* Posts by Scroticus Canis

855 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Aug 2012

Facebook, Google sued for 'secretly' slurping people's whereabouts – while Feds lap it up

Scroticus Canis
Big Brother

Re: Works the other way also @DougS

Sod's Law dictates the neighbour would have gone a crime spree and now your sharing a cell with him thanks to GoogleFace.

Better leave it at home strapped to the dogs collar so it moves about the house and garden.

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Yes, someone had to say it.

Went OSX in 2001 and have been fighting the schadenfreude ever since.*

Three weeks into a major release and still problems, well done M$.

I avoid any MS product that I can. I have used Skype to stay in touch with friends but have a feeling that will end when I try the enforced new version.

* - unsuccessfully :) , but in this case I am starting to feel sorry for the poor sods stuck with it.

FYI: Faking court orders to take down Google reviews is super illegal

Scroticus Canis
Devil

Re: "why wasn't the work started over 10 years ago and completed 5 years ago?"

Because Crapita has only had the contract for 15 years. Project plan due soon.*

*PS: Don't hold your breath

You like HTTPS. We like HTTPS. Except when a quirk of TLS can smash someone's web privacy

Scroticus Canis
Big Brother

This is why I set Firefox to clear cache, etc... on close

Then just close and reopen the browser after visiting a site on the list of tracking 'suspects'. Easy.

Insects with farts that smell like coriander assist in covering up Paris's aroma d'urine

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Can't imagine the stink bugs are worse than the cockroaches

Back in the late seventies when I was living in Paris the local councils would have your apartment sprayed twice a year for roaches. All along the skirting boards and bottom edges inside of floor level cupboards, whether you liked it or not. The older buildings were permanently infested due to wooden floors and loads of hiding places.

Once more with feeling: Windows 10 October 2018 Update inches closer to relaunch

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

"polish away some of the rough edges " ... ha ha ha etc... because you can't polish a ...

insert your answer here ____

Yale Weds: Just some system maintenance, nothing to worry about. Yale Thurs: Nobody's smart alarm app works

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

Unplanned maintenance... like backing out the Windows 10 update maybe?

Just a thought.

New theory: The space alien origins of vital bio-blueprints for dinosaurs. And cats. And humans. And everything else

Scroticus Canis

Re: "deoxyribose, in a chain that forms the backbone of DNA and RNA"

Yep. Also, both ribose and deoxyribose are carbohydrates and contain no phosphorous; it's the phosphorous groups which link the sugars to form the backbone of the respective RNA and DNA molecules. DNA is double stranded and RNA is single stranded, no helix shape.

Meep!

Scroticus Canis
Thumb Up

Re: "I'd say the B-Ark is a definite favourite for the origin"

Lloyd I think you are being a bit optimistic. Much further down the alphabet would be my assessment.

Uppies.

HMRC contractor scores IR35 payout after yet another taxman blunder

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Beautiful

Just plain beautiful.

Deliveroo to bike food to hungry fanbois queuing to buy iPhones

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Re: Typo alert... or is it?

First thing I though of was a FTFY of "stand in line to be preyed on at the altar of dreams".

I'm late to the party today :(

Scroticus Canis
Devil

...dressed like tramps...

Trickle down economy, pay a tramp to queue for you. Who says fanbois & gals don't have a social heart?

(damn just seen anthonyhedgedus beat me to it)

Don't let Google dox me on Lumen Database, nameless man begs

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: What's the first rule?

Rule No. 1: "Don't get caught"

Rule No. 2: see rule 1 .....

Lo and behold, Earth's special chemical cocktail for life seems to be pretty common

Scroticus Canis
Boffin

Re: @HampsterNet - Epigenetics

Epigenetics is not evolution nor is it mutation. It is the expression of "suppressed" genes due to changed environmental factors. The genes are already there by normal inheritance but another set or even the same set are just expressed differently due to need; think lung size when changing from a low altitude to a high altitude environment and vice versa.

Native High Andes dwellers have larger lungs than the norm, move them to a coastal environment and in three generations their lungs are the same as the norm. Move them back up and three generations later they have large lungs again.

Basically it's 'stored' responses to conditions experienced by the ancestors and allows fast adaptation to changing conditions.

London fuzz to get 600 more mobile fingerprint scanners

Scroticus Canis

@blugir "...so that you get a free lawyer..."

