* Posts by Stevie

7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008

Sacre BLEURGH: Google thinks London's Victoria station is on the PARIS Metro

Stevie

Bah!

Unacceptable! Rebrand those British subway stations with proper IRT logos at once!

TrueCrypt considered HARMFUL – downloads, website meddled to warn: 'It's not secure'

Stevie

Re: If you were the NSA...

"If you were the NSA, how would you set about neutralising things like Truecrypt?

One option might be what we see today.

Food for thought."

Not a very good option.

If I were the NSA, firstly I'd be extremely under-provisioned in the human assets department.

Secondly, I'd secretly subvert Truecrypt 7.0 and let it mature to a couple of upgrades. Then I'd hack the latest version really obviously and put out lost of messages to switch to Microsoft software so all the knee-jerk unterrorist nonpaedos would dig in, smugly secure in the knowledge that they were using the "good" version.

But I'm not the NSA (which does not exist).

How to strip pesky copyright watermarks from photos ... says a FACEBOOK photo bod

Stevie

Re:and the college wants you to pay for your graduation picture

I think the college could care less whether you buy it. Don't. That's your choice.

But if you choose to steal someone else's work (they call it plagiarism sometimes in academia) don't be surprised if you get a short, sharp lesson in civics.

Besides, this tw*t works for Facebook, and you'd think that alone would have made him careful even if, as is so clearly evident by his actions, four years of expensive schooling failed to install a moral compass in his tiny brain.

Stick to tech Mr Chen. You aren't smart enough for a life of crime.

It's Google's no-wheel car. OMG... there aren't any BRAKES

Stevie

Bah!

A hacked googlecar with two inflatable occupants and the rest filled with [insert your favorite home-brewed explosive] is an obvious hazard in the making and one that terrifies me more than shoebombers or y-front martyrs ever did.

And politicians are worried about guns made from weed-whacker wire.

I congratulate the Chocolate Factory in inventing the world's slowest cruise missile.

Tesla's top secret gigafactories: Lithium to power world's vehicles? Let's do the sums

Stevie

Unimaginative Place Names

Hmm.

Galena

Leadville

Silver City

All without switching on m' brain (runs the batteries down).

Watch: Kids slam Apple as 'BORING, the whole thing is BORING'

Stevie

Re: and burn holes in the carpet while etching PCBs

Ah, yes, but now the EEC has made everyone stop even thinking about using "dangerous" chemicals at home.

Last year I suggested on a UK-hosted model railway forum that someone strip paint off a plastic model using cheapo brake fluid and was yelled at for promoting the spread of dangerous poisons. Then I suggested that denatured alcohol might be a useful de-greasing agent and got yelled at again.

I wasn't suggesting anyone drink the stuff afterwards ffs, but the clonethink mindset was under full sail and the gunports were open.

I shudder to think of the aneurisms suggesting people etch their own PC circuit boards would induce in that crowd.

Stevie

Re: "Computers? Beep beep beep. Does not compute! What use are they?"

Upvoted. Would have done so twice for the Station V3 reference.

Stevie

Bah!

The 1970s were a great time to be alive and for the sap to be rising.

Anyone who doubts this should watch the Roxy Chick segment from the otherwise forgettable 'Flashbacks of a Fool'.

Also: Elton John, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Steely Dan, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Gryphon, Caravan, Curved Air reunion, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Peter Gabriel goes solo, Van Der Graff Generator, GRIMMS, Kevin Ayers and the Whole World, Mike Oldfield, 10cc, Rick Wakeman, Pink Floyd.

All producing their best work - all stuff that had never been done before (except, arguably, Rick Wakeman). The Who invented rock opera and made it popular, The Stones were at the top of their game pumping out hits that *still* get airplay today (and they still play the damned things live come to that). Yes sang gibberish songs and people loved them. Keith Emerson took his Hammond Organ to be serviced and was shown the door because the PR-clueless dolt running the shop felt that one should simply not stab one's Hammond Organ with an SS stiletto on stage.

Pete Aitkin and Clive James' Live Libel.

