Re: The clue's in the name.....
"ethnically challenged"
Really? Wow, no wonder you posted anonymously.
But you're not a racist, or a bigot, I can tell...
Posts by Alister
3335 posts • joined 19 May 2010
Page:
Ex-staffer sues UK's DWP, claims superior blabbed confidential medical info
Dodgy parking firms to be denied access to Brit driver database
If you've ever wondered whether the FCC boss is a Big Cable stooge – well, wonder no more
Julian Assange to UK court: Put an end to my unwarranted Ecuadorean couch-surf
Friday 26th January 2018 16:29 GMT 
Re: Expensive
Why is this man so special?
Because he considered himself to be above the law, and took delight in flaunting it.
How many other bail jumpers would this amount of money be spent on trying to bring them to court?
Not many. But how many other bail jumpers have claimed political asylum in a London Embassy and then held regular press-conferences so we don't forget him?
Here we go again... UK Prime Minister urges nerds to come up with magic crypto backdoors
Thursday 25th January 2018 22:58 GMT
The crucial point that all these politicians seem to be missing is that the knowledge and technology to do end-to-end encryption now exists.
No matter what laws are passed, criminals and terrorists are, by their nature, not law abiding, and therefore will ignore those laws, and continue to use the technology.
It is not possible to remove the ability to create end-to-end encryption, now it exists, all you can do is disadvantage law-abiding citizens.
France gives les citoyens the right to cock up official paperwork
Camels disqualified from Saudi beauty contest for Botox-enhanced pouts
Elon Musk offered no salary, $55bn bonus to run Tesla for a decade
Aut-doh!-pilot: Driver jams 65mph Tesla Model S under fire truck, walks away from crash
Facebook invents new unit of time to measure modern attention spans: 1/705,600,000 of a sec
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 15:02 GMT
What ever happened to the tic, the sec or the mo?
The flick joins a few other obscure time intervals including a jiffy (the definition varies), a shake (10 nanoseconds), and a microcentury (~52 minutes or a millionth of a century,
Or any other unit regularly used in conjunction with the phrase
"I'll be back in a..."
IBM UK's pre-Xmas GTS head-chop: THWACK! Is that it?
NASA is sniffing jet fuel over Germany
PC sales get that post-Brexit vote sinking feeling
NHS OKs offshoring patient data to cloud providers stateside
Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?
Friday 19th January 2018 12:47 GMT
Professional hoarding
So, as someone who works in IT, and is also a Land Rover owner, I reckon to have all the necessary qualifications (and collections of strange gadgets) to claim professional hoarding status.
I have, of course, boxes of ISA cards, including SCSI interfaces, ATA Raid cards, 3com network cards (by the hundred) old PCI cards, AGP graphics cards, broken keyboards and mice, ATA hard drives from 40MB capacity upwards - yes you read that right, 40MB Hard drives... loads of PC cases, including an original IBM XT, an original IBM AT, and an IBM PS2, a Sharp MZ80K, a couple of TRS80 and a Video-Genie, a Camputers Lynx, and some ZX81s.
BUT, I also have a replacement Series 3 rear-quarter chassis, a Ninety front axle casing, a pair of swivels from a Discovery 300Tdi, an R380 gearbox with a broken layshaft, a complete and intact LT230 transfer box, at least 2 pairs of halfshafts, a couple of propshafts, a set of 5 steel wheels, a 2.25 Petrol cylinder head, a complete but scattered around in bits Rover V8, so cylinder heads, sump, block, pistons, camshafts, crankshaft, tappets, rockers, pushrods, and all the other ancillaries, A Smiths heater, a set of Series2A dashboard instruments, a Series3 instrument binnacle, A Series3 seatbox, a set of Discovery 300Tdi sills, inner and outer, and door pillars, A and B, One Series2A R/H front wing, quite a few rusty outriggers, and a dismantled truckcab roof.
Then, I have a welder, a compressor and a full set of air tools, and hundreds of sets, partial sets, and mostly lost sets of sockets, allen keys, torx wrenches and individual tools. Whenever I go the find a 1/2 inch spanner and can't, I buy another one, same with 13mm spanners. I recently bought a 1/2 inch socket drive which you could use in confined spaces by twisting the handle, which I thought was cool.
As too finding the actual bit of Land Rover, or particular tool, when I want it... HA, no chance...
HTML5 may as well stand for Hey, Track Me Longtime 5. Ads can use it to fingerprint netizens
What do voters want? An IRL Maybot? Sure, give that a whirl
Hey. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Get in here... so we can shake your hands – US Senate cyber-terror panel
UK's Just Eat faces probe after woman tweets chat-up texts from 'delivery guy'
Tuesday 16th January 2018 17:28 GMT
Re: Unrelated to data breach stuff
@tiggity
I never understood why someone would use Just Eat (or Hungry House etc.) when you could just order from a takeaway directly?
