* Posts by cortland

1167 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Mar 2012

Flogging kit and services to UK.gov? YOUR LIFE IS ABOUT TO CHANGE

cortland

Lots

But seeing what that lot will do unbribed ...

'Camera-shy' Raspberry Pi 2 suffers strange 'XENON DEATH FLASH' glitch

cortland

Re: E.M.P. anyone ?

100 mW? That's not a pointer, it's laser knife!

IBM details PowerPC microserver aimed at square kilometre array

cortland

Re: At least THAT one

That's all right, then, and thanks. I'll avoid putting one next to *my* radio antennas.

cortland

At least THAT one

At least THAT one should be RF-quiet enough to put amongst the radio antennas.

'YOUTUBE is EVIL': Somebody had a tape running, Google...

cortland

Limited to takedowns; isn't this an invitation to copyright violators, an essentially no-penalty way to make Mickey (among other rats) public domain?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encouraging_or_assisting_a_crime_in_English_law

I've brought my own popcorn.

cortland

Re: "Don't be evil"

Medi-evil, perhaps; [ ]irds in a Guilded cage.

UK official LOSES Mark Duggan shooting discs IN THE POST

cortland

Re: Pants on fire.

Yes; Three Y's Men.

FCC will vote to cut off 41 million broadband users this Thursday*

cortland

Good! Can I expect

... my provider to lower my bills?

Heh. Silly me. But it's still lower than my 1984 Compu$erve $300/mo limit, 300 baud dialup with by the minute connection charges.

And whenever I miss the ASCII Internet (I do, too) I remember that.

How's this for customer service: Comcast calls bloke an A**HOLE – and even puts it in print

cortland

Flypaper Internet service?

That's what it is.

Let's be clear, everyone: DON'T BLOCK Wi-Fi, DUH – FCC official ruling

cortland

Re: Hotels next step?

Well, no. They COULD -- but when firefighters, medical personnel and LE can't reach each other inside over their trunked or LTE systems -- shielding,remember? -- safety is a very large victim. I suspect occupants and convention goers etc whose cellular service is cut off would be miffed, too, not good for business.

In any event, access to law-enforcement and public safety communications has become part of the US National Fire Code and many localities have made it part of their building codes as well. Given the multiplicity of frequencies used and fast changing technologies, a simple Faraday Cage is pretty much ruled out. See links below.

*links

http://www.npstc.org/inBuilding.jsp

http://www.rfsolutions.com/

BOT AN ABOMINATION: Mechanical DRONE VAMPIRE spreads wings

cortland

Re: Bats got legs

I'm calling my Congressman; we gotta outlaw perambulators.

cortland

How?

Common vampire? HOW common? Inquiring necks want to know.

Make mine A Positive.

Is it humanly possible to watch Gigli and Battlefield Earth back-to-back?

cortland

If one stands

I've been to Pearl Harbor. If one stands where he can watch Pearl Harbor, it's unlikely he'll be able to immediately after watch Gigli, unless he's taken along someone of that name -- and then he could watch both at the same time.

Hola HoloLens: Reg man gets face time with Microsoft's holographic headset

cortland

Digital photography

Just a good [enough],cheap [enough] wearable display would sell to photographers using digital cameras. Bluetooth viewers, anyone?

Increased gov spy powers are NOT the way to stay safe against terrorism

cortland

Indeed

One approach used by insurgents -- and terrorists -- is to copy what government does, turning people against their own governments even if those really are defending them. Considering how many exploits and scripts are already running around wild, it seems additional surveillance can create an excess of less (shall we say) benign intrusions. There's no good way the average person can say who's taking his picture, writing down his licence number, reading his email or scanning his HDD when government insists on doing all of those and says he can't make it known or do anything to stop it.

Fertiliser doom warning! Pesky humans set to wipe selves out AGAIN

cortland

Re: "ElReg is INTERNATIONAL."

And here's your Thruppence. Yeah; I was there, when.

BATMAN LASER builds smaller, faster hard drives

cortland

Hmm

Looks like resonance. Phonons or surface wave.