I suspect that you are a solicitor/lawyer or married to one.

I can see the use of these scanners would result in a drop in business for the legal profession and a saving for the public purse.

When's a backdoor not a backdoor? When the Oz government says it isn't

Scroticus Canis
Big Brother

Re: Double Plus Good - "...doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong."

Ah, but who's definition of wrong will this operate under?

Faxploit: Retro hacking of fax machines can spread malware

Scroticus Canis
Devil

Re: Denial of Service -Looping the black paper...

Supposedly five black pages was enough to fuse the thermal print heads on the older models. Never tried it myself, much.

Greybeard greebos do runner from care home to attend world's largest heavy metal fest Wacken

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: "Dazed and confused", surely?

Well more likely having found a toker willing to share than any dementia, it was a metalheads event after all.

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

Scroticus Canis

"Which could be on a single hybrid drive."

And thus a single point of failure if not backed up to an external device.

I am still on spinning rust but my next machine* will be all SSD for speed and physical shock resistance.

Apart from the big-iron exchangeable disc packs (8MB) my first hard drive was a 5MB Winchester on a CPM machine with 8" floppies, the HD replaced one of them. 1980 IIRC.

*assuming I outlive this one!

Top tip? Sprinkle bugs into your code to throw off robo-vuln scanners

Scroticus Canis
Devil

Re: Die early, recover quickly

"I can imagine that it would be quite annoying for a word processor to flicker in and out of existence while writing a document, though."

If you are having to imagine it you obviously haven't tried Orifice 365 yet.

Tech Shutdown Blows: IT chaos cost Brit bank TSB almost £200m

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: 2,500 staff in new roles

Probably just 1,100 of the new staff will be in new roles. 700 will replace existing roles in the IT division which have become vacant due to previous incumbents being condemned* to the hell desk (customer facing roles).

So just 1,800 "new" roles. I do agree with your escalation observation.

* a harsh but somewhat deserved punishment :)

Scroticus Canis
Happy

And the person who signed off on the migraine got a promotion, right?

They promote people who give customers headaches? Sounds even more like a bank to avoid.

Well, well, well. Crime does pay: Ransomware creeps let off with community service

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: "notoriously difficult language"

I lived in Holland for a year or so and found Dutch hard to learn because everyone just replied or talked to me in English as soon as they heard my accent! My period of living in France was the exact opposite of course.

Hurrah! Boffins finally discover liquid water sloshing around on Mars

Scroticus Canis

Re: That conclusion seems a bit fast to me - also for the reaserchers

From the article : ' “This subsurface anomaly on Mars has radar properties matching water or water-rich sediments,” said Roberto Orosei'.

So could be just damp rock (water rich sediments). If it is actually liquid it would be a brine slushie at best.

Sorry, Neil Armstrong. Boffins say you may not have been first life-form to set foot on the Moon

Scroticus Canis
Boffin

Re: Good! - "how do you explain the Clangers?"

So the cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, could account for the veins in the blue-cheese it's made of. It all starts to make sense at last.

Sysadmin sank IBM mainframe by going one VM too deep

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: "⸘You shut down the what‽"

FTFY

Crooks swipe plutonium, cesium from US govt nuke wranglers' car. And yes, it's still missing

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

"... individuals – described as "security experts" ..."

Security experts - my arse!

Capita strikes again: Bug in UK-wide school info management system risks huge data breach

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: Gonna be one less school soon

"Capita just really don't seem competent in anything they do!"

Oh I don't know, they do seem to excel at getting undeserved business from the government while screwing them for large amounts of money for shoddy products.

UK taxman outlines its CHIEF concerns for customs IT systems

Scroticus Canis

Re: I wonder how many codgers are still mentis enough to work on the 4GL it was written in?

You talking about Quick Build (QB)? Yep, it was a bit crap but good old COBOL worked bloody well with IDMSX under ICL's VME op sys. Still my preferred network-database.

QB was crap at multiphase transactions due to page and table locks being released at the end of each phase. Had to code your own lock system and needed the low level calls available with the VME/B option.

To quote my team manager on an ICL to IBM conversion (last century) "A small step forward for IBM but a giant leap backwards for ...."

It was hard work converting a nicely integrated polished suite of systems to a less flexible architecture. That's just the hardware and op sys aspect. The fact that IBM only did IDMS as a database meant everything had to be recoded as the were no eXtended indexes.

