* Posts by Naselus

1555 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2014

Classic Shell, Audacity downloads infected with retro MBR nuke nasty

Naselus

Re: More reason to use Linux

"I enjoy many things about Mint but I don't want to get that greasy under the hood right now!"

Honestly, Mint is actually less secure than Windows these days (not Linux distros generally - just Mint, which is extremely amateurishly run and often skips critical security updates for extremely flimsy reasons). Most Linux admins I know think it's awful and advise people to avoid it if they want to really learn about Linux. Generally, the people who go around proselytizing Mint to anyone who'll listen don't understand WHY Linux is considered better than Windows, and think that just by using any Linux distro they've become computing experts; the equivalent of people who think 'Macs can't get viruses'.

Naselus

"You mean like running a program as root on Linux?"

Yes, but that's different, because reasons.

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

Naselus

Re: Is that all?

Considering that what he actually did, according to the article, was show up, make a list of demands, piss off for two weeks, and then plug in a server and install DOS and Netware, I'd say the client was well within their rights to tell him to sod off when he billed 5 grand for what amounts to about 2 hours work.

Honestly, 'Earl' doesn't sound like he knew what he was doing at all really. No attempt to use drive recovery tools. He didn't even bother sourcing $30 worth of SCSI cables for a drive swap, instead insisting the client go and buy a new server at $2-3 grand. No attempt to run up a VM to sim it (which, let's be honest, could've been knocked up in 20 minutes on a laptop on day 1). No external drive connecting tools, no serious attempt to salvage the dead box (it had a bad PSU and fans. Like that's a show stopper), nothing. In total, he showed about as much knowledge of IT as you'd expect from a desktop support engineer, yet wanted to charge about 30 times as much.

To his credit, he openly admitted he wouldn't be much use for the job before they gave it him, but really if this was his approach then his honest answer should have been 'I'm not remotely capable of doing this for you'. So yeah, if I were the client I'd feel a lot like Earl was a random cowboy trying his luck rather than a professional - and reading the story I'm not hugely convinced that isn't what happened either.

Apple joins the bug bounty party with $200,000 top prize

Naselus

Doesn't seem like much of a bug bounty program tbh

By making it invite only, they've more or less dropped all the advantages to having a bounty program. The entire point is to harness the Open Source-style many-eyes advantage.

Outsourcery: We've had offers for our assets (and, er, shareholders might get nothing)

Naselus

Re: Hosted Skype for Business

The vultures are clearly circling.

Outsourcery burned through more than £20 MEEEELLION in cash before it crashed

Naselus

I was repeatedly harassed by recruitment consultants for jobs at Outsourcery for most of the past two years, as were most other engineers in the whole of Manchester. Most people avoided it like the plague, since it has been a byword for failing business since at least 2012. It never came close to turning a profit and Linney and Newton paid themselves a quarter of a million quid a year each for... well, I'm not entirely sure what they were doing, tbh. Setting fire to large piles of other people's money, apparently.

Microsoft buries the bad Windows Phone news: Mobile sales collapse

Naselus

A few things we need to remember before we bury this whole thread in anti-MS bullcrap:

1) Nokia was already failing before the takeover. They were a powerhouse for pre-smartphones. They failed miserably to translate that dominance into the post-2007 marketplace and were in deep trouble, relying on a fairly big subsidy from Microsoft to stay afloat. They were not well set up to transition toward a commodity market, and that's where non-Apple phones are headed, rapidly.

2) WP is actually a good product. No, really. I don't know anyone who was actually unhappy with it, and I do know a fair few people who have used it - the Lumia is a really nice bit of kit and lots of people like them. The lack of apps is a problem, but the actual OS was probably the best operating system MS have ever put together. Their awful market share meant that the WP team really tried pretty hard when most MS teams can get away with phoning it in because the vast bulk of people will continue to use Windows even if it sucks.

