Posts by Buzzword

ren virus.csv virus.exe

Presumably you can send a malicious payload with a trusted extension, combined with a .bat file to rename it. Pwnage done.

Is it just Trump, or Sanders too?

Both the Republicans and the Democrats have an anti-establishment candidate this year. Any mention of "Trumpistan" should be accompanied by "Sandernista".

Much pain, little gain

Why would Facebook bother? They already have a rich and extensive dataset gifted by their users; why would they risk stealing even more data, and data which is of low value at that?

Good news!

This obviously means that all the techies in the Midlands are already gainfully employed on excellent terms, hence why they didn't apply for jobs at SCC.

Deaths

Although nine workers did indeed die during the construction, other sources explain that:

"none of these incidents were related to hazards specific to the project - rock fall, blasting, fire or toxic gases - but rather came from hazards found on any construction site".

Did they actually read the consultation?

From the article:

"it will create a private monopoly hold over public data"

From page 8 of the consultation document:

This Government believes that it is important that the Registers continue to be owned by government, and this proposal would not change that. The data within the Registers is protected by Crown copyright and database right as material created by a public body. Land Registry has delegated authority from the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office in the National Archives to control and licence the database and copyright in its work and register data. This would not change going forward and the copyright of the Registers would remain under the ownership of the Crown.

So no, it won't create a private monopoly over public data.

Quite why they feel the need for such an unpopular move escapes me; but the consultation document contains plenty of safeguards. It certainly doesn't seem any worse than past privatisations, the fears of which ended up largely unfounded.

Cart before horse

How about giving the end user a choice? Google's search results could have a little performance indicator next to each result, to give you an idea of how long the page takes to load. Facebook could do the same: a lightning symbol to indicate fast-loading pages, a snail symbol to indicate slow pages.

Google already shows the words "mobile friendly" to indicate that the page isn't too small to read; something similar could tell us that the page takes forever to load. But who benefits? Follow the money: all those slow advertising scripts probably lead back to Google's revenue stream. Are they really going to bite the hand that feeds?

"for iPad"

If it's Bluetooth, then it should work with any computing device, not just iPads.

Bandwidth has diminishing returns

Getting 0.5Mbps is a transformative experience, as anyone who got broadband in the early 2000s will remember. Moving up to 2Mbps is very nice: you can watch Youtube in better quality, pages load faster, emails download sooner; but it's not a revolution in the way that the first step was.

Stepping up to 10Mbps just isn't that important. Yes you can watch Netflix in HD, but in terms of getting things done it doesn't change much. You can't buy stuff from Amazon any faster; you can't fill in your online tax return any faster. The main complaints come from rural businesses, in particular farmers. They complain that e.g. DEFRA's 200-page image-heavy PDF on how to claim farming subsidies takes too long to download. I can think of a solution that doesn't cost billions.

Getting 99.9% of farmers up to 2Mbps would be money better spent than getting 50% up to 10Mbps or higher.

Duh.

Why on earth did they give security clearance to someone who not only was a Chinese citizen, but served in their military too? What next - former ISIS fighers serving as the President's personal bodyguards?

Remote working didn't work for Yahoo; what makes GDS think they can do it any better?

On second thoughts, where do I sign up? I can probably pretend to work for GDS remotely while doing my day job too.

Might have less time to comment on El Reg though.

Company which benefits from big government contracts...

... is in favour of big government. That's hardly a surprise.

Where to watch it

Non-Sky subscribers can either buy it from Amazon or Blinkbox at £18.99 a season; or stream it from NowTV at £6.99 a month. It's rather a pain having to subscribe to a different service for each show.

Split the company

The obvious solution to the anti-trust issue is to force Google (Alphabet) to sell off ChromeOS and/or Android as separate, stand-alone companies. That has been done before in telecoms, e.g. when Ma Bell was split into the Baby Bells in the early '80s.

In fact they could go further and force Google to split off e.g. its Gmail, Search, Cloud, and all the rest. Not sure how much consumers would really benefit though.

How do they expect to get services without paying for staffing?

“Funds that could be spent on services are instead going to pay costly and avoidable bills for staffing."

Seriously, how?

