Posts by }{amis}{

'Last man standing in the floppy disk business' reckons his company has 4 years left

Re: Adapting new media?

I fitted one of these to a legasy warehouse control system about 10 yeas ago as far as i know its still running now : https://www.plrelectronics.com/floppy-disk-emulator/

Replaced several times but still live and kicking: Windows Forms updated for .NET 6.0

Re: Code like it's 1992!

There were WYSIWYG editors for html the problem is they all sucked, fire up an old copy of dreamweaver sometime and look at the code horror-show that it auto-creates when using its drag and drop features.

As a developer in both WPF and Winforms....

WPF is clearly the more capable framework but the problem is for the glorified spreadsheets that 95% of all business apps boils down to its massively bloated overkill.

WPF just cannot compete with how fast a simple form can be thrown together in winforms.

Microsoft, Google, Slack, Zoom et al struggling to deal with a spike in remote tools thanks to coronavirus

Re: Remote working hype cycle

Goldmine is a good analogy as the guys doing the dangerous digging work seldom get paid or treated well to this day the mining industry has a well-deserved crap reputation, gold mining especially.

Now Internet Society told to halt controversial .org sale… by its own advisory council: 'You misread the community mindset around dot-org'

Re: "this board already works in a very transparent way”

They already do the Matrix is a documentary ;-)

Re: "this board already works in a very transparent way”

I cant +1 this enough we are soo far past the point that Icant should have been dragged out behind the barn and shot!

Uncle Sam tells F-35B allies they'll have to fly the things a lot more if they want to help out around South China Sea

!!!

So far the B fleet is unable to meet its target of flying for 12 hours or more between critical failures.

The target (That it cant meet) is the equivalent to ~10 sorties please tell me this is not normal for a combat jet!

Somewhere, Google's financial bods are playing on repeat... What do you want from me? It's not how it used to be...

Re: Collateral Damage

Thats why the world needs more laws worded like gdpr as the max fine is calculated as 4% of the turnover of the financial group that the offinding orgnasition belongs to.

Are you, despite being a small company, part of a large group?

Tabletop battle-toys purveyor Games Workshop again warns of risks in Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP project

How Much??

So the Warlord titan is worth ~6k points how much does it cost to deploy the Dyanamics 365 DeathStar.

Facebook iOS app silently turns on your phone camera. Ah, relax – it's just a bug, lol!?

Apples Response

Given that apple has a long history of kicking apps out of the app store at not notice I have to wonder how the facebook app is still allowed?

Or is it just that the ones who have the gold make the rules?

Chemists bitten by Python scripts: How different OSes produced different results during test number-crunching

Re: Fixing the symptom…

You are assuming that "computational chemist" is an IT-focused degree, the computation they are focusing on in this kind of degree is the maths that happens behind the scenes.

I've had to clean code for these kinds of people a few times and their lack of experience and training in good code design is very evident.

I refer you to the inevitable xkcd :

xkcd 1531 "Code Quality"

UK ads watchdog bans Burger King Twitter jibe for condoning chucking milkshakes at politicians

Re: Eh?

I despise Farage but isn't narcissistic and self promoting asshat the definition of a politician??

After complaints over leaked Voice Assistant recordings, Google says: We hear you

Re: "It's clear that we fell short of our high standards..."

sell it to the highest bidder

this should read

Anyone who will give google even a sniff of an edge or has a $%1t law to silently demand any data they like.

UK.gov's smart meter cost-benefit analysis for 2019 goes big on cost, easy on the benefits

Re: In-House Displays

> Ah yes, I don't know anyone using these.

I have one the best use I've found for it is knowing when the oven is up to temp as the power demand drops.

>Me: "Fuck off. I'm not in."

>Me: "Smithers, release the hounds"

Me: Pull! Boom

Welsh police use of facial recog tech – it's so 'lawful', rules High Court

Re: How in the name of sweet beJesis is this legal?

Its the home office they regularly pull the rules out of their ass and if anyone dares to call them on it the trot our either :

A: But think of the childrennnnnnnnnnnnn

or

B: But Terrorism

While the papers froth over the implications of A or B they have the law changed to make their latest Knife in the heart of freedom Toy legal.

Class-action sueball flung at Capital One and GitHub over theft of 106 million folks' details

Chuck it all at the wall and see what sticks...

