Posts by WolfFan

Commonwealth Games brochure declares that England is now in Africa

Re: Well, if we're not in Europe any more...

Barbados, maybe. Antigua, probably not. Jamaica, hell no.

Re: Well, if we're not in Europe any more...

Oh and maybe a regional football tournament that we might win..

You don't want to be in North America. That'd put you in CONCACAF. You can beat Canada, everyone beats Canada, but the Mexicans will drop the hammer 'cause they're Mexicans and Englishmen look like Gringos to them, while the entire English-speaking Caribbean will line up for a chance to pound on England in Real Football(tm). The Yankees and most of Central America might be beatable, depending on how seriously they take the game. Honduras and El Salvador take it really seriously. Run away, run away.

Are you able to read this headline? Then you're not Julian Assange. His broadband is unplugged

Re: I almost feel sorry for Le Singe

There appears to be an XHamster lover loose on El Reg.

Re: I almost feel sorry for Le Singe

In the words of the Great John McAfee in the Greatest Single How To Uninstall video ever, no-one should have to use XHamster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg

P. S. I don't feel in the least bit sorry for Saint Jules. Not only should he have to use XHamster, he should have to use XHamster after it's been subjected to Japanese-style pixilation. Or he should only be allowed access to videos where all parties are wearing the Full Mormon Undergarment. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CqK2iKj3zjM/R13VXmDzmxI/AAAAAAAAANU/yxVu5mYJfmg/s1600/Mormon-garment.jpg

I predict that he'll bust out within 24 hours. That, or the female staff at the Embassy will go full Las Latinas Brava on him, with machetes.

Brit cloud slinger iomart goes TITSUP, knackers Virgin Trains, Parentpay

Re: sort of reminds me

Then they showed a slide of a (real)huge fiber cut that had probably a dozen or more carriers in the same pipe, I want to say the pipe or conduit was 1 to 2 feet wide buried in the ground.

Was that of the Really Big Cut(tm) near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel? The one caused by a gentleman with a very big backhoe and a very small brain? If it was, then the conduit was 18" in diameter and was made of reinforced concrete. It was Class IV or V, I think. See http://www.ncp-inc.com/price1.html for how much the stuff costs per foot. There were lots and lots of signs saying don't dig here, but he knew better.

Another day, another self-flying car pipe dream surfaces

Re: Obstacles

many such ferries are descendants of the US Army's DUKW 6x6 amphibious truck

And still as crap as they were first time round, to judge by serious and sometimes fatal incidents in Philadelphia, Arkansas, Seattle, Ontario, Liverpool and London.

In large part that is because the drivers of those things tend to behave as if it were a car on land, when it is a truck and if you don't treat it as a truck, there will be tears. On the water it's a boat with very low freeboard and a very low speed.

Military amphibious truck drivers get trained in first how to drive a truck and then how to drive a slow, small, boat with limited freeboard. If amphibious trucks are operated correctly, they are (relatively) safe. If they are treated as a car which floats, they are accidents waiting to happen. They have high centers of gravity when on land, which means they will roll. Fatalities have occurred when some amphibious trucks rolled. Fatalities have occurred when some amphibious trucks were used in heavy surf. Problems have occurred when amphibious trucks were used in the wrong conditions, such as when the ground is too muddy and soft for their wheels to gain traction, but isn't fluid enough to allow the vehicle to be used as a boat. Indirect fatalities have occurred, mostly due to the vehicle's operators doing something else stupid after being stupid enough to take the truck into conditions where it got stuck.

