* Posts by Pen-y-gors

3782 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Oct 2010

BT bets farm on consumers: Announces one network to rule 'em all

Pen-y-gors

Re: BT Plus

Reliable broadband costs.

I use BT Residential. I'm paying £75.99/month for 300Mbps FTTP, including line rental. No usage cap.

On top I'm paying £9.50 for the unlimited anytime calls package

£5 a month on top covers my mobile - free allowances are fine for my needs.

Doesn't seem too bad to me. Might save a few quid at renewal and drop the 300Mbps down to 100. But it is rather nice to have! Recently had some large 1.1GB MYSQL dump files to shift around - download in 3mins, upload in about 20. Beats the old ISDN!

Zero arrests, 2 correct matches, no criminals: London cops' facial recog tech slammed

Pen-y-gors

1) stick to cheap old cars

2) move

Pen-y-gors

and also, a massive waste of police time confirming the thousands of false positives, time possibly better spent actually investigating and preventing crime in a more traditional manner? (Or hanging around outside a London embassy 24/7 of course - it's what police do best)

Wah, encryption makes policing hard, cries UK's National Crime Agency

Pen-y-gors

Wut?

"Encryption is making it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to detect dangerous offenders".

Yes. And so do many other things. Foremost being the refusal of serious offenders to go and turn themselves in straight after the offence. Most unreasonable.

And how does encryption reduce detection of people glassing someone outside the pub on a Friday night, or of domestic violence? Surely those are a large proportion of the 'serious' crimes? trrrrrrsts are pretty rare.

But at the same time Encryption is reducing crime, by making it harder to commit online fraud.

Swings and roundabouts.

German IKEA trip fracas assembles over trolley right of way

Pen-y-gors

Re: Smiles in the aisles

Don't understand the down votes.

Real sport should go back to the original olympics, when all competitors were naked (no women allowed to watch). Just Man against Man, testing natural ability.

Although I'm not too sure about naked Sumo. Mind-bleach time.

Sort your spending habits out, UK Ministry of Defence told over £20bn black hole

Pen-y-gors

Re: RE: Come IndyScotland and, hopefully, IndyWales

Attracted by the sheep or just really bad at map reading ?

Actually suckered in to emigrating by a highly fanciful advertising campaign, extolling the beauties and fertility of Patagonia. After they disembarked from the 'Mimosa' on a bleak desert shore it was a miracle that any of them survived. But they did, and the language is strong in Chubut and Trelew. As is the 'té galés y sus exquisitas tortas' (Welsh tea)

Pen-y-gors

Re: RE: Come IndyScotland and, hopefully, IndyWales

@Ledswinger

After all, didn't Wales vote to remain vassals of the ever-broadening powers and increasing direct law making of Brussels?

Not exactly. They voted to leave the EU, but you have to allow for the fog of confusion generated by the referendum campaigns. You also need to allow for the sizeable contingent of retired English immigrants, many of whom are convinced they still live in the far-west Midlands, and have a tendency to support UKIP. I think we can be sure that with an independent England, and its permanent Tory government, they would be pleased to move back home.

Recent survey suggested that only 14% of Welsh-speakers voted Leave. That may or may not be accurate.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Another wee problem

@Ledswinger Ta. (Now 9 down votes and rising)

The basis is fact, or at least strong possibility - an independent England would almost certainly still be trying to re-live its dreams of imperial glory, and keeping up the same silly defence willy-waving as now, but it's a fact they would have a noticeably reduced tax base - due to losing the Scottish, Welsh and NI tax income, and the negative economic impact of Brexit.

Pen-y-gors

Re: RE: Come IndyScotland and, hopefully, IndyWales

@YAAC

I was thinking more of a happy globally-trading prosperous small country like Iceland, Lithuania, Ireland etc. rather than globally-bestriding. That's silly. Who wants to run an empire? And 11th Century Wales was at least on a par with 11th century Mercia and Wessex - and had a rather better legal system

England really when to shit when those violent, feudal Norman bastards moved in.

Pen-y-gors

Re: RE: Come IndyScotland and, hopefully, IndyWales

Why IndyWales?

Because every day makes it clearer that Wales would be a better, happier and wealthier country when it can run its own affairs. How effective has 800 years of English rule been for the fortunes of Wales? West Wales is the poorest area in Northern Europe! (Inner London is the richest)

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4575424

- shows how lucky we are to be in the 'Union'. I'm sure some other people were talking about 'taking back control'. What was that about?

As some wise person pointed out, how many countries have wished they had never become independent?

Pen-y-gors

Re: Another wee problem

@lost all faith

If it's jobs you want, you can build and staff a lot of schools and hospitals for the price of the jobs created in looking after nuclear subs and building white elephants.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Simple solution

@ZSn

Don't forget the Jutes! And the Danes, and the Vikings, (bloody vikings!) and the Normans, and the Huguenots (Farage!)...

