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* Posts by Stevie

7284 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008

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Lies from VW: 'Our staff acted criminally but board didn't know'

Stevie
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Re: Is it really so impossible for the board to be lied to?

No, but the board are paid the extremely generous amounts they get to be knowledgeable about the company and to make sure they are properly informed.

I'm not feeling sorry about the board's shaky position here, and that goes double after this transparent attempt to shift attention from the corporate culture to a more easily sacrificed individual or two.

I've no doubt the rot runs deep on this one. I just think that while you are checking for damp rot in the basement structural beams you should also be checking the roof for damage, because that's where the problems usually start.

I mean, what's more likely: some bod on the shop floor saying "we should use software to fool the emissions tests" or some bod on the shop floor being told "change this so it passes the tests and don't rock the boat or it's your job"?

We are talking attempts to maintain public confidence in the brand in the unfriendly face of inconvenient physics - aka maintaining shareholder value. Who cares most about that? The engineer or the stock-option-equipped politician?

As in all things corporate the world around: You want to find the problem, follow the money.

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Stevie
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Re:The jeep isn't diesel

Neither is a PT Cruiser, nor any of the "Smart" cars I know of.

And again, the regulations are based on *State* law, not some nebulous "US Law". Talking about "US Regulations" makes as much sense as talking about the lousy quality of "British TV". You can't lump Top Gear and Doctor Who in with Gordon Fucking Ramsay and Graham Norton, and you can't lump all the states together when a question of state vehicle inspection law is at hand.

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Stevie
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Re: Doesn't pass the smell test (4 Chemist)

Well, it is cold and flu season. Impaired sense of smell is to be expected.

Upvoted for useful and factual link.

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Stevie
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Re: Doesn't pass the smell test

What part of "the engine detects when it is being tested and reconfigures its exhaust to a cleaner profile" don't you get?

And your rumor is a bit shabby on two counts:

Firstly, emissions tests and standards are a State regulated thing (sound of cracked record playing).

Secondly, my smoky old Jeep Renegade* passed the NY emissions test without a catalytic converter in place a few years back (you coulda knocked me over with feather but I have the printout), so at least one regulated state has easily achievable standards.

But please feel free to continue your paranoia-fueled fact-free FUD blame-the-victim speculation.

* A car that was an object lesson in "How not to design and build a car". You couldn't pay me to have another Jeep.

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Stevie

Bah!

So the board is innocent but the workers are culpable?

Wouldn't that mean the board has completely failed in monitoring the actual business (probably too focused on increasing shareholder value)?

Then they have failed in their diligence and should be fired.

I'm waiting for the inevitable "Ve vere only followink orders" from those eventually deemed "guilty" for the win.

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MACAQUE ATTACK: Monkey plunders Florida resident's box, gobbles contents

Stevie

Bah!

That minkey looks just like one of my colleagues (facial-build and smug expression-wise).

The colleague is definitely not leesonced.

Behaviour after a couple of beers matches to a "T" though.

It's how he lost the leesonce.

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Russian antivirus vendor fire bombed for research blogs

Stevie
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Re: Oh those Russians...

Funnier if you don't explain it.

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Stevie
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Re: Rusky?

That's Roosky.

Upvote for the "Shirley" part.

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Web ad tried to make my iPhone spaff a premium-rate text, says snapper

Stevie
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Re: ad blocker

Fair enough. Now how do I get the other fucktard design issues with it sorted?

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Stevie

Bah!

El Reg cannot claim any high ground here. This morning the Reg App added an annoying persistent animated banner ad to the list of resons to never use it.

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'Miracle weight-loss' biz sued for trying to silence bad online reviews

Stevie
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Re: IANAL

The matter is one of contract law. Interstate commerce doesn't come into it. State laws apply.

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Stevie
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Re: US T&C strikes again

Whether or not your rights can be taken by T&C in product "contracts" is a matter of State law. Some allow it, some don't.

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Share-crazy millennials spaff passwords ALL OVER the workplace

Stevie

Bah!

