* Posts by brian

43 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Oct 2007

Thus passes to C&W

brian
Coat

It's too late

There used to be a good little dedicated platform specialist called DSVR which was bought by Legend plc which was absorbed by Thus and integrated into Demon. During this process the availability of the servers (especially email) went down the toilet and many customers f****d off into the sunset and took their hosting elsewhere. Nowadays the formerly vibrant DSVR forums are like a Welsh village on a rainy Sunday afternoon (thanks to Douglas Adams for that!!).

I dread to think what the remaining customers are about to go through. I'm glad I've escaped and took all my hosting platforms elsewhere.

Mine's the one with "Ex-Customer" on the back.

EU project scans air passengers for terrorist tendencies

brian
Stop

I've missed something here

So, I'm sitting in my seat being monitored by this camera mounted in the seat in front and I start to assemble a gun (like Christopher Lee in "The man with golden gun") so I can hijack the plane.

The camera records this and me setting the timer on the bomb.

Then what?

What is the point? The camera won't stop me unless my seat is fitted with automatic handcuffs too..... What a waste of time.

Outback hack suspect denied bail

brian
Joke

@andyC

"You're waiting for someone to dump Gordon and Jacquie onto a landfill? A little bit harsh I feel but can see where you are coming from..."

He can't do that - they count as "hazardous waste" and require a special disposable procedure.....

Dixons admits 'it's even worse than you thought'

brian
Coat

@anthony shortland

"If I want stationary, I'll go to a stationary shop"

I think you'll find that most shops are stationary..... ;-)

Except paper shops which are "stationery" as well as stationary!

Mine's the one with "Pedant" on the back.

Bulletproof quantum crypto dinged by implementation weakness

brian
Happy

@rich

"I met some Swedish people in Germany who went to Linköping Uni, and they reckoned it was a swinging place! So, what do I know? "

WIth only tufty grass and time on their hands - what do you think they did to pass the time?

Swinging....... Hmmmm..... I'll bet it did not involve a pendulum-like oscillating seat.

Why Microhoo! is like, so, totally dead

brian
Joke

Re: amanfrommars

amanfrommars is a town in south wales - north of Swansea

Ruckus kicks off over directional Wi-Fi

brian
Alien

Next on the list

They'll undoubtably be suing this next

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/tech/lovell/

because it doesn't get much more directional than that....

Sun's JavaFX to hoover-up user data

brian
Stop

Hydrazine....

... is highly toxic. It kills just about everything it comes into contact with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine#Safety

Top cop brands CCTV a 'fiasco'

brian
Stop

Of course CCTV doesn't work....

... if it *did* work then you couldn't have a programme on telly called something like "Criminals caught on CCTV". If CCTV worked then why does Crimewatch show crims robbing banks? Everyone *knows* banks have had CCTV for 30-40 years.

The evidence is against CCTV - a complete and utter waste of time and money.

Shell pulls out of Thames Estuary mega-windfarm

brian
Stop

Wind turbines are waste of time

There's far, far more energy in water movement than wind movement (water being denser per unit volume) and the tides have been shifting water round our coasts twice a day every day for the last few billion years whereas the wind sometimes doesn't blow at all....

Astroboffins moot massive Moon-mirror heliograph

brian
Alien

Tw*ts

They should shoot these "astroboffins" into deep space. Have they bothered to calculate just how much materials are needed?

[back of fag-packet mode]

The moon has a radius of 1900 km giving it a crosssectional area of 3.1416 * 1900 *1900 * 1000000 = 10^13 m2. If the reflective surface is 1mm thick then that is 10^10m3 or 10 billion m3 of metal. If we use Aluminium then we have a mass of 2.7x10^13 kg or 27 billion tonnes of metal

[/back of fag-packet mode]

Also, attracting aliens might not be a good idea - have they ever read "Footfall", "The Mote in God's Eye", "War of the Worlds" or seen "Independence Day"? We can't afford to attract aliens unless Randy Quaid is free - just in case...

Harman hack horror has blog backing Boris

brian
Paris Hilton

Expect new legislation....

.... in the next Queen's speech to make it offence to alter blogs by any means whatsoever including editing them which shall also become an offence unless they belong to the opposition in which case deleting them will be mandatory.

Paris, because after writing about "harridan" Harriet, well.... need I say more?

UK net registry battles coup d'etat

brian
Boffin

@Tom Ward

The phrase "Not for Profit" is a tricky one. It says nothing about turnover, simply that they do not make a profit. For example, they could give the "profit" to the directors as a bonus every year, thus making no profit.....

I think I would rather see that profit reinvested back into the domain infrastructure and control or possibly running seminars, conferences etc up and down the country on a regular basis.

UK Office of Government Commerce cracks one off

brian
Happy

So then....

...they really *are* a bunch of w**kers!!!

