Posts by PNGuinn

Sorry, Qualcomm, Apple – your patents don't scare us

Re: I do wonder, sometimes...

you mean a searoller???

Just WHY is the FBI so sure North Korea hacked Sony? NSA: *BLUSH*

Smokez and Mirrorz

So it wox the NSA wot didit. Stands to reazon gov.

THEY WANTZ SONYZ WORLD LEADING ROOTZ KITZ TECKERNOOLGIEZ.

Seriously, this whole thing is getting so unbelievable even the above is becoming remotely believable.

Get coding or you'll bounce email from new dot-thing domains

Re: Reality might suck for some people, but it's still reality.

In similar vein, why not internationalise air transport? Why shouldn't a <insert rare minority language> pilot be able to communicate in his own language with any control tower anywhere in the world? And shouldn't the tower be able to answer in its language of choice?

Silly example I know, but for some purposes (porpoises if you are from the big round cornered one) it is rather sensible to standardise for what is increasingly international communication.

Like it or not, English, for two reasons in particular, has become the international standard. Firstly, as a result of the British Empire and resultant trade it has been spread around the world over several centuries and become a de facto standard for international communication and secondly the spelling has sensibly cut out all the unnecessary extra characters and accents. (The Septics have helped somewhat in this process in killing a few dipthongs.)

In countries like India where there are so many local languages English as one of thes official languages is a positive advantage internally as well as externally.

Some idiot tried to invent an international language - Esperanto. I suspect more people are fluent in Klingon.

Seems to me, if there is a properly defined and accepted standard (I said standard not standards - good luck with that one) the coding is not a major problem. The potential confusion and resulting security risks are. I'll bet there are no solutions to that one. Do you really want to have yet another set of wackamole security patches to worry about?

No doubt some countries will want to do it, and probably ok internally if they have a sensible character set and the webmaster kills the confusion of all the others. Including English. I wonder how many sites would go for it?

Big Blue's biggest mainframe yet is the size of a fridge

Re: Stuff the specs

Personally I think it'd look better a battered blue with a blue lamp on top. Stick one in / up Dave's office. EXTERMINATE.

Spoken as a Tory.

Re: After the election comment

UGH - Cameron et al in the nuddie - I need MINDBLEACH - NOW

Re: Positioned as the badass mainframe to put in your office

Shirley its all about how you probe the tastebuds. And anyways the result should always be something not quite like tea

Would that be the nutri-matic version with built in drinks terminal and tastebud sensors?

TERROR in SPACE: ISS 'Nauts end panic by switching computer off and on again

I wonder what it was?

It'd be interseting to know if they are prepared to speculate what flipped the relevant bit. I guess there's significant shielding, and I assume this sort of thing is quite rare.

Or is the station toilet playing up again?

Icon in case that's the root cause.

Samsung's first Tizen smartphone is HERE ... by which we mean India

That seems excessively cheap for a high end phone..

...with such a superb high res screen too!

NOT.

I know Linux is good on low end kit, but 768Mb of ram and 4 GB of ram???

That must be a mighty small joy box.

OK at a decent price - say about 50 quid - and with none of the Sammy bloat, and full source code I might be interested -

if the thing was actually usable AND secure.

But I'd still want more ram and onboard storage.

Dreams.....

Roll on Puppy phone or Debian phone (without SYSTEMD PLEASE)

Personally, I'm watching Jolla / Sailfish.

Re: Tizen's dead...

In which case bb is deader then dead. Ok Sammy might get some useful tech and possibly a few patents but what would they want with BB's os? Add a load of extra crud and make it like their Andriod offerings? That'll go down really well with the remaining BB demographic.

You go fast, but we go 'further' and 'deeper' – Voda tells 'Speedy' EE

Not a recent one no - bloody vw in skirts. My old Favorit on the other hand - built like a tank, looks like a tank, sounds like a tank, drives like a tank (but blissfully comfortable with it), got the lugging ability of a tank - just keeps on taking the abuse my work gives it ... Mock 'em if you like, I'll be sad when I finally have to give up this one.

Microsoft patch batch pre-alerts now for paying customers ONLY

Wanted - Beta Testers

So - let me see if I've got this right. Microsoft want to cut through the clutter of defective patches. So ther're offering their most valued customers (ie the ones they think they can rip off the most) the fantastic opportunity to become paid (ie you pay us) beta testers.

GO!NADS.

El Reg - we need a bad joke icon.

