* Posts by Will Godfrey

5893 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms

Will Godfrey Silver badge
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Re: I've really had enough with humanity.

George Carlin was one of my favorite critics of the 'modern' world. I think I've watched all of his vids and enjoyed every one. My only regret is that I never got to see him live.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

I don't get it.

Master-Slave is a very exact and correct description of the relationship. Anything else is bullshit.

Brit armed forces still don't have enough techies, thunder MPs

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Attitudes

Maybe it's also partly because the armed forces (rightly or wrongly) still has the image of being led by privileged utter morons.

Hmmm... Where have I heard that before

Law firm seeking leak victims to launch £500m suit at British Airways

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Unhappy

Vultures Circling.

See title.

UK.gov went ahead with under-planned, under-funded IT upgrade? Sounds about right

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Unhappy

I seem to have heard this before

Are we in a Groundhog situation?

PPI pushers now need consent to cold-call you

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Re: How did El Reg get your number?

I just love it when someone else picks up the ball and runs with it!

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Happy

Re: How did El Reg get your number?

They'll never get my number, it's 01234 567890

Pluto is more alive than Mars, huff physicists who are still not over dwarf planet's demotion

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Happy

Only if paid up-front for their opinion

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Happy

Re: Active geology

OK... but only if you then call Saturn and Jupiter suns

{edit}

Hmm, that would make us a tri-solar system I think!

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Stop

It's a big round ball wizzing round the sun innit?

The IAU can say what they like, but it still is a perfect fit for a planet to me, so I'll call it one. Funny that, everyone I know seems to think the same way.

UK.gov's no-deal plans leave HMRC customs, VAT systems scrambling to keep up

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Unhappy

Yes they have a plan

It's 'grab the money and run'.

Do you really think crims would do that? Just go on the 'net and exploit a Windows zero-day?

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but he effected a very polite response :)

Cybercrooks home in on infosec's weakest link – you poor gullible people

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Re: Unusual wording

Dear downvoters,

The wording of the article title was changed from 'hone' to 'home' after I posted (and time had run out for an edit).

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Unusual wording

But not necessarily wrong

Oxford Dictionary: sharpen (a blade), refine or perfect (something) over a period of time.

Based on the premise that the scammers are steadily 'improving' their attacks, they are indeed 'honing' them in.

Brit teen pleads guilty to Minecraft-linked bomb and airline hoaxes

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FAIL

Mega fail indeed!

What a complete and utter pillock!

Unfortunately there is no means of compensating all the innocent people who's lives he screwed up.

Archive.org's Wayback Machine is legit legal evidence, US appeals court judges rule

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Unhappy

Difficult

Some interesting points raised by the commentards. I think we are in for some rapid changes both in the Wayback machine itself and the way people use it.

Unfortunately I suspect the crims will lead the way, closely followed by TLAs

Rather a shame.

Fast food, slow user – techie tears hair out over crashed drive-thru till

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Happy

Re: Very Good Answer...

This was all much more fun in the days of valve TVs

VMware 'pressured' hotel to shut down tech event close to VMworld, IGEL sues resort giant

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Multi-national corporations at their finest

Se title.

No need to code your webpage yourself, says Microsoft – draw it and our AI will do the rest

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Mushroom

Just had a horrible thought

The scammers will be all over this like a rash. It will be certain to contain huge swathes of unsanitised scripts, giving them acres of vulnerability to play with.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

It's getting worse

A few years ago I hand-crafted a website (that I still keep updated) with just simple displays of titles and content lists. It was a basic but presentable display. I was quite pleased it seemed to load as fast, or even faster that similar ones.

Not long ago I was chatting with a couple of guys interested in the same subject, and on showing them what I had, noticed they'd suddenly gone very quiet. It seems they were unused to being able to flick through menus so quickly.

Analysts gawp at network function virtualization through rose-tinted specs

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Angel

Infinite virtualisation?

I sense an approaching XKCD quote

Oh look, there it is :)

https://xkcd.com/908/

Ah, um, let's see. Yup... Fortnite CEO is still mad at Google for revealing security hole early

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Angel

Re: I learned something

Well now, some rather surprising responses.

However most miss the mark because I don't have a smart phone at all - there wouldn't be much point, as (until a couple of years ago) it would have spent most of its time in a security official's locked box. Many places I've worked have an absolute prohibition on cameras.

Having fat very dry fingers doesn't help - that's when they are not fat oil-covered ones.

This will all change soon, but I've got so used to a very basic dumb phone, I doubt I'll change it.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

I learned something

Google take 30%. That is some serious gouging.

I don't use android, but if I was, I'd now be trying to avoid their app store like the plague.

Voting machine maker vows to step up security, Fortnite bribes players to do 2FA – and more

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Ancient PLCs

These chug along for far more than 20 years! I know of several that are still running 24/7 and are getting on for 30, and last year I repaired an ancient TTL forerunner that's something like 40 - the I/O modules are 2x10x8... inches!

Fortunately none of these have any network access (that I know of)

Intel rips up microcode security fix license that banned benchmarking

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Facepalm

Re: Now we can understand

I always though shared FPUs was a daft idea, especially for things like ray-tracing, or sound synthessis, both of which massively use FP calculations.

Microsoft Visual Studio C++ Runtime installers were built to fail

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Re: Failure is not an option

Good one!

