* Posts by Amorous Cowherder

1063 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2012

Cert-slurping security firms chop super-fishy features

Amorous Cowherder
Thumb Up

As the late, great Bill Hicks said...

"If anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. There's no fuckin' joke. Suck a tail pipe, hang yourself...borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something...rid the world of your evil fuckin' presence."

Égalité, Fraternité - Oui, peut-etre. Liberté? NON, French speedcam Facebookers told

Amorous Cowherder

Here's a stupid idea that always works for me, stick to speed limits on non-motorway roads?

Although even on motorways now they have speedcams, the M25 from Enfield to Watford is a fun drive, every every half mile or so it's a like a red carpet night at swanky London opening 'cos there's so many flashes going off! LOL!

Thecus N4310 4-bay: A NAS-ty beast for the budget-conscious

Amorous Cowherder
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I've had 2 x 8TB 4bay ReadyNAS units running for close on 3 years serving the family's needs for movie and MP3 storage, plus PC/Mac backups. They're on 24 hours a day and (*touch wood*) I've only had one drive blow out on me, simply replaced on the fly without shut down. They've been patched to allow root access over SSH and I've even run a web based torrent client directly off one off one of the units! They're absolutely superb and very hackable units running Linux.

Looking to buy another NAS unit and I'm after another ReadyNAS based on how well the current two I have, have been.

SWINGBELLIES! Take heed AGAIN: Booze shortens your life

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

One day it does, the next day it doesn't. They said sat-fats kill, now they're saying they don't.

Here's a spiffing idea, how about we all stop giving ourselves strokes through the stress of worrying about eating the wrong things and simply eat a balanced diet, less shitty stuff ( note I said LESS not STOP ), slightly more of the fresh healthy stuff and we'll probably be OK.

Bitcoin trade biz MyCoin goes dark, investors fear $387 MEEELLION lost

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

"Some customers claim they were told that if they wanted to bring about their promised returns on investment, they should recruit other investors to pump additional funds into the operation."

Ah there we go....nothing but a naff pyramid scheme then!

'Ruskie' malware pwns iOS 7

Amorous Cowherder
Joke

Probably paid for by Apple to force people to upgrade to new iOS or buy new device that supports the latest patched iOS! ( See that icon over there! )

Zoinks! Is that Mystery Machine Apple's SELF-DRIVING FAMILY WAGON? You decide

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Downvotes, really? Some people have zero sense of humour!

Ross Ulbricht, in the library, with the laptop: Silk Road boss found GUILTY of all charges

Amorous Cowherder
Coat

Re: Other than

National Pirate Day....so that would be on a "Sat-Arrrgh-day" then! I'll get me...

Amorous Cowherder

Maybe I'm missing something but the guy ran a site to allow selling of narcotics, at the very least he turned a blind eye to it going on and he contracted hired killers. Doesn't sound just another daft kid running a tiny, harmless, "backstreet" website, sounds likes a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work who's deeds are catching up with him.

NSA lays out its reforms post-Snowden (they can fit on back of a stamp)

Amorous Cowherder
Happy

Re: ?

" ...there's even a mission statement in the NSA HQ foyer reminding analysts how important privacy is."

There's some really superb photos in our foyer at work, doesn't make any of us artists or photographers! Ha ha!

Hey kids! If you vote Facebook will give you EXTRA LIKES*

Amorous Cowherder
Mushroom

I VOTE THEREFORE I MOAN!

People say , "Don't vote? Don't moan!".

That's complete and utter bollocks! If I vote for someone and they don't deliver then I have every bloody right to moan at whomever it was that failed to live up to their promises! If the person I voted for fails to get in, then I have a right to moan about the other canidate who did get in and still isn't doing what I want! Ha ha!

Adobe and software pals haul Forever 21 to court over piracy allegations

Amorous Cowherder

Usually software companies are quite relaxed in so far as they give a little bit of time to prove you making moves to sort yourself out. Even Oracle, who are like vultures when it comes to licenses, usually give you a couple of months breathing room when your licenses don't come up to scratch, providing you stay in contact with your account manager and prove you're sorting it out. I doubt this has come out of nowhere. Sounds like Adobe have been bugging F21 for a while and F21 have not been opening the red headed letters that have been arriving, so Adobe had no choice but to drag F21 into the courts to get their money.

