* Posts by Alister

4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

NHS OKs offshoring patient data to cloud providers stateside

Alister

Re: Response

I'd like to see a politician argue otherwise.

<ObMalcolm_Turnbull>

"The laws of physics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in the UK is the law of the UK"

</ObMalcolm_Turnbull>

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

Alister

Re: sprouts cannot be fried

one man's frying is another man's sauté...

Alister

Professional hoarding

So, as someone who works in IT, and is also a Land Rover owner, I reckon to have all the necessary qualifications (and collections of strange gadgets) to claim professional hoarding status.

I have, of course, boxes of ISA cards, including SCSI interfaces, ATA Raid cards, 3com network cards (by the hundred) old PCI cards, AGP graphics cards, broken keyboards and mice, ATA hard drives from 40MB capacity upwards - yes you read that right, 40MB Hard drives... loads of PC cases, including an original IBM XT, an original IBM AT, and an IBM PS2, a Sharp MZ80K, a couple of TRS80 and a Video-Genie, a Camputers Lynx, and some ZX81s.

BUT, I also have a replacement Series 3 rear-quarter chassis, a Ninety front axle casing, a pair of swivels from a Discovery 300Tdi, an R380 gearbox with a broken layshaft, a complete and intact LT230 transfer box, at least 2 pairs of halfshafts, a couple of propshafts, a set of 5 steel wheels, a 2.25 Petrol cylinder head, a complete but scattered around in bits Rover V8, so cylinder heads, sump, block, pistons, camshafts, crankshaft, tappets, rockers, pushrods, and all the other ancillaries, A Smiths heater, a set of Series2A dashboard instruments, a Series3 instrument binnacle, A Series3 seatbox, a set of Discovery 300Tdi sills, inner and outer, and door pillars, A and B, One Series2A R/H front wing, quite a few rusty outriggers, and a dismantled truckcab roof.

Then, I have a welder, a compressor and a full set of air tools, and hundreds of sets, partial sets, and mostly lost sets of sockets, allen keys, torx wrenches and individual tools. Whenever I go the find a 1/2 inch spanner and can't, I buy another one, same with 13mm spanners. I recently bought a 1/2 inch socket drive which you could use in confined spaces by twisting the handle, which I thought was cool.

As too finding the actual bit of Land Rover, or particular tool, when I want it... HA, no chance...

Alister

raw sprouts, shredded or finely sliced, make a really nice addition to a salad, with a pleasant peppery flavour.

Seriously, try them.

HTML5 may as well stand for Hey, Track Me Longtime 5. Ads can use it to fingerprint netizens

Alister

@45RPM

Thanks, Douglas...

Alister

Re: Yes, but

I find the default colour palette on Lynx is a bit restrictive...

What do voters want? An IRL Maybot? Sure, give that a whirl

Alister

users can ask 'what's going on with Brexit?' and be given a bitesize, conversational overview of the progress being made".

"We are still waiting for the economic impact assessments"

Hey. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Get in here... so we can shake your hands – US Senate cyber-terror panel

Alister

Re: Fundamental Immaturity

The diaper (napkins to you Brits)

Umm, sorry, nice try, but I think you mean nappies. :)

Napkins are what posh people wear at the table to catch errant food.

UK's Just Eat faces probe after woman tweets chat-up texts from 'delivery guy'

Alister

Re: Unrelated to data breach stuff

@tiggity

I never understood why someone would use Just Eat (or Hungry House etc.) when you could just order from a takeaway directly?

Some of our local restaurants don't do deliveries at all, but do the best food - this is true of both our local Chinese and Indian, so using these services saves having to drive.

Additionally, of course, the great thing about the services is they can get food from more than one restaurant, so you can get fish and chips, Thai, Kebab and Pizza all delivered together.

Users clutch refilled Box boxen after 'empty' folder panic

Alister

Re: Box user RS Zaharna...

That's what happens when you use twitter as a news source and forget to actually check the facts.

Interesting that you immediately assume El Reg is at fault, and not RS Zaharna.