But isn't not divulging one's password "security by obscurity"?

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Feds want a phone smart enough to burn itself if it falls into the wrong hands

Stevie

Bah!

"I slipped on the ice in my driveway and the phone blew my left buttock clean off".

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Rosetta comet boffins: We can explain why there's a rubber ducky IN SPAAACE

Stevie

Bah!

What a shame NASA grabbed all the space glory yesterday.

Too slow, Euroboffins, too slow. This is what comes of using only Sinclair Spectrums for image processing.

NASA upgraded to 486's two years ago. Three of them, to be precise.

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Overheating iPhone 6S+ BLINDED my cam, cries flashgate fanboy

Stevie
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Pint

Re: It's the ghost of Steve Jobs...

Good one. Beer for you.

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NSA? Illegal spying? EU top lawyer is talking out of his Bot – US gov

Stevie

Bah!

So the SHA is a "living document"? Good, assuming that doesn't mean it was tattooed on someone as part of his/her "rendition".

Now convince us the NSA et al are using " living procedures" in place of the "emergency weasel clause" and we're getting somewhere.

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NEW ERA for HUMANITY? NASA says something 'major' FOUND ON MARS

Stevie

Bah!

The yanks have found the wreckage of Her Majesty's Cavorite Sphere Ares, lost with all hands on the disastrous Mars Expedition of 1889.

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'We can handle politicos, OUR ISSUE IS JUDGES', shout GCHQ docs

Stevie

Bah!

So the government has contempt for the electorate and the spooks have contempt for everyone?

Is anyone surprised at this "revelation"?

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Holy litigation, Batman! Custom Batmobile cars nixed by copyright

Stevie

Bah!

"The ruling means that Towle and other Jokers who wish to build replicas or merchandise portraying the Batmobile will have to obtain permission from DC Comics."

I *think* it means that anyone who wants to sell such a vehicle will have to get permission. Anyone can build their own for their own use in the land of the free, land of the Superhero, under fair use, can't they? As long as they don't go calling themselves Batman or hiring out the vehicle for cashmoney or otherwise attempting to profit from DC intellectual material?

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If you absolutely must do a ‘private cloud’ thing, here's how

Stevie

Bah!

One of the major advantages to hosting e-mail in a private cloud has to be beings able to deploy clients that accompany any automated "your mailbox is full" message with a clip of the Stones singing "(Hey You) Get Offa My Cloud".

Worth the hassle and cost of deployment in my opinion.

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iOS 9 security blooper lets you BYPASS PINs, eye up photos, contacts

Stevie
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The more complex

you make an OS, the more likely it is that one of the contributors will screw up something.

Yes, in an old-fashioned monolithic design, but all you bright young things spent ages after coming off your CS degree courses explaining loudly and slowly to us old-timers that the new, ultra-modularized world of OO design would make that a thing of the past because each class would be small, simple and easy to test (and presumably regression test, though I never saw that mentioned in print).

I guess a poor workman still blames his/her tools, even when they have bright'n'shiny new names.

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Chinese ad firm pwns Android users, creates hijackable global botnet

Stevie
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Re: I'm sick of being rooted in the back pocket.

Is that what it was? I thought you were just trying to dislodge a y-front ride-up discretely and had become lost in the moment.

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Stevie
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Re: telekenisis with the rock banging crowd

You are aware that telekinesis (all levels) has been shown to be completely open to the so-called "scanner exploit" and that over 80% of all rocks are believed by McAffee, Malwarebytes et al to have been infected with the "Mineral Inclusion" trojan, right?

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NIST's quantum boffins have TELEPORTED stuff over a HUNDRED KILOMETRES

Stevie

Bah!

Wait ... a third of the data just went ... somewhere else?

Even Target didn't leak data that badly, and we had a shrewd idea where it all went too, once we knew it had gone missing in the first place.

Also not keen on this rather wishy-washy "sometimes can't detect the photons" get-out clause. Was the quantums generator manufactured by Volkswagen Digital Evasion LLC by any chance?

