* Posts by Trevor 3

158 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

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Can it be true? That I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of PUREST ... BLACK?

Trevor 3

Great idea but....

Fluff isn't black.

I give it one wash with an accidentally left tissue in a pocket somewhere and it'll be as grey as the rest of anything "black".

Google Glass gets 2GB of RAM. Think about this. Two gigs of RAM

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Voice control idea:

"Stop hitting me officer" activates video camera

"Whats that moron doing?" activates video camera

"hahaha, check this guy out" activates video camera

Solar-powered aircraft unveiled for round-the-world flight

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Re: Idiocy of the first water.

Even if it can't be done, there's still no reason to not try and do it anyway.

The reason being is that the small steps may be possible, even if the end target is impossible. I don't think this trip would be possible without engines of 94% efficiency. They have them now, but they didn't at the start. Meaning they started on an impossible task in the first place.

Haha, really loose logic that, but I think you know what I mean.

Ancient Earth asteroid strike that dwarfed dinosaur killer still felt today

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Re: @Tom 7

Even that .6 of a billion is quite a large number of years.

Unless they are accurate enough to say "3.6B years ago, on Tuesday" which I doubt, we'll never know either way.

Anatomy of OpenSSL's Heartbleed: Just four bytes trigger horror bug

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Re: I don't get it..

More importantly, with OSS, you can either wait for the fix to be released, or get the code and build your own.

Or stick the compile options workaround in.

Its open to you, and up to you.

The Reg's desert XP-ocalypse aversion plan revealed

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Java (JRE) standalone?

I know its just there to be updated once in a while, but sometimes it's required, and its better to have it than not seeing as the place is a tad remote.

Roll up, roll up for the Reg Readers' Ball

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Re: London's a pain in the arse to get to...

I'll check my calendar when I get home.

I've not heard of butchers hook... will have to look it up regardless :)

Hey, IT department! Sick of vendor shaftings? Why not DO IT, yourself

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10 years ago...

When I started doing this 10 years ago, it was expected that the in-house guys knew what they were doing. They build infrastructure, wrote code, did some development work.

Now though, it seems these basic skills of building say, a web server, or a mysql database, or a webpage with a bit of java on it to do something simple has disappeared from IT teams.

Everything is spoon fed to them by vendors. The IT teams go out into the market place, get bombarded with information about the particular task they want to achieve, and are then forced to choose one, based on no knowledge at all, just the scales of cost the individual vendors are pushing at them.

You wonder why places buy the cheapest, or the most functional (but not necessarily the most functioning) bit of software? You wonder why businesses are so confused they seem to buy the nearest bit of crap to what they want without thinking about the environment they need?

There is very little skill left in the IT sector now. If you're wondering where its gone, look at the smallest, sweat filled cupboard with no air-con or adequate ventilation at any vendors office. Thats the place where our best developers and system architects are. Stuck in pre-sales designing overly complex systems for generic solutions for people who don't understand what they are buying, or buying into.

Google picks five teams to share $6 MEEELLION funding in Lunar X Prize

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Love them or hate them...

personally they can have a bit of data about me for the time being as they seem to be the only massive company funding these exploits to a realistic level.

That and their approach to new technology. Not just the 3D sensing phone thing, or even google glass, but the contact lense for detecting salt levels in tears for medical stuff, robotic cars and probably the myriad of other stuff they have under wraps.

They are not just not being evil, but they are doing some good for humanity too.

Long may it continue.

BT scratches its head over MYSTERY Home Hub disconnections

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Been with BT since the new year

Their WIFI on the new HH5 is crippled.

Every now and then the ping for WIFI goes up through .5 second, this causes problems with a lot of the internet as you can imagine.

It'll sit there for about 5 mins or so, then the ping will drop to 0.1ms, and life is again good.

The WIFI in the netgear router in my shed (acting as an AP) never misses a beat.

On the plus side it does mean I have a greater excuse for being in the shed, rather than watching "Celebrity death dance dive on ice" show.

'Copyrighted' Java APIs deserve same protection as HARRY POTTER, Oracle tells court

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This is a tough one...

As a thought experiment:

You have 2 developers, A and B. They are both tasked with writing some code to do the same thing.

