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* Posts by Stevie

7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008

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F-35s grounded by spares shortage

Stevie
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Re: "That's how you win a war"

"Then a lot of technology came from the defeated Germany - but it didn't help much to win later - after all Germany itself shown you can't win with technology only."

A sweeping statement. Germany failed to leverage the technology it did have by not having the manufacturing sector go on a war footing soon enough. Example: tanks. Still making the Panzer IV and very obsolete Panzer III in facilities that could have been turned over to making the new and badly-needed Panzer Vs (Panther). Germany's best weapons were always in too short supply to be effective once attrition began to be a factor.

And even that is a simplification. Having the country's overall war strategy in the hands of a loon didn't help them when the shock and awe factor wore off. Lucky for us, eh?

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Stevie
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Re: Let's make planes that can't fly......

"After the apparent fall of the "Soviet Empire", it was necessary to quickly find a suitable enemy to keep the spending going - "

It was? Because GHB pretty much gutted the aerospace industry in the aftermath of Walls Fall, Everyone Goes Home For Tea when he cancelled so much of the military spending whole local economies were smashed flat.

Don't take my word for it, just take a look at the map of Long Island, former home to Grumman, Fairchild, Eaton et al. All gone, almost overnight when those contracts were force majeured.

I suppose if you widen your definition of "quickly" to 12 years you might have a point though.

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Algorithms, Henry VIII powers, dodgy 1-man-firms: Reg strokes claw over Data Protection Bill

Stevie

Bah!

Yesyesyes, data anonymization and all that, of course.

But where in this document is the legislation to address the iniquities in the law concerning fish weirs as delineated in Magna Carta?

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USB stick found in West London contained Heathrow security data

Stevie

Bah!

Assuming this stick thing is genuine and not some elaborate troll, one question rises to paramount importance in this post 9/11 world:

Does Her Majesty have to take off her shoes and belt to get through security like the rest of us?

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Boffins befuddled over EU probe into UK's tax rules for multinationals

Stevie
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Re: EU competition rules

The best part about this thread was everyone posting as "anonymous coward" to argue with each other. The whole thing reads like a Gollum monologue from Lord of the Rings.

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Stevie
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Re: You're not a real boffin if you need a thermos to keep your tea hot.

You don't need a Thermos to keep your tea hot.

You need it to keep your tea hot until the liquid nitrogen is ready, then you need it to keep the liquid nitrogen in for fast and ready application to the superconductor elements of ... but I've said too much.

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Submarine builder admits dismembering journalist's body

Stevie
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Pint

Re: What's next?

Ebeer for you, Throatwarbler Mangrove.

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Stevie
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Re: It's starting to read like a Monty Python sketch.

Yup, I was thinking the exact same thing. I'm guessing you agree with me that it's only a matter of time before Spiny Norman puts in an appearance.

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Stevie

Bah!

I'm shocked at this completely unpredictable out-of-left-field development.

Never saw that coming.

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Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

Stevie
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Re: BMW 7-series

I've come to realize that all the BMWs in the USA are driven by the people previously starring in Russian dashcam videos.

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Stevie
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Re: Headlight UI

Are you sure you were switching on the headlights and not attempting to get a full weapon kit-out on the center console NES emulator Spy Hunter game?

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Stevie
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Coffee/keyboard

Re:My mate had an Alfa, the Corrode Rapide.

You stupid sod cornz 1.

Nose steam cleaned with coffee & Gentleman Regions of trousers now damp, brown and aromatic without a good scare to explain it.

Woman sitting opposite on train also v. unimpressed.

Your work here is done.

"Corrode Rapide" indeed.

23 1

Boss put chocolate cake on aircon controller, to stop people using it

Stevie
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Re: Heating / Aircon

Many years ago I worked with a large gentleman in a Victorian UK building.

He was happy to sweat it out. Everyone around him was less merry.

Let the big guys rule the thermostat and wear more layers, or you *will* regret it, there being no BO laws on the books.

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Knock, knock? Oh, no one there? No problem, Amazon will let itself in via your IoT smart lock

Stevie
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Re: low-value targets

I live on Long Island. Many of my neighbors have home theater installations in the basements, boats and second cars in the driveway, some of which are the expensive muscle cars they don't want to drive to the Long Island Rail Road door-ding and wheel-thief plazas car parks, all with keys probably hanging on a hook in the house somewhere.

I'm not sure why you think that Amazon customers wouldn't have stuff worth half-inching in an organized way. I reckon a half dozen teams working one work day could net quite a bit of expensive luxury swag working a scam such as I describe, and since the IoTat stuff is leakier than Quint's boat, rooting the stuff doesn't take a PhD or a room full of Russians.

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Stevie

Bah!

"However, would-be burglars are probably more likely to kick down a door or smash a window than to try to crash a smart lock."

Well, what if they've rooted your home network using that IoTat front door camera's, burgular alarm's or thermostat's weak security, have spotted your order as "out for delivery" using your account to spy on you, and turn up in Amazon drag asking you to app them in please?

