Posts by clatters

Read America's insane draft crypto-borking law that no one's willing to admit they wrote

Don't dismiss this

just remember two other (idiots) Senators who issued a knee-jerk piece of complete shite to a stupid president who rushed this into law affecting the IT industry...

Sarbannes-Oxley.

Nuff said!

Send tortuous stand-up ‘nine-thirty’ meetings back to the dark ages

Re: RE an unlamented fragment of my past

With a £150 tax free donation from your limited company on such an annual event of course.

Thanks limited company, Hic.

TalkTalk confesses: Scammers have data about our engineers' visits to your home

Call Centre is operated by WIPRO

I understand the Call Centre is operated by WIPRO. I cannot verify this but if it is true, this fraud is of such piffling and minor nature compared to what WIPRO employees COULD achieve. They are back office call centre and system testers for most of our FTSE 100 companies. WORRY!!!!!!

Brits learning from the Continent? Authority, digi gov wheezes and the Autumn Statement

Pedant alert !!!!!!

I've spotted a flaw...

>>>>>>> Ofcom says 85 per cent of adults have internet access.

and

>>>>>>> For the self-assessment tax return filing season that ended last January,

>>>>>>> 85.5 per cent of individuals used the online service.

Leading me to think that 500,000 of us completed an online tax return through some other medium or version of the internet that nobody in the IT sector has heard about.

Also, even if it is "a rounding error" (love that one) then it shows that 100% of tax return completers use the service.

R

Dum dum dum - another cloud bites the dust (Adobe's photo cloud)

Re: Head in the Clouds or in the Sand

Excellent summary Loofted.

I was asked by some non-IT friends to explain the evolution of the cloud as they couldn't see how it evolved...

it's magic was one answer

but then I explained that in the beginning the hard disk sat inside their desktop PC making loud whirring noises. Then we had the LAN, then NAS/SAN and now we have the cloud. All we have done (us IT folk) is make the data more and more remote from the user/owner of the data.

Good idea huh?

Another old contractor

DS5: Vive la différence ... oh, and throw away the Citroën badge

The question then is, can a mass-market car maker move 'up market' in Europe?

Do you mean like Hitler’s favourite engine manufacturer, was famous for building motorbikes, then becoming what every tw@ in England now thinks is an excellent car.

Answer - YES - Bayerische Motoren Werke

Re: I'm reminded of the old C6

The latest C5's are based on the C6 chassis/floorplan. I have had one for two years and when parked next to the "old" C5 I owned, it is about 35cm longer.

And yes, they both have pneumatic suspension as they should.

As for falling apart, I have had absolutely no troubles apart from a split window washer reservoir in the old C5 and I have had 5 Citroens since my first which was an AMI 8 back in the day (four-pot horizontally opposed engine (just like a Porsche)). THAT'S A JOKE.

R

Trouble brewing as iThing coffee machine seems to be hackable

Re: Do NOT want

I have seen NEST working and it is quite clever in the way it controls the central heating. However, my IT and security part of my brain melted when it showed quite clearly in the web-page, the hours that the house was uninhabited and the general movements of the individual in the house. Best time to burgle the place would be Tuesday between 10:00 and 16:00. Save a few pennies on your heating and increase your contents insurance in subsequent years. Err!

TalkTalk boss: 'Customers think we're doing right thing after attack'

Re: Customers think TalkTalk is doing the right thing

Cuddles,

you are probably right, but having just suffered a 4.5 month (MONTH) argument with TalkCrap, to get anything like the speed I should get from my "upgraded" service (16MB achieved, as against 39 to 40 promised) I can say that I will probably stay with them.

REASON: apart from 2m of cable from the BT so-called "Master Socket" to the router, the wireless router itself and the digi-box-TV-fella, everything else is BT or our quality British broadcasters. Apart from the billing and the package offered, there is very little to chose between them.

BT - expensive and football mad (which I detest). Special offers which run out and cost a lot more.

