Posts by Ben1892

Microsoft reveals terrible trio of bugs that knocked out Azure, Office 362.5 multi-factor auth logins for 14 hours

Re: This hit us bad.

You're using email for Emergency services, is your name Moss by any chance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzRFoO8wSVA

Post-silly season blues leave me bereft of autonomous robot limbs

My first thought, am I being trolled? is this like a new version of rick-rolling where all new apps are actually Not Hotdog.

Actually quite an interesting read on how they developed it - and you too can create you own version of not-Foodvisor https://medium.com/@timanglade/how-hbos-silicon-valley-built-not-hotdog-with-mobile-tensorflow-keras-react-native-ef03260747f3

London's Gatwick Airport flies back to the future as screens fail

Really no excuse, some of the most prolific and redundant dark fibre in the country runs through Crawley heading for London

Having said that, the redundant bit of the connection is probably in "phase 2" of the project as they were in a hurry to deliver something, anything - I mean what are the chances of someone digging throu......

Almost 1 in 3 Brits think they lack computer skills to do their jobs well

Re: If you lack the IT skills necessary to do your job...

Your training needs should be picked up in your 1-to-1. Ah, but, because: computer, it's IT not HR that need to sort it out

The processes you have to do as part of your job are supported by IT, not dictated by. If you're adding "XXXX" into a compulsory field or "don't send to this address" in Line 1 of an address field you're breaking your data/processes, IT doesn't care :)

....and it's not as rare as you think to be discussing a business process with someone and they say; "I just want one button to press" [to do the entirety of my job and effectively make me redundant]

Now that's a dodgy Giza: Eggheads claim Great Pyramid can focus electromagnetic waves

Brown note

My house resonates between 5 and 9 Hz, which unfortunately for the other occupants means it can be rather aromatic, especially after curry night

‘Elders of the Internet’ apologise for social media, recommend Trump filters to fix it

The Elders of the Internet know who I am?

Quite simply the best ever sketch of The IT Crowd

Dudes. Blockchain. In a phone. It's gonna smash the 'commoditization of humanity' or something

Hold on a second, hasn't Pied Piper already launched their decentralised internet?

Infrastructure wonks: Tear up Britain's copper phone networks by 2025

Re: Thirty three BILLION Pounds?

That's actually a pretty serious point - yes it's an old article but the argument still stands if BT own 75 Million miles of copper https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/22/bt_copper_cable_theft/

Big contenders in the broadband chart this week, but who will be #1? Well, not Britain

Britain's place in global mobile broadband speed rankings has slipped four places to 35th, according to a survey.

FTTP = Fibre to the Phone? at least I'll be able to find my way home more easily

Plans for half of Europeans to get 100Mbps by 2020 ain't gonna happen – report

Mega milli Bytes bits

Mega milli Bytes bits

Just sayin' - not sure if commentards are boasting or in the 1990's

( alternatively; buses, Sheepvacuums, Wales', Brontosauruses, linguine )

For the record; 59Mbps down, 19Mbps up, UK, Vodafone, £24 per month (all-in including line rental) and happy - I don't need more than that

In defence of online ads: The 'net ain't free and you ain't paying

Re: World Gin Day

If could add a minor addendum; the bottle of gin should be a Litre not 750ml

- the trick is knowing where to pick the sloes, and no, I'm not sharing :)

FTSE has a nap after a full English IT glitch

Odd that it came up bang on 09:00, someone been messing about with daylight saving?

SAP cofounder admits: Biz goofed on branding, confused customers, depressed staff

Yup, confused customers, that's it! What we need is a re-brand ... seriously?

UK's first transatlantic F-35 delivery flight delayed by weather

"If UK was not so much europhobic, it could have buy some Rafale, it's a twin-engine aircraft with combat-proven efficiency, and much less expensive than the F35.

I guess the 51st state wasn't free to buy what it wants to equip its air force..."

What you mean the Rafale that France developed after it dropped out of the Future European Fighter Aircraft programme - remind me, who's the europhobe?

Re: Alternatives

I came here to post the exact same comment :)

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

Chief EU negotiator....