Given the appalling stuff that FB and others get away with hosting the action against Github is doomed,

Capital One on the other hand, is about to get a well-deserved thrashing.

Ther are no excuses for not properly configuring security on cloud resources it's been fingered for info leaks time and time again.

Who's for another trade war? Japan hits South Korea, Seoul survivor promises to retaliate

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo previously called on the two countries to bury the hatchet

Pot meet kettle!

Our hero returns home £500 richer thanks to senior dev's appalling security hygiene

you may ask why he had domain admin credentials

If you are dev in an smb a lot of the time you are both development and support at the same time, there are no excuses for hardcoding passwords though.

Personally with stuff like that a new account is created with minimal permissions for the code in question and the details dumped into the password database this takes me about 5 minutes to do.

New UK Home Sec invokes infosec nerd rage by calling for an end to end-to-end encryption

I am trying to work out if she is incompetent, easily lead, stupid, or evil.

Why do they have to be exclusive ill go with any or all of the above!

Official: Microsoft will take an axe to Skype for Business Online. Teams is your new normal

Re: Skype for Business

Compared to the old Avaya ip phone's it replaced here it's solid as a rock and easy to use, I would take it any day of the week over legacy telecoms systems.

Either way, the end of life is a pain in the arse I've just forwarded this article onto my boss to ruin his day.

Hey, Windows Insiders! Sorry about that whole 20H1 build thing. Won't happen again – honest

Re: Windows Insider programme has three (sometimes four) rings.

I hope it's not because the clowns in the Microsoft circus would be clones of pennywise!

Rust in peace: Memory bugs in C and C++ code cause security issues so Microsoft is considering alternatives once again

Re: Explain this to me, please

Semantic checkers exist and I am certain the Microsoft will be using them the problem is that there are a million ways to create one of these memory corruption errors and new ways of exploiting the are being found all the time.

Long story short its pretty much impossible at this time to do an automatic check that is certain.

Re: Eh?

Even with the best coders in the world, there will always be bugs the problem with c and c++ is they make these kinds of error really easy to make.

The idea behind languages like rust is you accept that mistakes happen and any performance hit you take is a worthwhile tradeoff for less debugging and reduce risk of these catastrophic bugs.

Hummmmm

As a long-time c bod, it looks like its time for me to hit the books and look into rust.

I'm told that its something of a brain @~%$, to begin with but really nice one you get your head around its memory and thread management model.

SpaceX reveals chain of events that caused the unplanned disassembly of Crew Dragon capsule

From a safe distance. In proper safety gear

I had to insert the obligatory xkcd for this comment.

xkcd What If Pressure Cooker

Also if you are mad enough to dare to explore fluorine / hypergloc chemistry or just want a good laugh take the time to read PDF: IGNITION! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

Flame icon for the toasty chemistry content ;-)

BOFH: On a sunny day like this one, the concrete dries so much more quickly

Just remember: memory's the second thing to go.

I thought it was the sex drive!

Yuge U-turn: Prez Trump walks back on Huawei ban... at least the tech sector seems to think so

Re: Credibility

Almost nill

You are giving the orange idiot far to much credit if you as me.

Millions of Windows Dell PCs need patching: Give-me-admin security gremlin found lurking in bundled support tool

Dell were really bad for bloating stuff

Tell me about it I had to swap about a pallet full of motherboards over when they had the capacitor bloating issue!

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/29/dell-problems-capacitors

We knew it was coming: Bureaucratic cockup triggers '6-month' delay of age verification block on porno in the UK

This was always May's toy

So I expect it will be quietly dropped by whoever wins the big hat.

Brave urges UK's data watchdog to join Ireland in probing claim Google adtech breaches GDPR

Re: Comical

Maybe I've had too much coffee this morning.

That's actually possible???

Blighty's online pr0n gatekeepers are begging for a regulatory beating, says digital rights org

Re: Bloody big state Tories

regards to direct state intervention in citizens personal/sex lives than even new Labour

Cough: ID Cards

Cough: RIPA

Cough: Laundy list of terrorism legislation

No government reduces oppression without a revolution first.

UK industry calls for delay of IR35 off-payroll tax rules to private sector

which the government says will cost some £1.3bn by 2023-24.

