* Posts by Eponymous Cowherd

1596 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2007

Manchester man fined £1,440 after neighbours couldn't open windows for stench of dog toffee

Eponymous Cowherd
Devil

Re: Action should be faster

Had a neighbour who did this. He also didn't fix his fence when it started to fall apart, so Fido used to leave his mutt muck in our garden too.

One day I was busy cleaning this up when the mutt appeared through the fence. I called it over and liberally anointed it with the bag of its shit I had in my hand at the time.

The fence was fixed surprisingly quickly after that.

5G can help us spy on West Midlands with AI CCTV, giggles UK.gov

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Fortunately, I suppose,

Since 2010, the government has been continually giving people more incentive to turn to crime via cuts to benefits and services while simultaneously cutting the ability to deal with that crime via cuts to the police, courts and prisons.

Eventually a tipping point will be reached, and it looks like it has.

Basic bigot bait: Build big black broad bots – non-white, female 'droids get all the abuse

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: You can "dehumanize" robots?

Which is all well and dandy if you are a white Caucasian with a native accent and name. You may "treat humans as humans", but there are an awful lot who don't.

UK.gov ploughs cash into creaky police technology

Eponymous Cowherd

Microsoft

Hampshire Constabulary went to Microsoft for their new command and control system.

Calling it an almighty clusterfuck is being kind. The primary task for the system is to assign resources (cops) to tasks (robbers, etc), but its so slow that it's completely unusable.

You want to know which is the best smartphone this season? Tbh, it's tricky to tell 'em apart

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Some peoples wants are my hates

You are probably looking at either a Pixel or a OnePlus

I predict a riot: Amazon UK chief foresees 'civil unrest' for no-deal Brexit

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Alien Parasite

The parasite is an n-dimensional being that simultaneously exists within many hosts at the same time (28 at the last count). It can survive quite well after losing a single host.

That's the thing with sci-fi analogies. Anything is possible.

Eponymous Cowherd

Alien Parasite

The problem, as I see it, is the EU is so deeply entwined with the UK's political, legal, financial and trade infrastructure.

It's like a kind of alien parasite (or symbiote, depending on your point of view) that has become so entwined with its host's nervous, endocrine, digestive, circulatory and skeletal systems that the host cannot live without it.

The operation to remove said parasite is going to be very long, horrendously expensive, extremely dangerous, with an extremely high risk of failure, leaving the host as a basket case or dead. The best possible outcome is that, with many years of painful rehabilitation, the patient might regain some kind of limited independence.

Though the likelihood will be that the only way to save the patient will be to re-insert the parasite/symbiote.

East Midlands network-sniffer wails: Openreach, fix my outage-ridden line

Eponymous Cowherd

I consider myself lucky....

not to have to deal with these tosspots.

Switched to the rather excellent WightFibre.

Surely there must be other, similar, local providers?

Eponymous Cowherd

Nope.

why does he only have a consumer subscription and not a business package? I would expect the latter to come with better service levels and opportunities for problem escalation.

You'd have thought wrong.

Openreach are just as useless with business customers as domestic. Particularly if you aren't using BT as your ISP. They blame everything and anyone (ISP, customer wiring, etc) before they eventually capitulate and fix the problem no matter how many times you tell them the fucking dropwire is down!!!

UK taxman warned it's running out of time to deliver working customs IT system by Brexit

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: I think Boris Johnson said it best

I almost pity Boris Johnson, because the next time he stands for any election at all he's going to find himself permanently surrounded by posters and signs bearing that quote.

That.

And pictures of bulldozers.

UK has rejected over 1,000 skilled IT bod visa applications this year

Eponymous Cowherd

There are salary floors.

These are workers who meet the salary requirements but are unlucky enough to lose the numbers lottery.

HP Ink to compensate punters for bricking third-party ink cartridges

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Canon run a different con

MG7500s do exactly the same with genuine cartridges too.

Genuinely think more ink gets used in cleaning cycles than for printing. Send a document to it and it'll often chunter and grind away for a couple of minutes of ink consuming head cleaning before it even starts on the document.

Crypto-gurus: Which idiots told the FBI that Feds-only backdoors in encryption are possible?

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Straightforward Enough

Pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Had that sort of thing happen so very many times. Over-eager sales twonk promises a customer a "feature" to get the sale. "Can you add the ability to do X?" says the customer, "Sure, no problem" says the sales twonk. "Sold!!" says the customer.

"Oh by the way", says the sales twonk in his briefing to the developers, "I've told them we can do X. That's OK, isn't it? Not to difficult to do?"

"No it fucking isn't OK" I say. "That's next to impossible to deliver for the price you quoted."

"Just fucking do it. OK" says the boss.

So we do it. It doesn't really work properly. The project is massively over budget and late. The customer is pissed off and I'm in the shit with the boss.

