Posts by ssharwood

Horse named 'Cloud Computing' finds burst of speed to beat 'Classic Empire' in actual race

Re: But...

There once was a horse named 'hoof-hearted'. Made for interesting race calls

Boss swore by 'For Dummies' book about an OS his org didn't run

Re: But the real issue is

Public holiday here in Oz on Friday. Soz.

There's no shame in VMware quitting the public cloud

Re: No

Can we please put this 'The Reg slips in paid puff pieces' thing to bed? Because we don't. Ever.

I'll be outta here and driving an Uber if we do under my byline or any other.

You also seem to have missed the bits where I say VMware has weak and confusing products. Who would pay for that?

To your point of closing services being shameful, vendors are businesses. Of course they start with ShinyHappy. And of course they run like hell if the money doesn't flow. Would you rather they persist with duds forever? Would your pension fund?

GitLab invokes the startup defence to explain data loss woes

Re: @ShelLuser

The emails were entirely civil, from both parties. Mine >>always<< are. FWIW I grew up writing formal letters and maintain that etiquette in email to this day.

The offer of an interview was made when the outage was fresh news. I twice chased up the offer, but the email trail went cold.

After more than a week, the offer of an interview was revived. I explained the line of questioning I intended to pursue before the interview and, as the story explains, said I wanted to talk to someone with operation responsibilities rather than marketing.

Anything else you'd like to know?

Sorry to disappoint- no nipples were excited during the writing of this story

Top tech company's IP was looted by China, so it plans to hack back

As I tried to explain in the piece, I came in expecting B-arkers and found myself in the company of informed and intelligent people.

This event was much more than a luvvie-fest.

San Francisco's sinking luxury Millennium Tower: Tilt spotted FROM SPACE

Alternative alternative headline

Property developer in corner-cutting let the tenants sort this out later non-shocker.

It's the weekend here - this is moonlighting so obvs not up to my Mon-Fri standard

Angry user demands three site visits to fix email address typos

That's an awesome KB. Makes me think we need a reader-discovered amusing KB hotline.

World's shortest international flight: now just 21km in 7 minutes

Remember that airports now make more money from ground activities than from airlines. Rents are high. Ads are pricey. And don't get me started on parking charges

50 tech jobs to go at AirServices Australia

Re: The best lessons learnt

Not apologising for this decision, but politicians usually have a busy roster of engagements in their electorates over the weekend - I've seen mine running water for a junior footy team. Their departments close for the weekend. They should stay in Canberra why?

Panasonic wants you to wear Li-Ion batteries. The ones that explode

Re: Oh Gawd

That's just what the NSA is asking too!

iPhone 7 first fondle

Re: It looks great, must be perfect then ( Apple Speak)

YMMV but in my long experience, even a few minutes with a phone tells you a lot. Is it fast? Is it responsive to the touch? How good is the fit and finish? Is the UI cluttered and does it get in the way of the device? In my experience, premium devices quickly stand out. Lesser smartphones just don't quite behave as nicely. Having said that, it doesn't take long for battery life to dwindle and devices to slow a little.

And yeah, I think there was a need for it. There's huge curiosity about the iPhone. We're trying to sate it ASAP.

Luxe cable crimper

I worried some folk might perceive it as a disguised promo.

Our rule is we don't disguise promos. I thought this was interesting, but because it is All About A Product, and a product that needs to be seen rather than described, slipped it in as a news byte rather than a full story.

Does that answer the question?

Just not cricket: Microsoft's big data Googly called No Ball

Re: Sight

Sigh. Damn you autocorrect

Meet Deliveroo's ‘bold and impactful’ new logo. No, really

Re: K9

IMHO Art Spiegelman's lawyers are going to have to pore over some copies of MAUS and ponder their next move.

A USB stick as a file server? We've done it!

Re: WebDAV or SMB ?

WebDAV i think

40 years ago today the US govt sent a taxpayer-funded robot to invade an alien hostile world

I remember devouring an issue of National Geographic devoted to the Viking missions. Especially the bits about the microbe-attracting substance nicknamed "chicken soup". My grandmothers were both big chicken soup makers and I understood just what the Mars boffins were up to.

