* Posts by garetht t

98 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jun 2009

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What a terrible result from this year's Super Bowl. Can you believe it? Awful. Yes, we're talking about the tech ads

garetht t

Re: "being FEMALE is some kind of HANDICAP"

>"women tend to show more compassion than men"

Citation needed before you pull statements like this out of your ass.

"In short, compassion is natural and no gender differences have emerged across these studies."

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_women_more_compassionate_than_men

Want some of that sweet government contract money? Obama's CIO gives tips to land deals with Uncle Sam

garetht t

Employee Burnout

You know, I don't want my security partner to be staffed with tired, stressed, and over-worked employees.

I'd like my security needs handled by employees who had a nice rest, safe in the knowledge that their plonker boss isn't going to expect them to answer a phone call Sunday evening in order to make a point.

No, eight characters, some capital letters and numbers is not a good password policy

garetht t

Over Your Head

As a sysadmin you don't need to make users care. Users should be following the policy, and the policy should have the backing of senior management. Anything else is doomed to failure.

This isn't my opinion, it's the advice of SANS and ISC2.

Samsung Galaxy Watch: A tough and classy activity tracker

garetht t

Are you sure?

"Not that speed is a particular bottleneck: the main frustration with smartwatches [...] is slow activity startups"

Speed is not a problem, it's the damn slowness!

VMs: Imperfect answers to imperfect problems, but they're all we have

garetht t

Re: Tebibyte

>Never ever seen it actually used in the wild though.

I just did - some guy on a forum said "I have just learnt a new word - Tebibyte"

H-1B visa hopefuls, green card holders are feeling the wrath of 'America first' Trump

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Re: i am wondering about unintended consequences

>In America the size of the country allows everybody to find somebody conveniently distant from them to look down upon if they desire.

As opposed to the comparatively tiny UK, where Northerners, Southerners, the Welsh, the Scots, and bless em, lil Norn and Southern Ireland all live in a warm ambrosia of blissful harmony.

Size, as they say, has nothing to do with it. Put three people on a desert island and two of them will club the other to death for chewing too loud. Then the remaining two will fuck each other to death.

Stripe in Bitcoin hype flight while fans blindly gobble up crypto-cash

garetht t

Make up your own job title

"said Paul Brody, EY global innovation blockchain leader"

How can anyone read that without throwing up in their mouth a little?

Fake-news-monetizing machine Facebook lectures hacks on how not to write fake news that made it millions

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Dench

"They probably preaching to the choir."

She seems pretty "street" for someone from the The Poynter Institute.

VPN logs helped unmask alleged 'net stalker, say feds

garetht t

Re: She deserved it (really?)

Strawman:

OP never said "She deserved it" so the rest of your argument is invalid.

Azure fell over for 7 hours in Europe because someone accidentally set off the fire extinguishers

garetht t

Re: From the looks of it, cogs were falling off all over the place

"the Cloud is marvelous, never fails you and you can always access your data."

That's a strawman - you're saying things so that you can knock it down.

The cloud doesn't guarantee anything except possible failure, and you are massively encouraged to architect your systems against failure. High-availability systems across availability zones, backup systems in different geographic regions.

The people highest on their horse on this page against the cloud are the people who know the least. How infuriating!

garetht t

"Dog bites man!"

garetht t

Re: The insane thing about it is...

"things you could do at home with an extremely modest server from 20 years ago"

Such as:

Redundant power

Redundant A/C

Redundant Internet connections

Low latency transport links to backbone

Physical Security

Audited and certified systems and procedures

Sneering at the cloud is really easy until you actually think about it.

Nobel Prize for boffins who figured out why you feel like crap after long-haul flights

garetht t

Re: It's a start, but how to mitigate the effects? Bright lights, drugs etc

So Bez from the Happy Mondays never gets jetlag?

Congress battles Silicon Valley over upcoming US sex trafficking law

garetht t
Coat

Re: Targeting

>Is there no happy medium ?

Mystic Meg always seemed quite chipper.