...does his job.

However, I think in the case though, the EU used to have a safe harbour agreement with the US, why could they really not have a similar deal with the UK - after all we've implemented the DPA, GDPR and PECR. Barnier obviously thinks they are weak on this point, so needs to come out guns blazing with an announcement to feign strength.

At least we've stopped banging on about Galileo .... it's OK I'm getting it, mines the one with negotiating for dummies in the pocket

Is your smart device a bit thick? It's about to get a lot worse

Tena Ladies

I hear you Alistair, even with all this "clever" machine learning profiling that goes on, I still get offered products I'm not able to use, what with being male and not (yet!) incontinent

We've found it! A cloud-and-AI angle on the royal wedding

I hope it's as good as / based on Syncopaticaption - might even get me watching the wedding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONWNWBoqTuM

UK's Rural Payments Agency is 'failing on multiple levels' – report

Re: What's the problem?

Look can we stop talking about IT in a Brexit debate please - what do you think this site is for? if you want to talk computers, jog on!

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

Re: Olds

Usually they have buildings named after them and are hailed as "great founders" too - I think history will also be as kind to Elon and Jeff, except they'll have cities on Mars named after them

Blighty: If EU won't let us play at Galileo, we're going home and taking encryption tech with us

or paint them blue and put a light on top so you can find them easily, it would need a catchy name like Position Over Land Internet Communication Edifice

Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain

Re: Pressure?

I think technically it's the air getting hot during pressurisation by Concorde driving into it, rather than air rubbing against the airframe and causing friction. Have a google for isentropic heating and you see what I mean

Brit healthcare system inks Windows 10 install pact with Microsoft

One does not simply...

... upgrade to Windows 10

Been sniffing the NOx from the maternity wards have we?

Windrush immigration papers scandal is a big fat GDPR fail for UK.gov

I think it's reasonable to assume that after 60 years of being here legally that you'd have formalised that arrangement with an indefinite visa or a British passport and/or kept hold of the evidence of when you arrived.

...or are we saying that an entire generation of immigrants ( that bailed us out of an economic hole after the war - this isn't an anti-immigration rant) weren't issued with any paperwork at all?

Academics: Shutting down Facebook API damages research, oversight, competition

I hear that cash in academia is quite hard to come by, unless you're sponsored for some research by, I don't know; a political party, and insurance company or a pharma multinational..... how do you tell the difference between a white-hat and black-hat acedemic?

Incredible Euro space agency data leak... just as planned: 1.7bn stars in our galaxy mapped

Hold on, does that mean all the crunching I've been doing with Milkyway@home has been a waste :) Seriously though, Sloan Digital Sky Survey is kinda left behind by these new data

TSB outage, day 5: What do you mean you can't log in? Our systems are up and running. Up and running, we say!

Seriously, what clowns wrote this and why aren't any of the exceptions being caught and handled properly?

Audiophiles have really taken to the warm digital tone of streaming music

I think the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within a large concrete bunker some thirty-seven miles away from the stage

Elon Musk's latest Tesla Model 3 delivery promise: 6,000... a week

Re: Replacing the batteries.

As far as I'm aware, the fuel tank doesn't shrink over the life of a petrol car and can supply the fuel at the same rate as the day it left the factory. BHP has nothing to do with this, the efficiency of conversion of stored chemical energy into kinetic energy does.

Intel's security light bulb moment: Chips to recruit GPUs to scan memory for software nasties

Re: On the other hand...

That's what I was thinking in response to the comment; "...my GPU suddenly has an entirely new workload that it wasn't designed for and I never expected it to have." - what workload was it designed for exactly?, as it certainly wasn't graphics acceleration

ZTE now stands for 'zero tech exports' – US govt slaps 7-year ban on biz

I've always thought my Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 was looking at me funny, seriously though there is a UpdateZTE app on it that you can't disable (easily) and you can't see it on the installed apps list

It's April 2018, and we've had to sit on this Windows 10 Spring Creators Update headline for days

I've not booted into Windows on my home devices since it started failing CU patches post-

Meltdown/Spectre (Haswell refresh CPU), so I'm really not going to miss an update for something I don't use.

