Posts by agurney

ReactOS 0.4.11 makes great strides towards running Windows apps without the Windows

Re: sneering

noun: sneering

1. the action of ....

<sneer> not a noun then... </sneer>

Watchdog asks UK.gov to reissue freedom of information guidance after councils are told to STFU about Brexit plans

Re: This is going to be embarrassing

..oh wait, no there are some plans - everyone's booked vacations abroad in April ..

No, holidays will be taken in March .. after that we'll be limited to only a couple of bottles of wine duty free. (at least the anomaly of it being cheaper for me to drive from Scotland and buy my whisky in Spain will go away)

Granddaddy of the DIY repair generation John Haynes has loosened his last nut

Re: I lost a spanner

I've always use Haynes manuals as guidance rather than gospel, though religiously buying one for every "new" purchase of a car or motorbike - they invariably paid for themselves after a few months of buying someone else's problems.

I didn't lose a spanner, but found a dropped and lost screwdriver after a few years that had fallen between the radiator and fan (1960s or 70s mini, escort or transit van .. memory's a bit dim). The acrylic handle had been polished to 45 degrees and was a spit away from causing <shudder> grief </shudder>.

The Iceman cometh, his smartwatch told the cops: Hitman jailed after gizmo links him to Brit gangland slayings

Re: "Massey died in a fusillade of bullets"

Don't the Scots, Welsh and Norn'rish get a look in?

The rules are different in Scotland & NI

Begone, Demon Internet: Vodafone to shutter old-school pioneer ISP

Re: And another old name is discarded...

Demon as I knew it died years ago - I remember a colleage migrating to ADSL to keep his static IP, and having no end of problems.

One of the conditions when I upgraded my Demon dialup to ADSL was that I lost the static public IP address.

Wanted – have you seen this MAC address: f8:e0:79:af:57:eb? German cops appeal for logs in bomb probe

Re: I guess plod IQ problems are universal...

I stay by my original assessment. Das Plod is either fumbling the ball here or there is something else at work like f.e. a grey import with reflashed numbers.

I'd suggest not fumbling, just looking for more evidence .. e.g. to correlate with other potential perps; they may have the device but not the operator; see where else they've been (physically, and on t'Internet), and so on.

MAC not used to connect to mobile network...

The article suggested the device was probably a Motorola smartphone, in which case it has both IMEI and MAC. As has been noted, the manufacturer should be able to link the IMEI and MAC, and a bit of poking around phone records should then turn up an IMSI if it is a smartphone .. but the authorities are well aware of that (according to anecdotes the presenter gave us on a UMTS training course back in the day).

Apple blew my mind – literally, says woman: MagSafe plug sparked face-torching blaze, lawsuit claims

Re: Her Lawyer quite obviously studied chemistry in the US education system

The mask itself, likely made from a plastic polymer of some sort, would be a fine ignition source.

The ignition source would have been the spark, the fuel would have been her hair and face. Ouch.

Techie basks in praise for restoring workforce email (by stopping his scripting sh!tshow)

Re: Recursion is difficult

It was a dark and stormy night, and the Captain said to Antonio "Antonio tell us a tale"; so, Antonio told us a tale, and it went like this:

"It was a dark and stormy night, and the Captain said to Antonio "Antonio tell us a tale"; so, Antonio told us a tale, and it went like this:" ..

Holy moley! The amp, kelvin and kilogram will never be the same again

Re: @A.P. Veening Economists - In 1889?

Why not the keel too, it's heavier than led. There was one well known and quite successful French yachtsman who had a keel of uranium in his offshore racing yacht for that reason.

I trust you mean denser. A kilo of lead is far heavier than a gram of uranium.

Bright spark dev irons out light interference

Re: Have you ever put something apparently useless to good use?

Nope, downvote for OP and downvote for you as well. Misuse of apostrophe is the only crime I'll countenance flogging for...

I'm surprised you didn't give up at the first sentence ..

".. our weekly column of reader’s technical triumphs.

Watch closely as NASA deploys the world's biggest parachute at supersonic speeds

Re: Astounding

If you watch the video carefully, in the multi-screen view, you can see that the 'chute as a rip!

The multi-screen view shows the tests from the 1970s.

Florida man won't be compelled to reveal iPhone passcode, yet

"I assume they want to find out if he was using the phone at the time of the crash."

They could get that from telco records.

Sorry friends, I'm afraid I just can't quite afford the Bitcoin to stop that vid from leaking everywhere

Re: Discworld never developed an equivalent of the internet?

The clacks in Going Postal.

It good to see that El Reg is keeping the X-Clacks-Overhead going.

Convenient switch hides an inconvenient truth

Re: a bit thin?

or fortnight tea (two week)

UK.gov finally adds Galileo and Copernicus to the Brexit divorce bill

Re: TL;DR

The only possible way to get unfucked is to hold a second referendum

No, just the change the interpretation of the first one .. require, for example, that 40% of the electorate be in favour of leaving before accepting that as the will of the people. It worked for Thatcher in the 70s.

Whisky business: Uni of Edinburgh servers Irn-Scru'd by cyber-attack

Re: Scottish college?

