* Posts by tskears

21 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Nov 2011

Ladies in tech, have you considered not letting us know you're female?

tskears

Re: Typical attitude from the unoppressed...

>> All her referees said they would never rehire the lazy bitch again.

So the entire female gender is condemned because this one example had learned how to play the system.

Oh... that's right, Men don't play the system. They're all totally honest and upstanding, and you know that when you hire them you'll receive twelve hours work for eight hours pay.

>> Call me a dinosaur then.

You're a dinosaur.

Hollywood offers Daniel Craig $150m to (slash wrists) play James Bond

tskears

Bradley Cooper? If a speech therapist can train him to do a Brit accent...?

Hit me with the down votes, I can take it.

Childcare app bods wipe users' data – then discover backups had been borked for a year

tskears

Re: So much for Due Dilligence...

I am offended...

I'm an expensive consultant working in a regulated industry and part of computer systems qualification is to successfully run a backup AND a restore.

Poo on you...

PC pioneer Gary Kildall's unpublished memoir revealed

tskears

Digital Research DOS

DR-DOS was always one (sometimes two) steps ahead of Microsoft. I ran it up to version 6.0.

Gun-jumping French pols demand rapid end to English in EU

tskears

Interesting observation...

I'm presently at a company not far from the European Parliament where half the people speak French as their mother tongue and half the people speak Flemish as their mother tongue.

Everyone speaks English. Meetings are in English, water-cooler conversations are in English.They even talk to me in English, which is a shame because I'd like to practice my Quebecois...

What's holding up Canada's internet?

tskears
FAIL

Re: Socialist demands more socialism

"Rural broadband...", now there's an oxymoron.

We have 700MHz wireless Internet to our home in the rural Maritimes. The service is basically a provincially sponsored monopoly for the local ISP. And if we hit 100KB/sec, it's a good day.

The self-same company will supply cable TV to our home, but not cable Internet.

On the up-side, we have no data cap. But at 100KB/s, it's unlikely we'd ever hit one if we did...

Pair programming: The most extreme XP practice?

tskears

I'm not a programmer

I'm just a nerd, so what do I know...

But I do consult in process improvement and while it's not quite "pairing", I am a great proponent of brain-storming. Just three or four smart people bouncing ideas off each other. I've seen some incredible output from these sessions.

So I can see how it could work with pairing.

NASA's mighty SLS to burn 1.215 Olympic-sized pools

tskears

Still resisting pressure to go metric...

Scientific American, February, 1866:

"Let Congress pass an act declaring that, after the first of January, 1867, the French system of weights and measures (metric) shall be the legal system of the country".

The Register, March, 2016:

"Let Congress pass an act declaring that, after the first of January, 2017, the Olympic Swimming Pool shall be the legal system of measuring rocket fuel burn".

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

tskears

>> "People put up with body searches and scanners by the TSA at airports, which obviously thwarts terrorism, so why can't people put up with a little less security in their phones'

Because passing through a body scanner in Denver Airport won't allow some miscreant in Belarus to crack the encryption on my iThing and drain every last penny out of my bank account.

i am no expert, but the way I perceive this debate is that there is encryption and there is broken encryption. Place a back-door in encryption and the question is not "if" someone who shouldn't have access will find it, the question is "when" someone who shouldn't have access will find it.

Please correct me if I am in error...

Microsoft has crafted a switch OS on Debian Linux. Repeat, a switch OS on Debian Linux

tskears

Hmmm... Sounds like Microsoft just re-invented FreeSco.

Bitcoiners are just like everybody else: They use rubbish passwords

tskears

Uppercase? Where are the uppercase?

175,000 whinge to Microsoft about phone tech support scams

tskears

Windows? There's a problem with my windows?

My wife runs a Mac...

A few years back we were in the midst of a major home renovation. The replacement doors and windows had been delivered and were stored awaiting installation.

Phone rings:

Scammer: "Ma'am, we have detected a problem with your Windows"

Wife: Many expletives, followed by "Then you'd better come and replacement them NOW as we need them installing next week".

Scammer: Hangs up.

Wife: Very confused.

Yahoo! Mail! is! still! a! thing!, tries! blocking! Adblock! users!

tskears

Bad Business Plan

Disable my email account because I'm using Adblocker, and I'll disable my email account permanently.

600,000 cable modems have an easy to pop backdoor in a backdoor

tskears

Backdoor Squared

Does anyone believe that the uninformed masses in the various government buildings around the world that are lobbying for backdoors in everything read news articles like this?

Put a backdoor in anything and someone who shouldn't have access will find it. And the bad guys will just go to using One Time Pads.

Pause Patch Tuesday downloads, buggy code can kill Outlook

tskears

What Can Go Wrong?

It didn't just kill Outlook on my laptop, it appears to have killed Word too. There are selected files that I can only open in "Safe" mode.

Yes, I disabled Hardware Graphics Acceleration and yes, I disabled Add-Ons. Nothing made it better.

And strange that it all started yesterday...

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

tskears

Six Terror Bites

If this puppy fires up, I'll turn green!

Wikipedia’s biggest scandal: Industrial-scale blackmail

tskears

It's OK to say w**ker, it was on El Reg

The times that I do refer to Wikipedia, I season everything I read with a liberal shake of salt.

Some articles are demonstrably inaccurate, some are I-know-more-than you-do patronizing to the point of offensive, but in fairness a few are actually well written. And so we come to the Title Line...

My wife calls them all WIKI-W**NKERS and refuses to read anything on Wicked Wikipedia.

Don't want pranksters 'bricking' your Android? Just stop using the internet, duh – Google

tskears

Where's the news...?

>> A device will appear lifeless and unable to make calls, with a dead screen and no sound output.

That sounds like my Android telephone about one day in three, without the malware.

But then it rather sounds like me one day in three, too...

MARSQUAKES shook up range of hills in ancient lake bed

tskears

quake or Quake...?

I believe the term "earthquake" is applicable assuming Mars has "earth" (aka dirt or soil). Use of the term "Earthquake" would not be acceptable.

And on that note: Should "Marsquake" be "marsquake"?

I/O NOOOOO!!! We sat through Google's bum numbing 3-hour keynote so you didn't have to

tskears

>> or an authorized Bluetooth watch.

So the gang-bangers knock you down, give you a good kicking, take your phone and steal your watch.

Hmmm...

Got a few minutes to help LOHAN suck?

tskears

A cheaper suck?

Try this

http://www.vaccon.com/hvp-home.aspx

My monthly gin bill is more...