Only evening and weekend calls free (TT is up to one hour). Cap on download volumes

Virgin - not available

Sky - see football comment and the fact that their customer service is as crap as TT

Plusnet - BT in drag

Cheers.

Ho hum, so I'll stick with the poor customer service as I don't intend to talk to them for years to come

Deutsche Bank to axe 'excessively complex' IT, slash 9,000 jobs

Re: Just sticking to systems with reasonable share in Europe...

How about adding WANG to the list.

Just wanted to think of you all reading the word wang.

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Press the ANY key

Er! Is is this big one on the front?

Top telematics: Black box helps driver swerve speeding fine

In the old days...

Back in the early days of the laser speed-gun, my now retired mate in the Met tried one of them to see how useful it was. Duly dispatched to K Divisions streets, he came back to the station and presented the Sergeant his findings. The best one was Mr O Tree. On explaining that the oak tree was travelling at 40 mph, the Sarge decided it was either the machine or my mate that was defective. Guess which one it was.

The device (for those of cynical nature - ie all of you reading this)

R

VW’s case of NOxious emissions: a tale of SMOKE and MIRRORS?

Re: Alltogether Now

I have to agree with Frenchie, let's keep in mind this is an IT magazine and we need to think like software developers.... It is not impossible for ALL the other manufacturers to purchase a VW Golf (say) take the plastic box off of the ECU and backwards engineer the code (I would if I was in the job). Five minutes later and you yell " hey, look at what those crafty fuckers have written here!!!! ".

So the only reason that all the rest have not "fessed up" is that they have something similar/the same.

Just a thought.

Two weeks of Windows 10: Just how is Microsoft doing?

Re: @ Clatters

Dear Mephistro. Have an up-vote. Made me chuckle

To DanceMan, Go for it. I updated my 80 year old Dad to Mint 17.1 on a brand spanking new wide-screen HP laptop three months ago and have had one "support" call in all that time. (regarding a message about Flash and Firefox - resolved).

His old Doze laptop will be wiped next week as he has not used it in three months. Me, well I've been on Mint since 15 and use the Cinnamon desktop. Simple, clean and efficient. And... undemanding just like an OS should be.

Pirate MEP: Microsoft's walled garden is no consumer pleasure park

Re: For blank-reg

Our friend is using Mint for which apt-get is the software manager. Other options exist, YUM, RPM YAST yawn.

For blank-reg

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest* dkms

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers <your userid>

Reboot to bring in the updated kernel

open virtualbox and click on "new" to load your version of Doze

USB (keyboard, mouse, etc) may need additional drivers which are obtained in the Doze session.

Takes about 30 minutes.

RTFM... http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html

Cheers, enjoy!

Cinnamon 2.6 – a Linux desktop for Windows XP refugees

Re: I'll stick with my MATE

dotdavid,

I understand about your in-laws not noticing a blue shield icon in the system tray, but I have just upgraded my 80 year-old dad to Mint 17.1 with Cinnamon. I handed him a cut down user guide and included a one-page set of details of the "Update Manager". Go to Update Manager > Edit > Preferences > Icons and do a screenshot of that pane and you have a nice easy guide for your relatives to follow. I also kept the vanilla settings so that the icons in the system tray are all monochrome so that the blue one stands out. Also worth thinking about is to set the update frequency to every 2 or 3 weeks.

Cheers, hope this helps.

Sherlock icon as this may need investigation... hee hee

Microsoft says its latest, dodgy Windows 10 build is good for (almost) everyone

Re: Nope nope nope nope nope

Agree 100%. My 80 year old dad said last month that "every time that update thing runs, it f*cks up the computer". He's an engineer so he is qualified to use these technical terms.

Solution, move him to Linux Mint.

