itching to go off half-cocked...

Like a Dell factory but what comes out is a LOT more fun: We visit Aston Martin

Re: Leather choice

Human skin leather for me ta!

Tinder Plus charges oldies MORE to ogle young hotties' pics

@Really Anonymous Coward - Re: Obvious question

In the UK, under the Age Discrimination Act of 2010 I believe it is illegal to discriminate on grounds of age in the provision of goods and services. I do not know of any test cases however.

Similar legislation forbidding discrimination on grounds of religion or sexuality has been successfully tested so it would be likely that Tinder is on very shaky legal ground here. It probably won't matter though as the real hit on Tinder will come when their users bugger off to pastures new.

This one shall pass! Not even a flesh wound from ‘Monty Python’ SPACE ROCK

Asteroid?

It's only a model.

Is there ANOTHER UNIVERSE headed BACKWARDS IN TIME?

NOO!!!

I do not want to be part of a universe where I'm chained to my desk at the end of the week with only Monday to look forward (backward?) to.

The future looks bright: Prepare to be dazzled by HDR telly tech

@jzlondon

>>If I wanted an immersive experience, I'd go out for a walk.

I misread that last word.

Google+ to offer 'infinite' gender identity options

Re: ?

@Khaptain

Unknown is more than a bit worrying. I have twice encountered unknown as a gender in HL7 messages (the 'standard' messaging format for health data). Both times it has been where an unknown emergency patient was involved in an accident of sufficient severity that their gender could not be determined.

Of course if you are self-selecting unknown you probably need to pay more attention in biology class.

Re: ?

@Khaptain wrote: So outside of Male, Female, Androgyne, Hermaphrodite what else actually exists in the physical form?

I work in health care integration and so far I am aware of the following gender codes:

Male

Female

Other

Hermaphrodite

Unknown

Undifferentiated

None!

I suspect there are many more, health data stats folks are nothing if not thorough.

Holy vintage vehicles! Earliest known official Batmobile goes on sale

Hmm,

I quite like the look of that and coincidentally the oil pump on my bland eurobox failed at the weekend in a potentially fatal manner.

Wonder if the other half will approve a $112,000 replacement budget.

Emoticons blast three security holes in Pidgin :-(

Re: Novell Groupwise

>>Always brings back bad memories. Please avoid mentioning them

Agreed, I read those two words and shuddered a little.

At least no one mentioned Lotus Notes...

Cray-cray Met Office spaffs £97m on very average HPC box

Re: 16TFlops for £97m???

>>@Chicken Marengo - Please don't resort to hack journalist reactionary outrage.

Dear Don,

Please accept my humble apologies for offending your delicate sensibilities with my excessively Daily Mail tone. Next time I shall use the joke alert icon so you are suitably forewarned not to take anything I say seriously.

I do however suggest that you actually bother to read and understand what I wrote before jumping to your own moral outrage at my reactionary outrage, after all it was only one sentence so not exactly a taxing exercise.

To me, my subject line '16TFlops for £97m??? ' clearly suggests that not a lot of compute power is being acquired for that sum, rather than the sum itself being excessive.

As support for my argument, I reference the cluster humming away at the other end of the office I'm currently sat in with it's pile of Tesla GPUs which delivers >16TFlops and I'm pretty sure it didn't cost £97m since that is greater than our annual turnover.

16TFlops for £97m???

I know that government procurement is notoriously bad at getting value for money, but surely not that bad?

Now: The REAL APPLE NEWS you need to know

>>Eve (the evil alluring whore, no doubt wearing a thong and micro-skirt) tempting Adam (the spotless and ever-virtuous) to commit the unforgiveable: sex for the fun of it.

Where do I sign up?

You are here => Earth is in 'the suburbs' of an immense heaven

Re: Too bad there is no such thing as a total perspective vortex

@Amorous: Unfortunately I can only give you 1 upvote, but if I ever meet you I will buy you one of these -->

Your move, sucker! Microsoft tests cloud gaming system that cuts through network lag

De Lorean Graphics?

If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty eight frames per second, you're gonna see some serious shit.

Presumably the power consumption of the servers is 1.21GW?

TracBeam sues Apple over location

>>The case is being heard in the US District Court of the Eastern District of Texas.

Of course it is.

World's only flyable WWII Lancaster bombers meet in Lincs

Re: Love that noise

actually, it was rust coloured with hints of white

Re: Love that noise

Agreed with the Rusky noise record.

Flew in a Russian military helicopter once in Nepal. It was approximately 2 days before I got my hearing back.

Not a good noise, but definitely a loud noise! I've also flown in Sea Kings (wonderful beasts) and Lynx. they were positively silent compared to the Russian monster

Obvious icon choice, although the one I flew in was white.

Love that noise

I've been lucky enough to have experienced the BBMF Lancaster on several occasions. The sound of those engines is truly marvelous.

In fact the only other engine noise that's even close to being as good IMHO is the Vulcan on full throttle.

Stalwart hatchback gets a plug-in: Volkswagen e-Golf

Satnav?

Why do you need a satnav in a car that doesn't have enough range to get off your driveway?

Indian techies-in-training face down MAN-EATING LEOPARD - and WIN

Re: Still running Leopard?

>>There may also be some Tigers and Panthers stuffed in the back of a cupboard that everyone has forgotten about.

You sure you're not thinking of that lion we found in the wardrobe?

I asked him what he was doing there, he replied: ' Narnia business'

OK, I'm getting my coat.

Still running Leopard?

God(s) help the kids when they upgrade to Lion.

You didn't get the MeMO? Asus Pad 7 Android tab is ... not bad

Re: Tough judge

You fiends El Reg!

Hiding the the 1% rating you gave it, thus totally invalidating the context of my post.

Bad form, simply not cricket, I shall write to my MP to complain.

Wanders off muttering, possbily something about taking my stapler.