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The ONE WEIRD TRICK which could END OBESITY

Stevie
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Re: Food was never, ever, to go to waste

And if you carry out your leftovers in a box when you are finished eating, it doesn't go to waste. It gets re-heated (if that's appropriate) and eaten the next day.

I was born in '55 in the UK, two years after rationing ended. I know all about the rationing mindset, but it isn't just a European thing. I've met people who grew up hungry in the States too. I maintain that a real issue for Britain is the "you don't own your food" restaurant culture, which should be a thing of the dim distant past.

This doesn't fix food wastage though, as there are many reasons why perfectly good food is tossed away in rich cultures. From sell-by dates to ugly fruit, spurious-logic food wastage is a boil on the cultural backside of all wealthy western countries. The irony is that this often goes hand-in-glove with a subculture of people too poor to afford to eat, even in those enlightened countries that offer a proper social safety net.

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Stevie
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Re: It is not portion size which matters

Heh. Back in the 80s I used to take delight in taking visiting English pals for a sandwich in a New York diner.

First giggle was the sticker shock. Seven bucks? For a shrimp salad sandwich?

I would of course say "My treat" (well worth the cost for the ents value alone).

Next giggle was he look on their face when the sandwich arrived, it being about three times the size the guest was expecting.

Next giggle was watching them tryy and pack away the whole thing before they left, before ending the misery by saying "You know, you are allowed, nay expected to take some of that home with you. I'll ask for a take-out box, shall I?"

Because the real problem here is the culture that says somehow you only own the food while it is in the restaurant, and must eat it or leave it. The same ethic when applied to, say, software, would cause immediate uproar but food must be eaten or tossed out in the garbage in the UK restaurant culture.

Bloody silly. That sandwich was two meals.

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Total War: Warhammer, Blood Bowl and other Games Workshop table-to-screen delights

Stevie
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No one above this post has ever been laid!

Well, not during a game, no.

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Stevie
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[before we played we had to see] if we agreed on what [ the rules] meant

And what a culture of fucktardism that pantomime produced. My jaw-dropping moment of clarity came while observing two second year science and engineering college undergrads arguing range over a game of Wonkhammer 401K. The thorny issue that had them fighting? Whether 4" was greater than 4".

I'm not making that up.

The rule was clear that such-and-such happened differently at more than 4" range. The models were exactly 4" apart.

Neither young chap was amenable to the argument It's math, lads: 4" ! > 4".

I realized that the vague and useless rules GW repeatedly put out then break with add-ons and "clarifications" induce brain cells to spontaneously die off when you try and make sense of them.

Amusingly, a few days later one of those young men came across me and another senior playing a game of Star Soldier (call it a futuristic Squad Leader), and when he saw the 25 page rulebook for it he was appalled we'd play such a game.

We pointed out that the players were not expected to learn each rule before playing, that the rules were internally "hyperlinked" for fast look up so you could have open-book games, and that the rules worked mostly like real physics would so there were few surprises in store.

We also added that there were almost no contingencies that could arise in-game for which there was no unambiguous rule, because the people who designed it had the playability front and center and eschewed such nonsense as "play to the spirit, not the rules as written", and they knew how to properly play test their stuff. Way to go SPI.

The young guy couldn't hear us. All he could hear was "need to read".

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Stevie

Bah!

GW killed my interest when they deep sixed the Bits business.

I used to call up every so often and have my next order of Praetorians cast to order. One day I was told "We don't do that any more. Use E-bay".

So I took a long hard look at what the game had become, 70 bux for a rulebook, another 50 for the army codex du jour and the already mentioned cost per unit for the army itself and decided enough was enough.

Now if I get invited to a game I start the conversation with "which edition would you like to play?" and we use materials from versions we actually enjoyed.

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UK.gov wants a cloud wizard at £1,000 a DAY. That's more than the prime minister's salary

Stevie

Bah!

And for six months work the lucky bod will be able to -e-v-a-d-e- avoid tax like the very dickens.