Re: Obstacles

Amphibious trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles have a specific military use: logistical support over both water and land. They're not so good at assaulting across water, as they lack armor and serious weapons, but once a beachhead is secure, they can move supplies and personnel over water and inland quite efficiently. Amphibious trucks also have specific civilian uses: number one is tourism in certain precise situations. There are amphibious trucks set up as passenger vehicles providing tours of places like the Everglades in Florida and sections of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Delaware. Number two is operating as ferries in more remote areas, where the military nature of the truck part becomes very useful. (many such ferries are descendants of the US Army's DUKW 6x6 amphibious truck, which saw duty in Europe starting in June 1944 and later in the Pacific and then in Korea and Vietnam.) Because of the heavy-duty truck systems, they can and will operate on very poor road surfaces. Number three is operating as emergency rescue vehicles for coastal, riverine, and such duties. Those vehicles can get to places where neither boats nor ordinary land vehicles, except for hovercraft, which are much more expensive, can go. Number four is as a vehicle for use in hunting in remote areas. They are expensive, but, like the rescue vehicles, can get into places that boats and ordinary land vehicles cannot.

Re: You know...

I've always wondered where you fit the starting handle on a flying pig...?

Depends. Is it a flying boar or a flying sow?

Breaking up is hard to do: Airbus, new bae Google and clinging on to Microsoft's 'solutions'

This particular naked animal says: keep your hands to yourself, shaved-ape-boy. Or they'll be removed. At the elbow.

https://www.deviantart.com/art/Angry-wolf-153-256202656

Former Google X bloke's startup unveils 'self flying' electric air taxi

Re: Achtung! Lawyers at 6 o'clock high!

There are these things called helicopters...

The number of people killed or very seriously injured by helicopter rotors is rather high. They're unsafe, too. Just not as unsafe as these things, helos have only two rotors, and usually the problem is with the tail rotor. These things have multiple fans, right next to the doors. They're an accident waiting to happen.

Re: Achtung! Lawyers at 6 o'clock high!

So tell me what is the procedure when a police helicopter has a problem?

Helicopters have rotor blades, not fans. If they are 100 metres or so above ground level, they can autorotate down, and can land in a semi-controlled manner. If they are 10 metres or less above ground level, they can land using ground effect in a rather less semi-controlled manner. If they are between roughly 10 and 100 metres, all aboard them are going to die. And they will take anyone underneath (who doesn't run away really fast) with them.

As for LiPo battery fires, how come SOP on an airliner when one of these catches is to pour water on it because corralling the thermal runaway takes priority?

Because the batteries on tablets, cell phones, and laptops are much smaller than the batteries in an electric aeroplane. Please. Please. Please, pour water on the battery of a burning electric car. Stand really close when you do it. You will see, briefly, exactly why this is Very Bad Idea.

Achtung! Lawyers at 6 o'clock high!

The lift fans are unsafe: no ducts. The propulsion fan is unsafe: no duct. The machine is unsafe: it's got a massive battery pack. The machine is unsafe: there is no way to safely exit it in flight (see unsafe lift and propulsion fans, with the propulsion fan being behind the passenger compartment. The machine is unsafe: it is designed for operation over an urban area. In the event of a problem, after the passengers are converted to cutlets by the fans, the machine will land on the heads of people on the ground, and the unsafe battery will short to ground, starting a nice little metal fire. (Hmm. Li-ion battery on fire. Remind the fire service to not use water to try to put that out.) The machine is unsafe: it has a pitiful range, so that it will be difficult for it to get outside of the urban area if there's a problem, unless the problem is early enough in the flight. The machine is unsafe: without a pilot it won't be operating in controlled airspace, which means low, ensuring the minimum margin for error.

Just write the settlement check now.

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'

Re: I see what happened here

Ms did some market research and found that Apple users actually like the fact that they only have one browser and can only install apps from the app store.

You should have done some research. Mac users can have a choice of browsers, including FireFox, Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome, and, of course, Lynx. Mac users can install software from multiple sources; Adobe and Microsoft software, for example is usually not available in the Apple app store. VLC was notoriously removed from the App Store after someone yapped about the license. I just downloaded the latest version from the VLC site.

iOS device users have limited choices in web browsers. FireFox on iOS is basically a special shell on top of the standard WebKit browser engine. iOS device users can only get apps from the App Store.

