Posts by CliveS

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now: Brexit tea towel says it'll just be the gigabit broadband

Re: Song reference

>You know - the one with the bit of toilet humour elided from the remastered version..

Don't think David (now Dee) Palmer will be giving it a bit of a shake these days...

>The person who wrote that now famous tweet was a remain campaigner, just so you know.

Really? @ColinBrowning44 describes himself as "One of the 17.4 #Brexiteer" on his twitter profile. Spend 5 minutes reading his tweets and then come back and tell us all whether you still think he was a remain campaigner. As an aside, he seems to have a massive downer on cyclists too. You can start with his tweets from 31st Jan;

Had you said that the queue Colin experienced was unrelated to Brexit then you'd have made a valid point, but to claim he was a remain campaigner is more than a little hard to believe. Unless, of course, you have some evidence you'd care to share...

Re: Who needs Tea Towels when you can have Jack Boots?

Excellent. Craig's a good man and needs all the support we can give him. The fact that he still speaks out in spite of the crap flung at him over the years by the FCO, Uzbek oligarchs and lawyers is a tribute to hist determination.

Private equity ponies up £2m to help launch satellites from sunny Shetland by next year

Re: Ideal

>>i predict that when we, eventually, launch IndyRef2 Project Fear 2 will threaten to bomb our sat sites just like they threatened to bomb our airfields last time.

>Citation?

Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, back in March 2012. The former Conservative Lord Advocate and Solicitor General stated that in the event of Scotland becoming independent, then were a hostile power to gain access to the runways at Glasgow and Edinburgh airports, England would have no alternative than to bomb the airports.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13050305.english-would-bomb-our-airports/

Severe vuln in WordPress plugin Profile Builder would happily hand anyone the keys to your kingdom

Re: "submit input on form fields that didn't exist in the actual form"

A couple of points. In fact, thinking about it, three points...

1. Check the definition of hyperbole in your dictionary.

2. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. As long as there are new users making new installs, there will be new ways that things go wrong. To all intents and purposes Wordpress is, from a gestalt perspective, an open ended system.

3. For infinity to be a larger number that you claim I think it to be, first share your definitions of "infinity" and "number".

Re: "submit input on form fields that didn't exist in the actual form"

With more than 55,000 plugins, a ludicrous number of themes, and nearly 400,000 lines of code, the opportunities for screws are almost infinite. In fact it is more amazing that there aren't more vulnerabilities identified...

Re: CMS 101

"as the site is up its the fault of the IT department for any fowl up."

That glorious moment when the chickens come home to roost.

Okay, okay, I'll get my coat...

German scientists, Black Knights and the birthplace of British rocketry

Re: German scientists, Black Knights and the birthplace of British rocketry

"I wonder what a follow-on to Black Arrow would have looked like"

You might want to check out Black Prince. It would have had a first stage based on Blue Streak (LOx/Kerosene), Black Arrow (HTP/Kerosene) as second stage, and a third stage based on a solid fuel rocket. When the project was cancelled, the Blue Streak first stage was re-purposed for the first stage of the Europa launch system from EDOL (predecessor to ESA).

Re: Science Museum exhibit from a few years back

Bloodhound Mk2 could go from Mach 1 to Mach 2.5 is about 4 seconds, and hit Mach 1 in its own length, so let's assume acceleration is constant from launch to Mach 2.5.

Mach 1 is 340m/s at sea level, and Mach 2.5 is 850m/s. Bloodhound could achieve that in 4s which would give rate of acceleration of 127.5m/s/s or approximately 13G. Which is pretty much equivalent to typical launch escape systems for manned rockets.

Re: German scientists, Black Knights and the birthplace of British rocketry

"so much potential was scrapped on an apparent government whim"

In the 60s and 70s the UK was a bit of an economic basket case. The Pound had been devalued in 1967, and successive Conservative and Labour governments had failed to halt the decline. At the same time that Black Arrow was being cancelled, Rolls Royce was being bailed out by the government due to the number of defence-related commitments RR had. So money was tight and many projects had to be axed. It didn't help the British space programme that prior to the cancellation of Black Arrow, NASA had offered to launch British satellite payloads for free, an offer that was revoked once the cancellation was announced.

