* Posts by Alister

4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

Eric Schmidt, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords

Alister

Kubrick did a good job!

It still gives me a shiver when I see HAL's beady eye staring at me.

(see photo).

EE, O2, Giffgaff, BT Mobile customers cut off as mobile networks fail

Alister

Re: Let me shed some light....

we pump out about several thousand calls an hour

You wouldn't be working for a cold-calling company, would you?

The Police Chief's photo library mixed business, pleasure and flesh

Alister

Merry Christmas

To you Simon, and all at the Reg.

Microsoft releases major PowerShell update after long preview

Alister

@AC

For Fucks sake, what is the point of posting your stupid Linux crap as a reply to my post?

The point I was making is that although Microsoft are trying to push users to Install Server Core, in fact to carry out useful workloads, you have to install the GUI anyway.

In what way does your post help or enlarge on that point?

Oh, and just FYI I administer both Linux and Windows servers, depending on the requirements of the business, and the needs of our clients, and they are definitely not interchangeable for all cases.

Alister

PowerShell is critical to Microsoft's plans for Windows Server. The company is trying to persuade admins to install Windows Server without a GUI shell at all, where possible, making PowerShell essential

Yeah, except for some of the commonly used roles, (File Server, IIS Server, SQL Server etc) there are things that you still have to use the GUI for, which are not accessible in PowerShell, which makes a nonsense of the whole thing.

Software engineer sobers up to deal with 2:00 AM trouble at mill

Alister
Boffin

Re: What a hero

Trouble at Mill was it???

Aye lad, one on't cross beams gone owt askew on't treddle.

El Reg picked a pack of ace pic-titlers

Alister

"I can't hold this headline up for much longer!"

There's an epidemic of idiots who can't find power switches

Alister

Re: On the plus side...

Surely the last thing needed is a bunch of IT - savvy users.

Oh Gods! There is nothing worse than a user who thinks they are IT - savvy,

They will wilfully ignore advice or instructions, as they think they know better, and swear blind they never touched anything, when it's obvious they have.

The ball's in your court, Bezos: Falcon 9 lands after launching satellites

Alister

Superb bit of video, sent real shivers up my spine.

Isn't it curious how we've seen spaceships land like this for decades in Sci-Fi films and TV shows, but to see it actually happen for real somehow is just so much more awesome.

Microsoft grabs ex-Google and Facebook brains for unstructured SQL engine

Alister

Vassilakis lead Google’s work on Dremel and founded Metanautix with Lerios to bring the technology to a broader, enderptise audience.

Surely this isn't just a typo, but a comment by the author on Enterprise level companies?

Security sweep firm links botnet infestation and file sharing

Alister
Holmes

I can't help feeling this article deserves the icon here ---->>>>

Free Wi-Fi for the NHS, promises health secretary Jeremy Hunt

Alister

Such a move would allow patients staying in hospital to self-monitor their conditions using apps and reduce admin time for doctors and nurses

A difficult decision: spend 1bn on wages to employ doctors and nurses to provide proper care, or spend it on allowing patients to try and care for themselves instead.

Hmmmm.

UK government names Cloud Foundry Her Majesty's preferred PaaS

Alister

Cloud Foundry (by appointment to HMG)

Can they put that on their website now?

CES tech show adds new security checks after fears of violence

Alister

Re: Are you clueless?

How many people must die before the general public comes to understand that the world is now engaged in a war against terrorism that is likely to last for eternity?

You do know that San Bernardino was a mass-shooting incident, like Houston, or Platt, or Roseburg, with no compelling evidence of terrorist links?

How many people have died as a result of mass shootings in the US in 2015?

There have been 353 reported incidents, in which 446 people have died.

http://www.shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015

Which is the more worrying thing, mass-shootings, or "terrorism"?

Alister

"Bags and backpacks with many pockets are not helpful,"

Maybe not, if you're an exhibition organiser...

However, if you're a typical exhibition attendee, then just throwing your laptop, fondleslab, phone, and 30 different USB dongles and chargers into a mesh shopping bag is probably sub-optimal...

Bigger than Higgs? Boffins see hints of bulbous new Boson

Alister

So if a particle has the same predicted mass, spin, charge and decay as the predicted Higgs, I'd call it a Higgs.

If it looks like a Higgs, swims spins like a Higgs, and quacks quarks like a Higgs, it's a Duck Higgs...

Alister

Re: As heard by ATLAS experimenters

Aww, you spoiled it in the last sentence, should have gone with:

And it shall be called …………. the "Slightly Larger Hadron Collider."

Philips backs down over firmware that adds DRM to light

Alister

Re: @Grade% - Aww, who'd a thunk it.

Lister: We don't LIKE muffins around here! We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and DEFINITELY no smegging flapjacks!

Toaster: Aah, so you're a waffle man!

FCC gives small ISPs a pass on open internet rules

Alister

Does anyone proof read these articles?

Yes, you.

Physics uses warp theory to look beyond relativity

Alister
Coat

This article was originally published in the January 2016 edition...