3) Android would have murdered WP regardless of anything MS did. It is not realistically possible to compete with Android at this stage, since phone manufacturers making pennies on the dollar in profit margin are going to stick with a free OS and will pick the already-dominant option. Win Phone was late to the party, and was trying to play by proprietary rules when Google had decided to kill that whole market off; by the time MS adjusted strategy to increase market share it was too late.

4) The phone-becomes-a-PC thing was always an absolute hail Mary in response to point 3, and it's Intel who killed that. Whether WP would still be worth pumping money into if they hadn't, who knows; the ability to plug in a monitor, KB and mouse and just convert directly into a desktop was certainly something that a lot of people were very interested in. If they had been able to bring in the entire x86 Wintel ecosystem then the lack of apps would cease to be an issue too.

Smartphone sales stall at ~3.5 million per day

Naselus

Re: Don't forget the give away offers

It's also a shame because Windows Phone OS is actually pretty damn good by all accounts. Unlike the post-apocalyptic malware-strewn hellscape of Android or the Brave New World-esque controlling dystopia of Apple (or the similar horror shows that MS generates when it's dominant in a market), Windows Phone is pretty secure, light on the hardware, and pretty open - not that anyone has bothered to write any programs for it, legit or otherwise.

Blackberry's latest offerings have also been very nice, too. Shame that their company is now a byword for 2005.

Windows 10 still free, even the Anniversary Update, if you're crass

Naselus

Re: Missing option in survey

"* No, I am using a superior, non MS, operating system"

Could we not drop the 'superior' part, so that Mint users can use that option too?

Did Donald Trump really just ask Russia to hack the US govt? Yes, he did

Naselus

Re: You are seeing a master persuader at work

"Based on these skills, Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) has been predicting that he will likely win the election and made that prediction before the primary elections even got going."

He also predicted that Trump would get a landslide in Iowa, and then accused the Republican establishment of electoral fraud when Cruz won it. Then he endorsed Clinton because he was worried about being assassinated (no, really). He also believes in a bunch of ridiculous 'positive thinking' nonsense (like writing things down 15 times a day to make sure they happen), and thinks Kanye West is also a genius 'master persuader'. So yeah, forgive me if I doubt his thesis.

I think it's rather more likely that Trump simply tapped into many Americans' less pleasant urges at a point when globally elites are highly distrusted. Sanders also gained from it; in the UK, Corbyn has seen a similar thing; Podemos in Spain, the Front Nationale in France, Syrzia and Golden Dawn in Greece, and the 5-Star Movement in Italy... they're all just expressions of the crumbling credibility of the elite. An elite which Hillary is more or less the ultimate example of.

Trump is saying stuff which pisses off the establishment politicians, and a lot of people are currently pissed off with establishment politicians. So they agree with him and let him off the virulent racism and quasi-fascist authoritarianism. Bombastic Bob and Big John may sound like morons, but if you read their posts then they do outline their own motives quite clearly - and most of the are based on distrusting regular politicians and being entirely happy to unleash a monster just to shake the established order up. They're not able to provide a convincing argument because we're working on the assumption that we want incremental changes to the system. Trump supporters want to destroy it and rebuild it from scratch.

Naselus

Re: splitting hairs?

"Whatever you think HRC's flaws might be, think really hard about how bad it'd be if Trump gets to pick them. We just don't need any more Anton Scalias or NRA sock puppets."

I don't think Trump would be picking even a Scalia.

He'd want to have at least two Supreme Justices with the surname 'Trump'. Any other vacancies would be filled from the runners-up of Miss America.

Windows 10 build 14342: No more friendly Wi-Fi sharing

Naselus

Re: Good

"I found it really handy, but making more home WiFi publically accessible would be a better solution.

For most people locking down their WiFi is of little benefit anyway these days. You should be using HTTPS or similar for any services you care about."

I do hope no-one lets you configure a router. Ever.

