Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

@Alien fear not!

More than likely senior people who were to be on this project left IBM. (You figure out the hows and whys)

Their junior replacements weren't up to snuff.

I know nothing, but just an educated guess on IBM's recent RIFs.

@Tom Re: @Titter

You should have gone to Lou's a couple of blocks away if you wanted a good deep dish.

And if Deep isn't your thing, Lou's does a good thin too.

@Titter

Sorry mate, you get down voted.

In Amerika, its Pizza Slut not Pizza Hut.

In terms of 'strong arm' marketing, its 'Pappa Johns' (see their tie in w NFL)

But here in Chicago, if you want good pizza, you have a lot more options. Thick or thin, or even as a Calazone or Oven Grinder. So call me a snob.

BTW, the slice looks more like it came from a DiGiorno commercial than a pizza chain.

Pizza and Beer is what makes technology go around and my gut hang over my belt.

(Hence the beer icon)

@martinusher Re: @macjules A suprise?

Hate to break it to you mate, wrong on so many levels.

In fact there is so much evidence to show the contrary you could write a book on it.

Here's one of the simple facts that kills your theory.

The domain was created just before Clinton accepted the offer to be SoS.

(Oops!)

She had no written policy nor was allowed to do it.

At the same time, she turned down having a .gov domain email address.

(oops #2)

Do you really want to go on? It gets worse from here.

Like Cheryl Mills who knew about the server, claimed that there were no emails in response to a FOIA request. (Ooops #3) Oh and there's your intent. At least one of the several reasons...

@brianbone Re: Espionage Act

You seem to not understand the law as well as you think.

Intent isn't required when you're charging someone with gross negligence. By definition you can't intentionally be negligent.

As to intent. They can show it.

Re: Ooops - who let the cat out of the bag.

Whoa! Slow down there cowboy!

Lets get the facts straight...

1) Clinton's private server.

We know Eastern European hackers were involved because of Guciffer.

We don't know how compromised it was because without having a grand jury, the Feds couldn't seize anything or compel testimony. What we do know is that a security researcher found her server to be running unsecured and easily hackable. Because of the attempts to 'wipe' the server. Data that would indicate a hack most likely lost. This is why they can claim no evidence of a hack yet it doesn't mean it wasn't hacked.

In addition, its actually a moot point. Clinton's emails to Sidney B. contained classified material and we know that he was hacked by at least 3 governments.

2) DNC hack.

Wikileaks knows their source and how they got the material.

I agree that its very suspect that a staffer was killed in a 'mugging gone wrong'. Then Assange offering a cash reward. (The DNC staffer getting killed in a mugging gone wrong didn't make the national news until after Assange's reward, so how did he hear about it?)

Pointing to Russia is an easy diversion. I agree. But the key issue isn't that they were hacked, but that they actually rigged the party's election.

3) Podesta's email account hack.

A 14 yr old could do that phish attack.

Again its not that he was hacked, but the material that was recovered.

Again, Russian involvement is going to be tough to prove. Script kiddies and serious hackers who may or may not have ties to a government, can get government styled code and hacks.

I agree with what you are saying. I broke it down and separated it because when you conflate news, you may end up with the wrong conclusion.

Now more importantly... Trump just accused Obama of wire tapping his NY office. This is an actual fact because Obama got a FISA warrant on their second request. Obama's tenure is turning out to be more opaque and more scandals.

@Version 1.0 ... Re: Friday night in the bar

Like Microsoft, I guess we'll have to wait until version 3.0 comes out. :-P

Seriously, I think you need a bit of a reality check.

The article was poorly written and mirrors the tripe we find in the main stream media.

The hack who wrote this needs to go back to journalism school.

If you bothered to do any sort of fact checking you'd see that its an apples to oranges situation and the only ones having a melt down are Pelosi and Schumer along with some other kooky Democrats.

The real question is why do you think this type of non-story is popping up?

On the one hand, the Democrats in Congress are taking a 'resistance to everything' mentality which is not good for anyone.

On the other.... As Trump gets his cabinet in place, Sessions and Congress will proceed to go after Clinton as they roll back all of the mess that Obama created. In fact, the sooner they en panel a real Grand Jury and the FBI does a real investigation and there's a special prosecutor put in place, the sooner we'll see this type of malarkey go away.

You get to choose.

@Tom Dial...

Sir, you get the issue.

The irony of this is that her hubby signed in to the official records act, the retention of emails. It means she committed a misdemeanor, out of the gate.

The whole system was created to thwart that and let Clinton run a shadow government. There's more to the Libya thing and I think it will get buried. Even Obama doesn't have clean hands and I doubt Valarie will pull an Oliver North.

Further irony. What Pence did was completely legal. His only mistake was that he didn't CC: his government account. Had he done that... there wouldn't be a problem. And of course while inexcusable, the content of said emails was innocuous.

The issue isn't about Pence, but that the Democratic party is out to do anything in the name of 'resistance'. I find that to be ethically wrong , child like and petty. As an independent voter, I think that Pelosi, Schumer, Waters and a couple other Democrats should be voted out at the end of their term. I don't care which party replaces them, but that these individuals have to go. They are part of the problem.