His Tweet says "dropbox box" so my guess is he's tweeting the wrong company.

Junk food meets junk money: KFC starts selling Bitcoin Bucket

Alister

Re: bitbucket?

Surely their pulling our leg?

Or maybe they're pulling our leg.

Yay, it's power play day: Conaway prays USA says 'no way' to Huawei

Alister

Ban all products manufactured in China

Like, ummm, smartphones, computers, tablets, televisions, telephones, radios, network routers, switches...

Cisco can now sniff out malware inside encrypted traffic

Alister

Re: It's not that hard

Using an encrypted tunnel between endpoints (a VPN) is not the same thing as using HTTPS on web connections.

Boffins closer to solving what causes weird radio bursts from space

Alister

Alien? Unlikely

I'm happy to be convinced that there are intelligent species somewhere other than earth, but these FRB's seem to me to be an unlikely candidate for a deliberate signal.

Whatever is producing them appears to be of such intensity that any lifeform within light years of the source would be destroyed, so I can't see that they would be deliberately instigated.

The only other possibilities would be a nasty accident (some major failure of a power source, perhaps) or a byproduct of some conflict (like nuclear explosions but raised to the nth power) but the fact that they repeat, apparently from a similar source, would argue against either of those being likely.

1980s sci-fi movies: The thrill of being not quite terrified on mum's floral sofa

Alister

I think the pic used in the article is actually Automan, not Tron :)

I think the pic is from The Lawnmower Man, isn't it?

CCTV commish: Bring all surveillance systems under code of practice

Alister

Re: ANPR

Indeed.

I noticed recently that our local branch of Sainsbury has an ANPR camera at the entrance to the car park - and proudly displays your registration number to you on a matrix sign as you drive in, along with a time at which you must exit again. I wonder how many pings a day the local plod get from that?

If Australian animals don't poison you or eat you, they'll BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE

Alister

Re: He was being sarcastic

I'm glad you didn't go full-on acerbic, or caustic...

Matron, there's a large Thesaurus eating the Japonicas!

Wibble!

Alister

Re: So basically...

@ Nick Ryan

That Wooshing sound is TRT's point missing you completely...

He was being sarcastic, and is well aware of what the vulture signifies.

Alister

Re: Fascinating

Sadly, empirical evidence is frequently dismissed by scientists, even though, by it's very nature, it is observed behaviour.

This is why we waste money on scientific studies to prove the grazing behaviours of sheep, instead of just accepting what sheep farmers have known for centuries.

Alister

Australian wildlife

Already replete with sharks, crocodiles, snakes and poisonous jellyfish galore

Spiders! You forgot the spiders!

And some of the Sheep, and the Roos, and the Drop Bears...

Least realistic New Year’s resolution ever: Fix Facebook in 365 days

Alister

New Year challenge

Zuck always gives himself annual challenges that he shares with the world. In the past he’s learned Mandarin, run a lot and built a home AI.

If I remember correctly, last year he challenged himself to "read five books".

I wonder how that went for him.

Janet and John build a web site.

UK.gov admits porn age checks could harm small ISPs and encourage risky online behaviour

Alister

Re: In related news...

Somewhere for the birds and the bees to do educational naughty things.

Was it Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett who wrote that the beauty of listening to birdsong in the countryside is somewhat marred when you realise that they are all screaming "Look at me, I've got a big todger"

Alister

stopping kids accessing porn on the grounds that such content could "distress them or harm their development".

I would be interested to see if there is any actual evidence that this is the case.

It seems strange that in the UK, "kids" can legally have sex for two years before they are allowed to see porn on the Internet.

The healing hands of customer support get an acronym: Do YOU have 'tallah-toe-big'?

Alister

Computers fear me!

Yep, I seem to have the same influence, when I stand and glare over the user's shoulder, the reported issues always go away and everything works properly.

I'm sure I've recounted before how we keep a 20lb lump hammer hanging in the server room where all the racks can see it. Our MTBF went up massively when we did that.

