* Posts by Alister

4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

Capita unfurls new consulting arm. Hmm, what shall we call it?

Alister

Indigo Egret

I thought it would be a great name for a band, but apparently it's a colour combination for Converse trainers...

Who's that padding down the chimney? It's Puma, with its weird £80 socks for gamers

Alister

Re: It's made of gamers!

Who thought Soylent was an attractive name for a health food?

I think it was done in full knowledge of the origins and history of the name, either as an in joke or to be provocative.

Alister

Presumably, medial motion refers to pointing your toes inwards and lateral to pointing your toes outwards, but that doesn't really explain it.

If used in their strict anatomical sense, then Medial means towards the centreline of the body, and Lateral away from the centreline, so for example, the medial side of the knee is the side closest to the other knee whereas the lateral side of the knee is the outside of the knee. So your presumption is probably correct.

What Puma actually mean is anybody's guess.

British bloke accused of extorting victims for 'Dark Overlord' hacker crew finally gets his free trip* to America

Alister

Because this is primarily a website for those who work in IT, and individuals like him bring down the whole profession.

Alister

He pleaded not guilty, and will be detained until his next court date, which has not yet been decided.

Next court date has been penciled in for January 2030.

No merry Christmas for SwiftStack staff: Enterprise cloud storage biz axes workers amid strategy shift

Alister

unfortunately, some valued members of the company were affected

We valued them precisely, and found they weren't worth keeping.

Log us out: Private equity snaffles Lastpass owner LogMeIn

Alister
Facepalm

Re: Google

Is that bad?

See icon...

:)

Alister

Not just a password manager, but we use PasswordState from Click Studios

It integrates with Active Directory, and as well as password management it allows you to start SSH or RDP sessions from within the browser so that staff can connect to a resource without ever knowing the credentials. It also rigorously audits and logs every change made, and every access to information made by any user.

No connection, just a happy customer.

Amazon slams media for not saying nice things about AWS, denies it strip-mines open-source code for huge profits

Alister

Elastic

Rather, the search biz objects to AWS' use of its trademark in its Amazon Elasticsearch Service.

Elastic do know that various Amazon AWS products use the "Elastic" name, do they?

Perhaps they should complain about the stretchy fabric that holds up knickers as well?

InLink Limited limited: Firm that puts up UK's ad-supported phone booths enters administration

Alister

Re: Free calls ?

The availability of free calls from these booths is precisely the origin of the drug-dealer problem.

Deadly 737 Max jets no longer a Boeing concern – for now: Production suspended after biz runs out of parking space

Alister

Re: MCAS seems like a bodge

Surely, Boeing should have fixed the actual design problem with the jet?

But to do that they would have had to give up the grandfathering rights of the airframe, and go through a completely new regulatory and certification process, which would have cost them both money, and time - which they didn't have if they wanted to compete with the Airbus A321neo.

Happy Artemis Day everybody! NASA preps its monster rocket for testing

Alister

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, NASA's mighty booster is going to let off steam.

OK. We're off. Water ice found just below the surface of Mars. Good enough for us. Let's go. Impulse power, Mr Sulu

Alister

Re: Another study, another watery flip-flop

they invaded Earth in 1938

Or 1897, first, possibly.

Alister

Re: Yay! A reason to go there...

You forgot the rubber duck

Alister

Re: Brought to you by Elon

he builds something that can take off from mars

All you would need is a big catapult.

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Alister

Re: It was never my F**king DNS

we did have a problem where a Rouge Domain controller

There's your problem right there, we only use Blue Domain Controllers...

GlaxoSmithKline ditches IR35 contractors: Go PAYE or go home

Alister

The likelihood is, many freelancers and contractors will have voted Conservative based on the party's IR35 promise.

I doubt that many of the Conservative votes were swayed by the IR35 consideration, given the other more pressing issues.

Ever wonder how hackers could possibly pwn power plants? Here are 54 Siemens bugs that could explain things

Alister

Re: 54 security bugs?

Is it poor-quality staff who don't think beyond "get it working"? Yes

Is it poor education about dangers like buffer overflow? Yes

Is it because someone is told "Get feature PQR done this week, because feature XYZ should have been ready last month and you need to get on with that". Yes

Did I pass?

ESA trumpets 'world's first space debris removal' with 4-armed junk botherer

Alister

Ah, that'll be the cling-ons

Alister

Re: Less bang for your more bucks?

The Sirius Cybernetics Corp?

Alister

Re: Less bang for your more bucks?

@vogon00

I am relatively uneducated re space and orbital operations*

I bet you're really good at the shouting and throwing people out of airlocks though...

Microsoft enables phone calls from your Windows PC (as long as it's paired with an Android)

Alister

Re: Erm

New Zealand Dial type, yep, reversed numbering compared to the standard one.

Alister

Tele 746

Mmmmm....

Space Force is go, go, go! Because we have a child as President of the United States

Alister

Re: The new Space Force will get its own Chief of Space Operations

A fine, leader-cushioned armchair and desk

Nice Freudian slip there... did you mean lead-cushioned or leather-cushioned?