I may steal this :)

Butcher by name, Butcher by nature? Capita finds new CFO

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Hmmm

So from one industry not noted for arriving on time, to another not noted for finishing on time.

What could possibly go wrong?

Texas ISP slams music biz for trying to turn it into a 'copyright cop'

Will Godfrey Silver badge
FAIL

Arrogance

The music industry have brought this on themselves. They should have thought about it 20 years ago when the demand first materialised. Instead they tried to stifle it, and have failed at every step of the way since, all the time further alienating the listeners. Had they worked out a system for on-line sales at a reasonable price they would have annihilated the organised infringers, as (contrary to their statements) the majority of listeners like to stay within the law.

Use Debian? Want Intel's latest CPU patch? Small print sparks big problem

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Coat

.. and another thing

Whenever I see "reaching out" my subconscious interprets it as "retching"

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

Nasty

I'm not surprised debian balked. That's out and out censorship :(

I was surprised the others accepted it... at first, but then again not so much.

US tech circles wagons as India reviews data protection proposals

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Interesting

Yes, there's a risk this will be abused, but on the other hand all this info already is being extensively abused - it just happens to be by one country.

'Oh sh..' – the moment an infosec bod realized he was tracking a cop car's movements by its leaky cellular gateway

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Black Helicopters

Oops

Although plod might not have known about this I expect the spooks did, and are probably not very happy it's gone public.

Now you can tell someone to literally go f--k themselves over the internet: Remote-control mock-cock patent dies

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

The mind boggles

See title

Home Office seeks Brexit tech boss – but doesn't splash the cash

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Mushroom

Unbelievable

Are they deliberately trying to fail as massively, and destructively as possible?

Distro inferno: Debian's still rocking at 25

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And another one

Three of my machines moved to devuan, just one left to go.

Rimini Street slapped with ban in Oracle copyright dispute

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Coat

Irreperable damage to Oracle's Rep

Is that actually possible?

Drama as boffins claim to reach the Holy Grail of superconductivity

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

Undecided

After (admittedly briefly) looking at this, I can't decide whether this most resembles rocking horse poo or unicorn farts.

P.S. do they have unicorns in India?

Google risks mega-fine in EU over location 'stalking'

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Happy

Interesting times

I predict a huge rise in popcorn futures

EU wants one phone plug to rule them all. But we've got a better idea.

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Angel

I must be doing something wrong

I don't seem to have any problems with the USB cables and devices in either my home or place of work.

Phased out: IT architect plugs hole in clean-freak admin's wiring design

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Re: Not just failed artists

Bean counters! Cheaper to bulk buy all the same.

I once came across a case where it was all a slightly mottled fudge colour. When I told my then boss he laughed and said it was the natural colour of the plastic - to this day I'm not sure whether or not he was pulling my leg.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: I know Fuck but I call Bollocks.

Whatever you do, don't hold back...

However...

I don't know whether this is completely true, embellished, or a total fabrication, but I've lost count of the times I've heard people say "but that's impossible" or "nobody would do that" - expressions that Murphy up there is carefully listening out for.

Also, I can easily believe a UPS could destroy itself. Very high power DC systems (which the UPS is internally) are notorious for self destruction. One small design error, or unexpected circumstance can start an arc that simply won't extinguish until there is nothing left to destroy.

P.S.

I didn't downvote you.

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: Huh?

I've worked with three phase systems for a {cough} few years. I will always fit mechanically linked breakers to anything that can draw a significant current. There are some 'interesting' runaway situations that can occur otherwise - mostly based on "but nobody would do that", such as: "Well the phases are nicely balanced so there's negligible total neutral current so we can run a thinner (cheaper) line".

I've seen that, and the result when a printing press contactor lost one phase - smoke coming from a long line of ducting, and lots of (expensive) single phase kit going pop.

NHS Digital to fling half a billion quid at new GP procurement framework

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Facepalm

Obligatory

XKCD

Congresscritters want answers on Tillerson's rm -rf /opt/gov/infosec

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Re: We all know the US doesn't need cyber-security...

It's not that. It's just there's nothing left worth stealing.

Devon County Council techies: WE KNOW IT WASN'T YOU!

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FAIL

O really?

Do they seriously think anyone with more than two communicating neurons will believe this?

P.S. I just corrected a typo in 'preview' before posting.

Can we talk about the little backdoors in data center servers, please?

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Talk about unintended consquences!

And all in the name of convenience. Maybe it's time to consider using totally dumb hardware, and absolutely no closed software...

Oh look, a flying pig.

Intel: Yeah, yeah, 10nm. It's on the todo list. Now, let's talk about AI...

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Re: I Wish Them Both Well

@ Phil

Have one of these ->

That was good :)

Emma's Diary fined £140k for flogging data on over a million new mums to Labour Party

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Unhappy

Talk about crawling out of the woodwork

... in just about every possible sense of the expression.

Revealed: El Reg blew lid off Meltdown CPU bug before Intel told US govt – and how bitter tech rivals teamed up

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Angel

and?

How many time do people need to rediscover that when there's a serious issue cooperation works best for everybody.

UK.gov to tech industry: Hands up who can help cut teachers' admin

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Unhappy

Tech is not the problem

Politicians are,

Management are,

Teachers are,

Parents are,

Society is,

The kids? They just the confused recipients of all the crap. Sadly, I don't foresee any of that improving in my lifetime.