Note: I'm not suggesting Trump is going to do the right thing all the time, but for our government to work we need communication from both sides of the aisle. If Trump screws up, then you lay in to him. Right now the Dems are acting like cry babies because Hillary lost the election.

To your earlier post, she lost because she did run a sloppy election, but also because of the emails and her health, along with her years of being an ugly person. Add to this the fact that she was running because it was her time... really? Let us also not forget the pay to play scheme she and her hubby cooked up. She is as crooked as they come.

If you didn't read or believe 'Clinton Cash', the proof was in the hacks of the DNC and the Podesta emails.

Did the Russians have anything to do with it? Maybe a Russian hacker, who knows. It doesn't matter. It doesn't change the facts that Clinton and her campaign fixed the DNC primary in her favor. There is no excuse for that. Of all of the candidates, Kasich on the Right, and Bernie on the Left were the most honest and trust worthy. Biden should have ran and Clinton should have been indicted. Biden vs Kasich, Kasich would still have won.

There's more, but it doesn't matter unless you're a historian. Trump is #45 and he should be given a chance to do his job. Obama made a mess of things. More so than many realize. If you can't respect the man, at least respect the office.

Mr. Damage Re: Drink the f up.

Absolutely.

Actually I lied.

I had a glass of Japanese Whiskey at the time.

I was really lucky in the 90's to build a nice selection of Single Malts, and I'm now slowly draining the bottles. Since it was just an ordinary Friday, I opted for a nice 17yr old from Japan.

I'm afraid I've got to cut back on the beer, and I'm a bit of a fan of the Williams Brothers that I had while in Scotland. Don't think I can find it here in the States.

Maybe we should have a forum for alcohol on El Reg? It seems alcohol and IT go together.

A little bit helps to lubricate the mind. A lot helps us to forget the Pointy Haired Managers who don't know shit and expect miracles to be pulled out of our asses and done yesterday.

@macjules Re: A suprise?

Sorry, you fail to actually grasp the issue.

Pence used his personal AOL account for some emails. Was this right? No, however it wasn't illegal and had he cc'd his state government email address, it would have been 100% Kosher. John Kerry and other in the government have done the same thing. Except here. Kerry, while a Senator used his personal email account to email Clinton's private email server account and the content I believe contained classified material.

Now, did we see John Kerry a Democrat, getting his pee pee spanked by the Obama Administration? Or anybody? No.

So there's your hypocrisy.

With respect to Clinton. She didn't just use a personal email account for some of her emails, SHE USED A PERSONAL SERVER FOR ALL EMAILS. Now unlike Pence where there are no laws or official records act for Governors, there is a law on the books for Federal Government Officials in certain high ranking positions that require them to retain documents and in the 90's then President Bill Clinton signed into the law the inclusion of emails.

So, just by setting up the server in an effort to skirt the Official Records Act, Hillary Clinton and her staff committed a crime. Its only a misdemeanor count per email, but still criminal.

Now because she used it for all of her communications, that means she transmitted and stored classified material in a manner that too is illegal. That's in the felony range of criminal acts. She violated the Espionage Act. A Federal Crime

Pence didn't break any laws. Clinton did. So where's the hypocrisy in that?

Short answer, there is none.

Re: Drink the f up.

Funny.

I'm here with a nice pour of a Single Malt.

Re: Indiana

Dude!

Have you been to Indiana?

Seriously outside of Indianapolis its almost all farm lands. Of course across the bridge from Chicago, you do have a couple of casinos and strip clubs.

Re: The question we need answering

No.

They were waiting till they got the call begging them to take him back.

Oh wait, that was Tim Kane who was forced to sit with the Republicans during Trump's speech to a combined Congress just earlier in this week.

My Bad.. All those politicians seem to look and act alike.

@Stu

I think you are clouding the issue.

Pence for all of his questionable religious beliefs are his right. We have this thing called Freedom of Religion, where as the UK has an official state church (CoE) and still there are fights between Christians. (Catholics and Protestants )

As to AOL... you're showing your age. Several other key leaders have had AOL accounts which also have been hacked.

Oh and I call Goodwin on you.

Re: A suprise?

There is no hypocrisy on the part of the Republicans.

There is however hypocrisy on the part of the Democrats.

This is a non story. Pence had a state email address and conducted most of his business thru the official email address. 29 'pages'. So how many emails exactly?

Compared to how many pages from Clinton. Not just what she returned to State, and the FBI, but also what the FBI recovered from the server and from the other accounts like Sidney's ? Bit of a big difference by a couple of order of magnitude.

And then you have the issue of Pence's actions not being illegal.

Clinton? Oh yeah. No question. Post election and in January, the FBI quietly dumped emails between Clinton and Sidney which contained classified material including some SIGINT. (IIRC)

There's more and if you're following US politics, the Democrats are imploding and have shown a lot of hypocrisy on their part. Its beyond laughable and there needs to be a bit of housecleaning. Its not that we should remove them and replace them with Republicans, but remove them and replace them with members of their own party. We need to have some semblance of balance between the two parties as they diverge to the extreme Right and Left.

