* Posts by Stevie

7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008

AIDS? Ebola? Nah – ELECTRO SMOG is our 'biggest problem', says Noel Edmonds

Stevie

Well I raise you, in order

No, the ellipsis at the end of the original post was the clue that irony was in play.

So not so much a raise as STBO.

Stevie

Bah!

Didn't Mr Edmunds get taken in by some idiot scheme about 40 years ago? Something to do with speedboats and unworkable "harmonically balanced" reciprocating engines?

I think I saw the cutaway model for that engine once. It was very impressive. I could never make the geared pseudo-crank work on paper though. I figured I was missing something. I was. I was missing the fact that it was a tricked-up model for pushing a scam.

I, for one, welcome the rise of the Infrastructure Endgame Machines

Stevie

Bah!

"IBM have a library of software that can be deployed at the push of a button"

Can you tell me where that button is?

'Cos we've had four IBM guys on site for the last nine workdays deploying the latest and greatest and they don't seem to have found it yet.

Mac fans! Don't run any old guff from the web: Malware spotted exploiting OS X root bug

Stevie

Re: "Needing to download and install stuff is what Windows and Linux people do."

"Besides, the security hole is handy. I don't really trust my daughter's educational establishment to manage her MBA properly. Turns out, I was right... ;) ... and now at least timemachine works..."

I thought that subverting the security model to make software "work properly" was a windows paradigm.

I'm not sure what your point was. I said we should not be hand-waving away the problem because it involves Apple and poses a real risk.

The granny and mom example was chosen because the elderly pretty much just want to "talk" to now-distant friends and see pictures of the kids and the tool of choice is Facebook aka clicky heaven. If you gave your elderly parent a Mac so you could forget the IT support angle, my point is that you need to be on your guard.

There was no schadenfreude involved, simply the observation that there is a real risk involved and those saying there isn't have their heads in the sand. The auto-response in these situations is no longer appropriate in the general case.

As for my contention that Apple markets to the "idiot brigade", well, blame those adverts from the 1996 where they had a bloke on camera saying that with his windows computer he had to dismantle it to install a printer.

Stevie

anyone with half a brain

But Macs are marketed at those without half a brain as "it just works".

I see your point and agree that the exposure to those who read here is minimal to the point of non-existence, but someone's mom or granny is going to do exactly what is required because they've been told they are safe with their Apple computer.

We are surely past the days when it was appropriate to be unquestioningly uncritical of Apple just because it's Apple.

OFFICIAL SCIENCE: Men are freezing women out of the workplace

Stevie

Bah!

I once had an office facilities manager yell at me for an open window in the middle of summer (in Manhattan). I had not opened the window in question, but was nearest to it in terms of who got yelled at.

"When you open the windows it makes the A/C blow hot air" he screamed.

"You mean it makes the A/C go into overdrive and freeze up blowing cold air" I shot back.

"No, it bows hot air when the windows are open" he yelled.

"That explains why we freeze in here every winter. You have the A/C installed backwards" I yelled back.

It is hard sometimes to remember this country once put six men on the moon.

Stevie

Bah!

Well, they could simply put on a cardigan.

What?

Wait, what? TrueCrypt 'decrypted' by FBI to nail doc-stealing sysadmin

Stevie

Re: Errm, you cannot prove a negative.

"I am not dead".

Netzpolitik spy journo treason case stalls, chief prosecutor told to quit

Stevie

Bah!

They may have committed some Light Treason.

Oh wait, that was George Bluth.

Screw your cutesy plastic art tat, the US govt has found a use for 3D printing: DRUGS!

Stevie

Bah!

And given the low rate of production and high cost of manufacture I imagine this new medication will be affordable for all those who need it.

Oh wait. This is America. Land of "the best health care system in the world".

Which no-one can afford to access.

Still, the Koch brothers and Donald Trump should be able to get it. That has to count for something.

Australia threatens to pull buckets of astronomy funding

Stevie

Bah!

And so begins the Australian version of the education cost death spiral and ensuing debt crisis twenty years down the pike.

