Posts by john oates
31 posts • joined Wednesday 17th October 2007 14:47 GMT
Posted in A Farewell to Oates: Adios, El Reg
cheers
Thanks John, and everyone else.
Funnily enough 'herding cats' was exactly how the job was described to me by Drew...
Re: Clarrification
Hello,
I meant that the continuing attempts to ban substances mean developers will simply create different ones. The changes to the law push this development. If meph was still legal then that's what people would be buying/selling.
We might be interested in a longer article - but we can only pay in tomato feed or bath salts...
cheers
john
Re: @Colin Miller
Hello,
If it as an actual breach which we discover then we give the company reasonable time to fix it before reporting it.
In this case the breach was reported yesterday so I contacted UK PRs on the assumption that they'd have a statement from the US ready to send.
cheers
Posted in North Korea blamed for bank hack
Re: one-to-many?
Hello,
The attack was launched from one IP address - it then triggered the network to start the DDOS attack.
cheers
Re: You're SURE they didn't mean April 2011?
I did phone and check, honest. My first thought was that it was a typo...
cheers
Posted in Linux wins the SCO vs Novell case
Re: Excuse me...
Hello,
I wasn't trying to be snarky, just a bit sarky, and i'm not aware of any row....
cheers
john
Re: Pardon
Hello,
We were worried about condensation, but aren't now. And some form of heating device might be involved to try and keep a constant temperature...
Lester will reveal all later.
cheers
john
question
The question is something like - are you carrying pornography?
I failed to find a copy of the new incoming passenger card online - but the old version includes a list of items - you must tick if you are carrying them. These include wooden items. medicines, explosives, firearms, food etc. and now pron too...
If you answer yes to any of these you're expected to report to customs. Aussie customs are very thorough and check most food items. they also confiscate some strange stuff - like electric fly swatters....
Re: How man colleges? 90 or 142?
Figures are from the Border Agency. The total is 142 but that includes some wrongly included schools - which should never have been on the list in the first place.
cheers
john
Posted in Scott McNealy signs off in style
Re: Where is TPM ?
Hi,
Sorry to let you down - Tim is based in New York so he's probably still abed...he might have some wise words to share later though...
Re: Pet scams?
Pretty much. They typically get you interested in a fluffy puppy, then tell you they need $XXX for immunisations, vets certificates etc...
Posted in Kidnap fears kybosh charity car rally
value for money
hi Ian,
Secondhand cars in most African countries rarely fall much below that in price. This is partly due to scarcity and partly politics. Gambia has a 100 per cent import duty on cars - but the rally organisers managed to do a deal to avoid this.
At the border we had a couple of offers from people who dismantle cars and take them over the border piece by piece in order to dodge the tax.
Dealing with the import duties, and other hassles, means that most imports are expensive cars to make the process worthwhile.
have to admit i've failed to get in touch with the buyer to find out what happened.
cheers
john
Posted in Irish ISP downed by DDoS
P2P revenge
I did ask if they thought the attack had anything to do with their attitude to P2Pers and was told they had no evidence of that...
cheers
john
Posted in Nortel confirms fire sale
Ch 11
Sorry if i confused you Anon,
Nortel is seeking protection from bankrupcy in many different countries using many different laws.
These are known generally as Chapter 11, although this is a reference to US law.
cheers
john
Posted in Sage struggles in subdued market
Sage staff
Hello,
This is from the Sage website:
# Global company with over 5.8 million SME customers worldwide
# Over 14,500 employees
# Over 36,000 customer support service calls daily
# Global network of over 30,000 reseller partners and 40,000 accountants
cheers
john
Posted in Satyam rushes into arms of new auditors
from Reg reader Rose Humphrey
Pedantry (you may wish to correct the article) from a chartered accountant:
- Auditors do *not* produce accounts for a company, they merely certify them as being a true and fair representation (or whatever the approved wording is, as it varies from country to country, as well as depending on the size and type of organisation audited) of the company's financial situation, based on the information available to them at date of certification. Since the poor buggers (I mean the people that actually do the donkeywork, not the bigwigs) are inevitably overworked, underpaid (the company being audited hires the auditors and fixes the budget, spot the conflict of interest), hated and lied to by just about everyone they speak with - IT professionals may recognise the symptoms - yes, stuff gets past them, especially as the tests are by necessity only samples.
