Re: "WannaCry ransomware attack on NHS..."
This. Also, "half" the NHS?
If I wanted misleading clickbait tech news I'd be reading Ars Technica or Gartner or Rory Cellan-Jones or something.
D-minus journo effort, must try harder.
Posts by Allonymous Coward
419 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Feb 2012
WannaCry ransomware attack on NHS could have triggered NATO reaction, says German cybergeneral
Talking a Blue Streak: The ambitious, quiet waste of the Spadeadam Rocket Establishment
Wednesday 27th November 2019 11:02 GMT 
I was always under the impression that a land-based strategic deterrent made little sense in the UK because there simply wasn't enough land compared to, say, the US prairie states or the Russian steppes. There just weren't enough potential places to disperse the things, which left them vulnerable to a preemptive strike. With V bombers there were drills to get off the ground quickly with warning of an incoming attack, so they'd be in the air/away from their bases. And later of course MoD put the nuclear deterrent onto submarines and hid it out in the Atlantic where its main danger is probably plastic microparticles or something.
Looks like an interesting site. I went to Woomera once many years ago, also worth a look. The main Cold War artefact I remember was the huge European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) "hotel". It was in the former ELDO staff barracks/hostel; they must've had a lot of people out there.
Complete with keyboard and actual, literal, 'physical' escape key: Apple emits new 16" $2.4k+ MacBook Pro
Thursday 14th November 2019 00:11 GMT
Re: The best notebook keyboard ever
Well, hyperbole innit.
Though now I think of it, I did stick my hand in some fresh moggy droppings the other day. Long and unpleasant story. Suffice to say, it was literally shit.
In contrast, the keyboard on my workplace-enforced MacBook Pro is only figuratively shit. At least as far as I'm aware. But this has been the case for every Apple laptop I've used since about 2008.
Google goes full Anti-Flash-ist, boots Adobe's insecure monstrosity out of web search index
Tuesday 29th October 2019 21:59 GMT
VMWare still does that? I thought they at least had a standards-compliant web UI by now (been a couple of years since I used it, mind).
Enterprise software that pulls this sort of stunt needs to die. I have fond (sarcasm) memories of an IBM server ILO UI that required a very specific browser/Java plugin combo. Probably because all the later versions fixed the various security holes it needed in order to run. I think we ended up keeping a VM hanging around specifically to use it, until we decommissioned the last of those boxes.
How about flipping to another virt platform that treats you like it's 2019? Not always an option of course, but sometimes it is.
After 72 hours of recurring outages, you'd be forgiven for wanting to slightly tweak the first syllable of Bitbucket
Thursday 3rd October 2019 12:08 GMT
Re: Spokesdroid?
I mostly manage to avoid our corporate Confluence install, in favour of putting docs into our team's GitLab instance. Sadly I can't completely avoid Jira, Confluence's smelly cousin.
Atlassian should be some kind of case study for what happens when a small company who "gets it", gets big and starts selling "enterprise" rubbish.
UK ads watchdog bans Burger King Twitter jibe for condoning chucking milkshakes at politicians
Wednesday 2nd October 2019 12:48 GMT 
Steven Joyce
You forgot one of the best throwing-things-at-politicians incidents. Which is the time Steven Joyce, NZ's Minister for Economic Development, got clobbered by a genitalia-resembling pink rubber adult toy. There's video on the interwebs and everything.
New Zealand. Showing the world how political inter^H^H^H^H^H discourse should be done since 1893.
Icon because Paris, fnar fnar etc, obviously.
Margin mugs: A bank paid how much for a 2m Ethernet cable? WTF!
Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry
Tuesday 17th September 2019 14:13 GMT
Re: To publish or not
I could see how his opinions would be a serious concern regarding his job, but he isn't
As I understand it, one of the objections was that his behaviour dissuades women (and possibly other groups) from participating in open source (Free, whatever) software projects. As he's a figurehead, I can see how the FSF might consider that an actual problem.
Open source has form in this area too. Think of the objections to Linus Torvalds' behaviour not so long ago. Though one apparent difference between Torvalds and Stallman is that Torvalds seemingly eventually recognised the need to moderate his behaviour.
Vulture Central team welcomed to our new nest by crashed Ubuntu that's 3 years out of date
For real this time, get your butt off Python 2: No updates, no nothing after 1 January 2020
Now on Amazon Prime: The Amazing Shrinking UK Tax Burden
GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name
Friday 30th August 2019 12:03 GMT
Re: Divide and rule
It's a pretty big splash screen with GIMP in quite shouty letters, at least on my machine. And how long it hangs around depends on how fast your computer is, as well as how many fonts etc it tries to load at startup...
Otherwise though, yeah. Good point well made. If you actually go and look at how it's deployed (for Ubuntu anyway) this feels a bit like a storm in a teacup. The only other place that obviously mentions "GIMP" is an entry in the Help menu. Feels like a minimal-effort sort of thing to change without the need for a fork.
I couldn't possibly tell you the computer's ID over the phone, I've been on A Course™
There once was a biz called Bitbucket, that told Mercurial to suck it. Now devs are dejected, their code soon ejected
Wednesday 21st August 2019 16:59 GMT
Re: Git
I once had to submit a business case for why we should use SVN rather than VSS. Because Microsoft and all that.
It was the NHS, which tells you all you need to know about the quality technical decision making process that existed at the time. Luckily the case was accepted.
I left the job soon after. You're welcome, whoever it was that replaced me.