Stupids and shinies.

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Humble civil servant: Name public electric car chargers after me

Stevie
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Re: Bah!

8o)

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Stevie
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Re: Belisha Beacons

Yes, Doug, we all got that.

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Stevie
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Re: drive for most of the year at zero leccy cost.

Well, notwithstanding the cost of the PV arrays and the installation of same, batteries etc.

Noble goal though.

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Stevie

Bah!

Bloody cheek!

He already has a hucking fuge library of amateur car mechanic manuals named after him.

He'll be demanding his name on American Y fronts next!

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There's a battle on over two US spying laws: One allows snooping on citizens – one bans it

Stevie

Bah!

Oooooooh I wonder which law will be passed ...

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UK financial regulator confirms it is probing Equifax mega-breach

Stevie

Bah!

Baseball bats. Nutsacks.

Gotta dream.

Also: Why in the secret name of Azathoth isn't all this data encrypted?

And kept in a non-relational manner?

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Feel the pension pot burn, Canadian DXCers

Stevie

Bah!

As a public employee let me ooh and aah over the 50% matching funds.

Because, although I have a "guaranteed" pension, recent history shows that all state governments take their lead from US industry by not funding the pensions so they can look like they have more money to spend.

When this Ponzi scheme goes TITSUP like it did in Wisconsin and New Jersey, Governors announce that "the" problem is too many people with overly-high pension expectations. Not a word about years of financial malfeasance, chiseling and downright fraud.

I know exactly how I'll be treated when I retire.

10 2

This is no yolk. Newegg scrambles against rotten shell company claims

Stevie

Bah!

Couldn't see how a complex shell-game fraud was possible until I got to the bit about the banks buying the debt as a short-term gamble.

When will they ever learn? Buying up debt so it can be parceled out as some sort of shyster low-risk, high-gain short-term investment (no doubt insured each way with "complex financial instruments") is just another way of saying "let me put my dick next to the door-jamb so you can slam the door at your earliest convenience".

The banks just assume it will be someone else's dick getting crushed.

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IBM broke its cloud by letting three domain names expire

Stevie

Bah!

I'll wager that among all those people surplussed over the last year are a bunch involved with keeping the books straight on matter like this.

This is the way cost-cutting works. Keep paring back until something falls apart, then put that part back again while making excuses.

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Survey: Tech workers are terrified they will be sacked for being too old

Stevie
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Re: Yeah -- us old foks ain't worth it no more.

"Never learned COBOL but then again, I didn't need to learn it. It's verbosity was a God send."

Oh man, I made a very good living for years out of people coding under that misconception. Money for old rope. But then, I knew what I was doing and (more importantly) what the computers would do to f*ck over people who Fake-Booked their way through Cobol.

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Stevie

Bah!

If you want to frighten the youngsters right back just answer any query with "it's in my documentation on the server/ on the intranet/ on sharepoint".

The aforementioned documentation, naturally and without malice aforethought, discusses the product itself in all it's technical splendour notwithstanding a comprehensive and exhaustive treatment of bugs, faults, poor design choices and so forth all gathered in appendices a through f, all properly indexed and referenced repeatedly with endnotes, footnotes, sidebars and other properly literate methods of communicating, and of course including an extensive foreword in which terms are properly and rigorously defined (with much referencing of appendices a through f, various sidebars, footnote and endnotes and so on.

Then refuse any ploy to make you sit down and explain in an ad-hoc, round-table gathering without several printed and bound copies of the said documentation, to which you should of course make frequent reference, leaping on to the next point as soon as the fastest person has found whatever it was you just referenced in some appendix (a through f), footnote or endnote. If anyone comes close to sorting it all out over the years, publish an addendum and errata, then call a meeting to go over it using slides and an epidiascope.

If that doesn't stop the rot, start binding in ISO9000 stuff.

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Stevie
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Pint

Re: Disability overcome

Nice one Charles. eBeer for you.

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Stevie
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Re: Yeah -- us old foks ain't worth it no more.

Real Old Farts don't speak in hipster concatenated three-letter quasi-milspec jargon, Alistair, no matter how many young things are looking on and listening in.

We are the generation who owned dictionaries and occasionally opened them. We are the Thesaurus Generation, not afraid of words with letters and phrases with spaces in them.

We are, in short, the Rolls Royce generation, the generation that Harrods would sell one. What more can I say?

(Except that we cost a billion pounds and no-one can afford us).

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Stevie
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Re: Back when if you were there you don't remember

Oi! Who are you calling an Old Admiral, matey?

Arr!

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Stevie
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Age is but a number.

Why can't young people understand that old people are just young people who are older in age?

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Stevie
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Re: Wow they had 1900 processors.

Nah. VME were 2900 series.

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Stevie
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Re: I still remember George.

Whippersnapper! *I* remember Automatic Operator!

Well, I remember finding the manual for it amongst some old paper tape reels.

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Stevie

Bah!

