Posts by Will Godfrey

Microsoft springs for new undersea cables to link US, UK, Asia

Hmmm

I guess if you brought the brown wire too close to the blue one, and vice-versa sparks would indeed fly.

Then again, are those Microsoft and Google avatars?

Theresa May: Right, THIS time we're getting the Snoopers' Charter in

Never mind who 'won' the election. It's clear we all lost.

NSA domestic dragnet NOT authorised by Patriot Act, rules US Appeals Court

Metadata

Collective Noun:

Anything we can get our hands on, by whatever means we can get away with.

FOUND: NASA's stray balloon located in the middle of nowhere

Hmmm

I wonder if they can get there before the pikeys do.

DEFCON 23 to host Internet of Things slaughterfest

The name could soon change

Internet of Thugs.

Security bods gagged using DMCA on eve of wireless key vuln reveal

Bar Stewards

Once again this heavy-handed legislation does nothing to help the innocent, and everything to protect the guilty.

Mozilla to whack HTTP sites with feature-ban stick

Eeejits!

My own website is a very simple affair. No javascript and no flash, just a bit of css and some ordinary links. If that suffers, then it looks like I'll need to change my front page... Advising people not to use Firefox.

Intellectual property laws in China, India are flawed, claims US govt without irony

Translation

We want it ALL!

Do you have the intellectual bandwidth to attend ISC 2015?

Intellectual Bandwidth?

Euw.

Not for me then.

Oi, Twitter! Sign this or we won't talk to you, growls EU

Call a spade a spade.

It's bribes dammit!

And the EU wants a registered list of those it will accept them from.

El Reg merch tentacle mulls retro LOHAN T-shirt

I was a bit surprised thay didn't go for the artists side.

Tesla reveals Powerwall battery packs for homes, Powerpacks for cities

Re: "the horrors of an electric stove"

Also the looks on friends' faces is a picture when you have a plate sat millimeters from a nest of hot pans while you casually dole out the food, then hand the barely warm plate to them.

Boeing 787 software bug can shut down planes' generators IN FLIGHT

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Sorry, someone had to say it :)

It sounds like a pretty crappy bit of programming. I'm no expert by any means but I learned how to deal with integer overflows (assuming that's what it is) on a BBC model B.

Airbus to sue NSA, German spies accused of swiping tech secrets

Re: Tinfoil hattery

Nono. You got that wrong. Paranoia is the unreasonable fear that people are out to get you. These days, such activity is so widespread it is quite rational to suspect it.

Is Grant Shapps being naughty on Wikipedia – or did a Lib Dem stitch him up?

Just another minus grade

This has to be the worst election run-up I've ever known by a country mile. The lot of them are behaving worse than a playground full of kids, and if anyone previously had any doubts about the media's part in political 'management' they must surely have lost them now.

At this moment in time I really can't see any point in bothering to vote at all. I'm almost convinced my time would be better spent sat in the garden watching the grass grow.

Fondleslab deaths grounded ALL of American Airlines' 737s

Re: The reason...

That's it!

I'm going to take a patent out on the idea of a method of recognising duplicate files, notifying the user, and giving them the choice of which one to to use, based on erm... How about the age of the files?

I'll call it the Advanced Service Selector.

Re: Bad Data?

If this does turn out to be a data corruption issue then, after all this time, there really is no hope for the software industry.

ICANN wants total control of DNS while breaking its own bylaws to block .africa probe

Re: What's the surprise?

Indeed. I suspect these people can't even spell the word 'ethics' let alone understand what it means.

MEPs: Oi, Juncker! Hands off our science and research dosh

This guy is turning out to be a nightmare - I wonder who his 'friends' are.

FBI alert: Get these motherf'king hackers off this motherf'king plane

Money!

Re: I think it's more of a case of

You show people that we are idiots, we'll take your stuff.

Typical playground bully behaviour.

FTFY

Singapore's PM personally programmed C++ Suduko-solver

Re: If a political party could choose a programming language...

Good one. As well as an upvote, Have one of these ^

Japan showcases really, really fast … whoa, WTF was that?!

Re: Half an hour to wait for a platform

What's worse is that after that half hour wait three will arrive at the same time!

Neurobabble makes nonsense brain 'science' more believable

Re: re - Perhaps when your brain ..before the conscious mind can intervene.

But... But...

looking around today, it seems society doesn't work!

Post Office denies IT blunders led to criminal charges against posties

Form what I've heard, you could be forgiven for thinking the Post Office is deliberately trying to discourage anyone for running a post office.

National Grid's new designer pylon is 'too white and boring' – Pylon Appreciation Society

Stop!

These should be banned on health and safety grounds.