Been to High Downs a few times, and I share your sense of anger and frustration. That Britain is the only nation to have developed a satellite launch capability and then walked away is an ignominious record...

Pack your bags! NASA's latest exoplanet hunter satellite finds its first Earth-sized world in a habitable zone – and it's only 100 light years away

Schuyler "Sky" Haussmann aka "H" from Redemption Ark? It was a stand-in who was crucified on Sky's Edge rather than Haussmann himself.

Take Sajid Javid's comments on IR35 UK contractor rules with a bucket of salt, warns tax guru

Re: There's an elephant you're ignoring

There is so much wrong with that comment that it's hard to know where to begin. Simpler to identify the only reasonable, honest and factual elements. i.e.

"This is not a normal election"

and

"Boris is awful"

The rest is just unsubstantiated and refutable bollocks.

Oracle finally responds to wage discrimination claims… by suing US Department of Labor

Re: Ok...ok...

"I'm going to get ripped apart for this but..."

You are going to, so why continue?

"I don't want to sound like a twat"

Oh, I don't think you're being hard enough on yourself, you're going beyond mere twat-like behaviour. Try reading the article and understand the investigation and analysis done by third parties. Nothing arbitrary about it. One can but hope that you're never in a position to define hiring policy.

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

It's a digital replacement for an offset printer, so not just a colour laser on steroids, but more of an integrated, high volume, high quality print publication system. Presumably the idea was to save document publication costs in the long run by bringing the process in house. As if document publication is a core function of a government.

As pressure builds over .org sell-off, internet governance bodies fall back into familiar pattern: Silence

Re: Any word who trousers the cash?

"RPI= Retail Price Index, aka 'inflation'"

Not to be confused with CPI = Consumer Price Index aka 'inflation'. Or WPI = Wholesale Price Index aka 'inflation'. Perhaps its successor PPI = Producer Price Indices?

CPI excludes housing costs and is a geometric mean rather than RPIs arithmetic mean. CPI also tends to be lower than RPI, which is why the government links payments to CPI and receipts to RPI to ensure that increases in what is pays out increases at a lower rate than what it takes in.

PSA: You are now in the timeline where Facebook and pals are torn a new one by, er, Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen

Re: Using your free speech to limit other people's free speech?

"Invoking Hitler is exactly the case in point. You can be all high-and-mighty in hindsight, but I don't recall that "start a major war that kills millions, and exterminate parts of the populace" was front and centre of his election propaganda."

If you think that, then I'd suggest you look at Nazi propaganda from 1933 onwards. Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was introduced in July 1933 forced sterilization of "genetic undesirables" and was boosted by a substantial propaganda campaign; a vast amount was directed at forcibly reversing the Versailles Treaty losses; demonisation of Jews and other "undesirables" really kicked off in support of the Nuremburg Laws of 1935.

"The point of being really evil is that people don't notice until it's far too late."

One word, Kristallnacht.

Re: the UK will go to the polls amid ongoing disinformation efforts supported by foreign powers

"Given the politically biased fact checkers such as Labour's The Insider, FullFact and the BBC's Reality Check"

I'd agree with The Insider (obviously, you'd have to be pretty dense not to notice insider.labour.org.uk) and - to a lesser extent - Reality Check (generally leaning to the right), but what's your evidence for FullFact's political bias? That some of it's funding comes from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, or the Esme Fairbairn Foundation? Perhaps "Journalist" Enza Ferreri's "articles (she's actually Press Officer for Liberty GB, a bunch of right wing, Christian counter-jihadists (seriously, that's how they describe themselves)).

"You'll be telling me next that Friday's Question Time was fairly moderated and had no Labour Party activists planted in the audience."

