Posts by The Other Steve

Tangenitally relevant

Selecting based on N years of X is a poor technique anyway. Someone can have many years experience in a field and still not be any good.

IME, Windows admins and developers of all stripes fall squarely into this category.

I've been in a position to hire and fire, and I can confidently say that restricting adverts (and criteria given to recruiters, who will do the initial selection) to "Knowledge of X" provides a far more interesting list of candidates.

Apart from anything else, once you have their CVs you can see how long their experience with X is, and when you get them to interview, you can find out if their experience is actually relevant to you or not.

Someone with (say) 5 years of C# working as a web developer may be of no value to me at all if I'm looking for someone to work on a C# DSP application, whereas someone with no commercial C# at all who knocked up a spectral analyser application in their spare time may be just right for the job.

In fact, someone with no C# at all, but who is competent in other languages and has domain knowledge may fit well, and would have been eliminated through a requirement for some number of years working in a particular language, or even knowledge of that particular language.

Maybe this person could convince me that C# isn't actually a good platform to build a DSP app on. If not, I'm sure they can learn C# in a jiffy if they are decently competent. Transferable skills, see ?

Obviously, the less specific you are in your criteria, the more CVs you will have to wade through, and the more candidates you will have to see. But time investment in this phase will pay itself back many fold. Recruitment by box ticking on the other hand, often leads to a mismatch.

(IME, YMMV)

sa/sa

It ought not to be, in fact later versions will even you force you to jump through hoops to make this happen during an install.

Still, it's by far the most common Admin login tuple I've come across on SQL server installs. Including some really big uns.

And another thing(s)

It's not really "the first time that Colossus has been used since then Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the destruction of the top-secret machine following the end of World War II." either.

I stood in Hut H on a BP reunion day a couple of years back and watched Tony Sale demonstrate the rebuild running (along with many other people). Got photos and everything.

And yet, I split hairs, I see what they mean, and it's still a great project which deserves our support.

Honestly, I could bang on all day about how knee tremblingly fantastic it is to see the beast run, but don't take my word for it, go see it for yourself.

@Brian Miller :

I see your point, but to be fair the Colossus wasn't really useful to anyone not involved in what BP was doing. Although it enjoys a fair degree of flexibility vis a vis programming, it really is a very special purpose machine. Also, the skills and technologies were not lost. Post WWII boffins from BP went into academia and built machines.

Good and co at Manchester for instance, where they designed and built the Manchester Mk I (or Baby, which has also been restored and runs every Tuesday, IIRC), which went on to become the Ferranti Mk I, and so on. There was Lyons' incredible LEO project. Any lack of competitive commercial lead that the UK exhibited in this field was down to bog standard lack of vision on behalf of UK.PLC. (And possibly funding, which was thin on the ground after the war)

And don't forget, absolute secrecy was Churchill's overriding motivator where GC&CS, BP and subsequently GCHQ were concerned. Having seen what a strategic advantage was granted by reading peoples traffic without them knowing, he was unwilling to sacrifice it at any cost. Particularly with the cold war looming large.

Oh and @AC :

"It's a PII laptop!!"

Yes, Tony Sale's Thinkpad IIRC, but don't you see how incredible it is that a machine that was delivered in 1943 is actually in with a chance of outperforming a PII ? Seriously, tremble before it's mighty glory.

@adnim et al

"The part of the T&C you just quoted basically allows Comcast to throttle or block traffic that THEY deem to be unacceptable, regardless of what that data is."

Erm, yes, that was rather the point actually. And whatever you may think of that, morals wise, doesn't really matter. It's Comcast's network, and they lay down clearly the restrictions they will place upon you while using it.

"Despite my own moral standing on illegal warez, porn and copyright material. What right do I have to impose my morals on anyone else? If you are wondering about the answer to this, here's a clue: None whatsoever."

That's right, and me neither, as you succinctly point out. What right do Comcast have though ? The rights laid down clearly in their Ts & Cs. Again, you make my point for me. As for the definition of "reasonable", don't ask me, that's where lawyers make their cash.

@AC

Learn to read yourself freetard, learn to read the small print that's always attached to ISP deals. Oh yeah, and switch to decaf FFS.

