Posts by Argus Tuft
96 posts • joined Thursday 24th January 2008 02:14 GMT
good for the soul..
Everytime I read about how the corporates gleefully rob us blind 'legally' - I feel a little less conflicted about downloading an (ahem) 'Linux Distro' from Bittorrent.....
Posted in Telstra shed fried in fire
not just pussys
they also have COW's (Cell on Wheels) - a mobile cell station for additional mobile capacity at events, or to cover for disasters/damage like this.
what surprised me
was the number of stairs up to the 'red room'. Looking at DotCom i'd have expected an escalator...
Why worry?
Some mad b*st*rd with a nuke is going to blow us all to hell before any of this matters anyway.....
so i'm using my share while it lasts :)
what's this about 'old files'?
Isn't the point to show that the data is going to be kept for years, so will all be 'old files' tucked away on dusty servers in compliance with government orders - just a big juicy target...
And of course beyond the hacking aspect, they surely won't be subject to the same sort of 'browsing' that existing govt databases suffer - no nosy official is ever going to look up the browsing habits of their daughter's new boyfriend are they.....
Posted in GM to slash vast outsourced IT empire
loop counter ?
step 1. Save money on IT by outsourcing (& pocket management bonus)
step 2. Save money on IT by bringing back inhouse (& pocket management bonus)
step 3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 until costs approach zero. (& buy bigger yacht)
never thought i'd say this,
but don't blame Apple.
It's those nasty types at the NSA inserting their own little bit of 'monitoring' code into every download....
Re: Focus ?
"A military telescope is meant to look down at Earth
Says who?"
indeed - maybe they are up there to keep watch for the approaching Vogons?
ahhh memories...
6146B's happily warming the room- - back when there was still some magic in talking to someone on the other side of the world, and international phone calls upped your mortgage...
then came computers... sigh....
This is how science works..
"perfect scientific integrity in opening their measurement to broad scrutiny, and inviting independent measurements," he said. "This is how science works."
--- unless it's about Global Warming ofcourse....
Posted in Sweden rolls out invisible infrared tank
battlefield hacking
according to the swedish article linked by Jake Rialto 1;
"In order to be able to be controlled as pixels in a TV, they sit together in an electronic network, where each one has its own IP number."
so now you just need to hack the tanks' LAN and turn it bright fluro pink :)
why don't the Chinese
simply employ a couple of their billions of peasants to build a new mountain just inside the border that's just a little bit higher? and stick a nyah-nyah flag on top... [penguin because they like snow]
re: The scanner are...
"i wants one though to play with, link it to the beer fridge to deny access to the wife & kids"
that can't work - how's she going to fetch you a fresh one while you're safely ensconced in front of the telly?
re: not just on missions
The aussie SAS crash (1996) was due to two Blackhawks clipping during a live-fire night training exercise. Terrible tragedy with 18 fatalities, but not mechanical failure. Survivng crew actually credited the construction of the blackhawk for getting out of the crash alive.
Posted in BBC engineers see PLT knocking out DAB
how long...
before Google cars start hoovering up the leaky data?
sad
so if i bash a granny over the head with an iron bar that's OK and I can refuse to testify, but if I photocopy a page out of a book I'm such a threat that this right must be forgone??
sick sick world we're creating I'm afraid..... corporate profits must be protected. people can just be bred to meet demand...
Posted in Council loses USB of patient records
@ Matt Hawkins
the 'lock down all ports' comments were being made in a generic fashion relating to all users. That is simply not realistic. Even councils do need to pass data to people in unencrypted formats - tender documents to vendors etc.
Yes this person should NOT have copied the data. No question. The solution though is not a knee-jerk 'lock down all ports on all machines for everyone' - but to look at why they worked around what was in place and make the process fit in a way that they can use (and is simpler to follow than to avoid).
eg app that recognises the confidentiality level of the data and will only write it to appropriate media: unrestricted to clear usb, confidential to encrypted, secret blocked... - but that is dependant on useable rating system beyond the control of the user (or everything becomes unrestricted...).
Sooo many of us loose sight of the fact that ultimately IT systems are not an end in themselves - they are only there to support the business process. The modern version of paper shufflers who see their forms as being more important than the process that the forms are meant to assist..
If the systems are not supporting that business process (rather than being a process themselves) then they need work.
Posted in Council loses USB of patient records
@ It's the process, stupid, not the policy.
spot on. Make it simple and it will be part of the work flow. Make it complex (for the basic user) and it won't.
Simple for an IT worker is NOT simple for a middle aged clerk who uses PC's simply because they have to - not as a way of life... "just mount in Truecrypt" would leave 80% of users glassy eyed...
So many posts here say "just lock down the USB ports". Those posters need to get out of their ivory data centres and into the real world where people do actually need to give data to others (eg customers) on unencrypted USB's.
If the average user isn't doing what we them to -- it is OUR fault - not theirs, because OUR systems don't fit the real world work flow.
omg
does this mean the russian mafia could spend thousands to extract the spreadsheet of my shopping expenses for the last month...?
my life is sooo boring I'd welcome the attention.
(pps - hydrofluoric acid - just don't get it on you...)
Posted in Texting teenager plunges to his death
couple of facts
The building regs here are that if there is more than a 1m drop off the edge of a deck etc, you need a barrier 1m high
That's fine for a verandah, but when it's 8 stories in the air (like this was), then a 1m barrier is too low. Some carparks have wire mesh above the concrete car-barriers to prevent this sort of accident (which is what it was) - but not many.
