* Posts by Alister

4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

Microsoft's little eyes light up as Oscar-winning Taika Waititi says Apple keyboards make him 'want to go back to PCs'

Alister

Re: The answer is...

Now... what's the question?

Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees

Alister

Re: Seattle

But would you really trust Boeing to make a cup of coffee that doesn't kill you?

Alister

Whoosh?

'Tens of millions' of Cisco devices vulnerable to CDPwn flaws: Network segmentation blown apart by security bugs

Alister

I'm alright Jack!

Thankfully all our IP phones are SPA500 Series, which aren't vulnerable to this.

EU tells UK: Cut the BS, sign here, and you can have access to Galileo sat's secure service

Alister

Re: foot, shot.

The Eu should keep its satellites but thy wont be allowed to orbit over British waters, they will be forced to stop and turn back at the 200mi limit.

Ironically, Brussels is less than 200 miles from the Dover coast...

Alister

Re: Musky BS

Maybe offer His Muskiness honorary citizenship

As a South African, he would have been a Commonwealth citizen if he'd been born a few years earlier...

Ask the Windrush folk how well that went...

Alister

foot, shot.

Not mentioned in the article, but it is my clear recollection that it was the UK representatives to the GNSS Steering Committee who insisted that the clause disbarring countries from outside the EU from using Galileo was included in the Treaty, and would be stringently enforced.

The show Musk go on: Elon asks Uncle Sam to let him fly his Starship over Texas, scores fat NASA contract

Alister

Fly me to the moon

Fly me to the Moon,

Let me play amongst the stars

Watch as Elon Musk attempts to

land a ship on Mars

In other words, hold my beer,

Starship, your time is near.

Twitter says a certain someone tried to discover the phone numbers used by potentially millions of twits

Alister

Re: vast majority of trollish twits are not that clever

Having an excess of cunning does not necessarily equate to "intelligence".

Indeed the twitterer-in-chief is demonstrably lacking in intelligence, but he makes up for that with cunning, bile and vindictiveness.

Finally, that cruel dust world Mars proves useful: Helping scientists understand Earth's radio-scrambling plasma

Alister

Re: "Phenomenon" is singular, "phenomena" is (are?) plural

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

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I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.

I will not expose the ignorance o ^\

Brits may still be struck by Lightning, but EU lawmakers vote for bloc-wide common charging rules

Alister

Re: What about Britain?

I wasn't aware that the IEC was an EU body

It's got an E in the name, that should be enough...

Gin and gone-ic: Rometty out as IBM CEO, cloud supremo Arvind Krishna takes over, Red Hat boss is president

Alister

@Do Not Fold Spindle Mutilate

But does IBM actually design and manufacture its own hardware or is IBM mainly a software / services company?

May I refer the honourable gentleman to the passage quoted earlier:

our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing and blockchain.

Does that answer your question?

Elon Musk shows world that he is truly awful at something

Alister

And not one mention of the words "pedo" or "guy" in the article.

Such a shame.

Will Asimov fix my doorbell? There should be a law about this

Alister
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Infographics

It's like being on the receiving end of somebody trying to explain the theory of relativity through the medium of expressive dance.

<splorf!>

UN didn't patch SharePoint, got mega-hacked, covered it up, kept most staff in the dark, finally forced to admit it

Alister

Re: Rigidly de rigueur

Repeatedly shouting loudly does not constitute evidence.

Clunk, whirr, buzz, whine. Shared office space can be a riot and sounds like one too

Alister

Re: LEDs

how to disable the little buggers

a pair of side-cutters or a soldering iron can offer a permanent solution, or black insulating tape as a temporary measure...

BOFH: When was the last time someone said these exact words to you: You are the sunshine of my life?

Alister

Re: Hmmm

honk something fowl

So, geese then?

Or did you mean foul?

