Posts by GruntyMcPugh

Virgin Media's Brit biz broadband goes TITSUP: Total Inability To Support Upset People

How can the entire clustered, replicated database go down? Oh wait,... SPOF?

Drones replace models on Dolce & Gabbana catwalk

Just say no,....

... to vertical video.

I'm not watching that again, but I don't think I saw anyone holding their phone in landscape.

IPv6 and 5G will make life hell for spooks and cops say Australia's spooks and cops

Re: Backdoors don't matter.....

Indeed, or use steganography, and hide messages in images on Instagram, FB, etc.

IBM gives Services staff until 2019 to get agile

fw: SPAM SPAM SPAM !

jeez, there was endless cack forwarded to me via Notes. Usually a management cascade, and the scrolling to the bottom through several fw: fyi layers would often reveal that someone I didn't know had taken over a role I didn't know existed and the former occupier who I never communicated with was moving onto a role that sounded made up.

Aha! Some manager ticks their deliverable box and everyone else suffers the current fad.

So, previously, we had 10/10, Lean, GDF, then I left, now 'agile', which is a laugh. Nothing happens fast at IBM.

Although the positive in this is the abandoning of Notes.

Symantec ends cheap Norton offer to NRA members

Re: stats for the downvoting snowflakes,...

"In the USA in 2016, 7,105 people were murdered with handguns. Just 1,604 were killed with knives. Now, you cannot make the argument that in removing guns, knives will take over, figures for the UK show 186 knife homicides in 2015, so we have nowhere near the number of homicides that firearms facilitate."

Guns make it easier to kill people, so more people are killed with guns. Making access to guns difficult radically lowers the homicide rate, and other methods do not supplant gun deaths. It's easy maths, you can compare a few numbers, yes?

Re: Age limit?

Utter nonsence, and a quick fact check totally disproves such claims.

Look up the number of gun homicides in the USA, then look up the number of fatal stabbings. Notice one number is much higher? Then go look at figures for a country with strict gun control, and you'll see that fatal stabbings are not supplanting gun homicides. Guns let you kill someone without thinking, from a distance, without getting your hands dirty. Turns out people aren't so keen to get actual real blood on their hands and so do not kill so readily with knives.

As to criminals illegally sourcing guns, well yes they do, and the problem there is lax gun laws, not requiring firearms to be kept securely.

Guns are a very real problem, does someone have to murder _your_ kids before you get it?

Nokia tribute band HMD revives another hit

I still have a 7110...

I still have a 7110 in a pile of old phones in my attic. It was quite satisfying to press the little button and deploy the slide with a little 'snick!' noise,.. although tbh it felt a bit flimsy I thought one day it was just going to shoot off the end, and that would not be cool.

Who wanted a future in which AI can copy your voice and say things you never uttered? Who?!

Re: Not a single lawful one?!

Max Headroom,.... having just slurped 'Alterered Carbon' I am in the mood for some retro futurism, and was looking for a copy of the original TV movie '20 minutes into the future' , but it's hard to come by. There's a VHS rip on YT if I get desperate I guess.

A dog DNA database? You must be barking

I have dogs, and not all of the excrement I come across when walking my dog, is from dogs. On a couple of occasions, I've found a pile of poop and soiled garments, which has made me wonder how many times I've seen lone piles of poop, and assumed a dog was to blame, when the perpetrator perhaps had some tissues and didn't need to use their grundies.

So maybe we need a human poop DNA database too? : -)

Brexit to better bumpkin broadband, 4G coverage for farmers – Gove

Ah, but,....

... didn't Gove also promise increased farming subsidies?

The Gemini pocket PC is shipping and we've got one. This is what it's like

"To get a new computer to market in a year, with an entirely new mechanical hinge and keyboard, is an amazing achievement by Planet"

Hmm, so it can be done,.... anyone from Retro Computers Ltd listening?

Mind you, install a Spectrum Emulator to the Gemini, and you got some fun right there, in your pocket.

KFC: Enemy of waistlines, AI, arteries and logistics software

"the worlds leading chicken fast food specialist"

Bugger, I must have missed the awards ceremony.

Re: Have I missed something?

There was a story (was it here at the Reg?) about Tom Tom ceasing support for various models of SatNav, some of which aren't that old. I can't see support for built in units being any better, so am a bit sceptical about those, and whether they'll be much use once the vehicle is 5+ years old.

Kentucky gov: Violent video games, not guns, to blame for Florida school massacre

"The highest shooting crimes in the US are currently in areas with the most restrictive gun laws."

Uh huh, and why do think that is? Do you think that gun legislation leads to gun crime, or, maybe, just maybe, guns are restricted due to high levels of gun crime?