WOW! Time Travel!

Bungled storage upgrade led to Google cloud brownout

Alister

I wonder, is there anywhere which shows just how many outages Google's services have suffered this year?

Oh, the irony, a quick bit of googling produces these figures:

Feb 18 Google Compute engine down about 1 hour

Mar 9 Google Compute engine down about 45 min

May 3 Google Play, Hangouts, Mail down about 3 hours

Jun 19 Google App Engine down about 4 hours

Aug 14 Google Compute Storage 11 hours of brownouts

Aug 27 Google Cloud Storage down for 9 hours

Oct 9 Google Apps, Docs down for 5 hours

Dec 8 Google Container Engine loss of services for 21 hours

Dec 17 Google App Engine authenication failures for 17 hours

I make that 71 hours and 45 minutes of outages this year.

How many nines is that?

Cyber security buck stops with me, says Dido Harding

Alister

She said the company had wanted to inform customers of the breach sooner, but had been advised by police not to do so. "One of the most difficult periods was the first 36 hours of the attack," she said. The company had received a ransom demand and had informed the police. "The next day it was very clear there was a real risk material number of customers data stolen."

She said: "I was clear by lunchtime [the next day] that the sensible thing to do to warn customers, that would make them safer. For understandable reasons, advice received from the police was not to warn our customers."

If you can manage to unscramble the nonsense above and turn it into reasonable English, it still remains complete bollocks.

The ransom demand received was pertaining to the DDOS attacks, and there is no possible way that a DDOS can, on its own, cause a loss of customer data, although obviously it can be used to screen other attacks.

That makes a nonsense of the statement "The next day it was very clear there was a real risk [ of a ] material number of customers data [ being ] stolen"

Why would that be very clear? And why would the police have anything to do with that breach, when what they were investigating was a ransom note pertaining to further a DDOS?

The DDOS had nothing to do with the loss of data, and to conflate the two as Dido has, just shows the total lack of grasp she has on the whole affair. It's no wonder they are unable to tell what data is missing yet, when they clearly have no idea what occured.

This whole statement is as confused now as her original outpourings were when the incident happened.

Mozilla looses Firefox 43, including Windows 64-bit variant

Alister

Re: lose...looses

@AC

Um yeeesss? My point, exactly.

Increasingly, I see commentards spelling lose - as in mislay or cease to have, as loose.

Hence my comment.

Alister
Headmaster

Given that nobody seems able to spell the word correctly anymore, I wonder how many read that headline as "Mozilla Loses Firefox 43".

Grim-faced cosmonaut in ISS manual docking nail-biter

Alister

Yuri Malenchenko's serious demeanour expained

So you're really wanting us to believe that he knew the Kurs Rendezvous System was going to break, 5 hours before it did??

If so, he should quit being a Cosmonaut, he can make much more money as a fortune teller.

Lettuce-nibbling veggies menace Mother Earth

Alister

Re: This particular study is getting splashed all over.

instead the guidelines talk abstractly about eating less SOFAS

Well personally I can only manage a two-seater normally, although I might sneak a recliner armchair for supper if I'm really hungry.

Brit 'naut Tim Peake thunders aloft

Alister

Interesting. One tends to think of Astronauts / Cosmonauts as young people, and it's only since watching the BBC coverage that I realised the median age of the latest three is 52.

How to build a real lightsabre

Alister

@TeeCee

What! Waddaya mean Santa Claus isn't real? Who reads my letters every year then, hey?

:)

Alister

No, you've got it all wrong, what you do is, you get a real-looking hilt and film yourself waving it around, and then you employ Industrial Light & Magic to draw the blade on every frame of the film...

That's how you get a real lightsabre!

Help! What does 'personal conduct unrelated to operations or financials' mean?

Alister

Re: Gross Moral Turpitude?

but rogering a donkey... in the chapel...during the sermon..?

That's a different offence... Muffin' the Mule...

For a long time I thought Turpitude was what you used to clean paint brushes...

Alister
Trollface

nothing likely to incite hatred, ridicule or contempt

That's a bit limiting. I agree with nothing likely to incite hatred, but surely a bit of ridicule or contempt is fair game?

New gear needed to capture net connection records, say ISPs

Alister
Thumb Up

Re: Privacy nightmare in the Internet slow lane

They do not see every packet and therefore can't track individual connections, what seems to be required by the proposed legislation is deep-packet inspection (as they want seem to want to examine the protocol and payload for URI logging) on every packet. I suspect politicians have seen some graphs of traffic classified by type, put 2 and 2 together and made 5.

Exactly this!

The politicians have been trying to sell this on the basis that "well the ISPs already collect this traffic, we just want to legislate the retention of the data", but in fact NO ISP does routine DPI on every single connection, currently.

This will require a load of infrastructure changes and a massive amount of new equipment to implement, and if they really want to extend this to any company which provides connectivity then a lot of the small ISPs will be out of business.

GCHQ creates Github repo, offers graph database code

Alister
Coat

Why is GCHQ releasing Gaffer now?