SQL string in URL exposes sex offender data

brian
Boffin

@Mark Flingstone

Not much point in blaming PHP on this one. The site's headers reveal

Server: Oracle HTTP Server Powered by Apache/1.3.19 (Win32) mod_plsql/3.0.9.8.4 mod_ssl/2.8.1 OpenSSL/0.9.5a mod_fastcgi/2.2.10 mod_oprocmgr/1.0 mod_perl/1.25

Oracle, Apache, Perl, CGI.....

Fake subpoenas harpoon 2,100 corporate fat cats

brian
Thumb Up

Even if they know nothing about IT...

... they should know that legal papers have to be "served" by a court-appointed individual who must hand them over in person and inform you of the fact.

Nokia admits DVB-H still not taking off

brian
Joke

@sarah bee

That BubbleWrap - was it painted red with the word "Tension sheet" on it? Was it patent pending - Thickie Holden Enterprises?

(Hint for those who don't watch Red Dwarf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeslides#Plot )

The missing five-minute Linux manual for morons

brian
Boffin

@AC

"Recomplie the kernel"????

I've been using Linux for years. Everything in this office except one laptop is Linux and I've never had to recompile anything. Try using it instead of "spouting off"

No sense of humour? Avoid Bootnotes

brian
IT Angle

Where's the IT angle?

I'm shocked that there is a possibility that my crack-den might be turned into a house and given to a white, english, indigenous native of these islands.

At least wait until we've finished our roast swans & the football section.

O2 PR calls Reg readers 'techie nerds'

brian
Flame

@ A. Muppet

It's too late to apologise. You're toast buddy!!!

brian
Paris Hilton

What a bunch of total *******s

To "El Reg"

You forgot to post the names of these half-wits so that they can be fired.... or do you want to let them persist in the hope of getting more "inside info"?

Paris, because she knows how to deal with a good shafting.....

Is Europe's war on Islamist terror running out of terrorists?

brian
Flame

Helping people on the road

An AC said "Guess what, the only people to stop and check if she is OK were foreigners"

I've stopped to help people before and I've had very mixed reactions. One older lady fell off her bike and couldn't get up so I called an ambulance and she was grateful. She was also the exception.

Twice I stopped to help someone broken down on a country road. In one "incident" the woman in the car told me to go away. The next time (some years later) I was told by another woman that she had my registration and would phone the police to report me if I didn't go away. So I no longer stop to help.

I won't help with children either. These days any man who shows any concern or interest in a child *must* be a child-molester. I've been told that by a social worker.

So, women and kids, you're on your own because I'll be damned if I'm going to jail for just trying to help some lilly-livered nitwit afraid of her own shadow.

brian
Boffin

@phillistine

The "V" gesture also symbollises "Up yours" and is rumoured to originated at the Battle of Agincourt where English archers (who used a v finger grip to draw arrows) are supposed to have used it on the French....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_sign#The_V_sign_as_an_insult

United States president George H. W. Bush, attempting to give the "peace sign", once gave the insulting V sign to onlookers while touring Australia, unaware of what it meant to Australians

Hackers target outsourced app development

brian
Alert

That's why we don't outsource....

... talk about giving away the "keys to the kingdom"? On top of that, I have never seen an outsourced project where it was not necessary to rewrite large portions of the code. Combine this with the security risks and outsourcing just proves to be a large waste of money.

Ban using mobiles while crossing street, says US legislator

brian
Boffin

A simple solution

You could sort out drivers and pedestrian mobile use by attaching the mobile to an outlet socket with a wire...... errr.... ohh.....

Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

brian
Unhappy

Zero in

As a weekend pilot myself, I wonder why the pilots can't guide police to the approximate area where the beam is. They've got the best view and I doubt that whoever is doing this is in the middle of a big crowd.

Regular surveillance by ground cops should catch these fools and then charge them with attempted murder - for a Jumbo that could be 500 counts......

Thailand cracks down on cut-price castrations

brian
Joke

The price of ethics...

It said "the Medical Council will today rule whether the owner of one Bangkok clinic has breached medical ethics in allegedly performing castration on boys under 18 for just 5,000 baht."

Does that mean that ethics would not have been breached if it was done for 10,000 baht?

OOXML approved as international standard?

brian
Boffin

@Steven Hewitt

What's wrong with OOXML? Well here's a taster for you.

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/disharmony-of-ooxml.html

and scroll down a bit to the table that shows how to colour red or right-align stuff. It's just a small sample. If you want a more technical overview then go here

http://www.noooxml.org/open:rejectooxmlnow

or here

http://www.odfalliance.org/blog/index.php/site/top_10_worst_responses/

Basically, no one can implement an unimplementable standard. No one is even sure if Microsoft can implement this stuff.....

How bad does it have to be? There's nothing wrong with the idea of OOXML per se, but it needs a lot more work to actually be *fit* to be a standard.

brian
Black Helicopters

Why the delay?