So the government recons IR35 will collect an extra £1.3bn in tax, but the tax office being blinkered bureaucrats won't take into account the fallout from IR35 has probably cost the government more than that already.

I cant see how gross effect of this crap kneejerk law can be anything but negative.

UK taxman spent six times more with AWS last year than cloud firm paid in corporation tax

Re: hmmmmmm

All that tax / profit going abroad along with jobs.

Some possible but not much, the U.K. is the worlds 5th largest economy and even a substantial recession likely wouldn't change that fact.

All companies exist to make a profit and that means being where your customers are.

The current problems with the internet giants stem from them exploiting loopholes debility written in the law under the assumption that any large company would employ lots of taxpayers, who would in turn fuel the economy with their wages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

TSB appoints new tech transformation chief cuz last tech transformation went really, really well

Good Luck

Cos your going to need it an a possibly a miracle or two to clean up that cess-pit.

Infosec bloke claims: Pornhub owner shafted me after I exposed gaping holes in its cartoon smut platform

MindGeek...

Yet more fuel for the stuff the age block get a VPN fire if you ask me.

Coverage concerns dog UK Emergency Services Network as boss admits scheme too ambitious

"the people running them – tend to optimism"

optimism?? is that what they are calling Colombian marching powder in Whitehall these days??

This is a sett-up! Mum catches badger feasting on contents of freezer

LOL

I had forgotten about Bodger and Badger quality programming ;-) these day's i get subject to Paw Patrol by my nephew Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg.

Re: Catflaps - let's drag this back to IT...

We had one of those it was great until we found our concussed cat laying outside the door, it had tried to run through the flap chased by someone else's mog and the reader was too slow to unlock!

Press 2 to make a bid: Troubled biz comms beast Avaya confirms fire sale

Not Suprised

Their software is crap in my experience it just feels like a cruder less stable Skype with a even worse DB on the back end, they wont be missed by me.

Home Office cops an earful for emergency network feck-ups - £3bn overbudget and 3 years late

up 49 per cent on first estimates.

I find it a depressing comment on the UK government when i saw 49% over-budget and thought "Only 49% that's better than most government IT projects"

Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register

Good Luck And have fun

Thank you for helping to make El Reg one of the brightest lights in tech journalism.

'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco

Re: Option extra why???

Is not the problem with this stuff that it the angle of attack is relative to the air the plane is in though rather than relative to gravity?

It's been very long time since i flew a Bulldog trainer in the ATC, but I'm pretty sure that part of the lectures on angle of attack was that it is possible to stall a aircraft when flying level relative to the ground under the right (really bad) atmospheric conditions?

Option extra why???

Why is what appears to be a soft gauge based on data the flight control system has to have an at cost optional extra!

UK taxman falls foul of GDPR, agrees to wipe 5 million voice recordings used to make biometric IDs

Its good progress in the right direction:

But does anyone think the police will ever clean up their disgusting abuses of biometric data??

Facebook: Yeah, we hoovered up 1.5 million email address books without permission. But it was an accident!

Here i fixed that for you

Facebook: Yeah, we hoovered up 1.5 million email address books without permission. But it was an accident! Our $%!t business as usual!

Brit Watchkeeper drone fell in the sea because blocked sensor made algorithms flip out

pitot probes

I wonder if any serious research is going into a successor to pitot probes the design dates back to the 1730s and seems to have a long and sordid relationship with air disasters in general :

Wiki : Pitot-static related disasters

Either Facebook is building yet another massive bit barn in Iowa, and doesn't want you to know about it....

every data centre job, there were five jobs supported elsewhere in the economy

Only 5 that's a pretty rubbish return, admittedly these kind of economic estimates are always cooked to hell and back.

Even a pork barrel employer like Airbus in the UK manages 6.9 and its not unusual to hear figures of 20:1 banded about.

PDF: THE IMPACT OF AIRBUS ON THE UK ECONOMY

A quick cup of coffee leaves production manager in fits and a cleaner in tears

Re: So...

It could be worse LIFE SUPPORT MACHINE IS UNPLUGGED BY CLEANER.

China responsible for just, oh, 20% of global semiconductor revenue in 2018, no biggie

Re: ¥653.2bn ???

Pretty much the entire Japanese character set was nicked from china much like English uses the Latin character sets.