I have a question though what is a "Creators update" ? Why is it called that and why prefix with Fall/Spring without changing the "Creators" bit I was expecting a yearly name change, like "Imagineers update" or "Architectors update"

B-Ark passengers to control most IT spend from 2019 onwards

Re: The bane of my profesional existance

Yep; "We've just bought this <insert SaaS here> tried to connect to it and it doesn't work, apparently we need to open all these ports on the firewall ( 0-65535 TCP and UDP) , install these axtiveX controls, downgrade Java to an unsupported version, oh and can you make it so we don't have to log on and that it also knows who all the employees are"

Apple store besieged by protesters in Paris 'die-in' over tax avoidance

I remember the days of French protesters pulling imported livestock out of lorries and setting fire to them, seems they've toned down how they protect their economy these days

Virgin spaceplane makes maiden rocket-powered flight

Re: Vapourware

Yeah, a bit inconvenient that someone died in test flights really

I don't understand all the self-flagellating criticism, it still cool lighting a rocket engine and pointing it upwards, I'd have a go for sure even if it's not a "proper" space flight. I was always envious of Brian Cox's flight in the EE Lightning, so now's my chance to start saving my pennies. What Sir Richard is doing is actually creating a market segment and positioning VG right at the centre - you've got to start somewhere. ... and as for Reaction Engines, who exactly should be pumping loads of cash in to it?

Form their very own website; "We are supported by a £60m funding commitment from the UK Government via the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency and we have had a recent £20.6m investment by BAE Systems."

I'm not sure it's cash that they are starved of. If they have a viable product they should be out there selling the licenses to use it, I'm not convinced they can get the concept to -err fly. Yes they can get the engine to work, but for what ? not really hauling stuff into space any more but now sub-orbital London to Sydney hypersonic flights - now just who needs to get to the Antipodes in that much of a hurry anyway, the market can't be that big.

Intel admits a load of its CPUs have Spectre v2 flaw that can't be fixed

Re: So since Intel have now confirmed that are unwilling to fix...

Actually, I bought mine in a retail box, so I must be in the 0.001% , coincidentally I think there's an equal probability of me being able to get any kind of recompense from Intel or the vendor

Gone in 60.121 seconds: Your guide to the pricey new gear Nvidia teased at its annual GPU fest

Re: I don't know for a fact or even if its happening..

I think they see this glut coming, so they release a new Titan for £3000. Then it will be a mid range x70 equivalent Volta for £700 and the x80 at £1000 ( then bring out the Ti for £1200) and you've re-based what people think they need to pay for a graphics card. Produce them in fairly limited numbers so you aren't adding to that slump in demand when the crypto crowd move on. The bonus is that everyone will have forgotten that £350 for a graphics card used to be considered quite a lot of money.

I'm still with my GTX970 and I can't see me getting anything to replace it any time soon.

Troubled Watchkeeper drones miss crucial UK flight safety certificate

I didn't think the army wanted drones, which is why they pushed Fire Shadow loitering munitions for so long? tbh not being from a military background I never quite get why the RAF don't do the flying of flying things (hang on don't they have actual working drones ?), I'm sure it's a long running thing about the technical difference between army air corps, fleet air arm and the RAF, but as a tax payer I'd rather not buy three of everything. Do the RAF have ships and the Navy have tanks ? If not I think they should as it'll make it all fair then ;)

UK's London Gatwick Airport boasts of driverless vehicle trial

You don't need to go full auto, one thing I notice about airports is that they have a lot of lines painted on the ground where things are and aren't allowed to go (as Charlie mentions above). I'm sure a lot of these roles could be "follow that yellow line and stop if something gets in your way" rather than "here's a big open space with danger in most of it apart from some safe bits, you figure it out"

Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office not over cost but because Google G Suite looks sweet

Exactly what I was thinking, G Suite is pretty good but and one of the reasons the business case for it didn't stack up where I work was they had no EU data residency. The other one being that we needed integrated IP voice that you can actually phone PSTN people with too - if you add that ( 3rd party supplied) feature on to the GfW bill then a M365 with Skype for Business Plus Cal works out cheaper

Pasties in SPAAAAACE: Cornwall hopes for slice of £50m spaceport cash

horizontal launches - you're doing it wrong, think that's called Bloodhound SSC

LISA Pathfinder sniffed out gravitational signals down to micro-Hertz

Re: Motivating forces.