It's not hard to stay "in license". As an individual I pay my Adobe licenses by way of my CC subscription. I use the software on my photos and I make money from my images, it's only fair I pay for my tools. I wouldn't like it if someone ripped of my images without paying, so I don't see why I should rip off Adobe.

Apple CEO: Fandroids are BINNING Android in favour of IPHONES

Amorous Cowherder

Figures for migrations the other way, in the interest of a balance? Oh, sorry that would be sane and sensible to ponder the figures overall.

I thought about upgrading my 3 year old SGS2 to an iPhone, pondered and in the end bought a second hand SGS3 off eBay! Sorry Cookie old son, your latest mega-multi-core monster device is just a bit overkill for me at the mo.

GoDaddy in doghouse over puppy-flogging Super Bowl ad

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: So it's okay to...

Right, so no one's allowed to get passionate about something other than you then. It's OK for you to have a good rant at the "bleeding heart liberals" who are pissing you off and you're allowed to feel better about yourself for venting your opinion but it's not OK for them to have a good rant about something they're getting pissed off about?

Snoopers' Charter amendments withdrawn – FOR NOW ...

Amorous Cowherder
FAIL

Re: CCTV rant

I believe we have the largest number per capita of any country in the world!

Obesity! Go UK!

Childhood asthma! Go UK!

Teenage pregnancy! We're getting there!

Makes you proud to be a Brit doesn't it?!

NSA gunning for Google, wants cop-spotting dropped from Waze app

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

So what?

I would be glad if I was in trouble and knew exactly where the nearest copper was when I needed them!

Just 'cos good people make things that bad people can use for bad things, does not make said thing a bad thing itself!

Hoaxer posing as GCHQ boss prank-calls PM Cameron

Amorous Cowherder

Re: Two very different incidents

"handing out of a mobile number, whether classified or not, for any employee, let alone a senior one, is a serious security breach."

From what the story said, the hoaxer called the PM's aides, they put the call through to "Hug-a-hoodie" Cameron. So surely DC needs to give his aides a bloody good bollocking for not checking the call was genuine?

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

Amorous Cowherder
WTF?

Re: I reckon that I have something...

You've obviously never watched JET ( also known as Ground Control ) starring Keither Sutherland!

OH GOD IT'S BLOODY AWFUL! The set must have cost about £5 to build/rent out of hours. Sutherland seems to have taken his inspiration from Ted Striker in Airplane! It's shot at night for the external shots which consist of our hero having flashbacks and chain smoking while standing in a stairwell! The interior set must have been about 10 foot square max. The worst bit is the fact that when the plane safely lands it's daylight AND the shots were taken from another movie! Train wreck? It's a full on train-carrying-nuclear-warhead-hitting-a-city wreck!

LEAKED: Samsung's iPhone 6 killer... the Samsung Galaxy S6

Amorous Cowherder
Coat

"64-bit eight-core..."...Jeez that's some scary-arse hardware to make a phone call and send a text message!

( Mines the one with the Nokia 3310 in the pocket! )

Wizard of Oz OFFICIALLY 'most significant movie' EVER, says PNAS

Amorous Cowherder

If references were the metric where's a Bond film? Every spoof spy movie references Bond, especially Connery's tenure in the role.

'If you see a stylus, they BLEW it' – Steve Jobs. REMEMBER, Apple?

Amorous Cowherder
Happy

A good idea, some of us were not born with dainty little pinkies but chipolata digits and while modern technology works for us, intricate adjustments on a touch screen is not one of them!

Buggy? Angry? LET IT ALL OUT says Linus Torvalds

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: Middle finger

It's funny OK? It's a little joke to make the man seem less like a God to some or a demon to others, but to make his public persona more like what he is, a human being with all the frailties that come with it.

Amorous Cowherder

Re: As far as I can see...

Exactly! I've run groups of volunteers and the biggest problem is getting a solid commitment. Most people here would have been managed in a work environment, there you have to do the job so everyone is already committed to the project as payday is reliant on you pulling your weight.

With volunteers, people will happily say they will commit but then when you push them a little to get done what they promised, they suddenly have 50 other things to get done! If you get a commitment from someone then a promise is a promise and it needs to be seen through unless circumstances are so bad that it's impossible.

