* Posts by allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

6157 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Oct 2015

Aircraft laser strikes hit new record with 20 incidents in one night

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: "We don't know if the pilots were looking at our wimmin"

People really think it's a bad joke, I think.

Pope instructs followers to put the iPhone away during dinner

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Burn 'em all

So we take graeme leggett's suggestion from the first post, change 'toast rack' to 'toaster' and - bingo!

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

This is the time I'm having supper with you guys!

Well, when he's right, he's right. However, I'm having two questions to follow up:

1) Can El Reg please ask HRM (in her capacity as another religious leader) to give us her take on this?

2) Has anyone checked Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks on possible sketches of cellphones yet?

Your taxes at work: Three hours driving to turn on politician's PC

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

idiot architect

Me defending architects is a rare event, but in all fairness doors openig to the outside has usually to do with building codes and safety regulations. If its a public building or a large-ish office block or hospital or whatever it's usually a (primary) evacuation route. Trust me, when the building is on fire you don't want to be in front of a 'pull' door with dozends of people behind you trying to get out.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Really - there wasn't a cleaner or anyone else in the building...

"Rather depends if you want an engineer who can provide broad solutions or one who can pay attention to detail."

A competent engineer should be able to do both. And be able to see when to use what.

Disclaimer: no, they won't teach you that at uni. That's experience, both in your field and life in general (people!). You pick it up over time. That time is shorter when you can profit from someone else's experience, i.e. learn from someone who's been around the block already.

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Privacy in the age of IoT...

...

Startup uses ultrasound chirps to covertly link and track all your devices

http://boingboing.net/2015/11/13/startup-uses-ultrasound-chirps.html

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

I feel your pain

"An elderly relative bought it against my advice, was disappointed that 'wireless' still meant a power-cord."

Been there, talked 'till I started foaming at the mouth, didn't get a t-shirt.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

So when

will El Reg switch to HTTPS then?

Tax bill could kibosh Dell-EMC deal

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: apparently they did

Seems like they didn't close enough. And regarding the sheer size of the deal 'previous similar transactions' seems like stretching things a bit.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

You'd think in a megadeal like this they'd look into implications re taxes at a very early stage.

The Beatles - Taxman

MoD-founded firm Niteworks loses login creds of UK defence folk

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Okay then

"You are dreaming."

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Could someone please produce a TV series that is set in the IT department of the MoD? Sort of the IT Crowd meets Dad's Army (no, better go for MASH, gotta be able to sell it to a US network) meets Yes Minister. Should write itself really, all you'd need is follow the news for a bit.

BOFH: We're miracle workers. But you want us to fix THAT in 10 minutes?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
IT Angle

Only vaguely related - however it being friday and beer o'clock and whatever...

Clever use of IT for shirking: Reddid skin that looks like outlook

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Pint

[title goes here]

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Obligatory Dilbert cartoon here.

It's Gartner Magic Graph of Wonder time! And Google won't be happy

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Just how do they make these up? I'd really like to know. For research purposes. Whatever the process is, it could conceivably be used to generate random numbers for encryption systems.

Seagate forms federal biz unit to latch onto the gov cash faucet

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

I wonder...

So they'll put their old and surplus stuff into shiny new boxes with lots of blinkenlights and sell them for five times the price of the state-of-the-art models?

Now we know why Philae phouled up comet landing

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Dodgy Seal

Seal. Club. Put it together. Hint: nothing to do with night clubs.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: In a million year's time:

THE SPACE PEOPLE: Space People read our mail. The Space People think that TV news programs are comedies, and that soap operas are news. The Space People will contact us when they can make money by doing so. The Space People think factories are musical instruments. They sing along with them. Each song lasts from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. No music on weekends.

(Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense" liner notes)

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Dodgy Seal

Too much clubbing, perhaps?

My guess is the explosives. There can't be a lot of data on the longtime effects/processes in explosives in spaaace. Ten years might be even longer than the typical shelf life of the type of explosives used.

"As with all highly energetic substances, explosives are not perfectly stable - their safety and functional features change during ageing. The extent of chemical instability strongly depends on the chemical structure of the explosive - aromatic and aliphatic nitro compounds, secondary nitramines, and organic azides are relatively stable, whereas aliphatic nitrate esters suffer from much lower stability. The rate of ageing of an explosive can be strongly accelerated by incompatibility reactions between the explosive and contact materials." from "Chemical Stability, Compatibility and Shelf Life of Explosives" by Beat Vogelsanger http://www.researchgate.net/publication/233695161_Chemical_Stability_Compatibility_and_Shelf_Life_of_Explosives

TalkTalk hired BAE Systems' infosec bods before THAT hack

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Credibility gap

"TalkTalks shareholders need to get a firm grip on this ineffective leadership team at the AGM"

Yes, they should. But no, they won't. Because they don't care. Because they didn't buy shares in order to take any responsibilities. They bought shares to make money (not earn - make). They are not investors as such, they are speculators.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Called it.