I don't know about Labour Party plants, but Ryan Jacobz is a Conservative Party activist for East Yorkshire Conservatives who keeps cropping up on Question Time (30/11/2017, 20/04/2018, 31/01/2019, 23/11/2019) wearing the same (or similar, he may have a wardrobe full of them) shirt. Also registered (along with Mark "Gammon" Francois) a subsequently rejected complaint regarding Jeremy Corbyn and undeclared expenses. So at least one Tory plant.

Part of me should probably be glad that the Conservatives appear so obviously shit at this, from the inept editing of the Starmer interview, the twitter rebrand, or the ease of spotting Tory plants on Question Time. But the ineptitude of some of their actions suggests that they genuinely hold a proportion of the electorate in such contempt that they feel they can get away with this. And - more depressingly - based on what I see locally, they're right, a lot of people are that gullible.

Close the windows, it's coming through the walls: Copper Cthulu invades Dabbsy's living room

More importantly, are the cables squamous and rugose because it sounds like they've been run through the walls in a non-Euclidian manner?

The eagle has handed.... scientists a serious text message bill after flying through Iran, Pakistan

Re: My Favourite Birds

"I was horrified and got out my car to beat him up. He said, "What? Do you want some of them?" as he was gathering them up."

I seem to recall that it is illegal to eat roadkill unless you can prove that you didn't kill it. Not sure what the punishment would be, and how you'd provide proof, though perhaps dashcam footage could help with the latter.

Re: what a journey!

Gwalior is a city in Madhya Pradesh, India, and thus extremely unlikely to fly in to Mordor to rescue Frodo and Sam. Not to be confused with Gwaihir, lord of the eagles of Middle Earth and descendant of Thorondor, mightiest of all birds of the First Age of Middle Earth.

As for simply flying in to Mordor with the Ring, there's a good reason why that was never an option. The Great Eagles, serve Manwë, Lord of the Valar. After the War of Wrath in Morgoth (Sauron's former boss) was overthrown, a large chunk of Middle Earth, Beleriand, was totally trashed leaving only the Blue Mountains at the extreme west of Middle Earth. The destruction was so great that the Valar decided that any future intervention would be indirect, and that salvation for Middle Earth would have to come from its own people. The Istari (of whom Gandalf and Saruman were members) were Maiar (lesser forms of "angel) were sent to Middle Earth to inspire and encourage, but not to act directly as leaders. And the Great Eagles flying the Ringbearer to Mount Doom would be direct involvement by the Valar and thus verboten under their own rules.

Mine's the one with the entirety of Tolkien's legendarium in the extremely large pockets

US games company Blizzard kowtows to Beijing by banning gamer who dared to bring up Hong Kong

Re: couls gamers care less, really?

"Those middle agers are divorced three times (amazing they got married to begin with), living in their mommas basements again, hiding from child support mayments. ya, afraid of them truths you are"

This one is over 50, still married after 23 years to their first wife, living in a house they own mortgage free, with two children at university, and a 30+ year career in IT. Maybe *you* should consider coming out from under the bridge, growing a pair and not hiding behind AC (and your momma's skirts). You might discover a broad and diverse world if you opened your eyes, rather than remaining a contemptible, blinkered fool

Google sounds the alarm over Android flaw being exploited in the wild, possibly by NSO

"do not download any apps from untrusted sources"

What, such as the Google Play Store which has repeatedly been found to be hosting malware and other dodgy apps:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/09/google_play_store_malware_onto_9m_droids/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/31/google_play_app_deletion_data/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/15/malware_outbreak_googles_play_store/

Nominet continues milking .uk registry cash cow with 4 per cent price rise for... what exactly?

Re: 5 members agreeing on prices via a quasi trade body?

Will draft my own complaint this evening, but would urge all concerned Commentards to also lodge a complaint.

The place to start is here:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tell-the-cma-about-a-competition-or-market-problem

Hacker House shoved under UK Parliament's spotlight following Boris Johnson funding allegs

Re: "an offshore company"

I believe the word you're looking for is "allegedly"...

First water world exoplanet spotted – and thankfully no sign of Kevin Costner, rejoice!

Re: Thank you!