Police radios will be KILLED soon – yet no one dares say 'Huawei'

Re: Drop in the Ocean

Facinating post. Wolld mean a lot more to me - and I'm seriously interested - If I knew what all those acronyms were. Hell, I doubt if i'd understand half of that post if it all referred to the uk. Any chance of pointing us on this side of the pond to some further reading?

Got to disagree with you on one point though - Global Warming's a bad example. The politicoes all generally KNOW its crap - but they also know its a good way of extracting pork, and more important frightening and controlling the population. Look at it this way - if your reputation is some significant number of orders of magnituge lower than the type of lice that don't get mentioned in polite company you need all the levers you can get.

Giving him the excuse to spend even more of the time he should be spending chasing criminals chasing a curser on the screen or trying to swipe the screen with his bullet proof gloves.

And in a somewhat less charitable frame of mind I seem to see Plastic Pleb trying to browse the net left handed while wobbling furiously over the pavement on his regulation issue silly bike with his right paw holding his mobile phone up his left lug.

Re: Options

Dolt.

I meant band III not band II.

Band II, FM, is the one we need to keep

Although those with greyer beards may well remember listening to the (unencrypted) plod in their cars on around 100 MHz. way back in the 60's. It was just the Beeb Beeb Ceeb on FM in those days. And yes, I can remember the Home Service, Light Programme and Third Programme. Seem to recall we still had the Archers, though. Oh ARRRrrrrrrrrrr....

Anyone else here old and sad enought to remember Walter Gabriel? I think that was the character's name. Poor sod never did get past the first ARRRrrrrrrrr before I turned him off. Always felt sorry for the bloke who had to cough his script.

Sorry - must get back to playing with my EF50s

Options

What about all or part of Band II? Seems to be a reasonable frequency band, probably sufficient bandwidth for the "extras", could be used together with the exiting TETRA band to give better coverage, Gets rid of a useless obsolete and unloved BBC project. What's not to like?

Or, if you want the prize for the biggest, wackiest cluster*k ever - give the whole contract to Orange to implement.

Yup, absolutely. With the NSA / GCHQ we know for sure. No Questions. No Doubts. All our data are belong .... and will eventually leak become public knowledge .... or so I'm told ....

Re: Why change the system?

Unless its the chief c*nstable's cat?

Peak Samsung: Bottom line walloped in Chinese mobe, slab war

Re: Consistency consistency ...

Ah - the Tesco Effect. They should try the Ratner Method.

Norks blame U.S. for TITSUP internet, unleash racist rant against Obama

Insults, Insults

Didn't we read recently that in a recent survey USians rated their politicians somewhere below headlice?

C'mon Kim baby you and your mates need learn some real grown up insults before you shoot your mouthes off. I seem to remember in your dad's day....

Come to think of it, either you yanks are particularly blessed with your politicos or you're just too polite. Looking at our lot on this side of the pond that's not the sort of lice that come immediately to mind.

Re: Explain!

Personally I think it should be seen as a gross insult to the monkeys. And the forests. And the bears who use them....

SEXY GOLD FireFOXY LADY hits Japan in transparent kimono today

Re: Reminds me a bit...

I first read that as "my old 'special edition' transparent plant-pot."

Bonsai mobe anyone?

Reg man confesses: I took my wife out to choose a laptop for Xmas. NOOOO

Re: If she likes the colour ...

From the point of tech support I'd hug the penguin any time. Provided the hardware is compatible - and think peripherals like borked gdi printers etc as well - it seems to just work (tm) nearly all the time.

Sod Itunes, sod Orifice. (And sod systemd while I'm at it. I don't need another stinking registry).

To be perfectly cynical - (who - me?) - If it's a distress purchase - and frankly if it's the likes of pcslum it has to be - why not another distress purchace to go with it? Grit your teeth and go to halfords and get a tin of cellulose spray paint. You could even try out the colour on the sales droid - he'd probably never notice. Mind you, your local gofaster shop would probably have a better range of colours, and you might even get a really good deal on a nice bright obsolete 1970s tint.

Personally, you'll prize my Asus EEE901 from my cold dead hands. In many ways those things are still ahead of their time. A bit thick to say the least by today's standards, but a very nice keyboard if your mits are not too big, superb matt screen, excellent battery life, enough grunt for some serious work, easily upgradeable, built like a tank ...

Got to agree with you though - if you're going to have to support it make sure you choose it.

