Posts by Will Godfrey

If you're going to protect people's privacy, protect our profits, too – US broadband biz to FCC

Puzzled

Just when did the notion arise that businesses need their profits protected? The buggy whip makers lost that argument, so why are the telcos thinking they don't need to run their own affairs properly?

De-anonymising data should be a criminal offence, says MPs report

Numpties

... and these are the people (supposedly) running the country.

Google wins High Court fight with StreetMap over search results self-pluggery

Hmm

Personally I mostly use streetmap and almost never use anything google-tainted unless there is no alternative.

National Pupil Database engorged to 20 million individual kids' records

What a surprise.

Not!

I had a bad feeling about this as soon as there was the first wiff of a national database of children. This was my first concern. I most sincerely hope my second one is never realised!

Scariest climate change prediction yet: More time to eat plane food

Re: A suggestion for those worried about all that extra time, fuel, CO2, ...

Ah yes. Good old Boris, who wants to build an airport right in the centre of a massive bird migration route, adjacent to a sunken warship full of unstable explosives and in an area with zero infrastructure or access. I'm sure that will work out well.

Also, the problem isn't airports, it's London itself. There are no easy routes in, out or across the city, and this new airport would be the wrong side for access to anything West or North - so pretty useless really.

When asked 'What's a .CNT file?' there's a polite way to answer

Some people are totally beyond help

And PC just found one.

LOHAN entertains the crowd at Oz Linux shindig

Bad Bad FAA

At this rate it'll be quicker to build your own island in international waters and launch off that.

Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!

Pah!

Remember them?

I've still got an EeePC doing real work with debian Linux on board.

LinkedIn sinkin': $10bn gone in one day as shares plummet 40%

Re: LinkedIn...

@Jeffypoooh

Exactly! Like ArsTechnica, this doesn't seem like 'social media' (TM) more like a bunch of mates having a discussion with a bit of humour thrown in occasionally.

Re: LinkedIn...

400 million and 1 (not looking for a job)

I joined some time ago because an associate said I should, and almost never visit the site. I get occasional job offers but really am not the slightest bit interested.

P.S.

Actually I don't 'get' social media at all.

Sir Michael Lyons tells .uk registry Nominet: Time to grow up

Is it something in the water?

What is it about these Internet organisations? They even seem to out-arrogance politicians. In fact I surprised governments put up with such competition.

Row over GCHQ-built voice algo MIKEY SAKKE rumbles on

Sound like they're just taking the Micky

See title.

How a power blip briefly broke GitHub's boxes and tripped it offline

Thanks

Good to see an organisation putting out a detailed appraisal of what happened.

Now, about that BT outage...

They're alive! Galileo sats 9 and 10 sending valid signals

Re: Bah!

Would that be the inches that are now officially defined as being 25.4 mm?

Lawyer flings class action sueball at EMC over Dell merger

Eejit

Sounds like someone attempting to punch way above their weight. We might even get to see a poor lawyer!

When customers try to be programmers: 'I want this CHANGED TO A ZERO ASAP'

Re: Customer always right?

At one place I worked, when asked for source code they always stripped out everything that isn't essential for compilation (except copyright and licence headers). they also 'simplified' variable names.

I didn't stay there long!

Big Ben belittled by Infosys' plans for enormous erection

Willie waving

See title

Europe wants end to anonymous Bitcoin transactions

Numpties

This really underlines the difference between the EU commish and the EU parliament. The former is in cloud cuckoo land, while the latter protects us from our own government.

US government's $6bn super firewall doesn't even monitor web traffic

You coundn't make it up.

See icon

State Department finds 22 classified emails in Hillary’s server, denies wrongdoing

Boring!

Any chance of something interesting being posted on El Reg?

Patent Troll Unit set up by Virginia government to slay lawsuits

Fingers Crossed

I just hope some intellectual venture {cough} doesn't have enough money to mire this in legal wrangling

GitHub: We're sorry (again) about (another) outage

Re: Self-referentiality

Not very good at this are you? That should have read:

"Due to the great importance of the subject there wasn't time to perform the normal detailed copy check."

The monitor didn't work but the problem was between the user's ears

The thing is...

These things really do happen, time after time, after time, after time...

We had a 'computer failure' in our office quite recently. It was connected to a socket strip under the desk and (we surmise) the cleaning lady had knocked the switch on the side with the vacuum cleaner - why do they put switches there?

Nowadays, I'm not deemed competent to check out these things (not a Microsoft wonk) so they paid for an 'expert' to come and sort it out.

GitHub falls offline, devs worldwide declare today a snow day

Interesting

Our project is mirrored on github because of all the issues we've had with sourceforge. Besides, as the previous poster said, an outage doesn't stop you working, it just makes it a bit slower if you want to copy across to other members of the team.