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

cortland

An optimist says

30-year old software still runs in many of the world's organisations today, and there's absolutely no reason to expect the same won't be true 30 years from now.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/02/docker_part_3_containers_versus_hypervisors/

cortland

Re: Oh FFS

Want a 95 install? Heh.

cortland

It almost seems

Microswat apparently wants to churn hardware sales, producing operating systems that -- if security fixes were treated the same as auto safety -- cannot run on existing and still productive hardware, refusing to repair deficiencies in their own products that result in what would be massive recalls in the auto business (who can't squirt repairs down a link).

I worked in Avionics in the Army from1964-1980, and some of the equipment I worked with in Vietnam could still be seen in Active Duty Air Force transports in 1990; one enterprising person in Massachusetts, noting that test standards called out a specific instrument, bought the name and rights to build a vacuum tube (valve, to you blokes) Grid Dip Meter first sold in 1949. (http://www.isquare.com/millen/eqpicts/90651.html), much more recently, I worked in the digital loop carrier equipment business, where we made and sold equipment to telco's who expected FIFTY years of service and support. Military electronics, in a 2006--2011 job, had a still going and gegantic (sp) employer, as parts became EOL and unavailable, redesigning equipment first fielded in in the 1970's.

It seems to me that if the concept of implied warranty has any meaning, it applies to legacy products rendered unsafe to use not by acts by the users, but because of manufacturer oversights and omissions, manufacturers who, though GLAD to sell a lot if it, didn't want to fix teir errors after years of even decades while those who'd bought them could and were still being harmed as the mistakes became evident.

It could be worse; an OS update might some day come without warning (they've stopped giving most of us warnings) and a six day count-down to wiping it. Are they selling us ransomware? Not yet, but... there's money in it.

Professor's BEAGLE lost for 10 years FOUND ON MARS

cortland

Doomed from the start? Aye, but a good try still.

http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/what-ever-happened-to-beagle-2.html

Users shun UK.gov flagship digital service

cortland

Ah!

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.

--Yogi Berra

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/y/yogiberra100418.html

NHS: Go digital or you won't get paid, warns Kelsey

cortland

will be at risk of having their funding pulled

Are you trying to"catch up" to the USA?

Police radios will be KILLED soon – yet no one dares say 'Huawei'

cortland

Re: Usual gibberish

Some comments I've heard from firefighters and the like speak to not being able to call the one behind you to turn around and run -- or for someone else to call you. No direct comms.

Yes, we need two million licences - DEFRA

cortland

That's

... licentious. Go, and sin no more.

Marriott: The TRUTH about personal Wi-Fi hotel jam bid

cortland

All of your

USB tethers should still work. Until they set up their own fake cellular sites; THERE'S a nice man-in-the-middle.

Got info? All of your bits are belong to us.

Samsung forks 4K with Tizen tellies

cortland

I want

I want UHD or more for my COMPUTER. Scrw television; I'm editing digital images. 19 inches, please. (Heh; quantum dot pixels.)

21st century data protection: Get back up to date

cortland

Calling

Calling on the Trained Bands?

German minister fingered as hacker 'steals' her thumbprint from a PHOTO

cortland

Re: Real Security systems

"... the Obama administration report showed that federal government agencies spent $10 billion on information security. The biggest culprits, experts say, are human error and a patchwork of different systems. Billions of dollars in security can't stop an employee from clicking a malicious link."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/19/politics/government-hacks-and-security-breaches-skyrocket/

Note also, that it's easier to buy, bribe, blackmail (e.g.: honeypot) convince or turn an operator than electronically intercept his work. Nothing fancy about the Snowden etc capers.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_spies#Americans_who_spied_for_foreign_countries

CLOUD-to-CLOUD backup: A chasm-Spanning leap

cortland

LOVE the Hed

http://www.ahajokes.com/hunt016.html

FCC: A few (680,000) net neutrality comments lost in 'XML gaffe'

cortland

When once comments are filed...

then needs must one despair; for all the good they do, no one will read them, there.

