* Posts by Dodgy Geezer

1773 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007

Reg readers ponder LOHAN's substantial globes

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

If you have rocket direction control....

...the answer is simple. Fire it off sideways and then let it climb up.

It is easy to detect 'up', particularly at these heights. 'Up' is dark, and 'down' is light. An array of 4 photo-cells will provide attitude positioning very easily - a sort of 'artificial horizon'.

I remember a model aircraft autopilot from the 1990s which used this technique, and worked very well. You can probably still buy the kit - it wasn't that expensive, and attached direct to standard radio control servos.

HMRC online tax systems slammed by Private Forum for Biz

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Devil

Happy memories...

"...No. I have to call 'customer' services to give them 24 hours notice of my wish to view the document and they will make it available for viewing at their offices...

When you get to see it, will it be the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in

a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard"?

MPs slam government's 'obscene' IT spend

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Does anyone remember...

CCTA? That was the Government's own internal IT consultancy, which ran gov. projects in the 1980s. They were generally delivered well.

The industry lobbied to close CCTA down, and managed it around 2000. After that, projects were passed out to industry, and became uncontrollable....

Hacking scandal starts to spread beyond News Corp

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Does anyone seriously think...

...that ALL journalists aren't doing this ALL the time? Certainly all the 'private investigators' are, as are lots of schoolkids and anyone who has ever got hold of their girlfriend's phone....

This is hardly big-time crime. It's about the same as searching through someone's dustbin for data (which is technically theft, and which PIs and journalists also do....

Actually, the really big story is that, after years of Labour rule which resulted in database after database of all our data being set up, we now have institutional petty corruption in the NHS, DVLA, Social Security, the Police, Local Authorities, everywhere where interesting personal data is stored and £100 will buy a quick query on the database.

Why are we going after the customers? We should be going after the dealers. Or, better still, close the whole filthy apparatus down and make them all redundant...

'NATO RESTRICTED': The lowest possible classification

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

A short history lesson

@Title goes here

"...Ummmm..... The Brits are Europeans, and I don't remember us being successfully invaded since 1066..."

Hmm... You don't remember 1688 very well, then? Perhaps you were asleep?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution refers...

'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Consensus or dogma response...

"...Show me some testable causal evidence for what is going on. Please."

There are not really two sides arguing over mathematical models. There is one side providing a succession of 'evidence' which the other side keeps shooting down. It is up to you which of those sides you believe.

As an example, the AGW models all claimed that the world would keep getting hotter. We have now had a dozen years of essentially flat temperatures. So the AGW supporters now claim that it must be Chinese soot bringing the temperature down (though they also claim that there are more hurricanes). So the anti-AGW crowd point out that satellites now detect smaller hurricanes. So it goes on.

I think that the best evidence is found in the maths for Mann's original hockey-stick graph, which was undoubtedly fudged. The world authority on Principle Component Analysis said as much. If you need to fudge evidence, there is obviously something wrong.

Oh, and everyone keeps very quiet about the tropospheric 'hot-spot'. This was the single unique prediction made by all the models which would unquestionably show that increased CO2 in the atmosphere was generating extra heat.

It has never been found.....

Nepalese gov to nail Everest's bigness in row with China

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Paris Hilton

WHY...

...is it important to know the exact height of Everest for border talks? Since a border is an imaginary vertical line, surely all you need is the exact position of the summit in the horizontal plane?

Enquiring technical minds want to know....

No 'huge mountain' icon, so Paris, for obvious reasons...

CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Mushroom

Rolf-Dieter Heuer Faustus

"There are some things that Man is not meant to know..."

Cackles insanely, then pulls huge switch down to start the LHC.....

Murdochs won't talk to MPs over phone-hacking scandal

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Angel

Can't follow this...

Has he got diplomatic immunity? No? Then summon him before the House.

I assume that it's a crime to disobey the summons - it is for a minor court. If it isn't, then it will take an hour or two to vote in a new bit of legislation and make it so. I imagine that the Queen would be only too willing to sign that Bill in double-quick time....

Do people think he's some kind of god...?

GCHQ losing its 'internet whizzes' to Microsoft, Google

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Ethics is a killer...

