Posts by Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese

Snopes.com asks for bailout amid dispute over who runs the site and collects ad dollars

Let me help

If they're short of a few quid I'll help them out. I'm about to get 35 million dollars from this Nigerian prince. It sounds dodgy but it must be genuine because he comes from The Internet.

I've got a verbal govt contract for Hyperloop, claims His Muskiness

I presume the "29 minute" journey will have 2 hours of security theatre and 30 minutes wait in baggage claim added to it?

Good point. There are quite a few long-ish distance UK journeys that I prefer to make by rail, or even road, rather the supposedly faster air travel option. Once you add in the faff-factors, high-speed travel is quite often not that fast overall

HMS Frigatey Mcfrigateface given her official name

Re: Ship names

I was reading an article earlier over on Slashdot, about a US Navy vessel which has been equipped with an operational laser gun. It all sounded quite impressive, apart from the fact that the vessel in question is called USS Ponce

Nearly three-quarters of convicted TV Licence non-payers are women

Not quite. The license is for the receipt of broadcast transmissions. You are quite at liberty to watch pre-recorded material or CCTV on your TV

Not just the tellybox stuff - it covers radio as well. In fact, I think it replaced and expanded the scope of the radio licence from days of yore.

Insert obligatory comment here about Radio 4 being worth the licence fee alone.

Jesus walks away after 7,000lb pipe van incident

Re: Jesus!

PS: Naming your kid Jesus is not cool, think of going through school being called Jesus and the constant "Jesus" jokes as an adult.

I'm sure they'd learn to turn the other cheek

UK.gov snaps on rubber gloves, prepares for mandatory porn checks

Re: Conjours up the image ...

A picture of Theresa May smiling beautifically.

That's guaranteed to kill the mood somewhat

Man facing $17.5m HPE fraud case has contempt sentence cut by Court of Appeal

Re: Automatic halving of sentence

It doesn't say if he was released outright or released on licence.

Truck spills slimy load all over Oregon road – drivers slip in eel slick

Re: Rules

That's a good rule. I'll add it to my list which is never to eat anything...

...that I can't spell

...that I can't pronounce

...that looks the same (or at least very similar) prepared & cooked to how it looked when it was alive

What can you do with adult VR, some bronze gears and a robotic thumb? On a Friday?

I'd not heard of that before - what a fascinating device. Have an upvote.

What did OVH learn from 24-hour outage? Water and servers do not mix

The system from Roubaix arrived at 4.30am with all the failed system's disks moved over by 6am. The system was fired up at 7am but, disaster, the data on the disks was still inaccessible. Dell EMC support was recontacted at 8am and an on-site visit arranged.

Interesting that support was recontacted. I would have thought that the procedure would be to check that data was accessible before leaving the scene, and so not need to be contacted again.

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

Re: Just sayin'

I've yet to see a monkey create a startup.

True,...but I've seen quite a few brought into senior management roles within well-established corporations.

'My dream job at Oracle left me homeless!' – A techie's relocation horror tale

Re: CrazyOldCatMan

coterminous - a most excellent word. I shall endeavour to use it in conversation.

Have an upvote

Virgin Media biz service goes TITSUP* across London

Surely councils would have a backup link(s) with another provider that would seamlessly fail over...

That level of resilience costs money - money which councils have precious little of. The majority of people aren't familiar with IT infrastructure redundancy models and the like, but they are familiar with council services.

That leaves the council with two options...

Option The First - close a few libraries and buy some redundant connections from another ISP. If something goes wrong (and it's still an *if*) the public don't directly see any benefit. Regardless of what happens, the public *do* see a reduction in services provided by their council.

Option The Second - use meager resources to keep existing services running. Cross fingers that you don't have problems with your one connection to the Internet. If you do, try and deflect blame onto the supplier (Virgin in this case, but it could equally well have been BT - both of which the public are fimiliar with, and don;t hold particularly high regard anyway)

DIY music veteran SoundCloud flounders, lays off 40% of staff

Headcount

SoundCloud employed 420 people.