Both attended the same classes, and have exactly the same skill level. Both are highly nerdy types with a particular affinity for writing highly optimised code. Both also don't like leaving comments in the code.

They sit in separate rooms to write the solution.

When they have both finished they leave their respective rooms and hand in their work.

Its the same.

Who holds the copyright?

Can you tell who wrote what?

Isn't this in a similar vein to copyrighting the sum 1+1=2?

Sail HO! Look out Bay Area - it's the Google Galleon

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BAL0010 and BAL0011?

That is obviously BAL 2 and BAL 3.

So where is the mothership....WHERE IS IT?!?!?!

Want to keep the users happy? Don't call them users for a start

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The best advice I can give is

Little language things. Especially this one:

"How can WE fix THE problem?"

rather than

"how can I fix YOUR problem?"

Why Bletchley Park could never happen today

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It just goes to show....

...the amount of disassociation governments feel with the people who voted them in.

You don't need to spy on your own population. For any reason.

You can't even trust the figures coming our of central government about how many attacks they have aborted. Or what data they are collecting, or anything.

They can't prove anything to even come close to justifying spying on me or anyone on a mass scale.

Whistleblowers are the "general public's" response to being spied on. That's about it. The whistleblowers are returning the favour.

Retaliation if you will. Retaliation against having our own personal privacy attacked.

That's a lotta cats: 40% of YouTube vids are streamed to mobes

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Hopefully with this new report they won't ban so many sodding videos on the mobile platform?

wake up, record companies, wake up!

You are missing a revenue stream!

Snap-happy blogger babe posts catcalling blokes' mugshots online

Trevor 3

No Cat-calling?

Maybe they would like to be approached personally and face to face by these people then?

I can probably see that if 5 or 6 blokes cat-called at once could be a little bit scary, but would you rather them walk up to your face and say something?

What if its one guy cat-calling? What if he actually wants your number, and he is your ideal partner and all he is doing is trying to get your attention? Would you be happier if he ran over, stopped you in the street to get your number? Or would we get another "artist" taking photos and complaining that men kept approaching her personally, to her face? What if he couldn't get to you before you disappeared in the subway, or got on the bus or something?

What if they didn't whistle, but said "wow, you're gorgeous" loud enough for you to hear? Is that a cat-call?

What I am saying here is that life is not black and white. Its 50 shades of...wait hang on....life isn't black and white, its never that simple.

Us blokes have to get your attention somehow. And if you are on the other side of the street, we need to shout, or whistle or something.

Do we have to only meet you in certain places? What if you're not in those places? what if you're on the way to that place and we see you inbetween meeting places? Are we banned from getting your attention?

I'm playing devils advocate here, but come on. It'd be a pretty sad life if no-one commented on anything male, female, positively or negatively. We'd all be wondering around not daring to notice each other, eyes to the floor in case we saw something we didn't want to see, or did want to see but couldn't comment on in public..

I tell you this as well. Whistling is a damn sight easier and quicker than trying to shout something not deemed to be sexist:

"Excuse me madam, but you are looking especially radiant this morning and I wish to demonstrate my appreciation of your beauty, without feeling the need to interrupt your day further. Good morrow to you."

Expert chat: The end of Windows XP and IE6

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Seeing as no-one has provided you an answer, just downvoted you...

Try Zimbra or Citadel, for email/calendaring etc...

for DB2, yes probably, google is your friend. I highly doubt there isn't one.

For GPO, yes there is.

LIVE, my beauty, LIVE! Nokia revives dead phone with LIGHTNING powered Frankencharger

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hey neighbours

I live near Southampton too, I'm not worried though as Dexter will get you 2 first...

Boffins have constructed a new LIGHT SABRE. Their skills are complete

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Let me get this in my head.

Light is rebounding off a surface....lets say....a shed.

It hits this layer of super-cooled Rubidium in a transparent case and comes to an abrupt halt.

I am standing this side of the Rubidium layer.

Do I now have an "invisible" shed?

(yeah I know it'd block all light from everywhere not just the shed so you'd get a big black square where the rubidium is - but I still can't see the shed right?)

Is this the silicon chip KILLER? Boffins boot up carbon-nanotube CPU

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Carbon Nano Tubes?

We are very lucky its Carbon Nano Tubes (CNTs) and they are not made of copper.