Cops suspect Detroit fuel station was hacked before 10 drivers made off with 2.3k 'free' litres

Scroticus Canis

Re: @jake - "... thanks for playing ..."

Is it that what comentardery is about?

I see that they have updated the article to include "US" gallons and correct the miscalculated litre values. Was wondering why Detroit would be using imperial measures ;)

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: @jake - "wimpy US gallons"

Well it's obvious they are talking 600 full-fat imperial gallons giving 2,728 litres as 600 US gallons would be 2,271 litres. So no need for us non-USAians to mention it! :)

IBM fired me because I'm not a millennial, says axed cloud sales star in age discrim court row

Scroticus Canis
Devil

Re: "Our leaders wear jeans"..."I go commando, what does that say about me?"

You own more than one pair of jeans?

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

Re: "What they want is partners ... not afraid to try and fail.

So IBM is now trying Crapita's game plan? Getting rid of the experienced employees is a great way of playing catch-up!

Apple fanbois ride to the aid of iGiant in patent spat with Qualcomm

Scroticus Canis
Happy

"... naughty children with balls of yellow snow."

"Watch out where the huskies go, don't you eat that yellow snow."

(That line triggered a bit of Zappa nostalgia)

And that's now all three LTE protocol layers with annoying security flaws

Scroticus Canis
Meh

"5G will hopefully fix it"

And then probably introduce a host of new attack vectors. Ho bloody hum!

Not OK Google: Massive outage turns smart home kit utterly dumb

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: "... 7 cats and one dog are all waiting ..."

With reference to your handle. Nominative determinism or consequence?

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: "Unless there is a safety feature to override the lock?"

It's called a key.

UK taxman has amassed voice profiles of 5.1 million taxpayers

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: I'm one of those 5M

I'm just amazed that they claim 5 million people actually got through to HMRC by phone!

Office 365 celebrates National Beer Day by popping out for a pint

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: "Office 365 ISNT CLOUD!"

It's still fecking vaporware on the cloud or off.

Four hydrogen + eight caesium clocks = one almost-proven Einstein theory

Scroticus Canis
Boffin

"Homeopathy - Making Fuck All Difference Since 1796"

One of my favourite T-shirt logos.

"Everything is relative." "Oh absolutely!" - is another :)

Meet the real spin doctors: Scientists tell H2O to chill out so they can separate isomers

Scroticus Canis
Boffin

Re: absolute zero (-273.15°C, -459.67°F)

FTFY.

0 K would have worked.

Smut site offers VPN so you don't bare all online

Scroticus Canis
Childcatcher

Ummm...... Isn't TOR used for this anymore?

See title.

The harbingers of Doomwatch: Quist is quite the quasi-Quatermass

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Oh God ... I remember watching that episode on ye olde CRT TV

Strangely enough it was the first thing that crossed my mind when I came across this in the press last week or so.

I demand an old-fart-tard icon.

Facebook stuck with IRS bill after court tosses $7 BEEELLION appeal

Scroticus Canis
Meh

My heart bleeds custard for FB

Wonder what the penalties the IRS add will come to?

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

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: Wot! - "Using Until is a presumption of guilt."

They may have been referring to the way the police work.

Shining lasers at planes in the UK could now get you up to 5 years in jail

Scroticus Canis
Terminator

Paveway LGB

I was thinking more along the lines of a 20mm Phalanx but a Paveway also works :)

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

Scroticus Canis
Trollface

Re: "The only way to stop a bad guy with a USB stick..."

A Remington pump with a tube full of solid slugs works for most things up to Cape buffalo size.

Australian foreplay: Bum-biting in an underground hole

Scroticus Canis
Coat

Australian Foreplay - Whatever Happened to "Brace Yourself Sheila"?

Mine's the one with drop bear proof hat above it.

Pentagon in uproar: 'China's lasers' make US pilots shake in Djibouti

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: Binding Protocol? - "is also a war criminal for targeting you"

That's nearly as comforting as being hit by friendly fire.

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

Re: "awesomely fearsome 200,000 µW Death Machine!"

Sooo... 200mW or 0.2W. Wow only a tenth as powerful as the "scary" 2W laser.

(I'm hung-over so I might have missed implied sarcasm in the dropped zero)