Posts by Kingston Black

Mud Then

"It's not pure ice, but about 50 to 85 per cent water, mixed with dust or larger rocky particles". Down on farm 'ere, I calls that mud.

To quote Father Jack..

"DRINK!"

Binoculars?

Should have gone to Specsavers.

Father Doyle

Shirley no relation of Ted and Mrs D...

The one with the mind bleach in the pocket please.

"test explosions should be resumed and held regularly with the world's politicians watching"

And, as seems to be the protocol at major political events, the leaders get to sit front and centre, nice and close...

Shirley the title should have been...

IBM to offer BREAST MILK express delivery-as-a-service for staff.

"you’ve been handling pooh"

What's Winnie got to do with this then?

Once upon a time

On one contract many moons ago, I had a young, female, attractive, Namibian student on an international exchange scheme working for me. One day she comes up to my desk and says "Can you give me a stiffy please?". It was at the time 3.5" floppy disks were all the rage. Apparently 5" disks are floppy...

Icon - that's what happened to the bloke sat at the next desk.

Double Entendres

Headline, check. Article, check. Bootnote?

A server development board being tested (page1 pic)

On (what looks like) an anti-static bag. Really?

These people really put the n in cuts

The spooks and their lackies must be running really scared - what has Snowden got that they're terrified the rest of us might learn?

This flagrant, state sponsored bullying makes one ashamed to be British...

DARPA calls Big Data boffins: Help us lock up everyone

I've shortened your title a bit - sums up our governments' attitude nicely...

Was going to use the joke icon, but it's not is it?

A bunch of bankers

I think the correct collective noun is a wunch [of bankers]...

The hare's bolted...

Now the 'Merkin spooks in Russia get to do some old fashioned spying along side their remote voyeurism, and the FSB will, no doubt, try to catch them at it. Game on, although I suppose it was never off...

Bonne chance.

The nausiating smell of FUD

The AFR article smells of yet more western spook FUD to me, along with a side helping of pro-'Merkin, anti-Chinese trade FUD; succinctly summed up as "don't buy Lenovo, buy Dell and HP instead", or "don't buy no stinkin' commie back-doored kit, buy good ol' 'Merkin back-doored kit instead". Ah, the hypocrisy...

AC posted 03:31, has an interesting point about Lenovo allowing legacy mode BIOS instead of UEFI.

Oh, and does anyone else find the expression "Five Eyes" just a little too Orwellian for comfort? Or is it an accurate expression of reality?

"Assange's Skype appearance at this latest launch crashed repeatedly"

Someone at the NSA having a laugh perhaps?

Gardening Leave

One of the problems with these surveillance states is there are too many vested interests, not least of which is all the spooks who want their salaries, pensions, holidays in order to live. Dismantling the huge surveillance machine would result in many spooks out of work, which of course, they will do their best to resist.

Solution, gardening leave. Send 95% of them home on full pay, with pensions, holiday entitlements etc intact but insist they remain at home during office hours, doing no spying, for the rest of their working lives, unless they resign of course. Then close 95% of their offices, data centres etc. and save the the billions it costs to keep the infrastructure functioning - win win situation. By all means, keep a small, proportional, targeted, highly regulated and openly monitored surveillance operation, but get rid of the mass spying.

It pays to wear tinfoil

Being a user with a bit of a tinfoil habit (no, I'm not a nun), I've always used a second wireless router (configured as a switch) for my Android tablet, and it's only switched on when I'm actually using the tablet. Don't store any personal data on Android, so I've never knowingly used the backup feature, but I expect the NSA have a copy of the passphrase slurped via Google anyway.

Also, having a second, temporary WAP is useful when visitors request internet access, it stops their devices having a copy of your main router's wireless ID and passphrase.

An increase in funding?!

To the casual observer, it could seem that some of our politicos might have some juicy little secrets and that <insert TLA (or 4LA) agency of choice> have shown them the pictures...

"Ah! Carrier Pigeons..."

Somewhere in the bowels of the USA a new threat is perceived, and members of the Royal Racing Pigeon Association become "persons of interest".

The one with Trill in the pocket please.

Yorkshire Hard Water Blend

If you've got hard water, then Yorkshire's Hard Water blend gives an excellent mug of tea.

"no-IT-angle-whatsoever". Really? Not much programming gets done around here without a decent (see above) mug of tea...

Cynical B*****ds

"Informatica 64 created the (free) FOCA toolkit, an open source tool used to analyse documents hosted on a web site in order to chart the network architecture hidden behind the corporate firewall."

and...

"Informatica 64 also sells "MetaShield", an application for stripping such data before the files leave the safety of the office, for companies concerned about the existence of FOCA."

In other words, we've created this open source toolkit that helps attackers penetrate your network, and surprise surprise, we've created a service that will help you mitigate the effects of our open source attack tool.

WTF?

"Personal Locker – that allows online users to store their most sensitive documents, including financial records and copies of IDs and passports". Oh, that sounds like a really good idea then, with the added bonus that it's provided by paragon of software excellence McAfee... duh.

I expect <insert TLA agency of choice> are currently getting all excited again, and can't wait to get their hands on all that lovely new, very personal, data. Is it just me or will those of us who don't fall for this cloudy bulls**t soon become noticeable by our absence? "Excuse me Sir, you seem to use the internet everyday but don't store information in the cloud, you must have something to hide. Bend over..."

Well...

does it work?

Icon - mouse over it...

"...required for safe and effective weapons delivery." - RAF

Is that:

a) management drivel;

b) another military oxymoron;

c) something Parcelforce should be doing.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Icon: natch.

"A year should be plenty of time for the average Reg reader to pull that off? ®"

Stop sniggering at the back. A year? More like a couple of minutes...

Paris - well obviously...