If you're going to compare Microsoft desktop systems to Apple systems, you really should compare to Apple desktop systems, or you look really silly.

A dog DNA database? You must be barking

Re: Anti-pun police

Probably.

Re: Waste of money.

That wasn't how Warren Zevon put it...

Re: It might help identify EU migrants

And, after ScotExit, Scottie Terriers. Though they tend to be self-identifying.

[exits, to the sound of pipes playing "Cock o' the North" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAcPTQR0zE]

Feh

None of this DNA nonsense. None of this checking to see which dog bit which sheep; sheep are, after all, born to be bitten. No, do it properly:

Reintroduce wolves into Great Britain. And bring a whole new meaning into 'running for public office'. I'm sure that I could sell tickets to the run-off. Think of how many sheep they could save this way.

Indeed, we could extend this and add editors of the Daily Mail to the run-off, too. After all, they seem to think that they're running the UK as it is.

From tomorrow, Google Chrome will block crud ads. Here's how it'll work

However, the ad business are *most* unhappy that Apple is starting to block cross-site tracking by default.

How sad. Too bad.

[exits, to the sound of 'Surfing Safari']

No, Windows 10 hasn’t beaten Windows 7’s market share. Not for sure, anyway

Re: "No in place updates for you!"

If the file system has been upgraded, you would need to re-format the disk anyway.

Not necessarily. Apple has form in changing the file system from under users without having to do a reformat. Back when they moved from HFS to HFS+, no format was required. They are currently moving from HFS+ to APFS, and again no format is required. MS can move from FAT to NTFS without formatting. I have no idea whether it's possible to go from NTFS to ReFS without a format. If I were running things at MS, I'd certainly try to get that done without a format if it were at all possible. Then again, if I were running things at MS there would be a lot of things done is radically different ways.

Who's using 2FA? Sweet FA. Less than 10% of Gmail users enable two-factor authentication

yes.

Brit film board proposed as overlord of online pr0nz age checks

Re: All of you have the wrong attitude

Bah. Turns out that there's prior art on this.

http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-07-26

It's still a great idea.

All of you have the wrong attitude

I see this as a perfect chance to have a Job For Life(tm). I hereby volunteer to be the one who searches the deep, dank, depths of the Internet looking for p0rn... and gets paid for it. I'd have to do a Proper British Job of it, of course, and go through every single website on the Internet, one at a time, inspecting them thoroughly and completely, before marking them as either p0rn-free or as filthy evil hives of scum and villainy. I figure that it'll take me at least an hour per site. Maybe two. Maybe even a whole day. Maybe a week, if the evil hive has enough villainy. I might need a few extra hard drives to store my research materials.

It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. And I thought of it first, so it's all mine.

El Reg, you can get listed as being p0rn-free if you promise me enough BOFH stories, and if you bring back the Sainted Ms. Bee(tm). Otherwise... scum and villainy, ahoy!

Put down the eggnog, it's Patch Tuesday: Fix Windows boxes ASAP

Re: "Put down the eggnog"

But years ago when we, for some reason, took a ferry from Dublin instead of Larne, we came across a promotion for it. The poor girl who was trying to organise it had a supply of those minuscule plastic thimbles they use for such occasions and was trying to ration it out. She ran into a gaggle of old dears from the back streets of Belfast

She tried to get between a bunch of Belfast biddies and free alcohol? Whatever was she thinking?

Google lies about click-fraud refunds and tried to destroy us – ad biz

Re: Conflicted Here

And even if it sounds like fun, an immoral act carried out against the devil himself might have consequences.

http://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?chapter=1#1997-08-25

Moral: don't spam Satan. Or threaten to neuter cute little bunnies who carry switchblades.

Brit banks told to publish details of major incidents that stop punters' payments

Re: El Reg: as a public service ...

