* Posts by Gordon Pryra

990 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Mar 2008

IBM could have made almost all the voluntary redundancies it needed

Gordon Pryra

Around eight in 10 services staff will be based in these areas

Ha!1

And I STILL work with full time staff who have some kind of company loyalty. I really don't understand how people can still have any attachment to big company.

In fact, as a contractor, generally my role is far more secure than a full time member of staff.

And the fcukers wont outsource me over Christmas and tell me the 1st of January :)

Naming computers endangers privacy, say 'Net standards boffins

Gordon Pryra

IAB actually recommending security by obfuscation

Or one Internet Architecture Board (IAB) member trying to make it look like they are worth their day rate by getting their name on a paper.......

UK Home Office warns tech staff not to tweet negative Donald Trump posts

Gordon Pryra

Trump May be a Dick

But throwing words like "draconian" around when talking about your employees wish for you not to rock the boat is a bit pathetic.

You have a choice of working for them or not. If you are willing to take the cash from an organisation that supports the start of this century's coming of Hitler then fine, don't then pretend to cry about lost "civil liberties" And if the extent of your civil engagement is social media then......

I hear the same crap when I work with people who are on peanuts filling the same role as myself, either cry about it and look foolish or man up and get a new job.

People bitch about not having choices, people HAVE choices, but generally those choices mean having to actually do more than a strongly worded 140 word character assassination.

Cold callers illegally sold Aussie farmers 1,700 years worth of printer ink

Gordon Pryra

Sharing space with drop bears

And finally, just before I head off home, the weekly mention of "drop bear"

My thanks sir!!

Now I can rest easily this weekend safe in the knowledge that all is right in the world

Lawyer defending arson suspect flees court with pants on fire

Gordon Pryra

“A lot of people could have been hurt,”

Ummmmm, how?

WikiLeaks promises to supply CIA's hacking tool code to vendors

Gordon Pryra

Re: Thank you to Assange?

As if you didn't know that the CIA spy on people......

Whats more dangerous is someone claiming to speak for the people using his pulpit to push a political agenda.

Gordon Pryra

Thank you to Assange?

Hes hardly the good guy in this, releasing data for purely altruistic reasons.

The timing of his release of this information gives Trump a "get out of jail" card regarding the accusations of Russia getting him into power.

The "Vendors" can tell what the exploits were just by look at the already released data.

Assange seems to have done a deal with the new administration to get off the hook, and this is his half arsed way of trying to save face. Pity he never included Manning in his deal....

Repentant priest from Cuntis sorry he dressed as Hugh Hefner

Gordon Pryra
Gimp

Galician town of Cuntis

This whole story seems like some kind of forum troll honey-pot run by the FBI

No comment

Get a GRIP! Robolution ain't happening until TOUCH is cracked

Gordon Pryra
Terminator

I for one

welcome our firm (but not too hard) gripped overlords

(Edit- was going to use the Paris icon, but explaining it would take this post from joke to a ... different place, fast)

Devs bashing out crappy code is making banks insecure – report

Gordon Pryra

Re: Geographically, the UK scores the lowest out of all regions. France scores best.

If you are paid crap then crap is what will come out the other end.

Its not like the people being paid shoddy wages in India don't talk to their counterparts in the UK.

They KNOW how much their company has been paid for them to do the work, they are also generally among the most intelligent percentile of India, so well able to work out the profits they are not seeing a fair share off.

Gordon Pryra

Geographically, the UK scores the lowest out of all regions. France scores best.

Does this mean that the French, once they have the contract, spend more than 6 beans for the extra validation the outsourced coders have to do?

Without India, half our programmers would be underemployed, after all they are only employed to problem solve the issues resulting from shit code for cheap outsourced slave labor .

One day the cost of having "deniability" that comes with outsourcing will outweigh the fact that its 50% cheaper to do it in-house

Police Scotland and Accenture were at odds over ill-fated IT project i6

Gordon Pryra

Thats one way of reportng things

The other side of the fence would probably mention how many times the Police moved the goal posts once work had started.

Accenture may be bollocks, but the audit is not independent.

Windows Server ported to Qualcomm's ARM server chip. Repeat, Windows Server ported to ARM server chip

Gordon Pryra

Can it run Crysis?

Just wondering

Uber blackballs 'Greyball' tool it used to deny rides to regulators

Gordon Pryra

"It seems that Uber and specifically its CEO are getting punished"

"regulatory woes"?

