Posts by Scroticus Canis

UK taxman waves through £168.8m Fujitsu contract because no one else can hold up 30-year-old infrastructure

"Virtual Managed Environment (VME) Platform"

Used to be Virtual Machine Environment back in my ICL days, but that was on big iron, not as a service on Unix boxen. Most flexible opsys available back in the day.

Former antivirus baron John McAfee collared, faces extradition to America on tax evasion, securities allegations

Re: Estonian Digital Citizenship thingies

You mean Elbonian shirly?

AI world has gone bananas, it's official. This algorithm will help you optimize your peanut butter and banana sarnies

Sharp knife and slice the banana lengthways through the bend axis - trim the overhangs if needed

Best made with two slices of toast. Try it with Seville orange marmalade on the opposing slice of toast; a real taste orgasm for the hungover.

Score extra points if you DON'T launch a slice of banana sideways when taking a bite :)

Trucking hell: Kid leaves dad in monster debt after buying oversized vehicle on eBay

Re: Christ, what assholes - A second-hand car or truck dealer show compassion‽

What planet are you living on? Is there room for one more please?

Norfolk's second-greatest cultural export set for return with 3-metre monument in honour of the Turkey Twizzler

Unbaked koeksister‽

Not surprised as they are deep fried. Double twist of doughnut dough fried and then dipped in sugar syrup until it gains twice its cooked weight in sucrose - revoltingly sweet to most but loved by the locals. Explains the diabetes rate in SA.

I never heard J Oliver Esq. rail against Turkey Twizzlers ......

.... Turkey Twithlers on the other hand I did.

Sun welcomes vampire dating website company: Arrgh! No! It burns! It buuurrrrnsss!

Re: Not me, but someone else

Try buying a Roller (or any other car) for cash at a manufacturer's dealership nowadays and it's likely that the feds will rock up and start suggesting that your laundering money.

Re: Dress Code

Back in my big-iron mainframe days no one was allowed into the machine room wearing a tie or scarf due to the risk of garotting by line printers, card readers, tape decks, etc...

Except of course HR and managers but we had no luck there :(

Re: "I once had a driving lesson whilst wearing a wetsuit"

Did the instructor wet themself as well?

Shocking no one, not enough foreigners applied for H-1B visas this year so US govt ran a second lottery

Re: You'd have to be mad -- or desperate -- to come here on an H1B

Nope a UK born UK citizen (of UK descent) can't have their citizenship revoked. UK tried it with a convicted paedophile naturalised Australian citizen of UK descent. The Aussies sent him back anyway.

Looks like even that Daesh/ISIL 'bride' is getting back in.

Re: You'd have to be mad -- or desperate -- to come here on an H1B

I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam war and I believe the term was "Yellow Peril" and the Russian cold war version was "Reds Under the Bed".

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

Re: "Does that have the same effect as foreigners calling a Scottish person 'English'?"

No. Most Yupik and Aleut people "would na put the heed on ye" and follow it up with a boot to the sporran for using the term Inuit whereas calling a Scot English probably would.

Detroit Police make second wrongful facial-recog arrest when another man is misidentified by software

So next time the tuna will be guilty and the Detriot guy ends up in the sushi?

Sigh! I used to like this planet. Not so much lately.

Rip and replace is such a long Huawei to go, UK telcos plead, citing 'blackouts' and 'billion pound' costs: Are Vodafone and BT playing 'Project Fear'?

Re: > "selling point of 4G was greater range/capacity" - not around here

I live in a Southend-on-Sea suburb; O2's 4G here (Tesco Mobile) does not provide any data service whatsoever, not in the house, not in the gardens nor in the local high street or train station. Nada, nix, efokoli (Fanagalo for nothing).

There is a good signal, calls and texts are fine but data just wont work (no internet connection) and O2 said everything is working fine! 3G on the other hand works for the data apps, but only at 7-8Mb/s.

