Posts by GrumpyKiwi

Submarine builder admits dismembering journalist's body

Re: Not very clever

[QUOTE]Is that the guy on "The Godfather"?[/QUOTE]

Nah, he played Gandulf in the last Star Trek film.

MoD: Sci-tech strategy? Er, here's a bunch of words and diagrams

Technological literacy

I'm going to give an anecdote from when I was working at the MoD to show the kind of mindset you are dealing with when you deal with senior members of it.

The branch I was contracting for had recently (six months ago) finished rolling out a brand new email system (Groupwise for anyone who cares) and I got dragged into the office of a senior member who proceeded to give me a lecture on how this system was rubbish and didn't work.

I asked her what exactly wasn't working properly and was told that it was missing all sorts of people. Huh? So I asked for a demonstration. She proceeded to create a new email. "This is for Tom Watson* " I was told. She then clicked on the address book and started to scroll downwards through all the A's, the B's, the C's etc. towards W. Keep in mind that this was rather a large (some might even say massively overstaffed) organisation. Eventually - very eventually - we reached the WA's and sure enough there was no Tom Watson.

I asked, why don't you just search for him and clicked on the search field then typed Tom W which sure enough came up with Tom Whatson - the correct spelling of his name no less.

THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS I was told most firmly before being told to go away and fix it.

*Not the actual name which has been forgotten with time and therapy but close enough for government work.

Fake-news-monetizing machine Facebook lectures hacks on how not to write fake news that made it millions

Surely the media should be happy with Faecesbook's behaviour. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery after all.

nbn™'s problems were known – in 2008, a year before its birth

When I first saw the NBN announcement and how it was to be structured I wondered "gosh that is a really bad setup, how could things be worse". Then I saw what was done when the Liberal party came to power and realised that - yes things could be even worse.

Frankly Australia your telecommunications sector is a f******g disgrace. If I could just sit smugly over in Auckland and laugh then I wouldn't care but my role requires that I regularly source new network connections for the company in places throughout Australia - and that is a nightmare.

I'm being offered 2MB fibre for the same price as I pay for 100MB business grade fibre in NZ - and that only where it is available. Some places there is neither NBN fibre nor any spare capacity for DSL (I am looking at you Pacific Fair).

If you are an Australian citizen you should be looking for suitable lamp-posts and gathering rope and rounding up telco executives. It seems like nothing else will solve this.

NYC cops say they can't reveal figures on cash seized from people – the database is too shoddy

Re: So if they don't know what they've taken

And the average amount seized is around $4000 in shocking "we're cracking down on major drug dealers and criminals" news...

There is a reason why in many parts of the world the cops are known as 'the blue gang' as there really isn't that much difference between them and any other group of street thugs.

Man prosecuted for posting a picture of his hobby on Facebook

Re: Apology esp @ Monkeycee

As a FAL holder, the worst cops to deal with around here are the ex-British ones. They really don't get it that firearms laws here are different and that "because I feel like it" isn't a valid reason to stop something. Unfortunately we seem to have gotten the ones that are very good at climbing the ladder/floating to the top.

This really does say to me that an independent Scotland would be a miserable bureaucratic and generally nasty nanny-state - worse even than Australia. I feel rather sorry for its citizens.

Review pins blame for Medicare ID breach on you. All of you

Thanks Australia

For yet again providing us with an example of what not to do.

Lenovo spits out retro ThinkPads for iconic laptop's 25th birthday

+1 for X220 mention

Only just retired the last X220 here recently. With a SSD fitted (and boy was it easy to swap hard disks) and extra RAM (and boy was it easy to add RAM), they were still performing well. It's just that the battery had decided to only give 25 minutes of life.

Australia approves national database of everyone's mugshots

Only yourselves to blame

For the past 30 years you've voted in the politicians that have made Australia the second most nanny-state in the western world. And nanny needs to keep a close eye on all her children in case you have a poopy diaper.

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull hints at surveillance expansion

I don't know why you are worried about the police having access to this. They are well known as the finest force money can buy.

Vibrating walls shafted servers at a time the SUN couldn't shine

Brutish Rail

The legend at Brutish Rail when I worked there was of the UPS's at King's Cross station that had been (accidentally?) wired to the same feed as the trains used. So every two minutes there was a massive line drop and then an equally massive surge as another train braked coming in. Needless to say batteries in said UPS's lasted a matter of weeks.

Experienced it in a smaller way when I supported a client right next door to a steel works that had voltage going anywhere from 150 to 260 during the course of an hour as steel was poured. Not helped by the client also running some pretty high instant draw machinery themselves.