IT'S A TRAP!!

Brit 'naut Tim Peake preps for Space Station launch

Alister

I'm waiting for Donald Trump to decry a British Army bloke for joining ISS...

ISS 'naut trio return to snowy terra firma

Alister
Coat

Crumbs!

Given what happens when you bite 'em, I would think the last thing you want in zero-G is a box of crackers.

Tablet computer zoom error saw plane fly 13 hours with 46cm hole

Alister

Ground Control to Major Tom...

Surely he must have been given clearance to taxi, and then clearance to take-off, from ground-control in the Tower, so why didn't they query where he was trying to take off from?

WordPress hosting biz confesses to breach, urgently contacts 30,000 users

Alister
Facepalm

At WP Engine we are committed to providing robust security.

Umm, demonstrably not, I fear...

We are writing today to let you know that we learned of an exposure involving some of our customers’ credentials

See?

Puppet jerks into life, hugs Microsoft and orchestrates apps

Alister
Thumb Up

Which makes it even greaterer, presumably.

Yay! Much more betterer!

Microsoft encrypts explanation of borked Windows 10 encryption

Alister
Happy

Re: Silly Peeps

After all these days someone else might have encrypted your sock pictures, sock novels, sock videos, sock music and sock design software along with your .sck design files so it's not as if they really know whether or not you yourself chose to encrypt your sock data so it's best to play safe and have a good rummage about the place just to make sure.

Ha, you're nothing but a sock-puppet...

BTW, if anyone's thinking of buying me Xmas presents, I could do with some socks...

Boffins could tune telescopes to listen to lasers on Mars

Alister
Coat

Disaster Area

So, along with the Laser banks, the main speaker stacks can go on Tharsis Plateau, and the blockhouse for the instruments in Valles Marineris. Should be a good show!

After the first chord has been played, the planet should be just about terraformed...

IT pros are a bunch of wedding and funeral-dodging sickos

Alister

Re: Not allowed to have a life - ever

@Uncle Slacky

I don't know where you work, but I'd stick to it like glue. For me, Joe Drunk has got it spot on, and I work in an allegedly civilised country.

Alister
Unhappy

Curious answers

“People call me Jesus because I have long hair and save them from IT issues.”

Nope, balding and beardy

“We are treated like wizards”

More like witches - ritually drowned, burned or beheaded on a regular basis

“Everybody loves me”

Everybody hates me :(

“I am seen like a god and treated incredibly well”

What planet are you on?

“I am a hero or villain, sometimes both at the same time.”

Hmm, I think hero is a bit strong

“I’m either ‘Mr fix It’ or ‘he’s the one that broke it’”

Yes, this.

“My boss always blames me when something breaks.”

Emphatically this!

Also, no-one realises how much you do, until you're not there. The last three holidays I've been rung up or emailed for some stupid question, the answer to which was already well documented.

Team America, world police, take down 37,479 counterfeit sites

Alister
Unhappy

Whenever I see the words "Team America" I immediately think to myself "fuck yeah".

I wish I didn't.

Mr Grey, the Russian hacker who helped haul in 1.2 billion logins

Alister
Coat

Re: Why am I Mr Grey?

Are they sure it's one man? A group of 50 maybe??

Sounds a bit shady to me...

So why exactly are IT investors so utterly clueless?

Alister

a freeriding Australian colleague claimed that he only had to utter the word “bottoms” to make an Englishman snigger. We suspect he may be onto something...

Is this not, in fact, one of the main reasons why the Minions are such popular characters in Britain?

"Bottom"...

<snigger>

"BANANAS!"

Suck it, Elon – Jeff Bezos' New Shepard space rocket blasts off, lands in one piece

Alister
Thumb Up

@DropBear Re: The space joyride market seems crowded..

Rocketry, on the other hand, is not a field where substantial advances are possible anymore...

There's no huge untapped potential left to explore here, only novel commercial applications and price points...

But isn't that the point? The technology is now mature (it may not be the best way, but it's the only realistic one for a while), so the next step is commercialisation, which will hopefully lead to dropping prices and greater uptake.

We need a commercially viable space transport industry, so that we can then sensibly consider permanent settlements on other moons and planets.

Alister
Thumb Up

Re: @Alister "The successful VTOL, especially the "L" bit, is a major step forwards."

@Arctic Fox

those of us of certain age

Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately, in this context) I remember it well, and was old enough to watch, and appreciate the Apollo11 landing, on a flickery black and white tv as well.

Indian scientists teach computers to see by watching Cricket

Alister
Mushroom

Re: AIs that understand cricket could have an impact on global politics

Because historically, no two cricketing nations had ever gone to war on each other.

Umm... India vs Pakistan??

Alister
Coat

Re: Yes, but...

... and friendly chimney sweeps??

Fifth arrest in TalkTalk hacking probe: Now Plod cuff chap in Wales

Alister
Coat

Re: Bless

Ydw. A oes gennych caws ar dost yn Llundain?

Yes, and they don't call it Welsh Rarebit, either... :)