Posts by agurney

While Microsoft griped about NSA exploit stockpiles, it stockpiled patches: Friday's WinXP fix was built in February

Re: Plenty of blame to go around

I can't agree with that car analogy - a more appropriate one might be that the door locks aren't strong enough to stand up to a crowbar.

NASA's Cassini snaps pic inside Saturn's ring – peace among the stars

Re: Close. Too close.

".. I can get there, visit, and be back in about 2.5/1000th of a second. By my python3 integer maths."

I can understand sending a probe to Saturn to play Russian Roulette with its rings, but Integer maths that returns 2.5 as a fraction?

Boeing-backed US upstart reckons it'll be building electric airliners

.. and for those of you in enconomy .. could you pedal a little harder please?

PC survived lightning strike thanks to a good kicking

Re: Interfering mice

I gave up on wireless mice after losing one on a boat .. slide bounce splash.

'Trash-80' escapes the dustbin of history with new TRS-80 emulator

Re: "one line" games?

"The "One-Liners" were typically written in BASIC, concatenating the expressions up to the character limit per line of about 244 [?] "

Try that on a Beeb and you'd encouter a 'musical' buffer overrun

10 G.20:G.20:G.20.... until the line's full.

the numbers didn't matter, but when you hit Return the line expanded thus:

10 GOTO 20:GOTO 20... and overran into the area allocated for sound!

I've a TRS80 sitting beside the daisy wheel printer and a handful of BBC Micros .. I doubt I'll ever power them on again, but can't bear to throw them out.

Pure Silicon Valley: Medium asks $5 a month for absolutely nothing

"I'm still trying to work out how the "why don't you pay to read a printed version of articles we've had for free online for the last few days" model works!"

That's simple; after reading it can be put to a plethora of uses .. lining for kitty litter, firelighters, mopping up old sump oil ...

User lubed PC with butter, because pressing a button didn't work

"DVDs come in cases with writing on the side. Often, this makes a reference to the content. So merely by putting the DVDs next to another on a shelf, you get a self-maintaining list of them."

I tried that, but reordering by title or artist or genre proved to be a bit too time consuming.

I now just use random access

Royal Navy's newest ship formally named in Glasgow yard

Re: 30mm gun

"bang! bang! you're dead!" if they encountered an "attacker"...

.. rumble! rumble! I'm a tank

NZ High Court rules US can extradite Kim Dotcom after all

Re: Conspiracy to Defraud

He'd be better off changing his religion then POTUS wouldn't let him in.

Crack in black: Matte iPhones losing paint at alarming rate, gripe fans

it works as designed

Seems OK to me, it behaves just like the ablative paint I'm about to apply to my boat's hull.

Super-cool sysadmin fixes PCs with gravity, or his fists

Re: I wonder how many times he bounced the heads on the platters?

should be OK if he removed the floppy first ..

Tokyo 2020 Olympic medals to be made from old electronics

Re: With or without RFID?

so we're back to IoT (Internet of Trophies)

2014: El Reg booze lab proves Bluetooth breathalyzers are crap. 2017: US govt agrees

Re: Life is easier up north

"..The lower alcohol limit seems to have cut the number of folk who are measured over the limit."

If Mrs May finds out, she'll reduce the number of bobbies in her neck of the woods which will also cut the number of folk who are measured over the limit.

If my memory serves me correctly.. the French ones had to be from an approved manufacturer, sealed and in date. If you were stopped, the police would test you with your own kit, with presumably any indication of booze in the system resulting in a trip to the station for a test with an accurate machine. Potential nice little earner for the manufacturers involved, and savings for the Gendarmerie, but now there's no penalty for not carrying them.

Furby Rickroll demo: What fresh hell is this?

.. or Furbies randomly shouting out "Alexa, buy me a Furby" "Alexa, wake me up at 03:00"

BT installs phone 'spam filter', says it'll strain out mass cold-callers

There are still large areas of the country with minimal or no mobile phone or cable coverage, so a land line is the only option.

Re: How much to review your spam call messages?

"It would also block any calls from organisations without DDI - our GP for starters."

The way around that is to ask your surgery's receptionist to update your records and prefix your phone no. with 1470. Works for me.

Flight 666 lands safely in HEL on Friday the 13th

Room 13

Many hotels don't have rooms with '13' on the doors.

I ended up with a frustrating networking problem when helping install an IPTV system in a Spanish hotel a few years ago. The contractors had wired an IDF on each of several floors in the hotel. The job looked neat enough but we were seeing some unexpected behaviour, so we started tracing the cables..

- port 1 was connected to room 101 (201, 301, 401...)

- port 2 to room 102, 202, 302 ...

and so on, as expected, until ...

- port 13 was connected to room 114 (214, 314, 414, ...)

and so on for all the remaining rooms and floors (fewer than 13 thankfully).

Brilliant phishing attack probes sent mail, sends fake attachments

Re: Sigh. Not again.

I use PDFs so I can control how my 'customers' see my documents. Having worked in the UK for various North American companies over the years I know what grief can be caused when trying to print US Letter documents on A4 paper, and vice versa.

Hapless scouser scours streets for lost Crimble drone

Drone lost and found on the Fastnet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XksfKqfxG54

Support chap's Sonic Screwdriver fixes PC as user fumes in disbelief

Re: Overheard conversation about a new server

Sounds just like sleeping on a boat at anchor ...

Japanese robot space maid will incinerate Earth's dead satellites

That article makes more sense than the BBC's 'Japan tests innovative magnetic tether for slowing space junk' ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38265676 ) .. which implies only removing the (probably very) few ferrous bits of crud that are up there.

Bloke sold cash register code to restaurants that deliberately hid sales from taxmen

One of the earliest VAT computer frauds involved accounting software on an Apple IIE in the early days of VAT (1974 ish).