What's losing steam at Apple? Pretty much everything

Naselus

Re: Apple's biggest plus is also its problem

Yeah... honestly, I don't associate Apple kit with longevity. I mean, it's not like it dies any faster than anyone else's... but it doesn't last any longer either really. Generally, a Thinkpad half the price will have the same specs and the same life expectancy, while an equivalent-priced 'luxury' laptop will generally be better and last longer (and be more upgradable). In regard to phones, the same more or less holds true - a flagship 'droid at the same price as an iPhone is almost inevitably substantially beefier, usually has SD card slots, and will not be obsoleted by software upgrades within 3 years (in fact, 'droids are more likely to be obsoleted by the lack of them :) ).

Naselus

Re: A few folks I know that run Apple gear...

"Replacing Cook and Ive won't make any difference, because there is no one like Jobs in the entire industry."

And yet others in the industry have managed to be successful. You don't need to be a carbon-copy of Jobs. You just need to be more than Cook or Ives.

Cook wouldn't know a decent ideas if he tripped over it, and so his chosen additions to Apple's offerings have been, well, junk. A few of the other commentards have asked where the new products are. There have been new products (Watch, Apple Music etc)... they've just all been utterly underwhelming brand-wank tat. Steve Jobs was very good at spotting someone else's good idea sitting in a niche, ruthlessly copying it, painting it white and then building a mass-market for it (which is exactly what he did with MP3 players, smartphones and tablets). Cook is not capable of identifying these kind of products; he has no eye for when something has no potential (like the Watch - wearables are just a shit idea) and can't tell when he's already missed the mass-market boat (Apple Music). He's pretty good at just endlessly iterating existing Apple products and extracting rents from iTunes, but not much else.

As for Ive... I honestly don't know quite why people rate him as a great designer tbh. He mostly just makes things into thin rectangles and then declares himself a genius.

Nitwit has fit over twit hit: Troll takes timeless termination terribly

Naselus

Re: Right-wing news website

Actually, while I generally agree regarding the echo-chamber effect of the web (which has only really become this way since social media became a thing and started channeling us into small cliques who agree with each other all the time and filtering out anyone who might offer a different opinion), I think that the US right is in a much worse condition than most other examples, because it started this earlier. Hence this kind of deranged racism masquerading as free speech and the orange monstrosity that just became their nominee.

Naselus

Re: Freedom of speech angle

"They all seem to dumb to realise that freedom of speech is exactly the same as freedom of action"

Um, no, it isn't.

You don't have 'freedom of action', because many actions - like the ones you cite - are illegal and will result in the state arresting you.

You do have 'freedom of speech' (in the US), because the state will not arrest you for saying things.

That's the difference.

It also has absolutely nothing to do with this case, since Twitter is nothing to do with the state. Though the usual idiots who bring up 'freedom of speech' whenever they're complaining about not being allowed to spout racist or misogynist filth wherever they like generally fail to recognize that too.

Naselus

Re: Right-wing news website

" was involved in a discussion the other day around the juxta-position of many UK youths complaining that their elders had sold them out and ruined their lives etc. (/whinge/whine) when most of them who seem to be complaining didn't get off their arse and *actually* vote."

Except that's anecdotal bullshit, because youth turnout was 64%, in the same ballpark as all working-age groups. Which may actually go a little further in explaining why they're so pissed off with the result - they actually voted for once and it didn't go their way. Combined with the general theme of the Remain campaign being 'if we leave, the world will literally end by 3pm on Friday', that kinda left a lot of under-30s feeling very upset.

No, Google you still can't have dotless, one-word domains

Naselus

Re: Doesn't anyone remember Internet Explorer?

... you can still use 1-word DNS targets in any browser, provided you control the DNS server (or hosts file) that it's referencing the IP from. This in no way means that browsers are 'allowing you to have 1-word domains', because browsers are not part of the DNS infrastructure. At all.

For example, if you set up your DNS server to recognize https://search/ as 10,10,10,10, then typing 'search' into your browser would point it to 10.10.10.10. This doesn't mean that you've just broken the rules of the internet unless you allow outside queries to it and get someone to add it as a node in the web's DNS forwarding infrastructure. ICANN's ruling here says 'no-one is allowed to do that'. It has nothing much to do with browsers.

