Posts by onefang

A basement of broken kit, zero budget – now get the team running

Re: HMSO

My very first paying job. After having done a weeks work experience at the local government computer centre, they hired three of us during the school holidays. Our task was to work from the short spec handed us, write COBOL routines to validate particular input fields. Not a particular onerous task, and like someone mentioned above, I got curious about the various scripting languages available on the system, and automated it. So I generally had my days work finished in the first hour, and spent the rest of the time writing games on their hardware.

As for automating PHBs, I think the wrong question is being asked, how do you automate away a PHB? Simply automating their jobs leaves them with more time to cause more damage.

Kronos crims go retro, Apple builds cop portal, Swiss cheesed over Russian hack bid, etc

"Hopefully those cops can track down the crooks charging $1,500 for a phone."

I don't think they have to search far once they are on the Apple police portal to find those crooks.

The internet – not as great as we all thought it was going to be, eh?

These days, when everyone has their first smartphone surgically grafted in place of their umbilical cord at birth, the poor have no choice but to only have mobile, they can't afford mobile and fixed broadband.

Re: "Presumably this is the pool for all future jurors."

Might have been referencing the fact that jurors are not allowed to access the Internet, coz otherwise they might stumble across information that relates to the case that has not been washed through the legal system. This will be much easier for people that have never used the Internet in the first place.

Euro bureaucrats tie up .eu in red tape to stop Brexit Brits snatching back their web domains

Re: Well that's the end of the .eu domain

"If someone wants a .de domain, it's because they are invested in reaching German internet users; likewise .uk and the United Kingdom."

As the last few posts have proved, the other reason for going with a particular TLD is coz it forms some sort of clever, or not so clever, word play. I sometimes wa.de through a bunch of these, looking for a cool domain name that wont make me go "y.uk".

Security procedures are good – follow them and you get to keep your job

Re: Wireshark is a risky app?

"Unlike the others on that list, it's open source"

"PDF converters" can also be open source, unless that's the name of a specific closed source package. Open Office works OK for that task.

Redis does a Python, crushes 'offensive' master, slave code terms

Re: No masters!

"The only person I've got to know well into that sort thing, she, the sub, was definitely in charge and it was her masters job to keep her satisfied."

The sub has all the power really, coz the sub gives the gift of submission to the Dom, and the sub can take it away again. That's basically what a safe word is for, "Stop doing that nasty thing I previously gave you permission to do, and stop it right now.".

Re: A silly issue, distracting from real work

'I choose "fu" and "bar", so instead of a master/slave relationship, we would have a fu/bar relationship.'

So one is Fucked Up, and the other is Beyond All Repair. What can possibly go wrong?

"So really we can justify removing any word that causes pain anguish or suffering, hu Microsoft?"

Is it the micro, or the soft that causes you so much anguish?

Re: Makes me glad I'm old, accomplished,

For database systems, surely it's Tyrell Corporation / replicant.

Re: Apologies

"Otherwise we’ll end up w stupidly unclear euphemisms up the wazoo. Umbrellas indeed."

You don't want an umbrella up your wazoo, and if you do somehow end up with one of them there, do not open it.

We are still playing this game over on the recent Python thread. Though now my new suggested replacement is SJW / open source project.

You'll never guess what you can do once you steal a laptop, reflash the BIOS, and reboot it

Re: The Cold Shoulder?

I thought I provided one yesterday?

Re: Again,

"When I am finished for the day I simply drive a large nail through the battery compartment of my laptop which consumes the whole assembly with fire and renders the laptop uncompromisable overnight."

As a bonus, no need to turn on the heater during cold nights. Takes a long time to boot in the morning though, walk to the nearest computer store, buy new laptop, walk to where ever your offsite backups are stored, bare metal restore, walk back home, reboot. Could get expensive, I hope you have a cheap source of suitable large nails.

Re: Again.. How many people turn their machine off?

"The other being a nastygram from the BSA that was quite costly."

"The British Shakesphere Association are real bastards."

To sue, or not to sue?

Re: Again,

"Their advice was, if a computer gets compromised and it has UEFI, shred it."

So much for being more secure.

Re: Sociopathic

"What would the BOFH do?"

Similar to that bit you quoted - smacking the laptop owner with a clue-by-four until they learn better security practices.

Re: Again,

"How many people turn their machine off?"

I do. Or rather I don't use any sleep or hibernation modes in anything. On the other hand, I don't like laptops much, but I do use a couple that belong to others regularly, and I turn them off when I'm done.

I'm wondering why they didn't tell Linux and BSD people about this, only Apple, Intel, and Microsoft? Even AMD was left out in the cold (pun intended). Of those couple of laptops I mentioned, one is Linux only, the other dual boots Linux and Windows.

