Posts by Erlang Lacod

Arrow? More like Boomerang, amirite? Computacenter buys back tech disposal biz it disposed of

Good to see that RDC are still going. I was one of the founder members when it was independent and am still kicking myself I didnt push harder to buy a share.

Back in the day we ran computer auctions, manufactured our own branded desktop PCs and did a lot of spot buying and selling of components. It started in a small unit next to a tyre and exhaust centre in deepest small town Essex in those crusty days before Email. Great days as the business model was intentionally light and flexible so that we could focus on virtually any computer related activity where there was demand. IDE drives were too expensive for economy priced PCs and no one was really convinced if Windows 95 would catch on but our own market research proved customers were happy with homebrewed PCs with 2x second hand double height 5.25 inch SCSI drives so long as we stuck extra feet on their full tower cases to stop them rocking too violently on start up. In between manufacturing 2 brands of desktop PCs we found time to prove that multiplayer Doom worked perfectly well over a Novell Netware LAN, proved that a kit car could indeed be constructed from scratch between the racks of stock in the warehouse and prove that we could run auctions in different parts of the country every weekend without mishap. Time and tide moved on and eventually the startup was bought first by Datrontech, then as the new corporate IT inventory disposal market really started to take off it was acquired by Computacentre to focus solely on that market.

Interesting to read that Arrow have just sold it back to them. A great place to work in its day with a myriad of larger than life characters.

It was an effective launchpad for many people's careers. Long may it continue

New SMB bug: How to crash Windows system with a 'link of death'

And the level of damage this will cause is ... ? Sounds more like a practical joke than an exploit really.

Ireland's govt IT: Recession and job cuts forced us to adapt

well, yes

“If you modernised in one area that released people, you had to move those people into other places,” says McCluggage. “The scale and capability to realise efficiencies was I believe constrained by that agreement.”

Pretty obvious, but that is the whole idea, to save jobs. Any idiot can save money in the short term by laying off staff - even someone named after a tartan suitcase should be able to understand that one.

Thieves can wirelessly unlock up to 100 million Volkswagens, each at the press of a button

Re: Quick Release or build it like it is in my head

It used to be practical to do this for family cars up until driver's side airbags became steering wheel mounted. detachable steering wheels are quite a common site for kit cars and some classic cars.

Samsung's little black box will hot-wire your car to the internet. Eek!

... Would you like to explain that thinking to classic car owners ?

Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick... Hang on. They're back

Methodology

I find the best method of delivery is just get on with it. Do a proper job, be organised, put the hours in, hold people to account and get it delivered. Every PM needs a keyboard with a JFDI button and be prepared to press that button rather than dice with the death of endless detail and waste time playing methodology bingo.

Solus: A welcome ground-up break from the Linux herd

Comments here seem to have veered off into the wondrous realms of comparing command speeds between Python and C. Very clever stuff but this sort of stuff probably isnt the first thing on the minds of the majority of potential users.

What I'd like to know before I point people towards it is what are it's hardware requirements. Is it lighter weight than Mint or Ubuntu. Is it sufficiently light weight to be used on older PCs, cascaded from the front line ?

Southend-on-Sea splashes £1.5m on hybrid cloud data centre

pierless approach

Where's the seagull ? Someone changed the picture. I'm sure thats now the backdrop where Arthur Daley used to saunter off our screens at the end of Minder.

It is certainly positive to see a local authority running their own DC on their own premises.

What I know about UK local authority finance could probably be printed nicely on the back of a postage stamp in 16 pitch font but I guess I'd like to see a bit of detail around this to show viability.

Councils are having their budgets painfully squeezed by Central government still, so with year on year cuts the norm can they afford this ? Have they thought about consolidating services with another local authority ? Will it create new jobs or cause redundancies as a scramble to reduce paper headcount ? And indeed will Arthur Daley be taking care of the data migration..

Re: Costs

Lets hope this creates some directly employed roles in both local councils. Outsourcing day to day data centre tasks to external providers delivers scalability but it also generously throws wads of taxpayers' money straight into the pockets of those who own those companies for doing pretty much damn all themselves..

Get whimsical and win a Western Digital Black 6TB hard drive

"wild ? I was livid"

What sort of tit builds non-bird bird boxes? Vodafone

"which runs to the garage of the house where the tester lives." Why is he tester compelled to live in a garage ?

That sub-$100 Android slab you got on Black Friday? RIDDLED with holes, say infosec bods

Has anyone got a suggestion for a cheapo Android tablet that has average security & average browsing experience over wifi ?

Dig into Iron Mountain and you'll find Seagate and EVault

frying tonight ?