Some of our local restaurants don't do deliveries at all, but do the best food - this is true of both our local Chinese and Indian, so using these services saves having to drive.
Additionally, of course, the great thing about the services is they can get food from more than one restaurant, so you can get fish and chips, Thai, Kebab and Pizza all delivered together.
Users clutch refilled Box boxen after 'empty' folder panic
Junk food meets junk money: KFC starts selling Bitcoin Bucket
Yay, it's power play day: Conaway prays USA says 'no way' to Huawei
Cisco can now sniff out malware inside encrypted traffic
Boffins closer to solving what causes weird radio bursts from space
Thursday 11th January 2018 08:35 GMT
Alien? Unlikely
I'm happy to be convinced that there are intelligent species somewhere other than earth, but these FRB's seem to me to be an unlikely candidate for a deliberate signal.
Whatever is producing them appears to be of such intensity that any lifeform within light years of the source would be destroyed, so I can't see that they would be deliberately instigated.
The only other possibilities would be a nasty accident (some major failure of a power source, perhaps) or a byproduct of some conflict (like nuclear explosions but raised to the nth power) but the fact that they repeat, apparently from a similar source, would argue against either of those being likely.
1980s sci-fi movies: The thrill of being not quite terrified on mum's floral sofa
CCTV commish: Bring all surveillance systems under code of practice
Tuesday 9th January 2018 00:48 GMT
Re: ANPR
Indeed.
I noticed recently that our local branch of Sainsbury has an ANPR camera at the entrance to the car park - and proudly displays your registration number to you on a matrix sign as you drive in, along with a time at which you must exit again. I wonder how many pings a day the local plod get from that?
If Australian animals don't poison you or eat you, they'll BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE
Monday 8th January 2018 09:58 GMT
Re: Fascinating
Sadly, empirical evidence is frequently dismissed by scientists, even though, by it's very nature, it is observed behaviour.
This is why we waste money on scientific studies to prove the grazing behaviours of sheep, instead of just accepting what sheep farmers have known for centuries.
Least realistic New Year’s resolution ever: Fix Facebook in 365 days
Monday 8th January 2018 10:08 GMT
New Year challenge
Zuck always gives himself annual challenges that he shares with the world. In the past he’s learned Mandarin, run a lot and built a home AI.
If I remember correctly, last year he challenged himself to "read five books".
I wonder how that went for him.
Janet and John build a web site.
UK.gov admits porn age checks could harm small ISPs and encourage risky online behaviour
Friday 5th January 2018 12:40 GMT
Re: In related news...
Somewhere for the birds and the bees to do educational naughty things.
Was it Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett who wrote that the beauty of listening to birdsong in the countryside is somewhat marred when you realise that they are all screaming "Look at me, I've got a big todger"
Friday 5th January 2018 11:49 GMT
stopping kids accessing porn on the grounds that such content could "distress them or harm their development".
I would be interested to see if there is any actual evidence that this is the case.
It seems strange that in the UK, "kids" can legally have sex for two years before they are allowed to see porn on the Internet.
The healing hands of customer support get an acronym: Do YOU have 'tallah-toe-big'?
Friday 5th January 2018 10:50 GMT
Computers fear me!
Yep, I seem to have the same influence, when I stand and glare over the user's shoulder, the reported issues always go away and everything works properly.
I'm sure I've recounted before how we keep a 20lb lump hammer hanging in the server room where all the racks can see it. Our MTBF went up massively when we did that.
And a friend of mine has the carcass of a Dell PE860 displayed on a workbench in the server room, with a large flat-bladed screwdriver driven right through the motherboard...
Friday 5th January 2018 10:42 GMT
You certainly aren't . It's a strange phenomenon that makes us look like witchdoctors. I might get myself some sort of magical staff to wave at the computer on the way over.
Sacrificing a chicken over the keyboard is always a show stopper, although removing the blood and feathers afterwards is a bit of a chore.
Jocks in shock as Irn-Bru set to slash sugar and girder content
US Homeland Security breach compromised personal info of 200,000+ staff
Soz, guys. No 'alien megastructure' around Tabby's Star, only cosmic dustbunnies
Bug-finders' scheme: Tick-tock, this tech's tested by flaws.. but who the heck do you tell?
Captain Morgan told off for Snapchat lens: That grog be aimed at kiddies
UK security chief: How 'bout a tax for tech firms that are 'uncooperative' on terror content?
Tuesday 2nd January 2018 12:57 GMT
"Wallace said that inaction from internet giants means the cost of tackling terror content is "heaped on law enforcement agencies" – and the state should be able to recoup that in some way."
Strangely, perhaps, it was my belief that the law enforcement agencies were paid to enforce the law already, that's their job.
If various internet companies didn't already help them out with traffic capture and analysis, the law enforcement agencies would be much worse off than they are now.
