Re: Are you sure that's MI6?
What they actually say is "MI6? No Sir. This is Universal Exports".
Posts by Kingston Black
51 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2013
In real life, Q is a woman! Head of MI6 calls for more female techies at SIS
It's round and wobbles, but madam, it's a mouse pad, not a floppy disk
Monday 19th December 2016 08:45 GMT
Stiffies...
Since you brought it up...
Many years ago I had a attractive Namibian student working with me. She was studying at university in South African, but on year's training placement at the company I was working for in the UK. One morning, she came up to my desk and the following conversation took place:
Me: "Hello *******" (she shall remain nameless).
Her: "Hello ***, can you give me a stiffy please?".
A colleague promptly spits tea all over his keyboard and monitor.
Me: "A stiffy?"
Her: "Yes please, one of those" (pointing to a 3.5" floppy).
Her: "Those are stiffies, 5.25" are floppies."
Me: "Ah!"
Her: "What did you think I meant?"
Silence, except for choking noises from the next desk...
LAKE OF frozen WATER THE SIZE OF NEW MEXICO FOUND ON MARS – NASA
Lester Haines: RIP
Sunday 19th June 2016 07:52 GMT
Farewell Lester
and thanks for the many hours of enjoyment your garden shed boffinry and other musings brought us. My heartfelt condonlences to your family and friends. Take a crumb of comfort that many hundreds of people, most of whom who never met Lester, feel your loss as well.
RIP and may LOHAN finally fly in your honour.
Boffins: Comet Lovejoy is a cosmic booze cruise spewing alcohol across the Solar System
Let's talk about that NSA Diffie-Hellman crack
Pluto flashes its unusual pits
Facebook's security now sexier, with killer curves
North Korea exploits 0-day in Seoul's favourite word processor
Wileyfox Swift: Brit startup budget 'droid is the mutt's nuts
Pope loses grip on Antarctica: Clergy withdraw from austral landmass
Happy NukeDay to you! 70 years in the shadow of the bomb post-Trinity
IBM to offer breast milk delivery-as-a-service for staff
White House taxes Silicon Valley to skill-up American workers
Worst … commute … EVER – Surrey to Sydney
30,000 people buy a box of BOVINE EXCREMENT
Marriott fined $600k for deliberate JAMMING of guests' Wi-Fi hotspots
Spies would need superpowers to tap undersea cables
Thursday 18th September 2014 09:26 GMT
Landing Points
Shame about the apparent lack of fact checking and speculation in the article.
The discussion about the (un)feasibility of splicing undersea is a smoke screen. Google the landing points of the SCC - Hawaii (ex-home of Mr E. Snowden) and mainland USA. Much more favourable locations for a cable tap...
IT jargon is absolutely REAMED with sexual double-entendres
Sunday 7th September 2014 12:05 GMT
Once upon a time
On one contract many moons ago, I had a young, female, attractive, Namibian student on an international exchange scheme working for me. One day she comes up to my desk and says "Can you give me a stiffy please?". It was at the time 3.5" floppy disks were all the rage. Apparently 5" disks are floppy...
Icon - that's what happened to the bloke sat at the next desk.
Crack team weighs LOHAN's substantial box
Inside Facebook's engineering labs: Hardware heaven, HP hell – PICTURES
NASA promises balloon ride and über precise 'scope pointer for planet-gazing boffins
Sysadmins hail Windows Server 2012 R2's killer ... clipboard?
Obama prepares to crawl up NSA's ass with microscope
Tat bazaar eBay takes a rest for 'scheduled maintenance', goes offline
British spooks seize tech from Snowden journo's boyfriend at airport
DARPA calls Big Data boffins: Help us lock up everyone's privates
Infosec analysts back away from 'Feds attacked Tor' theory
Did a bunch of bankers fax a stranger's sensitive privates to YOU?
Edward Snowden skips into Russia as Putin grants him asylum
Oz defence department: We don't have a ban on Lenovo kit
Wednesday 31st July 2013 08:25 GMT
The nausiating smell of FUD
The AFR article smells of yet more western spook FUD to me, along with a side helping of pro-'Merkin, anti-Chinese trade FUD; succinctly summed up as "don't buy Lenovo, buy Dell and HP instead", or "don't buy no stinkin' commie back-doored kit, buy good ol' 'Merkin back-doored kit instead". Ah, the hypocrisy...
AC posted 03:31, has an interesting point about Lenovo allowing legacy mode BIOS instead of UEFI.
Oh, and does anyone else find the expression "Five Eyes" just a little too Orwellian for comfort? Or is it an accurate expression of reality?
Western spooks banned Lenovo PCs after finding back doors
Monday 29th July 2013 07:56 GMT
Re: Unnamed intelligence and defence backdoor sources?
Do I smell FUD from the western spooks? Have they re-started trying to make out the Chinese are worse than them again? Pot, see kettle.