This gun says you ain’t leaving until my PC is fixed

In a dim and distant past.

I was a TV repairman in the days of all-valve TVs, where stability was an 'interesting' concept.

One particular customer would insist on repairs being done at a time of day when the test card was showing, and when completed would get a ruler and measure the dimensions of the image on the screen. He had a list of the sizes he considered were correct, and would not let you leave until they were 'correct'. In those days, the picture would often 'breathe' depending on the difference between the scan rate and the local mains frequency.

Nobody ever got out of there in less than three hours.

Pubs good for the soul: Official

Re: Your pint has been marked

One of those glasses appeared in my kitchen some years ago. I honestly have no idea how it got there.

P.S. I just looked for it, and it's gone again {sigh}.

400 jobs to go as Texas Instruments calls time on chip fab in Scotland

Bit sad really

I can remember in the early days of TTL they were one of the very few chip makers that would throw reams of detailed information your way (and samples) at the drop of a hat.

UK Home Sec wants Minority Report-style policing – using your slurped data

Not again!

Whenever I think it can't get worse...

You all know the rest by now.

Outage outrage: Banks need clear targets for improving IT systems

Re: There's already IT expertise in the boardroom

I believe it's usually three on shift for 24 hour cover.

Lincolnshire council shuts down all IT after alleged 0-day breach

On the other hand

They have a very nice cathedral that doesn't cost arm+leg to visit.

P.S. and free parking if you know where to go!

Folk shun UK.gov's 'expensive' subsidised satellite broadband

Re: Poor BT

Apologies for posting this in the wrong thread (guess which other one I was reading at the same time).

I'm wondering if my downvoter was one of the control room technicians we had to train - the one who reckoned he could handle the entire desk by himself {snigger}

Poor BT

Did you know they have 'offices' overlooking St Paul's cathedral? There is a massive broadcast standard auditorium, and conference suites with solid mahogany board room tables. I did some work there a few years ago. No expense spared (except for us minions).

Linux Foundation quietly scraps individual memberships

Very Sad

But smells like money talking (why am I not surprised)

Squeeze the banana to log into this office Wi-Fi

Interesting

That one certainly shows up those with no sense of fun.

'No safe level' booze guidelines? Nonsense, thunder stats profs

Re: What's the point of living?

Living in a terraced house causes terrorism ... in kids.

Criminal records checks 'unlawful' and 'arbitrary' rules High Court

Re: Proportionate

Can the Home Office explain how revealing minor offences protects children and vulnerable people?

Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

Re: IoT

Was it AMX or Crestron - I worked with both in some pretty swanky places during the mid 1990s.

Properly insulate your home, have radiator stats in all rooms and a modern efficient boiler, with a sensibly set up overall day/night timer and you can leave it running all day with negligible increased cost.

Re: 4G - Not so bad here

And there was I was under the impression that effective 4G was as expensive as a geegee

It's 2016 and idiots still use '123456' as their password

It's hopeless

Stupid is outbreeding smart.

How to get root on a Linux box, step 1: Make four billion system calls

Re: 4 billion system calls

Wot? Both of them?

Re: typo

Nono. It was a cunning ruse to prevent people in possession of the computer from accessing root by some means other than typing in the frickin password.

For fsck's SAKKE: GCHQ-built phone voice encryption has massive backdoor – researcher

If it walks like a duck...

and quacks like a duck...

Cisco: Businesses are losing the ground war against hackers

O realy?

Is Cisco really the company best placed to 'advise' others?

French say 'Non, merci' to encryption backdoors

Disaster!

That's done it. If the French say 'Non', that makes it a certainty that our lot will say 'Yes'.

Put your private parts on display if you want to keep earning a living

Could be interesting

I'm one of those people who fidgets... a lot, when sitting, and usually take very strange positions anyway. One of the more common ones is sat with one leg folded underneath me, while randomly swinging the other one outstretched. I don't do it consciously, it just seems to happen - much to the merriment of family and friends.

So, I would imagine it would only be a matter of time before said outstretched leg came into high velocity contact with the nadcam. At this time one of two things would be likely to happen Either nadcam gets broken {what a shame} or I suffer an injury that warrants first aid, very considerable quantities of paper filling and possibly a claim against the employer for maintaining an unsafe working environment.

After-dinner Mint? Stylish desktop finale released as last of the 17 line

Re: My only problem was the installer

Oh, that was good!

Re: Improvements in the bowls?

Improvement in the bowels is probably fibre connected.

Stephen Hawking reckons he's cracked the black hole paradox

GCHQ know the answer to that.

Three-years-late fit-to-work IT tool will cost taxpayers £76m

"just as poor at seeing the conmen coming"

That's because there are no mirrors in the House of Commons