What ? like "place" missing an L in the sub heading ?

"Better-than-expected performance created 'the quietest pace in space'

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Re: Ran out of igniter fuel

Firstly, this is an awesome achievement and for any mission this is a win, they have loads of data that can improve the thing(s) that went wrong.

Visually, on the landing descent, the centre core looked like it was going to slam into the ocean. There's normally a noticeable amount of flame even when the engines aren't fired up - I'm guessing this must be a steady flow of the igniter fuel you mention, this was absent on the centre core to my untrained eyes so it must have run out a fair way before the landing zone.

No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

I recently replaced my dads computer with Linux Mint and Libre Office (from Win XP and Office 2010). I set up and migrated everything to be as close to how he had it before; named icons, everything filed on the desktop, etc. sat with him for half a day explaining everything was where he'd left it, and thought after a couple of weeks he'd be fine with it...

Er no, he tried his best but really struggled, most of his Word documents that he used as templates didn't format correctly and he couldn't come to terms with correcting the formatting, plus he managed to get Libre Office to regularly say "something's gone wrong, I'm going to have to restart"

Most of his other problems were of the type; "well to do <insert task>, I usually click here, here and here, then do that". This is the main problem - there are many users out there who have learned a rote sequence of mouse moves and key-presses - they don't think in terms of "I want to manipulate the thing in this way, so I'll look around the menus for something that does the job I'm after"

FWIW he went out and bought Win 10 and Office 2016 and is extremely happy with it and able to work like he used to.

Yes, those of us that can switch, do switch - but you aren't going to beat this type of inertia in enterprise deployments any time soon

SHL just got real-mode: US lawmakers demand answers on Meltdown, Spectre handling from Intel, Microsoft and pals

Don't Panic

So following that through, none of the players had their "Don't Panic" media campaign planned, spokespeople briefed, copy written and fixes ready. But instead, they were going to do that all in the week before the embargo was lifted.

I know we think El Reg is the centre of the universe, but you know what, I don't think that many people pay it much attention, not enough to cause looting and world chaos anyway ;)

New Sky thinking: Media giant makes dish-swerving move on Netflix territory

Would be nice not getting drop out in thunderstorms and not having fugly dishes on the sides of houses tbh but this is a very well executed, cunning move ( net neutrality ends -> Murdochs sell most of 21st C Fox ->Murdochs focus on being an ISP and content provider -> all ur IPs are belong to us ! )

NHS: Thanks for the free work, Linux nerds, now face our trademark cops

I migrated my Dad to Linux last weekend, (from Win XP and Office 2010 to Linux Mint 18.3 and LibreOffice) you'd have thought his world had ended "because the font in my email signature has changed" - tbh I took that as a win, sat with him for a bit and talked him through all his snagging points.

Overall it took me a day of setup and migration for his 3GB .pst plus files and a half-day of hand-holding to migrate him, he was talking about buying a Win 10 license (£100) and Office ( £160) because he couldn't get on with it....

...now multiply all of that that by a million....

Airbus warns it could quit A380 production

single-engine A350 ...

That's going a bit far with the fuel economy isn't it ?

Yeah I know what you meant, I'm putting it on and already halfway out the door

Hawaiian fake nukes alert caused by fat-fingered fumble of garbage GUI

Re: UI design 101

Yep, I agree with the visual cues and flip-top buttons, even better, different shaped and coloured buttons, but would you have one for each message; "there's a tsunami Test" "There's a real tsunami", "missile test", "missile really, yes really, quick, jump in the sack with the nearest hottie", "Test red alert", "red alert" (but for that last one, it does mean changing the bulb)