Hey it's friday, pub o'clock and all that... and maybe the intern is sick or something...

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Police told us not to answer questions"

Oh how very convenient.

Also, everything I've read so far (okay, I might have missed this or that) suggested, BAE infosec was hired after the last hack. So, what's all this, then?

Ouch! Subaru telescope catches astroid prang

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Hit and run!

Space Patrol? Right here.

Obama: Let me spam 600,000 of your customers with a TPP sales pitch. eBay: Sure thing, Barry!

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"VP of geographic expansion"

Do you have an impressive track record of playing Risk as a kid, or how does one qualify?

China’s chip shop makes dash for flash with huge new fab

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Chip shop?

My favourite is still this one.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Is that

a nuclear power plant on the rendering?

US military readies drone submarine hunter

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

@ x 7

Good point. Especially the Kilo types (and derivates) should be easy to spot.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

The article mentions that its role would be to 'look' for diesel-electric subs. What about those that run on fuel cells (and of course nucs)? AFAIK the USN doesn't operate any diesel-electric subs anymore, so any diesel-electric sub spotted is 'nor one of ours'. So far, so good - but some potential 'not-friendlies' have nucs. And a lot of those nations operating diesel-electric subs are at least considering phasing out their diesel-electric subs for fuel cell powered ones.

Most developers have never seen a successful project

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

What took you so long?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: "The problem in software projects is the requirements phase."

That's the problem for any project. (Not the only one, but the best opportunity to doom any project to failure right from the start.)

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Needs just a tweak.

You've never built a house either...

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Needs just a tweak.

You've never built a house...

Cement company in sacks out for the lads rumpus

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Cement

"Not that cement is particularly exciting anyway."

That is so wrong on so many levels. As any of the top men in the field will tell you.

Old tech, new battles: Inside F-Secure’s formidable Faraday cage

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Colour blind risk

"More like Fight Club meets scrabble" - senior citizen version... bingo, anyone?

Google open sources machine learning software

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"win-win for everyone" with G00gle involved? Yeah, right...

Einstein's brain to be picked by satellites

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re verifying the theory

there also was the Hafele-Keating experiment in 1971:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Decca? LORAN? You were LUCKY!

"Another thing about Liechtenstein - their road maps are really easy to fold!"

All cooped up and nowhere to go, US and German spooks spied on each other

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: unsurprising

Has to be a smiling George Smiley.

TalkTalk: Data was 'secure', erm, we beat rivals on price. Um, scratch that...

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Bah!

Bastard Engineer From Hell?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

One of the cross-beams has gone out of skew on the treddle,

Royal Mail mulls drones for rural deliveries

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Drones? Boring.

British Rail holds a patent on a flying saucer, powered by nuclear fusion and driven by lasers! Now that's a delivery system!

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Odd comment about driverless trains

Well spotted.

Also, trains use a technology called 'tracks' or 'rails'. Which means, they don't have to 'know' the way, only where to stop.

Block storage is dead, says ex-HP and Supermicro data bigwig

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

IIR Hollerith punch cards derive from Jaquard punch cards used for controlling mechanical looms.

GCHQ director blasts free market, says UK must be 'sovereign cryptographic nation'

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

GCHQ and business

Why doesn't the GCHQ start 'the next Facebook'? They'd get all the data and could even make money doing so!

Here are the graphics processors cloud giants will use to crunch your voices, videos and data

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: The petabytes of nonsense humanity churns out every day

When the rise of the machines will happen, it won't be fancy weapons systems or stock trading AIs - it will be the communications systems that are bloody fed up with all the crap they have to process.

HGST closing SSD plant in Malaysia – report

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Why

are the windscreen wipers on the parked cars in the picture tilted up? Around here we sometimes do this in the winter to prevent the rubber freezing on the glass, but that can't be the reason they do it in Malaysia?

So. Farewell then Betamax. We always liked you better than VHS anyway

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Can we finally settle this?

Sure.

The best was Video 2000

*runs away*

Three men indicted over JPMorgan Chase megahack

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Hate to say it, but this is a very disjointed article.

I think the chart was included to show that JPMC stock prices didn't suffer, hence also the reference to the Harvard Business Review's claim that data breaches "don't hurt stock prices" due to shareholders lacking "good metrics, tools, and approaches to measure the impact of cyber attacks on businesses and translate that into a dollar value."

Which rings true to me - I have the impression that 1) a lot of stock holders don't even know which industry the companies they invest in belongs to 2) for quite a while now stock prices are only vaguely related to the real world.

Which is a pity, as the threat of losing money is a strong incentive to invest in IT security and would give at least some leverage to the IT departments.

Otherwise, yes, the article is a bit uneven, without having read something about the case before it would have left me a bit puzzled, I guess.

New Horizons makes last burn for Kuiper Belt target

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Planet Claire

Trident test-shot startles West Coast Americans

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Can we expect

a similar display of fireworks on New Yera's eve over Scotland courtesy of the Royal Navy?

What is the shelf live / 'best before' of a Trident missile?