The Old Grey Whistle Test. Radio North Sea.

Alien. Cripes, John Hurt exploded and Ian Holm was *NO SPOILERS*

For the very young:

Star Wars.

For the British:

Servillan, every Monday night, trying to catch Blake's Seven (though by the second season there were only six and none of them were named 'Blake').

Roger Delgado was *THE* Master (even though Anthony Ainley played him for many more episodes in the 80s).

Two words: Felicity Kendal. The Good Life was probably the best comedy of the decade, but I won't fight over it because there was so much good stuff on.

Tommy Cooper's inimitable conjuring. Eric Morcombe's & Ernie Wise's treatment of their guests and Oh! Those plays.

Peter Sellers' Clouseau.

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition. Then everyone did.

I was thin and the women were young and beautiful. All of them.

The Internet of Things helps insurance firms reward, punish

Stevie

Bah!

This story simply reeks of stoutism.

Redmond slow to fix IE 8 zero day, says 'harden up' while U wait

Stevie

Re: ZERO unpatched vulnerabilities.

"IE8"

Anyone still using it, other than the XP users?

Stevie

Re: Harden your browser

"Install Chrome......"

Install SRWare Iron.

There, fixed.

And this is easier than simply installing the MS hardening kit how?

You can keep chrome. I have to use Chrome for fiddling with my BeagleBone Black and every time I do it wants to know about my gmail settings and where I keep my contacts and ... (don't you just love when browser evangelists saddle you with nagware AND spyware in the name of political correctness).

If Redmond did this you'd crucify them, and rightly so.

Look, pal, it’s YOUR password so it’s YOUR fault that it's gone AWOL

Stevie

Bah!

Password aging is a stupid brute force answer to a subtle problem and only ever inconveniences the legitimate owner of the credentials said passwords 'protect'.

What is needed is more sophistication as to looking at how people *use* their credentials and detecting out-of-band usage. This is not new tech. Credit card companies have been able to do this with remarkably few false hits since the mid eighties to my certain knowledge.

Nor is using one technique to 'secure' credential usage adequate.

The mistake isn't in thinking any software solution is secure, it is in thinking that a password/userid is a person in the first place.

NASA stitches 3.2 gigapixel 'Global Selfie' mosaic

Stevie

Bah!

In other NASA news, still no rocket to replace the Space Shuttle.

EBay, you keep using the word 'SECURITY'. I do not think it means what you think it means

Stevie

Bah!

Why don't people running webtat emporia encrypt *EVERYTHING*?

Ditto banks.

CERN and MIT chaps' secure webmail stalled by stampede of users

Stevie

Bah!

For the clueless: The idea here is that you can be as computer literate as Seymour Cray and still send secure e-mails to your 80 year old grandmother - who isn't.

Facebook wants to LISTEN IN on the songs and vids playing in YOUR living room

Stevie

Bah!

Why on earth would anyone not a 13 year old girl want this "feature"?

Prediction: Six months on, "Whoops, we accidentally forgot to tell you about the change to the ToS"

"Again".

Robotics pioneer: Intelligent machines are 'scary for a lot of people'

Stevie

Bah!

Perhaps the fear is that a learning robot can also learn from a hacker and do considerable physical and financial damage to the production line before anyone realizes what's going on?

Because you just *know* those intelligent learning robots will require constant net-supplied updates and bug fixes, right?

MacBook Air 13-inch: If you squint hard enough, you'll see a lesser-spotted Apple Price Cut

Stevie

Re: You did, of course blitherblahdrool

First, I'm not running windows 8

Second I do not see great value in any of the "included aps" in either system.

Third: I haven't been virused with my laptop. Guess what: If you are a little knowledgeable and appropriately careful you don't get them. But I am aware of the threat and take precautions. Do you?

Basically, the issue comes down to what I get for my money and what it can become. All the software I'm interested in running plays nicely with windows or *nix, but requires all sorts of messing around to get working on OSX and even then is not guaranteed to be a pleasant experience.