Linus Torvalds releases Linux 3.18 as 3.17 wobbles

Re: Unknown source of kernel lock-ups?

No, that is NOT the point. This is a kernel released with a KNOWN IDENTIFIED BUG. If you do something affected by it USE ANOTHER. That's a decision for the user - include distro here. Most distros have a shrewd idea of their userbase.

The difference here is that if you don't like it or have problems you can use another kernel. Or distro. Just try stripping out the current kernel from, say win 8.x and shoehorning in the kernel from say win 7.y If you were able to do it even, I suspect MS would scream EULA at you, either via a nastygram or the system phoning home and killing itself.

I'm gusseing here - I dumped a certain commercial closed source os because of the unstable buggy sluggy (there - invented a new word just for you) piece of shite it was.

Clue:

Commercial closed system: Yeah, we know its full of bugs and some of 'em are nasty. WE NEED THE PORK. We'll release it anyway, make sure they have to buy it. If anyone finds a bug we may patch it if we know how or can be bothered. Or we'll call it a feature. or deny it and tell you (in the nicest possible way) to get stuffed.

Open Source: There are a lot of improvements here a lot of people need. There is an obscure bug we can't find that does not seem to affect a lot of people. We'll release now, making it clear what the problem is, people have a choice whether to use this or not. We'll keep looking. With it and the source out there the chances are the cause problem will come to light far more quickly as more people use it.

Being FREE has nothing to do with being buggy. Linus and the kernal team ain't perfect. Shock horror - they're probably not even the brightest people on the planet. They ARE bright enough to know that there are others out there who can read the code and contribute. That's why its OPEN.

Shock! Nork-grating flick The Interview WILL be in cinemas – Sony

Re: All a marketing stunt?

"... someone who loves the NK government more than Sony..."

You mean a substantial part of the thinking world then?

Doh! WikiLeaks' PDF viewer springs XSS vuln

MORONS

See Title. That is all

Hackers pop German steel mill, wreck furnace

Re: Why the fcuk...

"They simply can't be bothered even WHEN it inevitably happens"

There - corrected it for you.

Beencounters are generally NOT there to save the company money or even keep it afloat. They're there to massage their own pathetically self inflated opinions of their own importance and ability. For which they simply MUST grow their own empires.

Generally endowed with a limited ability to count beans in isolation, they usually have no inkling that there are many different kinds of beans, nor how these beans interact.

Good management will keep 'em locked - preferably chained - up in Beencounter Central, supervise how and what they are counting and very carefully analyse the "results".

Running a business takes business accumen and management skill. Skills beencounters generally don't have.

When the BCs start running the company its time to bale out. The result is inevitable.

Re: Why the fcuk...

If what you say is true, and I'm not for a moment suggesting it's not, (although by all the normal rules of sanity it OUGHT to be utter bx) it seems to me that some steel manufacturer has a mighty good case suing someone for providing a control system totally unfit for purpose.

Pass the Popcorn.

NUKE HACK fears prompt S Korea cyber-war exercise

Re: Sony haters looking pretty silly now.

So what if all the guff about silly movies about the Boy Wonder and releasing lots of personal info was just covering noise ... and what they REALLY wanted was Sony's world leading ROOTKIT TECHOILOGY????

Untangling .NET Core: Open source for Windows, Mac, Linux

Re: You like MS Products

Personally I think the Jury's still out on whether Elop was a trojan horse or just plain disfunctionally incompetent.

Personally I think being that daft would take a great deal of skill - but then MS seem to have had a uniquely successful training scheme in that arena. Have you considered that someone else might have been pulling his strings and then dropped the leash?

One day we may know the truth. In the meantime I'm glad Its not me on the jury locked away in a seedy hotel room over the weekend - I fear the verdict will be while coming - shortage of black helicopters, you know.

CoolReaper pre-installed malware creates backdoor on Chinese Androids

Image Analysis...

John - did YOU choose thst image? If so you need help.

If not - PLEASE find out who did and offer him / her / it some help - preferably with a cattle prod.

Seriously - I'm sure not everyone has unlimited bandwith to waste on Heroney Mouse on a bad day.

Goes like the blazes: Amazon Fire HDX 8.9 late 2014 edition

Re: HOW ****ING MUCH?

Ork! Ork!

Fish! Fish!

Clap! Clap! Ork! Clap! Fish! Ork!

Pirate Bay towed to oldpiratebay.org

NO, no and thrice no.

