Posts by Tromos

WHY did NASA probe go suddenly SILENT - JUST as it was about to send pics of remote ice-world?

Forward planning required

Just to ensure closest approach does not occur on Patch Tuesday

Outsourcery has ‘greater flexibility to pursue opportunities’ after £4m Voda loan

Pursuit of opportunities

Methinks Piers needs a few sessions in one of Duncan's gyms. He might be pursuing the opportunities, but it looks like they can run faster than him.

Rampaging fox terrorises rural sports club, victim sustains ‘tweaked groin’

"We now know how it got the name!"

Named after the TV channel?

Facebook prepares to STRAFE the developing world with FRICKIN' internet LASERS

What could possibly go wrong?

Thinking about it - rather a lot. I'd be baling out if I was a shareholder.

Looking forward to getting Windows 10 the day it ships? Yeah, about that...

I'm looking forward to the reactions of those who get it the day it ships and over the next few weeks after that. If the Windows community is generally positive towards it and that remains the case at the start of November, then that will be my install date. I see no reason to rush to abandon a stable Win7 setup for an unknown quantity. Three months worth of feedback from others should be enough for an informed decision to be made.

Windows 7 and 8.1 market share surge, XP falls behind OS X

The rush to get freebie Windows 10?

The rush to get Windows 7 while it can still be found, more like.

Trump carded: Wannabe prez's hotels 'ground zero' in banking breach

After his remarks on Mexicans...

...never mind POTUS, he sounds a much better fit than Chris Evans for replacing Clarkson.

It's the hottest day of the year. So check out John Lewis' Xmas tech range!

Re: Food processors...

Wake me up when they produce one I can pour raw unpeeled spuds into and offers buttons marked 'Roast', 'Boiled', 'Mash' and 'Chips'.

Crowdfunded beg-a-thon to bail out Greece raises 0.003% of target

@LucreLout

Free trade agreements? Don't make me laugh. A Greek exit will have a negligible effect on their trade as it is next to sod all in the first place. Pop into your local supermarket and check out the Greek yoghourt. Oh dear, it appears to be 'Greek style' yoghourt (usually from France). Check out the feta cheese - again Greek style salad cheese. Look on the wine shelves for cheap but drinkable table wines. South America, South Africa and all sorts of exotic spots from outside Europe well represented, not much from Greece. Same again with fruit - look at the countries of origin. We had cherries from Argentina FFS! The common market (which is what we originally joined) has completely and utterly failed, and especially failed Greece.

Get READY: Scientists set to make TIME STAND STILL tonight

Tackle the problem at source

Wouldn't it be easier to speed the Earth up?

Bloke called Rod struck by lightning for second time

Re: What I want to know is...

With luck like his, he'd probably win and then get knocked down by a bus on the way to collect his winnings,

Hey devs. Forget Siri – Amazon's Alexa will show you a $100m good time

"Buy six tickets for the next showing of Jurassic World."

Done. You have row 7 seats 14 to 19 at screen 2, the Roxy, Kuala Lumpur. You have two minutes before it starts.

Dyre banking VXers LOVE Mondays, Symantec says

"capable of hijacking all three major web browsers"

So Explorer is safe to use then.

Indiana Jones whips Bond in greatest movie character poll

Re: What no...

Despite the name, he only had a small part.

GCHQ: Security software? We'll soon see about THAT

"spooks reverse-engineered software products in order to obtain intel"

They fell for the label that said 'intel inside'.

DEATH by VEGETABLES: Woman charged with killing boyf using carrots. And peas

Proof...

,,,that crisps are healthier than vegetables.

Supermarket tweet: Twitter ankles balloon in product, places shopping frenzy

Do they really expect to bolster their revenue...

...by making the people who don't use them more firmly convinced they are right whilst driving the ones who do use them to consider quitting?

FLICK my FLINT and SNIFF my TREE on the streets of Naples

The automatic banana peeler sounds useful

Those automatic bananas can be a bugger to peel.

Stealing secret crypto-keys from PCs using leaked radio emissions

Re: Note the *low* frequencies they are talking about.

"And note once you've got someone's private key you've got their whole secure email back catalogue as well."

Sorry, I don't note that at all. I could give you my private key right now and you would have none of my email back catalogue at all. It is one thing to have the key and quite another to have access to the data to use that key on.

UK.gov loses crucial battle in home-taping war with musicians

I'm in favour of a pool

Then we can drown the music moguls in it.

California über alles? Is MEP Reda flushing Euro copyright tradition down the pan?

The Anglo-American tradition...focuses on a time-limited property

Time-limited until the next renewal.

Vicious vandals violate voluminous Versailles vagina

Get rid of it altogether.

It isn't so much the artwork I dislike as the placement. Totally inappropriate as is the blue cock in London's Trafalgar square.

Arkansas Kum & Go onanist did just that

Any moment now he'll be picked up by the fuzz.

MOUNTAIN of unsold retail PCs piling up in Blighty: Situation 'serious'

The huge number of 2 to 5 year old kit that is around, mainly core i3/5/7 running Win7 is more than adequate for just about everything most people need. All of these have got past the 'teething' stage of reliability and about the only thing some need is a replacement for a failing hard drive. There is just no compelling reason any more to upgrade, especially as most current offerings are more of a replacement than an upgrade. They aren't ten times faster, memory and storage are likewise not massively larger. Laptop batteries are still hours not days.