Whenever I read stories about these big name tech companies who are making huge losses and.or laying off staff, I'm always perplexed by the scale of their operations.

Thinking about companies I have worked for...there was one who developed systems for big corporates, for deployment on a national scale, and marketed in the UK and worldwide. We did that with a staff of <100, including technical, sales, marketing, bean-counting, etc.

Obviously, I don't know the detail of what does on in a company such as SoundCloud, but a head count well in excess of 420 seems a lot for comapny which, so far as I can tell, just do one online service.

NASA: Bring on the asteroid, so we can chuck a fridge at it

William Perry

Never mind Bruce Willis - from the headline, I thought they meant...

this guy

One-third of Brit IT projects on track to fail

Well, colour me surprised

The real shocker for me here is that Capita were involved in the research project, and that seems to have been completed successfully

Oh my Word... Microsoft Office 365 unlatched after morning lockout

Re: Please explain to me ...

My thinking entirely.

On the face of it there's a lot to like about cloud but the availability issue is what puts me off. You're entirely at the mercy of a 3rd party to make something available, and when they let you down you're left completely bereft.

Robots will enable a sustainable grey economy

Re: Isolation

Video chat with their friends and a delivery driver turning up periodically along with a postman and milkman would do a great deal more for many isolated elderly than an autonomous vehicle taking them on a solitary trip to the last supermarket not to fall to the might of Amazon

I beg to differ - video chat is not a like-for-like replacement for social interaction with an actual human being.

Speaking from experience, my own father falls into the "lonely" category right now, having recently suffered the bereavement of my mother. He'd had someone by his side pretty much all day every day for something like 6 decades. With that gone, he feels very isolated.

Having only a few moments of human interaction with a milkman or postman each day is not enough, and to keep his sanity he travels to places where he can meet friends in person...just talking on the phone is not enough. Until you've felt lonely and isolated, you cannot imagine how soul-crushing it is to go for a entire 24 or 48 hour periods without seeing another human being.

Re: Hmm...

When I first read the headline, I took "grey economy" as meaning the shady, heading-towards-black market, for example I've heard the term "grey import" used for goods acquired cheaply from overseas from genuine manufacturer but sans warranty.

In the context of this article, I think "silver economy" (as in "silver surfer") might be a more appropriate term.

@Doctor Syntax

Thursdays Me take SWMBO to charity shop, collect her later

Yeah, I had that problem with mine for a while, but after a few weeks of persistence I finally found someone who was willing to take her off my hands.

123-reg resolves secure database access snafu

Someone who is technically savvy enough to read El Reg, but technically naïve enough to use 123-Reg for hosting services.

I'm a bit sad to see those two bits of the Venn diagram intersecting.

Mozilla dev and Curl inventor Daniel Stenberg denied travel to USA

Re: I think I've found the problem

Do we trust BA's IT not to screw things up?

To screw things up, the IT has to be running. Current form would indicate that there will be times when that question is moot.

Ride-snare: Lyft ruse helps cops cuff suspect in tech CEO murder case

Re: Timing

Makes a change from the usual 'murcan shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach

WannaCrypt blamed for speed camera reboot frenzy in Australia

Re: No internet, huh?

Quite a lot of cameras here (UK) still have film. There's one down the road from the office, and on my commute I quite often see a guy changing the film canister over.

Canadian sniper makes kill shot at distance of 3.5 KILOMETRES

Risk to the shooter

Article suggests that the sniper would be relatively safe, as target wouldn't have anything capable of firing back over that range. There is always the risk that there are other enemy troops closer to the sniper, so he needs to maintain cover to avoid giving away his position

1 - the round slows down during its journey

2 - total distance traveled is more than direct point-to-point (round going into the air with a curved path back down to target)

Research suggests UK consumers find 'fibre' advertising misleading

The differences between the types of service are quite simple really...