Lenovo Thinkpad X280: Choosing a light luggable isn't so easy

Re: Plenty of X220s on eBay

"You can't ever make a US keyboard feel like a UK one, no matter how many stickers you use or what remapping tools. :P"

The only way I ever end up getting a Dvorak keyboard is to swap keytops around. Makes for a rather lumpy keyboard. Tried the stickers, they tend to come off after a while. Happy Hacker used to provide a Dvorak version, until just before I ordered mine.

When I tried getting a Happy Hacker keyboard, you couldn't buy them in Australia. One of the overseas suppliers we tried refused to sell it to us, due to RoHS, which restricted things in Europe. They had seen "Australia", and thought "Austria".

Re: Where art thou, Sapper?

"you could throw it in a board meeting"

Your board meetings sound seriously dangerous. Throwing laptops at each other? Or have you mixed up your agile scrums with your rugby scrums?

Do not adjust your set, er, browser: This is our new page-one design

Re: "Consultation"

'why put the classification and reporter on the "listing"'

'WE ARE TECHIES - WE WANT INFORMATION, EFFICIENTLY.'

One of the problems is we are asking for different things. Go back over the comments in all three articles on this current change, and you'll find people asking for the classification and reporter that you are wondering why it's there, and some asking for that info to not be there.

One way of making all of us techies happy might be to provide a public API, we can write our own queries to present the info in which ever way we like. Now THAT might be innovation in a tech news site, the user editable profile might include -

First name

Last name

Forum user name

Email

Front page SQL

Front page HTML template

Forums SQL

Forums HTML template

Re: "some of us consider 10's and 20's to be loose change. GBP that is."

"For the last sodding time - WE HAVEN'T LEFT THE EU YET!"

I'm afraid it wont be the last sodding time, until you actually leave the EU.

"I guess we should all go install Win10 if we haven't already."

I think most people don't install Windows 10. It comes pre-installed on most non Apple computers these days, or they upgraded from an earlier version of Windows, or the earlier version of Windows upgraded itself (even if you didn't want to), or they buy a Mac, or they install a proper operating system.

Re: I agree

"or even discover that the same article appears more than one because it falls into several categories"

I've noticed something odd about the RSS feed, some articles appear in it twice, coz they edited the title. Usually right next to each other, like it was changed quickly. Most of the time it's a rather inconsequential change. For example (both published on 2018-09-13 05:26) -

Whiskey business - DDoS attack leaves University of Edinburgh server Irn-Scru'd

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

Re: My two cents worth.

"Again, not really interested in looking at quirky pictures. I come here for the news."

You mean you only read it for the articles.

Re: Next change in line

"Your first urge upon waking up is to check El Reg, rather than have a quick wank?"

You sir win the Innerwebs. I'll just leave it up to your imagination what's on my keyboard now.

Re: Argghhh

"In the past I have used the Stylish addon to change the look of sites/pages but that addon got pulled from both browsers app stores when an update started sending data back to their servers."

"Page Colors & Fonts Buttons" has been working well for me for a long time. Shitty name, good addon.

How an augmented reality tourist guide tried to break my balls

Re: Customer Feedback

"carefully analyse exactly what the tourists are looking at in close detail in order to enhance the customer expereince...."

So Dabsy's testicles are about to have an enhanced customer experience? Does his wife know? Will El Reg cover it as business expenses?

Sounds like your holiday was just a complete balls up.

I'll get my coat, it's the one with the thick Kevlar patches in the front at crotch level.

Berkeley bio-boffins' butt-blasting belly-bothering batt-teria generates electricity

Re: Next time I get the runs

So you'll be charging your iPhone from green Apple iSplatters?

Re: I am not a battery

Using humans body heat for electricity seems like a very inefficient way to generate power. Was The Matrix coded by Microsoft?

I always wondered how the human batteries in The Matrix worked. Now we know.

Microsoft accidentally let encrypted Windows 10 out into the world

Re: 19H1

"Apparently it isn't just me and I need to read the comments more carefully"

The idea that 19H1 is a codename for a virus seems to be contagious.

The entire OS was encrypted? Did Microsoft accidentally release their, soon to arrive on every ones desktops, the up coming "Windows 10 Ransomware Edition"?

Don't put the 'd' and second 'i' in IoT: How to secure devices in your biz – belt and braces

"even with a minimal set of tightly configured, rigorously controlled systems, you can never guarantee absolute security."

Cut off all USB sockets / WiFi / network devices etc, wire in the keyboard and mouse, use VGA (coz modern monitor connectors have bi directional out of band protocols), lock it in small locked room with no windows and with armed guards outside. Allow one user at a time, always accompanied by three heavily armed BOFHs, and the PFY does all the typing as instructed by the user, while the BOFHs watch everything very closely.