Some stats would be nice,....

...you say knife attacks, but the stats don't back that up. In the USA in 2016, 7,105 people were murdered with handguns. Just 1,604 were killed with knives. Now, you cannot make the argument that in removing guns, knives will take over, figures for the UK show 186 knife homicides in 2015, so we have nowhere near the number of homicides that firearms facilitate.

Re: What a load of Trump...

Ah, the Swiss reference is alive and well I see. It needs context. Switzerland has national service, so all able bodied blokes get basic training in the use of firearms. Then there's the fact that reservists keep rifles at home, and used to keep sealed packs of ammunition, with severe penalties for opening them without orders. I believe ammunition is now not kept at home. Sporting rifles are popular in Switzerland, but as mentioned already, the vast majority have had training in the use of firearms. So all these factors skew the stats, and that's before we factor in socio-economics, like a national health system.

Chrome adblockalypse will 'accelerate Google-Facebook duopoly'

If they didn't work

I assure you they don't.

But I'm not going to get drawn into a rant about adverts. They make me despair for human kind. I see adverts, and I wait for nature to decide we're done, and it's time for the cockroaches to rule. Although I see advertising execs as cockroaches, so perhaps not.

If you don't like what IBM is pitching, blame Watson: It's generating sales 'solutions' now

So Watson is going to massively over spec hardware solutions, instead of a TSM?

Or does this facet of Watson boil down to

10 print "Place it in the IBM Cloud."

20 goto 10

IBM declares it's the 'backbone of the world's economy'

Re: A fine plan

churn,.... a major problem we had with our offshore teams when I worked for IBM. We lost one guy in a lunch time,... he failed to dial into a conference call, someone else joined instead, and explained our guy had popped out to get some food, got talking in the queue, got a job offer and packed up his stuff. Must have been a really good offer to burn that bridge and not see out his notice too.

See that over Heathrow? It's not an airliner – it's a Predator drone

Range,....

given this is the range of the Predator:

http://obeattie.github.io/gmaps-radius/?radiusInput=337&unitSelector=mi&lat=53.635132&lng=-2.155595&z=6&u=mi&r=337

You'll need to centre the search on 'Waddington' (337 miles as the range of the Predator is ~675, so out and back)

they're hardly being launched from Waddington to police the Middle East,.....

Facebook gets Weed-whacked: Unilever exec may axe ads over social network's toxic posts

If only companies spending billions on advertising could engage agencies that didn't produce adverts that suck, that would be nice. Stop with the lifestyle BS, and poppy, upbeat formulaic nonsense. I'm sure perfume and car ads don't _have_ to suck. Hell, I remember the simple VW Golf advert from the 80s where they dropped the Golf into shot, and it bounced on it's suspension, and the narrator got in it and drove off. That was creative. No eurovision happy pop, no photogenic 20-somethings acting 'cool', no cinematographic landscape shots of the car in an environment that few people are ever likely to drive in, or implying that owning the car helps you avoid traffic and find nifty short cuts through back alleys.

OK, I'm going to stop now,.... I hate adverts and could rant for ages.

No sh*t, Sherlock! Bloke suspected of swallowing drug stash keeps colon schtum for 22 DAYS

Re: Nice precedent for our corrupt police

If he was innocent and constipated he'd ask for a laxative and get it over with. Why prolong your own detention if you're innocent? He's refused food, who refuses to eat for so long?

Boffins upload worm's brain into a computer, teach it tricks

Re: As simple as that thing may be...

.. when you say 'self made millionaire several times over' do you mean because he had to start over between bankruptcies? Or because he has several millions left, after he inherited a couple of hundred million in 1970s money?

ROFL!

ASA tells Poundland and its teabagging elf: Enough with the smutty social ninja sh*t

Re: Fondly referencing 'Carry On',...

and I was accused of missing the point. It's not relevant that the show was more about two pig headed men. It's whether you'd dare to make a show like that _now_ . So citing 70s mores as a defense for the 'humour' in the Elf ad campaign really isn't relevant today, is it?

Fondly referencing 'Carry On',...

... if Poundland think 70s references are relevant and defensible, I challenge them to make a series of adverts based on the 70s TV series 'Love They Neighbour'.

Yorkshire cops have begun using on-the-spot fingerprint scanners

As far as I can tell from other sources, the Police are only using fingerprint scanners after they detain someone, they aren't doing random stop checks with these.

If you watch the TV Series 'Police Interceptors' , you'll see the Police often pull over a vehicle after it's flagged up on ANPR for not having insurance, or the registered owner being under a driving ban, then they'll try to ascertain the identity of the driver. In some cases, the drivers have lied about their identity, and then they get fingerprinted.