"Edinburgh University. The clue is in the name. Heathens."

Wrong. From the Uni's website:

"The University of Edinburgh's academic structure is based on three Colleges containing a total of 20 Schools."

- College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

- College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine

- College of Science & Engineering

[ and, of course, with three colleges it means the apostrophe is in the wrong place "..the Scottish college's websites and wireless network gateways are down ]

Chinese hotel chain warns of massive customer data theft

"Real culprit here is the hotel group for holding onto data long after it was needed."

Nope. Under China's cybersecurity laws, hotels are obliged to keep information about guests.

Experimental 'insult bot' gets out of hand during unsupervised weekend

Re: Scotland wide

"Local holidays in Scotland have nothing to do with bank holidays. Scottish bank holidays are Scotland wide."

you would think so, but it's not that simple as Banks in Scotland do not always close on Scottish bank holidays, and neither are they statutory holidays.

"So what's the story about the two different holidays? "

Pragmatism.

In England, everyone's on holiday on the same day, everything's shut and the roads are gridlocked as everyone tries to head to the beach.

Holidays in Scotland are staggered, so, for example, Glasgow's on holiday but, say, Paisley isn't, meaning the day trippers have somewhere to spend their cash, the load on the popular destinations is spread over a few weeks, and the roads aren't as congested as much of the country is still working a 9-5.

There are a few downsides, for example if you work in an area that has different holidays to a child's school.

Wasted worker wasps wanna know – oi! – who are you looking at?

Re: Wasps

Until a couple of days ago I had a football-sized wasps' nest outside the house, however the wasps haven't been a problem and they seemed to be doing a good job of removing aphids. I was wondering about how to remove the nest but a family of sparrows tore it to shreds and the wasps have all but vanished.

I take a bit more care of drinking outdoors ever since a few years ago I took a swig from a can that contained a wasp; it stung the back of my tongue, but fortunately I don't have a bad reaction so it was just a painful surprise rather than anything more serious.

The off-brand 'military-grade' x86 processors, in the library, with the root-granting 'backdoor'

back to the future

...which hit the market in the early to mid-2000s.

..so, somewhere between 2000 and 2500 (or 2050)?

Early experiment in mass email ends with mad dash across office to unplug mail gateway

Avoch (Och (as in Loch, not Lock) ), Milngavie (Mull-GUY) and Footdee (Fitty) are regular causes of confusion up here.

US-China trade war is back on: White House repeats threat to tax Middle Kingdom imports

Re: Lunatic

Is it a coincidence that the moon's full?

Chief EU negotiator tells UK to let souped-up data adequacy dream die

The paltry 2% leave got should never have been enough to trigger this clusterfuck.

That didn't work for the Scottish independence referendum in 1979.

Around 52% of the voters supported the proposal, however Margaret Thatcher had determined that at least 40% of the electorate had to vote yes for it to progress .. so of course it didn't.

If only Cameron had taken a leaf out of the Iron Lady's book we wouldn't be where we are today.

Car-crash television: 'Excuse me ma'am, do you speak English?' 'Yes I do,' replies AMD's CEO

Re: F1 is a Car Crash

I stopped watching when it started costing £500 a year to watch live on UK TV.

F1 is live and free-to-air on German Eurosport (Astra 19.2E) .

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

Re: and also Ahh sub folders Ahh, parents

"directors reports/finial reports/

Do they have pilaster reports too?"

Of course, spreadsheets are full of columns.

Uber self-driving car death riddle: Was LIDAR blind spot to blame?

Re: "...a [Lidar] blind spot low to the ground all around the car."

Being mounted on the roof, the Lidar's blind spot is smaller than the driver's.

Office junior had one job: Tearing perforated bits off tractor-feed dot matrix printer paper

Re: out of paper!

That reminds me of the embarrassing blunder I made at a new job in the 1980s.

I was looking through a database on a Friday afternoon and spotted something interesting so sent it to the print queue. I arrived Monday morning to find several boxes of wide line printer paper on my desk .. I'd somehow managed to dump the entire database. I still have a few hundred sheets for old times sake.

WordPress is now 30 per cent of the web, daylight second

Re: Wordpress is NOT a CMS

"Nowadays the security vulnerabilities come from the plugins, not the Wordpress core. "

Really? I setup a generic Wordpress site in a dusty corner of a sandbox, and it wasn't long before it acquired the knack of displaying unwanted crud.

AI racks up insane high scores after finding bug in ancient video game

Re: Not the real thing

The BBC's article has the following:

"Rather than the original, the researchers used an updated version of the game, and seven others, to make it easier for their AI creation to try out different strategies."

Remember the Yorkie pizza horror? Here's who won our exclusive Reg merch...

Southerners

..calling the kettle black.

Curry night in the Reading Hilton ... serving tattie scones.

Home taping revisited: A mic in each hand, pointing at speakers

Re: Gatefold sleeves

In Dixon of Dock Green's time it was bells .. nee-naw was more like Z-Cars or the Sweeney

A mic in each hand, pointing at speakers

The biggest problem with doing it that way was that many portable cassette recorders had Auto Gain, resulting in horribly loud hissing for quiet bits such as the lead-in lead-out and gaps between tracks, never mind the enhanced rumble, rumble, clunk from the turntable.