The UK isn't ditching Boeing defence kit any time soon

Re: as RyanAir never seem to land quite where you might expect them to.

They say in the Air Force

A landings OK

If the pilot gets out

And can still walk away

But in the Fleet Air Arm

The prospects are dim

If the landings piss poor

And the pilot can't swim

This article has been deleted

Re: WOW, a real danger to the community shut down. Vicious criminals beware.

They long ago changed the motto on the side of the LAPD cars to "Obey & Survive".

Argentina eyes up laser death cannon testbed warship

Nope, you need to do pretty much almost the same level of maintenance as you would an operational ship if you want it to be available in any reasonable length of time. The main cost benefits are not needing a full crew, nor much in the way of fuel oil/food.

Electronic dohickeys have a service life and have to be replaced regularly. Oils swapped. Shafts lubed (oooh err madam), hulls scraped and painted, systems tested. If you are going to regularly test the engines then the boilers need cleaning.

You can smother it all in preserving grease, but then you have weeks of cleaning gloop off, relubricating, testing etc. And still need to do the hull scraping/cleaning/repainting regardless.

Not the kind of thing that lends itself to an immediate response to a threat.

Mothballed ships

The need to keep a large fleet in reserve was what crippled the Royal Navy post WW2. There were large fleets of escorts and minesweepers (plus more than a few Battleships and Cruisers) anchored in a great many rivers and harbours around the UK post war, ready to be reactivated when war broke out with the USSR (expected to happen by 1955).

They all needed a certain amount of maintenance (and hence manpower) at a time when both were in short supply.

Meanwhile most of the RN's fleet carriers were unable to be used from manpower shortages - not that this mattered much as the Fleet Air Arm was down to less than 150 aircraft after all the Lend-Lease American stuff was pushed overboard to avoid paying for it.

Re: The Ponce would be far from the first former US warship acquired by Argentina.

Argentina got two Brooklyn class ex-USN light cruisers in the early 1950's, but they'd retired one by the time of the Falklands War.

Likewise Brazil and Chile also got two each as part of the "balance of power".

Facebook ran $100k of deliberately divisive Russian ads ahead of 2016 US election

Can someone, anyone, who comments on here please tell me of anyone they know who's political opinion has been changed by advertising? Really?

When was the last time you convinced someone to change their POV on the internet? Ever.

There is a delusion that 'everyone else is a weak minded sheep, easily swayed by the last bright colour they saw with a slogan on it'. Which is amusing in its own way - shared as it is by everyone else.

75 years ago, one Allied radar techie changed the course of WW2

Re: As a Canadian

Monty's ego and desire to be "first over the Rhine" caused him to completely ignore the advice from the Admiralty that Antwerp was utterly useless unless he also took the approaches. Instead of ordering them captured from the very weak German forces at the time, he had them charge hell for leather towards the German border. The Germans recognised this and reinforced the approaches and it took months to capture them.

Meanwhile, Antwerp was useless even though it had been captured with the docks intact. The allied forces were on the end of a very long supply line from Normandy via trucks and as a result were out of fuel and munitions and stuck on the German border. Antwerp operating would have meant one of the biggest ports in Europe could be used to deliver munitions etc. to forces faster and in much greater volume.

This two month delay in getting Antwerp opened gave the Germans time enough to reorganise their forces (hence the victory in Market Garden) and allowed them enough time to kick off the Battle of the Bulge.

All in all, not the mark of the "strategic genius" that Monty liked to parade himself as. Indeed most of his "genius" can be attributed to him taking over the Eighth Army at the time when Bletchley Park had started having a great deal more success in cracking Enigma. Post war his time as Chief of Imperial Staff showed up just how out of depth he was.

Taken a while but finally here's the first proper smart-home gizmo

Excellent. A solution I didn't want for a problem I don't have*. (or The Internets of Shit Things in a nutshell).

*assuming that the problem in question is "how can I switch on my lights from my iPhone".

Can GCHQ order techies to work as govt snoops? Experts fear: 'Yes'

It's nice to get official confirmation...

...of our status as slaves of the state isn't it.

Not much different from conscription, only with less opportunity to object on the grounds of being a pacifist.

Gov workers told their social posts are more believable than politicians' statements

Trust none of them

Civil servants have just as many reasons to lie, obfuscate, exaggerate and generally mis-describe situations to their own advantage as their political "masters" do.

I trust the words of none of them.

(Confession - Grumpy was one for 10 years which is how he knows these things).