The only time I contacted Iron Mountain for a quote for tape storage for an SME many years ago they came back with a page of waffle presumably in an attempt to justify the high figure they felt their service warranted. Amongst this was a list of BS and ISO references they complied with. Having a quiet ten minutes at the time I looked these up only to find they related to the safe operation of catering equipment including deep fat friers for mobile catering van use. Strangely enough I never heard from them again when I challenged on this.

Who know what wonders lurk in that strange mountain of iron.

Doctor Who nicked my plot and all I got was a mention in this lousy feature

The recent Rings of Akhaten borrowed heavily from HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Surprised it took that long in a way..

Oh, shoppin’ HELL: I’m in the supermarket of the DAMNED

Valco, serves you right

TWELFTH-CENTURY TARDIS turns up in Ethiopia

..or the BBC could just be playing their cards close to their chest for now and wait to announce it either during the 50th anniversary celebrations or when they are ready to release it as part of a premium box set of classic episodes.

Iranian nuke plants rocked in midnight 'heavy metal blast'

Great to see the virus writers picked a decent UK based Rock band such as AC/DC which is being discovered by new generations round the world. I dont really have any opinion at all on Iran either way so long as they dont attack us we should just keep a watchful eye on them. No point provoking them as they doubtless feel as strongly about their right to self determination as we do and react the same when people rattle sabres in their general direction.

Tesla Motors in dirty-tricks suit against Valley electrocar rival

compares to Windows

Reminds me of the time when Microsoft had the contract to design the OS/2 operating system for IBM whilst developing Windows as their own product.

O2: We didn't know we were capping 3G data speeds

Works for me

It seems works for me though I must confess I never use it for anything serious on the move.

Not so long ago hardly anyone bothered with data over mobile 3G, 2G or Ali G.

Without much real demand I guess no one was that intersted in providing it either as presumaly this would need them to buy much bigger mainsprings for all their clocks and more engineers to wind them. Mobile data is now getting to be a commodity though I dont believe theres really still enormous take up. Like anything else the suppliers must battle for market position leapfrogging with ever higher data speeds and ceiling limits trying to attract customers away from each other as these people do.

Red Hat scurries away from consumer desktop market

coherent approach is key

The future of Linux as an accepted desktop OS is equally in the hands of the distro developers and the support bases that form around them.

Few would doubt that the consumer needs and deserves choice here but the existing myriad of multiple Linux desktop distributions each with their options of KDE or Gnome front ends etc are serving to confuse the consumer - so its no wonder so many adhere to Windows.

Though I run both and can see the arguments for both I certainly wouldnt wish much of the confusing and contradictory information thats on many of the Linux forums on my worst enemy. To expose a newbie non technical desktop user to this stuff as an example of the support thats available from the open source community would win few converts, apart from the odd masochist maybe.

In an age where the cost of adequate desktop and notebook PCs is so low one now has to make a very convincing argument in order to convince the average non technical user to go out of their way to order a computer without Windows pre loaded.

Every altruistic not for profit organisation there has ever been has always benefitted by benchmarking its processes and structures against those of commercial organisations.

It's really now up to the Linux community to rationalise it's efforts behind the most sucessfull desktop distributions - and clean up its support forums in order to be taken seriously.

USB 'compact cassette' promises 1980s nostalgia, home taping

adaptor module- why

i can maybe see the point of laying out for an in car converter assuming it's to be used in a classic car where a recent mp3 enabled stereo could look out of place but;

Why lay out on a usb external cassette drive just for music transfer. There are stacks of cheap cassette players to be snapped up for a couple of quid, a lead from it's audio out socket to the soundcard line in on your PC will do the job nicely. At that point you can work out the saving youve made and give some of that amount to charity- better than just pissing it up the wall for no body's benefit except the harware vendors.

3 drags rivals into court over number porting

3 Net-not-work ?

3 really should have got out there and invested in a decent 2G network.like the others. 2G is still very much where it's all at for voice calls.

3's 3G network does compare ok with the other operators' 3G networks but thats where it ends. A customer on one of the other networks willl be handed over to their 2G network with no loss of service when moving out of 3G range. As 3 dont have their own 2G networks.their customers get roamed onto their competitor's networks. Which provider's 2G network the customer then get roamed onto seems to depend on when they signed up as a customer as the roaming contact hasnt always stayed with the same provider.

Darling admits Revenue loss of 25 million personal records

SPOOKS

Tell me this is an episode from Spooks.