The ridiculous part is the barriers around any sort of pool have to be 1.2m high, but a safety barrier to stop a 100m drop is only 1m...
@ Dagg
gotta correct that one - everyone knows it's New Zealanders who like wooly overcoats.
Aussies are the ones who suck at cricket.
reminds me of..
Romanes Eunt Domus
now write it out 100 times....
the only reason you lot like warm beer
is to stop it freezing in winter...
[wot - no sunny beach icon? Have to make do with Paris as she knows all about schooners]
the only reason you lot like warm beer
is to stop it freezing in winter...
[wot - no beach icon?]
sounds like a job for....
Trunk Monkey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9odyz844flw
but what happens
if the ship reaches 88 mph?
the ones to be chopped
should the "C-level" ones who control the budgets for backup systems, and offshoring. Not the staff who have to work with what they've got.
(said by someone who hates our own IT group with a passion...)
Posted in Ofcom slaps down ham botherer
.. / -- .. ... ... / -.-. .-- (sigh)
.. - / .-- .- ... / -- --- .-. . / -.-. .. ...- .. .-.. .. --.. . -.. /
---... -.--.-
(+ some random letters to get past the bot)
Posted in Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests
Call in Mr Burns
Wasn't there an episode of The Simpsons where Monty Burns blocked out the sun with a giant umbrella?
Just get one of those hanging from hovering airships during daylight hours.
only problem is
most of the men I know who are anything to do with airlines would be safer monitoring the womens queue....
Posted in ASA: You can't say 'f**k'
this f**ckin f**k counter
is completely f**cken f**cked...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJIk01p_x7U
shooting air rifles might be illegal
(at least they are in Oz), but paintball guns.......
Posted in Feds admit storing pervscanner pics
won't someone think of the children
wonder how many tour groups of school kids have gone through that court?
Posted in Saudi Arabia beats UAE to BlackBerry ban
shhhh
Don't let the Aussie Politicians hear - they'll want to block it first....
they're OK in certain spots
BUT - in my area of OZ they've gone totally feral on them, and lovingly set them with a (reportedly) 3kmh tolerance.
Do 103.1 kmh on a 5 lane freeway and you're snapped. As that is about the width of the speedo needle it has breed a generation of drivers who spend more time watching their speedo than looking out of the car.
This becomes frightening when taking my learner-driver teenagers out on the road - and they're concentrating more on what speed they're doing coming up to an intersection than looking out for the fire-engine coming from the crossroad.......
Typical case of a concept taken to ridiculous extremes by zealots and accountants...
Posted in The Register comment guidelines 2010
won't someone think of the children
hmmm - nothing in the rules about posting kiddie pron....
So now I can complain to ACMA and have this URL banned by the Great Aussie Firewall. bwa ha haaa.
nosiy nukes
the put-down on electric subs is interesting.. Canadian, Australian, and Dutch electric subs have repeatedly taken out nuclear attack subs, carriers, anti-sub frigates, etc in exercises - mostly without loss.
And that includes the Walrus class subs.
On the 'listening to communications' - wouldn't it just be easier to station a couple of big floating steel things with lots of guns in clear view just off the main trouble zones?
Posted in Brazilian banker's crypto baffles FBI
re: RIPA = No rights in the UK
maybe that's why your civil service don't encrypt those pesky databases they like to leave on trains.
if they encrypted it and forgot the password they'd be breaking their own laws....
Posted in New Aus PM may dump comms minister
only trouble with an Opt-in filter
is once the infrastructure is in place - it's only a signature on a Act to make it All-in.....
and in another 4 or 8 or whatever years time there'll be a different bunch of monkeys in govt all with another point to make on how to 'save the children'.....
so many lines, so little time...
could decide between;
a) did she enjoy the rogering?,
b) she got well and truly rogered then...
c) another random phrase with 'rogered' inserted in the middle...
(ok so it's Friday.....)
Posted in GCHQ imposes Whitehall iPhone ban
human factors?
we got iPhones for email. Our vunderkinder in corporate IT then set a group-policy that the phone auto-locks after 1 minute, needing you to enter a complex (upper/lower/numeric) password to get past the 'slide to unlock' every time you put the bl00dy thing down.
result - jailbroken iPhones with the security disabled totally........
not sure if you can jailbrake a Blackberry - so maybe that's a consideration?
there's a plan....
'The Portal' makes it sound like a nice single point-of-entry from the big nasty internet thingy into Aus. That'd make it easy to "protect" us by simply putting a filter onto that single 'portal' wouldn't it.....
Apart from the fact that he's a raving moron, there's a pattern appearing in his babbling of trying to create an 'understanding' in the general population that the Great Firewall is a good and simple thing....
Little details like polls taken by the major newspapers showing 99% of the population opposed to it are just issues to be worked through.
only in England
30deg ... "Cruelly Hot".. Hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Posted in Aussie police probe Google
re: the title
this is a follow-on from Senator Conroy's blast at Google.
the only thing that should be probed is Conroy - preferably without lube..
time for new desktop wallpaper..
GOATSE perhaps?
or for our New Zealand brothers
.baa.nz
looking forward to the law suit
when Apple decides iD is too close to iEveryThingElseInTheWorldBelongsToUs
Posted in Apple bins iPhone covers
if iPhones are so tuff
why doesn't the army save a few quid and replace ballistic vests with a couple of iPhones - one in each pocket of the uniform should do..
that could double as a replacement for whatever the latest cockup of a comms system is as well...
(thermonuclear war? - we've got an app for that)