Pen-y-gors

Another wee problem

At the moment HMG manage to effectively attribute a proportion of defence spending to the budgets for Wales and Scotland.

Come IndyScotland and, hopefully, IndyWales, there is unlikely to be any strong demand for a fleet of carriers, nukes and strike aircraft bearing the Saltire or Ddraig Goch. Both will be looking to go more down the Irish route, which has a per-capita defence spending of approx 20% of the UK's.

Some will say that leaves the Celtic countries unable to defend themselves against attack. True. But 1) who is going to attack them? and 2) if it was the UK/USA/Russians how much would we have to spend developing and deploying nuclear weapons to defeat them? Spending which would be at the expense of schools, hospitals, infrastructure, pensions etc - all the things that make it worth having a society for anyway.

So good luck to the English and their over-inflated and largely pointless 'defence' budget. But count me out.

There will be blood: BT to axe 13,000 employees

Pen-y-gors

Re: if you think they are bad now...

Don't see why not. Usually meaning is 'subject to debate', a moot being an assembly. A term generally out of fashion, but still occasionally heard. I remember attending a "Ley-hunters Annual Moot" in Lewes many years ago. (Don't ask....but the highlight was a talk by Michael Bentine!)

Chap charged with fraud after mail for UPS global HQ floods Chicago flat

Pen-y-gors

I'm amazed

No-one at UPS thought it strange that they hadn't had any mail for weeks / months? Or did the redirect only include generic 'UPS' addressee, and not mail for specific named individuals? I believe when you redirect mail in the UK you (sensibly) have to list each name that is to be redirected.

Still odd that the local postie in USPS thought to query this

Consent, datasets and avoiding a visit from the information commissioner

Pen-y-gors

Commercial relationship?

I presume (wrongly?) that keeping details of a sale/customer remains legal, provided the data is kept safe. Does entering into a contract to develop a website for someone mean they have given you explicit agreement to remember who they are? And to send them invoices in the future for renewal?

One good thing about GDPR - I keep getting emails now from companies asking me to confirm that they can send me mail in the future. It's so satisfying to just bin the email without confirming!

Google's socially awkward geeks craft socially awkward AI bot that calls people for you

Pen-y-gors

Counter-strategy

When the phone rings, start by asking "Hello, What is the capital of Turkmenistan?"

If the caller answers correctly, put the phone down.

Pen-y-gors

Re: The only rational response...

Oooh, yes. I'd forgotten about Google News. Used to be quite handy. Killed it off ages ago.

Every major OS maker misread Intel's docs. Now their kernels can be hijacked or crashed

Pen-y-gors

I'm impressed

by any mekon-brain who can understand all this sort of hyper-low-level stuff. Could we please go back to IBM/370 Assembler? That was vaguely understandable (and the quick reference guided fitted onto one folding card)

Courting disaster: Watchdog slams UK justice digitisation plans

Pen-y-gors

Meh! What's new?

Watchdog slams UK justice digitisation <insert name of just about any Govt IT project here> plans

But they never learn. Be honest, lab rats have more aptitude for learning their way round a maze than ministers and civil servants have for learning about why IT projects fail.

Microsoft reckons devs would like an AI Clippy to help them write code

Pen-y-gors

Radical new idea

This idea of some sort of 'sharing' where a 'buddy' in your 'team' can 'view' what you're doing on your screen, without having to stand next to you sounds like a really neat idea. You would be able to remotely share your desktop with someone else if you asked them 'LogMeIn' please. Damn clever. I'm amazed no-one has thought of it before. It could be really useful for offering remote support, or to let dodgy Indian purveyors of malware help you install malware on your Windows machine.

Password re-use is dangerous, right? So what about stopping it with password-sharing?

Pen-y-gors

Re: Sites sharing passwords with each other?

I have never, ever been able to understand why any organism higher up the evolutionary tree than a prawn would ever have thought of having the same password for every website was even close to being anything less than an absolutely barking mad idea.

I've got another idea - why don't we give all doors the same lock and key? What could possibly...?

The Rocky Planet Picture Show: NASA Mars InSight ready for launch

Pen-y-gors

Return ticket?

InSight will arrive at Mars on 26 November and will stay for a full Martian year

and then comes home again? Wow!

Virgin Media to chop 800 jobs in Wales call centre

Pen-y-gors

Exactly. The bottom line is that to employ x thousand call-centre staff, you need y thousand sq ft of office space. Whether that space is in one location, four or eight, the marginal cost benefits of centralising are going to be minimal, unless you house them in tents in the Sahara.

So to save a few million a year, Virgin shit on their loyal staff in Swansea and devastate the local economy. Don't you just love red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism?