How about maintaining a "financial" (and/or even ISP) TITSUP record page, maybe with bar charts of how many hours / days each of these occurs?

They'd get sued out of existence for slandering the guilty with the truth.

Hey, we've toned down the 'destroying society' shtick, Facebook insists

Re: facebook eventually imploding.

"PS : I have no social media accounts unless El Reg is considered as Social Media ??"

Ever since I first heard the term, probably around the time of Web 2.0 (though the term was probably around before that) I've considered usenet and mailing lists to be social media.

Many mailing lists and especially usenet are, always were, and always will be, anti-social media.

If you doubt this, visit talk.origins. Warning: the locals eat newbies, alive and screaming, for breakfast.

Android flaw lets attack code slip into signed apps

That soon? Are you sure?

Sloppy coding + huge PSD2 changes = Lots of late nights for banking devs next year

Re: "malicious actors"

More like Mel "I hate everything English" Gibson.

New Capita system has left British Army recruits unable to register online

Sigh

Re that pic: the three squaddies are standing way too close to each other. And the laddie on the left needs to pay attention to where he's pointing his weapon. (Assuming that you consider a SA80 to be an actual weapon. There are some who think that the last real rifle the British Army had was the SLR; others disagree, and point to the Short Magazine Lee Enfield. A few hold out for the SMLE Mk III*.) The laddie on the right really should be told that 'tis a chin strap, not a throat strap. Ah, well, at least they're not skylined, like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Band_of_Brothers,_101st_in_Iraq.jpg

Re the 'recruiting' software: they should just scrap the whole thing and do things the Right And Proper Way: assign the incoming Young Gentlemen to a platoon with a sergeant who's been in the Army longer than the Young Gentlemen have been alive, and have the sergeant teach 'em the Army Way. Respectfully, of course, with a 'Sir' as the first and last words in every command he gives them. ("Sir, if you stand close together at the top of a ridge you'll get everyone killed, sir. Let's stand further apart, sir. And let's do it a bit further down from the top, sir. ")

Finally, re Ledswinger: no, don't waste that lovely view on civil servants, get some use out of them instead. Target practice would be best.

YouTuber cements head inside microwave oven

Self-identify as a dog you say? Time to pay a little visit to the vet I think. snip snip.

Come on over here, monkey-boy, and try that. http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/growling-wolf-royalty-free-image/138699017?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect

Damn shaved apes, small ears, small nose, no fangs... and no sense.

Speak for yourself, I self-identify as a dog.

Cuz, you still hang out with those idiot shaved apes. Us wolves know better.

Meet the woman with a supernatural affinity for stiff lovers

Re: WTF???

You won't find devops in the star or tits in devops.

Trust me, there are lots of tits in devops.

O Christmas wreath, O Christmas wreath, thy potent skunk's in bunches

Re: A High holy day?

In some parishes, every Sunday is a high holy day, after the resident clergy finish off the communion wine...

The ultimate vendor lock-in: High school opens on Oracle campus

It's impossible to be unfair to Oracle.

Re: Catch 'em young...

<cough>'Give me a child until he is seven years old and I will give you the man' --Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus.</cough>

Who ever thought that Larry Ellison could find Jesus?

errm...

as the attached video shows, it ain't the helo (a Sikorsky SkyCrane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane which can't land on water) doing the water landing, it's the slung cargo under the helo (a boat) doing the landing.

Once again, UK doesn't rule out buying F-35A fighter jets

Banzai

Much better, they should have gone to the Japanese and had them build some carriers. And some cruisers and destroyers and frigates to escort them. And the airplanes and helos to fly from them, even if the Japs had to do the design work from scratch; I have great faith in the ability of Mitsubishi and their friends to get something workable out the door in a matter of months and at a reasonable price. It'd cost less than the two white elephants and their non-existent yet hugely expensive air wings, been done in a shorter time, and they'd have an actual fleet. And if the RN asked nicely enough, the Japs would allow British industry, such as it is, to build one or two more ships in Britain, to Japanese plans, with Japanese technical teams standing close by to correct the cock-ups and to take over when the inevitable strikes start. There's even precedent for this, about 100 years ago. The other way, to be sure, but that was back when Britannia ruled the waves.