And no - there were no topless tribal shots in that issue of National Geographic. It needs saying before one of you people makes a gag about it.

Computex 2016: Full of people in cold sweats, retching after VR demos

Re: Dual Cameras?

Well we do know the iPhone's appeal comes from a powerful glamour!

Re: RE : Lego is an obvious health and safety risk in the office.

I saw a Minions store in a Taipei mall. Nothing but Minions. On every conceivable product.

Airbus to build plane that's even uglier than the A380

Re: Beluga Fans in Uproar Shocker

Awoooga! Awoooga! PR alert!

Re: A380 ugly?

Agreed. A 737 with winglets is noisier on descent than a 747 or 380. I'm about 4km from the runway so have literally tens of thousands of experiences in this regard.

Re: A380 ugly?

I gather the the thing that really ticks Boeing off about the 380 is that the 777 has it covered on seat capacity. Yes the 380 can do more high yield seats - Biz class - but the 777's operating costs are lower and its ETOPS rating means there are almost no routes it can't match. SYD-LAX is flown by 777s every day.

36 idiots running SAP under attack after flubbing 2010 patch

Re: No, not really child's play

They've had five years to get this done. Five years. Yes, I understand that patching business applications is rather more complex than the stuff I do with tech. But five years ....

Google asks Unicode to look over 13 new emoji showing professional women

Re: Meh....

Won't someone think of the children? The children educated so poorly that they can no longer form sentences, but can only communicate by sending each other cartoons?

Does that explain it?

Sure, let's build the NBN with technology that's not proven at scale

Re: So El Reg now wants FTTP?

I'm not pushing FTTP. I say it's the preferred solution in the best possible world.

nbn didn't make the technology choice: the government did with its "faster, cheaper" policy.

I stand by the previous article because I believe G.fast and its successors offer sufficient service for the medium term. Once nbn is up and running, it can use cashflow to fund future upgrades.

Stross' new Laundry list

Re: This should be fun

Your tea preferences have been logged and will shortly pass over the Reg-to-CONTROL hotline, straight to Maxwell Smart's shoephone.

Waleed Aly's NBN intervention is profoundly unhelpful

Re: A Misunderstanding....

Agreed. But the notion that FTTP will mean buffering never happens but FTTN means it will is ridiculous. It's just not the final carriage medium that matters.

The Register to publish Mindful Sysadmin adult colouring book

No. It's real. Click the order link

The Register's entirely serious New Year's resolutions for 2016

Re: In other words

No offer. And no on all fronts. We'll still be the reg, full of snark and scepticism. Still telling it like it is in colorful language with cracking headlines. And more depth and broader horizons.

Re: Courtesy of Barry White

Billy Joel, surely?

Agreed. If the image doesn't add something to a story ot shouldn't be in your face.

Our intention with multimedia is not to do it for its own sake. When we can take you places and share experiences, we will. Folks in suits droning is not our intention.

Could NetApp's purchase of SolidFire see the end of ONTAP?

Can anyone find my socks?

Solidfire's socks are cycling socks, and I cycle. And I can't find my Solidfire socks. Both pairs missing. Help!

IT bloke: Crooks stole my bikes after cycling app blabbed my address

Sorry but this chap FAILs

Strava has a privacy bubble - it won't publish data bout rides in a 500m radius from whichever location you choose. If he turned it on, the crims would have been clueless.

Australian cops rush to stop 2AM murder of … a spider

Time to put the sharks thing to bed ... with actual data

Time to put the shark thing to bed.

Australia has 24m residents and gets about 10m visitors a year.

Let's assume they each swim in the sea .5 times a year, for 12m swims a year.

How many shark attacks? In 2015, 33 of which 11 were provoked.

And in the last 100 years, 542 known unprovoked attacks and 293 provoked attacks. Across hundreds of millions of salt water swims.

Yes, we still have the occasional incident. And yes, some of our beaches are fenced or netted, which probably keeps numbers down. But your chance of being attacked by a shark are very, very small.

Data here: https://taronga.org.au/animals-conservation/conservation-science/australian-shark-attack-file/latest-figures

By way of contrast Australia recorded 271 drownings in 2014/15. Data here http://www.royallifesaving.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/14559/RLS_NDR2015_Report_LR.pdf

Re: IT angle?