But leader-cushioned it certainly will be...

Alister

And yet there are commentards who complain about Musk, Bezos and Branson spending their own money on trying to go to space, when they should be giving it to the poor and underprivileged...

$738bn you poor fools, from YOUR money!

Boffins find proof that yes, Carl Sagan and Joni Mitchell were right, we really are all made up of star stuff

Alister

Re: Not right about everything

"find our way back to the window box" didn't scan

Alleged Nigerian social engineer wins free flight to the US for business email fraud and love scams

Alister

Re: Next on the demonization list...

I was just going to post the same thing.

We spoof email addresses every day, for sending email on behalf of various companies, and we also use VPNs every day to connect to our servers. I wouldn't call either of them a "sophisticated anonymization technique".

We've heard of spam filters but this is ridiculous: Pig-monkey chimeras developed in a Chinese laboratory

Alister

making pigs grow pre-cured bacon

Hmm... tricky... this may take a while...

:)

Alister

Red, obvs

Apple sues iPhone CPU design ace after he quits to run data-center chip upstart Nuvia

Alister

electronic recordation

Jesus fucking Christ!

Remember the Dutch kid who stuck his finger in a dam to save the village? Here's the IT equivalent

Alister

Re: Paper White...

That's a pretty bright green :O

Alister

Re: Oddly enough ...

Umm, "Don't mention the war!"?

Hey kids! Forget about Disney – who fancies a trip to DevOps World?

Alister

The Rimmer Experience...

He's Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer.

Without him life would be much grimmer.

He's handsome, trim, and no-one slimmer.

He will never need a zimmer.

Huawei with your rural subsidies ban: Chinese comms bogeyman fires sueball at US regulator

Alister

Re: Get your head on!

You need your tin-foil hat checking, it appears to be leaking.

Pablo Escobar's brother is Medellín in the foldable phone biz, sniffing out new markets

Alister

late Colombian pharmaceutical executive, Pablo Escobar

What a wonderful euphemism.

Astronauts brave razor sharp edges and fiddly pipes to bring joy to boffins

Alister

Re: Well deserved beer

I think I've explained myself badly

No, I think you were perfectly clear, and I'm sure I have seen something similar used for self-sealing petrol tanks, or similar application. Instead of your polystyrene balls (ahem) you could use something which hardens when in contact with a vacuum but is otherwise viscous or liquid.

EFF warns of 'one-way mirror' of web surveillance by tech giants – led by Google

Alister

said Bennett Cyphers, EFF staff technologist and report author,

No way that is his real name. Really? Come on...

Register Lecture: Can portable atomic clocks end UK dependence on GNSS?

Alister
Facepalm

Re: The European Commission and Galileo

Why would GB agree to be blocked from Galileo post Brexit, unless this is yet another example of Brussels making up the rules as they go along.

As I recall, it was the UK who insisted that that particular bit of regulation was included.

That's Microsoft price: Now you can enjoy a BSOD from the comfort of your driving seat

Alister

Re: Why on earth...

Because the majority of the specialised hardware used in such kiosks often comes with windows drivers.

A couple of years ago we were involved in developing some ticketing kiosks and found that the receipt printers, numeric keypads and even robust touchscreens came with dedicated PCI card interfaces with windows drivers only.

Alister

Enhance, Rotate, Expand, square D3 Enhance

Technical information:

STOP: 0x00000074 (0x00000002,0x9A50CBA8,0x00000004,0xC0000102)

Alister

Nope, if you zoom the photo it is definitely an underscore.

Humour detection error, please ignore.

Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?

Alister

Fair enough. Last time I renewed mine (2 years ago?) there was no such restriction.

Alister

Re: Habitual glasses wearer

the challenge of identifying my body until someone found a pair of glasses to shove on my dead face.

Yes, I can see you've given this some thought...

:)

Alister

The wearing of glasses (or indeed hats, false moustaches or Ziggy Stardust makeup) in passport photos is forbidden

Umm no, not if you are a habitual glasses wearer.

That is to say: hats, false moustaches or Ziggy Stardust makeup are forbidden for everyone, but those who normally wear spectacles should wear them in their passport photograph - even if they were the NHS frames you had twenty years ago...

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

Alister

Re: Impartial????

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Oh wait, you were serious?

Brian Eno's latest composition: A giant Christmas card with Julian Assange on it

Alister

Lullaby maestro Eno has long been an outspoken supporter of the leaker-in-chief

I guess he didn't contribute to Julian's bail payment then?

Christmas in tatters for Nottinghamshire tots after mayor tells them Santa's too busy

Alister

May be old fashioned

Yup.

All actors are Actors, and all mayors are Mayors, and all chairpeople are Chairperson.

Nutanix: There have always been losses. You know what's really fattening? Our subs

Alister

Funny that you should use foody photos and metaphors in the headline - I've always thought Nutanix sounded like a health-food supplement.

Dead or alive, you're camming with me, says RoboPup: Bomb squad hires Boston Dynamics Spot to snoop on suspects, packages

Alister

Where's Montag when you need him?

There's books to be burned...