Once or twice?

The foetuses in this place gave me nil respect until I stopped introducing myself at vendor presentations with a couple of brief statements and made them listen to five minutes of detailed backstory, dropping all the Big Names I'd worked for along the way.

Not sure whether it was respect for my years of extremely varied tek nollige or fear of having to listen to it all again that made them stop dissing me as a casual thing.

They seem to think that something changed in the way computers work sometime around 1986.

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IRS tax bods tell Americans to chill out about Equifax

Stevie

Bah!

Well, *I* certainly trust the IRS to look after my interests. I mean, if my taxes are fraudulantly filled out it's not like I'm guilty of fraud unless proven innocent ... hang on, I think I see a tiny flaw in the thinking.

2 1

Oracle Hospitality apps rolled out the Big Red carpet to crims

Stevie

Bah!

Auto-patching databases?

Hard to see how that would ever work out badly. I mean, what are the chances that anyone would come in to work to find their multi-billion dollar enterprise fucked to a fare-thee-well by a bricked Oracle RAC installation after an overnight autopatch?

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US Congress mulls first 'hack back' revenge law. And yup, you can guess what it'll let people do

Stevie

Bah!

I have no doubt that this will end up being viewed as the greatest law ever and will show no possible downsides.

In unrelated news: "SWATting" seems to be on the rise again.

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'There has never been a right to absolute privacy' – US Deputy AG slams 'warrant-proof' crypto

Stevie

Bah!

Can we now say that if a computer has been compromised by the loss of a govenrment-owned backdoor key that the system has been "Rosensteined"?

"How in christ's name did The Lucky Chang Vehicle Group get hold of our game-changing automobile tech?"

"Sorry, chief, we were Rosensteined. The Department of Homeland Encryption just announced they were rooted last March"

4 1
Stevie

Bah!

“Such encryption already exists," the Deputy AG claimed.

At Accenture for starters.

Is everyone in this bally administration working for the Russians?

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'Israel hacked Kaspersky and caught Russian spies using AV tool to harvest NSA exploits'

Stevie

Bah!

After the Stuxnet fiasco and the counterpunch from Iran I doubt relations between the NSA and Mossad are that good anyway.

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When Irish data's leaking: Supermarket shoppers urged to check bank statements

Stevie

Bah!

Bejaybers!

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Super Cali's futuristic robo-cars in focus – even though watchdogs say they're something quite atrocious

Stevie

Bah!

Before anyone else at El Reg gets to do one of these Super Cali headlines they must be made to listen to the song on infinite reloop for a whole morning so they get the &*^%ing scansion right.

It isn't hard:

8 syllables / 6 syllable / 8 syllables / 6 syllables.

Get it right! *headslapping noises*

3 1

Et tu Accenture? Then fall S3er: Consultancy giant leaks private keys, emails and more online

Stevie
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Re: Oooohhh Nooooo (4 Mark 110)

To be fair to awsacp0175, he or she probably couldn't get past page 123 of the Accenture S3 procedures and standards documentation.

Remember, this is Accenture we are talking about, the outfit that measures progress (and billing) by the page count of documents presented to the customer.

1 1

Is that a bulge in your pocket or... do you have an iPhone 8+? Apple's batteries look swell

Stevie
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Re: Fire in the Hole

Fire in the Hole?

Where on earth do you keep your cell phone?

1 1
Stevie

Bah!

Well played, Samsung Galaxy Note 7 team, well played.

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SCARY SPICE: Pumpkin air freshener sparks school evacuation

Stevie

Bah?

Nauseating is right. Drop into any craft store this time of year and the stench is overpowering. That, and the stink of "christmas spices" give me pounding headaches within minutes.

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Leicestershire teen admits attempting to hack director of the CIA

Stevie
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Re: causing risk of serious damage to human welfare/national security

"If I say "abracadabra the US 6th fleet to turn into frogs" is that an attempted act of terrorism?"

Pay no attention to those men dressed as undertakers waiting in a hearse round the corner from your house.

8 1
Stevie

Bah!

"Gamble's barrister, William Harbage QC, said his client is "on the autistic spectrum". "

Aren't you supposed to wait until the Americans ask for him to be extradited before playing the Asperger's Card?

9 2

Blade Runner 2049: Back to the Future – the movies that showed us what's to come

Stevie

Bah!

Seconds.

To find out why, watch it (but don't Wiki it or you'll ruin the experience; it's a mood piece as much as anything).

1 1
Stevie
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Re: Mad Max

"Not nearly enough venomous animals and plants for that."

You aren't paying attention! The animals have all been killed off by whatever it is that has left the world in such a crappy state. Does *everything* have to be stated upfront by a character to be understood?

These fine documentaries stand as a monument to Aussie can-do-ism and poor lane discipline.

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Stevie
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Re: Fahrenheit 451 (the 1966 Truffaut version) does quite well on predictions.

Moronic daytime TV programs that were *fake* interactive.

Brilliant concept.

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