* Posts by Alister

4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

Revolutionary Brit-made SABRE hybrid rocket engine to burn in 2020

Alister

It does seem to have been a long time coming, I agree, almost to the point of feeling like vapourware, I too have read about Reaction Engines, Sabre and Skylon, for well over a decade, without seeing much progress.

However, I think that is probably due to a lack of funding, rather than issues with the underlying technology, and as we all know, trying to secure funding from the British government for any sort of technology that doesn't involve the BAE Systems pork barrel is doomed to failure.

UK.gov flings £30m at driverless car R'n'D, wants plebs to speek their branes

Alister

Re: Still waiting...

@TeeCee,

I think you missed this bit?

But this comes after the world witnessed the first fatal autonomous vehicle crash. Last month, a man driving his 2015 Tesla Model S on Route 27 in Florida crashed into a 18-wheel tractor trailer after he and the computer system failed to spot the trailer.

FBI arrests satellite engineer on charges of espionage

Alister

Re: I'm sorry...

I was just watching that the other day...

"Junior, there's no way, *no* way that you came from *my* loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I'm gonna do is punch yo mamma in da mouth!"

Alister

Or was the stolen data not actually 'classified' at all, just commercially sensitive stuff that the Americans would rather foreigners didn't get their grubby paws on?

Did you miss this bit of the article?

"Justice did not have access to classified material, but, claimed Special Agent Peter Lee in an affidavit, he allegedly handed over proprietary trade secrets that, under international arms laws, could not be moved from the US without an export licence – in breach of arms laws, as well as trade secret protections."

SETI mulls reboot: Believing the strangest things, loving the alien

Alister

Re: You're an Alien from outer space!

Downvotes for Star Trek quotes, what is the world coming too?

Alister

You're an Alien from outer space!

"No, I'm from Iowa, I just live in outer space".

4-day Fasthosts outage: Customers' sites go TITSUP

Alister

I seriously lol'd at this comment:

"It's amazing that it is still down, particularly as this is not a cheap service we are using. All they are offering is a day's free hosting for every hour outage - but only up to a month free - so that’s £60."

Mate, if you think that's expensive, then maybe you shouldn't be running "online booking systems", for god's sake invest in a proper hosting facility,

Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated – just like movies

Alister

Re: Disqualified

@anonymous boring coward

Yeah, the foxes shouldn't have any right to eat. Why not exterminate all wild animals from this island while we are at it? In other countries they have bears, lions, tigers etc, but in this one we can't accept some foxes. Pathetic.

Wow, Strawman much?

No, the foxes shouldn't have the right to eat farmed poultry, there's plenty of other things they could eat. I did not, and do not suggest exterminating them all, I've no idea where you got that from. And I don't support hunting, either.

Alister

Re: @Alister: Disqualified

@Jay,

I don't think I said anywhere that I support hunting, did I?

I was simply correcting ChrisG who said "a small mammal that largely (in the countyside) keeps down rodent numbers and looks cute"

This may be the townies view, but anyone who farms knows what a struggle it is to deal with foxes.

Alister

Re: Disqualified

So no idea about how the real world works

...to chase a small mammal that largely (in the countyside) keeps down rodent numbers and looks cute.

I'm sorry, but you also have no idea how the real world works if you come out with shit like that.

Foxes are a pest that kill enormous numbers of chickens and geese every year, they aren't just a cute little animal.

Alister

Re: The obvious problem with this

But hang on: Britain could decide to leave the internet, couldn't it? That would keep all that nasty stuff out.

Oh I would so love to see the outcome of a referendum on Britain leaving the Internet, I wonder how many dumb fucks would vote for it.

Rolls-Royce reckons robot cargo ships are the future of the seas

Alister
Pirate

“In principle, anybody skilful and capable to attain access into the ICT system could take control of the ship "

Or, alternatively, anybody with a RIB could board it and do what they want.

You can’t sit there, my IoT desk tells me

Alister

Re: Let's talk balls

What about balls? Has anybody tried sitting on them? Does it work for them?

I sat on my balls once - not to be recommended, the pain was excruciating.

Gartner: Brexit cluster-fsck has ballsed up our spending forecast

Alister
Facepalm

Tech spending forecasters at Gartner are all in a tizzy

Ha! They didn't see that one coming, did they!

Loose wrists shake chips: Your wrist-job could be a PIN-snitch

Alister

"Attackers can reproduce the trajectories of the user's hand then recover secret key entries to ATM cash machines, electronic door locks and keypad-controlled enterprise servers."

I wonder if they could work out what a watch wearer was doing, given the output like this:

101010101020202020202020303030303030306060606060606080808080909090909090909090909095908090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090

UK.gov's hated Care.data project binned

Alister
Holmes

Not enough public confidence, says minister

No shit, Sherlock

Sociology student gets a First for dissertation on Kardashians

Alister

You could win a prize

a critical analysis on the implications of Love Island for romantic archetypes and chest-waxing in the postmodern era

put me in mind of:

Award for the most gratuitous use of the word "Fuck" in a serious screenplay...

