* Posts by Scott Marshall

65 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2011

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Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union

Scott Marshall
Trollface

And in breaking news ...

... Android phones and tablets become the officially recommended "smart" devices in the EU.

Oxide reimagines private cloud as... a 2,500-pound blade server?

Scott Marshall
Joke

Yes, looks nice, but can it ...

... run DOOM? Quake? DOTA? Oooh - don't forget Minecraft.

Micros~1? ClippyZilla? BSOD Bob? There can be only one winner. Or maybe two

Scott Marshall

Wats-in a name?

As a "Superman" fan, I rather like the idea of "General BSOD" (after "General Zod") which also hearkens back to the old "General Protection Fault" messages we used to see.

However, given El Reg's predilection to "zilla" suffixes, I think "BSODzilla" is the way to go.

Another consideration is that given Windows' propensity towards crashes, or "bingles", "Binglezilla" also works!

Unfortunately, due to work getting in the way, I never got around to submitting these options.

Google's second stab at preserving both privacy and ad revenue draws fire

Scott Marshall
Trollface

PIGIN / TURTLEDOVE?

Coo blimey!

More like PIGIN-A-POKE and TOTALDOUCHE in my (not so) humble opinion!

Of course, it's a bAD, dAD joke!

After this, will they rename "doubleclick" to "doublecluck"?

Artful prankster creates Google Maps traffic jams by walking a cartful of old phones around Berlin

Scott Marshall
Coat

99 jamming phones ...

... auf ihrem weg zum Horror-zon.

I also proclaim that ...

I would pull 500 phones, and I would pull 500 more

Just to be the man who would pull 1000 phones

to jam the traffic at your door.

Okay, okay! I'm leaving - just let me get my coat.

Christmas in tatters for Nottinghamshire tots after mayor tells them Santa's too busy

Scott Marshall
Childcatcher

The Grinch Scrooged up...

The Night Mayor Before Christmas.

Mayor left red-faced even more than Rudolph is red-nosed?

Icon because of the kiddies.

Oracle finally responds to wage discrimination claims… by suing US Department of Labor

Scott Marshall
Devil

O.R.A.C.L.E

As I'm sure has been previously bandied about:

O. ne

R. ich

A. rsehole

C. alled

L. arry

E. llison

Spending more time and money on lawyers, islands and yachts than actually paying his employees.

The icon because, you know, Big Red.

Rise of the Machines hair-raiser: The day IBM's Dot Matrix turned

Scott Marshall

Re: Let's face it, who amongst us hasn't lost a tie to the...

Nice to see another graduate of the South Pacific Surfing Champs here.

I fondly recall my metalwork lessons; I definitely preferred them (and John Morrow's woodworking) to Hugo Shaw's art classes. (Hugo was good, it's just that art didn't resonate with me at the same level as that of metalwork and woodwork).

Both Trevor and John were sticklers for workplace safety, especially around the lathes.

It was through them that I gained my love (and respect) for metal, wood and their associated tools.

Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP

Scott Marshall
Alien

Going Viral...

Has anyone noticed how similar "influencer" is to "influenza"?

IMHO, many of these so-called "influencers" share many of the characteristics of "influenza", excepts that it's easier to get inoculated or vaccinated against 'flu than these other parasites.

ET because I'm not sure that viruses influencers like the Kardashians and their ilk are entirely human.

Behold the might of dynamic crimefighting duo Captain Met Police and the Microsoft Kid

Scott Marshall
Big Brother

Re: It has to be said

That's only an excremental improvement!

Big Brother because Micro$oft (and others) are watching you from the Clouds.

We (may) now know the real reason for that IBM takeover. A distraction for Red Hat to axe KDE

Scott Marshall
FAIL

Without KDE, RHEL is GNOME to Hell

RHEL/CentOS has for a long-time been my "go to" Linux of choice.

(IMO, Linux Mint is the only half-way decent Debian-based distro for Muggles)

I absolutely loathe GNOME3. Fortunately, apart from CentOS on my notebook, all my Linux servers are non-GUI (ie headless/SSH only).

MATE and Cinnamon are excellent GNOMEish alternatives to GNOME3, however I switched my desktop allegiance to KDE precisely because of the abomination that GNOME3 was when released way-back-when in Fedora.