This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of governments spending billions in perks to tempt big companies in to 'create jobs'. The companies have no roots or loyalty to the area. As soon as they can save a few quid by moving down the road they do. Much better to spend money helping local businesses to grow. Far greater chance of long-term stability.

GoDaddy exiles altright.com after civil rights group complaint

Pen-y-gors

A never-ending argument

Supporters of the site and/or free speech argue that activism of the sort practised by The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is a restriction on free speech. Others point out that GoDaddy is a business, not a government, so has every right to decide how its service is used. Others still say the likes of altright.com are so far beyond civil speech that they deserve censure

A very succinct summary of the different points of view.

And the validity of each argument depends on the situation. As has been frequently pointed out, 'free speech' does not allow people to say anything they like, in any situation, and not expect consequences. By all means you can shout 'Fire' in a crowded cinema, but expect to spend the rest of your life in jail for causing numerous deaths in the panic.

In this case, the second point applies. Individuals and groups have a right to decline to facilitate speech and actions they disagree with. I must admit I'm not comfortable with the decision about declining to bake a cake for a gay marriage being illegal. An unpleasant manifestation of a closed mind, perhaps, worthy of censure, and boycott of the business, but not actually illegal. Would I be acting illegally if I declined to build a new website for the alt-right, or the 'Welsh' Labour Party? Of course not. So what's the difference.

In this case this is exactly what Go-Daddy are doing. They are merely declining to facilitate alt-right. It might be different if it was a notional public monopoly, such as ICANN, refused to allow them to have a domain. But where that domain is hosted is a different matter. If necessary they can host a site on a laptop in their shed, if they can find someone to provide a fibre connection. If they have enough dosh let them set up a hosting provider exclusively for really unpleasant scum sites. That's their right, so long as they stay legal, and don't incite hatred and violence.

So, thumbs up to Go-Daddy (for once - not the best of hosting companies!)

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

Pen-y-gors

Re: What to do with surplus money?

Can you still buy penny chews? Even a small Maoam is 10p

Pen-y-gors

Re: What to do with surplus money?

Down votes again?

How can calling for everyone in the world to have access to clean water and sanitation deserve a downvote?

That bot is getting irritating. Can TPTB at El Reg please block it?

Pen-y-gors

Re: What to do with surplus money?

Yep, that's the problem. Joseph Bazalgette is one of my all-time heroes, and providing sanitation to 2.4billion people is Bazalgette to the Nth power.

How would you like to be remembered? The bloke who screwed millions of people so he could fly in space, or the bloke who saved hundreds of millions of lives and possibly saved the planet. A global "St Bezos, patron saint of sanitation Day" would be a nice way to be remembered for the next 1000 years.

Pen-y-gors

What to do with surplus money?

Hmmm, tricky. Obviously the first thing is to ensure a regular supply of rolled-up Forbes magazines, but after that?

I am impressed with the way certain insanely wealthy people have given a boost to the human adventure in space. But there are other alternative big projects - the Gates Foundation is looking at some interesting ones, which save lives - millions of them - here and now.

What to do with $100 billion? Tackle the 2.4 billion people without access to proper toilets and sanitation? Toilettwinning.org reckon that they can build a family toilet for £60. So, 2.4 billion divided by say, 6 in the family, = 400 million missing toilets. x £60 = £24 billion = about $40 billion dollars. So enough left over to provide clean drinking water to everyone.

Space tourism, or improving the lives of billions? Tricky choice.

Pen-y-gors

Not just USA

Several large companies, including Walmart, are infamous for paying wages so low that the taxpayer sometimes has to fill in the gap

Whereas in the wonderful socialist utopia of the UK we have a government that sets (and sometimes enforces) a minimum wage! A minimum wage that they set to be rather lower than the actual minimum wage needed to live, so many many people, employed by companies large and small, have to depend on the taxpayer (including the person on minimum wage) filling the gap. Net result, my taxes subsidise the Tesco shareholders, allowing them to get away with underpaying their staff and suppliers, while I have to pay the balance. Nice trick if you can manage it.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Compare Bezos to Reinhold Würth

Yes, but, no, but...

Rowntree was a Quaker. And serious about it. Unlike most USian capitalists who claim to be some sort of devout Christian but manage to break "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" with every breath.

Pen-y-gors

If you live in a small-ish town with an Amazon Warehouse, and you're pissed off with the wages, where do you move to? It's likely that the only place in town with vacancies is the one with low wages and poor conditions - i.e. the one you're already working for.

NASA demos little nuclear power plant to help find little green men

Pen-y-gors

Weight?

See title

'Computer algo' blamed for 450k UK women failing to receive breast screening invite

Pen-y-gors
FAIL

Lies, damned lies etc

The reports are very clear "computer modelling suggested that between 135 and 270 women may have had their lives shortened."