Elon Musk offered no salary, $55bn bonus to run Tesla for a decade

"A little clearer would have been something like "up from its current $65bn, then stepping up in $50bn increments up to $650bn""

No, "stepping up .. in increments" is tautology.

Oracle rival chides UK councils for pricey database indulgence

Something doesn't add up..

"Of the 60 that responded in the allowed time, 92 per cent said they currently used Oracle database software."

55.2 ?

Thousand-dollar iPhone X's Face ID wrecked by '$150 3D-printed mask'

At least it saves Apple having to go to court to defend not unlocking suspects' criminals' iDevices .. the police/security services just need to employ some sculptors.

Shiver me timbers! 67cm Playmobil pirate ship sets sail for Caribbean

Re: From a maritime safety perspective...

Power gives way to sail, and as it looks as though the ship's (marginally) on starboard tack they should be stand-on vessel to just about everyone until they near the shipping lanes.

[For the 'lubbers amongst you, the stand-on vessel is obliged to maintain course and speed.]

Carphone Warehouse given a stern talking to for 'misleading' radio ad

re. Bugger the story

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt - I'd park like that if I was dropping of my son with his wheelchair and there were no disabled parking spaces nearby (he can only transfer with the passenger door fully opened).

Guntree v Gumtree: Nominet orders gun ads site must lose domain

Gun trees do exist, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBpTP4depWc

You forgot that you hired me and now you're saying it's my fault?

Re: Ah, memories.

that brought back so many memories ..

1. I ran a training course for Saudi Telecom in Riyadh. I checked everything worked in advance from the hotel. All went well on-site until I wanted the class to log in to a large Oracle database back in blighty. The great Saudi firewall kicked in and wouldn't let us connect, no matter what devious route we tried. I took a chance on inviting everyone back to the hotel for tiffin, where we could bypass the firewall using the hotel's satellite connection. I still get goosebumps thinking about all the things that could have gone wrong with that.

2. Oreo break. That same class in Saudi almost gave me a heart attack. I took a few packs of shortbread with me to share at the coffee/prayer breaks. With a deadpan face the local boss picked one up, pointed at the list of ingredients, and said that it contained pork fat ... he let me stew for a about 30 seconds before the class burst out laughing. [I believe a flogging is the standard punishment for importing pork products]

3. meeting rooms. This time I was running a course in Mumbai. I did my preparation, and confirmed a room had been booked. I turned up early to set up, and yes, a room was available. It was a bit on the small side, with no ventilation, but would probably be fine for the small IT group that I was due to train on some super new stuff (real time GSM fraud). The grapevine must have been working overtime, as more and more folk turned up .. I abandoned the idea of a formal course and ended up doing a high level presentation and live demo to a couple of hundred folk in a lecture theatre ... now, if they'd only asked for that in the first place.

HP Inc's rinky-dink ink stink: Unofficial cartridges, official refills spurned by printer DRM

Getting desperate for news? That article's a year old.

Scottish pensioners rage at Virgin cabinet blocking their view

Re: It's Scotland

"In one episode they went in the front door (Strathclyde University), and looked out the office window at the Kingston Bridge (the old Strathclyde Council Roads Dept office) which is over a mile away, as the crow flies."

They were good at that .. there was one episode where they were having a conversation on the pontoons in Kip Marina (on the Clyde coast) and continued the scene, and sentence, along Portobello promenade on the other side of the country.

Brits look at Google and Facebook every 210 seconds, says survey

I don't look at Google and Facebook every 210 seconds, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of tracking information that they collect no matter where I go [despite ad blockers, noscript, Tor, and so on].

If you love your email standards, SMTP your feet: 35 years later

Re: user-whitelisting

"here's a simpler idea:"

It's not new though, I've been doing that for the last 20 years.

There is, however, a downside; there's a lot of random (though easily filtered) cr*p that arrives.

Imagine taking all the possible slurped prefixes from @yahoo.com or @gmail.com and then finding them in the inbox for @your_domain

.. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. .- -. / .-. . .- -.. / - .... .. ... then a US Navy fondleslab just put you out of a job

"Odds are that the lamp and the person who knows morse code don't survive whatever kills a ruggedized tablet computer."

There's a backup for that ..

Disneyland to become wretched hive of scum and villainy

"And as a final piece of advice about the Disney parks:- if you want thrilling roller coasters, go to Busch Gardens or Seaworld instead."

If you want a thrilling Star Wars roller coaster ride, take a Land Cruiser trip over the dunes to the real Tattooine and the remains of the Star Wars set of the same name.

Talk about cutting-edge technology! Boffins fire world's sharpest laser

baw hair

Yahoo! retires! bleeding! ImageMagick! to! kill! 0-day! vulnerability!

Re: What! The! Hell! Does! ImageMagick! Have! To! Do! With! Yahoo!?

possibly for all those photos being uploaded to galleries on Yahoo!groups