ITU okays another TV spec

Alister

" It enhances dimly lit interior and night scenes, revealing more detail in darker areas, giving TV producers the ability to reveal texture and subtle colours that are usually lost with existing Standard Dynamic Range TV"

Umm, is he talking about turning the brightness up? I can do that on my 15" CRT telly!

Paper wasps that lie to their mates get a right kicking, research finds

Alister
Thumb Up

Re: The cost of cheating

Well said Pascal, the whole basis of the "experiment" seems flawed to me, they don't even mention if they had a control group of unpainted vs unpainted wasps fighting to compare traits with. And the conclusion drawn from the "experiment" seems wholly out of proportion to the actual results.

Bad science, in my view.

Theft of twenty-somethings' IDs surges

Alister

Do people under 30 have actual IDs?

Few of them seem to vote so are we sure they all really exist and are not some Matrixian constructs?

Well I have a teenage daughter who appears long enough to eat any food available, and then disappears again. I'm pretty sure she does exist... if only occasionally.

Alister

Re: Are we surprised?

But on Facebook at least, only your direct circle of friends can see that information (by default)

Yes, but a large number of Facebook users have all sorts of miscellaneous additions to their friends list, like favourite shops, football clubs, local pubs etc, as well as friend requests from friends of friends, or even people completely unknown to them.

Those extra additions open up their information to far more people who may not be trustworthy, unless specifically blocked.

UK.gov wants to fine websites £250,000 if teens watch porn vids

Alister

Age verification

"Please tick here to confirm you are over eighteen and therefore legally allowed to access this site"

That should do it.

Uber opens up on Oz deactivation policies, just a little

Alister

Re: "Deactivated"?

It's as if they consider their drivers to be robots.

But that's the problem for Uber, isn't it, they are desperate to insist that they don't "employ" drivers, they just "facilitate" getting drivers and passengers together, so they are trying to avoid any of the usual terms associated with the parting of ways between an employer and employee.

They could have used "terminated" but perhaps that has even worse connotations? :)

Humans and bees share the same sociability genes

Alister

I can't say I've ever felt the urge to unleash my sting whilst feeling threatened or angered, perhaps eating bananas has desensitized me to the effect of the pheromones?

Forget YouTube – meet ChewTube: Strangers watching millennials eat

Alister

Re: Coming Soon

Social Deification - watching each other become Gods?

I think you need to chastise your spillchucker, as I'm sure you meant defecation.

Michael Gove says Britain needs to create its own DARPA

Alister

We need change to make this country a global leader in education and science

Well given his track record whilst at the helm of education, forgive me if I appear less than enthusiastic about his abilities.

Trans-Pacific FASTER fibre fires first photons, finally

Alister

FASTER fibre fires first photons, finally

Fank phuck for that, finks founder.

Brexit-bored Brits back to bashing the bishop after ballot box blues

Alister

netizens are far more interested in grumble flicks than finding out who might be the next leader of the country

Yeah, well that's probably because neither of the prominent political parties have a clue who is likely to be their leader, yet, either.

You know how that data breach happened? Three words: eBay, hard drives

Alister

Re: Hacking a disk that's been 100% written to zero.

I don't know about multiple writes to zero, but I learned a salutary lesson some years ago when a friend of mine managed to do a clean install of windows 7 beta over his XP boot drive by mistake (he meant to install it on a separate drive).

So the existing partitions had been removed, and then new partitions created, and the new O/S written to the drive.

Despite that, with a piece of software called GetDataBack_NT which cost about $50, we were able to recover all of his previous partitions and data from that drive, and clone it to another drive, and boot it.

Ever since then, I've been very careful not to assume that overwritten data can't be recovered.

Dixons, UK's fifth 'emergency service', brushes off Brexit scare stories

Alister

And the third: not the Ambulance Service

As in the UK, the government has never acknowledged the NHS Ambulance services as an emergency service, which is why their staff are expected to work until state retirement age, unlike Police or Fire service staff.

Body of evidence: Biometrics and YOU

Alister
Paris Hilton

Fred Potter explained for us the task of getting a satisfying facial at home without relying on a massive online image database to deliver the money shot.

"getting a satisfying facial", "deliver the money shot."

Either my mind is in the gutter, or the writer's was...

Singapore Airlines 777 catches fire after engine alarm

Alister

Re: Serious questions to answer on this one.

You land with a fire, you get everyone off the plane. You don't sit and wait to see if the fuel tanks burn through before the fire crew controls the fire. It is not safer on the plane. There is nothing safe about a burning plane. The moment it stops you hit the parking brake, switch the engines off, yell "evacuate, evacuate, evacuate" to the cabin, secure the aircraft and leave.

But the aircraft didn't land with a fire, the fire started during the rollout on the runway, so no preparations would have been made by the crew for emergency evacuation. Also, the engine on the non-fire side would have needed time to spool down before you could safely evacuate on that side.

Also, if the crew had yelled "evacuate, evacuate, evacuate" to the cabin, then some idiot would probably have opened the door on the side where the fire was.