I'm more concerned about the five year retention of finger print data harvested from people arrested or charged with a serious offense, who are either not prosecuted, or found not guilty. If the accused isn't found guilty, they should have the same status as before the accusation, and the same as any other innocent citizen. Retaining the data is the 'there's no smoke without fire' attitude.

If you haven't already killed Lotus Notes, IBM just gave you the perfect reason to do it now, fast

Not even IBM,...

... IBM used to use an in house (or rebadged) tool called ISSI (IBM Standard Software Installer) to upgrade applications. So the largest user base out there didn't use this feature.

EE unveils shoebox-sized router to boost Brit bumpkin broadband

Stats, and damned stats,...

"EE has said its 4G network can reach 90 per cent of the UK"

90% of the UK surface? Or 90% of the UK population,... when oooh ~90% of the Uk population live in well connected cities?

The OpenSignal map of coverage doesn't lead me to think 90% of the UK landmass has coverage,...

It took us less than 30 seconds to find banned 'deepfake' AI smut on the internet

Re: He didn't do it

Were you there when he didn't do it?

Allegedly there's a video of David Cameron doing it with a dead pig. Oh, wait, that's not a deepfake.

New strife for Strava: Location privacy feature can be made transparent

"the app can be used by criminals as an accurate map of where to find expensive bikes they might want to steal"

I have used Strava to map my runs, so all thieves are going to find is my four dogs, and one pair of smelly trainers.

I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word

Re: "With over 15 million job applications being submitted on LinkedIn every week, "

"outright lies"

Ha, I love Linkedin for this,.... I occasionally look up old colleagues, one has the prefix 'Senior' to every role he's ever had, even his first,..... but when I worked with him we were the same level, and not 'Senior' at all, that wasn't even a job description where we worked. Another was a salesy bullshitter, who now actually works in sales, and his CV was full of how he got so many achievements, and increased this and that, when the truth is the company we worked for nearly went bust.

Wileyfox goes TITSUP*: Smartmobe maker calls in the administrators

Damn.

.. was recently looking at cheap droiders to use as a tracking device for one of my dogs, and WileyFox were on the shortlist. If they get sold off at a discount now there will be no ongoing support, they might still be.

Ghost in the DCL shell: OpenVMS, touted as ultra reliable, had a local root hole for 30 years

Re: there is the possibility of one of these hitting the jackpot

We'd like to think everyone secured everything, always, but I know this isn't the case. When I worked for a University Dept of Computing at the end of the 90s, I gained access to an SGI workstation via the 'lp' printing account, which, out of the box, had no password. I left that job in '99 so it will have been sometime in the preceding year.

Anyway, VAXes, and the US military, there was a story that the eight digit launch codes for Minuteman missiles were all set to 00000000 , so it wouldn't surprise me if the passwords for some accounts used in the field weren't exactly strong, given they'd have to be recalled under pressure.

Re: The sky is falling in

Internet, probably not, but connected using DECNET and using wireless connections in the field, definitely, so a MitM may be possible.

And while we hope none of the built in accounts still have default passwords, there is the possibility of one of these hitting the jackpot:

Name Password Access

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SYSTEM SYSTEM, MANAGER or OPERATOR (All privs.)

FIELD FIELD, SERVICE, or DIGITAL (All privs.)

SUPPORT SUPPORT or DEC (All privs.)

SYSMAINT SYSLIB or SYSMAINT (Usually all privs.)

SYSTEST UETP or SYSTEST (All privs.)

SYSTEST_CLIG CLIG, SYSTEST, or TEST (Usually a disabled user)

DEFAULT USER or DEFAULT (Normal User)

DECNET DECNET, NETWORK, or DIGITAL (Normal User)

OPERATIONS OPERATIONS (Normal User)

USER USER (Normal User)

LIBRARY LIBRARY or None (Normal User)

GUEST GUEST or None (Normal User)

DEMO None (Normal User)

HYTELNET None (NETMBX)

Re: Happy Days!

Bugger, wish I'd known that 25 years ago!

I worked for a Uni Physics dept back then, just me and my boss did the techhie stuff, and he went on holiday, then on the Monday evening, I was dragged from the Students Union bar by a postgrad, who said 'everything is broken'. Given we had a VAXcluster I doubted that, but he was correct, the star coupler had died spectacularly, and corrupted both system disks.

Anyway, it turned out my boss had changed the SYSTEM password when I'd been on hols, and had forgotten to tell me, ... so after new parts, I went through a conversational boot, renamed sysuaf.dat and got in without a password but it was a PITA as there was no error handling, one spelling mistake or typo and you had to start again.

Damn, I miss VAXes.

Re: Source code

Same here, we had 'The Grey Wall', the hard copy manuals on a shelf, plus the microfiche version, which often had more detailed info.