NB key words: 'modelling', 'suggest', 'may', 'between'

BBC News front page headline "Breast scan error 'shortened 270 lives' "

Epic fail by BBC headline writers. More what you'd expect from the Sun

No top-ups, please, I'm a millennial: Lightweight yoof shunning booze like never before

Pen-y-gors
Pint

They'll grow up

Research tends to show that in many ways 'childhood' is being greatly extended. Although 'youngsters' tend to have a lot of freedom they are also very sheltered until they are well on in age - the 30-year-olds still living with mum and dad, and depending on them for money. None of this 'going down t' pit at 14' nonsense now.

So maybe, as good beer is a grown-ups drink, we'll see them hitting the ale when they're 40? I do hope so. At the moment it seems to be fancy (expensive) gin. But from seeing the streets on a Friday night there's still a long way to go until we see the Hallelulia Lasses of the Salvation Army attracting hundreds to their temperance meetings. But who knows...

Pen-y-gors

If you're still doing it when you're 40, you're probably a barrister.

Or a Tory MP?

Techies! Britain's defence secretary wants you – for cyber-sniping at Russia

Pen-y-gors

Re: Salary

Does the grade include an automatic promotion to Rear Admiral?

Grab your lamp, you've pulled: Brits punt life-saving gravity-powered light

Pen-y-gors

Re: Gravity?

I think I agree - I assumed it was like an old 7-day pendulum clock. Human strength is used to raise the weight, and then gravity pulls it down, providing the power for the clock. Seems I was wrong! But wouldn't that work as well?

Pen-y-gors

It's a confused bot - usually it only downvotes anti-Brexit and pro-Climate Change posts.

North will remain North for now, say geo-magnetic boffins

Pen-y-gors

Be prepared!

the timescale would be so long people would have time to prepare

Well, the timescale for climate change is quite long, we've known about it for decades, but preparation? By most world governments? Have any of them done anything serious? They'll wait until the floods are up to their grandchildren's knees before doing anything. All the pressure for action is coming from individuals, particularly the ones who can't afford to move to high ground.

US citizen sues France over France-dot-com brouhaha

Pen-y-gors

Re: Shirley

Trademarks are a different matter. In the UK certain words can't be used in company names without permission e.g. Royal, British etc, but I don't know if UK courts have the power to demand the handover of british-kneecap-traders.tv unless someone is already using the trademark etc in the UK? Is 'France' a trademark of the French Government?

Pen-y-gors

Shirley

...French courts have no jurisdiction regarding US domains? (Which is what .com domains basically are)

And does this mean M.Macron can seize france.xxx and any other french-related domains? cheese-eating.com? surrender-monkeys.com?

More Brits have access to 1Gbps speeds than those failing to muster 10Mbps – Ofcom report

Pen-y-gors

Full fibre?

I have 'full fibre' or FTTP as we techies call it.

I pay BT residential for 300Mbps and, to be fair, that's what I get. Sometimes a tad more. Visible difference when chucking large files around the interwebs, but not so much day-to-day impact (I assume the bottleneck is upstream)

We're just getting Fibre for our village shop from BT Business - 80Mbps. They offer 330 but at a silly price.

Neither of them are actually offering 1Gbps.

So is 'full fibre' the same as 1Gbps? If not, why ot? And how much will they charge?

Eurocrats double down on .eu Brexit boot-out

Pen-y-gors

Re: What's the difference?

But

mylordmontagueofbeauli.eu

is available - not sure what to use it for theu.

High Court gives UK.gov six months to make the Snooper's Charter lawful

Pen-y-gors

Re: So Plan B then?

And up until next year we get a say in determining the Gorilla's way, after that, we just bend over and assume the position.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Write your damned MP people

No need to write. Plaid, SNP and Green MPs need no urging on this!

Pen-y-gors

Re: Yay

Ditto. It's nice to see money put to a good use!

BOFH: Guys? Guys? We need blockchain... can you install blockchain?

Pen-y-gors

New magic beans?

You had to work on WAP-phones didn't you?

Incredible Euro space agency data leak... just as planned: 1.7bn stars in our galaxy mapped

Pen-y-gors

Re: You know you're old when...

and you're *really* old when you can remember when they discovered Pluto (not speaking personally, obvs)

Windrush immigration papers scandal is a big fat GDPR fail for UK.gov

Pen-y-gors

Hindsight?

Could it be said that the Windrush data was no longer "needed"? In hindsight, no

No need for hindsight. Several members of staff from the time have stated that they regularly went down to the basement to refer to these slips to confirm various things, and they told their management that. Management still went ahead.

So, not even in hindsight. At the time it was very clear to the officials that the data was still needed and used. Heads->roll.