WindiLeaks: 250 million Microsoft customer support records dating back to 2005 exposed to open internet

Alister

Re: Data Leeks

Incidentally, unless you're talking about Welsh vegetables, it's LEAKS, not LEEKS

Alister

Re: Data Leeks

Are sysadmins becoming complacent or just fcuking lazy?

No, they're just being bypassed by dev/ops who think they can do it themselves.

SLS goes vertical at Stennis while NASA practises SRB stacking

Alister

Nice erection!

...apparently

Two billion years ago, snowball Earth was defrosted in huge asteroid crash – and it's been downhill ever since

Alister

Re: Idea

And using something else to actually start the martian core generating a magnetic field

well... You could nuke it from orbit?

Ancient Ore Crusher or KillBot 2000? NASA gets ready to pick a name for its Mars 2020 Rover

Alister

After curiosity, and opportunity, we should consider apathy, indifference and indolence.

South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal and unjust' sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos

Alister

It was stupid of Bezos to pick "Amazon" as a company name, it was bound to end in tears. He should have gone with something memorable and easy to remember like "Orinoco" or "Danube" or "Mississippi".

Autonomous Logistics Information System gets shoved off the F-35 gravy train in favour of ODIN

Alister
Thumb Up

Re: Bad omens.

Thumbs up for VALKYRIE

Alister

how they manage to bloat it to such a degree it entirely fails is beyond me.

Pork.

Lots and lots of pork.

Alister

I don't why she's leaving, or where she's gonna go,

I guess she's got her reasons but I just don't wanna know,

'Cause for twenty four years I've been living next door to Alis

(Alis, who the fuck is Alis?)

Boeing aircraft sales slump to historic lows after 737 Max annus horribilis

Alister

Re: Corporate culture

Not only that, but the incident killed 100+ people. Lives were wasted FFS ! How can Boeing staff be so casual about the matter ?

I think you are misunderstanding: the email comments were made before the Lion Air crash happened, not after.

Behold the Internet of Turf: IoT sucks waste energy from living plants to speak to satellites

Alister

So It's Turf an' Surf then?

is it?

Tabletop battle-toys purveyor Games Workshop again warns of risks in Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP project

Alister

ERP?

Whilst reading your article I was hoping for an Error Reduction Parameter of Event Related Potential to explain to me the significance of the acronym ERP. I was confused as to why the Estimated Retail Price should be of such concern, and even considered sending an email with the Envelope Return Path set to explainerp@me.com, but after an Extensive Reading Program I rationalised that you were talking about Enterprise Resource Planning.

AI of the needle: Here's how neural networks could detect nighttime low blood-sugar levels using your heart beat

Alister

Yes, I'm not sure where El Reg gets that from, as if you read the abstract the identification of a hypoglycemic event seems to be based on ECG changes, not heart rate, in particular a prolonged QT interval, an increase in the R/T amplitude and a raised S/T segment.

Unfortunately all of those can also be a consequence of Ischemic Heart Disease, and a high proportion of Type 1 and 2 Diabetics will also suffer from IHD.

I don't see how you could reliably differentiate between the two without careful calibration for each individual patient.

Alister

I fail to see why an "AI" is required for this, plain old data crunching without tacking on neural networks or anything else should be all that is required to identify patterns of ECG activity. As the poster above, I think "with an AI" seems to be done for the sake of it, sometimes.

It's your walkie-talkie Teams mate, over. 'You don't have to say Over, over'. Copy that. Stop making the static noise, over and out

Alister

Re: "Over and out"

Historically, "over and out" was the correct method of ending a conversation, but most modern users discard the "over and" bit and just say "out".

BOFH: You brought nothing to the party but a six-pack of regret

Alister

Re: Posters with platitudes

The pessimist sees the glass as half-empty, the optimist sees it as half-full, and the engineer sees it as twice the size it needs to be.

We see https://what-if.xkcd.com/6/

Alister

Re: New year

Who is Penry, the mild-mannered janitor?