@freeloader apologists in general.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I downloaded the MS betas, several linux distros, and all the generally legitimate things you can get as well (although many of them came via FTP), but you all still know that 90% of the stuff travelling P2P is infringing content. ISPs know this as well. Pointing to the 10% of legitimate traffic and saying that it means ISPs shouldn't do traffic shaping is a very very weak argument.

For the record, I don't really give a toss what people choose distribute or consume via p2p, but whining at your ISP because they attempt to limit your usage to what is a) fair and b)clearly spelled out in their TOS, AUP or whatever is simply pathetic.

I hope this freeloader gets kicked out of court with "Caveat Emptor" tattooed on his ass. Perhaps people might learn to engage their brains for a change instead of blindly believing everything the profit mongers tell them and then being surprised when it turns out not to be true. Duh!

Newsflash !

Businesses lie

Advertisers lie and manipulate you

Businesses exist to take your money away from you.

Everything is stacked in their favour

Welcome to Earth. Get used to it.

DNS fix

Erm, I for one wrote a working exploit for this issue in 2004 (Multi platform perl script, very ganchy but it works), after reading an article about it in Phrack. And published it, albeit fairly quietly, on the web. Probably still lurking out there somewhere.

So in fact this extremely serious and very amusing bug has had working 'point and click' exploit code in the wild for at least that long. I have no idea if anyone has ever used it.

I really thought that this was fixed in SP2 (never checked, had moved on to other things), clearly I was mistaken. Shame on MS for taking so long to sort this out. No bloody wonder the world is overrun with botnets.

year mod ( (year mod 100 > 0) ? 4 : 400) > 0 ? false : true

My date fu is a little rusty, but ISTR that the above will do the trick in a very compact kind of way barely even a full line of code, although the intent is hard to read(and I haven't checked it of course, that would be no fun).

Whoever programmed the date dropdown component wants to be shot.

@Mark Rendle :

I live near Newcastle, I went to Paris, it was shite. I'm not going back.

So you might not be to far off the truth.

Still got one of those

The 'Orange' branded one circa about 1993 I think, which is slimmer and sleeker, unless you put the long life battery on it.

Still in good working order, and the only reason I don't still use it is that when you send an SMS you have to input the number manually. Other than that it's a damn good phone. It looks like a phone, it rings like a phone, you make and receive calls on it. That is all. These days the styling passes for retro geek chic. If only it could keep up in the SMS stakes, it would be housing my current SIM.

On the orange network, it got CLI (and passthrough from BT at that) well before BT introduced it. Great way to spook people out before they all realised what CLI was.

Ah, those were the days

Need an icon for 'misty eyed nostalgia' :-)

@AC w/r/t "2 girls one cup"

Until today I had never heard of this particular internet meme, having little better to do with my time I just had to google it.

I hate you so much right now.

Well it's about time...

...that we saw a security story with a named security expert who a) actually is a an expert, and b) ISN'T GRAHAM BLOODY CLUELESS.

Yay!

RE : run a lunar lander on Windows?

No. No way. Nor would anyone sane chose linux for such a task. You want a proper RTOS. Possibly one developed specifically*. Linux is a server OS, and isn't designed for such critical systems. Far to much bloat.

As this incident rather proves. I mean, it's one thing if a software glitch drops your web server for a while, but blowing up your lunar mission is another kettle of fish altogether. Even if your bug report is received in good faith, and fixed in good time (ever try submitting a bug report for linux ? Wear your best asbestos clothing.), and you eventually get a patch, it's not going to be much consolation to the dead astronauts or their grieving families is it ?

Just because linux is quite good for running Apache doesn't mean it's suitable for everything (q.v supra, the article, and the reports), many foamy fanboys to the contrary.

*Fanboys : The point at which you suggest this is to difficult / expensive / time consuming is the point at which your geek cred drops well below 0 and you have to hand back your "10 kinds of people" T-Shirt.

Surely biodegradable stuff...

...will, always, ultimately, erm, biodegrade ? The answers really in the question.

And what if you live in a city, and don't have a garden to compost in, or if like me you live in a city but have a garden that's about a foot wide, with barely enough space for the wheelie bin as it is. This garden is no way big enough to take the compost generated by the residents total addiction to cups of tea.