Kotkin on who made Trump and Brexit: Look in the mirror, it's you

Naselus

Not exactly news

The Left hsa been split between the working class left and the technocratic left for at least a century. In 1903 Martov and Lenin had pretty much the exact same debate that the Labour party is currently wrenching itself through. Lenin argued the technocratic viewpoint, that there should be a professional political party that controlled everything because the workers were too stupid to bring about socialism. Martov took the grassroots option, arguing for a decentralized, democratic movement that would allow working people to determine their own destinies with dignity, without being controlled from above.

Under Neoliberalism (ie, since Reagan/Thatcher in the early 1980s), the left in both the US and the UK has become entirely consumed by the technocratic viewpoint that middle-class, highly educated professionals should manage society for the benefit of all. Hence why everyone in parliament has identikit Oxbridge PPE educations and started out as a researcher or policy wonk, never doing a genuine job outside politics in their lives. They honestly don't understand why the working class left have been abandoning them in droves as a result of this. Both the Democrats under Clinton and New Labour under Blair pretended to be moving to the left for the benefit of everyone... and yet the societies that they shaped turned out to be very baised toward, well, people like Clinton and Blair, and completely forgot about the people that they were elected by.

Those groups found no voice on the left, and so began to move toward the Right to find any representation at all; they aren't all crazy racists or insane xenophobes, they simply want to smash a system that has no place for them. They view all of politics as corrupt because they see Blair making millions consulting for fascistic Arab dictators, or Clinton grooming his wife and then daughter for a dynastic coronation (just as the Bush family have been doing on the Right), and see that despite all the promises that were made, they ended up shut out of the system while the guys making the promises have made a fortune. They feel ripped off, and quite rightly.

Use Brexit to save smokers' lives and plug vaping, say peers

Naselus

OK, so negatives:

* economy crashing

* No immigration limits possible

* No tariffs possible

* No extra money for NHS after all

* Fishing quota not changing

* Still probably going to have to pay EU fees for access to market

* Still probably going to have to follow all EU directives for access to market

* Thousands of jobs being offshored

* Hiring freezes worldwide

* Total collapse of political system

Positives:

* Can vape again.

Remind me why we voted out again?

Linus Torvalds in sweary rant about punctuation in kernel comments

Naselus

Re: Reflection on the author...

"If you see "bad (sloppy) comments", there is (I suspect) a similar fate for the code in general."

It's only sloppy if they mix and match, which there's no indication hat they have done. Linus is just being an asshat here tbh. I can't even tell the difference between a couple of his 'acceptables' and 'unacceptables'.

Naselus

Re: Well there is a point to this

"When I was writing code back in the day, my comments were mainly there for the next man who would be looking at the code. "

This.

You may be a fantastic coder who can look at a function in FORTRAN and instantly divine it's purpose, or you may just have a great memory and recall why you wrote every bit of code as you did. Regardless, assume the next guy who's going to look at it is a half-blind concussed chimpanzee in a masturbatory frenzy with an attention span of 45 seconds, knows nothing of the language and will delete anything that is not explicitly commented with 'DO NOT DELETE THIS YOU PILLOCK'.

We know for a fact that, no matter how short-term code is meant to be in use for, there are many cases critical for the functioning of the entire economy where bits of code have actually outlived the languages they're written in. Dead languages lurk at the bottom of banks and underlying the nuclear weapons launch systems. In fifty years, some poor bastard who only heard of C++ once in a two-hour history lesson while he was hung over may need to crack open your code and figure out what the hell it is meant to do on a time limit, and if you're not commenting because of some idiotic notion of 'coding purity' or some other bullshit, then that guy's life just became infinitely harder. Comment properly, don't be an asshole.

Besides, writing code 'clearly' is often the exact opposite of writing code efficiently.

Label your cables: A cautionary tale from the server room

Naselus

Re: Labels

"some over zealous person removes the documents 'because they are a fire hazard'. Probably as a non techie, they are filed straight into the watepaper basket/shredder."