And a friend of mine has the carcass of a Dell PE860 displayed on a workbench in the server room, with a large flat-bladed screwdriver driven right through the motherboard...

Alister

You certainly aren't . It's a strange phenomenon that makes us look like witchdoctors. I might get myself some sort of magical staff to wave at the computer on the way over.

Sacrificing a chicken over the keyboard is always a show stopper, although removing the blood and feathers afterwards is a bit of a chore.

Jocks in shock as Irn-Bru set to slash sugar and girder content

Alister

Re: How to be English in Three Easy Steps

2:They are Feegles.

Nae king, nae quin, nae suugarr, we willnae be fuled agin!

Alister

But just think of the opportunities! They can double the amount of GERRRDERRRS for a higher Iron content...

US Homeland Security breach compromised personal info of 200,000+ staff

Alister

It is to be hoped they don't run a witness protection programme...

Soz, guys. No 'alien megastructure' around Tabby's Star, only cosmic dustbunnies

Alister

Re: Silver beetles

Joshua! Is that you?

Alister

Re: It's only dust,,,

OH! Alien Overlords is it? (or overloards...)

What about OverLadies, or Over-non-specific-gender-stereotypes?

Hey?

Bug-finders' scheme: Tick-tock, this tech's tested by flaws.. but who the heck do you tell?

Alister

So, Scott, you want me to publish an easily discoverable text file containing an email address, phone number etc, on all our sites?

And you don't think that, perhaps, we might be spammed to death within hours of putting it up?

Captain Morgan told off for Snapchat lens: That grog be aimed at kiddies

Alister

Re: Plus ca change

Yep, I reckon I had a folder and pencil case in John Player Special colours, and nobody seemed bovvered...

UK security chief: How 'bout a tax for tech firms that are 'uncooperative' on terror content?

Alister

"Wallace said that inaction from internet giants means the cost of tackling terror content is "heaped on law enforcement agencies" – and the state should be able to recoup that in some way."

Strangely, perhaps, it was my belief that the law enforcement agencies were paid to enforce the law already, that's their job.

If various internet companies didn't already help them out with traffic capture and analysis, the law enforcement agencies would be much worse off than they are now.

Firefox 57's been quietly delaying tracking scripts

Alister

Re: Firefox 57 on Ubuntu 16.04

Can somebody fix the memory leaks on Linux?

Posting this on El Reg is unlikely to get you much of a response. Why not try the Mozilla forums?

'I knew the company was doomed after managers brawled in a biker bar'

Alister
Facepalm

Re: "and gloves were forbidden"

a mixture of mercury and iron filings in his lab-coat pocket,

Magnesium, dammit, not mercury

Alister

Re: "and gloves were forbidden"

My secondary school Head of Chemistry used to walk around with a mixture of mercury and iron filings in his lab-coat pocket, and he used to walk behind the pupils and throw pinches of the mixture into the lit bunsen burners on the bench. Very hard to concentrate when a low-grade thermite reaction is going off in front of you!

US senators rail against effort to sneak through creepy mass spying bill

Alister

and now we have the Liberty act they are trying to push through the back door.

Yeah, if they'd called it the Butt-Plug law, we'd have known where we stand...

Seagate's lightbulb moment: Make read-write heads operate independently

Alister

Make read/ write heads operate independently (on seperate platters)

So, not actually, then.

Exploding alien bodies' space death-rays gave Earth its radiation cloak

Alister

Earth is Flat

NASA should be funded for a mission to send a probe under the earth to look at the bottom, we need to know if it's turtles all the way down.

UK's map maker Ordnance Survey plays with robo roof detector

Alister

Re: Ho ho ho

However, determining if there's a gas or electric fire at the bottom of the chimney is still beyond AI.

Yes children, that muffled thumping noise and swearing is just Santa trying to deliver the presents...

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

Alister

Re: Goose

Fellow residents of Great Britain;

Yorkshire puds with Xmas dinner. Yes or no?

A resounding NO here, I can't imagine why you would do such a thing.

Alister

Starter for Ten...