All-copper = data travels over copper line all the way to the premises. Service is provided by a large ISP who will make wild claims about unrealistic speeds and quality of service, while their "technical support" teams read from a script and their customer services treat you like dirt.

Fibre/copper = data travels over fibre optic line for most of the way, and then down a copper line from a local cabinet and into the premises for the final leg of the journey. Service is provided by a large ISP who will make wild claims about unrealistic speeds and quality of service, while their "technical support" teams read from a script and their customer services treat you like dirt.

All-fibre = data travels over fibre optic line all the way to the premises. Service is provided by a large ISP who will make wild claims about unrealistic speeds and quality of service, while their "technical support" teams read from a script and their customer services treat you like dirt.

I think that ought to clear that up.

Darkness to fall over North America from a total solar eclipse

Re: That diagram

Given the readership of El Reg, the inclusion of a diagram showing what an eclipse is seems a bit unnecessary. A map showing the area for this specific eclipse would have been far more appropriate

Tesla death smash probe: Neither driver nor autopilot saw the truck

Re: They still call it Autopilot?

Besides, it does more than an actual autopilot in a plane so...

And the autopilot in the plane has *way* more testing before being deployed for live use

Elon Musk reveals Mars colony rocket capable of bringing pizza joints to the red planet

Trip Advisor Review

After a long journey, my companions and I were ready for a meal, so we visited the Red Planet Pizzeria. Service was good, and food excellent. Not much atmosphere though.

Scottish govt mulled scrapping £178m car-crash IT system

Re: "the programme has not delivered value for money"

At least it was (relatively) cheap.

Sadly, in the longer term cheap != low cost

Hotheaded Brussels civil servants issued with cool warning: Leak

Re: Belgian "Beer"

Do you perchance mean the near frozen and tasteless gnats urine purveyed under the label "Lager"?

I strongly suspect that when Disgruntled Yank said "beer", they meant "beer", as in the alcoholic beverage that the Belgians arguably do better than anyone else in the world. I have visited a number of cafes in Bruges with beer menus listing literally hundreds of different beers...none of them a lager, and all of them superior to the likes of Stella Artois

Jaguar Land Rover ropes in Gorillaz to help it lure 5,000 'electronic wizards'

Connected cars are a growing market for tech companies and staffers alike danger as carmakers continue developing ever more in-depth infotainment packages, as well as semi-autonomous driving technology and vehicle control and monitoring systems with no consideration for cybersecurity.

FTFY

BA passengers caught in crossfire of Heathrow baggage meltdown

Re: Baggage load

Yes - systems that are in place are very complicated, and can deal with mind-boggling volumes of baggage to myriad destinations.

Trying to replace that with people in place of the machinery to maintain business as usual just isn't practical.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft's 'Ms Pac-Man beating AI' is more Automatic Idiot

Sematics

AI or not AI?

As other commentards have commentarded, what is being discussed here isn't really what we should expect AI to be, as the machine is pre-programmed with some material specific to the task in had (i.e. it is pre-taught how to learn within the context of a given task).

In that sense, what we're seeing probably quite well termed "artificial" intelligence.

Maybe the goal that we're ultimately chasing, i.e. the ability to learn without being pre-coached, might be better termed something else, such as "synthetic intelligence"?

Currys PC World given a spanking for misleading laptop savings ads

My last few machines*, generally high-spec, have come from PC Dixon's Curry World, for no real reason other than convenience.

As a professional techie, I always come away feeling a little bit dirty, but at least I have a new machine.

* apart from one, which came from Staples of all places

Fear the dentist? Strap on some nerd goggles

Re: More detail required?

A most witty response - possibly your crowning achievement

Damian Green now heads up UK Cabinet Office

with just over 2,000 staff, it is a relative minnow

When you consider how much some private sector companies can achieve with a much smaller headcount, you have to wonder about how efficient (or not) the department is.

Specsavers embraces Azure and AWS, recoils at Oracle's 'wow' factor

Subheading

Warms IBM Watson for patent data probe

"Patent" or "Patient"?