You will find youngsters with stars in their eyes and dreams of James Bond in these places....

but once they realise just what it is they're doing, and the nature of the hegemony they are trying to impose on the world, a lot of the ones who still have a conscience leave.

The ones who are sociopaths stay, which is why these places have the reputation they have....

Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Thumb Down

Why do people miss the whole point...

...which is that CO2 is NOT a polutant, and does NOT cause Global Warming?

This makes the whole basis for the tax into a big lie. And it really IS important that leaders tell the truth - it sets the tone for the whole of society. If, as el Reg seems to have done, you just don't care about whether something is true or not, you are encouraging the huge drop in public morality that we have seen over the past twenty years.

Oh, and also, this is a tax on ANY kind of activity. If this is accepted, then it is accepted that governments no longer need to justify any tax at all - they can effectively say: "You're alive, so pay me your money!"

Is that what you want? Cos that's what'll happen.....

El Reg to unleash rocket-powered spaceplane

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

The Canadians did it in 2005...

I presume everyone is familiar with this site: http://members.shaw.ca/sonde/

It shows a Canadian model aircraft hobbyist doing exactly this, in 2005. Includes all technical details and photos.

That is all....

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Alas...

when one balloon goes, so do all the others touching it....

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

Screaming Catastrophe...

@AC

"...... submitted a lot of funding applications, eh? Do let us know your hit/miss rate, correlated with title..."

On a completely separate board some years ago, I read a story from an editor who ran a local magazine in New Zealand. One week, as an experiment, he decided to run nothing but good news for the coming month. Sales plummeted, and he rapidly revised that decision.

Unfortunately, it's the way humans are made...

RSA appoints security chief amid blistering criticism

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Behind the times...?

From the OP: "..RSA has appointed its first chief security officer..."

If this means what it says, it implies that RSA (a major security product provider) has NOT had a Head of Information Security position before. Amongst other things, it would be hard for them to be in compliance with ISO 27001/2 without such a post.

But that's not surprising. Amongst other skills, I work in contract interim Head of Information Security positions. Everybody talks a lot about this subject, but few clients want to pay money for it to be undertaken. I get about 1 job a year....

Danish embassy issues MARMITE WAFFLE

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Coat

@DrXym

"...I don't even know where to start with your comparison between fashion and chinese medicine and homeopathy. The consequences of wearing flares are slightly less dire than eschewing a proper evidence based medical treatment for quackery..."

Not in my street!

I'll get my Ozwald Boateng...

Comcast 'Tweetgate' apology thrown back in face

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Unfortunately, Shaw was wrong...

...as he was wrong about so many other things. For instance, he greatly approved of Stalin...

If you accept money from any source, you will come to depend on it. And gradually, you will mould your thinking into thoughts which do not rock the boat of your provider. We have seen this countless times - it's called 'going native'.

If Comcast or any other corporate body want to provide charitable donations they are quite at liberty to do it anonymously. Indeed, that is the only true way to give a 'no strings attached' gift....

German salesmen rewarded with meticulously organised orgy

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Alert

Normal German activities...

"A spokesman for the company admitted the event had indeed taken place, but stressed "it was not the usual way of rewarding their employees...".

Usually, they let them initiate a political merger with Austria and then invade the Sudetenland....

Royal Weddings, PCs and Cameron's brass balls

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
WTF?

A little confusion here?

"... This break up of State provision of education and healthcare was something that even St Maggie never tried. Far too frightening a course of action even for her. Yet here we have David Cameron quite happily opening up both areas to any willing provider, the State picking up the bill...

Cameron with bigger, brassier, balls than Thatcher: who would ever have thought it?..."

This is NOT informed political commentary.

If you are comparing Cameron and Thatcher, the first point that springs to mind is that Thatcher knew what she was doing. It is irrelevant whether you supported her approach or not - you cannot disagree that she had a coherent agenda and followed it.

Cameron, on the other hand, is a figurehead (I will not say leader) of a government that has no coherent agenda, and has been u-turning like a dodgem car ever since it was cobbled together. If you wait a few months you will see the complete spectrum of policies from the far left to right proposed, floated, and then hastily trashed as one group or another complains.

We are no longer being led by politicians. We are being led by activists, each of whom are vying to put their own agendas into the legislative mill....