Brisbane and TechnologyOne swap demands for AU$50 mn

Seat warmers? In Brisbane? While I agree that conditions for lawyers on this earth should be as close to hell as possible, I don't think they'll go for it.

Nah, they'll be going for the air conditioned buttock-cooling seat options.

Fan of FBI cosplay? Enjoy freaking out your neighbors? Have we got the eBay auction for you

Re: Flowers By Irene

Have a +1 just for the Simpson's reference.

Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? Get this – It's just hit the US appeals courts

Re: Corporations - meh

Buzzzz. WRONG. They ruled on body corporate status and the rights pertaining thereto. That's not just corporations, it's ANY group of people acting in concert. So it includes trade-unions, Greenpeace, political parties, the New York Times, the NRA, PETA themselves, sports clubs and 'teh evil corpratshuns'.

And they ruled that just because you are acting as a group you don't lose your protections and rights. Unless you think that the police should be able to tap trade-unions phone lines at will because they have no rights , that the taxman should be able to seize anything they want without recourse from your football club or the White House should be able to force the NYT to run favourable stories because freedom of expression doesn't apply to companies. In which case I can't help you.

Photobucket says photo-f**k-it, starts off-site image shakedown

Re: Swapped over to using OneDrive

Microsoft already had their Photobucket level of Derp incident about two years back when they decided arbitrarily that "no-one could possibly want a link that lasted more than 24 hours" which meant that any new links would rapidly die. There was a fair amount of outcry about it and six months later they introduced an embedding option within OneDrive.

Gave up on them a couple of years back. They used to have a tool that let you see who was linking to your images and which images were the most popular. Then they "upgraded" to support ... I dunno, sepia tones or something. And killed the tool. Simultaneously it became suspiciously easy to run out of free bandwidth.

Swapped over to using OneDrive and have never looked back, until today. Just to crown things, one of their ads tried to serve me some malware when I logged in to delete my account.

'No decision' on Raytheon GPS landing system aboard Brit aircraft carriers

Re: Mirror landing system

Indian Navy (and the Royal Navy) was using the very same mirror landing system for their Sea Harriers. Instead of bringing an aircraft down to the arresting wires, it was set to bring the Sea Harrier to a point 40 feet up and just to the right of the island.

Mirror landing system

Just install a mirror landing system. Invented by the Royal Navy and adopted by the rest of the world. Has the advantage of not sending any electronic transmissions.

Canadian sniper makes kill shot at distance of 3.5 KILOMETRES

Re: A new low for The Reg!

Boo hooo hooo. Go cry into your pillow snowflake.

When we said don't link to the article, Google, we meant DON'T LINK TO THE ARTICLE!

Re: This will be tough...

Maybe. But my money is on he's just an idiot.

Lobbying is done by people representing all kinds of views and interests. Greenpeace, unions, corporations, lawyers - everyone and everything.

The here problem appears to be a (deliberate?) misunderstanding of the word "corporation". Corporation means any group of people acting in concert. So yes, that covers the likes of Greenpeace. And General Electric. And Planned Parenthood. And the NRA. And the New York Times. Because it is recognised that people working together are stronger than any one individual.

But noooo. Instead we get the wet dream "If only we could ban lobbying. Then only my favourite groups would be allowed to exert any political pressure".

Re: This will be tough...

Why if only you weren't talking out your backside you'd know that US law has long recognised the difference between lobbying (political speech) and advertising (commercial speech) and that the two are treated completely differently.

Five Eyes nations stare menacingly at tech biz and its encryption

Re: Open source?

"Wow, nice software son. It sure would be a shame if the IRS decided to audit you every year for eternity from now on. And if the EPA took an interest. And if the FCC decided it was worth investigating in case it was 'commerce'. Yep, sure would be a shame. If only there was a way that sort of thing didn't happen. Right?"

Oz government says UK's backdoor will be its not-a-backdoor model

And to start with

So the first bad move is to emulate the UK at anything - and especially this.

Two leading ladies of Europe warn that internet regulation is coming

Stupid is as stupid does

I look forward to fans of Freedom like Saudi Arabia, Burma and Venezuela being appointed to Ms. Merkel's international regulatory body. Just like the recent appointment of Saudi to the UN Women's Rights Commission, this can only be good for the internet.

Having a degree in Physics doesn't stop you from being a complete 'tard about other things clearly.

Senator blows a fuse as US spies continue lying over spying program

And they wonder it is that we no longer trust the statements from the likes of the NSA/CIA/FBI/et. Al. on claims of pretty much anything - whether it be WMD's, Russian spies, terrorist plots or privacy.

