* Posts by TRT

9611 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2009

The phone OS that muggers wouldn't touch is back from the dead

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Wasn't Kai the name of the undead assassin in Lexx? Basically, already dead, didn't stop moving.

We all hate Word docs and PDFs, but have they ever led you to being hit with 32 indictments?

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Re: TRT on digital signatures

I don't mind humans being stupid. Really, I don't. They are. Why deny it? What I do mind, though, is when they claim to be professional or competent or otherwise beyond error. It's a form of hypocrisy and that's the thing that grinds my gears above all else. The IT directorate bleating on about cyber security endlessly then expecting absolute trust and a different set of rules for their staff, or shirking any sort of hard work that would actually mean they comply with the best practises that they are proscribing... it's like the local priest preaching hell and damnation and putting, literally, the fear of God into the little kids from the pulpit, about paedophiles and original sin and how buggery condemns you to burn in eternal fires... then bending their favourite choirboy over a chair in the vestry and blessing their ring with their rod and staff thy comfort still.

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Re: My driving licence is paper and I don't have a passport. Guess I'm stuffed, then?

Yep. Been through all of that myself. Had to get a passport in the end. Took months and months due to changes to the passport regulations, all that business about grandparent's place of birth etc. You wouldn't think that would matter for the UK - it's almost as bad as someone of Pakistani descent trying to get a visa to visit India. Interviews, retake your photographs (and the price of the photo booth in the passport office... talk about creaming a captive audience), phone calls to your sponsors etc. And that's for a 40ish year old WITH a UK birth certificate, a NI number, a 20 year plus continuous employment history, UK bank accounts etc etc.It was just a lost passport and a destroyed birth certificate from years ago that was holding it all up.

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Re: Pled?

I pled for my freedom.

You pled the court spare your life?

Sounds fine to me. Although maybe not quite correct in the use in the article. Besides, it's in a quote.

Maybe he's just a miserable pleader.

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Re: Just Wow

You want an administration that knows how to properly cover its arse leaving no tracks?

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Re: Special Prosecutor Mueller

When he backs you into a corner, you feel like a lemon.

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Re: What

I believe financial and commercial fraud actually IS a federal crime, isn't it?

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Re: @ Dr Heinrich Backhausen

Ah, but the problem is, if you're a bit short of dosh in the first place, how do you get a loan to pay for a full copy of Acrobat? ;)

OK, I know, a bit of a tongue in cheek poke at Adobe's relatively new SaaS licensing model, and I know Acrobat Pro does have a more traditional licensing option available - the only part of the suite that does, I think. But still, it's worth a cheap shot about the price of Adobe software now. Suits some customers, but not us for sure.

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Myself and my office-mate been trying to get cryptographic digital signatures for PDFs adopted by my workplace for over two years. They think it's too complicated, and prefer to stick with audited email through Microsoft Office. They can't even create a PDF form to use without signature. Permissions and logins is good enough for them. If something needs filling in or signing, you print it, complete and sign it, scan it, return it. Seriously... they're living in the stone age. Whilst simultaneously forcing us to adopt entirely new working practices to replace established and evolved ones and telling us we've got to change because change is good. They are inept. Totally inept. Demand the highest levels of regard for digital security and GDPR etc etc, yet they planned to send round an IT audit team with just an email warning that "people will be asking to install software on your machine" and that if you have an administrative login, to let them. No list of names, no photographs, no nothing. So I said no - we will install the software and do the audit for you. That's not acceptable, they said. We've got home office licensed areas and we're not even letting you in through the door, I said. You have to, or we'll turn off your network, they said. In that case, not until we've vetted the people doing the audit, and you will be accompanied at all times. Bring your workplace IDs and a second form of photo ID with you. Your memory sticks will be scanned before and after use on the floor, by a member of our own IT staff.

Trying to tell us about security, indeed. Bunch of incompetent b*******.