I'm currently using my laptop to drive Oracle around the block and to take the engine to bits to see how it works. Nothing the Mac offers makes it in any way better suited for this task, and the forum questions would suggest that some are finding the experience significantly more painful than I have.

If you use you laptop as a typewriter and a paintbox you can pretty much get by with any machine.

I eagerly await your telling me that I can always run windows in a virtual machine, neatly sidestepping (as so many do) the fact that should I do that and should I buy the license needed I will simply have added the cost of a MacBook to what I can already do.

One thing I didn't mention was that I increased the memory in mine to 8 gig when the prices fell by simply opening the bottom and replacing two boards, and that I installed a 3/4 terabyte disk by sliding out the old one and sliding in the new. I also installed a bigger battery. All without having to give my machine to anyone else or talk to "Expert Baristas". Didn't cost an arm and a leg either. I considered going platterless then, but the cost/byte ratio was lousy.

So my machine has twice the memory of a MacBook air and three times the disc space. True, the disc is a spinner (and the reason my battery drains faster than yours), but I need capacity, not the dubious benefits of high speed random access backing store.

But I'll give you one in the win column for getting Garage Band with your wafer-thin mint.

Stevie

Re: Bah!

You'll have to forgive me, I just shelled out the down payment on a small car for an iPad for my daughter.

If it hadn't been for the assumption of a bottomless money bucket I would have found it amusing that every feature we asked about adding cost approximately 100 dollars (including the extended warranty and the tax on it all).

Classic moment: when the missus asked "well if it's only 100 dollars why don't we max out the memory" to which I replied "because I have a hard ceiling of one thousand dollars for this toy. One dollar more and we're off to Hyundai/Toyota to buy a subcompact", after which the salesdrone stopped playing to her and started to get real.

As for the MacBook Air:

I don't value thinness so for me that is not a feature.

The difference in weight is a positive, as is the battery life, but not worth the asking price for me.

I do value an optical drive. I use mine quite often. I do not have a persistent internet connection while I commute, which is when I use my machine the most. Besides, I have a luddite resentment of being forced into a "net connected or nothing" situation.

As for build quality, I've opened and repaired an Apple computer. Please don't make me laugh. I'll burst my stitches. I think it's nothing short of genius to shoehorn the innards into that tiny package. I just think the innards cost too much for what they are and don't see the need for the thinness in the first place.

I don't begrudge your owning one though. That wasn't where I was coming from. I read the price in dollars is all, and that price got me excited.

Stevie

Bah!

I was all excited, then I saw the price was in poundquids.

So, about twice the cost of a windows lappy with equivalent spec then.

The weird and wonderful mind of H.R Giger is no more

Stevie

Bah!

And the world is smaller again.

I remember during the run-up to Alien an article/interview on Giger in an early OMNI magazine in which it was disclosed that a piece of set graffiti read "Giger writes nice things on lavatory walls".

It seems the workforce was freaked out by a lot more than his black attire, and who can blame them? Working among those nightmare forms would give anyone the heebie-jeebies.

RIP Giger. If not for you there would have been no Alien worth the name.

Canuck cops cuff teen suspect in swatter-for-hire case

Stevie

Bah!.

I'll restrain my glee until after this little alleged sociopath has been found guilty.

Chip and SKIM: How dodgy crypto can leave shoppers open to fraud

Stevie

Bah!

So, not the Universal Fix for the Target hack as so many smugly opined here just after Christmas then?

JJ Abrams and Star Wars: I've got a bad feeling about this

Stevie

Bah!

Agree. Seven 'a's are the required number. One can use eight if one is William Shatner.

Achtung! Use maths to smash the German tank problem – and your rival

Stevie

Re: The tank used for the illustration ...

You are all wrong. The vehicle shown is in fact a Bolo Mk XXIV Continental Siege Engine.

Understandable mistake, there being no figure in shot to give it scale (those roadwheels are, in fact, over thirty feet or about twelve metres in diameter), but if you know where to look you can make out the unit's name (Restartus) on the glacis underneath and to the right of the ball mantlet of the rail gun.

Peak thumb drive is coming in 2016

Stevie

Re: Methink you didn't read the LICENCE

or, less confrontationally, that the content in question was all self-authored or supplied unencumbered.