The best sci-fi film never made: Also-rans take a bow

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Go

Jules Verne's...

'Master of the World' might be fun. Especially if you could borrow ThrustSSC or the Bloodhound for the car....

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

Anything.....

by James Blish would be good. How about Doctor Mirabilis...?

Multimillionaire's private space ship 'can land on Mars'

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Coat

Millionaire has a spaceship that can land on Mars?

That's nothing - I have a brick in my garden that can land on Mars just as effectively. In fact, I think I have it here in my pocket.....

Ex-director permanently banned from revealing confidential info

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
WTF?

@ JustThinking

"The injunction already says its a "studded device, resembling a hedgehog, which straps to the wheels of golf trolleys". Presumably rivals can buy one and take it apart to analyse it in detail.

Is there much more to know?"

Er... How much it cost to make, what the minimum profit they are willing to accept is, who they are interested in targeting for sales.....etc. etc....

End of the line for ID cards

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Incompetent secure deletion...?

No. It's £400,000 for knowing that Ctrl+A then Delete WON'T do the job properly, and for knowing what will.....

Strange, blobaceous 'alien pod' lifeform found in Virginian lake

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

Obviously....

been caused by Climate Change (aka Global Warming, until the Earth started getting colder)....

Turn off your standbys, and pay vast electricity bills, and these things will go away...

EU to lift flight ban on carry-on liquids

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Thumb Up

That was a long time ago....

"..a long night in a dank, windowless basement room with one naked lightbulb hanging from a slowly swinging wire..."

Does someone on the Vulture staff still remember the 'Callan' intro...?

http://www.tv-timewarp.co.uk/callan/ refers...

Branson 'spaceship' successfully falls off mothership

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

@steve114

"..No way is it a 'space' ship. I know what I mean by 'space', and you simply can't be anywhere there without doing escape velocity first..."

I get the impression that you do not know what 'escape velocity' is. Why don't you have a look at the Wiki, where you will find out that escape velocity can be any figure down to 0, depending on your height.

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

(And no, you do not have to achieve 'escape velocity' to get into space. You could happily go to the Moon by climbing up a ladder if you had enough energy and time...)

Hefty physicist: Global warming is 'pseudoscientific fraud'

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

@Glen 4

"..Has this guy got any info to share? Doesn't seem that way ..."

Um?? His resignation letter is full of facts - they are the reasons why he resigned. Of course, I suppose you think he was bribed to do this by Big Oil...

A flame will do, but there really ought to be a 'scam' icon...

HABITABLE ALIEN WORLD discovered 20 light-years away!

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

Does anyone else worry about....

..the fact that the artist's impression clearly shows a green and fertile land on the day AND night side of the planet, although you would expect the night side to be a permanent icecap....?

This sort of inconsistency should be legislated against...

Twitter joke appeal adjourned

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Osama is totally uninterested in this....

All he wanted was to get the US out of Saudi, Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, MI5 are very happy about this. Since they ran out of work when the Berlin Wall came down, they have been stoking up fear wherever they could find it, and this sort of reaction from the authorities is just what they want when the time to consider their budget comes round....

By the way, did you see that they are now pushing the Irish Threat again? Looks like they have given up on keeping Iraq/Afghanistan going, and are going back to something they are used to. I wonder if they can get the Irish to oblige....

Pope makes central London no-go zone for BT engineers

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Thumb Up

At Last!!!

"...blame the police & the spooks who are trying to keep their jobs by perpetuating the myth that there's a terrorist cell living and plotting in every street in the UK...."

Someone who has accurately seen the reason for this post-cold-war mess....

Greenland ice loss rates 'one-third' of what was thought

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

That's nothing!

Today I broke a stone with my hammer that had been around for hundreds of millions of years!

Why don't you think about what you are saying, instead of mouthing insults and cliches...?

Danes work up head of steam over manga exhibition

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

They wrote something that offends you?

Good for them!!

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

Erm...

"...Not posted anonymously (because I'm confident that not only am I right but I can prove it properly)...."

Yes, you are right

Yes, you can prove this properly...

NO, this is NO defence against current legislation.....

Ofcom sets out recompense for luvvies

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

I recall....