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Re: There's a worrying implication

In the UK the banks accept scanned payslips, PDF bank statements etc for electronic submission. They have to.The number of banks pushing 'go paperless' and the rise of internet banking means that people are expecting electronic document submission. We'll see, of course, if the new laws opening up financial records to third parties will mean that in future a mortgage or loan application will mean downloading a company's verification tool.

Oddly the identity checking system seems way, way more advanced than the document checking system. For example, one major internet bank requires that you use a webcam to image your passport or photo driving license (nothing else will do), using image recognition software to ensure that every bit of the captured image is readable at a high level of certainty, then you have to, within a minute, place your own face into the webcam view, and it then checks THAT for image quality before sending the pair of the images off as a combined and encrypted pair. It only runs on some browsers, and it seems to have a preference for inbuilt web cams - a USB plug in one didn't work for me.

It's a pain in the arse having to get the photo ID documentation, but one can get around that by posting a certified copy of the documentation in - it just belies having an internet bank in the first place.

Hubble Space Telescope one of 16 suffering data-scrambling sensor error

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Re: Astro cameras went digital a long time ago

Ah, the analog to digital conversion...

Huawei guns for Apple with Mac-alike Matebook X

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A - Acronis True Image, Adobe Acrobat.

B - Battery Checker

C - Chrome...

Yes, thank you. I know my alphabet.

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Re: Looks good

I think I'd prefer my screen to have a notch taken out of the top to house the camera. It just makes so much sense not to have just the 1 rectangular screen when you could have three rectangular screen portions.

NRA gives FCC boss Ajit Pai a gun as reward for killing net neutrality. Yeah, an actual gun

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The point of saying "keep your guns, ban ammo" is so that idiots argue how impossible that would be and then say what an imbecilic argument that is. Then the proposer can say "OK, so we ban guns then, as that seems to be easier". It's one or the other because otherwise people killing each other remains an impersonal point and click, fatalistic whim.

When clever code kills, who pays and who does the time? A Brit expert explains to El Reg

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Re: *A* Brit Expert

Dr Kingston of the institution formerly known as Brighton Poly.

It's a fine place, I'm sure. Must have come on leaps and bounds since I was at a neighbouring university.

Flappy Friday for Stack Overflow as outage woes run on

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"We're working hard on the issues behind the scenes and addressing the connection issues. "

But we've been slowed down by not having access to an online resource from where we can get a pre-built solution to our problem done by someone else.

Vatican sets up dedicated exorcism training course

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Does this course incur a fee?

And, if so, can you pay using papal?

Are there course materials required? Exorcise books and the like.

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

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Re: Compliment slip stapled to 5.25" floppy

Or like the visitor to the rubber & latex factory who was being shown round the condom production line and expressed his surprise at the worker who was sticking a pin through every 100th condom that went past.

"Isn't that rather unethical?" the visitor asked.

"Maybe, but we do say it's only 99% effective. And it does wonders for sales in the rubber teat department."

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Re: Thats right up there with

Ah yes, they put the fans on public display, presumably because they are functional, whereas they hide the on button, presumably because it isn't.

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Re: Electrons

Ah yes, the old Edison electric light - turn key by door sign.

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Re: Compliment slip stapled to 5.25" floppy

I remember the old hole punch trick that could turn a SSDD into a DSDD.

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Re: Thats right up there with

The new Dell AIOs... delivered one to a professor, who came round about 30 minutes later and asked if it came with a manual, because he was f***ed if he could see where the power button was. I had to concur - I couldn't find it either, but stumbled across it by accident as I gripped the f***ing thing ready to hurl it out of the window.

King's College London staggers from outage, replaces infrastructure services head

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Re: I use more things like EMC VMAX and HP 3PAR that are fault tolerant throughout.

It was a 3PAR that failed at KCL.

Who wanted a future in which AI can copy your voice and say things you never uttered? Who?!

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Re: PS: I fell from the top bunk of a bed... Oh, darn it!

As I said, an exceptionally aggressive wank.

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Re: explain to me again how I broke my wrist in 1968...

If it was 1968 when it happened, 'ole mum would be around 80 - 85 years old.

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Re: Bedtime stories...