On the FCC's BPL Rulemaking (PLC for English speakers) my comments were backed up with reference to good data and a certain amount of what I thought was persuasive logic. Wasted effort; the Commission having seen the dagger readied to plunge into its budget in Congress, had orders from a higher authority; money.

Also see https://www.natoa.org/policy-advocacy/Documents/Deception&DistrustHouseRptFCC.pdf

Hack hijacks electric skateboards, dumps hipsters in the gutter

cortland

Re: ".. you could also just hit them with a car."

I used to work on technological security. IMO the gorilla in the room is that it's cheaper -- and (Snowden, anyone?) to just stir up (or buy) a user. Road rage or Roid rage; pick one.

Countless Belkin routers go TITSUP in massive mystery meltdown

cortland

If it's Tuesday

This must be a Mcirosfot Update. Oh, it wasn't? Are you SURE?

Brit gun nut builds working sniper rifle at home out of scrap metal

cortland

In 1963 some of my colleagues in green decided to make shooting blanks on manoeuvers more fun by tying the end of a cleaning rod into the flash suppressors of their M-14's with alumin[i]um wire from a box of C-rations. Full auto, for a while, then the wire broke and the cleaning rod tip got stuck into a tree somewhere. As far as I know, nobody was wounded or killed thereby -- but some got angry after a vehicle accident and apparently managed flesh wounds with pine needles down the bore. The exercise (look up Swift Strike 3) was suspended a day or so to let tempers cool.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19630713&id=s_IhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YdUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1200,1509914

Fun days,eh?

Hold the front page: Spain's anti-Google lobbyists lobby for Google News return

cortland

Re: Prospect of death concentrates the mind

Be careful what you ask for, etc.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Literature

DARPA-backed jetpack prototype built to make soldiers run faster

cortland

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showpost.php?s=a859a74fd8f9dcc20dd6c4f33557e0b5&p=2354036&postcount=2

'How a censorious and moralistic blogger ruined my evening'

cortland

Cannot hope

To bribe or twist. Etc.

Sacre block! French publishers to sue Adblock maker – report

cortland

Add BLOCK

http://pixabay.com/en/power-on-off-button-glossy-red-150638/

Click!

EU bangs drum over its openness rules – from which it is exempt

cortland

Trust me, he said

Oh, look over there!

Brit boffins debunk 'magnetic field and cancer' link

cortland

Field of screens?

I suspect plasticizers in the handset material.

Parliament face-sit-in to spark mass debate on UK's stiff smut stance

cortland

eh?

On F*ceb**k?

Net neutrality: EU's three-headed beast now at war with itself

cortland

"miles from an agreement"

Km, yes?

Netflix: Sacre vache! French resistance from the vestibuleurs de consommation

cortland

"To some it will seem eerily close to reality."

Still good; CURRENT and inflammatory is OK.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Masala omelette

cortland

Re: 1,176,182 Scovilles?

Perhaps there's a algorithm: the number who pass out before someone asks for seconds.

Orion: To Mars, the Moon and beyond... but first, a test flight through Van Allen belt

cortland

Re: Architected?

Nah; the writers are paid by the syllababababble.

Top Apple exec: 'I knew [ebook] prices were going to go up – hell, the whole world knew'

cortland

The COOL thing

The cool thing about real books is that families and other subsequent buyers get to keep the ones they like. Our children might just think of us when they see the notes we made in them, too.

Feds dig up law from 1789 to demand Apple, Google decrypt smartphones, slabs

cortland

Re: still have a backdoor though right?

Travelling to another country on business? Some firms won't let employees take ANY data with them, but issue sanitized computers for use once they get where they're going. They might be getting even more restrictive, given USB-stick BIOS-level backdoors.

I'll be back (and forward): Hollywood's time travel tribulations

cortland

FWIW department:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=albee%20beck

Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers

cortland

Re: reducing energy consumption

"Unless we do something now about large scale generation that is not fossil based."

Will the fossils in government agree?

Rosetta science team thinks Philae might come to life in the spring

cortland

Re: Hard surface

"Evil-looking things those harpoons."

Were we expecting lampoons? heh!