- Accountants produce the financial reports certified by auditors. They may not be the same people, or even the same firm; this rule is generally applied by the Big whatever's-left-of-them (was 10, which shrank to 8 over my year's postgrad course). 3 now, isn't it?
costs
hello,
They've not set firm prices yet but it should be about £30 a year, we've been told - prices will be set with the official launch in January.
cheers
Posted in Microsoft hires Yahoo! search boss
Qi Lu or Lu Qi
That comment is certainly not pedantic. And I'm ashamed to say I've made this mistake before.
But are you sure Lu is the first name?
I took this from the press release which refers to “Dr. Lu’s deep technical expertise" - maybe he's anglicized the order of his name?
cheers - happy to correct if I'm wrong...
john
Posted in Customs warns of killer consoles
More from HMRC
Hello,
I've just phoned Customs in response to these comments.
First of all they're insisting these are fakes, not just grey imports. But some of them are "grey dragon" machines destined for, the spokesman thought, for the Japanese market - these also had a dubious power supply.
The power supply is dodgy - a British kid was injured by a similar power supply used on a different console bought in Thailand.
As for the cost of reverse engineering such a console - as another commenter said these often come from the same factory using cheaper materials.
cheers
john
Posted in MoD admits data loss bigger than thought
Total records
The MoD have got back to us now - they hold 220m records, not 200m, and they haven't finished counting yet.
They do not know how many people this refers to - one person is likely to have several different records but they have no average figure for records per person.
the audit is due to finish at the end of the month.
Mark
hello,
It was a DMCA request - copyright essentially. I was unable to find the actual takedown notice, or contacts for someone likely to tell me - YouTube use an Irish postal address to receive notices in writing - but...
The video included use of the Olympic rings - the IOC keenly enforces its copyright claim to the rings
see here -
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/02/50275
cheers
top jock
Apologies to anyone offended by Jock in the headline - it wasn't meant to be derogatory - I wouldn't want to upset our Edinburgh office apart from anything else...
missing Bootnote
Apologies Steve - should have credited you and the other people who sent us the email - thank you to all of you...
john
the original offer was $40
the $40 offer, or "about $40" to be precise is at the top of page 11 of the pdf
cheers
john
Posted in ITV fined millions for phone fraud
@ Mike
hello,
Just rang Ofcom - the fine goes to the Treasury.
cheers
john
Re: Error
The 4 per cent figure comes from 26 per cent who had searched for information - out of this group 15 per cent found errors, which gives us the 4 per cent... - the survey makes it clearer.
cheers
john
Posted in Microsoft signs MOU with Siberia
Clarification:
Microsoft got in touch with the following statement: "Microsoft confirm that an MOU was signed between the Irkutsk government and Microsoft to work more closely on ICT projects and training, on 23 Nov. This MOU did not include any agreement on a data centre, either in the region or in Russia or anywhere else."
Posted in Wikipedia not a publisher
Title
Hello,
Reuters says the case involved privacy and defamation.
And describing someone as gay can be libel - just ask Robbie Williams or Jason Donovan.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article331523.ece
Posted in SCO gets offer for Unix biz
Re: Not patents - copyrights, then contracts
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your comment - i've tweaked the story now to make it less wrong. This is why my sister is the lawyer in our family...
cheers
john
Posted in MySpace opens up to developers
Re: Facebook chief executive Chris DeWolfe...
Apologies for that - my fingers moving faster than my brain...it is fixed now
john
Posted in LHC@home gets new home
Re: Eskimo's
Apologies Sir Runcible, that's been fixed now.
cheers
john