And like, even if I could compost it and put it on my garden, or I put it in a special bin which I haven't actually got room for and give it to some other bugger, WTF is the difference from just chucking it in a whole in the ground ? It's still going to biodegrade back down into it's components. Duh!

Can someone explain why this is bad ? I mean, surely those components were around in the atmosphere / dirt / etc previously anyway ? Otherwise how the fuck did they get into my teabag ? By magic ?

Further, if I'm going to give my compostable waste to someone else, who presumably will get some use out of it, shouldn't *they* be paying *me* ?

Twat

What kind of utter fuckwit puts a weapon on the ground without safing it first ? And I mean breaking it and removing the cartridges, not just applying the safety. What a dick.

@Bob Boswell :

Nice poem, yeah. It neatly encompasses everything I was taught about shotgun handling many many moons ago. It's amazing how many people just don't get the "don't point it at people, even when unloaded" part, sigh.

RE : Still the best Java platform

Erm, except it isn't, is it. Not if it can't keep up with the current standard. I don't know what it's like for apple fanbois, but my windows desktops download the new version of JRE as soon as it's available. This is a feature of Java, not the OS.

So you're saying that an OS where Java doesn't update itself, and in the case of 1.6, can't update itself, is the best platform to develop on ?

Think yourself lucky you don't work for me, or you'd be polishing up your CV.

@Apple apologists

Get used to it. You all jumped all over Vista for every tiny little flaw when it came out, which IMO is fair enough, but you have to accept that the same will happen for the latest shiny turd that apple poops out as well. It *is* news. It's new information about a new IT product. How is that *not* news ? Just because apple won't tell you about it doesn't make it un-newsworthy, quite the opposite in fact.

@Early adopters

Seriously, WTF is your problem ? Leopard has been available for what ? 48 hours or something ? And you're surprised there are problems ? You installed it on a production system ? Jesus, and I thought the linux fanbois were dense.

May The Lord Have Mercy On Your Soul

"Just put some clown makeup on that sucker and I'll never sleep again."

Oh, thanks for that Andrew, thanks a lot, now I really will have the screaming nightmares.

I never heard of the "Uncanny Valley" stuff until I read this story, but I sure am feeling it right now.

Deeply creepy.

"most economically advantageous" ??

TfL could have phrased that better, cue massed whining about "stealth" taxes.

In fact, I bet by the time this is mod'd, there's at least two.

Hint : If they tell you about it, it's not really stealthy, now is it ?

I hate ANPR as much as the next rabid libertarian / habitual criminal, but you all know the way to avoid it is to stock up and steak 'n' kidney and get your two wheeled, pie powered, personal transport out of the shed.

Don't forget to oil it, and watch those braking distances in the wet.

AAHHHHHAAAAHAHHAAAHAHAAAHAAAHAAAAAHAAAA

"plans were also announced to protect freedom of information and "legitimate journalism". Specifically this would be done by having Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, examine the rules under which many government documents are locked away for decades before being released to the public."

That's a joke right ? Please tell me that's a joke. It's certainly the first time I've seen the words "legitimate journalism" and "Daily Mail" in the same sentence.

You're not seriously telling me that instead of convening a committee of bipartisan pols and other interedsted parties, The Fat Controller is going to cede judgement on an issue of national importance to the Daily bastard Mail ?????????

I can't find any words, I really can't.

"new issues of terrorism and security, "

Again, that's a joke right ? I mean it's nearly November yeah ? Guy Fawkes ? Anyone ??

Amateur

OK he got the 'completely missing the point' part right, and there are some speeling and grammar probs, but what ? No SHOUTING CAPS ? No swearing ? This guy is hardly even frothing. Couldn't you have spiced it up a bit ?

Ministry of Justice ?

I just can't get used to seeing that in print (so to speak). It's just so frighteningly Orwellian.

W/R/T the actual story, if FOI requests are expensive, boo hoo. My heart bleeds.

Four remedies :

1) Stop being so damn secretive in the first place, if the info was routinely made readily available it wouldn't cost so much to track down.

2) Keep proper records, see above.

3) Sort your bloody admin processes out so that they actually work efficiently, massive cost savings all around. Handy hint for public orgs, stop hiring monkeys to be 'administrators' and get some properly trained employees. They'll cost more, sure, but they'll be more efficient, q.v previous. The three GCSE crowd will end up back on the dole, sure, temporarily inflating unemployment figures, but then they'll all get snapped up by Mickey D's and GAP which is where they belong in the first place.