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:::::c )

< | /|\

Stevie

Bah!

I feel mean for saying so but the full worth of the report is seen in the choice of averaging technique for determining the popular size of thumb drives.

Even I know what you need is the one where you take the actual sizes and group them, then count the ones in each group and report the group with the most in it, and I'm terrible at sums. Adding up all the storage and dividing by units sold is as useful as a ham sandwich at a Jewish wedding.

Even the person of median intelligence should be able to spot that 25 gig is a nonsensical size for thumb drives - at least, not fly-by-night counterfeit thumb drives.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot becoming mere pimple

Stevie

Bah!

"His guess is as good as any"

It is? Good! Here's mine:

The hole in the crust that is sucking all the atmosphere into the otherwise vacuum-filled hollow core of the planet has clogged up with various bits of detritus over the years, including huge rocks from the Shoemaker-Levy event.

I arrived at this hypothesis after a session unblocking my bathroom sink. The model produces repeatable results and I judge it reliable, if annoying.

Urinating teen polluted 57 Olympic-sized swimming pools - cops

Stevie

Re: Urine, while icky, is still sterile

a) Depends on the health of the person supplying it

2) So is properly cleaned arsenic

But I agree with your thesis that either way the draining was stupid with a capital stupe.

Stevie

Bah!

They drained the reservoir? Just because some idiot pissed in it?

This is what happens when you don't have a proper science curriculum in the schools, and when you put people in charge of something who have no f*cking idea of how it works.

This country is f*cking doomed.

Beam me up Scotty: Boffins to turn pure light into matter

Stevie

Bah!

So Breit and Wheeler are able to say they were only wrong once - when they said they were wrong but they were right.

Classic.

US space-station crisis: 'We have enough of our own problems' sighs Russian deputy PM

Stevie

Bah!

Crickey! Rogozin is right!

The American side of the ISS can't survive without the American side of the ISS.

Why has this takes so long to come to light? And why are we being told this by a Russian?

FSF slams Mozilla for 'shocking' Firefox DRM ankle-grab

Stevie

Bah!

Color me naïve.

I support DRM for documents under the following stricture: It is intended to ensure I bought a copy of whatever missive Mr/Ms Babyneednewshoes has written to pay the rent. Fair's fair. I get paid for producing, so should the writer.

I am avowedly against DRM if it is merely a way of ensuring that I can only read said missive on one computer or device and that I pay multiple times for the same thing. For me a written tract is a book, to be picked up wherever and more importantly whenever I like.

My thinking extends to music. A recording is not a concert. I own the first. I attend the second at a single time and place.

For software I'm willing to countenance a seat/machine licensing model, provided I own the instantiated files needed to get it in front of me. I am rabidly against the "you licensed something but not ownership of the said bit settings yaddayaddayadda" model.

But.

Adobe will get no more money from me, at least, not knowingly, after the "Complete National Geographic" fiasco I went through last Christmas. Briefly, I had been using this product (a gift from the previous Christmas) which forced me to use the awful, lousy, unspeakably nasty Adobe Air reader instead of giving me a bunch of pdfs. That notwithstanding the content itself was wonderful (the Air reader fought the Flesh reader every step of the way, though).

Clearly "thou shalt not copy" was the top priority, though the market for Nat. Geo. from 1920 would be small in my opinion.

I then had to rebuild my laptop to incorporate some upgrades. When I tried to re-install the Nat Geo thing it was borked by an Adobe Air upgrade that automagically intruded itself into the business. The install threw a Java error (and we all know how helpful those are, don't we kiddies?). I did what any red-blooded SA would do and downloaded an "improved" installer from Nat. Geo. - also borked.

I cleaned off the system vis-à-vis adobe, java and Nat Geo. Scrubbed it with Vim and Mr Clean. Then I isolated my machine from the tricky interwebs and ran the install again. Borked.

I used several different installation procedures recommended by Nat Geo tech support. All ended in Swedish Chef Land (borkborkbork).