"How many rods, poles or perches is that?"

6.314x10e18 rods, poles or perches or, to be more accurate, 1.164x10e16 Devon Fatbergs

Fairphone 3 stripped to the modular essentials: Glue? What glue?

Daughter had a Galaxy S5 where the USB port broke.

SpaceX didn't move sat out of impending smash doom because it 'didn't see ESA's messages'

Re: correct me 'cause i am sure i am wrong

I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's peanuts compared to space.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Re: Inaccurate

"For a year now they've voted down every single option, often several times."

Effectively May's deal voted down three times, After Dominic Grieve's amendment giving Parliament a vote passed on 13th December 2017. As a consequence, the First Meaningful vote on May's deal was scheduled for 11th December 2018 before being delayed until 15th January 2019. It was voted down. The Second Meaningful vote was on the 12th March 2019. It was voted down. The "No Deal" (Spelman) Bill passed on the 13th March 2019. On the same day the Malthouse Compromise was voted down by the Speaker's casting vote. We had the A50 Extension vote on the 14th March, followed by the Beckett and Letwin Amendments on the 25th March. On the 27th March we had the first round of Indicative Votes, one of which - The Customs Union proposed by Ken Clarke - was defeated by a mere 6 votes. Then the Third Meaningful vote on the 29th March at which May's deal was rejected for a third time. The second round of Indicative Votes occured on the 1st April, at which the Custom Union proposal fell short by only 3 votes. The third round of indicative votes were scuppered when the Cooper-Letwin Bill was defeated by a single vote on the 3rd April.

And that's it. Three votes on May's deal in two and a half months (15th Jan - 29th March), and 2 rounds of indicative votes in a week (27th March - 1st April). So you're wrong, Parliament hasn't voted every option down for a year. In the space of 3 months they voted May's option down three times, and were given only two opportunities to try and find a consensus that could command a majority.

That's not a failure of Parliament, that's a failure of the Conservative government to find a deal acceptable to Parliament or to amend the deal in light of its first defeat. You can't complain about Parliament failing to achieve in 2 days what the Government had failed to achieve in 2 years.

Re: About Time

Only if you ignore the 20+ agreements between the EU and the US that regulate specific areas of trade between them.

http://ec.europa.eu/world/agreements/searchByCountryAndContinent.do?countryId=6063&countryName=United%20States%20of%20America&countryFlag=treaties

Re: Inaccurate

Except he didn't refuse to comment. In one of the televised leadership debates he said:

"I think colleagues really are starting to come together, they are thinking about this in a very mature and sober way.

"I'm not attracted to archaic devices like proroguing.

"Let's get this thing done as proud members of a representative democracy that asked the people of this country a question, that received a very clear answer, promised faithfully to put that answer into effect - and now we've got to do it."

That was barely 3 months ago.

"ParLIARment have had three years to debate Brexit"

They debated the referendum as part of the 2015 Queen's Speech and the European Union Referendum Act[ in December 2015. But that was the enabling legislation, rather than the nature of Brexit after the referendum result was declared.

In terms of debating Brexit, it wasn't until December 2016 that Parliament debated the invoking of Article 50, the bill to support this receiving Royal Assent in March 2017. At that point Parliament, business and representatives of various sectors (health, business, agriculture, etc) should have all been engaged in the process of drawing up what was wanted from a deal, and what would be the minimum acceptable position. Instead one T. May, former Conservative Prime Minister decided to do her way. Parliament didn't get to participate until she brought her negotiated deal to the House late in 2018. So Parliament was effectively excluded from the process for the best part of two years. And now Johnson is trying to shut Parliament out again.

The failure has been on the part of David Cameron who used the referendum to try and resolve decades old divisions in his party and sideline the UKIP threat with no consideration of the possibility of losing. And on the part of Theresa May who took a majority in the House, threw it away and still persisted in ignoring the opportunities to find a national consensus. And now we have Boris Johnson trying to further marginalise Parliament.

We are in the current mess because of the ongoing failure of consecutive Conservative Prime Ministers. Point the finger of blame and opprobrium at the Tory Party before you cast blame upon Parliament.