But the fucking sales wanker got his fucking commission, so that's OK.

A tiny Ohio village turned itself into a $3m speed-cam trap. Now it has to pay back the fines

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: "raise property taxes slightly"

Oh gawd. I remember the Invisible Man episode (David McCallum).

Feel positively ancient now...........

Star Wars: Big Euro cinema group can't handle demand for tickets to new flick

Eponymous Cowherd
Unhappy

Nothing new

Cineworld's online booking system is, and always has been, a pile of crap.

Apart from being as slow as hell at the best of times, it's cumbersome and unintuitive, particularly when entering offer codes.

Then there's the "handling" charges and the "If you sign up we won't rape your wallet some more" thing.

Cineworld sucks but, unfortunately, the only cinema within realistic travelling time is a Cineworld fleapit, so we are kind of stuck with it.

Blade Runner 2049: Back to the Future – the movies that showed us what's to come

Eponymous Cowherd
Go

Spaceballs

Title says it all.

Home Sec Amber Rudd: Yeah, I don't understand encryption. So what?

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Sauce for the gander

Oh, Boris is an organ all right.

An organ of genital origin and indeterminate sex.

Some days he's a huge cock, others he's an enormous, errm, ladygarden.

Eponymous Cowherd
Facepalm

Re: From the BBC article

That was in reply to Michael Beckerman trying (badly, I might add) to explain that encryption is just maths and that it's piss-easy to roll your own.

I'm guessing that she thinks that if you have "the code" you can control encryption, completely missing the point that "the code" is just an implementation of a mathematical function and can be implemented in a huge number of ways.

And she wonders why us techies sneer at her? Could it be because it is eminently justified?

Everyone loves programming in Python! You disagree? But it's the fastest growing, says Stack Overflow

Eponymous Cowherd
Facepalm

Re: Usefulness

As for "pythonic"? In my book, if the code works, it works. Who cares whether it conforms to the "right" way of doing it.

The poor fuckers who have to maintain your pile of shite code after you've been sacked, that's who!!!

Two million customer records pillaged in IT souk CeX hack attack

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: When a store asks for my mail or phone...

Generally, I just lie.

Quicker, avoids arguments, and has the added bonus of messing up their stats. If everyone did this they'd soon stop the practice.

Similar thing with TV catch up services, who all now demand we create accounts and sing in.

BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5. All signed up with fake email addresses and fake postcodes.

Eponymous Cowherd
Coat

Unprotected Cex

Yeah, I know.

Getting my coat.

We're not the 'world leader' in electric cars, Nissan insists

Eponymous Cowherd

Don't the ASA have better things to do?

If you see an electric car on the road in the UK it is extremely likely to be a Nissan Leaf. Do a search for electric cars on AutoTrader. 767 found, of which the top 3 are:

Nissan: 475

Renault: 127

Tesla: 48

So, compared to the guff that telcos get away with regarding their broadband performance, Nissan aren't being overtly deceptive.

Fewer than half GCSE computing students got a B or higher this year

Eponymous Cowherd
Unhappy

Re: Teaching IT doesn't have enough money

A few years ago I was made redundant. I was kind of pissed off with the rat-race, so looked at teaching as an alternative.

Now I have a CS degree and (at the time) 12 year in industry as a software engineer and sysadmin, so I thought they'd be keen.

Sorry, Mr Cowherd, I was told, Your English qualification aren't good enough (I have a D in English Language). Never mind the fact that all of the projects and theses I did at uni have probably pushed my standard of English way above GCSE. Never mind that English teachers seem incapable of drilling the difference between "their", "there" and "they're" into students. I didn't have a piece of paper so they weren't interested.

Now I see my 15 year old daughter being taught Computing by a complete muppet who thinks an Apache server is a waiter in an ethnic restaurant.

No doubt his English is excellent, though.......

Still working it IT. Currently a dev for an R&D outfit. Enormous fun, so I'm kind of glad I got turned down for teaching.

Nest security camera captures landlord's romp on tenants' bed

Eponymous Cowherd
FAIL

Not impressed

Only 6 minutes?

Pah!

Air, sea drones put through their paces on Solent testing range

Eponymous Cowherd
Unhappy

Re: Great idea!

They might even have some success considering the almighty clusterfuck the hovercraft operator, Hovertravel, have made of their upgrade programme.

They comissioned two new craft from Griffon Hoverwork to replace their two aging, but proven AP1-88 100s. These were brought into service last summer but are so unreliable that the AP1-88s still seem to do most of the work.

The new craft also have a vomit-inducing see-saw motion that is guaranteed to have you feeling queasy in anything above a flat calm.

How the Facebook money funnel is shaping British elections

Eponymous Cowherd
FAIL

If you work in IT you might be a tiny bit better off with a Tory government.