"It's only money"

Edmund Blackadder. 1584. Or thereabouts.

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11 MILLION VW cars used Dieselgate cheatware – what the clutch, Volkswagen?

Stevie

Bah!

This just in: Birkenstocks made from CFC-polymerized whale oil.

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Nice try, Apple. The Maxi Pad is no laptop killer – and won’t scratch the Surface

Stevie

Bah!

Yeah, after all the hoopla by well-placed AppleFanz (I'm thinking of a certain SF author here as I type that) to the effect that the iPad can replace a laptop for productive work, my experience some years after that endorsement is no it bloody well can't.

Different tools for different jobs.

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Cambridge University Hospitals rated 'inadequate' due to £200m IT fail

Stevie

Bah!

"It's a hospital, Humphrey! Patients!"

And here we see the inevitable result of putting highly-placed techies in a real-world problem. We have raised two generations of CS graduates to expect to have the latest and greatest instead of getting the job done with what is at hand. This translates into open-ended budgets implemented by people who never expect the money to run out, and wide-eyed bewilderment when it does.

Systems of the sort described in the article need to be engineered firstly to get a deliverable product out of the gate before changes in law make upgrades and scope-creep push the delivery horizon into the land of imaginary dates, and secondly to describe a rich and immutable API so that modules can be bolted on to a visibly working useful core as time progresses. That way the customer gets to see and use something as soon as possible allowing mistakes and mis-specified actions to be rectified before it is all out-of-hand according to real-world needs as opposed to what some MBa in management thinks it should do.

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India to cripple its tech sector with proposed encryption crackdown

Stevie

Bah!

"Bear in mind, however, that these are proposed rules only"

So why didn't the article's headline read that way?

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Long-memoried boffins re-invent 1950s ferroelectric tech

Stevie
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Re: Ferroelectric Memory

Looks like a teenytiny replica of the old ferrite rod/coil arrangement in transistor radios strung on a grid of wires running up/down and diagonally. The XY wires were used to energize the coil (or not) for a single bit and magnetize the ferrite rod. To read it back you "wrote" back to the bit and "listened" for a momentary pulse on the detector wire that indicated a state change. If you got a pulse the bit was the opposite binary sense to whatever you wrote.

The ones I saw and used were mounted on 6 or 8x4 foot* "barn doors" on the corner of one of the cabinets that comprised the computer itself which could be fanned open to allow air into the matrices because they got hot.

They don't make 'em like that any more (thank Offler).

[EDIT] And I just realized you meant the cleverer modern version. So change all that to "Haven't the foggiest. Whose round is it?"[/EDIT]

* sorry, 60 year old meat memory can't remember clearly which it was.

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Stevie

Bah!

You only needed to rewrite the bit if the (read) write caused a state change. The state change caused a change in magnetic field which in turn generated a current in the coil wound around the core which could be detected. Current made= state changed. No current = same state as written information - no rewrite necessary.

Grumblegrumblewheresmydinner?

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Hey you! Better 'fess up to submarine cable cockups, FCC demands

Stevie
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Re: automatically generated report

Worse, a copy of a report generated internally for after-disaster blame allocation sorry process adjustment is all that's required, so the work will have been done by most businesslike companies who have boards of directors and shareholders anyway.

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Stevie

Bah!

Running cabled internet to submarines is a bloody stupid idea anyway.

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Bitcoin is an official commodity, says US gummint

Stevie

rules applicable to all participants in the commodity derivatives markets

There are rules then.

Wait, then how come 2008 ... ?

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Ahmed's clock wasn't a bomb, but it blew up the 'net and Zuckerberg, Obama want to meet him

Stevie
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Re: Radioshack sells

"RadioShack"? Who are they, then?

Oh wait, you mean the Sprint phone place. We don't have any round here any more. There's less than 2000 of them in America now.

Azathoth, I miss living 15 minutes from Maplins Hanger o' Stuff.

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Stevie

Bah!