Around Southend there seems to be several O2 4G no-data areas. Really useful when you need mobile banking in a shop or business or want to Skype/FaceTime people.

If they can't make 4G work properly then I hold no hope that a 5G upgrade would be of any use. Maybe including Huawei kit would make the 4G work.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Fujitsu tells 80,000 of its Japan employees: From now on, you work remotely

Re: "It'll be dignitas for me"

Better start buying a prepaid plan now then, they're not free. On the bright side maybe Soylent will have opened a "free" service by then.

PC printer problems and enraged execs: When the answer to 'Hand over that floppy disk' is 'No'

Re: family - "let her pay for it (from her own money)"

I have a suspicion that you haven't been married.

(Icon - me, after the divorce went through)

The girl with the dragnet tattoo: How a TV news clip, Insta snaps, a glimpse of a tat and a T-shirt sold on Etsy led FBI to alleged cop car arsonist

Re: Hitler a communist, hah!

Well he was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party a.k.a. Nazi Party. Communism is a form of socialism, so.....

Just saying.

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

Re: "WHY would they build aircrafts that are:"

3 - likely to be completely rejected by passengers

I for one will never set foot upon one again.

Software bug in Bombardier airliner made planes turn the wrong way

Re: Dislexia Lures KO

FTFY

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

Re: marketing

Hopefully they're being herded towards the B Ark.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Re: 'Deny Friday' ?

Wishing for an Allow Christmas

The Deny Country, the Deny Hills

The Allow Cliffs of Dover

I'll have a deny coffee please

Where does it all end?

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

"a total twat and a moron" - too much credit ...

... a twat at least has some depth, while a moron has an IQ between 60-79. Trump has no depth and he is not that smart.

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

Re: Incredible!

Joe, is that you?

Are you extracting the urine, ESA? Why, yes it is, from Moon dwellers to build homes out of lunar regolith. Possibly

Re: What's it smell like?

Grandma's house.

US prez Donald Trump declares America closed to those flying in from Schengen zone over coronavirus woes

Re: @ I ain't Sparticus -- Green card holders and the immediate family of US citizens get a pass.

Huh, spring chicken eh? I am, and to think I paid two and six pence to watch it!

Or was it five bob for the pair?

SpaceX Falcon 9 meets watery end, and NASA needs someone to go to Mars and whack its mole

Re: Typo?

Yes.

No backdoors needed: Apple ditched plans to fully encrypt iCloud backups after heavy pressure from FBI – claim

Crayons only.

Nah, he ate those. That's why he has to use a felt tip.

Pack your bags! NASA's latest exoplanet hunter satellite finds its first Earth-sized world in a habitable zone – and it's only 100 light years away

Re: How many planets?

Now your just pandering on.

You cannae break the laws of physics, cap'n... Boffins call BS on 'impossible' black hole, fear readings were botched

Hmm... aim for the head then?

BOFH: Trying to go after IT's budget again?

... and then chop down, pulp and make into paper ...

... with an incredible amount of toxic waste. You could smell their pulping plant 20 or more clicks away depending on the wind. It was vile.

Pack your bags, you're going to America, Lord Chief Justice tells accused Brit hacker

Apparently not. Pence isn't president yet.

Denial of service kingpin hit with 13 months denial of freedom and a massive bill to pay

WTF - "Pennsylvania school district .... and the local Catholic Diocese"

Who let the local left footers anywhere near a school district's computer systems with all those juicy kiddies' details? Buggers belief really.

Astroboffins rethink black hole theory after spotting tiny example with its own star buddy

Maybe it's a pair of neutron stars ...

... in a tight mutual orbit and the low mass red giant is just orbiting them; gotta be a low mass red as it's orbiting something that's just 3.3⊙ and far enough away that it's not being bled of gas.

What's the scoop with Mars InSight's mired mole? It's digging again, thanks to trowel trickery

"I wonder what this is?" said Baby Clanger

Whistle, whistle, etc...

