Posts by MAF

Boeing and subsidiary file trade secrets lawsuit against Virgin Galactic

Obligatory door comment

A key point in Virgins defence case - If we had stolen Boeings tech, the doors would have blown off by now....

Boeing top brass stand down amid safety turbulence

Always open

If you want to leave Boeing, the door is always open

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be coders, Jensen Huang warns

A little test

OK Jensen - we propose letting an AI run the Nuclear power plant near you (What could go wrong)

When you need a medical procedure to be performed on you, the Doctor will use an AI

You are not driving or flying anywhere without an AI at the controls

Surely no objections there. You must be willing and able to put your health, wealth and security

in the hands of this espoused AI utopia?

No? Then stop spouting this drivel....

Someone had to say it: Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches

Kill switch

Yes because Dr Chandras one for Hal 9000 worked soooo well....

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

Pun-ishment?

Report to the torturer for some time on the rack...

Our training programme is designed to stretch our employees.

How to deorbit the Chromebook... and repurpose it for innovators

USB GPIO

Like this one?

https://uk.pi-supply.com/products/ryanteck-rtk-gpio-pc-gpio-interface

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Fantasy Island

UK government will correctly specify, tender and implement (securely, on time with no cost overrun) a new NHS Patient data system overturning their track record on Government IT contracts (Oh and Capita & Palantir will not get the contract)

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

This is the Sway!

China reportedly bans iPhones from more government offices

Phones getting ubiquitous for work these days

Good luck with that ban....

2FA everywhere all expecting apps e.g. MS Orifics, Github.

Very soon will need to authenticate bathroom break using MS Authenticator so vitally important to remember phone

(and to charge it and not break it) to mis-quote Douglas Adams.

Passwords are so last Century....

Artemis I isn't just a test run – there's science to be done

Boldly going

Alexa, please activate the Emergency Medical Hologram.

Unable to comply, EMH not installed

Alexa, please install EMH

Unable to comply, insufficient storage available suggest you uninstall MS-Teams...

UK launches 'consultation' with EU over exclusion from science programs

Leave means leave

The "Project Fear" pidgeons are coming home to roost and the Government that campaigned for and got re-elected on the own goal that is Brexit are now trying to dictate the rules and access the benefits of a club that they are no longer a member of...

Horizon and previous EU Framework programmes were a big influx of funding to UK Science but never mind we got blue passports.

NASA wants nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030

Space 1999

Better get working on them Eagle Transporters for when things go south...

NASA will award contract for second lunar lander to a biz that's not SpaceX

Re: A second lunar lander? About #3

I regret that I have but one up-vote to give that post...

Lack shame? Fancy some festive Windows knitwear? We've got your back

Foss takeover

Forget C#!! Next year MS Windows knitwear should be Perl-based (Now that would have us in stitches)....

Junking orbital junk? The mind behind ASTRIAGraph database project hopes to 'make space transparent'

Hmm

Love the idea of a "Star rating" for kit sent into space.... "Oh my God it's full of stars"

NASA postpones spacewalk as it would be too much of a pain in the neck for astronaut

Pinched nerve in astronauts neck?

Damn those Vulcans!

UK spends £36m on 18 little 'bullet-proof' boats to protect Royal Navy assets

Usable in all weather

'cos you wouldn't want to not be able to use it somewhere wet (err like the sea...)

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

That kind of programming is a bit of a "hit or Ms" affair

I'll get my coat....

'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries

c2d2?

more like R2D2

Ruminate Rubbish Don't Deliver

Dratted 'housekeeping', eh? 150k+ records deleted off UK’s Police National Computer database

Error accessing drive a: Retry, abort or ignore?

The fact that it hasn't been fixed before it became a story makes me wonder if the plod have discovered the golden

Data Management rule: A back-up is NOT a back-up until you have tested restoring from it...

Newcastle University, neighbouring Northumbria hit by ransomware attacks

Re: Durham

MS are old hands at ransomware - but they just call it licensing...

Someone must be bricking it: UK govt website for first-time home buyers snapped up for £40,000 after left to expire

Don't underestimate the Ministry of puppetry

But because they probably can't spell as well as think, they'll probably try and register oxymoron, oxymoron, oxymoron & oxymoron just to be on the safe side - ka-ching!!

Ooo, a mystery bit of script! Seems legit. Let's see what happens when we run it

You can never idiot-proof anything

In his defence - Even if you called it "Do_not_run_this_script_it_will_totally_wipe_this_server.bat" there still exists a significant (in this case more than one aka all that is needed) proportion of the population who would run it....

I heard somebody say: Burn baby, burn – server inferno!

Re: "Yeah, but it's a dry heat"

No they're special. Treat them well.

Take them out for a trip in the woods....and leave them there.

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

Re: "justice and fairness"

See the Superman: Red Son DC Comic series...

You'll never select all and mark as read again after this tale of peril... Oh, who are we kidding? Of course you will

Makes a change from the usual hole that IT users dig themselves into...

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

Re: Or a Kryten icon...

Sonos is creating a Silicon heaven for it's products?