That is ..... one way ..... of looking at being found out using systems that specifically target police to hide evidence of crimes being committed.

regulatory woes.....

Gordon Pryra

Re: Shouldn't accounts violating the TOS terminated simply?

"What need of creating a virtual reality for them?"

Because these users have NOT violated any TOS.

A private companies terms of service does NOT trump local laws.

By blocking them for any breech, they would have to explain what TOS they have broken. While for a normal user, this just means the industry standard of "ignore any form of contact" for the police this may be slightly harder.

Salesforce joins 'smart' software bandwagon

Gordon Pryra

Complex things?

Things?

Einstein would have wept methinks

Success in the bedroom breeds success in the boardroom – research

Gordon Pryra

Catch 22 really

There is a direct correlation between reductions in dopamine and length of marriage.

Just add dopamine to the fluoride in our water so EVERYONE gets some

Facebook shopped BBC hacks to National Crime Agency over child abuse images probe

Gordon Pryra

What is the reasoning behind allowing this company in the UK?

Surely when a non-tax paying organisation believes its internal policies trump British law then that company should not be operating in Britain?

The UK can go back to "friends reunited" as a platform to bullshit their friends into believing they have a perfect life :P

US Marines seek a few supposedly good men ... who leaked naked pics of a few good women

Gordon Pryra

But when I am in the doo-doo

And how often is the average El Reg reader under hostile fire?

Salford and Liverpool City Councils plan IT trading venture

Gordon Pryra
Mushroom

What other big tech companies do we have up there?

KCOM.........

(nb "up there = + 52° 19' 15.79" N)

Stop the press: Journos not happy losing jobs to journo bots, say journos

Gordon Pryra

journalists from The Sun thought it could enhance speed and accuracy

Ha haha ha ha ha haaa

Sorry, I mentally added "the Daily Mail" to that one there, and I was also reeling from the line about "Stories need to be based on data"

This IS the UK press we are talking about isn't it?

I can't actually think of ANY paper press in the UK that is not a comic or a vehicle to push the UK into Brexit (ironic considering most of em are owned by the "Dammed Furrigners", a sad indictment of the average British persons level of intelligence)

Robots would NEVER work in the UK, because its hard to get a machine to write with the correct levels of xenophobic acidity while having an air of "I cant believe these ****** are actually lapping this up" that a human can achieve.

That big scary 1.4bn leak was 100s of millions of email, postal addresses

Gordon Pryra

I expect they have

or at least some of the smaller "parts" to the "company"

But when the naming systems and organisations who can hand out names are so corrupt there is little they can achieve except force the spammers to spend a couple of days and change their domain names. How long will it take to run a script to create a few hundred domains and then spend some time to "warm them up"? RCM can probably take the chance for a team building holiday to the bahamas for their script monkeys while the infrastructure builds itself.

Its not like the email addresses are any less useful, considering most of them are live and have real people attached I doubt Google and co will be closing them.

This whole story is like when the police show pictures of a drugs bust in the UK, 20-50 keys of coke! yay! we are making a difference!!!!! it Is just a pity 50 times that is consumed in one day.

Its a nice find, but the tip of the ice-burg.

Going after the names who pay for the adverts however, that would hurt the spammers. Cant see this ever happening though

(NB - figures for drugs use are just numbers pulled out of the air)

User rats out IT team for playing games at work, gets them all fired

Gordon Pryra

It wasn't me

Just saying....

Google's troll-destroying AI can't cope with typos

Gordon Pryra

Not much point in this anyway

As has been said, most forums have filters to block the obvious and the less obvious (forum mods know the language of their posters generally, with all its variation in spelling) add to this that the MOST abusive posts are generally in pretty good English, not requiring any swearing or nasty words.

The idea is to hurt the person you are trolling, and generally this is accomplished by making them feel small, physical size doesn't come into it, therefore the attacker can generally beat their target into submission by putting a post that is just "better written" than the target can respond too. (case of the small people being able to pick their battlefield and attack from a position of strength)

Check out some of the threads on E lReg for examples, those in the lower leagues tend to be left looking like the only surviving brain transplant donor by those who can string a few non-swearing insults together.