So, we normally have the following to feed the assembled hordes:

Chicken (as it's much moister than turkey) with streaky bacon laid over the breast, and cooked as a crown.

Pigs in blankets (cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon, for those not aware of the term).

Roasted carrot and parsnip coated in honey.

Roast potatoes done in goose fat.

Sprouts, boiled and then mixed with chestnuts and lightly fried in butter.

Boiled carrots.

We don't do peas, or any other green veg.

Gravy, made from the legs and wings of the chicken boiled and reduced down.

Sage and Onion stuffing.

Bread sauce.

Redcurrant Jelly, not Cranberry sauce.

Then Christmas Pud with double cream, not custard, about 2 hours after the main course...

Christmas cake and mince pies may appear in the evening, as we argue over the family jigsaw...

America's drone owner database is baaaack! Just in time for Xmas

Alister

Re: If you want a laugh...

@Big John

The whole point of this exercise is that the new bill is NOT like the old one.

John, you seem to be having a comprehension fail here. What part of the following suggests that the new rules are different?

President Trump today signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018 that will reinstate rules created by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2015

Pickaxe chops cable, KOs UKFast data centre

Alister

Re: DR Testing Failure

@jmch

Doesn't matter how big your batteries are, if the generators don't work the batteries will eventually run out.

No, that's obviously true, but my reading of this situation is that the mains power went out and everything stopped immediately. They should have had sufficient battery power to at least give them time to manually start the backup generators, but that doesn't appear to have happened.

Alister

Re: DR Testing Failure

Exactly.

The article very carefully skims over that bit, doesn't it.

The incoming mains supply was lost to the site and generators failed to take over the service.

Every datacenter I've ever dealt with does weekly on-load generator tests, and UPS failover tests.

Now we all know shit happens, no matter how much we try to prepare, but this does feel like they haven't been taking enough time on planning or testing.

Why didn't their UPS have enough capacity to keep things up, even if the generators failed to start cleanly?

Millions of moaners vindicated: Man flu is 'a thing', says researcher, and big TVs are cure

Alister

Re: Man Flu - banter OK but no balance

@A Non e-mouse

Unfortunately you seem to be in a minority, most managers I've come across don't care about whether you infect everyone else, they just don't want you to be off.

My experience is not that it's bravery driving people to come in when ill, it's fear of reprisals.

Alister

Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke

And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk,

It seems I had to fight my whole life through.

Developers, developers, developers: How 'serverless' crowd dropped ops like it's hot

Alister

...and is it a good idea?

Serverless is all about giving developers the ability to execute code without requiring sysadmins.

Given the recent large numbers of incidents where private data has been dumped in an S3 bucket and then ALL THE SECURITY TURNED OFF, I would suggest that developers shouldn't be trusted to do anything without sysadmin supervision.

Berners-Lee, Woz, Cerf: Cancel flawed net neutrality vote

Alister

Re: Whaaat?

@Big John

Are you really so deluded as to think that all these people are part of some evil conspiracy to push a political agenda.

Can you not appreciate that these people, many of whom are the pioneering founders of what the internet is today, may be genuinely concerned by what they see as an ill-concieved and flawed plan of action?

Have you actually read the open letter? I have, and I'm not seeing the "personal attacks and Good vs Evil language" which you mention.

Shady US sigint base upgrade marred by stolen photograph

Alister

thieving gits

A mate of mine had a similar experience with Transport For London, who, in their online documentation for the London Exclusion Zone, nicked a photograph of his to illustrate a type of vehicle that was not compliant.

The photograph, which was taken by him of his own vehicle, was published on his own website which was for enthusiasts of that type of car. Under every image on his site there was a copyright notice, but sadly he didn't watermark the image.

TfL didn't even bother hosting the image themselves, they just linked to my mate's server, which is how he found out about it - he noticed a sudden increase in traffic to the site.

When he contacted TfL to get them to stop, they claimed they had tried to find the copyright owner before using the image, but couldn't. Clearly bollox.

He said afterwards that he regretted the missed opportunity of replacing the image with one of the same filename, but different content...