Following suspicions, the computer investigation branch (Customs & Excise in Southend) identified that the software would provide accurate records, but by appending digits to the password it would do something similar to the zapper in the article. For example, password "qwerty" would show clean acounts, but "qwerty25" would produce accounts with 25% of the records removed.

HMS Queen Lizzie to carry American jets and sail in support of US foreign policy

Re: So, umm

Plural, there are two resorts - Balmedie & Turnberry.

Space crap: Flap, zap or strap? $30k from NASA for your pooper scooper

Re: Traditional Glastonbury solution

or like the constipated Chancellor of the Exchequer [couldn't budget]

Google declares victory for its Wifi router before it's even shipped

Re: Take with a grain of salt.

and it's "wee fee" in Spain

LASER RAT FENCE wins €1.7m European Commission funds

Re: Pulsed agrilaser in the 40W range

I use one of these brilliant scarecrows to keep the cats & dogs away from my garden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jHYV6nJksw - non-lethal, and a great spectator sport.

Judge nailed for trying to bribe Fed with fizzy water (aka Bud Light)

Re: Bud Light is beer?

Agreed, there are some nice beers in the US, but sadly few and far between. Of the mass market beers, the only one I can tolerate, nay enjoy, is Samuel Adams.

On a business trip back from SLC recently I packed a few bottles of Polygamy Porter for a larf ("why have just one") .. on arrival in the UK there was broken padlock on my suitcase with a nice note from TSA or homeland security, but at least they left the beer intact.

<rant>

Why is it that in the US if you order a beer you're handed a bottle of Bud Light, no glass, and expected to tip?

</rant>

Lessons from the Mini: Before revamping or rebooting anything, please read this

"the Mini was designed in layers like a burger: the roof, the windows... none of the elements overlap"

Not true, my first car was a 1964 mini and the sliding windows DID overlap. I don't miss them.

'Doubly unacceptable' Swiss vegan forces his way into the army

Re: I'm confused.

So, there's no problem with wearing leather boots that have been made from a (non-farmed) beast that died of natural causes.

HomeKit is where the dearth is – no one wants Apple's IoT tech

Re: Would somebody...

I have a Raspberry Pi on my boat, about 150 miles away, with a couple of sensors and a webcam.

The sensors sample atmospheric pressure and temperature every fifteen minutes, and upload that to a web server at home whenever it can connect to the local wifi.

So, with that small amount of information: I can see the current and past weather, both visually and from the sensors; I can see pressure trends for the previous few days; I know the boat is still afloat and not been moved; it confirms that my wind generator's providing enough power to run the automatic bilge pump if it's required; it confirms that the marina's intermittent wifi is up and running so I'll be able to work remotely if I drive over.

That's not flimflam in my eyes.

This speech recognition code is 'just as good' as a pro transcriber

Re: This speech recognition code is 'just as good' as a pro transcriber

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0DGA2VV3cI

Excel abuse hits new heights as dev uses VBA to code spreadsheet messaging app

Re: Tide tables

The VM's run at home once every spring to generate these.

No laptop on the boat, just a couple of Raspberry Pis; one for OpenCPN and t'other running a webcam and weather station .. but off topic as they're appropriate tools for the job.

Back in the 1980s I used Mentor Graphics' document scripting language on an Apollo workstation to calculate tidal gates and generate tide tables.

[When I lost access to the Apollo I ended up converting the script to GW-basic .. it now gets fired up once a year in a Windows 98 virtual machine. It still works, so I don't see a need to bring it into the 21st century]

Eat my reports! Bart ransomware slips into PCs via .zip'd JavaScript

Re: Translations

"Because with Brexit, English is no longer an official language of the EU"

I'll leave you to break news to the Irish..

'Leave EU means...' WHAT?! Britons ask Google after results declared

Re: So how long before ...

"Not long - Petrol's already being mentioned:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36621927"

No, petrol will be cheaper, the Leave campaign promised to remove VAT from fuel.

Re: Seriously...

"Maybe because they might also demand the right to be able to drive a car, buy a drink, or fags, or open a bank account or get a tattoo or make a will or take a selfie of their own arse or or.....

In the framework of what we trust 16,17 years olds with giving them a vote is ridiculous, only suggested by politicians desperate to try to cover up the huge apathy most of the electorate show towards them."

16 & 17 year olds had a vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and anarchy didn't ensue .. maybe because they could already do some of the things you list (drive a car, open a bank account).

Sneaky brown dwarf gives us a bright flash and astroboffins are confused

needs a new starter switch; it's acting just like a dodgy fluorescent tube

US military tests massive GPS jamming weapon over California

Re: @Gray ... Military aggression

"...I wonder if it will impact other GPS based applications."

not much fun if you rely on a GPS NTP server

Spaniard live streams 195km/h burn-up

Re: Up Periscope!

I regularly drive the length of Spain overnight, passing through Madrid around 4am. The roads are great, the traffic's light and there are no holdups. Until now these trips have been very relaxing ... but your comment about 'suicidos' has shattered that.

Islamic fundamentalists force Yorkshire IT shop to chop off brand

I did some work in Riyadh a few years ago .. the company I was working alongside had just changed its name from Bin Laden Telecom because it was affecting their overseas business.

'Wipe everything clean ... Join us ...' Creepy poem turns up in logs of 30 million-ish servers

Even landed on my Rasperry Pi that's running my weather station and little else

"151.217.177.200 - - [30/Dec/2015:04:48:29 +0000] "DELETE your logs. Delete your ... "

GPS, you've gone too far this time

That's going to vary depending on the number of 'visible' satellites and their location, weather conditions, and day/night.

In poor weather at night my old handheld Garmin will give me 20ft EPE whereas my phone won't even lock on to a signal.