Posts by Dr Scrum Master

Did Donald Trump really just ask Russia to hack the US govt? Yes, he did

I haven't heard much on the subject of which vice presidential candidate would make the better president, but such talk might invite unwanted attention....

Dolly the sheep clones have aged well, say scientists

Re: Good

But who will reach the top shelves in the cupboard?

Or will you just get Latvians?

Iraqi government finally bans debunked bomb-finding dowsing rods

Re: "dowsing"

Would the success at dowsing in any way be related to walking up and down the area in question and looking down?

I don't like Mondays, Pokemon, Twitter or Facebook – Sir Bob Geldof

Sir Geldof?

Star Trek Beyond: An unwatchable steaming pile of tribble dung

The three laws are complete bollox.

For robots and computers without positronic brains, yes.

Microsoft ordered to fix 'excessively intrusive, insecure' Windows 10

Constitutional Right

But in the Land of the Free software is Free Speech, so being instructed to make any change to software is an infringement of Merkins' constitutional rights!

It's not our fault we don't hire black people, says Facebook

I will get pass the techies at interview their HR ... I won't get pass

Having to be interviewed by HR is always a bad sign.

Correction: There was no hangman's noose, claims Hyperloop countersuit ... it was a cowboy's lasso

Re: I'm sorry...

I keep reading it a "Bogan"...

Tupperware vehemently denies any link to storage containerisation

Re: Arkell v Pressdram

The letter from Portakabin's lawyers is more apt in this case.

Google aims to train two million Indian Android devs by 2018

Wikipedia indicates that there are 754 universities in India.

So the 2000 universities must be 2000 worldwide... unless Google are including all the made-up ones with their made-up degrees, as opposed to the real universities with purchased degrees rather than earned degrees.

Even Silicon Valley rolls its eyes as controversial Zenefits ex-CEO reveals he's back in business

Which way round?

Parker Conrad or Conrad Parker

Or is swapping surnames and forenames an American thing? - such as women with 3 names.

Chilcot's IT spend: Tighter wallet than most public sector bods

With the publication of the report Private Eye will have to look for a new joke.

A trip to the Twilight Zone with a support guy called Iron Maiden

Re: Terry (won't have voted for the next PM)

"Anyway, voters elect the party. The party selects its leader and he selects his cabinet. Any idea that you're voting for _anyone_ as prime minister is misguided at best."

Just as any idea that you get a choice over who to vote for as MP is misguided at best.

If you're not in a local party or on it's selection committee (or whatever particular process is used), you don't select the candidate. If it's a safe seat then it's a small group of party members who are responsible for "electing" your MP.

Singapore Airlines 777 catches fire after engine alarm

Re: camera phones

Why would anybody sitting in a burning aircraft take the time to photograph the burning engine?

Singaporeans.

Friends with benefits: A taxing problem for Ireland in a post-Brexit world

Norway

Here's what the Norwegians were told before their EU membership vote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-UbT0g9A8c

The Microsoft-LinkedIn hookup will be the END of DAYS, I tell you

Re: "...many HR departments hire entirely by certification."

Warning Sign #1: having a HR department

Warning Sign #2: HR driving recruitment

Microsoft buys LinkedIn for the price of 36 Instagrams

Re: Pretty obvious, no ?

I've got a number of endorsements for the things I do - the vast majority from people who've never seen me do those things. I've even got an endorsement for something I can't do (from several different people).

Me too!

Recommendations were bad enough with mutual back-slapping by people you'd never ever want to work with, but the endorsements are just a joke.

Unicode serves up bacon emoji

Re: What's wrong with ASCII?

Emojis have no place in the writings of civilised people.

Damned Egyptians bringing down the levels of literacy!

BBC's Britflix likely dead before the ink has even dried on the news

Re: re: Government representation on the board

I have a hard time believing that replacing the current staff with Daily Mail and Sun readers would have a positive effect on the quality of the programmes it produces...

How about El Reg readers?

Adpocalypse 'will wipe out display ad growth' by 2020

Re: Suggestion

How about Optimal pay me to view their ads? That's a business model I can really get behind.

Just don't tell them that it's not actually you viewing the ads but a bot.

Re: Is it just me ....

That's all valid. If the ad tossers clean up their act by killing Flash, auto-start videos, loud music, dancing bears or whatever, not cover the entire page on the screen, no tracking, then maybe, ad-blockers won't be needed. And then there's a malvertising.... You want to display your ads on my computer... clean up your act, advertisers.

Content providers wondering why we ad block should just look at what I said above. If they push the advertisers to clean up their act, they will benefit also.

I do unblock sites that have "respectable ads", might even click on one or two occasionally just to add some change to the content provider's pot. But too many times, I unblock and then immediately block due to the advertising content.

Well written Mr 85.

Someone should print this out and shove it in the faces of the advertisers until they get the message.

Girls outpace boys in US IT and engineering test

Re: Yawn.

It does appear to be a particularly American problem, based on my unscientific observation of:

the sheer number of articles written about the subject by Americans,

a description in El Reg by a woman of her experiences at an American IT (?) conference which differed wildly from El Reg's readership's experiences of IT conferences elsewhere,

El Reg readers' descriptions of Serbian women programmers.

'Knucklehead' Kansas bloke shoots self in foot

It's a good job Americans are allowed to carry guns, otherwise they might end up living in a country with paramilitary police... oh, ummm....

China's Dalek-like robots fear only one terrifying nemesis: Stairs

Re: Off?

If they add a smiley anime face and a camp voice it will be unstoppable.

How about Duncan "Chase me" Norvelle?

Colander-wearing Irishman denied driver's licence in Pastafarian slapdown

The problem appears to be that we don't mandate Pasta and Beer on Fridays

Do that and I'll break away from your heretical doctrine to keep the true faith alive.