Now we know why UK spooks simply shrugged at SSL encryption

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I bluff my encryption

I use ROT10, and no matter how many times they apply their SSL decryption on my messages, it never works.

Headmaster calls cops, tries to dash pupil's uni dreams - over a BLOG

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Re: Seems pretty switched on to me

Just ask a few of my servers...

Boffins lay bare exotic Lara Croft meteorite element ununpentium

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Cost of research....

I can't afford ununPentium

I'll happily buy some cheap ununCeleron though.

Study finds online commentards easily duped, manipulated

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I love el Reg Commentards

You guys are awesome. Loving the voting. :-)

It's now or never for old sysadmins to learn new tricks

Trevor 3

I have recently found that System Administration is incredibly boring, and I was worried about the risks to that role as I seemed to be writing the scripts and the programs to automate my job. (If I can do it, someone with more business acumen can do it too and sell it for load of money to all sorts of firms)

I decided that instead of "doing IT" I would do "Applied IT". There are computers in everything nowadays, so it can't possibly be (and isn't) beyond my wits to learn new software/applications/services etc... so that's what I did.

I have learned a great deal where I am now, and applying my IT skills. I am working a lot harder though ;-)

Now I can say that I don't work in IT, I work in broadcasting - which is a damn site more interesting and people talk to you...even if they do try and weasel free Satellite TV out of you ;-)

Secret ROYAL BABY birth VIDEO leaked! (And other malware scams)

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Ah Irony

I was so interested I clicked on the news story without a seconds thought.

Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild

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FAIL

The reason why I hate it is because when I'm reading a document on how to fix a server, and as I'm reading I hit the windows key, type the name of the program I need and hit enter WHILE I AM STILL TRYING TO READ THE DOCUMENT I get a giant fucking menu in the way.

Even if I have to look at my keyboard to type the name of the command (not very often), having my whole screen flash in the corner of my eye is a real distraction.

That's simply it from my point of view. The rest is just an OS. A means to an end, but not an end in itself.

Murdoch hate sparks mass bitchin', rapid evacuation from O2, BE

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Re: Leaving, not because of Murdoch

Same here.

I left Sky as they were next to useless and I heard about this bunch of guys at BE, who did everything I wanted them to. Great support, static IPs..etc...etc... and if you want a laugh get on their BBS.

Now I'm back at sodding sky and I'm expecting it to be as terrible as it was when I left.

Can't help but notice that my internet isn't half as stable as it used to be already, or is that psychosomatic?

Sun lets loose with THREE record eruptions in 24 hours

Trevor 3

Daft Question

The CME's were not ejected towards Earth....does that mean not ejected in the direction we are in, or not ejected in the path of where we will be when it gets here?

Record numbers of you are reading this headline right now

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Pint

Congrats guys

I never thought I would align myself with any media company, but as you're here you'll do.

Its nice to be able to congratulate or rip apart any reporter, and have them come back at you with more facts and opinions and be happy to take part in conversations with us.

the news stories are what you do. You're going to do that anyway. But its that interaction, and the paper plane experiments, and the playmobile stuff, the fairly unmoderated comment boards and countless other "random" stuff you do that sets you apart. This is why we're here.

THAT AND THE BAD PUNS, DODGY ALLITERATION AND HEADLINES IN CAPS!

Thank you and roll on 2013!

McDonalds burger app gives it to you straight from the horse's mouth

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Coat

Re: Beef

Vegetarians were close, but they had it backwards

Turns out

Meat is Red Rum

Playboy fined £100k by Blighty watchdog for FLASHING SMUT at kids

Trevor 3
Pint

The UK is a funny old place

You can have sex legally at 16, but you can't watch porn until you are 18.

So if you film yourself having sex you cant watch it back for 2 years. Shocking.

Home Sec: Let us have Snoop Charter or PEOPLE WILL DIE

Trevor 3

Here you go then:

The people who say they’re against this bill need to look victims of serious crime, terrorism and child sex offences in the eye and tell them why they’re not prepared to give the police the powers they need to protect the public.

I'm not prepared give the police excessive powers they think they need to protect the tiny minority of the unfortunate members of public affected by these heinous crimes.

Anybody who is against this bill is putting politics before people’s lives.