British Army down thousands of soldiers after outsourcing recruitment IT to Capita

Go traditional

They could just go traditional and set up shop in dark alleyways in places like Leith (Insert city here).

Rated PG for Press-gang...

Worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable and royalty-free: Amazon's Alexa NHS contract released

Re: Dead peoples health records

No the NHS Data privacy regulations protect living & dead patients and overarch the GDPR/DPA regs.

Christmas in tatters for Nottinghamshire tots after mayor tells them Santa's too busy

Ahem - Chairper-thingies to avoid any male-specific words FTFY

Bare-faced lies are a critical component in the tool belt of politics.

FTFY

20% of UK businesses would rather axe their contractors than deal with IR35 – survey

Or as HMRC says "Taxes shouldn't be taxing" - muppets

Thanks, Brexit. Tesla boss Elon Musk reveals Berlin as location for Euro Gigafactory

Please not the old Southampton chestnut...

https://infacts.org/eu-not-paying-uk-firms-outsource/

Remember the 1980s? Oversized shoulder pads, Metal Mickey and... sticky keyboards?

Re: Tobacco smoke

Working in the era of DecMates word-processing system used by our typing pool (That description is akin to carbon-dating). Yes, they smoked and drank at the keyboard and yes, their keyboards would stop working.

Would swap them for working keyboard and work on duff one. Shake it upside down to remove paper-clips, biscuit crumbs and staples (and once tinsel fragments!).

Most major mistake was to do a thorough job by infusing keyboard with Isoprop alcohol and watching in horror at the disgusting resultant yellow/orange nicotine solution draining out of the accursed device

Scariest thing about Halloween? HMRC and Defra systems still a risk to post-Brexit borders

Government message: Get ready for Brexit

Because we've done fsck-all on our side...

Conspiracy loons claim victory in Brighton and Hove as council rejects plans to build 5G masts

Re: Who cares?

I thought that they already had...

HP to hike upfront price of printer hardware as ink biz growth runs dry

Of course, it could result in people not buying HP at all

Posit:

Used to be expensive well-built printers with expensive consumables but cheap 3rd party ink/toner available & usable with ignorable nag-ware about

used/'counterfeit' consumables

Move to cheap nasty inexpensive hardware with expensive consumables with 'chips' to stop 3rd-party (until subverted by 3rd parties)

Now move to pricier cheap-to-make hardware with expensive consumables with another lock-out

Do they really believe that we just exist to transfer money from our wallets to theirs regardless?

Oracle demands $12K from network biz that doesn't use its software

12K - so that's what two Oracle licences...?

Thanks-thanks to TalkTalk teen hacker: UK cops' first auction of ill-gotten Bitcoin nets £240k

Who needs that much Bitcoin

It would be ironic if the buyer was a State that was paying off Ransomware criminals...

Scotiabank slammed for 'muppet-grade security' after internal source code and credentials spill onto open internet

Re: Mean Mr. Mustard

Worse yet, one of the positive things about Microsoft buying Github was that they changed the free tier to include unlimited private repos. So not an excuse even for cheap-skates...

The wheels on the bus go round and... Oh dear. Chancellor Sajid Javid unveils spending review

Re: His father was a bus driver?

Reading that (Javids aside) gave me this ear worm

Lonnie Donegon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Old_Man%27s_a_Dustman

Yes - it's those fun-loving Swedes...

https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-31-00-no-perks-for-swedish-mps

How about a show of some conviction in this initiative - take away their ministerial cars & issue each MP with a bus pass.

Let's see how they manage like the rest of us.

There are other countries where the politicians use public transport after all...

Another sign of the End Times: Free software guru Richard Stallman speaks at Microsoft HQ

Appropriate GB quote for this article?

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

The purple SIM of fail: Virgin Mobile punters left in the dark with batch of borked cards

Could it be that the new sims are just red sims with a case of the blues...?

I couldn't possibly tell you the computer's ID over the phone, I've been on A Course™

Moral: Never give your name

What's your name?

Don't tell him Pike!

Six-day cruise lies ahead for India's Chandrayaan-2 probe before the real lunar shenanigans begin

Several of the Apollo 3rd stages & LEM upper stages were lunar impacted.

Along with sensor packages near LEM lower stages they provided info about moon geological structure.

https://www.seeker.com/what-happened-to-all-the-saturn-v-rocket-stages-1768231080.html

Choc-a-block: AWS sues sales exec for legging it to Google Cloud. Yup, another bitter battle over non-compete clauses

If shoe were on other foot?

Additionally, if they dismiss an employee then they (AWS) ought to pay gardening leave for the period of the cause in addition to any redundancy package.

Also, an employment contract can be terminated by either party. Once the contract is terminated, surely any clause is null and void?

Oracle told to warp 9 out of court: Judge photon-torpedoes Big Red's Pentagon JEDI dream

Re: TWO Star Trek references??

Speed Standard by five

Blackburn ain't big enough for the both of us: Mr Creamy and Mr Whippy at the centre of new ice-cream war

Return to the Cold War days?