Enraged by jealousy Adam sets off to discover the father of Ros's secret love child. He sets about gaining access in his normal way by going undercover at the HMRC posing as a junior tea stirer in the department of Strategic High Intensity Training. No sooner has he swiped his way into the secure zone, with his usual expired Blockbuster Video membership card, he spots a visiting van driver in TNT uniform, a man with a long beareded face who looks strangely familiar. Not having any weapon with him ( The HMRC now publicly escew the carrying of scythes by it's staff except for those investigating illegal tea bag cartels) Adam picks up the nearest thing to hand being a small case containing two cd roms and pursues the van driver who he thinks he has recognised as no one other than Osama Bin Laden who it later is revealed has given up his former life and is now peacefully pursuing a new career as a contract driver for HMRC and occasional football pundit on Channel 4.

to be continued...

RM readies Linux sub-laptop... for £169

RM - vs - ?

Their biggest real competitor in price and spec has to be the second hand market. £ 199 will buy quite a decent spec older Tosh, Lenovo, HP or Dell with a new battery being the only must have extra.

Science and religion collide for galactic conference

peace

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so whosoever believes in him shall not persish but have eternal life."

Interesting how many here seem to really get their rocks off by trying to knock established religeous ideologies that teach equality and mutual respect.

It's inevitably caused by feelings of guilt that express themselves as defensive aggression. It really doesnt matter though as God knows you measure up, is ready to forgive you and will always keep His door open for you.

Skype founder quits

interconnect

Surely Skype's biggest points of failure must be the interface between their voip network and the bricks and mortar phone networks.

Looking beyond the feint bleats of 'patch Tuesday' (yeah, see you next tuesday Patch me old mucker) i'd ask whether Skype might be having some serious problems with whoever provides their connection services ?

SkypeIn goes out

connection SIMplicity ?

Its worth delving a little deeper and asking how Sype connects to the real phone networks, landline and mobile- Whether they have proper workable agreements with contracts and SLA's in place for terminating their voip traffic or whether they might be doing it the cheaper way ?

Until I knew this i'd never consider buying any shares in them nor relying on them for my main business line....

Pinwheel galaxy boasts edgy star formation

Milliways

I am your host for tonight, Max Quordlepleen

Britannia triumphs over Johnny Metric

@'Metric is coming anyway'

"Can't wait till your generation moves disappears! It's just a shame we have to wait at least 25 years for it to happen"

Ha, well look which generation lives in proper houses and look which one cant get on the housing ladder though irrespective of whether they are measured in yards or metres. With luck on your sideyou might just graduate to your very own sofa in a bedsit in 25 years, who knows. Cash has been calculatred in base 10 for a while but lets face it kid you just aren't making enough of it yet to bother counting.

Aussie serves up feral cat casserole

post mortem ?

Mmm, dead wild cat is one thing but dead wild cat carefully sliced open and prepared with formaldehyde is another.

Slice of pussy pie anyone ?

DARPA looking to kickstart raygun tech

may the farce be with you

A 3kW tactical laser weapon in the hands of those good ol boys , with their penchant for friendly fire.

A couple of test runs and then it's

"hey you damn mothers, anyone tell me why my sonofabitch sat nav will not find any sonofabitch satellites"

Oh, Oh, Oh, can you feel the FARCE ?

Teen sticks Xbox 360 power supply in bowl of water

Wii ?

Poor guy, at least it was only water on a xbox though.

No doubt if it had of been a Wii device he would have misunderstood them words of the web that's outa ya head and dunked it in a big bucket of piss.

To which the paramedics would have to say ' looks like ur in trouble here son, another case of over pissistent gaming.'

Novell owns Unix copyrights after all

company policy

Dont you just hate it when what used to be a real technology company like SCO largely abandons the legitimate business of developing and selling its products and relies on dubious litigation over patents to bolster it's share price. This was never any more a true asset than some of Enron's notional reserves. Personally I would like to see the Sarbanes-Oxley rules applied to this kind of flim-flam carpetbagging.

Novell on the other hand have kept true to their values, moving with the times through the loss of their Netware market, embracing open soure along the way. So long as they dont sell out to Micro$oft I cant think of a better repository for those Unix patents now other than the open source community itself.

Las Vegas judge sacked for MySpace page

thin ice.

'It's my court,

stand up,

sit down,

stand up,

sit down,

bring on the skating vicar'

Cops taser crap-smeared Oz clubber

going on the offensive

Does it matter. No one died and hey, this all happened on the other side of the planet anyway.

Stricken Evesham says will honour warranties and support

so long and thanks for all the fish

Having been instrumental a few years ago in building up another UK based PC manufacturer I have nothing but sympathy for what has happenned at Evesham- a company who's business model we worked hard to emulate at the time.

Surviving in a market where you are constantly competing for oxygen and sunlight against huge monolithic players with vast advertising budgets and low far east production costs and where the value of unsold boxes drops measurably by the day - well it isnt an business for the get rich quick brigade by any means and hasnt been for at least 10 years.