Of course, none of these politicos will be there then to take the blame.

We made a new Do Not Track thing – not like you'll use it or anything, huffs emo teen EFF

Stevie

Bah!

"What's in it for me?"

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crackup verdict: Pilot error

Stevie

Bah!

The speeds and weight restrictions on spaceflight using the current state of the art - which is not really much different to that pertaining in the 1960s with respect to goals, methods and obstacles - make the whole business a very dangerous undertaking.

What this tragic accident highlights is the magnificent job done by everyone involved in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and STS (with the notable exception of the idiots assembling Virgil Grissom's Mercury capsule; I've seen what was pulled out from behind the console when it was salvaged and those involved should regard themselves as extremely fortunate that their malfeasance was hidden by the sinking of the machine and subsequent blaming for the fiasco on the - as it turns out - blameless astronaut).

Spaceflight is dangerous. Those that do it are both brave and lucky bastards.

Will flash save the data centre? Don't spread your wings yet, Vultan

Stevie

Bah!

That's VOLTAN.

Such ignorance cannot go unpunished!

General Karla! Bring be the Bore Worms!

Linus Torvalds warns he's in no mood to be polite as Linux 4.2 drags

Stevie

Bah!

Dear me, if I am busy on a project and the Scope Creeps mail me I just ignore them until I have the product released to Test.

If people get upset by that I have a mailbot respond with "Too busy with Project Millstone to reply right now" to all mailings.

'Cilla Black introduced me to my wife on Blind Date': Channel man's heartwarming story

Stevie

Bah!

Why is Cilla Black dressed as The Queen Mother?

Sun? In Blighty? Nah, just build that rooftop data centre, it’ll be fine

Stevie

Bah!

I have done experiments that show dramatic improvements in ambient temperature using passive cooling techniques (getting outside air into the room and back out again). It amazes me that every time I broach the question I'm told the filtration requirements would be "ruinously expensive". Unlike the costs of a complete machine-room and restart.

Oh Jeez, not now! Activist investor threatens Violin Memory

Stevie

Bah!

Penultimate line, penultimate para. For "firm" read "ford".

Windows 10: Buy cheap, buy twice, right? Buy FREE ... buy FOREVER

Stevie

Bah!

Riddled with factual errors as usual.

Mike Oldfield and Phaedra+ TG are more accurately described as mid seventies.

Bloke cuffed for blowing low-flying camera drone to bits with shotgun

Stevie

Re: Apart from, y'know, the federal ones.

But the context of the discussion was about the carrying and use of the gun in his garden, a matter which is firmly ensconced in the local and state firearms laws.

The reason there is so much successful resistance to "gun control" is, in large part, because it is being attempted at the Federal level. This is also at the heart of attempts to curtail the Affordable Healthcare Act.

A war was once fought using the Federal usurpation of States' rights as the battle cry. Some are still fighting that war.

Stevie

Re: How about ....

An old avionics X band radar should do that quite well at short range, or you could build a directed EMP box. Either would fry any unshielded sensitve electronics on the drone and be undetectable as well, thus avoiding arrest.

Typical US, brute force approach, even if it does sortof get the job done :-)...

Model, please, or confess to bullshitting.

Stevie

Re: He should go free...

only? The average American's grasp of global geography presumably not able to differentiate between the UK and New Zealand...

As is the tenuous grasp of how law is made in the U.S. by UK Reg readers. Gun restrictions are enacted by States, not by "America".

And on that bombshell: Top Gear's Clarkson to reappear on Amazon

Stevie

4 AndyS

Could have been more relevant (this being a UK website discussing a UK TV show which has been ousted from the BBC), but hey, I value your effort.

So you aren't aware that the Clarkson/May/Hammond Top Gear goes out weekly on BBC America, or that there are umptytump seasons of it available for binge-watching on Netflix?

How Imperially insular of you. You should check out this American invention called The Internet. It is wonderful for keeping up to speed.

Well, I'll let you get back to The Archers on your wireless.