I work in IT.

My wife is a midwife. My daughter is a medical student.

I shall be voting Labour.

US Senate votes to let broadband ISPs sell your browser histories

Eponymous Cowherd
Unhappy

Yes, Phorm....

That was exactly my thought when I read about this. Just like Phorm.

And it's a concern regarding the Snoopers Charter, too.

How long before the UK Gov decides it can monetise all of that data they've trawled?

US tech giants take brave immigration stand that has nothing to do with profit whatsoever

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: That's a long article, let me condense it for you.

That Donald Trump.

He's a bit of a Jeremy.

Jeremy Hunt pockets £14m through sale of course search website

Eponymous Cowherd
Mushroom

To be frank.

I'm rather the black sheep in the family, being a software guy.

Most of my family and close friends work in the medical profession. Doctors, nurses, midwives.

Mrs Cowherd is a midwife, and often comes home near to exhaustion after a 12 hour shift with no breaks because there aren't enough staff, and sometimes comes home near to tears because of the near misses and occasional real shit-meets-fan incidents, again due to lack of staff.

And all the fucktard never-seen-a-patient-in-their-lives hospital management ever do is hold investigations and point the finger of blame at a convenient over-stressed and over tired scapegoat, who then gets "retired", exacerbating the situation that caused the incident in the first place.

Another close relation is a junior doctor, seriously considering jacking it in or pissing off overseas because of the new imposed contracts.

And a close friend who was a highly regarded senior community nurse who quit because of the pressure to see more and more patients every day.

So Jeremy Hunt?

I fucking detest the smug bastard. I honestly can't think of a politician I have ever loathed more.

Trump's cyber-guru Giuliani runs ancient 'easily hackable website'

Eponymous Cowherd

Right man for the job

"there’s literally millions of people in infosec who would be better cyber security advisors than Giuliani"

Putin couldn't have chosen a better person if he'd picked him himself.....

Hang on a minute..........

Jeremy Hunt: Telcos must block teens from sexting each other

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: This country

And what is really scary is the twats who are holding themselves up as the antidote to these self-serving arrogant fuckwits (Trump, Farage, et al) are even bigger self serving arrogant fuckwits.

Google makes it to third base with Home digital assistant

Eponymous Cowherd

Annoying wake words

I have an echo. There are three "wake word" options, "Alexa" (the default), "Amazon" or "Echo".

My preference if for "Echo". "Alexa" isn't too bad, but there is no way I'm calling a corporation name out to wake the device.

Mind you even that is far less cringeworthy than "OK Google" or "Hey Cortana" ( the XBox is still set to use "XBox" as it's wake word.

As to the device itself? Really rather pleased with it. Voice recognition is very good and can recognise the wake word spoken in a normal voice from anywhere in the room, even when it's playing at quite high volume, and recognises almost all requests first time.

Just say "Echo, play some Joy Division" and it just does.

Sound quality is very good considering the size of the unit, with clear treble and fairly punchy bass.

What does let the whole thing down, however, is Amazon Music, which is used to manage your music and playlists for the Echo. The Windows application is shockingly bad. To upload your own music you have to drag files and folders to an "Upload" link, which then displays a "spinner" while it's uploading. That's the only indication you get, no progress information at all. It is slow, clunky, and crashes often.

The Android app is even worse, only permitting a single file to be up/downloaded at a time. It, too, crashes frequently, is unintuitive and hideously clunky in use.

This has always been a theme with Amazon kit. Excellent devices. Shockingly poor supporting software.

Skyscape rebrands to UKCloud following legal challenge by Sky

Eponymous Cowherd
Coat

Meanwhile in Iceland

Skyr

But, but, but, we pronounce it "skeeer"....

Doesn't matter, says Sky. It conflicts with the name of our new channel showing pirate movies, Sky Arrrr.

Time to re-file your patents and trademarks, Britain

Eponymous Cowherd

They are illegals you pillock. They aren't going to present themselves to immigration officers and ask to be let in.

At the moment trucks, cars, etc are searched on the French side of the channel. Catching an illegal on a truck on which he has to stay if he wants to get to the UK is a lot more effective than trying to catch them once they are this side of the channel and merely have to scarper as soon as the truck doors open.

Microsoft cancels Remain speech after death of Labour MP

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Brexit: Who will REALLY benefit?

Indeed, it's rather like watching turkeys voting for Christmas.

Shocking how they are being taken in by an Eton toff and an ex banker by the hollow promises of making Britain great again.

What they don't realise, when the likes of Johnson, Farage, Gove, etc talk about being better off out of the EU they mean how they, themselves will be better off, riding on the backs of the poor sheep they suckered into voting Brexit.