It'll need some massive driver of uptake like Lotus 1-2-3 was back in the days of 4.77MHz clocks and 256k RAM. I can't think what, but whoever can stands to make a fortune and give the industry at least a temporary boost.

The only surprises are that it seems to mainly be just the UK that hasn't seen the giant writing on the wall and that only one head has rolled so far.

AT&T fined about 3 days of profit ($100m) for limiting 'unlimited' plans

Limited unlimited

Halving someone's speed at after 5Gb and again at 7.5Gb, etc. is a sneaky way of setting a 10Gb cap whilst claiming it to be 'unlimited' because it is never actually completely halted.

Brace yourselves: Public cloud is coming. When? Er... soon, possibly

TechMarketView need a closer look at what they're saying.

In what way is £2.9bn a year relatively small as compared with almost £5bn a year divided amongst the three 'heavyweights'?

If I get hit by a bus, Linux will go on just fine says Linus Torvalds

Linux with Greg? Yeah, should be OK.

Top Gear with Chris Evans? No chance.

Bezos' bozos swing ban-hammer at media player

The Internet facilitates piracy...

...but where would Amazon be without it?

Apple no-pay-for-plays streaming risks indie boycott

Sauce for the goose

How would Apple react to people taking anything they fancy from their stores and shouting "It's OK, I've decided to give it a 3 month trial." on the way out? I reckon I can guess the answer.

'Get your ass to Market Street!' Arnold Schwarzenegger to give drive-by directions

For a return journey...

...simply select the "I'll be back" option.

Testing Windows 10 on Surface 3: Perfect combo or buggy embuggerance?

Weather chart

Don't drink the yellow rain!

Zionists stole my SHOE, claims Muslim campaigner

Round up all the usual suspects

The one-legged ones, that is.

British banks consider emoji as password replacement

"An Intelligent-Environment-commissioned survey found British teenagers regularly converse over SMS using nothing more than emojis"

Yes. They're known as illiterates.

Chancellor Merkel 'was patient zero' in German govt network hack

did not mention how Merkel herself may have been infected.

It was probably that nude Herman Goering screensaver

Deutsche Telekom, Huawei: Let's rain on Amazon’s euro cloud together

"subject to strict German data protection guidelines"

Wot? Like Angela Merkel's phone?

'Right to be forgotten' applies WORLDWIDE, thunders Parisian court

I support this 100%

France has the right to be forgotten - and the sooner, the better.

Amazon turns up spectacularly late to 'transparency' party, pours a large one

Other people who purchased Anthrax spores were also interested in...

Sun's out, guns out: Plucky Philae probot WAKES UP ... hits 'snooze'

Excellent work!

Full credit to the designers and builders. Mistreated, bounced a kilometre, frozen and subjected to all sorts of indignities and yet - it LIVES!

Hey kids, who wants to pwn a million BIOSes?

Therein lies the problem.

"They are just executables to be run through your patch management software like any other executable."

Flashing a new BIOS has just become too simple especially compared with the early days when you had to program a new EPROM and replace it on the motherboard. Of course in those days it was due to the available hardware rather than a need for security.

The advent of cheap flash memory has simplified updates to the point where they can occur without the user noticing anything untoward. The ability to flash needs to be restricted by a physical switch that the user has to place into 'maintenance' mode and then reset back to 'operation' mode. With both access and intent being necessary this is about as secure as things can get without being overcomplicated.

Wholesale price cap: Take THAT, BT, says (now toothy) Ofcom

When are Virgin going to be forced to open up access to their fibre? They obviously have a lot to spare judging from the amount of unwanted mail and dodgy advertising campaigns.

Belgium trolls France with bonkers new commemorative coin

Belgian coffers must be in a pretty poor state if 70,000 lots of 6 euros have any noticeable positive effect.

A 16 Petaflop Cray: The key to fantastic summer barbecues

Ensemble modeling builds forecasts that deliver a range of probable outcomes

A hundred megaquid to tell us it might rain tomorrow - or it might not.

EU: Explain your tax affairs. Google, Amazon, Facebook: Mmm... nah

Do what the energy companies do

Drop a highly inflated 'estimated' bill on them.

Soon your car won't let you drink. But it won't care if you're on the phone

Polo mints won't work

The IR will get through the hole. Tape a different brand of mint over the sensor.

Chips can kill: Official

More research is required...

...especially into the effects of the great British breakfast.

Just let me get on with it, OK?

Microsoft makes Skype beach body ready with web browser beta release

Not gonna work

How many hotels/cafes that don't have Skype preloaded are going to allow arbitrary plugins?

Dre-stic measures: Apple Beats retreat from iTunes brand – report

They're sticking with the 70/30 split

But now they want the 70.

Intellectual Ventures: Toshiba is violating our patent! Toshiba: What patent?

Re: About time...

I fail to see one iota of common sense. The USPTO just take the fee and grant the patent to any old shit and then rely on the likes of Toshiba to point out the invalidity. It should be down to the USPTO to perform the due diligence which may necessitate charging a higher fee but would go a long way to restoring at least a vestige of credibility to the system.

Your servers are underwater? Chill out – liquid's cool

This goes against conventional wisdom

Oil is for frying chips not cooling them.

We stand on the brink of global cyber war, warns encryption guru

Re: Just as well...

I always thought the Styrofoam came between the two bits of bread.