Stevie

Re: 30 grand is not really a punishment

Nononononono. The fine is to fund the payoffs that will be incurred over time.

The punishment is the loss of the co-producer credit (with concomitant loss of income and say in what the shows do, where and when).

Stevie
Coffee/keyboard

Re: "smart TV. Ironic, isn't it?”

You stupid sod. I sneezed very hot coffee down my nose when I read that.

Stevie

Bah!

Incoming clue missile for the BBC:

If you want to punish your very very very popular presenters for reprehensible bad behavior but don't want to lose your revenue stream and be made to look like a bunch of bathchair-bound dodderers who've lost the thread, instigate large fines and public outing as per sports louts.

"Okay, Clarkson, you punched this bloke because you were tired and being a twat: That'll be 30,000 quid and the loss of your co-producer credit for a year. The cashier is the third door on the right. Now cut along and don't do it again."

"Okay punched bloke, you absolutely didn't deserve that. You can either sue that idiot Clarkson or you can have a bonus of 3000 quid if you sign this here waiver."

Stevie

Re: Oh well, at least you get to watch some fun TV whilst waiting for a delivery...

"Well there's no point signing up to Amazon to get prompt delivery, they're either late, or don't show up (filing a "tried to deliver, no answer")."

In New York I have had one delivery marked as a "prime" offer that arrived later (by one day) than the "expected delivery" date. I typically see my tat in two full days from the purchase time, even though that is NOT what is promised in the ToS.

I prefer my stuff delivered by the US Post Office, as they are on-time and don't break my stuff. UPS are prone to seasonal worker issues in my experience. Amazon even got the USPO to start delivering on Sundays again, something that was discontinued so long ago I don't remember it.

The times I see excruciating delivery delays that miss targets sometimes by over a month is when I get involved with a UK or Aussie vendor. I try and avoid doing so because the business standard seems to be "charge for express delivery and superb packing, toss in a padded Teflon mailer and sling it aboard the nearest tramp steamer pointing approximately the right way".

So perhaps your beef is not with Amazon so much as the vendors and the pitiful postal infrastructure in your locale?

There are other advantages with Amazon Prime that make the cost worthwhile for me, but to be honest until now I hadn't factored streaming TV as one of them. I live for Clarkson howling "I've ruined m'car!" while toodling across the Andes or somesuch.

Your voter-trolling autodialer is illegal: The cringey moment the FCC spanks a congresscritter

Stevie

Bah!

The Congressman clearly never learned the old lawyer adage: never ask a question in public to which you don't know the answer.

And I prefer my Congressmen to limit themselves to "Wow, that's interesting" since the alternative is a slow speech with pauses ever three to five words used primarily to use up three minutes of public mike time. I can't be the only one to wish someone would yell "for f*cks sake get on with it" when one of these assclowns takes the stage for yet another three minutes of painfully slow outrage.

Octogenarian accused of performing sex act with a SHRUBBERY

Stevie

Bah!

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. He says he is a nature lover on his facebook page.

UK.gov wants to stop teenagers looking at tits online. No, really

Stevie

Bah!

I agree with Mr Cameron. We should stamp out this vile internet vileness tootsweet.

Teenaged boys should get their inspirational artwork by clipping it from the Sunday Mirror like I did.

The girls illustrating the serialization of Desmond Morris's The Human Zoo almost gave me Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Download Fest goers were human guinea pigs in spy tech experiment, admit police

Stevie

Re: What are you all worried about?

Nonononono. Everything DOES get deleted from disc.

It's just that diligent SAs ensure there is a good backup before anything gets erased.

Hey Pesto! Both sides happy.

What?

Stevie
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Plan of action

Not just the keyboard, the screen too.

Contractors who used Employee Beneficiary Trusts are in HMRC's sights

Stevie

Re: who don't have a guaranteed job

"... who don't have a guaranteed job " by choice.

I was a consultant programmer for years, and very happy I was, not because of the money - which wasn't outrageously great in them days - but for the sheer pride at holding a job because I could do it and would be shown the door the instant I couldn't.