...the mess that the Home Office Radio Regulatory Board got into over CB.

When CB radios first hit the UK they broadcast on the 27Mhz band, which was already used for radio control of model aircraft. They caused huge amounts of damage to this hobby, and endangered public safety. The aeromodellers asked for help - they paid an annual license fee to use their frequency, but the Home Office did nothing. At the time, they did seem to understand what a frequency clash was, and I recall speaking to an official who actually suggested that CBers and aeromodellers in a local area got together to work out times when each group could use their equipment....

Story of government and a completely non-technical civil service really.

Wikileaks publishes encrypted 'insurance' file

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Think a little more...

"...If the US hadn't armed half the flipping nutters in the world, then there would be no need for US troops to be sent half way round the world to have their brains blown out their country! ..." AC

Umm, true. But then, if there was no need for US troops to be sent half way round the world to kill lots of locals before a few have their brains blown out, what need would there be for the US Army?

And if there was no need for the US Army, what need would there be for the giant weapons manufacturing sector? And a vast intelligence sector? And a huge security industry......

And if there was no need for the various threat response sectors, it would be harder for some people get very rich. So, you see, it is very important that America keeps defending the free world against all threats, and that threats are manufactured whenever we run short of them.

A lot of people in the various diplomatic centres round the world are currently looking very hard for a reliable enemy to take the place of the Eastern Bloc, and justify their existence. It looks to me like the Muslim world has been already been chosen.....

Australian Senate censors print link to cartoon

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Yes.

"Democracy seems to have been on the retreat in the west ever since we 'won' the Cold War."

That is a very accurate statement. And there is a good reason for it.

Before 1990, the West had a military and intelligence sector that made a decent living out of 'the Russian Threat'.

By 1994, they had no reason for existing, and their budgets were beginning to be cut. Then, luckily, came the attack on the World Trade Centre. That was a small group of Saudi dissidents who got lucky - there was no need for a knee-jerk reaction. But the intelligence sector saw their chance, and built it up into a new world threat. They got a whole new budget for it...

The threat didn't really exist, so ever since then there has been a push for more and more threats to be uncovered, and more and more money to be spent in fighting international pedophiles, terrorists, computer hackers, you name it. None of these threats are real, but nobody will get any money for saying this. They will get a lot of money for setting up structures to fight them....

Security world ill-equipped to solve digital whodunnits

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

For God's sake, Dan, where is your cynicism...?

“Theres' (sic) a lot of people that the second they see a big company get compromised we immediately think its a state-sponsored effort and likewise when we see a power company get some malware we immediately think that it's a targeted attack sponsored by a nation state when in actual fact it turns out to be someone viewing a Viagra commercial they shouldn't have looked at. "

There's a very simple reason why you don't have effective systems for pinpointing web 'attacks'.

Who is going to benefit from the realisation that most 'Cyber Attacks' are really bored staff, script kiddies and spam merchants? NOT the US and UK Security Services, who build up their budgets on the assumption that the 'Axis of Evil' is behind all attacks on the freedom-loving western democracies.

The last thing they want is for the politicians to realise that the reason for their collective existence collapsed with the Berlin Wall. You want work in this field, you'd better be prepared to pretend that western computing is continually under attack from sources that ONLY a State Security Service can defend against.....

Apple bars radiation nanny from App Store

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Funnily enough...

you are correct. They haven't. And not for want of trying.

There appeared to be a strong statistical co-relation between smoking and lung cancer in the early tests, but that's not quite the same thing.

I wonder if the same co-relation would be found today with a dispassionate scientific test, but I'm quite sure that no-one would get any funding to do such a test, and that publishing any findings short of a complete confirmation of the 1950s findings would result in the end of any medical career the researchers might have had....

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Thumb Up

Brilliant...

but you forgot to get Global Warming in...

German arrested for Adolf Hitler ringtone

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Grenade

Is it illegal to defend impossible statements in Germany?

"The greatest commander of all time"?

Hitler had a string of successes with brinkmanship diplomacy driving German expansion during the 1930s. If he had stopped there he would probably have been hailed as the Father of the first European Superstate. But he didn't.