Certainly I am ensuring that surveillance is not put upon innocent members of the public, using the unfortunate and rare occasion (numbers of people attacked vs population of UK) someone may be harmed due to this surveillance not being in place.

There will be paedophiles who will not be identified and it will reduce our ability to deal with this serious organised crime.

Possibly yes. A small percentage of paedophiles who make up a tiny proportion of the UK may go free. They are not pokemon, you will never catch them all.

Tech titans lose our loyalty: Are fanbois a dying breed?

Trevor 3

I've said this before about server-side applications or services, but equally its true for end-user\consumer devices.

Consumers no longer have to buy a specific device because it is the only one that has function z. All devices do function z. Its not important what device the consumer uses, as long as they have the choice of which device to use. Which one does a specific function better?

I have a computer that I use for recording music, editing video and playing games. Its a dual-boot linux and win7 box

I have a core I3 laptop for when I'm mooching out and about for a week or so, or for when I want to write a blog, but don't want to sit on my horrid office chair but instead sit on my comfy sofa. It is also dual boot, because linux boots faster, and sometimes I play games on it.

I have a tablet that lives on my bedside table or the coffee table in the lounge, or in the kitchen or for surfing the web, looking at the news, looking up recipes or for googling facts to support conversations and things because its always on.

I have a netbook for when I'm sleepless in bed and want to write something, or if I'm going to be away for a weekend and need something small I can type on reasonably well.

I have a smartphone for calling people and googling stuff in the pub.

Too many devices? Maybe. But they each have a purpose, and they each run a different OS.

I haven't got time to be a fan of any particular company, and I'm not stupid enough to get locked into anything I don't want to be locked into when I have the choice.

Design guru: Windows 8 is 'a monster' and 'a tortured soul'

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Actually I found his website rather good.

It loaded in under 3 seconds, no flash, important stuff left hand side, interesting stuff right hand side, contact details at the bottom.

Do you have pictures in your books at home, and feel a bit lost without them on the internet?

Should Microsoft merge Office into Windows - or snap it off?

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@richard12

'Back at the article - it doesn't matter whether MS want to merge Office and Windows together, because if they do that on the desktop they'll be immediately done for abuse of monopoly.'

Exactly what I was thinking.

Then we'll get a patch: Which office suite would you like?

MS Office?

StarOffice?

openoffice?

Lotus?

etc...etc...

Boss wrong to demote man over anti-gay-marriage Facebook post

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Alert

Just a thought....

Maybe we are trying too hard?

If you are religious you can get married.

If you aren't, you have a civil partnership.

If you are religious and gay, you have probably been disowned by your church anyway.

If not, then your church can marry you as its their rules. Don't like the rules? Don't go, they don't respect you.

'Perfect' INVISIBLE SHED stuns boffinry world

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Pint

If you were to alter an objects refractive index to that of air, it would be, for all intents and porpoises, invisble. (Thanks EE Doc Smith)

But everyone would see you when you got in. And all your old Ataris and megadrives and archemedes and stuff

Bradley Manning submits partially-guilty plea in WikiLeaks case

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Sorry, I was trying to suggest that some documents may be kept secret forever knowing that it would cause a public outcry if released. Either destroyed or put in the back of a cupboard somewhere, never to see the light of day again.

I'm for full disclosure of everything, I can probably say with some certainty that it hasn't ever happened, and I'm not sure how it would even work.

Having a random Private turn up and release it when he hasn't got the full picture of what is going on is definitely not the way to do it though.

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I wouldn't like to call it.

I think the documents should be released, and the videos. But maybe not now. Maybe in 20 years time. Soon enough so people remember what was going on, and late enough that the information isn't as valuable.

But to never release these documents would be a crime as we need to be honest with ourselves about what our governments did/are doing.

Maybe the better policy would have been to hold these documents until the government declassified them, then add yours to the pile with a suitable shock filled headline.

Like I said, I wouldn't like to call it. He did wrong, but how much wrong?

Gaping network port with easy-to-guess password? You ARE the 79%

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Re: Get attacks at SSH all the time...

I know its not as secure (maybe) but I use port knocking.

Described simply:

You have a number of closed ports that the port knocking daemon is watching. You ping (or send a specially formed packet) to a number of ports in the right order.