Sliced your submarine cable? Fill in this paperwork

Alister
Boffin

Re: Pedantic

... being "cut" with a wrench.

It's a pair of side-cutters...

PM resigns as Britain votes to leave EU

Alister

Re: We all know what happened

Bigotry exists on both sides if you ask me. Yes there are bigots and racists in the leave camp. But to tar just over half the population that way...seriously?

At no point did I suggest that all Leave voters were either racists or bigots.

However you cannot deny that a significant portion of the country voted to Leave based purely on the Immigration issue, and the completely false premise that "we can control our own borders now" as I heard quoted on the radio this morning.

Alister

Re: We all know what happened

Exactly. If ever proof were needed, this shows just how much xenophobic bigotry is still present in Britain.

I want to learn about gamification but all I see is same-ification

Alister
Thumb Up

Ivor Biggun was a legend, sadly unappreciated by the masses. Some of his lyrics stay with me to this day.

In brave new 5G world, data centres are pizza boxes... or football fields

Alister

So, how do you build multiple redundant carrier routing, N+1 UPS and backup generators into a pizza-box?

Mobile phone app replaces Congressional TV as Democrats stage sit-in

Alister
Headmaster

And on occasion the feed has freezed, prompting C-SPAN to cut back to its studio

The word is froze, or even frozen for heaven's sake, there's no such word as freezed.

Cash-strapped English and Welsh cops prepare to centralise all 43 forces' websites

Alister

Re: Local bobby?

All ours spend their lives sitting on their fat arses in an expensive car, looking out for minor traffic offences

No, those are Traffic officers.

The local bobby is the one sitting in the police station filling out forms in triplicate for a domestic violence offence, whilst wishing he could be doing something else, like be a traffic officer.

Alister
Facepalm

The company will build off the back of something already in existence, such as WordPress, or even use the Government Digital Service's GOV.UK site

Oh Dear Gods, not WordPress...

Meet the 1,000 core chip that can be powered by an AA battery

Alister

Re: Why?

There must be a reason for building it - some application that needs this architecture - otherwise ... title?

@MT Field

This outlook on life really annoys me. If everyone had this attitude, there would never be any innovation, no new discoveries, no experimentation.

I hope you will choose not to take advantage of this or any other technical innovation, in fact, I think you should stop using your mobile phone, laptop, PC or whatever it is you use to post on here, and go back to rubbing two sticks together for warmth.

You lucky creatures! Mammals only JUUUST survived asteroid that killed dinosaurs

Alister
Coat

Researchers from the Milner Centre for Evolution of the University of Bath

I hadn't realised the University of Bath was so old...

DARPA demands brand-new command … IN SPAAACE!

Alister

Well from the artist's impression, it appears all they need are some big LED monitors and a few tablets dotted about.

There you go, sorted, I'll send you the bill shortly.

How's your driving, Elon? Musk tweets that Tesla Model S 'floats'

Alister

Re: I would like to know

It does look like the driver was a pillock though - he was moving quickly enough to create a bow wave that could cause water to enter and damage the engines of the other people's cars. Some 4x4 drivers have been know to do the same on flooded roads.

Far from being a pillock, it sounds like he knew what he was doing.

To drive through deep water you are taught that you should create a bow wave, as it causes a lower area of water immediately behind the wave, and thus less chance of water damage in the engine compartment, in particular it keeps the water away from the cooling fan, so less likely to spray it everywhere.

In the case of the Tesla, there probably isn't a fan on the front, but the principle is sound.

Non-US encryption is 'theoretical,' claims CIA chief in backdoor debate

Alister

Re: From 55 Countries?

Let's be fair for a moment. Encryption standards as they stand today originate in the US.

AES - Belgium

RSA - one of the inventors is Israeli

??

Hey cloud lawyer: Can I take my client list with me?

Alister
Paris Hilton

Re: Suspenders?

I thought suspenders were for my stockings?

I'm too pure and innocent to know about such things...

Alister

Suspenders?

Those aren't suspenders, they are braces.

Suspenders are for socks.

This is still supposed to be a British website, isn't it?

Telco bosses' salaries must take heat for cyber attacks, says MPs' TalkTalk enquiry

Alister

Well well, you learn something every day.

I'd never heard the term garnished in it's secondary usage, I though it meant to decorate or embellish, so the first sentence confused me.

However, I now know that garnish can mean

"serve notice on (a third party) for the purpose of legally seizing money belonging to a debtor or defendant."

Lester Haines: RIP

Alister

What terrible news, my condolences to his family.

RIP Lester.

Cats understand the laws of physics, researchers claim

Alister

Sometimes, you really wish that researchers could be punished by having to pay back all their grant money.

This is such a "No shit, Sherlock" result. I suggest that most mammals have sufficient reasoning power to work out that one thing leads to another, and that a box which makes a noise might be of interest. Any animal will be curious about a silly human waving something around - after all, instinct tells them it may contain food!

You could repeat the same experiment with new-born babies, and would probably see similar results, but I doubt anyone would try to extrapolate from that that the infants have a deep understanding of physics.