The delegates seem to be able to add up the votes and there is not that many of them, so why the silence from the ISO?

Could it be that they've heard that the process might be a touch flawed? Time for a review perhaps?

Get your German interior minister's fingerprint here

brian
Boffin

ID cards anyone?

Another nail in the ID card coffin? It will be interesting to see how the minister's fingerprint gets used and what the minister "buys" or "agrees" to on the strength of his fingerprint.

Biometrics are the ultimate form of "money laundering". After all, the system validates *your* identity so if it says you are the German Interior Minister then you must be. All of you........

Stupid bl**dy system!

Cassini sniffs Enceladus's 'surprising organic brew'

brian
Alien

Oh good grief....

"Enceladus' brew is like carbonated water with an essence of natural gas"

Expect the price of Perrier et al. to drop as the Islington set and other chinless wonders start looking to where they can buy "Enceladus Spring Water"

Come to think it, there's a business opportunity here......

Army says farewell to UK's 'bugger-off' airbag drone

brian
Black Helicopters

@Henry Lockwood

"...the main difficulty (I suspect) is in the remote control range..."

I don't doubt it. Most hobbyist kit couldn't support the instrumentation package's weight or battery, but at the end of the day I would expect these minor problems to be solvable. After all, a handheld satellite telephone can reach an orbiting satellite and the technology is out there for a few hundred quid. Maplin can flog a webcam and a thumb drive to support an operating system and solid state storage. I could build one of these things in my shed get change from a grand or two

OK - so the MoD version would be fancier, but by a cost factor of several thousand times? If they're cheap enough then it doesn't matter if you trash them when you land them.

(NOTE: the best way to make these things invisible is to light them up. Weird, but true)

brian
Coat

How difficult can it be?

About two miles up the road from is a large field where modelling enthusiasts make radio controlled aircraft, some of which have wingspans in excess of 2m. If a bunch of cardigan wearing "anoraks" (pardon the mixed metaphor) can manage with tissue paper and dope then surely the MoD can make a slightly heavier version?

The only real expense is the instrumentation module and if that was recessed into the body instead of sticking down underneath...... or maybe, just maybe, they could try some of those new fangled "wheel" thingies....

Mine's the one with the radio controller in the pocket!

Motorola cuts off gangrenous right arm

brian
Stop

Goodbye Moto.....

hopefully those stupid "Hello moto" ads will disappear as well.

Patent Office loses software not a patent case

brian
Boffin

EPO is not the "European Union"'s Patent Office

The EPO is nothing to do with the EU.

It is a completely separate organisation which is not under control from Brussels, owes no loyalty to Brussels and is not under any European treaty. Several non-EU countries such as Switzerland belong to the EPO.

Arthur C. Clarke dead at 90

brian
Alien

Remember "Clarke's Corollory"

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"

That should keep us all busy......

Microsoft rolls out Vista SP1

brian
Stop

SP1 - Extensive testing starts here

"SP1 signals .... Broad take up by businesses"?

Err... what? It breaks A/V software and other packages suffer a loss of functionality? What business is going to install such a lemon? Time to hang on to XP Pro methinks.

Biometrics plan for London Olympic builders

brian
Unhappy

One CCTV camera for every 4 spectators?????

Are they nuts? Will you be able to see the track and field events on the other side of the bank of cameras? I'm sorry, but this just proves that the police think that we are ALL guilty - we have just not been caught yet.

Besides CCTV is a waste of money as far as crime prevention is concerned. If CCTV prevented crime then there would be no programmes of the "Criminals on Camera" variety. All CCTV does is let you watch the crime in progress from the comfort of your armchair.

Tool makes mincemeat of Windows passwords

brian
Paris Hilton

Everyone seems to forget....

... that this requires PHYSICAL access to the machine. As always, the first line of defense is to make sure that no one gets access to a sensitive machine. Locked doors are a good preventative.

Paris, because even she could solve this one....

ISP data deal with former 'spyware' boss triggers privacy fears

brian
Happy

Just checked

My ISP is Zen who say they are not doing this and have no intention of doing this.

Good news for me then, because I don't fancy the hassle of moving....

Nokia wins in Qualcomm case

brian

A simple change would help....

.... that patent rights have to be disclosed and asserted from the day the patent is granted. This would kill most submarine patents and certainly would knobble these "standards" patents since failure to disclose them on submission to the patents process would invalidate any action based on the use as a standard.

UK claims millions saved by scrapping redundant regs

brian
Thumb Down

How about....

Passing less stupid laws in the first place....

Idiots

MP warns against Microsoft monopoly in e-gov services

brian

Private sector are insecure

So, according to the govt. all those private sector companies who DO support non-Microsoft technologies are comprised security wise?

Was the medical system secure? I think not! Next they'll be telling us of a successful IT project in the NHS........