As regards Matey Next or whatever his name is - just put yourself on the other side of the fence will you man: Lets face it a sizeable minority of computer purchasers who call manufacturers support lines are idiots, theri craniums are a total IQ free zone .

This isnt poking criticism at their lack of technical knowledge but because:

1. they claim a higher level of skill and knowledge than they actually possess, which inevitably leads to more confusion.

2. an apparent determination to waffle and bluster and avoid at all costs providing a clear and succint description of the problem encountered, in plain english.

3. a lack of objectivity and realism.

How to watch TV on your PC

Window$ ? mac ?

Good article but please can it be revised to include something that could be useful to the growing number of Linux users wanting to watch TV on their PCs

I'm reliably informed that quite a number of the PC TV cards available are quite capable of running under Linux but as this fact isnt made obvious from the two line product descriptions and box-front piccies provided on most on line reseller sites it would be really useful to see this covered in feature such as this one.

Staff cut off in Evesham 'rescue' deal

flooded with choices

Is this the firm that went bust after the town they were in was flooded with 8 feet of water ?

OLPC project goes into production

an end to the digital divide ?

Its an ideal learning aid for the youth of developing countries, delivered at what most in the industry would regard as an almost unfeasiblly low price. That the dream has been realised with a seriously large dollop of help from renterprises better known for their bitter real-world rivalry is even more testamony to the quality and sheer 'rightness' of the original vision. Frankly I dont expect there will be any shortage of software - the project is very dear to the hearts of the Open Source community and hey, who knows, Micro$oft might even step up to the plate.

Sorry I cant agree with the Bible or Quoran comment though, awareness of the spriritual has provided more benefit than harm despite the extemists.

Vodafone sinks to new low

Drink !

I'll drink to that one. hic

Hackers saw through iPhone AT&T shackles

busy hacking what ?

If the rumours are true there seems little point in bothering to hack imported iPhones in the UK.anymore as the iPhone could be about to be offered on the O2 network.

Iran's 'Rescue Nuke Scientist' game battles US game studio

availability ?

Can anyone find a download link for this ? presumably it must be freeware

Man uses tank in phone mast flattening rampage

bit of a tanker

sounds like a bigtime case of a rebel without a cause. This NIMBY thing about phone masts is kind of unreal. i mean we all hear of these folk opossing masts being built near their homes and the occasional one thats demolished by lone gunmen but hell when was the last time any of us knew someone who actually refused to use or own a phone in protest. Yep that must be the guy we sat next to on the bus the other week sitting there dribling and with tin foil wrapped round his head to stop the Martians reading his thoughts.

Intel launches Core 2 Extreme for laptops

Warranty ?

So will it be Intel or the poor laptop manufacturers that have to honour all those warranty claims that will result from users' over enthusiastic experimentation with the clock speed. One too many megacycles extracted = more heat than a mobile device can cope with = short processor life.

El Reg lobs iPhone at Genius Bar

will they learn from experience ?

It will be interesting to see whther Apple will have learned from this experience when they launch the iPhone in European markets. If they have we should be able to expect less hype, revised software and better network speeds. Who knows

Man cuffed over Jamie Oliver email threat

milk sheiks

The CNLA dont seem to have a coherent message so its all a bit limp disk . No doubt they are trying hard to imitate the pre Good Friday Agreement IRA at present though when the whiff of shamrock and Semtex wears off they might just claim affinity to Al Quaida -though this brand of terrorism is less likely to be funded by misguided oil sheiks than bewildered Cornish milk shakes.

As the Welsh learned they'd be better off battling for fast broadband connections installed in all rural exchanges to attract more high income home workers rather than towny second homers.

(Un)lucky UCLA student cops Paris's old mobile number

ca$h in girl !

There's no two ways about it girl. Flog the phone to the tabloid press for a seriously large amount of dosh, . They will have hours of fun setting up trap meetings with and doorstepping Ms Hilton's unsuspecting celebrity pals. Then get yourself out there and buy a shiny new iPhone with an altogether less controversial number.

Hey, its a dog eat dog world. Not that i'm saying here that theres any evidence that Ms Hilton actually 'eats dog' you understand- though for all i know that might now be prison slang for something which would make one hell of a cool You Tube video.

Catherine Tate to accompany Doctor Who

Dobby or evolutionary stage ?

Ok yes i thought the tiny version of the Dr's suit was a bit naff but I certainly dont think this was intended to be a Dobby character or in any way comical.

To me it resonated the transformation of the Dalek's from a pure human (oid) form into something distinctly diverse which had lost the vestigaes of humanity alongside the use of its limbs and could now only survive and retain mobility by being inside a mechanical device. The Doctor's ultimate form could be seen as almost being a point on this same divergent path away from traditional humanoid form but distinctly different in clearly retaining his humanitarian values.