I can't imagine what it's like to be in charge of such an important piece of code like the Linux Kernel and ensure all the egos are held in check and everyone is doing what they said they would to the best of their ability. Like herding a swarm of locust using a tea strainer!

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

"Tough at the top"

Have you ever run a club or a group? Takes a lot of "herding cats" type work and sometimes you have to just get everyone in line, that takes a bit of gentle goading and other times a lot of shouting. Yes I agree, there is no need to be rude or obnoxious about being in charge but when you're dealing a huge number of egos and they all want to get one up on each other including you. sometimes people need to be slapped back into line. Sorry but the world is not all happy and fluffy 'cos it's full of people and sometimes people can be arseholes to one another.

Amorous Cowherder

Rusty Russell ?

Sounds like the name of a 1970's prog rock band drummer.

Hollywood vs hackers: Vulture cracks Tinseltown keyboard cornballs

Amorous Cowherder
WTF?

Oh come on, you missed the best one!!!

Jurassic Park? 11 year old girlie shouts, "This is UNIX! I know this!". She then proceeds to flash up lots of terminal windows an old SGI box and restart the entire park from a single terminal.

Come on, it's a classic hollywood "plot-a-matic"(*) moment!

(* It's a special add-on for Word/Pages that only Hollywood hacks are allowed to download. When they need an IT scene in a movie, this clever little app produces a script to cover the load of old tosh about "OVERRIDE PASSWORD" and hacking for the main script! )

Get coding or you'll bounce email from new dot-thing domains

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: Sysadmins touching the code?

Left "TURNING" or Right "TURNING"?

Perhaps you need to spend time recoding that grammar/dictionary checking app on your browser?

Sony hack was good news for INSURERS and INVESTORS

Amorous Cowherder

So it uncovered what most of us already knew, that people are people. They bicker, fight and do stupid things such as talk about each other. I bet if you crack open any company's Exchange server you'll find more less similar prattling in the reams of emails, people passing on rubbish to each other, it's the secrets and tittle-tattle that binds groups together.

Kim Jong-Un shoot-em-up Glorious Leader! yanked

Amorous Cowherder

Re: FTFY

Even more surprised when you learn how many IT people lose important business data 'cos backups weren't checked!

"It's not a backup unless it can be restored."

Grand Theft Auto 1997: 'Sick, deluded and beneath contempt'

Amorous Cowherder
Happy

Voodoo 2/3DFX support!

Jeez, memories! I actually went out and bought a Voodoo 2 card so I could play this with enhanced 3DFX graphics!

DANGER: Is that 'hot babe' on Skype a sextortionist?

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

For the love of all that's precious!

How fecking stupid do you have to be to do something rude in front of someone else you've never met AND ON FECKING VIDEO CAMERA to boot?!?! Jesus wept....

Checkmate, GoDaddy – Google starts flogging dot-word domain names

Amorous Cowherder

Anyone know if Google will take over existing renewals? I have 6 domains and I get tapped for £20/year for each of those, I'd love to pay £10/year to renew mine.

UNDER A VEST: Man cuffed for smuggling 94 iPhones strapped to his body

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

They probably first noticed the bulge from the big set over his nethers!

iPhone addiction will RUIN YOUR LIFE – if only that were true

Amorous Cowherder
Happy

The battery died ( after a nasty shower last week ) I've been without a mobile phone for 5 days now while I wait for the battery, first 2 days were bad ( head-twisting babies on the ceiling bad! ) but now I'm quite calm and can't say I miss it. I miss listening to my MP3s but knowing I would have no phone for the commute I grabbed a book from the shelf before I left home and did something a little more intelligent than the 1000 yard stare.

Bloke in Belgium tries to trademark Je Suis Charlie slogan

Amorous Cowherder
Headmaster

Re: Interesting graphic

"...you ignorant oink."?

It's OIK, not OINK you ignorant oik!

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

Amorous Cowherder
Unhappy

Re: I must be old

What about the rest of us old timers who can still remember installing the early version of Excel with "Windows 286 Runtime" on a 286 PC from 5 1/4" floppies! I'm only in my 40's!!

Peers warn against rushing 'enhanced' DATA SLURP powers through Parliament

Amorous Cowherder
Pint

What a politician says and what a politician does are very, very rarely one and the same.