Why are you letting non-techies in your server room?

Pure Storage’s FlashBlade is great on paper. But it's still only on paper

Naselus

Re: Fluff

"Am I the only one that read this article and thought, "There is literally nothing here" ?"

I've felt that after reading more or less everything Enrico Signoretti has ever posted on El Reg, tbh.

Gartner: Brexit cluster-fsck has ballsed up our spending forecast

Naselus

So...

How do they explain the other 500 times they've been wildly wrong?

App-V birthday to you, Win10: Virty tools baked in Anniversary update

Naselus

Re: So....?

"So.... why are people really bothered? Because now they have to pay for what they use?"

First rule of any Reg comments section about a Microsoft article - regardless of the contents of the article, you must jump on this chance to slag off Microsoft.

If they are removing something broken, then you must complain that you use this feature all the time, regardless of the fact that everyone knows it is broken and anyone using it is an idiot.

If they are integrating an otherwise separate feature into the main operating system, you must complain that you don't want it to be integrated because now it is filling up your computer with unwanted crap, even if it doesn't install by default,

If they are making something easier, complain that it is spammy. If they are making something harder, complain that it is too complex. If they are giving away free cake, complain that they are trying to bribe people. If they set up a hospital specifically to nurse seriously injured puppies back to health, argue that the puppies deserve to die.

Attempt to fit the word 'sheeple' in if possible, even though it makes anyone using it sound like a total dickhead from a 1996 conspiracy theory. Announce that the Great Migration to Mint is now certain, because that makes it clear you know nothing about either Linux generally or Mint specifically. Make some general comments that haven't been true since about 1993; in particular, a long rambling critique of how much you hate Terminal Services or MSDOS 3.1 will be prized and earn you much status. Screaming with rage about some specific Visual Basic bug from Office '97 that was fixed years ago is also a bonus.

Maybe try and claim that Apple would never do something like this, despite the fact that Apple pull shit like this constantly on iOS. For extra points, post some videos of Steve Jobs at one of his cultish events, probably while launching some hideously locked-down, overpriced piece of crap that no-one in their right mind would try to use for serious work. Do not mention the Watch.

Fail to comply with these rules and you'll get like a million downvotes. Remember, even if MS are dong something good, they have been making all our lives hell in dozens of ways for 20+ years, so their natural relationship with the average Reg commentard is a deep and abiding distrust.

DevOps: The spotty faced yoof waiting to blossom

Naselus

Re: Slow News Day

The really annoying bit is, it isn't a slow news day and they're doing so anyway.

Fear and Brexit in Tech City: Digital 'elite' are having a nervous breakdown

Naselus

Re: So any company that trades with an EU country has to open their borders to EU inhabitants?

"The point being they don't need to. Seriously. They won't be that desperate."

Actually, that's not strictly true.

See, there's been a lot of comparisons for this - like the EU accounts for 50% of British exports and Britain only accounts for 12% of the EU's - which are true, but they're also a bit disingenuous, because the EU isn't a single country. It's a collection of individual countries which each have their own trade relationship with Britain operating within that single market. And some of them really are going to be pretty desperate to have access to the British market... especially Germany, who need to be able to compete with the rise of China.

Britain is Germany's 3rd largest export market, and it's place is not going to be taken by Italy or Romania or some other country that's remaining in the union. That introduces a lot of business pressure on Merkel's government to try and maintain free trade with Britain - pressure she's very likely to fold under, even if she does so while throwing out lots of bluster about how Britain cannot 'have its cake and eat it'.

Germany arguably needs Britain's markets more than Britain needs Germany's, in fact, given that German is an engine of manufacturing production and Britain is mostly a clearing house for international capital. Expect to see a lot of posturing on the German side before a relatively sweet deal is offered.