Pasta should only ever be accompanied by a fine bottle of red wine.

Daily! Mail! eyes! up! Yahoo!'s news! arm!

Re: If all print media go online-only

The other toxic effects would be from lead dust, transferred from the traditional printing presses that were used prior to the 1980's

So older newspaper readers are more likely to be a bit loopy? Or were there some unforeseen beneficial side effects?

That naked picture on my PC? Not mine. The IT guy put it there

Re: Another reason...

> I've said to people for years "never piss off your IT people

s/IT/IT, HR and Finance/*

HR are there to be pissed off and brought down several pegs for the petty obstructive bureaucrats they are.

Dodgy software will bork America's F-35 fighters until at least 2019

Ouch!

How many Textron AirLand Scorpions could have been bought and be operational for the cost of the F35 programme?

Web ads are reading my keystrokes and I can’t even spel propperlie

Re: Ads suck

Similar principles include youtube ads

Ah, I remember those. There I'd be listening to Mozart or the sound of waves crashing against the shore and, BAM! DO NOT IGNORE THIS ADVERT! BAM! BAM! BAM! Then I'd rip my headphones off as I desperately waited for the Skip button to appear...

Judge roasts Chipotle for firing guy who grilled bean counters on Twitter

Re: Good

Never mind, I suppose the Sky's the limit?

You're fired! No – you're acquired! Reality TV hits Silicon Valley startups

Re: Can someone take this lot

The problem is that the Media get on the hype bandwagon

Problem #1: drivel being produced by the meeja.

Problem #2: hoi poloi lapping up the drivel and demanding more.

Who's at fault, the pusher or the junkie?

Vendor rep 'Stinky Sam' told to wash and brush teeth or lose job

Why?

How is it that these people are still employed when they are clearly unfit to work in the company of humans in an enclosed space or upwind of you?

Investigatory Powers Bill to be rushed into Parliament on Tuesday

Re: Not Bad News for everyone

Which is why people really should engage in plausible denability.

I don't believe you.

Your xenophobia is killing us, Silicon Valley warns US Congress

I Ran

I'm thinking of visiting Iran just so that I'd lose the visa waiver...

Who wants to go to the USA anyway?

Solution to tech bros' disgust of SF homeless people launched

Movement?

The spectacles only appear to work for stationary riff-raff. The walking riff-raff were still clearly visible.

We're going to use your toothbrush to snoop on you, says US spy boss

The Internet of Things is a godsend for the US intelligence services

In godsends we trust!

US taxmen borked in computer cockup riddle

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

My sides split in laughter every time I hear about the US tax system.

Time to file taxes in Singapore? Zero, because IRAS have done them for me. I can just check if I want to.

Time to file taxes in the UK? A few minutes with HMRC's website.

Girls! Girls! Girls! Intel brags about diversity push, Silicon Valley tells itself it's doing great

Re: Proof of concept?

If there were really a large pool of interested female software/hardware engineers going un/underemployed because of some pervasive "bro" bias, you would think that someone could pretty easily start a company aimed at hiring these folks, and end up with a superior staff at a lower price.

You mean like "Steve" Shirley did in the 1960s/1970s?

Why the Sun is setting on the Boeing 747

Really big

newer, more reliable engines have also been bigger and more efficient.

What I find really amazing is that the new big engines are so big that they're wider than the body of Concorde

Back to the Future's DeLorean is coming back to the future

Re: A couple points ...

"British Govt subsidies perchance?"

Yes, a massive fraud on the British Goverment, which ran alongside the other Northern Ireland high-tech scam, the LearFan

A fraud that got Arthur Anderson banned from British government work until Tony Blair entered 10 Downing Street...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1791168.stm

Apparently we have to give customers the warm fuzzies ... How the heck do we do that?

Re: Problem gamblers

Not sure who to dislike more, William Hill or Tesco.

'No safe level' booze guidelines? Nonsense, thunder stats profs

Re: What's the point of living?

What next, running in the corridor is dangerous?

That must be why the girls in my daughter's school do cartwheels in the corridors.

Pentagon fastens lasers to military drones to zap missiles out of the skies

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's a UAV circling over my missile silo.

These drones could be permanently stationed over launch silos without the need for human pilots.

And nobody would decide to do something to detect UAVs around silo areas?

Aircraft now so automated pilots have forgotten how to fly

Re: Pilots?

Sounds like it's time to remove some gold braid from so-called pilots' uniforms.

I expect more from someone with 4 stripes on their cuffs or epaulets.

Wanted man sends selfie to replace 'terrible' police mug shot

Re: Rack up another charge

I think there's something in their Constitution which guarantees the right to use a mobile phone while driving a car.

...and that you don't need a driving licence/driver's license to drive a car. (Go check YouTube.)

Americans massively back call for more police body camera tech

Re: USA is a "War" nation

No wonder the USA police refer to the general public as "civilians", especially now that police is the USA are basically a series of paramilitary forces.

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

Bear to the rabbit, "Does shit stick to your fur?" Rabbit, no, "I never have that problem." The bear picks up the rabbit and wipes his ass....

Then what happened to the donkey?

US Marines kill noisy BigDog robo-mule for blowing their cover

Re: "Warfighter"?

and "lawmaker", eurgh!

Enraged Brits demand Donald Trump UK ban

Re: There are two points of view

A word of advice. When you use juvenile and derogatory tactics like rewriting someone's name (RayGun) you negate any chance of being taken seriously by intelligent people. ;-/

Yeah, nobody intelligent takes Private Eye seriously, err...

Google says its quantum computer is 100 million times faster than PC

That deserves a thumbs up, and a thumbs down.