4) Tax me more. If a proper, functioning, accountable democracy is more expensive than what we've got now, then so be it. But be damn sure you try the first three proposals first.

A heavily qualified, but hearty "yay" for the consultation result though.

Regardless...

...of weather the bloke is a decent sort, or weather the majority of mod chipping probably is for the stated purpose (comments here to the contrary obviously, and there are certainly many legit uses, but these are from techies and the XB is a mass market consumer product), or weather he was paying tax on his income (if so, prosecute him for that)

Regardless of weather the economics of piracy suggest that lowering unit costs would increase sales to make up the shortfall, and all that jazz.

Regardless of any factor that you care to mention, this law still sucks a fat one.

There is absolutely no frickin way on earth that it's legitimate to LEGISLATE against people modifiying things that they own. Similarly, if they are not technically competent to do it themselves, and wish to pay for a commercial third party after sales service that's legitimate for almost any other product I can think of, how the blue bloody hell is this a legitimate target for restrictive legislation ?

What is it exactly that makes game consoles so freakin' special that they special laws to protect them from harm ?

There are existing remedies in law for all the potential 'bad' uses of such a modification, so what gives ?

The people that drafted this law, and those that voted for it, should be taken to one side and beaten roundly with a clue stick until they understand the implications of what they have done and whose tune they are dancing to.

Yet again, we see a that a rich western economic system that spends a whole lot of time whining about "Free Trade" wouldn't know what free trade was if it stood up and bit them in their fat round asses.

Fucking politicians, conniving shitweasels, so they are. My piss boils.

Knows ? Evolving ?

Utter shite. However sophisticated the storm worm code might be, it is just that, code.

It is not aware, it does not 'know'.

It does not 'evolve', it is changed by programmers.

Hysterical hyperbole, pure and simple.

As usual, the EU does it wrong, but...

..we sniffy Euros and stiff assed Brits really do need an independent military industrial base. We will need it when we fight the Yanks. Or in the best case, when we finally grow some balls and simply disengage from them.

I think we all know by now that sooner or later the Good Ol' US of A is going to do something so heinous and so unbelievably stupid that even the UK will find it distasteful to be associated with our once beloved cousins.

Per Ardua Ad Astra

"China will not be involved in a Moon race with any other country and in any form."

Yeah right. If they keep hitting their set targets, the Chinese will land a manned mission to the moon in 2017, a bare couple of years before NASA plan to do the same (stop sniggering at the back).

But hey, if competition, even just national pissing competition stimulates space exploration, then yay! And about fucking time too.

Go China.

RE : The cigarette smokers may disagree...

"...but if this is the start of a process of decriminalising all currently prohibited drugs, then I say OK."

With you there, that was pretty much my first thought as well. If one dangerous addictive drug can be licensed, then it's only fair that others should be to. I'd be perfectly willing to spring 200 quid a year if meant I could buy skunk from the corner shop at knock down prices (which is the way I buy ciggies now).

On the other hand, why the license. Why not just legalise and tax other drugs, which would provide a massive increase in tax revenue straight away ?

"If, as most people accept, prohibition and "just say no" doesn't work."

The sad answer is that, in fact, most people **don't** think that way. The hysterical middle classes (e.g the people who actually a)give a shit about drugs, etc and b) swing vote ) have been brainwashed by years of tabloid/ITV stories about retards like Leah Betts who killed themselves through their own stupidity, into repeating the mantra "Drugs are bad, m'kay" without applying any kind of critical thought process.

So much so that they can't even join up the dots thus :

Caffeine == drug; Booze == drug;

if(drug == bad) then Gin,Latte == also bad.

It's this same audience who have been now been convinced that Smoking == killing children & reducing biodiversity & funding terrorism (probably) who are the target market for stupid announcements like this.

Nothing will ever come of it, but Daily Wail/Express/etc reading Parents (note the capital P) will warm to the party because they are being seen to "Think About The Children"(tm) and because they see a policy that targets those "other people" who cost "them" a fortune in taxes to pay for "their" health service. And similar.

