* Posts by Legless

21 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Aug 2007

iPad tethering does disappearing trick

Legless
Happy

Tethering

The single most useful feature of my HTC Desire. A lifesaver at a recent conference where the provided wireless went down. So there I was with 6 colleagues all connected through my phone, wirelessly. Made me a popular bunny.

Microsoft releases Vista virtualization

Legless
Unhappy

I've Been Doing This For Ages

I run Microsoft Virtual PC inside VISTA and have done for at least 18 months - when I run VISTA at all that is.

I'm stuck supporting an app that is welded to XP and won't run at all on VISTA so a virtual machine was the only way forward.

And I do the same thing on my MAC - I run Virtual Box to run many configurations of XP.

Can't see what's new here....

Kentucky judge OKs 141-site net casino land grab

Legless

Well

Technically, the .com domain is reserved for AMERICAN businesses so there is an argument that non-American companies shouldn't be using it. And, given that NSI controls the .com domain the Judge could force NSI to confiscate the domain names. But I think it would have to be a Federal judge to carry any weight.

Cheers

Aussies: Eat roos, save the planet

Legless
Thumb Up

Roo The Day

.

I eat roo at least once a week. It's really tasty, cheap, and makes a nice change from beef or lamb.

The sausages are manky though. Didn't like them at all....

Cheers

Baptist church in assault rifle giveaway

Legless
Flame

@ Omar Little

"If your for gun control, your a racist. Plain and simple."

Wow. That's a new one on me.

I've suddenly become a racist and it must be true as a black man has said it.

You're an idiot.

Cheers

Gas crunch: Jatropha, kudzu, algae and magic to rescue

Legless
Happy

Algae

There is great deal of research been done into algae into oil. And it's worth looking at. There are even genetically modified algae that produce huge quantities of oil.

All they need to grow is sunlight and C02.

Of course, growing and processing them in anywhere near commercial quantities will throw up lots of gotchas, but I'm intrigued by the possibility of using waste C02 from a coal plant to feed carbon hungry algae.

If it's possible, it would be a nice solution.

Cheers

What I learned from a dumb terminal

Legless
Paris Hilton

Too Much Information

.

A few moons ago I was doing 2nd Line/3rd line at an outsourcing company that looked after lots of local and regional councils. It was an easy job and I rarely had to talk to users. But I did take all the "hot calls". Calls that the helpdesk had no idea where to send them to or calls that were politically sensitive. The one that follows was one of my favourites.

One of the Helldesks bods rang me and said she had the headmistress of a particularly demanding school on the line. She was extremely pissed off and the operator wanted me to handle it. So I took the call.

"Hi, I'm Legless. Can you tell me what the problem is please?"

"It's pornography. There's pornography all over the childrens computer screens" the head replied in an incredibly posh voice.

"OK. Can you tell me what type? I asked expecting the answer pop-ups, pop-unders, home page changed etc...

"COCKS! BIG BLACK COCKS!!!" screamed the head excitedly...

I corpsed. Hit the mute button and collapsed over my desk.

Be careful what you ask......

Cheers

Fire at The Planet takes down thousands of websites

Legless
Unhappy

B3ta

Still offline.

You never know how much you miss something until it's gone. Hope they get everything back, and soon...

Cheers

Spanish police cuff web defacement crew

Legless
Pirate

21 000 Sites Hacked In 2 Years

That's about 200 a week.

Yeah, right.....

Sounds like old Mike It-Was-Me Stitchup at work.

Nice way to close a lot of old cases...

US war robots in Iraq 'turned guns' on fleshy comrades

Legless
Thumb Down

Gimme...

I'd love to have one of these bots armed with a paintball gun and the see how long it would take me to figure out it's parameters.

It's a sensor array with discrimination. That means, once I figure out how it works, how it targets and when it'll actually fire I can fool it.

Heat sensor? - Ignited magnesium chaff. Movement? - Lots of strong balloons filled with various stuff. Any sort of vision system? - Laser pointers or mirrors reflecting the sun.

It's a sensor array and therefore will be a piece of piss to spoof.

Cheers

Global-warming scientist: It's worse than I thought

Legless
Unhappy

Dumbo...

There's some people on here that seem to be thicker than a castle wall.

North Pole.

OK. It's ice floating on the sea so when/if it melts it's not going to raise the sea level. But the thing you have to worry about is the ice-sheets on Greenland. They're VAST. Second only to the Antarctic ice sheet.

They're 2.85 million km³ . Look at that figure. 2.85 million cubic KILOMETRES of frozen water. That's a lot of ice. Add to that the Canadian ice sheet and it's a shitload of water. That lot melts, you're looking at a rise of about 8m. Then the fun starts.

You see, all that ice reflects a decent amount of sunlight back out to space. When it's melted, the water will instead absorb that energy leading to the oceans getting distinctly warmer. And that warmth could trigger the melting of the Antarctic then we're all fucked.

The scary thing about these scenarios are that they could happen faster than you could imagine. All we need to do is to exceed one "tipping point" and the whole thing enters a positive feedback loop.

Cheers

Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

Legless
Paris Hilton

Nope

I don't buy this for a second.

The closest I'll accept is that the pilots *might* be able to see the odd beam flash by them (probably dozens of yards away) as some idiot *tries* to focus on them but that's as far as I'll go.

Someone hitting a target moving in three dimensions from a mile away without some serious kit is too much to swallow.

Paris - 'cos she'll swallow anything

Cheers

Coming up: the fingerprint-grabbing keylogger

Legless

Hmmm.