Re: The sky is falling in

Perhaps you are unaware, but the US DoD is still using VMS systems. Patriot missiles used to have a microVAX as a guidance computer. Some banks still use VMS.

So this exploit having existed for 30 years is a big deal.

UK PM Theresa May orders review of online abuse laws in suffrage centenary speech

Re: 'edge' Lord,....

"t's not long since an MP was stabbed in the street by one of her constituents."

Did Thomas Mair threaten Joe Cox via social media before he murdered her? Nope, so death threats via social media and actual murders would not appear to have any relation. Can we think of any real life cases where social media threats have been carried out? Quite the opposite I think, only recently some far right numpty was prevented from carrying out an atrocity at an LGBT event because he blurted his intentions on social media.

'edge' Lord,....

.... indeed. It's quite easy to deal with death threats received via the Internet. Ignore them. The kid that made said threat won't pass their driving test for several years, so won't be able to come find you.

I got some death threats in the early days of the Web. How I laughed.

IBM: About those agreed voluntary redundancies ... we were just kidding

Mental WellBeing Day?

About time, two former colleagues had time off from stress when I was at IBM. How did IBM welcome them back to the fold when they returned? Why, by giving them a PBC3 'unsatisfactory' rating and putting them on a PIP (performance Improvement Plan) at their next review.

Meanwhile, I've been clear of IBM for three years (to the day, as it happens) and this article shows I left just at the right time.

Accused Brit hacker Lauri Love will NOT be extradited to America

The best part.

The best part of this was omitted from the story, and it's that Amber Rudd signed the order for Lauri Love's extradition, and she's been thwarted.

Now, we just have to keep the momentum going and defeat every proposal Rudd makes, like cryptographic back doors, retention of data under the snooper's charter now deemed illegal by the EU, etc.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Another Amazon Key door-lock hack

Re: Still looking for an electronic lock...

Some people do rather get carried away trying to shoehorn technology as a solution just 'cos, don't they?

I am reminded of a startup that wanted to help people that lost their house keys, by offering to 3D print a spare on demand,... so you'd have the b*llache of getting your key scanned, then waiting for them to print and drop off the crappy plastic key to your house. Assuming they were open, of course.

Or, you could, instead of getting your keys scanned, just get a couple of copies made, and leave one with a friend or relative, and perhaps tape one to an old loyalty card, and pop it in your wallet. That way, you aren't waiting for some neckbeard to do fire up the Ultimaker.

‘I crashed a rack full of servers with my butt’

We'll call him,...

A former colleague of mine, we'll call him Suhail,. because that was his name, did exactly this. We worked a kind of shift, ish, some of us would come in at 08:00hrs, so we had time to rectify any minor niggles before the muggles clocked on, and then others would work until 18:00hrs, so someone was available, allowing whoever was on call to get home. So muggins is staying until 18:00hrs, when said colleague called at 17:00hrs, and fesses up to knocking the power lead out of a disk array down in the DC, which for some reason only had one feed. He said he'd love to stay, but he had a pressing engagement (not the buttock against the kettle lead this time) and would I do him a solid and make sure everything came back OK. Luckily, it did.

Astroboffins spot sneaky signs that the Milky Way devoured smaller galaxies

Re: All fairy tales.. fantasy numbers.. no science...

Hey Joerg, next time I go for beers with the Post Doctoral Astronomers I used to work with, I'll be sure to pass on your _opinion_ .

Meanwhile you sound like a Solipsist, so why are you arguing with yourself?

No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

its the other crowd.

... Boom, it sure is.

I have deployed alternatives to MS Office before, once under the direction of a Head of Faculty who hated MS. So I started with his PA. She hated it, started crying, and threatened to quit. The other times were with PhD students, who ran Linux, and just got on with it. Horses for courses, and all that.

Windows Defender will strap pushy scareware to its ass-kicker machine

Can we suggest some other things it can block? Anything in a web side bar that contains 'one weird trick' and 'You'll never guess what they look like now'.

Govt 'comprehensively ignored' advice over NHS data-sharing deal

Re: Free

Blah, was surfing in Portugal a few years ago, mate wiped out and copped a fin strike, needed stitching. Walked into the local hospital in Lagos, and the doc stitched him up and gave him a prescription and didn't ask for any money, or our EHIC cards, or anything.

Are you taking the peacock? United Airlines deny flight to 'emotional support' bird

Re: The real question

Steady on, I for one didn't say I had no problem with the opinion pieces. I was merely replying in the context of technical articles.

I have plenty of problems with 'opinion' pieces, although usually with the Grauniad and the Telegraph, because they take themselves far too seriously.