Disclaimer - I've never been to Pirate Bay nor am I interested in doing so.

However - the thought of letting the PURVEYORS of the copyrighted tat - ie the studios - having their closed source rootkit on my machine..... REMEMBER SONY!!!

Sorry lads - for some strange reason I DO NOT TRUST you - Or maybe I trust you only too well.

I'll just have to do without your tat. There are more rewarding things in life to do. Like watching meat rot.

Is there ANOTHER UNIVERSE headed BACKWARDS IN TIME?

Re: Ah!

"while the main 3 aim for popularism and the magic 'centre'"

If only the magic centre were a dirty great hungry black hole.

Slough isn't fit for humans now, says Amazon. We're going to Shoreditch

Re: SLOUGH - if despond - easily the worst place in Buckinghamshire ... or anywhere?

So - if I understand you correctly - you're saying that Slough is the orifice of the Bowels of Buckinghamshire.

Re: Sorry... BS...

Upvoted for the analogy!

... Come friendly hedghogs and get squashed in Slough ...

Brit gun nut builds working sniper rifle at home out of scrap metal

Memories...

That brings back memories of a year in the school cadets in the mid '60s!

Thoroughly enjoyed the article.

Firing off a .22 in the school range after school once a week.

Learning to strip, clean and put back together a .303, together with learning the names of all the bits. Carrying 'em on parade on a friday afternoon ...

A beautiful piece of engineering they were, but mighty heavy for 13 year old to lug around.

How times have changed - I remember lugging a .303 around the local forest one Saturday morning - no adults - just us lads.

Strange, almost emotional feeling ... maybe I'm starting to get old....

REVEALED: Titsup flight plan mainframe borks UK air traffic control

Which neatly describes why the terrorists have already won.

Only the inside exspurts who know (or think they know) are allowed to comment. Everyone else is a terrrorist. Trust us WE know best - Our freedom is important to us.

Bad flight plan?

"Invariably someone puts a flight plan wrong and it borks the system"

Seems that this is a fairly regular event then.

"If the same data goes into the backup server it will sometimes fall over on same processing problems, and start switching back and forth with the main server. When we get a switchover then the first thing that's usually done is to shut down the backup processor."

So the data doesn't ALWAYS bork the system then.

And the fix is to disable the backup system. Which is presumably there just for laughs??? WTF???

If this info El Reg has gotten hold of is correct then there is something more than rotten with both the software and the operating procedures here.

I wonder what other mischief - accidental or deliberate - could done with a "bad" data entry?

See Icon.

Web daddy Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Back off Putin, I'm no CIA stooge

Memo to Vlad:

Just don't try to piss off Linus.

UK flights CRIPPLED by system outage that shut ALL London airspace

Re: Pointless latest update

Breath of PENGUINS you dolt. Everyone knows a unicorn will BSOD if you just so much as look it in the eye.

Car-crash IT: HUGE write-off for Universal Credit - PAC

Re: A seven-foot drop is enough to snap the neck of an adult human

The Merkin method I believe.. Which is why when a US soldier was sentanced to death by the US military during the last war in the UK Pierpoint got the job.

Re: I was watching Yes Minister last night

The official Home Office table of drops is in Pierpoint's memoirs I believe. But has to be adjusted by the hangman according to the build of the condemned man.

Re: Dead, decomposed, blind....

Why?

Universal discredit?

A dead, decomposed blind person with a dead, decomposed guide dog could have seen this coming.

But IDS plays a mean pinball.

The future looks bright: Prepare to be dazzled by HDR telly tech

Agree with that - still happy with the 12 inch B & W we chucked over 30 years ago when we decided that the licence (B & W) wasn't worth renewing.

Re: Not convinced

No I don't think you're photophobic - learn a new term on the reg every day - I can drive all day in full sun, hate tinted glass and dark glasses, low sun does not bother me. But I think EVERYONE has their tv way too bright.

Re: I'll wait thanks

Which in this game means that it is at least 5 "standards" back down the road and there are now no "cheap" screens available using it.

Welcome to the brave new world of landfill tvs.

ps - Call for you. Last 2 dacades want a word. Black and white tv era is on holiday and will call you later

Your data: Stolen through PIXELS

So if You can flash new keys, why can't I?

'Cos I'm 'onest, gov, innit.

Govt spaffs £170k to develop the INTERNET OF SHEEP

I'll get my coat

In which case wouldn't it be better to call a VET rather than the aa?