The port knocking daemon watches the firewall logs for your "knocks" against closed ports, and runs a command to open the SSH/VPN/VNC/RDP port on your firewall.

obviously you need to be careful which ports you choose (random, not sequential) but it does give a method for keeping ports closed until you need them.

EARTH was a BAKING LIFELESS DESERT for 5 MILLION years

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I was stood

In a room the other day full of people.

It was really hot

I went into the room the next day when there were no people, and it was cooler.

People must have heated the atmosphere!

Rover spots 'possibly artificial' MYSTERY SHINY OBJECT on Mars

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Sounds like you have experience of rinsing out keyboards....got your own cubical where you work have you?

:-)

TalkTalk's YouView box gets Ab Fab reception

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Re: 'linear television'

It's TV that's linear. ie. scheduled

This is (in part anyway) View on Demand or VOD

Why Java would still stink even if it weren't security swiss cheese

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Pint

It sounds like you spoke to some kind of careers advisor or looked up what the job description was?

I didn't look up my job role. I didn't speak to a careers advisor. I didn't aim to become a Systems Administrator. I just wanted to work with computers - as sad as that sounds.

It was a natural progression for me to take my scripting and computing skills I learned as a kid into work with me. "Whinging users" always turned up at the helpdesk (I didn't go to Uni, started at the bottom) with the same problems, so I scripted the responses as far as possible.

I realised I could write scripts to do all sorts of stuff, if only I knew what language I needed to write in and what stuff I wanted to do what. No one told me I'd need to, or had to. I just did it. With a smile because I enjoy it.

Every time I changed job I learned a new way of doing things, new languages, new operating systems. I didn't care what the job was, or even what the role required me to do, it was how I did it that mattered.

The benefit is, as I had scripted most of my tasks, I could get on with the fun stuff.

Like playing with storage, or networking, or reading The Reg and talking to you.

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" I eventually went into systems administration. The joke was on me with that choice; by becoming a sysadmin, I ended up just having to learn a greater diversity of languages. I did not escape software development."

That's an interesting statement, but having to learn lots of different languages shouldn't have surprised you really. As a Sys Admin you are categorically not doing development work. You are writing code. Same as I built myself a brick BBQ but I wouldn't consider myself a builder.

On my CV I include things like Perl, Python, Javascript, VBScript, Bash, ASP etc..etc.. but when it comes to interviews I have to state categorically that I am not a developer.

I am a Sys Admin, and IMHO a bloody good one. You need to be able to write or at least read in as many different languages as required in order to be a good Sys Admin.

You can't sit there doing the same 150 mouse clicks or whatever thousands of times over to do something. You script it, fire it off and go get coffee or go to the pub, or maybe do something else constructive.

I'm not saying that I am any good at writing code though. The code I write is for a purpose. Normally throw away stuff. The point is that it works and can be made to work quickly, not that it works well. I am NOT a developer.

Developers should write good optimised code in some specific languages. In my opinion, good Sys Admins should be expected to write some code in *any* language.

Ten netbooks

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Re: Still using my £120 AAO first series

Thanks.

From memory, its a 2.5" 10mm? drive. something like that.

I used the zif connector from the original SSD. No mods. Because the 110 wasnt designed to take the drive I filed a little bit off the mounting posts for the motherboard. The keyboard isnt exactly level any more but it works.

The 8GB SSD that came with it was rubbish. The spinny disk has overheated, been dropped off the sofa/bed/hotel table/etc... numerous times and barely works.

I'm looking to get one of these:

http://www.eeepcssd.com/product_info.php?currency=GBP&products_id=121

Not entirely sure if itll fit.

Or one of these:

http://www.memoryc.com/storage/solidstatedisk/32gbsupertalent13idepatassd.html

We shall see I guess.

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Still using my £120 AAO first series

Got rid of the SSD and put a spinny disk in it. Ubuntu 12.04, upgraded to 1.5gb ram

Works like a charm.

Why is a similar specced Netbook still over £200? It's rediculous!

Incidentally, can anyone help? I'm looking to go back to SSD with it. I don't have it on me, but IIRC its an AAO 110L. Does anyone have any suggestion on what would fit in the case and has a ZIF connector?

Thanks in advance!

Red hot chilli peppers floor Bristol shoplifter

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@Lester Re: Just wondering .....

Superdrug?

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