So, so long as KDE/Qt remains available for CentOS, I couldn't give a rat's arse whether Dead Rat* deprecate KDE in RHEL or not; I absolutely refuse to have the excrement known as GNOME3 shoved down my throat once again.

*Dead Rat because that's what they'll be after they get swallowed by the Sargasso Sea that is Big Blue.

Shiver me timbers: Symantec spots activist investor Starboard side

Scott Marshall

Hey - dung beetles are useful

Calling the corporate/banking slime balls "dung beetles" is malicious slander against dung beetles.

Dung beetles provide a very useful service, breaking up and burying all the crap left behind by various creatures and thus helping cut the food supply and nursery for the maggots of various flies.

The added benefit of the dung beetles burying the crap in the ground is that it enriches the soil making it a better bed for plants.

So, don't call corporate slime balls "dung beetles"; call them for what they really are - "maggots".

Sysadmin shut down server, it went ‘Clunk!’ but the app kept running

Scott Marshall
Black Helicopters

Re: Halted machine on other side of the planet

We're the Sysadmin Police, and we're here to "help" you.

Foot lose: Idiot perv's shoe-mounted upskirt vid camera explodes

Scott Marshall

Re: Is it too early to ask....

... and how long will it take him to "heel"?

It would seem that exploding batteries are his "arch" nemesis.

MSDN unleashes a fresh round of unintentional innuendo bingo

Scott Marshall

Re: I've never seen a door penis.

I thought that it was a splinter, Dick.

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

Scott Marshall
Alert

All hands on deck and bums on seats

"... and will not be here due to vacation or work travel, please inform [the relevant manager]... so we can fill your seat while the guests are in town."

I envisage a new service: BoSaaS (Bums on Seats as a Service).

Hipster horror! Slack has gone TITSUP: Total inability to support user procrastination

Scott Marshall
FAIL

Slack down?

So who's taking up the Slack now?

The Hipster Slacks are totally pantsed now.

Israel cyber chief's 'pants' analogy for password security deemed, well, 'pants'

Scott Marshall

Re: Pants, eh?

Some sort of plug?

Yep, you're right; no "butts" about it!

Scott Marshall
Joke

Re: Pants, eh?

The "back door" appears when you put the pants on backwards!

Reality Winner, liberty loser: NSA leaker faces 63 months in the cooler

Scott Marshall

Surreal

I thought that America was into "surreality" TV shows.

I didn't realise that it was actually "sue Reality".

The DNS was designed for diversity, but site admins aren't buying

Scott Marshall
Devil

Arguments with stupid?

Straight from Chapter 1 of the BOFH manual:

"Duct tape; while it can't cure stupid it sure muffles the sound"

Microsoft Azure Europe embraced the other GDPR: Generally Down, Possibly Recovering

Scott Marshall

Underlying temperature issue

We've asked Microsoft what exactly an "underlying temperature issue" is.

I'll take a punt that an "underlying temperature issue" is actually the clients getting seriously hot-under-the-collar about the outages.

Scott Marshall

Re: More Microsoft CloudFog

They planned for it by creating BaaS - Blame As A Service.

Google cloud VMs given same IP addresses ... and down they went

Scott Marshall

Re: More Google CloudFog

The call-out rate for Cloud-based services is determined by the "risk" multiplicand I call the "Cloud Fuctor".

The more services that one has "in the Cloud", the higher the "Cloud Fuctor" multiplicand, which will always be ≥ 1.0

The risk can be mitigated by distributing across multiple providers.

BOFH: Got that syncing feeling, hm? I've looked at your computer and the Outlook isn't great

Scott Marshall
Devil

Not politics

Those who are best at making money from it, of course, go into politics become CEOs of multinational corporations.....

It's the financially less competent liars that go into politics.

FTFY (you're welcome)

Unbreakable smart lock devastated to discover screwdrivers exist

Scott Marshall
Facepalm

Re: IoT

One must know how to identify IoT security.

Identify IoT Security.

ergo IDIoTS.

... Aaaand that's a fifth Brit Army Watchkeeper drone to crash in Wales

Scott Marshall

Enquiring minds wish to know ...

... whether it’s more “Brexit” or “Breaks it”?

Another chapter from “Thales of the Unexpected” perhaps?

Would you rather health data or finance data in the cloud?

Scott Marshall

Neither ... nor

Nothing should be in the clouds (except water waiting to precipitate).