Imagine finding this bad boy in your shower: Brit startup pulls the sheets off Moon spider mech

Re: Do I have this right..?

Well it was made for 3-5 year olds and the narrator is telling them the story. Just like every episode that was made.

Re: "the four-legged robot can also jump"

A good enough reason pack a pump-action if you go up there. Just to be sure.

EU's top court says tracking cookies require actual consent before scarfing down user data

Re: What have the Germans ever done for us?

On the plus side: some damned good beer, schnapps, Heckler & Koch, a few of great composers, some decent motor cars and resistance to Roman expansion long ago.

On the minus side: Karl Marx, a couple of world wars, sauerkraut, sarin, mustard gas, Rhineland wines and world leaders of industrial pollution until the USA and then China showed how it should be done.

Still ambivalent over their contributions to the UK aristocracy.

Got a pre-A12 iPhone? Love jailbreaks? Happy Friday! 'Unpatchable tethered Boot ROM exploit' released

Re: ...like to take screenshots of movies

You can on macOS if your watching in a browser (cmd+shift+4 - the standard way).

Noticed that there was engraving on the muzzle of Dead Pool's gun in the opening sequence (second film) but too small and fast to read. Screen-shot and got "SMILE" at the top of the muzzle and "WAIT FOR THE FLASH" on the bottom. Thought the humour was great even if it was mainly for the crew who did it

Behold the perils of trying to turn the family and friends support line into a sideline

Re: "...says the person who never dropped a deck of punched cards"

Ah, floor-sorting a 5,000+ card COBOL compilation run; the good old days :)

Remember the fun to be had with those hand powered card punches where multiple keys had to be pressed concurrently? Always some snafu before the end of the line was reached.

Or calling the h/w engineers because some tosser had sellotaped a chard back in place as a correction. Really upset the card reader feed mechanism rollers.

BOFH: We must... have... beer! Only... cure... for... electromagnetic fields

Well they won't be getting any from the cell towers

At least not from around here.

Astroboffins baffled after spotting solar system with great gas giant that shouldn't exist

Re: The standard model of planet formation

Seems the most likely explanation. One eddy in the collapsing gas and dust cloud just made it to stellar mass, the other didn't. Probably halted as the red dwarf reached ignition mass and density dispersing the rest of the cloud via radiation pressure.

macOS? More like mac-woe-ess: Google Chrome slip-up trips up SIP-less Apple Macs

Re: Why?

To bring the Windows 10 Update experience to Mac users?

Emergency button saves gamers from sudden death... of starvation

Re: "Never drink the Lucozade"

After tasting it once, about 50 years ago, I have always thought it was just a way to monetise old diabetes mellitus urine samples.

Good to see the old blonde bimbo jokes being recycled

No, not really.

Those furious gun-toting Aussies were just a glitch. Let's try US drone deliveries, says Wing

Clickbait title - where's the guns in the article, where's the chasing?

see title.

That time Windows got blindsided by a ball of plasma, 150 million kilometres away

Re: Holy Smoke

When you've left your Rizla's at home ;)

Snoops can bypass iOS 13 lock screen to eyeball your address book. Apple hasn't fix it yet. Valid flaw? You decide

Just RTFM and this is apparent

... which is why I just turned it off. Why would you want a phone thief to be able to read and respond to your text messages?

Wake me up before you Gogo ... so I can jump out: Kenyan MP takes on aeroplane flatulence

Crop Dusting ...

... is the term cabin crew use to describe the practice of releasing the SBDs as they stalk the aisles. They are also prone to getting the farts from the pressure changes and diet.

SBD - silent but deadly

SpaceX didn't move sat out of impending smash doom because it 'didn't see ESA's messages'

Re: I OWN SPACE

How many Falcon Heavies did you strap together to get that bugger up there?

LightSail 2 successfully unfurls its silvery solar sails, prepares to become a truly solar-powered satellite

Re: Reg needs a new office supplier

Yes. I certainly heard a lot of WHOOSH noises reading some of the replies.