Canonical adds ZFS on root as experimental install option in Ubuntu
BT adopts Ubuntu OpenStack as core brains for its 5G, fibre-to-the-premises rollout
Wednesday 24th July 2019 11:24 GMT
Re: Is BT just taking or is it contributing?
They do list the prices here though, if you follow links from the above page (or Google "Canonical support prices"):
https://buy.ubuntu.com/
TL;DR - it's not more than you or I could (probably) afford. But it depends on how much you buy. I'm sure for someone like BT the numbers will be a) bespoke and b) large.
Wednesday 24th July 2019 11:20 GMT
Re: Is BT just taking or is it contributing?
Given there are quotes from Mark Shuttleworth, and it's "Ubuntu OpenStack" rather than just "OpenStack", I assume there are probably commercial arrangements of some sort in place between BT & Canonical. Which seems like it'd be both wise and a good thing for the underpinning open source projects.
Such arrangements might well be commercially sensitive so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lack of detail.
(I have no knowledge of this deal, but I've had commercial support from Canonical in the past. It works well.)
Boris Johnson's promise of full fibre in the UK by 2025 is pie in the sky
Wednesday 17th July 2019 11:55 GMT
Re: FTTP?
regularly timetabled ambulances
Under privatisation, perhaps ambulances will be paid by results? Cue mental picture of ambulances cruising the streets.
To paraphrase Pterry, any bunch of people who are paid to transport patients would naturally see to it that there was a plentiful supply of patients to transport.
Maybe double-check that HMRC email? UK taxman remains a fave among the phisherfolk
Hell hath no fury like a radar engineer scorned
Loose tongues and oily seamen: Lost in machine translation yet again
A Register reader turns the computer room into a socialist paradise
Firefox Preview for Android: Mozilla has another go at a mobile browser
Friday 28th June 2019 13:46 GMT
Re: I'm genuinely surprised usage is so low
I periodically use Firefox on my desktop, and while it's mostly fine there are enough niggles that it's not a seamless experience.
Mainly it's tracking down extensions that do the same thing as in Chromium, configuring settings etc etc. All do-able, but probably like most people on El Reg I've got years of muscle memory built up in getting $BROWSER how I like it with dev tools and so on. And I don't find playing with new software inherently interesting any more, I mostly want it to get off my lawn.
Basically it's inertia. Until Chromium gives me a really good reason to switch I've got better things to do. I find that's less of an issue on mobile, where there's no customisation going on beyond a couple of privacy-related extensions.
Friday 28th June 2019 12:07 GMT
I'm genuinely surprised usage is so low
Firefox has been the go-to browser on my Android phone for a number of years (unlike my Linux desktop I'm sad to say, though that may change the way Chrome/Chromium's going).
Firefox on Android mostly Just Works and has some useful privacy features. I'm surprised it sees so little adoption, even considering the usual inertia problem.
RIP Dyn Dynamic DNS :'( Oracle to end Dyn-asty by axing freshly gobbled services, shoving customers into its cloud
Wednesday 26th June 2019 12:38 GMT
I use CloudFlare these days
Have them set up as nameservers for $DOMAIN, then run a little script on home Linux box that uses their API to periodically update a record to whatever my public IP is at that time.
Seems to work well enough though I haven't hammered it over the years. That may change if I ever get my Plex mega project off the ground.
Go fourth and multi-Pi: Raspberry Pi 4 lands today with quad 1.5GHz Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, up to 4GB RAM...
Ubuntu says i386 to be 86'd with Eoan 19.10 release: Ageing 32-bit x86 support will be ex-86
Wednesday 19th June 2019 06:50 GMT
The post is required, and must contain letters.
Isn't Linux Mint mostly a reskin of Ubuntu? Yes I know they do some of their own apps, but overall I thought they were reliant on the Ubuntu ecosystem, certainly was when I used to use it.
Unless they're planning to maintain all their own i386 packages from now on, moving to Mint doesn't seem like very good long term advice.
Julian Assange jailed for 50 weeks over Ecuador embassy bail-jumping
Last year, we joked that Amazon was a cloud giant with a gift shop. Looking at these AWS figures, we were right
Dev's telnet tinkering lands him on out-of-hour conference call with CEO, CTO, MD
Barnet Council reckons Capita's dropped the ball on outsourced services
In Space, Still: 20 years since Russia hurled first bit of floating astronaut hostel into orbit
Well that's just spliffing: UK Amazon merchants peddling Mary Jane
Wednesday 21st November 2018 10:53 GMT
Re: "El Reg yesterday made Amazon aware of the weed being sold via its website."
I miss Lester. He seemed like the sort of chap who would've bought some and done a scientific "analysis", then written the findings up in an article.
Icon, because pipe and also boffin with a predilection for substances.
Scumbag who phoned in a Call of Duty 'swatting' that ended in death pleads guilty to dozens of criminal charges
If Shadow Home Sec Diane Abbott can be reeled in by phishers, truly no one is safe
Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too
Woman who hooked up with over 15 spectres has found her forever phantom after whirlwind romance and plane sex
Britain's rail ticket-booking systems go TITSUP*
Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz
Cathay Pacific hack: Personal data of up to 9.4 million airline passengers laid bare
Thursday 25th October 2018 13:12 GMT 
Missed image opportunity
The El Reg snark is slipping. You really should have illustrated a Cathay Pacific story with a picture from the time they spelled their name wrong on the side of a plane.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