Should have gone to Specsavers

Hundreds stranded at Manchester Airport due to IT 'glitch'

Re: Check-in System?

If there is an issue with the check-in system, why are people already checked in being held up on the tarmac?

My guess* is that prior to takeoff, the plane crew get a list of passengers. If the system failed after check-in, but before the ground staff could print off the list, then there would be a hold up.

* I'll admit that I have no hands-on experience of such things, only as a passenger/observer, so my theory could be totally wrong

ICO seizes phones and computers in nuisance call scam raids

The ultimate threat

"Stop doing that, or else I'll tell you to stop doing that again"

Cabinet Office minister Gummer loses seat as Tory gamble backfires

Re: Well look on the bright side - @ Voland's Right Hand

[...] Provided Sinn Fein shows up.

I think it's fairly safe to assume they won't (I don't believe they ever have, so the number required to reach an overall majority is always 325 minus the number of Sinn Fein seats)

Golden handshakes of almost half a million at Wikimedia Foundation

Re: Why I don't donate to big charities

There are something like 250,000 registered charities in the UK, all no doubt doing equally good work for their own good causes. Why people feel the need act like lemmings and continue donating to the same "brand name" charities is beyond me !

The way I see it, "Charity" covers the following groups:

• Big name charities that lots of people donate to, and which raise money for good causes

  (sub-classifiable based on the ratio of income to directors' salaries)

• Less well-known charities, supported by a smaller number of people, which raise money for good causes

  (again, sub-classifiable as per the above)

• Organisations who wangle charitable status for themselves, so that they can avoid tax and/up bump up their income at HMRC's expense, but who only seek to raise money for themselves. The private schools example quoted above is a good example of such

Ex-MI5 boss: People ask, why didn't you follow all these people ... on your radar?

IRA

Drawing parallels with the IRA seems somewhat artificial to me. The IRA acted as a politically-motivated organisation with a clear goal, i.e. a united Ireland for the Irish.

The more recent terror operations seem a bit more open-ended, i.e. kill anyone who isn't one of us

Like a software engineering problem, it gets harder to work towards a tangible solution when the requirements are less well-defined

The biggest British Airways IT meltdown WTF: 200 systems in the critical path?

Re: Do any really large companies rip it all out and start again?

I can think of one project during my career which was a complete rip-out-and-replace exercise...

A company I contracted to had a large system which they'd built up from scratch. They got bought out by a much larger company, who had their own corporate standard system for such things, and within a short time a decree was issued that company #1's system should be replaced.

We then had a very long and drawn out project (actually it was more like a programme of projects) to do a migration.

To be fair, the outcome was what had been requested, but I don't think that the amount spent on the migration could be paid back in terms of tangible benefits (at least not for the company involved - personally I scored quite a bit of overtime and an end-of-project bonus which sorted me out with a new fitted kitchen)

'My PC needs to lose weight' says user with FAT filesystem

Windows 98

This comment makes me feel so old. A 10-year old kid using Windows 98 at school. I'd already been in industry for over a decade before Windows 98 became a thing. When I was at school it was all BBC Model Bs...after a while we got them connected with Econet and then were were able to access the single Winchester disk.

<sigh>

Pentagon trumpets successful mock-ICBM interception test

re-entry vehicle1)

1) Cutest alternative name for "nuclear warhead" ever.

It is cute, but I must admit that I've always preferred the term "bucket of instant sunshine"

I'll take the sandtrooper in white: Meet the rebel scum making Star Wars armour sets for a living

It's quite a while since I watched the original trilogy, but I can't recall there being any real differences between the stormtroopers in those films (not counting things like the snow troops from Empire and the speeder bike fellas from Jedi..or the dudes with the natty red get-up in Jedi). I'd always thought the differences didn't creep in until the Clones

‪WannaCry‬pt ransomware note likely written by Google Translate-using Chinese speakers

Re: More to the point

I'm not sure what value IP address would be. Seeing as the perp(s) are in the cybercrime game, it's highly likely there'd be some IP address spoofage going on.