Unless of course, they are preparing the ground, fearing more revelations? From the resident of Moscow airport perhaps? Why do they have such enormous, disproportionate(?) downer on him? I'm beginning to wonder who is running scared here; is it us (the people) or them (The Establishment)?
So many questions, no answers, must go and buy some more tinfoil.
Assange™ names a Senatorial stand-in
Senator: Surveillance state based on secret law 'has no place in America'
Wednesday 24th July 2013 07:45 GMT
Gardening Leave
One of the problems with these surveillance states is there are too many vested interests, not least of which is all the spooks who want their salaries, pensions, holidays in order to live. Dismantling the huge surveillance machine would result in many spooks out of work, which of course, they will do their best to resist.
Solution, gardening leave. Send 95% of them home on full pay, with pensions, holiday entitlements etc intact but insist they remain at home during office hours, doing no spying, for the rest of their working lives, unless they resign of course. Then close 95% of their offices, data centres etc. and save the the billions it costs to keep the infrastructure functioning - win win situation. By all means, keep a small, proportional, targeted, highly regulated and openly monitored surveillance operation, but get rid of the mass spying.
Oi, Google, you ate all our Wi-Fi keys - don't let the spooks gobble them too
Tuesday 23rd July 2013 11:30 GMT
It pays to wear tinfoil
Being a user with a bit of a tinfoil habit (no, I'm not a nun), I've always used a second wireless router (configured as a switch) for my Android tablet, and it's only switched on when I'm actually using the tablet. Don't store any personal data on Android, so I've never knowingly used the backup feature, but I expect the NSA have a copy of the passphrase slurped via Google anyway.
Also, having a second, temporary WAP is useful when visitors request internet access, it stops their devices having a copy of your main router's wireless ID and passphrase.
ACLU warns of mass tracking of US drivers by government spycams
Thursday 18th July 2013 09:49 GMT
Re: Why do they do it? Because they *can*
"Some of it's implementers may be just ordinary people earning a paycheck but the champions of this system have far more questionable motives" - quite so, very questionable it seems.
It strikes me that it would be easier and cheaper to do the inverse of what the ANPR system does at the moment. i.e. all license plate numbers captured to be compared real-time against a list of cars with out-of-date insurance and/or car tax, stolen cars, other cars of interest etc., and all non-matches (most vehicles) to be instantly forgotten about, no requirement for any storage of innocent data at all. Of course, that system would presume most people are law abiding citizens going about their daily lives. However, our control freak rulers need to try and keep themselves in power don't they? If only we had a B-Ark available, it'd be very full...
Bolivian president's jet grounded so officials can look for Snowden
FCC orders wireless carriers to protect customers' call info
Osbo jacks up spending on spooks to keep us safe from TERROR
Privacy expert dismisses PRISM-busting typeface as 'art project'
El Reg rocket squad poised to select Ultimate Cuppa teabag
Telefonica's new offering: We will penetrate you by surprise, every day
Monday 10th June 2013 08:07 GMT 
Cynical B*****ds
"Informatica 64 created the (free) FOCA toolkit, an open source tool used to analyse documents hosted on a web site in order to chart the network architecture hidden behind the corporate firewall."
and...
"Informatica 64 also sells "MetaShield", an application for stripping such data before the files leave the safety of the office, for companies concerned about the existence of FOCA."
In other words, we've created this open source toolkit that helps attackers penetrate your network, and surprise surprise, we've created a service that will help you mitigate the effects of our open source attack tool.
McAfee all-in-one security suite covers PCs, tablets, and smartphones
Wednesday 15th May 2013 09:21 GMT 
WTF?
"Personal Locker – that allows online users to store their most sensitive documents, including financial records and copies of IDs and passports". Oh, that sounds like a really good idea then, with the added bonus that it's provided by paragon of software excellence McAfee... duh.
I expect <insert TLA agency of choice> are currently getting all excited again, and can't wait to get their hands on all that lovely new, very personal, data. Is it just me or will those of us who don't fall for this cloudy bulls**t soon become noticeable by our absence? "Excuse me Sir, you seem to use the internet everyday but don't store information in the cloud, you must have something to hide. Bend over..."
Builder-in-a-hole outrage sparks Special Projects Bureau safety probe
RAF graduates first class of new groundbased 'pilots'
USA's H-1B skilled worker visa applications open
Facebook prepares to dominate Android
Microsoft issues manual on Brits to Cambridge exports
Tuesday 19th March 2013 11:56 GMT
Re: "The local ciders are worth drinking as well."
"..as someone once said.. "mostly apples"."
Many locally produced ciders are excellent. The dirty secret big cider manufacturers don't want you to know - there's little or almost no apple juice in their products. It's just flavoured fermented sugar syrup, made in the shortest time possible (about a week). If it doesn't say 100% apple juice on the label then it won't be.
Note, I make traditional cider, 100% apple juice, see handle...
Icon - now I'm thirsty,
Biting the hand that feeds IT