One person's harmless japery can be another's night of LaserJet Lego

Ah. So you're a masochist on a diet, are you?

People of Britain: You know that you're not locked into using the same ISP forever, right?

Re: Tip for VM customers - go business

300MBs from Virgin or 18MBs via FTTC (via lousy aluminium cable dating back to the 70s for the circuitous 1.5km to the cabinet which is a mere 250m as the crow flies) is a no brainer. Business broadband from Virgin at £30 with a guaranteed SLA (48 hours, but the only time there was an issue they were already fixing it when I rang), guaranteed compensation, and decent customer service (compared to their residential service).

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

Re: Parasitic weight

"add a disposable escape tower system like the Boeing capsule has."

Pretty sure the Boeing CST 100 Starliner uses a similar approach as that adopted by SpaceX for the Dragon. It's the Orion capsule (Lockheed/EADS) that has a escape tower.

Queen Elizabeth has a soggy bottom: No, the £3.1bn aircraft carrier, what the hell did you think we meant?

Re: Spurious, Curious

Yup, the gun was slung between two ruddy great girders which ran parallel to the barrel. There was about 10 degrees of traverse each side of the centre line, aka 2 shades of bugger all. They could also only be fired at between 22 and 45 degrees of elevation in order to spread the load. HMS General Wolfe holds the record for the greatest range at which a Royal Navy vessel has ever engaged an enemy target, which was a railway bridge near Ostende at a range of 33km or 1500 brontosauruses.

Re: Spurious, Curious

"(I haven't a clue what happened to the 18" ones from Furious)"

One ended up on HMS Lord Clive and one on HMS General Wolfe - both Lord Clive class monitors. The third was to have been fitted to another of the class, HMS Prince Eugene, but the war ended before work could be completed. After the war all three were used for testing purposes at Shoeburyness and Yantlet before being scrapped, two in 1933 and the third - lined down to 16" - in 1947.

Re: There it is...!

"The turbines use superheated steam, FYI."

No they don't. QE has 2 Rolls-Royce Marine Trent 30 gas turbine generator units producing 36MW, and 4 Wartsila diesel generator units (2 x 9MW and 2 x 11MW). The 3-phase electricity generated is used to power 4 GE induction motors (2 per shaft).

So no steam other than that from the kett;es, showers, coffee machines, and any irate crew members.

SQL Server 2008 finally shuffles into the home for retired relational databases

Ilya, you've been touting this line around various forums for years now. I remember you claiming that Amazon, Google, Ebay, Oracle, etc, were obsolete and will soon be out of business years ago. Why don't you build this excellent product that you keep eulogising about, and then see who comes knocking to make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice?

You're not Boeing to believe this, but... Another deadly 737 Max control bug found

"It may even be that 737 MAX has “inherited” some certs from its “predecessors” (same airframe?)..."

Boeing has relied on Grandfather Rights for the 737-Max and earlier developments. The fundamental certification for the 737-Max dates back to the original certification issued in 1967. That's a 50 year old certificate of airworthiness being applied to a plane that is fundamentally different to that originally certified by an FAA that is today effectively a different organisation. All in the interests of saving money.

We've Falcon caught it! SpaceX finally nets a fairing half after a successful Heavy launch

Re: "the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You"

The "Gravitas" ship names were a running joke within the Culture. They were the result of another Involved civilisation which complained that such powerful and intellectually advanced beings as the Culture ship-minds should give themselves names with a bit more gravitas in light of their near-godlike powers. At least one Culture shipyard decided to give all its ships names on the "gravitas" theme, such as "Stood Far Back When The Gravitas Was Handed Out" or "Gravitas... Gravitas... No, Don't Help Me, I'll Get It In A Moment" or even "Absolutely No You-No-What". As I recall, Iain had a list of 20 or 30 "Gravitas" names.

"Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall" appears as a GSV in Look to Windward, and a GCU in Matter, and provided the inspiration for SpaceX's latest drone ship.