[exits, to the tune of the Kimigayo]

Foil snack food bags make a decent Faraday cage, judge finds

Re: golf

Invented by Scotsmen so as to have something to do while waiting for a sheep to become available.

Yes, the tweed one, there's a nice lass.

Russians hear Tim Cook is gay, pull dead Steve Jobs' enormous erection

Re: Promoting sodomy?

Nah. Vice Admiral.

Stop us if you've heard this one: Russian hacker thrown in US slammer for $59m bank fraud

Re: Stop me if you've heard this one: Casual racism is rife on the Internet

1 you're oversensitive.

2 'Russian' isn't a 'race'.

3 you have made a total of 19 posts under this name since 3 Sept 2009. One wonders as to why you devoted over 5% of your output over eight years to this subject, one really does.

Dawn of The Planet of the Phablets in 2019 will see off smartphones

'big hands'

If current trends continue, poor Donnie Trump is going to have to abandon Android for iPhone... [sniff] Will no-one at Google or Samsung or even ZTE think of the small-handed? Sad!

doubt it

There are a lot of people. myself included, who like small form-factor phones and simply will not buy phones which are too large. Apple's 'plus' phones (6+, etc) are too large. Even the 6 and 7 and 8 and X are trending too large. Anything larger is simply not getting a sale here.

Crown Prosecution Service is coming for crooks' cryptocurrency

"Illegal goods are illegal goods, the law does not care who owns them now and they would still confiscate the cryptocurrency."

Does that mean that if a criminal bought a car from his ill-gotten gains, the police could demand that the car dealer hand over the money that was used to pay for the car? Could they chase around every shop the criminal bought something and demand the return of the money used for the purchases?

They could. They won't, it's far too much trouble, and would cause far too much ill-will among far too many people. But they could, if they really wanted to stick it to someone.

Night before Xmas and all through American Airlines, not a pilot was flying, thanks to this bug

the pic

Why is Santa on a MiG-19?

You mean Google updated its smartwatch OS and nobody noticed?

Re: Any recommendations for a solid, inexpensive Wear watch?

If you don't want to keep shelling out (or buying an Apple watch), then the highest technology you should ever have on your wrist carries the word "Casio" on it.

Damn right. [looks at Casio on wrist] I spent $20 on this three years ago. When the battery dies I'll just get a new one, it's cheaper and faster than figuring out how to open the back and then hunting down a new battery for it. The probability of my buying a smartwatch approaches zero quite closely.

Forget Sesame Street, scientists pretty much watched Big Bird evolve on Galápagos island

Re: So this 'Separate species' question

All of the Panthera cats (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars) can and will interbreed both in and out of captivity, though jaguars have a difficult time of stepping out with other cats due to the South Atlantic Ocean being in the way. Mostly it's due to male lions, who apparently will screw anything which holds still long enough. (Hmm. Sounds like some other males I know.) Male tigers are somewhat more circumspect, or at least less attractive to other kitties. Tigons (male tiger/female lion cross) and ligers (male lion/female tiger cross) are often fertile. Crosses with leopards and jaguars are much less so. Note that the biggest cats result from having a lion as the father; other kitties lack the gene complex that lionesses have which cuts back on the size, so ligers and litigons (tigons crossed with lions) tend to be really, really REALLY big cats. Here's a nice big house kitty: https://i.pinimg.com/474x/30/d9/25/30d925cf64948b1985e6ba75087d883f--ligers--years.jpg and here's daddy house kitty, son house kitty, and soon to be lunch: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b9/f1/e2/b9f1e2ca81aeebf28229b7445f82c5de.jpg

See, they're nice friendly kitties, just the thing for inviting into the house.