But the fact that the money was much better than the salaried types were getting, benefits and all, didn't hurt. Nosir, it didn't hurt at all.

And the motto with taxes is "pay as little as you can but don't whine when the bills come due". This Gibraltar scheme is a re-tread of the old Seychelles scheme which is a retread of the ... well, you get the picture. The fiction is an obvious falsehood erected to avoid paying your fair share.

Every tax pound *you* "avoided" was added to someone else's bill, usually in the form of additional taxation.

So Mr F. Ewe, pay your taxes.

Thought YOU'd had rude service in France? Ce n'était RIEN, M'sieu Pantalons Malodorants

Stevie

Re: Je suis Eadon, et ma femme est aussi

I don't see what your wife being Australian has to do with anything.

Stevie

Re: de cases libel.

Bleeding enfer! Vous avez raison, methinks.

Stevie

Bah!

Well, the French are well-known to be stereotyping racists.

Windows 10: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to Microsoft's long apology for Windows 8

Stevie

Bah!

I don't see any attempt to bring up the system from cold and use it sans Internet connection. It seems an awful lot of the new OS predicates on persistence of webbiness.

As for Windows as a Service not being a subscription model, I strongly suspect this is a frog-boiler, a way of desensitizing the community to increasing levels of MS presence in the business of using your computer to the point that a subscription service for one's OS is "acceptable".

It's what I would be shooting for if I were looking for a way of increasing revenue stream in the OS game. I mean, it works for X Box, dunnit?

Stevie

Bah!

But the interesting thing is that the interface for the iPad - the "successful" tablet according to the article* - uses a conventional desktop icon array as the way into the thing, whereas Windows 8-> uses asymmetrical splats of odd-shaped bug-ugly tiles that use too much real-estate in order to add functionality no-one in their right mind would want on a desktop.

One might ponder that the iPad designers, who have indisputably "got it right", didn't think the blotchy windows uckfup display was a Good Idea when they were inventing the device that would cause the Windows 8 GUI to happen.

Windows designers: Give me a switch to put the icons back and send the tiles into the hell in which they were conceived and you might, might I say, get me to consider buying one more iteration of your increasingly too-much-trouble OS.

For someone else. I'm going Linux next time, assuming I can get two critical programs in compatible versions. If not I'll stay on Win7 and hide it behind a defensive linux proxy when it talks to the WuhWuhWuh.

* - but it is doing so in the context of a replacement for a PC and I take strong and strident issue with that thesis

Exploding 'laptop batt' IN SPAAACE! Speeding lithium spaffed by nova

Stevie

Bah!

Are those English billions or American?

Typical Register imprecision.

Let's all binge on Blake’s 7 and help save the BBC ... from itself

Stevie

Bah!

Two best things about Blakes Seven:

a) Hearing a friend describe season two as "Un-Blake's Not-Quite-Seven".

2) Seeing "Clackavoid" defined as a page of dialogue from Blake's Seven in the first edition of Liff.

Three-mile-high pyramid found on alien dwarf world, baffles boffins

Stevie

Bah!

Time to reclassify a Dwarf Planet as everything that has already been said plus "must not have pimples".

What we have here, rather than a true Dwarf Planet, is obviously a Ceresoid.

Job done.

Amazon comes up with delivery-drone zones after watching Fifth Element all night

Stevie

Bah!

OI!

Where am I supposed to fly my aerobatic kite, Mr Deliverydrone Fucktard? Your multirotor flying brownboxen are in my airspace according to your picture.

Show me the plan view of this, er, plan on a real map of, say, Long Island (to pick at random) before you start layer-caking the atmosphere for tat-delivery.

Or run the risk of encountering some high-speed duraluminum wrapped with blue plastic sheet.

Windows 10: A sysadmin speaks his brains – and says MEH

Stevie

Re: Rebooting after updates

"In fact, Linux had (is this still the case?) a reputation for introducing gratuitous breakage from one kernel version to another "

And people wonder why the desktop uptake was so slow and limited to the Expert User.