And then we have the final issue with language and words having their meaning changed or just having an generally accepted double meaning, those mugs at the AI lab will have a hard time working out whats an actual attack by only looking at the language being used. (see what I did there? English is great for this kind of thing)

Syntax and placement of words are almost as important as the words being used themselves. but I guess that is the point in using this as a training ground for an AI, after all a self learning system would come out of this exercise either totally broken and crying or able to work for IGN forums as a mod.

Gordon Pryra

Not only that but it seems biased towards Hillary as well!!

Personally I feel the words "moron" and "idiot" to carry the same weight on the Toxicity scales.

I AM from the UK, so my tolerance of swearwords is probably higher than that found in the New world or amount the other lesser countries. These are words taught in reception and primary education to give our British children a good platform on which to build their vocabulary.

But I digress, how can calling a Trump supporter a "moron" only get a score of 80% Whilst calling a Hillary supporter an "idiot" gains 90% toxicity!?

Tuesday's AWS S3-izure exposes Amazon-sized internet bottleneck

Gordon Pryra

Re: Lies and Urban Myths

Not only a Firefighter, but well versed with working with the NHS and even some brief encounters with the Police thank you very much! (I doubt many people will get that reference though AC)

Yes yes, there are ALWAYS some exceptions to the rule, its just a pity the actually important systems owned by institutions that actually matter are never those exceptions.

Who gives a monkeys if some consultancy or private company is well looked after by its staff, I can state with some certainty that the infrastructure running this country is not.

Gordon Pryra

Lies and Urban Myths

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery don't exist. Its an urban myth.

I have seen companies spending hundreds of thousands on DR for DEVELOPMENT systems that would NEVER have worked. Yet in 20 years I have seen about 2 companies who had a REAL WORKING disaster recovery system in place.

Anyone who tells you that their company has any form of real BC beyond a few backup tapes and some telephones for the sales weasels are just lying to protect their job, and that job is ticking things off on a check list and passing reassurances up the line so the people above them can tick the same things on a different bit of paper.

Ofcom finds 'reasonable grounds' that KCOM failed to maintain 999 services

Gordon Pryra
FAIL

Reasonable grounds for believing the operator would fail.

Yes, there are reasonable grounds for believing the operator would fail.

The 4 letters "KCOM" gives it away.....

Google Chrome 56's crypto tweak 'borked thousands of computers' using Blue Coat security

Gordon Pryra
Joke

Reminds me of the old M$ joke

Reminds me of the old M$ joke, maybe not as apt, you SHOULD be able to deliver an update with the assumption that a standard has been followed but anyway...

Q) How many Google engineers does it take to change a light-bulb?

A) None! They just make darkness the industry standard......

What gifts did ol' kitten heels May get this year?

Gordon Pryra

Re: Checklist

"We can leave that to Frau Merkel."

Really? surely you meant Nigel Farage.....

Apple sues Nokia's pet patent trolls

Gordon Pryra

Re: How is Nokia a patent troll?

Just because Apple say its a standard doesent make it so.

Notice anything that Apple have copyright of is NOT a standard but anything they want to steal/use IS a standard.

My own thourghts are "who cares what a criminal organisation thinks? until they pay tax they should not be under the legal protection of the countries. Incedently these regulations they are protected by are partly funded by the taxation that is not being paid"

Gordon Pryra

Pot and fucking Kettle

That is all....

Imagine every mistake you can make with a new software rollout...

Gordon Pryra

It has nothing to do with software roll out

These kind things never do.

Replace the words "software roll out" with "excuse to move public money to your pocket via your mates company"

I have worked in multiple local councils in the UK and the problems with these roll outs can ALLWAYS be pointed directly at theft

No training will be given because there is no money for training, despite paying 5 million. Out of the 5 million, only a hundred k or so will have actually been spent on the system itself, the rest on white elephants

Recruitment giant PageGroup hacked, Capgemini dev server blamed for info leak

Gordon Pryra

Blame Dodgers

Bollocks, the fault is PageGroups and noone elses.

They gave access to CapGemini and any blame falls squarley on their own door step.

If they had NOT given access to that data to a 3rd party then their customers details would be safe.

Any company using this bullshit excuse and trying to shift the blame needs to be strung up by their testicles.

Fatigue fears over bug bounty programs

Gordon Pryra

Sounds like a Synack advert to me

"Kaplan argues that Synack’s man-led, machine-supported approach offers a way to more systematically search for flaws."