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Everything is your fault

Well, when things go tits-up after a brexit, one consolation will be to point and laugh at the brexit supporters, I suppose.

Eponymous Cowherd

A double helping of steaming bullshit

Both sides have spouted nothing but undiluted bullcrap throughout the campaign. There wasn't a single concrete fact, or even a well presented reasoning.

So I'll be voting remain. It was up to the Leave campaign to convince me that a change would be for the better. They failed.

I suppose one huge benefit of a leave vote would be that that obnoxious little maggot, Farage, would be rendered completely irrelevant and without purpose. Every cloud, and all that.....

UK authorities probe 'drone hitting plane at Heathrow'

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Kudos to the idiot responsible

There certainly are "professional drone operators" in the UK, and the rules they operate under are significantly stricter than for those who fly drones as a hobby.

Eponymous Cowherd
Facepalm

Re: Kudos to the idiot responsible

Really? So some twatspanner behaves like a complete smeghead and everyone else's enjoyment suffers?

By your reasoning, the next time some idiot gets done for drink-driving we can expect a ban on all cars? Or, possibly a ban on all alcohol, 'cos that worked rather well the last time it was tried.....

Line by line, how the US anti-encryption bill will kill our privacy, security

Eponymous Cowherd
FAIL

Re: In the Land of the Free..

"You are aware that encryption algorithms are incapable of finding terrorist material themselves, eh?"

You are aware that encryption algorithms are incapable of finding terrorist material themselves, eh?

Eponymous Cowherd
Facepalm

Re: In the Land of the Free..

It's more absurd than that. The politicotards don't get the fact that encryption is just maths, and it's piss easy to roll your own.

So they want to try to ban something (or, at least, render ineffective) something that anyone can make for themselves. An act that that will also have little effect on the safety of American ( or any other ) citizens.

Yet fail to do anything to control guns, which most people are incapable of making themselves and which kill over 10,000 Americans every year.

Truly crap exhibition dumped on Isle of Wight

Eponymous Cowherd
Joke

Not a very good zoo

All they have is one single dog.

It's a shih tzu

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: Er, what?

What is truly absurd is that these people go to the trouble of actually picking their mutt's shit up before hanging it in a tree.

Legion of demons found in ancient auto medical supply dispensing cabinets

Eponymous Cowherd

Red Tape

A large part of the problem are the regulatory frameworks involved and the grief in getting any medical software approved.

Fairly recently I was involved with upgrading a piece of medical software from Windows XP to Windows 7. The changes were fairly trivial, but getting the software revalidated for FDA approval was long, drawn out, and bloody expensive.

This is why so much medical gear runs on XP. Perversely, the validation and approval process that is actually supposed to ensure the software is safe is now having the reverse effect.

EU ministers to demand more data access after Brussels attacks

Eponymous Cowherd

Known risks

Apparently, yet again, the filth that did this were known to the authorities.

What we need is better monitoring of the current data on the known persons of interest.

Photographer hassled by Port of Tyne for filming a sign on a wall

Eponymous Cowherd

I doubt they are ex police. A retired copper would know that that no offence was being committed.

More likely ex prison service.

Investigatory Powers Bill: Spooks willingly entering the light?

Eponymous Cowherd
Holmes

Re: BBC "Analysis" on the subject...

I did like this quote from Lawrence Jones of UK Fast:

"The bill is doomed from the outset... It's almost as if Theresa May doesn't understand how the internet works," he told BBC Breakfast.

No shit Sherlock!!!!

Three simple steps that even the less technically able can follow to ensure that their internet activity isn't snooped on:

1. Buy a TP-Link router.

2. Install Gargoyle on it.

3. Enable TOR plugin.

That is how trivial it is to ensure that you, your family's, and visitors' use of your broadband isn't being spied on by the Gov't. Frankly, any terrorist, paedophile or crook who can't take those (or the many similar) steps deserves to get caught.......

Investigatory Powers Bill to be rushed into Parliament on Tuesday

Eponymous Cowherd
Black Helicopters

Re: So no change

Employ experts, experts report, they don't say what you want, ignore said experts and do what you were going to do anyway. Same old (s)tory.

Only the lucky ones get ignored. The unlucky ones get sacked. That's probably why most of the criticism has come from outside of the Government.

The really unlucky ones end up, apparently, taking an overdose and cutting their wrists.......

Five Eyes nations must purge terrorists from the web, says Theresa May

Eponymous Cowherd

Just when....

you think politicians can't get any more clueless and technically illiterate, along comes Theresa. Just when you think she can't get any more clueless, she come out with shit like this......

What's it like to work for a genius and Olympic archer who's mates with Richard Branson?

Eponymous Cowherd

Re: I would post

You weren't the guy who tried to tell his Lordship what a steaming pile of manure the "eMailer" was, are you?