France is a little different; they have a much, much greater need to prop up the EU and the Euro because any hint of collapse would cause more or less all the capital in France to flee across the Rhine overnight, reducing the country to near-medieval poverty very quickly. They also have a larger Nationalist Right than Germany's relatively marginal one, and a lot more of their population has grown Euro-skeptic in recent years, so they have to prove that Frexit would be a disaster. France's position is much more likely to hinge on a punishment position, though Germany industrial interests will likely in out in the end (as they more or less always do in European politics).

Italy and Spain are in economic chaos and really just need to get a deal sorted quickly. Poland is a rising star but still lacks much clout compared to major powers. Sweden is similarly middle-ranking, and while it can make it's voice heard it's not particularly interested in punishment politics. No-one else in Europe really gets a say in the matter, no matter what everyone likes to pretend; they're just present to hold Germany's currency valuations down and soak up excess production.

Parliament takes axe to 2nd EU referendum petition

Naselus

Re: Be careful what you wish for...

"There wasn't time to undo the amount of voter resentment that such a level of persistent arrogance had accumulated"

How would we know if there was time? No-one even attempted it. All the Remain camp did was keep pushing ever-more-insane threats and declarations of how it would be, literally, 'the end of Western Civilization'.

The warnings about the very genuine horrors that we're gong to have to put up with now were being drowned out in hysterical hyperbole and threats of 'punishment budgets', and no-one, at any point, bothered offering a plausible plan to reform the EU in a way that would address some of the concerns people have with it... mostly because no-one bothered to ask what those concerns were, they just assumed it was all working-class xenophobia and racism. Which is now largely what the Remainers are blaming it on, too.

Both campaigns were truly awful (for Leave, Nigel Farrage's copied Nazi poster; Gove's shout-out to anti-intellectualism; just anything Boris has ever done), but Remain's campaign managed to take a country that pretty much wanted to remain in the EU and managed to produce an Out vote through completely failing to engage the voters at all. Project Fear was a thing - it's been the favoured tactic of Cameron's entire time in office in fact - but now it's lost it's teeth.

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

Naselus

"There is nothing like a couple of batsh*t crazy nationalists stirring up some ol' reliable xenophobia for the entire population of the country they come from to get tagged with the same label."

Or people discussing verifiable historical facts about the post-revolutionary French government's stated policy of using the standardization of their language as a tool of domination to produce a unified French identity, to the point that they turned it into the first state-controlled language in the world. This is pretty well-recorded in the early 19th century, and the motives are explicitly laid out in this manner.

You can discuss the crimes of various states throughout history without being a nationalist or a xenophobe, and despite being a Brit (as embarrassing as that admission is at the moment) I'm entirely happy to discuss the British Empire's record of genocide, wrongful imprisonment, economic destruction and downright idiocy too. But the British didn't care as much about language as the French did, and they still don't (aside, obviously from the furious anger we all feel during Microsoft installs when it offers US English first).

In fact, the British were quite happy for local groups to be unable to communicate with each other, in keeping with the 'divide and rule' philosophy of the Empire. The French were hell-bent on attempting to assimilate their colonial possessions (hence why Algeria ended up in a department in it's own right, where there was never any talk of turning Mysore into a British county), which ironically generally mean they were a lot nicer in their colonialism.

Where the British built plantations, the French built schools. But their price for that was the wholesale assimilation of local cultures. Where the British tended to just subjugate local world-views, or pervert them to their advantage (like they did with the hardening-up of the Indian caste system, which was largely in decline prior to colonization), the French tried to replace them outright.

Naselus

Re: Pedant alert

If you wish to be technical about it, then perhaps a better terminology would be 'regional French languages' then. IIRC, Occitan is also not actually a dialect of French but a separate Romance langauge. The point was more to highlight the French government's obsession with the promotion of French and the destruction of rival languages.

Naselus

They're also quite likely to speak French, as it happens. And German. Both are taught in schools in both countries. I suspect that German courses might be defunded in Greece's case, though.