The Imitation Game: Bringing Alan Turing's classified life to light

The real hero...

was Tommy Flowers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers,

He used his own money to build the first programmable computer and nobody recognises his work. Folk forever bang-on about Babbage building the first computer (he didn't as you all know) and the bleeding rediculous comment on Radio 4 last week was that "Ada Byron was the first programmer, despite the fact that there was no computers at that time", I kid you not, my wife and I (both in IT for decades) just laughed at this nonsense.

Cheers

Facebook-for-suits biz LinkedIn shares drop on weakened 2014 outlook

Re: Nothing unexpected

The only rule I have is to send LinkedIn cr*p to the delete box. I've also restricted (not removed as this is not possible) every communication from LinkedIn.

British Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing receives Royal pardon

What about the forgotten ones?

Going off track about the homosexual injustice etc, what about that chap - whats-his-name - Tommy Flowers - that's it. The guy who made the first electronic computer (at Bletchley) plus all the other unsung heroes who created our industry.

I saw some bilge on TV a few months ago which strongly implied that Microsoft and IBM created the PC and hence invented computing too. Aired on teh BBC - what an insult to history and the truth.

Merry Chrimbo one and all.

Code-busters lift RSA keys simply by listening to the noises a computer makes

Re: Back in the day

I've heard exactly these tunes from an IBM 360 when I were nobbut a lad, where the core resonated at different frequencies to produce sound. Younger readers should now Yahoo! or DuckDuckGo (trying to start a new trend here) "magnetic core"

Hey Linux newbie: If you've never had a taste, try perfect Petra ... mmm, smells like Mint 16

Just loaded Mint 16

Well, I have just loaded Mint 15 Cinnamon on both my laptops and I love it. Upgrade from scratch, reload /home and sort out my apps took about an hour and apart from my time-zone and WiFi password it was all done for me.

As for the queries above (Fonts naff, cannot do xxxx) try loading ttf-mscorefonts and looking in the Mint forum for solutions. RTFM + Google + Forum = you won't go wrong.

As for the Windows versus Linux (YAWN!!) and "what about the Newbies" comments, I have these controvertial thoughts... To go from Doze to Linux is difficult. To create an ISO image in Doze when you have not heard of an ISO image is not straightforward. Finding the right distro for your situation is fraught and confusing. To make the brave step from your beloved Windows version (because let's face it, that's all you've used up to now) to Linux of whatever version is not straightforward and is daunting.

How did I do it? I had help. Someone to steer me to the right (at the time) distro, to hand me the DVD and to tell me how to run a Live session (a fully functioning Linux system that does not touch your hard disk - a true "try before you buy") and then to instruct me loading a dual boot machine.

How would a Newbie really do this without help and leave the Windoze world behind unaided? It is like asking a 17 year-old to learn to drive by throwing him the keys and saying "off you go son. Keep the car between the kerbs and you won't go wrong" Doh!

Weird interview questions

A large car manufacturer based in Essex decided to interview me for a PM role on their recall system. They were trailing a new sexed-up HR process where a candidate met the team first and were then interviewed by an unrelated senior manager with the potential boss sitting in the room but not involved. All was going well, the lead dev exclaimed his surprise at meeting a PM who had also been a programmer. Buoyed with this thought I went into the interview, which went well. Then we get to the dreaded last question, the senior manager was in charge of "direct mail" - what we call junk mail. His question was "what is the last thing you would like to see coming through your letter-box?"

"A transit" I replied. No job offer was made!

DVLA declares J14 HAD on BU14 SHT and SL14 AGS

Two minutes of (ahem) "research" and I found these

WA14KER (WANKER)

for £1,599 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/howtobuy.html?plate=WA14%20KER&price=1599

PS51LAP (PISSFLAP)

for £250 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/buy.html?plate=PS51%20LAP&price=250

AA14NGE (MINGE)

for £399 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/howtobuy.html?plate=AA14%20NGE&price=399

AN14LLY (ANALLY)

for £399 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/howtobuy.html?plate=AN14%20LLY&price=399

DH11DOS (DILDOES)

for £399 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/buy.html?plate=DH11%20DOS&price=399

Hours of fun to be had...