Comp sci world shock: Bonn boffin proposes P≠NP proof, preps for prestige, plump prize

garetht t

I can has google

Here's the full text of the example, which answers your question:

Suppose that you are organizing housing accommodations for a group of four hundred university students. Space is limited and only one hundred of the students will receive places in the dormitory. To complicate matters, the Dean has provided you with a list of pairs of incompatible students, and requested that no pair from this list appear in your final choice. This is an example of what computer scientists call an NP-problem, since it is easy to check if a given choice of one hundred students proposed by a coworker is satisfactory (i.e., no pair taken from your coworker's list also appears on the list from the Dean's office), however the task of generating such a list from scratch seems to be so hard as to be completely impractical. Indeed, the total number of ways of choosing one hundred students from the four hundred applicants is greater than the number of atoms in the known universe! Thus no future civilization could ever hope to build a supercomputer capable of solving the problem by brute force; that is, by checking every possible combination of 100 students. However, this apparent difficulty may only reflect the lack of ingenuity of your programmer. In fact, one of the outstanding problems in computer science is determining whether questions exist whose answer can be quickly checked, but which require an impossibly long time to solve by any direct procedure. Problems like the one listed above certainly seem to be of this kind, but so far no one has managed to prove that any of them really are so hard as they appear, i.e., that there really is no feasible way to generate an answer with the help of a computer. Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin formulated the P (i.e., easy to find) versus NP (i.e., easy to check) problem independently in 1971.

Microsoft's Surface Pro 2017, unhinged: Luxury fondleslab that's good...

garetht t

Skillz

I'm impressed you were able to type & post that after closing the tab!

Hot news! Combustible Galaxy Note 7 to return as 'Galaxy Note FE'

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Re: Facile Emanations

I counted 7 sentences of information, and 2 sentences of jokes about the initials FE. Manic exaggeration much?

An *entire comment* built around a false and hyperbolic complaint, containing no fact *whatsoever*?

Guy ... it's a little pathetic. It's not as if you need to comment: 'twere better to have commented *nothing*.

Cloud eye for the sysadmin guy: Get tooled up proper, like

garetht t

IPS/IDS

What IPS/IDSes would you recommend in AWS? I've been struggling to find one :/

garetht t

cloud guru

I'm in the same boat as the author - trying to get up to speed following an on-high mandate to move systems up into the cloud.

I've found the "cloud guru" courses to be very good. I paid $69 for a pack of three courses covering Amazon's associate exams.

I've no affiliation with them at all, just a satisfied customer (and it's nice to hear training from an aussie for once!)

Forgetful ZX Spectrum reboot firm loses control of its web domains

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quote

""We also emailed the address given on the Bum Fun Gaming page (it’s never a dull day at Vulture Central)"

I laughed out loud. ty

Dell offers crunch-in-a-box set of Edge teeth to Internet of Things things

garetht t

Headline!

It looks like two headlines crashed into each other, only one of the headlines was pregnant so they had to deliver the baby headline at the scene and it came out all jumbled up :(

FCC slams Comcast with largest-ever fine for a cable company

garetht t

One of these things..

>In its last quarter, the company reported net income of $2bn, meaning the stern

>action by government regulators cost it nearly three hours of profits.

Income is the same as profits now?

Transmission hijacked to broadcast Mac malware

garetht t

Not true

This story is patently not true, as Macs don't get malware.

Veeam: You know what's not a disaster? Our software mega-update

garetht t

Product Announcment Chat

Hilariously they enabled anonymous chat at their live stream event.

Techies didn't really appreciate the marketing bumpf...

There's an archive here: https://jsfiddle.net/6p3dcgp1/ but my favourites were:

Paul 08-23 07:19 Having this anonymous chat is both the best and worst idea I've ever seen.

Jordan 08-23 07:20 I don't think they created a presentation meant for their target audience. Quickly losing my attention and wasting my time. I am here for a product announcement; not a shareholders' meeting.

Chris in KY 08-23 07:20 I really need to take a dump.. how much longer?

Hillary Clinton's 08-23 07:22 the FBI is looking for me. they won't find me here!

SJTechy SJTechy 08-23 07:23 Can Veeam recover from this disaster???

Died of Boredom Died of Boredom 08-23 07:24 kill me now

IronySoap IronySoap 08-23 07:25 Can he restore Harambe?

PaxJustice PaxJustice 08-23 07:23 Thank you for wasting my time... I'm out...

This is what it looks like when your website is hit by nasty ransomware

garetht t

Image link shirley?

Probably not best to link directly to a website which is known to have been hacked.

Whether the server was hacked or files transferred from a naughty Windows PC, it seems unwise to be sending el Reg's innocent eyeballs to a site which could well spring malware to the undeserving.