Bank account number/sort codes

Back in the old paper days, your bank account number and sort code was printed in the corner of every cheque. The cheque system itself was ridiculously insecure: a piece of paper granting easy access to any sume of money in your bank account at any time. People stored cheques at home in ridiculously insecure conditions (e.g. in an unlocked drawer).

Keeping your PIN safe is common sense; but it's hard to do any damage with your bank account and sort code. Jeremy Clarkson proved this in 2008 by publishing his bank details. The worst that happened was someone signed him up for a direct debit to a charity, which he was able to cancel immediately under the Direct Debit Guarantee.

Here's a crazy thought

Train them in-house! Just like big companies used to do.

In fact, if the concept of forward planning still exists, they should have begun training them a years ago to be ready for today's demand. Plenty of people were predicting growing demand for such skills a few years ago.

Mossad do it right

Get them in young, train them up as part of the army, then do your best to keep them onboard for grown-up work. The Israeli example proves it's perfectly feasible.

Outsource!

If we're going to have remote consultations, let's at least use cheaper doctors overseas. For the last couple of decades we've become increasingly accustomed to foreign doctors (at the last count, 37% of BMA-registered doctors were trained overseas). Most patients won't notice the difference if their tele-GP is in India rather than down the road.

Sounds like a reasonable plan to me. It's still a crying shame that they can't back-port the app store to Win7 though. That would have won over developers in a flash.

Flushing meadows

People who visited this might also like to visit the Paris Sewer Museum. It's just a short stroll from the Eiffel Tower, where a discreet ticket booth provides access to the underworld of Parisian sewers. Particularly enjoyed by young children of the poo-fascination age.

Protection racket

Getting an occasional shake-down from the government seems to be a standard cost of doing business in the USA these days.

Disappointed

Every "new" OS these days still uses Linux for most underlying functions. That's fine, and I'm sure it speeds up development immeasurably, but it's not really new.

But at what cost?

In the US, a T-Mobile 14 GB/mo data-only contract costs $65/mo. In the UK, an EE 15 GB/mo data-only contract costs £20 ($30). That's less than half the price.

Unsigned code?

I thought iPhones could only run code that had been signed by Apple after submitting to the AppStore. So downloading new (and presumably unsigned) code from Facebook wouldn't get around that.

Tech geeks?

Carlos Slim Helu is a very rich man, but he's no tech geek. He bribed Mexican politicians to maintain a monopoly on telephone services, then raised calling rates to squeeze every last peso out of his customers (i.e. the entire country). Mexicans should be calling for his head on a plate; but they can't afford the calls.

Internal IT

Ahh, the joys of having to use internal IT resources rather than going out to the market for the best supplier.

Personally I think GDS should be pared back to merely providing an advisory service for IT procurement, rather than doing it all in-house.

The promise of HD Voice

We're still waiting for cross-network HD Voice calls. The standard was defined in 2002-3; in the UK all the networks support it (O2 was behind the pack, but got there in May 2015). Practically all phones support it. Yet there's still no sign of cross-network calling.

Whatever chicanery they're up to with 4G calls, it'll be another decade before it reaches mass-market.

Dalek

But can it climb stairs?

A what?

WTF is an Elasticsearch cluster? Granted, the article isn't aimed at people who don't know; but would it have killed you to add a little introductory paragraph and a link to another article introducing the damn thing?

So are they breaking the law or not?

I thought Google's dealings were, while naughty, not technically illegal. So why should either the UK or French governments get another penny out of them, without actually changing their laws?

What problem does a blockchain solve in government?

This is just an answer looking for a problem. Government IT is beset by all kinds of problems: poorly-specified requirements, ever-changing needs, and of course getting locked in to long-term expensive contracts (HMRC I'm looking at you). Blockchain solves none of these problems.

Products become Services

It's the servicifation servicisation financialisation of the economy. Soon you won't be able to buy a PC - you'll only be able to lease one, with capital and maintenance costs rolled up into a single monthly payment. We're already there with cars, with mobile phones, even with our homes. Why buy when you can rent instead? The mind boggles.

Ahh, Amiga

A decent windowing system which booted up in less than a minute from floppy disk; in seconds from hard disk. It has taken the best part of three decades to get back to that state of affairs, and even then only thanks to SSDs.