Neither aeroplanes nor data should reside in clouds for the same reasons. It's hard to see whom else is sharing your space, and any crashes are catastrophic.

Of course, that doesn't stop the marketing-droids from spruiking about "the advantages of clouds", but then again they can't tell the difference between having one's head up one's arse and having one's head in the clouds.

I like to call that similarity the "Fog Bog™"

Microsoft says Windows 10 April update is fit for business rollout

Scott Marshall
Trollface

Probably more like ...

<FTFY>

Redmond’s advice comes after over 250 million users installed the OS and gave it a thrashing. Those efforts produced data that Microsoft said shows a twenty per “reduction in system stability issues” and the same reduction “in operating system and driver stability issues.”

</FTFY>

I'd say that the above edit is probably the real story.

Microsoft tries cutting the Ribbon in Office UI upgrade

Scott Marshall

Libre ...

... Office.

'nuff said.

Cloud-in-a-box? Bo-ring! How about cloud-in-a-tank?

Scott Marshall

Cloud-in-a-box?

... that can operate when offline, a change from the cloud-in-a-box’s usual arrangement, as Thales assumes there may be times during operations when getting online won’t be possible.

One presumes that the part about “getting online won't be possible” is actually a euphemism for the “fog-of-war”.

There you have it folks, in IT circles “military clouds” shall henceforth be known as the “fog-of-war”™.

British egg producers saddened by Google salad emoji update

Scott Marshall
Flame

What's the emoji for ...

"Fu**wits" and "Fu**tards"?

Seriously, all this "political correctness" hearkens back to the good-bad-old-days of KGB and the political commissars (or politruk) that ensured (enforced?) ideological "purity" in the organisations in which they were embedded.

I wish the so-called "politically correct" w*nkers would realise that their so-called "inclusiveness" actually creates and promotes more divisiveness than previously existed.

There's only one good thing for the precious little marshmallows; being shoved on the end of a big prong and roasted over an open fire.

Stop us if you've heard this one: Adobe Flash gets emergency patch for zero-day exploit

Scott Marshall

Re: The internet's screen door?

Not a word per se, but an expression; "the village bike".

Everyone's ridden it.

Word on the street: Rimini takes Oracle copyright battle to US Supremes

Scott Marshall

The Oracle is not talking?

"We’ve asked Oracle for comment but was told not to hold our breath as a statement will not be forthcoming. ®"

So, in other words, no predictions or prophecies from the Oracle?

Stern Vint Cerf blasts techies for lackluster worldwide IPv6 adoption

Scott Marshall

IP V.Soon™??

You will note that they said "migrate Soon™", rather than "migrate V.Soon™" ;)

HostingUK drops offline after losing Farmer vs Fibre competition

Scott Marshall
Trollface

Cloud services are damp ...

DAMP: Definitely A Major Pain

Scott Marshall
Joke

If you're using CLOUDs, you're going to need RAIN ...

RAIN: Redundant Array of Infrastructure Networks.

If you don't use RAIN with CLOUDS, then you've MIST the point.

(MIST: Multiple, Independent Service Technologies)

RAIN helps you avoid DROUGHT when running services on CLOUD.

DROUGHT: Distributed Randomly Over Unreliable Global Hosting Technology

Meet the real spin doctors: Scientists tell H2O to chill out so they can separate isomers

Scott Marshall
Pint

The most important question is ...

... which isomer is preferred for Scotch (for those who don't take it neat)?

'Incomprehensible failure' – Canada's $1bn Phoenix payroll IT fiasco torched by auditors

Scott Marshall
FAIL

Not the first time this has happened with IBM ...

Here in Down-Underland, the Queensland Department of Health had similar problems with, yes, a payroll system developed by IBM.

cf: Learning from the Qld Health payroll fiasco

... and ...

Queensland Health payroll fail: Government ordered to pay IBM costs

Once again, due diligence by the government agency (or agencies) was not adequately performed (if performed at all).

Of course, let's not mention the Australian Census debacle. But then again, let's do:

Tech giant IBM pays about $30m compensation to taxpayers over botched census

IT disasters now part of modern life

Router admin? Bored? Let's play Battleships using BGP!

Scott Marshall

Re: On a ten-by-ten playing field?