Which tech stocks are suffering and – crucially – why?

garetht t

Re: Atlassian?

eh? Atlassian make something just as much as Etsy make something. They both produce software - one for developers & one for jumble sales. Different markets, but I'd challenge you to go out and buy me 2 gallons of Atlassian products vs Etsy products.

What sounds like a silly yoga-fitness-dance craze, and lost $325m in value in 8 years? Zimbra

garetht t

>(Never really touched the other parts of it). But if the core part of your product is pants

If you never touched the other parts, how are you deeming it pants? The client is not the core part, silly. It's a bleedin email server. Access the mail how you like - IMAP, POP or Outlook.

The Honor's a defo gamechanger, but good luck buying one

garetht t

Re: "it's got a USP: a clever sensor that genuinely helps with ease of use"

Presumably Andrew had a description of the sensor that was too large to fit in the margin.

Microsoft pushes us closer to the Edge: Test new web browser now in free Windows 10 VMs

garetht t

Re: Stepped back

https://www.google.com/search?q=uv+dv&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

nope - still no idea what on earth you're on about. Perhaps you should link a CS for the BS TLAs?

Major web template flaw lets miscreants break out of sandboxes

garetht t

Available

Details available here: http://blog.portswigger.net/

Super Cali goes ballistic – Uber says it's bogus (even though its contract is something quite atrocious)

garetht t

Re: Kudos

I very much believe it's an 'omage, rather than a rip-off

Bethesda all out for 'Fallout 4', fallout for global productivity foretold in countdown

garetht t

Fallout 4 setting confirmed

This is only a guess, but it's definitely going to be set in the post apocalyptic world of the Kettering service station off the A14. A separate DLC will be sold for the nearby Little Chef.

THREE MILLION Moonpig accounts exposed by flaw

garetht t

Re: Basic Good Manners

There is a notice posted. Not on the front page, but on the Contact Us page at https://photobox-mpusa.custhelp.com/app/ask.

One might also say "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”

Marriott fined $600k for deliberate JAMMING of guests' Wi-Fi hotspots

garetht t

Re: Harvey's law

I'm not sure a hotel should be expected to allow nntp access, considering it's unsavoury usages far outweigh it's legally safe usages.

Blockbuster book lays out the first 20 years of the Smartphone Wars

garetht t

Apologies for not arguing at all

Fantastic and thoroughly interesting review - thank you.

Lazy sysadmins rooted in looming Mozilla cert wipeout

garetht t

Lazy journos root sysadmins

"Admins could run the command '$ openssl s_client -showcerts -connect kuix.de:443' to assess if their infrastructure depended on the affected certificates"

The command given is just an example. Running that command will show you what certs kuix.de:443 is using, not your own site.

The original article phrases it better: "For example, you could try to use a command like this[...]"

It's a fine distinction, but I would hold el reg to higher techy standards than a broadsheet rag.

Nanu nanu! Mork calling Orson on VoIP over 2G

garetht t

Re: Proprietary compression technology

"Why would you spend money developing a proprietary compression technology that carries voice in 11 kbps when g.729 runs at 8kbps[...]"

Because g.729 is not a royalty-free algorithm. It incurs licensing costs.

Amazon Zocalo rocks Box, socks DropBox, clocks Google Docs

garetht t

Impressive job on the headline there!

Cabbies paralyze London in Uber rebellion

garetht t

Nice Traffic System You've Got Here...

..It'd be a shame if anything *happened* to it.

So black cabbies want us to only use them, and not Uber. And to show this they block up traffic for a day, causing frustration and hatred against black cabs. Not only does this seem like a bully move, stubborn in the face of change, but thanks to the Streisand Effect, they've ensured a *fantastic* amount of free publicity for Uber.

If the black cabs are blocking traffic and causing me aggravation because they hate Uber, then.. *counts on fingers, stares into distance* ... then.. I.. love Uber!

600 school sysadmins sacked in New South Wales

garetht t

Re: That sounds like American politics...

Just to provide the counter point, while books are lovely and tend not to crash, and without arguing the merits of it, you are more likely to find job adverts asking for basic computer skills rather than basic book reading skills.