Hitler then carved up Poland between Germany and Russia. If he had cheated the Russians and invaded them in defence of the Poles, he would have gained all the lebesraum he wanted, and had the unqualified support of France, the US and Britain. But he didn't.

After Guderian and von Manheim had conducted their brilliant blitzkreig through the Low Countries, Hitler could have been master of all Europe if he had extended the fight to a British invasion. And if he had kept the momentum going, he would probably have won. But he didn't.

And finally, he could have let his skilled generals have their say in the invasion of Russia. But he didn't, and instead wasted German and Russian (and lots of other Eastern European) lives like water. And comprehensively lost the war for Germany.

So it is hard to see how he was 'the greatest' . Charismatic, possibly. But, in the end, spectacularly unsuccessful....

How can UK.gov spend £35m on a website?

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Badgers

What was that title...?

"How can UK.gov spend £35m on a website?...Here's how..."

Only you DON'T tell us how!. You just say that that's what they spent.

If you have done a lot of in-depth research - where's the detailed costings...?

Power line tech could crash aircraft and shut down the Archers

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

I'm 52, you know...

and I remember the fiasco with CB in the 1980s. It broadcast right on top of the allocated model aircraft slot at 27Mhz. Obviously causing much damage and danger.

The Home Office Radio Regulatory Department (as was) held up their hands in horror and said "We didn't know it would do that.".

Thirty years on, their children have obviously reached the same position in OFCOM....

Want Olympic tickets? Better get a VisaCard then

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

Does everyone think anything goes?

...or should some things, like what you eat and drink, and how you pay, be left to personal preference?

If anything goes, can the BNP purchase the rights for the next official Olympic Racial Group to be Aryan? It was fine at the 1936 Olympics.....

Middle-aged sex is crap: Official

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Dead Vulture

And the obligatory...

"I'm ninety-five, you know......"

.

.

.

.

"What was the question again?....."

Huge new airships for US Army: designed in Blighty

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

The Taleban have got a poor idigenous weapons industry..

but a lot of money.

And money can always buy weapons, from SA or Israel, or Russia, or China, or even the US....

100 Gigabit Ethernet standard ratified

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

Was it the first?

"...When Apple's Macintosh was released in January 1984, it was the first mass-market PC to have networking built in.."

Not sure what you mean by the 'first' - you could buy a BBC B with built-in (on the motherboard) EcoNet in 1981-2. Not many of this varient were sold in the UK (not many UK homes had a multi-system network requirement then), but all the US export ones had this in 1983....

Native Oz ducks being raped to extinction

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Troll

It is instructive...

... to see Nature Conservation activists so much at odds with nature doing what comes naturally...

It used to be the Puritains who were anxious that no one anywhere should be suspected of having a good time. I see that this particular religious quirk hs now well established amongst the bearded and open-toe sandaled amongst us.

I presume they gained some satisfaction from making these observations? And isn't that illegal under the 2003 'Having sex in a non-prescribed manner' Act? I think the Bestiality Squad should be called in here...

Canadians form adulterers' privacy campaign

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
FAIL

I'm going to be very old-fashioned...

...and suggest that marriage vows should be brought into the equation.

If they're not married, Rogers should be considering them separately. But if they are married, they have made a solemn and binding promise to love, honour, share all worldly goods, etc...

Under those circumstances the law always used to consider a husband and wife as one legal entity - until a century ago the wife's property was considered to be the husband's - they were "unica persona, quia taro una et sanguis onus".

That would make it quite reasonable for Rogers to assume that any directions about their billing could equally well come from either of them, the default assumption being that, having taken marriage vows, they would be acting together in trust.

Gabriela seems to have secretly broken that compact, and is now claiming that Rogers should not have been treating her as if she was still abiding by it, although she would have been claiming to do so publicly. Trying to have your cake and eat it at the same time springs to mind...

Researcher shows how to strike back at web assailants

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Welcome

You don't quite get it...

“If the answer to that question is yes then it's a technical violation of the US computer crimes statutes. In other words, you do so at your own legal peril."

"If there is little or no enforcement, who really worries about risk? " - tuna1

The problem is NOT that you will be arrested yourself. The problem is that if you have broken the law while investigating a presumed attacker, you will find it difficult if you ever get the case to court. Your legal standing will be 'in peril'.....