IBM ushers in BIGGEST EVER re-org for the cloud era, say insiders

Amorous Cowherder

Ermmm...

Why is Honor Blackman shown in the lead pic on this article?!

French Google fund to pay for 1 million print run of Charlie Hebdo next week

Amorous Cowherder

"I may not agree with you or what you say but I will defend your right to say it."

No it supports the free and democratic right to take the piss out of anyone for satirical purposes, regardless of race, creed or belief.

20 years on: The satirist's satirist Peter Cook remembered

Amorous Cowherder
Pint

Born a little too late to really appreciate Cook my first recollection of seeing him was in the Comic Strip's "Mr Jolly Lives Next Door", Cook playing the psychotic murder/assassin of the title.

I think a lot of people must have really appreciated Cook's talent, even the so-called at the time, alternative comedians of the Comic Strip obviously thought a lot of his comedic talent to ask him to take on a title role in one of their plays.

Lube company merger receiving second 'in-depth' probe

Amorous Cowherder

Re: Real concerns

KY is water based not oil based, that's why it's suitable for use on latex such as johnnies.

Does anyone use the term "dunkies" for 'em anymore? Just curious.

Tesco preps for Big Data Engine dump: Laters, Clubcard dev

Amorous Cowherder

The pair that dreamt Dunnhumby up and flogged it to TESCO are laughing all the way to the bank!

Boffins open 'space travel bureau': Come relax on exoplanet Kepler-16b, says NASA

Amorous Cowherder
Thumb Up

It's good to see the creative and artistic side of science, we don't get to see it enough.

It's 2015 and ATMs don't know when a daughterboard is breaking them

Amorous Cowherder

Or the money ( or said crim ) get sprayed with indelible dye!

Amorous Cowherder

Re: It's hard to feel sorry for the victims

You realise any losses the bank incurs are recouped one way or another through you being a customer?Something as simple as creaming off a small percentage from the interest they earn from your deposits, interest that should in your pocket. Just keep the interest rate down enough on the accounts so when they do incur some stupid fine or loses from dodgy equipment like ATMs, they'll just cream it off what they'd pay their customers.

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: First rule

The same "Braclay's" that in 2015 still insist you fill in a paying in slip for any amount or type of deposit! The same "Braclay's" that bought Woolwich, a typical building society that let you walk in and simply deposit money using your bank card well over 15 years ago!

Consistency in service and customer ease-of-use, yeah we've heard of them.

Yes, we need two million licences - DEFRA

Amorous Cowherder

Re: They get you coming and going

VM licensing is usually factor-based on core of host. Run Oracle RDBMS on VMs and it's usually something lower like 0.75/core ( totals rounded up to nearest whole number of course! )

No matter how you try to play them, they have a huge team of auditors and lawyers who will plug any loophole you try to find, then baffle you with the license calcs. Woe betide anyone who goes through a severe Oracle license audit, trust me the "Spanish Inquisition" would be a better experience!

Hardly surprising they're being trounced by SQL Server for new installations in a lot of companies. Been working with Oracle since 1995 but Oracle are not helping their customers and sooner or later they will need some when they will find out they don't have many left.

FREE EBOOKS: Apple falls into line with EU refund laws

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

"a lot of people can finish an ebook in two weeks, given a long enough commute into work."

Yes but if you keep "renting" books surely they're going to have something pull up for it, after the first half-dozen times you do it in a row!

I'm sooooo green: The Beginner's Guide to Krautrock

Amorous Cowherder
Happy

I remember as a spotty 13 year old sod someone I met suggested I seek out Tangerine Dream and Einstürzende Neubauten. I know EN are not technically part of the original Krautrock movement but discovering those two bands really opened my eyes to the fact that music is not all 4/4 verse/chorus/verse/chorus. Led me to seek out more Krautrock even to this day I still like to source all sorts of bizarre music from all over the world.

Back in the day it got me a fair amount of verbal from idiots at school for being one of those weird kids, so what?! At least I grew up with an open mind for music, as did my parents who had to put up with me playing it!

Saudi Arabia hires 'ethical hackers' to silence smut slingers

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

I believe that's one of the perks the ultra rich young Saudi lads and ladies get to enjoy. The minute they touch down in Blighty during their Summer holidays, they offload their £600k sports cars and they get to enjoy all the perks the decadent West has to offer for a few months.