To lie is their default position - so to disbelieve is now mine.

Wowee, it's Samsung's next me-too AI gizmo: The Apple HomePod

Shaped it as... a sailor experiencing the hunt for the golden rivet for the first time?

Venezuela increases internet censorship and surveillance in crisis

Re: 'end stage Socialism'

Those would be the Scandinavian countries that over the past twenty years have rolled back their social welfare networks, reduced their tax rates and generally deregulated their economies?

They're only socialist in wet dreams.

Australian Taxation Office named as party preventing IT contractors being paid

ATO = Australian 'Tards Office

I've had dealings with ATO's software support people for their incredibly crappy portal. If the rest of it is run like the software support people (hours of support 09:30 - 16:00 except Wednesdays when it's 10:30 - 16:00) then it leaves me completely unsurprised that this is happening.

Can you spout digital bollocks? London is hiring a Chief Digital Officer

Sooner not later please

The next big increase in office productivity will come when companies realise that pretty much any role with Digital, Sustainable, Gender, or Communications in the title can be nixed without the slightest impact on company performance. (Anything with Bicycle in the description unless you are working for Avanti, Yeti or a Tour de France group too).

It's Russian hackers, FBI and Wikileaks wot won it – Hillary Clinton on her devastating election loss

Re: Comey was required by Congress to inform Congress

She was found to have been "extremely careless with classified information". Which is code speak for "if anyone else had done it they'd be in jail".

As I may have mentioned in another thread on this, I previously worked on British MoD email servers, had TS clearance and was subject to the Official Secrets Act. If I'd done even 50% of what was done with her email I'd still be in jail being traded for a handful of cigarettes (on account of being so pretty).

Re: Not entirely correct.

Buzz: Wrong!

The "Popular" vote was for "None of these bozos" which over 80 million eligible American voters went for and didn't vote at all. Next on the list was "anyone but Clinton*". At best she got third.

* Taken as when you position yourself and the chosen one, she who has been anointed and so forth, everyone who votes otherwise clearly is against you regardless of whether they went for Trump, Johnson, Stein or others.

China launches aircraft carrier the length of 13.6 brontosauruses

Re: The carrier is not the real threat

Sort of. Remember the sea is very big and even a carrier task force is quite small compared to that. What all those missile boats need is targeting information. And it's very hard to get such information when your enemy has air dominance and can knock down your recon drones/aircraft before they can supply such data.

While most modern missiles can simply be fired down a vector with the hope that the onboard radar will pick something up, that is a rather poor method of engagement with a much lower chance of a successful strike.

Re: Units

176 dead hookers? Surely that is in the Heavy Goods Vehicle owner/operators manual.

Slightly disapointing

On the one hand, it's an impressive testimonial to China's shipbuilding industry.

But on the other it's a copy of a flawed design - they could at least have improved it, got rid of the ski ramp and put in a catapult. Yes I am aware that for a steam catapult they'd have needed a different power design. But the Royal Navy ran cordite powered catapults for many years on their older carriers which worked perfectly well - i.e. using a charge of slower burning gunpowder to drive the catapult.

Instead what they appear to have created is a copy of the Kuznetsov only with working toilets and on-board WiFi.

One such ship (the Liaoning) can be justified on the grounds of "we are training on how to run a carrier", but two such flawed designs is a bit silly.

Republicans want IT bloke to take fall for Clinton email brouhaha

Hey, it's only secret information, who cares

If I'd been as incompetent and reckless with Her Majesty's top secret information while I was working for the MoD (on email servers no less) I'd still be in jail being traded for a handful of cigarettes.

FYI – There's a legal storm brewing in Cali that threatens to destroy online free speech

Re: Thanks California...

I might have agreed with that diagnosis except that even back in the days of Ronald Reagan republican California there were still legally-retarded laws being passed. I'd suggest that it's in the DNA of California to imagine you can legislate your way to happiness.

Thanks California...

...for yet another attempt at imposing your lowest common denominator level of legal stupidity on the rest of us.

30,000 London gun owners hit by Met Police 'data breach'

Re: Now now...

Ah yes. The "I don't own a gun, never would and don't see any reason why someone would" person who likes to tell firearms owners just how things should - nay must - be.

And while we are at it, the head of Marketing doesn't see why we need any of that firewall or anti-virus rubbish that just slows things down and he's an expert because he has an iPad and uses Facebook.

And a reminder. Prior to both Hungerford and Dunblain the local firearms community had told plod that they were very concerned about the people involved and didn't think they were suitable for a firearms license. Plod of course did... nothing.