Anybody given any thought to Somali pirates (or their equivalent in Arab waters)?
Posts by Anonymous South African Coward
3211 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jan 2010
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UK's Royal Navy buys £13m mine-blasting robot boat
LESTER looks up, spins its wheels: The Register’s beer-butler can see ...
Tuesday 8th May 2018 11:24 GMT 
So going to make notes here. Maybe I can create something like LESTER, but one which'll bother ne'er-do-wells on our freeholding by sneaking up on them, dropping an activated cherry bomb behind them, and beating a hasty retreat...
Or one which'll scream "Lumme see what I've got here!" behind them before scuttling away.
Something like that. Possibilities are endless.
Admin needed server fast, skipped factory config … then bricked it
Monday 7th May 2018 08:30 GMT 
A pop, and not a bang?
What a damp squib.
Glad to hear all ended well though :)
First time I've heard about an application for the elusive 80186 - had fortunate experiences with the 8086, 80286+80287, 80386+80387 and so on...
My first 80486DX I was in such a rush that I did not notice what I was doing and mounted the CPU the wrong way round - part of it glowed briefly before magic smoke escaped... had to toss the board and everything. Learnt my lesson that day.
Sir Clive Sinclair dragged into ZX Spectrum reboot battle
Zombie Cambridge Analytica told 'death' can't save it from the law
BOFH: But I did log in to the portal, Dave
Friday 4th May 2018 13:40 GMT
Re: I've been there
Intel servers FTW - we've got a couple with good track records.
At first we were wary, but times were tough, so we took the leap.
The downside is that most Intel kit is not built to last forever, whilst HPE (and others) are built to last, but the upside of this is that you are able to afford a new Intel server every two (or three) years, whereas with HPE (and others' kit) you have to grin and bear it until the BOFH slush fund Bossly Unit's CC is full enough to go out and purchase some pretty HPE kit - and have a major hissy fit with driver installation.
So far I never had any issue installing Windoze Server on Intel kit. HPE is another matter though...
Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana
Blame everything on 'computer error' – no one will contradict you
Friday 4th May 2018 09:37 GMT
Re: Blame everything on 'computer error' – no one will contradict you
Unless it's known you work in IT. Then it's your fault because you touched it last or you work with computers so you should know.
So doing that to a colleague at present. He fiddled with a server - now it is giving problems, and I just kick the ticket(s) back to him. Let him sort his own messes out.
My PC is on fire! Can you back it up really, really fast?
Friday 4th May 2018 08:02 GMT
Was on duty at a toll road plaza yonkers ago. It was winter, and every toll collector has his/her aircondtioner's heater on in the toll booths.
Supervisor get a panicked call from one toll collector - apparently a fire has started in her AC unit. Strangely nobody acted to extinguish that fire.
I relocated myself swiftly from the control room to the toll booth in question, grabbed the fire extinguisher, located the flames (luckily it was still small) and proceeded to empty the extinguisher on it :) Was fun.
When the AC repair crew rocked up, we found that the culprit was a bad connection to the heater element that overheated and caught fire.
Fun days.
TSB's middleware nightmare: Execs grilled on Total Sh*tshow at Bank
Exclusive to all press: Atari launches world's best ever games console
Vlad that's over: Remote code flaws in Schneider Electric apps whacked
North Korea's antivirus software whitelisted mystery malware
US techies: We want to see Pentagon's defence of winner-takes-all cloud contract
Wednesday 2nd May 2018 12:13 GMT
Things will be very interesting should the cloudy storage suffer a prolonged (and catastrophic) outage.
Let's face it - currently we have a select few instances of ISP's going TITSUP* due to cocking up their storage arrays.
Big cloudy boys have their share of grief too, but they're also able to recover quickly from outages.
What are the odds of a cloudy service getting hit with a prolonged** and catastrophic*** outage?
*Total Inability To Supply Usual Pr0nz
** longer than a day, continuing for more than 2 or 3 days...
*** all data is lost, or reverted back to more than 1 month prior.
It's not rocket science! Actually it is, and it's been a busy frickin week
Apple grounds AirPort once and for all. It has departed. Not gonna fly any more. The baggage is dropped off...
BOFH: Guys? Guys? We need blockchain... can you install blockchain?
Boss sent overpaid IT know-nothings home – until an ON switch proved elusive
Friday 27th April 2018 15:45 GMT
Had to deliver a printerer (brand new in box) to a difficult client once.
The arrangement was that the printerer would be handed over & installed after said client would hand over a cheque for an outstanding amount of money plus the money for the printerer.
Client eventually arrived sans cheque. Told him that no, will not install the printer, whereupon he tried to kick me - but kicked the printerer's box.
Luckily no damage, but company told client to get lost after this incident, and a debt collection agency got involved.
Newsworthy Brit bank TSB is looking for a head of infrastructure
Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes
Thursday 26th April 2018 18:42 GMT
Sisyphus is not happy, as getting IBM on the team now means that he now will have to carry the object* upwards whilst farting** a merry tune and also have to take a short course on the OSHA act on a regular basis lest he should hurt himself.
*greased with Face Man's special grease
**past the inserted bluetooth-controlled buttplug which got inserted to stop him from farting
IMHO this may (or may not be) the beginning of the end.
When tyrants pull on their jackboots to stamp out free speech online, they reach for... er, a Canadian software biz?
TSB boss: We know everything's working, you just can't see that
TSB outage, day 5: What do you mean you can't log in? Our systems are up and running. Up and running, we say!
Oh dear... Netizens think 'private' browsing really means totally private
Wednesday 25th April 2018 07:42 GMT
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
<wheeze>
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I expected something like that.
My assumption on this private mode - that it ONLY prevent your wife (or GF) from seeing which sites you've browsed, but you still can see it on your firewall/ISP was correct.
Next they (chrome, firefox etc) will offer a built-in VPN - but even then I won't trust that as it may leak like a sieve.
Happy having Amazon tiptoe into your house? Why not the car, then? In-trunk delivery – what could go wrong?
Wednesday 25th April 2018 07:18 GMT
Now I've got an idea.
Put a dummy in the trunk of the target vehicle, and make it look like it died from multiple stab wounds (or whatever, just that it has blood all over).
Train several hi-res cameras on the car (plus one inside the boot) - order a parcel from Bezos Inc and wait for the fun to start as the poor sod will get the shock of his life :)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