OK, you are correct. You'd have to turn it off completely as well, and fill the room with concrete. Then maybe, maybe, you can guarantee absolute security, perhaps.

New MeX-Files: The curious case of an evacuated US solar lab, the FBI – and bananas conspiracy theories

Re: I can reveal

"I have been using a tennis racket to kill them but they keep sending more.

Bug spray helps to clog their engine intakes after a while they crash."

I've always said physics works better than chemistry for killing bug.. er I mean aliens. Hit 'em with a shoe, the tennis racket technique is full of large holes. Their chemists will eventually concoct an antidote to the bug spray.

If it was solar flares, you'd think we would have noticed after a week.

I, for one, welcome our new spotty faced sun overlords.

Facebook can't root out fake news and hate talk, but – oh look – it has software to catch bugs

"If SkyNet is born in facebook's systems, then either it will delete itself or kill us all out of compassion."

I wonder how many likes it'll get from the other AIs on FB when it kills us all?

What can possibly go wrong?

US govt concedes that you can indeed f**k Nazis online: Domain-name swear ban lifted

George Carlin also has a sequel to his Seven dirty words rant. It's just as funny.

Re: This raises the question

Last time I checked there was anonymo.us. I wonder if there's a toys.r.us?

The problem with fucknazis.us is I'm not sure if it's a porn site for people with a Nazi uniform fetish, or something else.

World's oldest URL – fragments 73,000 years old – discovered in cave

Re: So-called "timeout" in IPv4 ...

"Which brings up the obvious question ... how does one get an ICMP-11 (time exceeded) back to the originating server?"

Dig deeper.

Re: Windows?

"Nobody noticed that I forgot about the hostname ..."

73,000 years ago there was only one host, so no need to name it.

So this is the earliest TCP fragmented packet? Sure their technology was very primitive, taking 73,000 years for a broadcast packet to reach our screens, I guess they hadn't invented timeouts yet. I can't wait for the next fragment to arrive, we might eventually see the entire URL. Then we'll retroactively slashdot it.

Martian weather has cleared at last: Now NASA's wondering, will Opportunity knock?

Re: This is no way to die...

"Next time, strap a kiloton-nuke to it."

The one they strapped a nuke to is still going strong.

Re: Not a chance

"Wait a few more years until the twenties are well upon the wires."

Then the teenager will call you, coz they want you to buy them a car for their 21st.

Apple in XS new sensation: Latest iPhone carries XS-sive price tag

"a spare hardware button or two and letting users map them to common features such as Flashlight or Pause Audio."

A built in feature of my current phone is movement gestures. Shaking it sideways twice turns the flashlight on and off, I don't have to fumble for a button in the dark. I use that a lot, it's a well practiced gesture now. I can whip it out of my pocket and have the light on before I've finished pointing it in the general direction of where I need the light. Other gestures and functions are available, but that's the one I actually use.

Re: Emergency call

I've mentioned several times that I do volunteer work for seniors. One of them recently bought one of those fall alarm / panic switch type devices, with my help picking it out. She's an artist, paints portraits, mostly of bearded men (yes, she's done one of me). When we were discussing the pros and cons of wrist mounted versus pendant around the neck style, I pointed out that waving her arm around like she was painting broad brush strokes, might be misinterpreted as wildly waving your arms around as you fall down. My comment was accompanied by appropriate mimed arm movements. She went with a pendant.

It can be programmed with five numbers, it'll call each in sequence until it gets a result. The recommended sequence is family members, trusted friends, doctor / nurse / other designated care person, then emergency services if all else fails. Those five designated numbers can also phone the device, but otherwise doesn't allow incoming or outgoing calls.

The only ongoing cost is for the SIM and phone calls (depending on plan).

I can't recall the battery life, but way longer than 18 hours, that's pitiful. Yes, it has a GPS, water proof, and other features I can't recall off the top of my head.

She is very pleased with her new pendant, and has been extolling it's virtues to the other seniors. Two of them where complaining about their devices being broken, so they need to buy new ones. I pointed out to them they should probably buy a different brand, those brands are obviously not robust.

Wow, great invention: Now AI eggheads teach machines how to be sarcastic using Reddit

So when will El Reg add the automatic AI sarc tag generator to comments? It'll save an awful lot of typing.

Re: Superhuman?

"Cultural references? I'll get some of them (e.g. Pratchett); others (like things off the telly) are likely to go straight over my head. You (other commentard) will share some but not all of mine."

Sometimes the context tells me that something is a cultural reference that I've never seen before. Sometimes I even bother to search for it, in order to understand the commentard better. Other times I just assume humour / sarcasm, and move on.