Re: "the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You"

Given the subject matter and recent results, perhaps the CGU: Only Slightly Bent might also be appropriate.

Re: "the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You"

Of Course I Still Love You is a GCU (General Contact Unit) spacecraft from Iain M Banks' Culture novel, The Player of Games. Elon is a big fan, which is why both SpaceX autonomous drone ships are named after Culture vessels.

ALIS through the looking glass: F-35 fighter jet's slurpware nearly made buyers pull out – report

Re: Dreadnought of the skies

"so fantastically expensive that in war you probably daren't ever venture outside Scapa Flow in case you lose one"

Dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy were involved in several engagements in the North Sea between December 1914 (Scarborough) and August 1916 (after which the Germans abandoned the idea of using the High Seas Fleet and switched almost exclusively to submarine and torpedo boat actions).

In the Mediterranean the Austro-Hungarian and Italian navies did mostly keep their capital ships in port, mainly because there wasn't much to do with them. For these nations, possession of Dreadnought class vessels more more from national pride than any strategic requirement. Austro-Hungary did lose one of its dreadnoughts during an attempted surprise attack on Otranto in 1918.

Russian dreadnoughts saw action in the Black Sea on several occasions between 1914 and 1917.

French dreadnoughts operated in the Mediterranean throughout WWI, as convoy escorts and as enforcing a blockade on the Adriatic.

United States dreadnoughts also saw service, with both Florida-class ships seeing service on Atlantic convoy escort duties and alongside the British Grand Fleet.

It wasn't the cost and risk of losing them that was the issue, so much as the limited range of applications for dreadnoughts. 99% of the time they were overkill.

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

Re: Joking aside, it's a reminder we should be on the moon ...

"Talk about strong negotiating position!"

It worked for the Loonies when negotiating with the Federated Nations. Let's just hope it isn't built in secret in the region of Mare Undarum..

(icon for what happens when Loonies throw rocks at Cheyenne Mountain)

It's official! The Register is fake news… according to .uk overlord Nominet. Just a few problems with that claim, though

Re: The problem with "fake news"...

"Great Britain includes England, Wales & Scotland but not Northern Ireland, which is on the island of Ireland (together with the Republic of Ireland)."

I guess that depends on whether - in this context - Great Britain is used geographically to refer to the island, or politically to refer to the entity formerly known as the Kingdom of Great Britain, but officially Great Britain.

If Scotland leaves the UK, then politically it would no longer be a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. However the United Kingdom would still exist, albeit as the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland. As for poor old Wales, their existence as an independent kingdom effectively came to an end when Edward I defeated Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282.

I took a look at that piece of snivelling sophistry from Howarth, and note that, just like Nominet itself, there is no way for anyone to leave a response as commenting is disabled.. Tosser.

That magical super material Apple hopes will hit backspace on its keyboard woes? Nylon

WD-40 is a brand. And in addition to their original multi-use product, they also do a contact cleaner...

https://wd40.co.uk/specialist/fast-drying-contact-cleaner/

Let's make laptops from radium. How's that for planned obsolescence?

Re: Paper Milk Straws

If you hear a noise with your milk and your bowl,

It must be the ten-thirty Humphrey patrol.

In slippers with pom-poms for creeping about,

Watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out, there's a Humphrey about!

One Hundred Humphreys soft as silk,

Off on their search for your Unigate milk.

Get extra pintas or you'll be without,

Watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out, there's a Humphrey about!

The 70s, when ads were real ads...

Taylor drift: Finally, a use for AI emerges? Cyber-smut star films fsck-flick in Tesla with Autopilot, warns: 'I wouldn't recommend it'

Re: Peeks or perks?

Filth, sir, pure and unadulterated filth. You should be proud of yourself...

Brit Parliament online orifice overwhelmed by Brexit bashers

Re: @AC

"Since the default legal outcome now is to leave then the gov is in a binding position."

That may not actually be the case...

https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2019/03/19/no-deal-brexit-may-be-unlawful-a-view-from-rose-slowe/