And of course smokers are fucked, because we *know* smoking is bad for you, it's written on the packet and everything, and we've been told that it's bad for other people as well, so it seems churlish to complain.

All in all a genius piece of political manipulation, which leaves with the interesting position that if it's actually implemented, our rulers are Stalinist, but if it's just fluff, they're more like, erm, hang on, it's Stalin again.

Funny how many times that name's come up.

Well, thank the lordy for ANPR

If it was Traffic Cops enforcing the 'Olympic fat cats only' lanes, I wouldn't able to cycle in them !

@AC RE (etc)

"I am more than happy to concede that this is information that could be left out of the manual shipped with every unit but making it a pay only resource is where I have problems."

Sorry, I missed a bit off my post here I castigated BT in sympathy. Must be the Aspergers kicking in :-)

Well out of order to make that a chargeable support issue.

@Dave

Could be a bit of both.

@Joe and Tim

And the poor bugger was stuffed with cyanide beforehand, apparantly (I saw it on QI, IIRC)

RE : Fucking video adverts

So, would you rather pay a subscription to get to the juicy goodness of el reg ?

People have to eat you know, and advertising is the main revenue stream in the "new economy", or whatever they're calling it this year.

This has been the case since about 1996, so you've had plenty of time to get used to it.

@Sandra Keegan

I was just thinking what a decent comment that was, until I read the last sentence :

"Perhaps we should join or support EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://www.eff.org/)."

Then I nearly wet myself laughing. I applaud your conviction, but you need someone more credible than the EFF to help you express it.

@Mad Mike

OK Mike, lets talk some more numbers.

Deaths from air pollution caused by traffic, according to the Lancet are 19,000 per annum, if we believe the NAO figure for economic cost per road death, that's another 50bn quid.

That's already eaten your remaining contribution, and you're into negative numbers now just paying for the death toll inflicted on society by motoring. In fact, we seem to be paying you to kill us.

That's what you can do when you just use a few straight numbers you pulled out of your arse.

You want some proper research, perhaps I should have cited sources earlier, my bad, try these.

http://www.thebikezone.org.uk/thebikezone/campaigning/tax.html

http://www.igreens.org.uk/great_road_transport_subsidy.htm

You won't like that, it was done by the green nazis, they have an agenda. But these people :

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/current/trnprice.htm

don't. Naturally, they give the motorist a little more leeway, citing that you probably pay ~33% of the actual cost of driving a car. Download the full paper, read it, be informed.

So, far from being a government mouthpiece, I am merely someone who *has* actually taken the time to read the actual research.

You might like to take the time to do the same before you start telling me I'm making unsubstantiated claims. You might wish to remain ignorant, it's your call.

RE: Spoofing ANI

Consider me updated, cheers :-)

@Brasche

There are no moral qualms with embryonic stem cells unless you happen to be a dribbling sad ass christian fundie.

You're a yank of course, so I figure there's maybe a 50/50 chance that you are.

Whiney little maggots

So a positive, upbeat article about a new version of a popular user focussed linux distro generates as many flames as an article that dares to be in some way be uncritical of MSFT.

This comment section has rapidly developed into a "my linux distro is better than your linux distro" pissing contest.

The quick'n'dirty answer to the question "Why didn't you mention [some linux distro]/[some tool that I use] ?" is this. The article was about Ubuntu.

Put your dummies back in, get the toys back in your prams and stop fucking whining you sad fanboi bastards.

It's attitudes like that which prevent many savvy developers from participating in FOSS projects and generally hold back the progress of GNU/Linux.

It's not that we don't like linux, we love linux. We just hate you, you poorly socialised nitpicking freaks.

@Steve

Will you *stop* posting that, you spammng cunt.

No, no, A thousand time no, I'd rather DIE than say yes.

It's bad enough on the train, and I travel first class. Someone should tell these fuckheads that they give you a phone so you don't *have* to shout. That's like, the whole point.

On more than one occasion I've communicated with other passengers my displeasure at their activities, especially after I paid extra to specifically to sit up front and avoid gobby little tosspots [1], usually to the resounding approval of the other passengers.

Allow this to happen on a plane, and someone is going to die.

[1] Well, that and to have a table to put the wine glasses on, obviously.

If no one else has said it...

BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAA.

Something that makes both DSG *and* MS look like twats can surely only be a good thing.