As an independent (never been a member of either party, or any party for that matter) , I have to say that its the Democrats who are acting like petchulant children.

Re: Apples and Oranges

Pence had no access to classified materials. He didn't hold a security clearance.

He had access to confidential material.

Bit of a big difference.

But yes, we're in violent agreement. :-)

Oh and lets not forget the perjury charges because Hillary signed certain documents that she understood her obligations on how to handle classified material. (Same for her staff)

@Pen-y-gors

Actually head up to Scotland. I think there is...

And yes, I used to watch BBC Alba. I thought it would help me to understand Wegie.

@DropBear ... Re: No issues visiting India

As an American, I deal with H1Bs all day every day.

And we talk about India because many go back for a month each year to visit family.

One of my friends told me of a story when he needed to renew his passport. Lucky for him, he had a cousin in the right place, who told him who to call, and how much to 'gift' in order to make things happen.

So having his cousin make the call and then make a gift, he got his passport in time so he could leave the country to attend school in the US.

That doesn't really happen in the US, so which is better?

Ever try writing a contract in India? Before I did, I never heard of requiring a tax stamp for the contract.

Every country has its quirks.

The UK included.

@Doctor Syntax ...

I've had the pleasure of dealing with the UK on similar issues. They never talked tech. But more on contracts and international law. (Try explaining that an SOW is a contract that is an addendum to a larger MSA contract, so you have 1 MSA and then SOWs that apply to specific tasks and work periods.)

As to getting asked a programming question... I'd have to laugh, and explain to them that I design the systems / solutions and hand them to their local developers. That the reason I'm coming in to the UK is because there is no local expertise.

@Valarian

Uhm, I am technically competent to judge your code and I would have bitch slapped you for being that dense. And I seriously doubt you actually have written any serious code on the 6502 in the past 30+ years.

And yeah. I grok 6502, 6800, 8080A along with other languages.

Seriously, I would have been more impressed if you wrote some Object Oriented code using only C.

(And yes, you can do that. )

Re: No issues visiting India

Silly boy, Tech and Guns go hand in hand. Many of the techies I know and work with shoot.

If the US was so bad... why so many trying to get in?

And in India, you have a thing called bribes to get stuff done. In the US... not so much.

@Elledan Re: Crippled C++

Sorry mate. C++ isn't that complex. You just have a bunch of careless developers who don't know what they are doing and its a pain in the ass to walk thru their careless code to fix their bugs. I would much rather program in C than C++.

But to your point. Yes COBOL is alive and well because the mainframe exists and legacy apps continue to run and run well. COBOL is also something which could easily move to the big data space with a few tweaks and updates. (Think of Pig with a data definition section so you don't need to persist the schema in a RDBMS like you do with Hive) Of course COBOL would be redundant since you do have Hive, Pig, Drill, and more tools than you can shake your wee willy at. (Hey its Friday and its funnier than saying stick).

Java?

It's portable (no little indians to worry about.) [Endians]

You don't have to worry about GC

And its easy. (Dumbing down of languages)

For bonus points, you can use the old Sun hack and go off heap with your memory as well as do some cross language stuff to C/C++

Oh and those nasty pointer indirection thingys... fuggit about them. (Pointers and memory stuff is really not that difficult, but it takes time to really learn and use them correctly)

So, pick your poison. Its all good. (said the waiter at the hotel california) :-)

@GV Re: Crippled C++

Its called reality snowflake.

COBOL is something you can teach monkeys and it works well. Legacy systems still exist and if you want to have a skill that pays well, learn the mainframe.

Also I have taught COBOL programmers OO techniques and they picked it up faster than a bunch of C coders who also didn't believe you could write OO code using C. (You can if you really know what you're doing.) [This was many moons ago. You probably were still in your nappies. ;-P

Want to stump someone in an interview? If they claim to know C++ ask them what they like and what they hate about C++ versus Java or some other language.

But Seriously, you need to get out more and look at the entire enterprise.

In the Big Data space, a COBOL like language makes sense.

Re: "And, you know, "...

"O'Rly? My experience - FOSS more reliable than prop. software."

Son, you must not have a strong engineering background, or have been programming for a long time.

FOSS isn't more reliable. That's a fallacy.

I've got some embedded code that I wrote for a client that's been running pretty much untouched for almost 30 years. Why? Because when they gave me a spec to design the OS (Custom, IP, and not FOSS) , I wasn't told how fast it had to run, so I was left to my imagination. It was over designed for the time. You don't see that with FOSS.

Don't get me wrong. I use FOSS. But its no better or worse than today's prop software.

The larger problem is the dumbing down of the industry.

@Wolfetone .... Meh!

There should be a Meh! Icon.

Maybe you should go back to school and get an engineering degree. Its not about learning the language, but learning language theory. So you can pretty much pick of any language easily.

I've never touched Javascript. Why? Because I do the heavy lifting on the back end. Pojo developers are a dime a dozen. Not much call for J2EE. What you need to learn are 3 languages if you don't know Java.

1) Java

2) Python

3) Scala

All the rest is noise.

Now if you're really technical, there's C/C++ and Objective-C if your an Apple fanboi.

Your choice.