The French are completely batshit about languages, though. They're obsessed with the idea that French should be the language of diplomacy, and that it not being so is a stain upon the honour of the whole country. Their insane hostility to regional French dialects (Occitan, Bretton) over the past two centuries is well-documented; there's still schoolyards in Brittany where you can see signs proclaiming 'it is forbidden to spit on the ground or speak Breton'

Osborne on Leave limbo: Travel and trade stay unchanged

Naselus

Scottish independence would be suicidal atm, tbh. They'd need to adopt the Euro (which is also in the shitter from the EU just becoming 13% smaller), and their budget from the last referendum assumed Brent Crude would remain at $115 a barrel in perpetuity... it's currently at $48.

Indyref2 would be followed by 30 years of austerity, a collapse in the entire Scottish welfare state, privatization of the Scottish university system (no more fee tuition fees), and a brutal backlash against the SNP. Which is why Saint Sturgeon's position has shifted from Friday morning's 'we're going to have another referendum' to yesterday morning's 'the Scottish parliament can veto Brexit'... she's been told that any independence campaign conducted right now would be economic suicide (and worse, economic suicide the Scots may actually accept).

Naselus
Joke

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

"Obviously Osborne won't want to stoke the flames under the boiling financial market at this exact moment in time."

Yes, the last thing we'd want him to do is try and intervene in a plunging market. That's totally not what we expect the guy in charge of the economy to do. I for one also hope Mark Carney isn't doing anything either.

Naselus

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

"The pound has dropped. A little."

You've not being keeping an eye on the market if you still think the pound is at $1.37. It's presently on $1.32. Which is an $0.11 drop from three months ago, an $0.18 drop from Thursday night (when it was admittedly significantly over-value from pro-Remain speculation),and a $0.05 drop from where it was when the markets opened. At one point it bounced off the lowest floor since 1985.

You have a very odd definition of 'a little'.

Naselus

Re: Growing Sense of bereavement..

"You could say exactly the same about the Remain campaign, where promises about more control and more independence were just so much hot air."

I don't recall the Remain camp making many promises of what would happen if we stayed in, tbh. I do remember them promising that if they lost, the pound would fall, unemployment would go up, there'd be a recession, we wouldn't be able to get access to the common market without following all the rules anyway, hell, even that the price of holidays would go up. Y'know, all the stuff that's actually happened over the last few days.

Just about the only thing that hasn't happened is Osborne's Brexit Budget (A.K.A the second-longest electorial suicide note in history), and that's only because he honestly still believes he has a chance at No. 10.

Naselus

On the plus side

At least George has finally stopped weeping in the shower about how he'll never get to be PM now, like he was doing all weekend.

Of course, the fact that he's back in action might spook markets even more, given his abysmal record in office.

Naselus

Re: Give us the emergency budget!

"I think it's a bit rich to wait months with an emergency budget."

It's certainly stretching the definition of the term 'Emergency' a fair bit, isn't it? I mean, if I ring for an emergency plumber at 2am and he doesn't show up til 7 I get pissed off, let alone if he says 'there's no rush, I'm retiring in three months and my apprentice will pop over after he's taken over'.

Naselus

Re: Project FUD is alive and well

"So what are the figures for any other July? is this any different from "business as usual?"

Not got the figures to hand, but I suspect 20% of businesses planning to offshore a big chunk of their workforce and another 25% engaging in a hiring freeze isn't a typical July.

Quick note: Brexit consequences for IT

Naselus

Re: CHange

"Where do companies make their money - that's where the HQ's are likely to be located"

Yes, because almost all consumers in the whole of Europe only spend their money in Luxembourg..

Naselus

Re: CHange

"Yes, things have changed, but how did they work in the past?"

Mostly by having massive periodic wars. Seriously, Europe has rarely managed to go 50 years without at least two of the French, Germans, British, Dutch, Italians and Spanish being at war with each other. Saying 'we always managed fine before the EU!' neglects to note that immediately before the EU, Germany's main import into Britain was (quite rapidly-moving) incendiary bombs.

Time to re-file your patents and trademarks, Britain

Naselus

Wait, an IP article

...not being written by Andrew Orlowski? I'd have thought he'd be all over this.