Well, he has in 2015 denied plans to adopt a child with his husband Elliott Spencer, but Elliott is young still and might want to start a family. Who knows?

*EDIT*

And argh! at the iPhone auto corrupt changing "your" to "you're".

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Re: explain to me again how I broke my wrist in 1968...

An exceptionally aggressive wank.

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Bedtime stories...

Why mother's voice? The bedtime story was always my (male) job. And, and... why not just record the audiobook, for crying out loud. I mean, if you're dad is Stephen Fry, for example, there's every book every written to choose from.

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Advertising voice overs that can adjust the content of a campaign without recording a new segment. Additions to the DVA on trains, at airports etc without having to arrange another recoding session.

I can see the actor's union having something to say about this.

Real talk: Why are you hanging on to that non-performant disk?

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Re: Really?

More so, in a hospital, one might have 12 medical imaging scanners acquiring and dumping scans into a system all at the same time. One needs a system with the bandwidth to cope with all of those systems offloading at once, obviously flash, then it can migrate into slower storage at the system's leisure.

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SSD?

Are you using that to mean "Flash"? Because there are better ways of using solid state storage than SSD. And I think HDD still has a place in on-prem solutions.

Japan's Robo-Bartenders point to a golden future

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Re: Newcastle Brown Ale.

Or "dog".

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Can it pour a decent pint of mild?

And WTF? That's been given more head than Hugh Grant in a lay-by.

This job Win-blows! Microsoft made me pull '75-hour weeks' in a shopping mall kiosk

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It looks like she's trying to file a law suit...

would she like some help with that?

KFC: Enemy of waistlines, AI, arteries and logistics software

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Kentucky Fried Coney.

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We are currently awaiting the loading of ...

... our compliment of small, lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort, refreshment, and hygiene during the flight, which will be of two hours duration. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The cabin crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits… again.

A print button? Mmkay. Let's explore WHY you need me to add that

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Re: 1/3

It's about that point in time that Microsoft Office went from a 57MB, mostly self-contained, application to a 1.31GB application which relies on an external framework and a code abstraction layer.

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Re: Have you noticed how a religion starts with a guy coming back from a holiday in the desert

You mean what started with a halo ended with Halo: Evolved?

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Re: Adding a Print Button

Why did a 5 minute job turn into a 2 month project?

Farts away! Plane makes unscheduled stop after man won't stop guffing

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Re: Something's amiss

You think that's what happened to MH370.

"Right. That's it. I'm turning around, and I'm not going to land the plane until whoever dropped that one owns up. Come on. It's your own time that you're wasting."

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Re: I am secretly impressed at someone having to be told off by the captain ...

In flight attendant. "Your attention please, passengers. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the captain has now illuminated the no farting sign, so you'll have to hold it in until we have safely landed and the cabin doors have been opened."

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Re: High Risk Strategy

Matchmaker, matchmaker,

Strike me a match,

Disguise my gas,

Mask me my flatch

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

I've brewed me a stew,

Of gas that I've passed from my ass.

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It was a real...

Dutch oven.

Big data fitness plan: What's the deal with DX?

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I thought DX in a data centre...

referred to Direct eXpansion cooling, i.e. the traditional mode of operation of a pumped refrigerant.

Also DupleX in comms.

UK.gov calls on the Big Man – GOD – to boost rural broadband

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Re: I may be missing something

Churches do tend to be co-located with churchgoers, i.e. population spots. There are often telecommunications run out to churches, not least as a result of their role in WW2. There is also the possibility of line-of-sight microwave relay between the spires, should cabling not be available. There's also power run out to a church which isn't necessarily the case to these long abandoned rural outposts.

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Re: FTTP.

Could be FTTC, Fibre to the Church.

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Re: I'm waiting...

Those bits of God which passeth all understanding.

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FTTP.

Fibre to the Pulpit.

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Re: Location, location, location

The Holy Trinity?

Oi! Verizon leaked my fiancée's nude pix to her ex-coworker, says bloke

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It means he uses his chopper, and photographically documents the axe wound.