It was on Facebook so demonstrates OCP kit at work. Also public sector use of social media

Boeing builds British Airways 787 Dreamliner in 4 minutes

Re: hang on...

I flew on an Air India 787 last week. The Windows are lovely and large. Not sure about the pressure/humidity caper. But the cabin was nicely spacious. Now if only the Air India food hadn't left me a little ... erm ... delicate ...

Google robo-car suffers brain freeze after seeing hipster cyclist

Re: It does seem somewhat ridiculous to have one's feet fixed to the pedals...

It takes half a second to clip out. Not a massive risk, at least for cyclists who ride assuming everything else on the road can kill them and will after a moment of negligence. That's how I ride. If I'm not visible and predictable I assume I'm a statistic waiting to happen.

High-heeled hacker builds pen-test kit into her skyscraper shoes

Re: Somewhat prude?

Readers sometimes tell us they like a NSFW flag because they want to know when they should exercise caution before reading a story at work. It's not prurience or a moral judgement but a little warning in case readers feel this kind of image might be inappropriate in their workplace.

OpenOffice project 'all but dead upstream' argues prominent user

OpenOffice good

I use OpenOffice on Mac pretty much all day, but for light text editing and spreadsheets. It is utterly fit for that purpose and I do hope it continues. I imagine Libre Office doesn't have a massive learning curve, but do hope OpenOffice sticks around. It just works and makes me happy. It's stable too. Years of using MS Word taught me to expect the after-lunch snooze as it hung on something. OpenOffice never crashes.

Number 5 is alive! VirtualBox the fifth debuts

Re: Link?

True answer? Big night (on Reg duty), early start, usually do it but just forgot in this story. Will pop it in now.

Reg hack survives world's longest commercial flight

Re: Only half the record...

Thanks for letting us know about this. Terrific story. Visit the link y'all.

Qantas does the US run about 30 times a week. Mostly in old 747-400s. There's plenty more data to be had from the A380, which is rather more sensor-tised. And don't forget that airlines count profit im cents/seat/mile. Adding even one cent is worth it.

I flew to America for a conference. Nutanix's, as it happens. Met people I can't meet in Australia. Part of the job is showing up.

Re: Auckland to Heathrow

LAX surely can't be better thsn LHR.

North America down to its last ~130,000 IPv4 addresses

Re: Why the [sic] in the second paragraph?

My job description includes being a little bit pedantic. If I hadn't inserted the [sic] there's a chance UK readers would have commented about my use of the US spelling. In a cleft stick, that's where you'll find me.

Ride the Gong Ride with The Register, or pay for our suffering and support a grand cause

Ride the Gong Ride with The Register, or pay for our suffering and support a grand cause

Thinking of doing the "Gong Ride"? That's the Sydney-to-Wollongong bike ride in support of Multiple Sclerosis Australia, on November 1st.

Sydney Reg man Simon Sharwood is a keen cyclist and plans to do the ride. If you are too, why not join Vulture Velo, our Gong Ride team? https://register.gongride.org.au/MS-Sydney-to-the-Gong-Ride/Vulture+Velo

The Reg's Sydney office is agitating for the creation of some Vulture Velo jerseys. We can't guarantee anything, but can promise a fine and very fulfilling day out.

The Martian: Matt Damon sciences the sh*t out of the red planet

Re: I'd watch it.

Re:Crusoe. This is what happens when I write book reviews in airport lounges after 12 hours sleep in three days in the midst of 89-hour Sydney-Miami-Sydney blags.

Shoulda picked that up ...

BONKERS apocalyptic WAR WAGONS circle Vulture South

Re: Where you using a camera on review?

Not full sunlight by a long stretch. The Opera House forecourt has water on two sides and glare-making whiteish stone paving. Sydney today had low cloud and a stiff breeze. I tweaked the phone - a Galaxy S5 - as hard as I could, but the results weren't stellar. In my experience the S5's software usually does better. Trust me: the light was weird out there today.

Re: A title is not required

Correct. I used a story I'd created for the BitTorrent story, forgot I'd customised the URL, then put the Max story in there. Changing URL now. Silly me.