In a sudden thunderstorm the safest place you can be is right in the centre of a conventional pylons feet. The new ones would be the worst place to be.

Labour manifesto: Tech Bacc, not-spot zapping and hi-speed interwebs

Oi!

I come here to bury politics, not to praise it!

Big Blue securo-bods warn of dire Dyre Wolf AMONG WOLVES

Re: Bah!

Nuffink... Innit.

Bad News

I would say I've no sympathy for the organisations that get scammed, but the bottom line is that it's us that eventually have to foot the bill.

Volvo V60 Polestar: Speak softly, carry a big stick, dress like a Smurf

Must be getting old. Didn't find anything about this exciting.

Keep snapping selfies, says Snapchat: Cops NEVER ask us for 'em

What a disaster

... if even the cops and spooks aren't interested!

Torvalds' temptress comes of age: Xfce 4.12 hits the streets

Re: If it ain't broke...

I am well aware that the title bar is still there. I don't see how that in any way invalidates my observation of what appears to be the current trend.

Therefore, if my comment was pointless, then surely yours is even more so.

If it ain't broke...

The version available from debian wheezy is fine for me. I want to work on stuff, not admire how pretty the frills are. Oh, and I want a title bar. It seems all the 'improvements' are backward steps.

Power, internet access knackered in London after exploding kit burps fire into capital's streets

Famous Last Words

We need to cut maintenance costs, so we might as well seal that entrance - We're never going to need it.

UK's National Museum of Computing celebrates 10 glorious years

Hmmm

It's been a few years since I visited (Tony was still around). I absolutely must get there again this year.

Microsoft dumps ARM for Atom with cut-price Surface 3 fondleslab

That's a relief!

I was worried there for a while. Fortunately ARM can now carry on developing new ideas with out the ball & chain of Microsoft's 'requirements'.

Affirmative wrist action: Pebble Time raises 20 MEELLION BUCKS on Kickstarter

Nope

I've (almost) achieved the joyous state of never really needing to know the time. I haven't actually worn a watch for several years. As an experiment, I'm even leaving the central heating timer on GMT this year. It hardly ever comes on in the summer anyway.

BOFH: Mmm, gotta love me some fresh BYOD dog roll

I think all of these could be summed up as Bring Your Own Disaster!

Lighty and flighty: Six sizzling portable projectors

I'm also puzzled at who these are targetted at. Having used a variety of projectors in the past, I know that just projecting onto a whith-ish surface is rarely good enough, so the value of the extreme portability is moot. Certainly they will in no way compete with modern flat screen displays, not on clarity, brightness, or resolution.

Banks defend integrity of passcode-less TouchID login

Re: Wunch (you know the rest)

Have you seen the tailspin most people go into when they realise they've lost their phone?

Quite typically they'll be in a supermarket and decide to ring home to check on what's needed. In their agitated state, are they then going to tap up a complete stranger and ask to use their phone to ring the bank? Then, I guess they'll need to find someone with the same bank 'cos guess where they stored the number (along with all sorts of things that really should not be on such an insecure item).

When most people's idea of a 'mobile' phone was the one in the big red box on the street corner nobody was particularly dependent on them, but now many can't function rationally at all without them.

Wunch (you know the rest)

I like the bit about calling the bank if your phone is lost or stolen...

Ummm. how?

Web geeks grant immortality to Sir Terry Pratchett – using smuggled web code

To the miserable git

Please don't visit my website. It's full of 'unnecessary' stuff.

Oh, and it now proudly displays its clacks.

Re: Downvoting

Indeed!

Also, by doing this they are effectively UPvoting everyone, because as soon as you realise it's happening you start subconsciously subtracting 1 from all downvotes.

Re: Brilliant!

... and because I can't have two icons, I'll just have to have two posts!

Brilliant!

I can't think of a better tribute.

Apple Watch is like an invasive weed says Gartner

Am I missing out?

I don't have a smart anything, but somehow seem to survive.

P.S.

I've even got a bit of money in the bank.

The storage is alive? Flash lives longer than expected – report

In order to stagger the RAID array's failures wouldn't it make sense to use a mixture of drives of different makes and slightly different actual capacities?

BBC: We'll give FREE subpar-Raspberry-Pis to a million Brit schoolkids

Well OK...

... as long as you don't have to use a 'special' Windows-only application to program it.

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett: Discworld author finally gets to meet DEATH

"He had a wonderful grasp of the human condition and the human mind, and I think the appropriate reaction for me is to go and read one of his books again."

THIS is what I was thinking around, but couldn't quite find the words for.

Also, his books are a way you can laugh at yourself without being embarrassed by your own failings.

Mattel urged to scrap Wi-Fi mic Barbie after Register investigation

Crazy!

Has the entire world gone stark, staring mad?