Bloke who tried to get journo killed by SWAT cops coughs to conspiracy charge

Stevie

Bah!

Presumably the guilty will be placed in a small cell with concrete walls to reflect the sound of the nightly concussion grenade pushed through the food slot after dark.

Happy 30th anniversary, Tengen! Your anti-DRM NES chip fought the law, and the law won

Stevie

I lived the the alternate reality

You wouldn't like it. That's the one where all the games look like Pong Tanks.

Stevie

Bah!

Point of information: Although Pac-Man looked the part and made the right noises (coulda swore it was the arcade version in fact) it had a game-destroying bug from the get-go in that it would often not obey the joystick.

Pac-Man requires only one thing to be playable: reliable and responsive code wrt the steering stick. Remove that and you have an expensive door-wedge.

And though Tetris was great in the original versions (pretty damn close to the arcade version) absent Gauntlet the rest of the Tengen catalog was abysmal, exactly the sort of poorly produced and badly visualized crap that killed Atari (and the console market shortly after because the fast'n'cheap release mindset extended to Coleco etc) and which Nintendo was trying to make a bad memory.

People coming of age in the post-NES world don't remember how badly the pooch had been screwed and how much better NES made things - notwithstanding companies going under waiting for chips. I still break out the NES for games of Gauntlet, Arkanoid and SMB3 on occasion.

BONK! BONK! Windows 10 whack-a-mole – Microsoft still fixing bugs

Stevie

Re: This "Get Windows 10" widget...

I stopped deleting the patches and hacked the registry to hide the clicky. Now the updates download automatically but the annoying too-easy-to-click icon is nowhere to be seen.

Unisys halts and catches fire: Mainframe builder dives into the red

Stevie

Re: The last of the BUNCH

Univac->Sperry Univac->Sperry->Unisys (the popular alternative at the time was "Spurroughs")

Unisys have had some fine products, a great OS, and some innovative ideas on hardware. What they have never had in the 30+ years I worked on their kit in my opinion, is any kind of vision for how and where to move forward and market it to the world.

They also suck balls when it comes to PR. In the 80s, if you booked an airline ticket in the western world the chances were better than 80% that your transaction passed through Unisys kit at some point in the process. I'll bet you never knew that, even if you are old enough for it to have mattered to you.

In the early 90s I was asked by an IBM DBA how much data we lost when we had a disc failure/recovery, and I didn't understand the question, because for me the answer was "none" and had been for years. I just assumed everyone was on the same page as Unisys when it came to low-level integrated recovery but for other manufacturers it was apparently rocket science made of unobtanium. It was easy to take this sort of stuff for granted because Unisys didn't make a big deal out of their achievements, something everyone else calls "marketing" and understands as essential for business.

Unisys were also open before there was a popular recognition of the term. If you wanted to know how anything worked they would not only give you a manual, they'd show you the code. This prepared me badly for dealing with the "so far and no further shall ye tread" Black Box world of IBM I inhabit these days.

Ah f*ck it. If Unisys don't care, why should anyone else?

Hurrah! Windfarms produce whopping one per cent of EU energy

Stevie

Bah!

Punative Treadmills. Finally a use for all those hackers clogging up perfectly good prisons. Also: promotes healthy exercise for the incarcerated. Go in an overweight geek with a penchant for cheetos, come out a lean, clean, running machine with a great health insurance profile and thunderthighs. Give prizes and incentives for over-capacity hamstering to encourage dilligence: No-Lashes Friday, that sort of thing.

I see no downside to this plan.

YOU! DEGRASSE! It's time to make Pluto a proper planet again, says NASA boffin

Stevie

Bah!

In your face, DeGrasse Tyson!

All time-wasting thing-renamers should now move over so real scientists can work at getting humans there for a proper look in a decent timescale.

We need anti-matter and a way to store it economically, and we need it yesterday. Otherwise everyone will be stuck on this mudball listening to the time-wasting telescope-and-robot brigade forever.