I like wolves. They're less likely to roll over you and crush you by 'accident'.

Back to the Fuchsia: The next 10 years of Android

Re: anarchic, fragmented, insecure, with a user base that lags far behind the latest code.

Those who have kitkat phones still are probably short of cash,and so have little choice but to buy an Android phone.

Nah. They bought a phone on the company approved list, none of which are cheapies. They just bought it a long time ago, and it still works, so they haven't replaced it. Given the lack of support on some phones, the approved list has been trimmed considerably. There are still Android phones on it, but not many.

Anyone who buys a phone on the approved list gets some company money towards paying for it, the exact amount depending on which phone. Anyone who buys a phone not on the approved list doesn't get to connect to the company network. We're not saying that users can't buy some $30 landfill Android phone running Honeycomb or Gingerbread or whatever. We're saying that if they do, they ain't connecting to this network.

Re: anarchic, fragmented, insecure, with a user base that lags far behind the latest code.

Look at the mess iOS has, where every new version of iOS is forced upon existing users of older devices, making them run slow and crappy, and forcing them into buying new hardware upgrades.. I'm glad Android manufacturers only do full version upgrades when it makes technical sense to do so.. Sorry if that doesn't fit with the hidden agenda.

Interesting. My iPhone 6 is an older model, dating from 2014. It has the latest version of iOS: 11.1.2. I haven't noticed it being particularly slow or crappy. Several people around here have iPhone 5Ss. They don't seem slow or crappy under 11.x either. Indeed, this was the opinion of the folks at Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/ios-11-on-the-iphone-5s-slower-but-not-quite-slow/ Please note that the time increases shown for loading various things are in fractions of a second, except for loading Maps where it's a whole second, and cold-booting the phone, where it's 12 whole seconds. You may feel that this is 'slow and crappy', but John Public does not. Especially as John Public doesn't reboot the phone very often, usually only when there's an upgrade to the OS requiring a boot. Hmm. I guess that John Public would be rebooting iPhone 5Ss more often than Android phones, 'cause Android phones rarely get updates while iPhones get them often. Some people, however, are willing to live with a 12 second delay once a month in exchange for upgraded systems. YMMV.

It used to be that upgrading the OS could slow down iPhones mightily, as noted in the same Ars Tech article cited above. Those times have, it would seem, passed. In the meantime, Android remains fragmented as many vendors simply do not upgrade devices. This site https://data.apteligent.com/ios/ shows market share for versions of iOS. 97% of the userbase is on iOS 9, 10, and 11, with a massive 66% on 10. If devs ignore 9 and below, they are selling to 84% of the market. Meanwhile over at Android, that picture changes: https://data.apteligent.com/android/ Just look at that mess. Given the security updates in later versions of Android, it's really disgraceful that so many users are still on known problematic versions of Android.

Google may patch as far back as KitKat, but some people here are still on Android phones with KitKat, and have never received an update of any kind. Many of them will be updating their phones. Few will be updating to newer Android phones.

How is 55 Cancri e like a Sisters of Mercy gig? Astroboffins: It has atmosphere

Re: How is 55 Cancri e like a Sisters of Mercy gig?

It's full of dry ice, weird tectonic rumblings and barely moving ancient lifeforms.

So it's the Editorial Board at the Times, is it?

iPhone X: Bargain! You've just bagged yourself a cheap AR device

It rather depends on what you're watching. I have a TV which had 3D, almost as an afterthought. It wasn't hyped up, it was just there, along with the HDMI ports, the coax port, the VGI port, and the USB ports. They didn't make a big deal out of any of them, except to point out that there were three HMDI ports, and even that was subdued. I occasionally watch 3D content on the TV. Certain movies simply look better in 3D; the last few minutes of Rogue One, for example, with Anakin Skywalker slaughtering rebs left and right, is pretty good in 2D but is magnificent in 3D.