The account of the arrest follows a familiar pattern. I wonder if the "complaint" originated, as stated, with a teacher or with another student who "felt threatened" and wasn't indulging in sophisticated bullying no sir not me.

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Sierra Nevada snow hasn't been this bad since 1500AD

Stevie
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Re: You know that the UEA was investigated ... and was exonerated on all charges?

You are wasting your fingers and keyboard on this. The denier mindset is predicated by the standard newspaper ethic: Accuse on page one, retract on page six (in a much smaller font size).

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Stevie
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Re: It's like trying to recover the original data from the product of a hash function.

"Stevie, you know that UEA was at the center of the climate data scandals over the past decade, right? "

How on earth would I know that? It's not like it was written down anywhere for me to see. Like in a newspaper. Even an E-Paper.

I will certainly go and research more about the authors of the paper that drove you into a rage, but not today because I'm busy and quite frankly I've seen evidence first-hand with my own tired eyeballs that the world is getting alarmingly more warm, that the change is accelerating, and that fallout from fossil fuel burning is at least partly to blame.

I'd have thought the fact that you can now see Antarctica whereas in my childhood everyone just had to guess what it looked like on account of all the ice in the way would be compelling, but apparently not.

Lewis is crowing about colder winters to come being some sort of denialist vindication but those are actually one effect predicted for the UK in a global warming scenario. Another is that the Gulf Stream may shut down entirely.

I've told my kid and her boyfriend to head inland and north. Our house is built on a glorified sandbar and is about 25 mm above current sea level. Actual real world stuff going on in Pakistan suggests my house will soon briefly be super valuable waterfront property, then worthless. By a stroke of good fortune I own it, having paid off the mortgage in March (and have put back the brick wall that fell off it in April).

Like good DBAs say: expect the best, plan for the worst.

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Architect of UK’s hated Care.data scheme quits NHS, flees from Britain

Stevie

Bah!

Infectious energy.

Very witty, Wilde, very witty.

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Britain's FBI wants 'Five Eyes' cosy hookups with infosec outfits

Stevie

Bah!

So not only do we want your e-mail, we want you to parse it for us and issue yourself a summons.

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SPACED OUT: NASA's manned Orion podule pushed back to 2023

Stevie

Bah!

"It's no secret that SpaceX has designs on the drawing board for new engines and rockets that could make an SLS Block 2 look puny, "

First off, nothing in that linked article suggests a departure from standard binary fuel/oxidizer engine technology, just bolting more of them together if I read the article right.

"[and] which would probably cost an awful lot less to boot."

Nothing in the article shows this to be a given either. In fact, PREDICTION: No it won't, not without creative accounting after the fact.

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All in all, it's just another hit in the stalls: Roger Waters The Wall

Stevie

Bah!

Azathoth on a bike.

The Song Remains The Same.

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AT&T grabs dictionary, turns to 'unlimited', scribbles it out, writes: '22GB a month'

Stevie

Bah!

Telcos are in a war for subscribers. To get the numbers up, each will try and outdo the others in gig per dollar. One day, not that long ago, one came up with the idea for "unlimited" and width consumption and, though the others tried to find affordable alternatives they eventually had to do the same to stem the flood of people desperate to join the Smartphone Set.

Fast forward a few years, and the system has reached saturation, with too many customers for the available infrastructure and too many hogs snouting at the trough for the available cash flow to be deemed acceptable (public companies, shareholder value etc).

It will be interesting to see how closely everyone's throttling levels are set. I suspect massive collision between Telcos a-la Enron et al in California during the 90s.

The irony here is that some of those whining are shareholders and therefore caught in a noiseless face fiasco.

Absolutely make the term "unlimited" off-limits. Replace it with an estimate of the number of hours of video each plan can provide at acceptable levels of buffering stutter. That's what people seem to do with smartphones when they are not playing free games.

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Arctic summer ice cover is 31st highest ever recorded

Stevie

Bah!

Bit late in the year for the NWP to be navigable though, in it?

Let's see how it is on Xmas Day before we celebrate Journos

:1 Scientists:0, eh?

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