Report about how crap one approach is, followed by a nice cheap system that gets over those issuses.

Yawn

We're going to have to start making changes or the adults will do it for us

Gordon Pryra

What an awesome read

No comments on the content, except that I really enjoyed reading that

(for the record its notepad ++ and tabs)

We're great, you don't understand competition law, Google tells Europe

Gordon Pryra

FairSearch represents vertical search rivals shafted by Google

The biggest trouble is that there are NO decent alternatives.

There never have been, from the moment Google hit the web the other search engines all looked like crap. From Excite, Yahoo, Alta Vista, Bing etc none of them actually return much in the way of relevent results.

Yeah Googles results are not as good as they used to be (and I am a pretty heavy poster on the indexing and ranking good help pages) but they are far and away the only real choice.

As soon as people become competition by offering a decent service, then all this rubbish becomes moot

People use Google becuase they are good. They have to go to google, its not default like Bing

Brexit judgment could be hit for six by those crazy Supreme Court judges, says barrister

Gordon Pryra

Re: Thursday's explosive anti-Brexit judgment

@codejunky

Surly we vote for our MPs so that they can represent our best interests in Parliment.

This allows the undeducated masses to have some form of protection and gives them a voice on subjects on which they would not have any understanding.

I would say that you could argue any MP who voted to sign Article 50 would actually be commiting treason by expressly NOT acting in their constitutes best interests.

Saying "its the will of the people" is meaningless, if we had asked people if they want to pay tax or not and the answer would have been "No!!"

Gordon Pryra

Re: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

@codejunky

Someone else posted the history of Europe in a few lines

War

War

War

War

War

Argurments about bananas

By the way, the banana I brought a few minutes ago is definitely curved. Whats up with that?

Smut site offers to buy Vine

Gordon Pryra

six-second format offers "more than enough time for most people to enjoy themselves."

What do we do for the other 3 seconds?

Judge orders FBI to reveal whether White House launched 'Tor pedo' torpedo exploits

Gordon Pryra

David Tippens, Gerald Lesan, and Bruce Lorente

Whatever the outcome those 3 are pretty fucked unless they are given protection by the FBI after this case.

Wonder how good that protection will be?

Accountant falls for sexy Nigerian email scammer, gives her £150k he cheated out of pal

Gordon Pryra

Re: scored 3 times in 10 months

Even married people get more than that......

Kids today are so stupid they fall for security scams more often than greybeards

Gordon Pryra

Re: 'Digital Natives' are totally oblivious to how it works

VW claimed all sorts for their Diesals, how much do you trust figures from car companies?

Gordon Pryra

Attempting to get Elite working on a 386 because I could not afford a 486 forced me to understand how to affect changes to the hardware using the OS.

But the difference with the old systems we had and the current crop of OSes (Moden Windows, Android, iOS etc) is that nothing was locked away, I had visability of what was going on.

Kids today have no chance. The computer is now almost a black box system

Imagine trying to change the name of Android using a hex editor like we used to with old Dos 5+

Instead of the relevent Dos flavor of the time (Toshiba, IBM or Microsoft etc) I had "Gordy Dos".

Do that now and you will just brick your device

Memorys of Mem /C and /M spring to mind, heady days....

Virgin Media boss warns Brexit could hamstring broadband investment

Gordon Pryra

Re: Christmas Time is here!

"With no real world evidence that things will be worse"

If you ignore the value of the pound and the cost to GovUk of borrowing, yeah, then in this fictional world where people cant work out the obvious then your arguement would be good.

But in REALITY many ‘remain’ voters feel they need a holiday or a long sleep after the tiring experience of trying to reason with people who completely reject logic or evidence.

Gordon Pryra

Virgin Values?

This made me spit coffee all over my keyboard

"no concern for the Virgin values"

These values seem to be the mis-selling of ALL their products to rip their customer off to the maximum they can.

Even telewests support staff lied less than Virgins

AI software should be able to register its own patents, law prof argues

Gordon Pryra

And job done for Ryan Abbott

The fact people are talking about his idea gives him the power to get another 3 years funding....

Microsoft boffins: Who needs Intel CPUs when you've got FPGAs?

Gordon Pryra

Awesome!!

So all 12 of the people using Bing found their results were faster....

Can the same FPGA setup also be used to enable relevent search results as well?

That would indeed be awesome for Bing