Just tried this and it works.

Put some cling-film over a finger-print reader. It looks pretty much invisible.

Press finger to reader. It recognises me and allows access.

Carefully peel cling film off reader.

Voila! A perfect finger-print that I know will allow me access. Only need to make a gummy-bear model and I'm in.

OK. This was done on my own system using a crappy USB reader but I'll bet it works with other systems as well.

Cheers

Shell waves goodbye to 3,000 IT staffers in $4bn outsourcing gig

Legless
Jobs Horns

Choo-Choo! Gravy Train

25 years as an IT contractor and I've never, not once, seen a successful IT outsourcing project.

But, on the bright side, it's gravy for people like me. The initial outsourcing creates vacancies for people like me to go in manage the transition. Then, when my feet are firmly under the table, I watch as management hound out the permies, generally starting with the people who are good at their job, but crap at company politics. That generally leaves me running mission-critical systems that nobody else understands. This is a *really* good time to demand a rate-rise - and I get it.

The next few months are fun. As the original staff are removed and replaced with cheaper, younger geeks, more and more work ends up with me and the rest of the contract IT hyenas. Which means more and more hours (did I mention that I only work on an hourly rate? Daily rates are for suckers). This goes on for a few more months before a bean-counter notices how much we're actually earning. So they have a talk and ask us to reduce hours or accept a rate cut. A rate cut is out of the question so we stop doing so many hours. Then systems start falling over due to lack of maintenance or monitoring. Meetings are held where we point out in a I-Told-You-So-Fashion, backed up with e-mails, that we predicted this. Management's next bright idea is to ask us to take on training roles and bring the new guys up to speed in howto manage the systems. This works fine on a day-today basis but falls flat on it;s face during the next phase.

So we train youngsters in looking after the systems. The workaday sort of stuff. Systems are all running OK then management call us in, thank us for our efforts, and tell us we're no longer required. Too expensive. We shake hands and wander off into the sunset.

Then a while later (can vary from weeks to months) something out of the ordinary happens and everything falls over in a big messy heap. Youngsters are way out of their depth and company is deep in the shit. This is where they ring us up again.

"Can you come in urgently? Same rate as before?"

And we laugh. Most of us are happily ensconced elsewhere and can't or won't (in my case) break a contract. Those of us who are free demand around double what we were previously charging and the gravy train goes on.

Repeat ad nauseum.

Oh - and if EDS are involved in automatically ad on £10/hour just for dealing with the fuckwits.

Cheers

Phorm launches data pimping fight back

Legless
Happy

Err

Let me get this straight.

Phorm makes a copy of each and every website visited?

*HUGE GRIN*

Then, the first time a Phorm user visits a paedophile site they're guilty :

“taking or making” of an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child"

It's the catch-all the Police use to make sure that kiddie-fiddlers get done for "making" indecent images of children rather than just viewing them. Just by displaying these images on your screen, you've automagagically "made" an image and are therefore guilty of a more serious offence.

That said, Phorm will be deliberately creating these images and, as such, are open to criminal charges.

And, as they're not an ISP or a carrier, they don't have that get-out either.

Cheers

How Phorm plans to tap your internet connection

Legless
Go

Downing Street Petition

I'm based in Oz so I can't start one but can someone set up an electronic petition please?

Cheers

Hotmail dies on both sides of the Atlantic

Legless
Thumb Down

Hotmail Up, Live-ID Down

10 am here in Oz and I can get to Hotmail through a browser but not through Windows Live Mail.

Cheers

Government wants every English child on 'secure' database

Legless
Dead Vulture

45 Million?

For a database?

What about putting this out to open tender (EDS need not apply).

I'll do it for 5 million and in under a month. I'll even throw in the hardware for free.

45 million. For a database.

Sheesh!

US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly

Legless
Unhappy

Can I Just Add...

.

That lastminute.com is now truly fucked?

Cheers

Legless

Legless
Pirate

@ Nick H

Yup - the world would certainly be in better shape if you took your toys home and didn't play with the rest of the kids. Let's see who you've attacked in the last 50 years..

Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)

Guatemala 1954

Indonesia 1958

Cuba 1959-1961

Guatemala 1960

Congo 1964

Laos 1964-73

Vietnam 1961-73

Cambodia 1969-70

Guatemala 1967-69

Grenada 1983

Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)

Libya 1986

El Salvador 1980s

Nicaragua 1980s

Iran 1987

Panama 1989

Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)

Kuwait 1991

Somalia 1993

Bosnia 1994, 1995

Sudan 1998

Afghanistan 1998

Yugoslavia 1999

Yemen 2002

Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)

Iraq 2003-05

Afghanistan 2001-05

Plus

Iran, April 2003 -- hit by US missiles during bombing of Iraq, killing at least one persdon {2}

Pakistan, 2002-03 -- bombed by US planes several times as part of combat against the Taliban and other opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan {3}

China, 1999 -- its heavily bombed embassy in Belgrade is legally Chinese territory, and it appears rather certain that the bombing was no accident (see chapter 25)

France, 1986 -- After the French government refused the use of its air space to US warplanes headed for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes were forced to take another, longer route; when they reached Libya they bombed so close to the French embassy that the building was damaged and all communication links knocked out.{4}

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 13, 1985 -- A bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, the mayor's office, and the FBI were all involved in this effort to evict a black organization called MOVE from the house they lived in.

Yahoo! Unveils! New! Mail! Service!

Legless

Err

Does this reporter work for Yahoo? There's absolutely nothing new here - just a service thats been available from loads of other places for years.