VMware reveals plan for pay-as-you-go hybrid cloud and hybrid NSX

garetht t

Well if you're not going to

Here's the link: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/25ys3b/we_are_the_hybrid_cloud_team_at_vmware_and_are/

Cheat Win XP death: Your handy guide to keeping snubbed operating system ticking over

garetht t

Re: Dear author

Wow! Must be an amazing view from that high-horse!

Aw, SNAP. It's too late, you've already PAID for your storage array

garetht t

No shiller, but all filler.

Play this game with the article - after every sentence, add the words "No shit!"

"One way is to look for independent reviews of the product by a trusted reviewer. No shit!"

"For example, product reviewers paid by a media outlet should be more independent than ones paid by the product's vendor. No shit!"

"It is, to be frank, inconceivable that a vendor would pay for a product review and publish the thing if it was negative[.] No shit!"

"A review of a product's claimed specifications using supplier-provided information is not enough on its own to justify a purchase. No shit!"

"All such reviews or product comparisons should be discounted unless there are independent reviews of the product. No shit!"

I hope I have, like the article, or a small asian child whittling at twenty-foot high bamboo, made my simple point at quite unjustifiable length.

Irish plod biro outrage invites Limerick Limerick challenge

garetht t

Sorry

There once was a judge named O'Kelly,

Who couldn't placate his big belly;

He ate all the things,

Pencils, police pens and pins,

and washed it all down with mint jelly.

Torched £30 server switch costs phone firm millions in lost sales

garetht t

Citation needed

"And it wasn’t even the server that failed, Delran said, just a £30 switch on the server that burnt out as a result of the fire."

That doesn't sound dodgy to anyone else? A server with a built-in switch? A massively important server that they couldn't simply move the drives, and/or functions to another server? A cheap switch ("on the server"?!?!) that they couldn't replace?

I'd love el Reg to get in touch with Michel Delran & press him for more details of this, pardon my french, bullhonkey.

One day your data centre will get you to the pub on time

garetht t

Just my two pence

First of all, kudos to anyone who made it through the article. My eyes kept skittering off the page from things like the HR Manager asking "Can you explain why I’m paying so much for my IT?” (because that ever happens in real life) to tortuous quotes such as:

"The key requirement for a service-centric approach to delivering IT is to define the services required by the various business groups and functions and their value to these groups and functions,” [...] “These services should then be delivered to the associated users – business application owners and groups, end-users and consumers, or other IT staff.”

I see there are words written there, but I struggle to find meaning in them. 'Service-centric' IT, by all accounts, means delivering IT to users. This supposedly contrasts with 'Kitten-centric' IT which revolves around throwing mewling cats at users until they go away? Or is all IT about delivering IT to users?

"IT has to become a service-centric culture." IT has always been this. In The Beginning, God didn't create an email server - first of all there were users wondering how they could send amusing powerpoints to each other, then came the email server. IT by definition is a service. There's little point hosting a website if nobody's intended to view the bloody thing.

Beyond stating that our mythical HR head should, should she ever suffer a severe head trauma rendering her unable to ever feel joy, be able to pull up an ever-dynamic list of why she is "paying so much for IT", I've no idea what the point of this article is. Rambling and at every turn using a Mayfair word where an Old Kent Road one would do, it feels like something autogenerated by a robot, or a someone wishing to merely fulfill a quota.

"A truly sophisticated cloud architecture extends to the team, helping them to understand how they benefit each other in the delivery of IT services."

By the end of the article "the team" has long since departed for the pub, leaving the manager to continue his badly-covered-up affair with the head of HR.

AVG: That World of Warcraft hack? RIDDLED with malware

garetht t

Re: Should simply say

So - you haven't played it in three years, yet you agree the game is still bad?

You've missed too many changes to espouse on it's merits.

Sanitary towel firm's 'CEO' sets traumatised man straight

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Re: @Dave 126

Also, weasel words like "can help hide the appearance of wrinkles."

ie. In a study of 10000 women, one of them thought her wrinkles looked better. So it *can* do it!

My comments are proven to reduce weightloss

when combined with an active lifestyle and a healthy diet.

UKNova drops torrents after threats from FACT

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Devastating

As an expat living in the states I'm not ashamed to say that when I read the site notice on Sunday I cried.

DDoS crooks: Do you want us to blitz those phone lines too?

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Register DoS

At that point a border controller should be saying "erm... 10 failed registrations in a minute? Ok, you're getting blocked for an hour."

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