Fuck knows what's wrong, but thanks to Adobe Air, never great by any stretch of the imagination when it was working, I cannot access so much as a word from this set now. It would be nice to think I could hold Adobe's feet to the fire and get either a working Nat. Geo. library or a refund of its value, but there's that ubiquitous passage in the license that says "although we do make software for a living, and although we do say we are the best at what we do, we refuse to be held accountable if said software doesn't, in fact, work". My efforts are now being put into finding something that can translate the oodles of bought-and-paid-for content into some sort of portable, readable form.

So no, Adobe, I don't think I support *YOUR* latest implementation of DRM even if I do see the point of the exercise. You are fuck useless at making active software, especially for the browser, and I can't tell you the contempt in which I hold people who call themselves engineers but who don't have the balls to stand behind their products..

Comcast exec says wired broadband customers should pay-as-they-go

Stevie

Bah!

Remind me again: who was it paid for the national coms infrastructure in the first place?

And has Comcast ever availed itself of a tax-break in order to establish its services?

And has Comcast ever been given taxpayer-funded government assistance to enable it to grow it's business?

Linux distros fix kernel terminal root-hole bug

Stevie

Re: that's what you get for using free software

That's what you get for not using a Clearpath mainframe with OS2200 installed.

If you want a proper job doing you need to use a proper computer.

Tsk!

Interstellar Fight Club: Watch neutron star tear Goliath a new hole

Stevie

Bah!

So, not real science then, just another simulation.

Scientists! Stop farking about making fancy youtube movies and deliver us a working star drive so we can go and start looking for the real thing!

Philips lobs patent sueball at Nintendo in US: Seeks to BAN Wii U

Stevie

Re: Patents take a long time for approval

What a bringing-low of the firm that once made such beautiful innovative products and marketed them so cleverly. From the combinatorial engineering fun of the Electronic and Mechanical Engineering kits to the genius of making the spec for the compact cassette open and well-known right before they pushed out the world's first cassette player, guaranteeing a unified format. If Sony had done the same thing we'd have been watching Betamax all the way and the VHS format would have gone the way of the Philips/Grundig Video 2000.

Heeeey...

Stop bullying SUPER FAT GODZILLA, urge movie stars

Stevie

Bah!

If them Japanese don't watch it, Godzilla will cross the ocean and kick the living shirt out of *their* most famous city ... bugger.

Game of Thrones written on brutal medieval word processor and OS

Stevie

Bah!

Which doesn't answer the big question plaguing his audience: Why are the GoT books getting thicker but the contents getting suckier?

Here is the best précis of Dance with Dragons ever written. Spoilers of course, but you'll thank the writer in the end.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AJ1DWEA83P0YD/ref=cm_pdp_rev_title_1?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#RQMHSVDEC80QE

Shame I didn't see this before I befouled my Kindle with the book.

Chap rebuilds BBC Micro in JavaScript

Stevie

Re: not even javascript can slow down

it can if it uses the extra time to mine bitcoins in the margins.

Stevie

Bah!

Chap Cleverly Emulates BBC Micro Using JavaScript.

Fixed it for you.

No soldering irons, hacksaws or drills were used. Not even a 3D Printer was part of the process. No BBC Micro was rebuilt to rise from the ashes of yesteryear. A clever script was built (and probably rebuilt a good number of times) to emulate the BBC Micro, but that is different.

Russia to suspend US GPS stations in tit-for-tat spat

Stevie

Re: you'll be better off if we're on your side rather than being "neutral"

because it is much better to have your life electronically snooped by the nonesuch agency than by the notKGBanymore.

Those commie bastards spirit people away in the dead of night to do vile things to them in dark basements with no need for proof and no requirement to let the victims even know what they are supposed to have done ... oh bugger.

Boeing shows off 7-4-heaven SPACEPLANE-for-tourists concept

Stevie

Bah!

So ... the spaceplane from 2001 is still not doable then? You know, the one with conventional seating so if someone throws out (the zero-g version of throwing up) it only covers the back of one's seat at worst possible case, and where there are actual real toilets so you don't have to - well, let's not go there.