Could he be a secret super-hero?

Alister

Re: Learnings

makes me shudder to read it, let alone here it

Hmm...

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

Alister

Not round

Released in 2003, the Nokia 7600 boasted a head-turning round chassis

Not round, ellipsoidal.

Flying taxis? That'll be AFTER you've launched light sabres and anti-gravity skateboards

Alister

Re: "Lightsaber"

then can you tell us how words are spelled.

Normally I would agree, and did in fact upvote you, but as the word was made up by Mr Lucas, (or one of his scriptwriters) I don't think that applies in this case.

Hash snag: Security shamans shame SHA-1 standard, confirm crucial collisions citing circa $45k chip cost

Alister

Re: Statistics

I can confirm that there are plenty of sites on the Internet that have their TLS settings set such that they can't do better then SHA-1. That is you won't be able to connect without allowing it.

I don't see your problem. If fewer and fewer people are able to connect with current browsers, eventually they'll either have no visitors, or they'll realise there's a problem and fix it.

Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways

Alister

We are currently awaiting the loading of our complement of small lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort, refreshment and hygiene during the journey.

Alister

a peculiar software flaw that blanks the airliners' cockpit screens

This sounds such a silly thing, but shirley, the CDUs going blank is a symptom of a much more severe problem - that the computer controlling their output has crashed.

I can't see any way that entering certain lat and long co-ordinates could affect the power to the CDUs, but I'm prepared to believe a buffer overflow could perhaps corrupt the video memory, or alternatively just crash the nav comp.

Tragedy: CES squeeze forces frequent flier hotshots into economy hell

Alister

She's trying to work out how to get a rowing boat across the Nevada desert

El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail

Alister

Friday is upon us

I know I had a drink last night, but I'm not that drunk. It's still only Thursday, here.

Boeing, Boeing, gone! CEO Muilenburg quits 'effective immediately'

Alister

Re: What changed in the paradigms of engineering ?

What happened was that at some point the engineers became overruled by the beancounters. Do it fast, do it cheap, became the bottom line, instead of do it right.

Alister

“operate a renewed commitment to full transparency, including effective and proactive communication with the FAA, other global regulators and its customers

But not a word about changing the corporate culture which led to 346 deaths, you will notice. They really don't understand the problem.

BOFH: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the ransomware struck

Alister

The PFY is still charmingly naive...

It's a plot device to allow the BOFH to do a bit of exposition, otherwise there's no way for the readers to be in on the action.

Starliner: Boeing, Boeing... it's back! Borked capsule makes a successful return to Earth

Alister
FAIL

In the briefing, Chilton said he reckoned that the team were in the "low 60s" in terms of percentage of mission goals at first glance. However, he went on to say, once all the data had been retrieved following the capsule's return to Florida "we're probably in the 85 to 90 per cent range of our test objectives."

Yeah... No.

Your job was to deliver a payload to the ISS. You didn't. That's a FAIL!

As in 0%.

Tracking President Trump with cellphone location data, Greta-Thunberg-themed malware, SharePoint patch, and more

Alister

Re: New (York) Times

unless we loose our addiction to 'free' content.

We would be better losing our addiction to free content, as it has already been loosed.

Alister

Re: Mac's don't get malware?

Don't think I've heard that one before, it's usually 'Mac's don't get viruses'.

A virus is malware, you twit.

Malware is a catch all term for any malicious or harmful software. A virus is a specific form of malware.

HPE goes on the warpath, attacks AWS over vendor lock-in

Alister
Holmes

the cloud is not democratising IT, nor is it an open environment, just the latest form of vendor lock-in.

Well no shit, Sherlock. I don't think anyone who has used a public cloud offering can be unaware of this, can they?

Want to live long and prosper? Avoid pirated, malware-laden Star Wars free vid streams – and pay to watch instead

Alister

Yep.

Fucking lens flare dickhead