Interviewed on the BBC. Interrogated by the DoD.

nbn™ CEO blames copper for performance problems

Scott Marshall
FAIL

NBN - Nobbled, Buggered, Neutered

The nbn™ was a great idea, but the implementation has left much to be desired.

The ISPs/RSPs need to lift their act too, as from what I can see none of them seem to offer any tools to help their customers choose an appropriate (??!!) nbn™ plan from their offerings.

It should be easy; customer logs in to their account on the ISP and clicks the "help me convert to nbn™" link.

From there, the ISP (who already knows their customer's current plan inclusions) could produce a summary table showing "current plan" and "nbn™ best match".

A web form could also be pre-filled with all the customer's current information and plan details and then the customer could select any additional "nbn™" features they wanted, before hitting "submit", "confirm", "go for it".

Well, one may very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.®

Apple tells app makers to strip VoIP toolkit from iOS software in China

Scott Marshall

Re: China 'Requests' ...........

iCompany?

More like "iCapitulate" or "iSurrender".

IPv6 growth is slowing and no one knows why. Let's see if El Reg can address what's going on

Scott Marshall

Want vs Need

For the majority of home users, they don't need IPv6 (let alone want).

Consider the raison d'etre for IPv6; every device in the world (and then some) can have a unique, directly accessible public internet address, without the need to traverse NAT between private LANs and the limited pool of accessible IPv4 addresses.

But, does one actually want every one of one's devices directly accessible from the internet?

Methinks not. Security becomes a more complex issue, and the average punter barely understand security as it is.

So, for Jane and Joe Q Public who just want to get out to the internet, and don't give a rat's arse about running up a Web/FTP/whatever server at home, an IPv4 address delivered from their ISP via DHCP to their router, with everything home-side sitting behind NAT in private IPv4 space is all they need (and probably want). The ISPs can provide the infrastructure to bridge between the IPv4 addresses they assign to their clients' routers and the outside IPv6 world.

Those of us who do want to be able to get to our inner-net from the outer-net will want a static IP address. If we want/need to avoid the NAT-trap, then IPv6 is how we will need to go, and of course we'll need to ensure that only the devices we want externally visible will be accessible through whatever firewall and perimeter security devices we interpose between us and them.

For the average Joe (and even many organisations), not everything needs direct access from the internet, so private IPv4 addresses are more than adequate.

Domain name sellers rub ICANN's face in sticky mess of Europe's GDPR

Scott Marshall
FAIL

ICANN

ICANN'T

Telstra's mobile networks go TOESUP* in national outage

Scott Marshall
Trollface

Nah - it's nothing serious. Just NBN sabotaging Telstra's mobile network so that people "know that they can only rely on NBN fixed line and fixed wireless communications"™

Facebook Android app caught seeking 'superuser' clearance

Scott Marshall
Black Helicopters

Re: Oh Sorreee! Sorree!

rouge coders???

Oh, of course; it's a code-phrase for Russian Hackers.

ROFL

Bowel down: Laxative brownies brought to colleague's leaving bash

Scott Marshall
Devil

Re: Revenge is a dish best served wet

I'd do both - that way the miscreant gets burned on the way in as well as on the way out.

No new 3PAR weirdness found behind crashes at Australian Tax office

Scott Marshall
Joke

The ATO reports that ...

"... a combination of faulty components, poor design, disk failure and weird choices like moving SANs while they ran, obviously taxed the capabilities of the system."

Navy names new attack sub HMS Agincourt

Scott Marshall
Pirate

For those inclined to puns and music ...

... may I suggest that the next submarine be called "HMS Depth Leppard"?

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

Scott Marshall

Big Blue has used Imation's Iron Key previously ...

Back when I was a wage-slave to Big Blue here Down Under, because I was a "privileged user" the only desktop client I could use was a Linux (RHEL) notebook.

We could only use (and only permitted to connect) Iron Key encrypted USB drives for any data we downloaded.

The problem of course was that the Iron Key drives weren't usable on Solaris and AIX systems, and guess what I spent most of my time managing?

Once again, a policy triggered by issues in the Wintel world bollixes things up for us who use/manage non-Intel platforms.

Now, even though we weren't allowed to connect our mobile (cell) phones to the laptop USB ports, the policy at the time didn't specifically disallow Bluetooth connections!

I've no idea what the policy says about "non-physical connectivity of external devices" now (if anything).

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