Of course, there isn't a real space station for it to visit anyway, just a low orbit shed.

Apple, Beats and fools with money who trust celeb endorsements

Stevie

Bah!

One has to remember the iPhone generation believes in spending upwards of three hundred bux only to reproduce the tinny sound of a 1960s transistor radio, and will insist it is a worthwhile thing to do that.

I have friends who seriously believe their iPhone speaker sound reproduction is "amazing".

As for those dolts who drive past my house with the fixtures of their vehicles rattling on account of all the bolts having rattled loose due to the attentions of the on-board stereo, please don't count them as audiophiles. Racketophiles would be more accurate.

Boffins debunk red wine miracle antioxidant myth

Stevie

Bah!

you'd "need to have such large amounts from red wine that you'd probably kill off your liver and be drunk most of the time"

Sounds like a plan.

Powershell terminal sucks. Is there a better choice?

Stevie

Bah!

The really encouraging thing about the spurious 'bash is better' "debate" is that it shows this old man that he was right in something he theorized a few years ago: much of the rabid Windows=crap, MS=evil zeitgeist in the post 90s graduate population seems to spring from "not what I know", something I am familiar with having worked on more operating systems than some *nix SAs would credit existing (they seemingly being of the 2+1 school of OSs: *nix, Windows and whatever apple is doing).

I work in a large *nix department which is twinned with a large windows one. The *nix SAs spend a lot of time laughing about how much better they are than the windows crowd at what we do. So much time, In fact, that no-one ever seems to get round to making it true.

Time and again when we are in panic mode it is the windows SA teams that have plans in place, procedures to follow, and contingency schedules up and running in a jiffy, while my lot flail around, answering "why can't you just do what they do?" with "well, it's windows!" and scrambling for their little black books in which they keep their alchemical secrets to themselves. An unscheduled absence during one of these events can be a thing of high comedy to watch unfold.

Our hot line can contact users (our user base in in the thousands) impacted by a server outage with good estimates of the down time expected - if those users happen to have the good fortune to be working on apps located on a windows server. If they are using one of our *nix servers they are, to use dense technical jargon, SOL. We have an enterprise-wide system for enabling this technology, but it involves the SAs knowing what is running on their servers and entering that list on a database. This they claim they are too busy to do (a blatant lie obvious to even the most oblivious upper manager).

I'm not popular just now because after the last disaster, when we were asked for ideas to improve the *nix departmental image, I suggested the SAs wear Stetsons so there would be no confusion as to their professionalism.

LA air traffic meltdown: System simply 'RAN OUT OF MEMORY'

Stevie

Bah!

So lack of memory, or (as I see it) inadequate edit/audit functions on the user interface.

Blimey, we had this kicked into a coma in the late seventies when mainframes cost money to use and unnecessary run-time errors were deemed a finger-breaking offence for the programmer concerned.

How hard would it be to simply say "The number of outcomes you are requesting is very high. Are you sure you want to ask that [insert user name]?"

You use the user name so that the threat of being held accountable is raised in the users mind, often making a re-think more likely than a knee-jerk "just do what I ask" response.

Comcast dragged into muck in Oracle's Solaris fix-it lawsuit

Stevie

Bah!

The only reason Oracle would bend over backwards for anyone is if they felt they had hidden the petty cash in the drop ceiling.

Vinyl-fetish hipsters might just have a point

Stevie

Bah!

Bad news for them of us with Pioneer 15R decks then. The auto arm lift will defeat this artsy-fartsy cleverness and 78 rpm cannot be achieved.

Also: Why does this "artist" hate the 16rpm enthusiast, and why is there no cylinder format version?

Quick Q: How many FLOPPIES do I need for 16 MILLION image files?

Stevie

Bah!

Pfft! We had a clear out of one chaps equipment locker in '04 and unearthed a shrink-wrapped mint condition box of 8 inch single siders.

And he wanted to keep them "just in case".

They were used to back up a server in use in 1984 and long since gone to the big server room in the sky. I have no idea how he intended they should be put to use. Perhaps his desk was rocking.