Oh, wait, no, he backed Leave, didn't he. In order to protect our patents, no doubt. Good work, Andy.

Pull on your branded rival T-shirt, it's time to party with Nutanix

Naselus

Can you come back when any of these Hyperconverged vendors have actually posted a profit please? And until then, can we you stop constantly banging on about it? It's as overused and vapid as 'cloud' and 'devops'.

Professor slams digital efforts of 'website-obsessed' government

Naselus

Re: Bah!

Yes... but the quote does not say 'the government never changed anything prior to the coming of the internet'. It said they never changed things with the purpose of 'transformation', which has become a stated aim in and of itself since the web came about. They could be incompetent either way - but in the olden days, they were incompetent in delivery but at least they had a sensible aim stated in the first place (which they then failed to achieve).

I don't think this is particular web-related, so much as because of the absolute dearth of talent in the UK government these days. When half-baked muppets like Michael Gove or George Osborne (or Ed Balls and Andy Burnham if you like the other lot) are considered 'big beasts', and the Prime Minister is more concerned with image management than setting an actual policy agenda, you're gonna get money thrown at buzzword bingo projects with no real clue about what they mean.

Naselus

Re: Bah!

"Bollocks. In 1985 in th US a half page tax form used by consultants to maximize shareholder value was replaced by a four page document in order to "simplify" it. "

That's literally what the quote says they would do, though. They redesigned the form in an attempt to 'simplify' it (and made an absolute pigs ear of it). They did not attempt to convert it into "a high-availability agile form-based user-centric governmental experience", which is what UK.Gov keeps trying to do with digital services.

It's not enough to just put the thing online so people can access it, it needs to undergo 'transformation' and become an all-singing, all-dancing new means for citizens to interact with the government in an exciting new way. Because no matter what you attempt to do, filling out Tax Form 817b is never going to be exciting.

Dell tempts hordes with MASSIVE DISCOUNTS on PCs

Naselus

"One of the many reasons that I've never had a Dell on site that was purchased by me."

This, utterly this, completely this forever.

Dell - invariably shitty parts put together by underpaid, incompetent engineers and then sold at premium prices.

Naselus

Re: Whooppeee Do a whole £0.99

"$0.99 (so - let's face it - we won't get as much as £0.99)."

Knowing most tech company exchange rates, a $0.99 discount actually translates into +£50.

Stuxnet was the opening shot of decades of non-stop cyber warfare

Naselus

Re: What happens when real people get killed

"Why would dropping ordnance on a reactor be a war crime?"

If the side that doesn't do it wins, then they get to decide it's a warcrime. That's pretty much how Nuremberg worked, tbh - mass-bombing civilians wasn't a crime because the allies did it too. 'Planning an aggressive war' was included, because only the Axis powers were doing that in the 1930s (it apparently only counts if you're planning it against white people).

Three non-obvious reasons to Vote Leave on the 23rd

Naselus

Re: The Register

"Fair enough. My point about the climate change denial stands though."

Since Lew Page got fired a while back, El Reg has started being sane on that side of things (i.e., either reporting climate scientists who say it's getting worse, or keeping it's trap shut on the issue altogether because it's flamebait).

Naselus

Is anyone else as stunned as I am to discover Andrew honestly believes that he's a lefty?

I mean, he's opposed to regulation, he's obsessed with seemingly endless extension of copyright, he hates ad-blockers, the EU and the BBC, and he has no major problem with massive conglomerates (he's on Google's side in the current Android monopoly lawsuit)...

Frankly, he's about as typically left-wing as Boris Johnson wearing a David Cameron costume at an Old Etonians-only fox hunt.

There's genuinely good reasons to remain, and there's some genuinely good reasons for leaving. Neither have been used much by either campaign.

For Remain, you have the fact that if the UK stops this endless will-they-won't-they Ross and Rachel bullshit, we might actually be able to reform the EU and make it less of a Franco-German dominated club for screwing Southern Europeans and keeping German currency values down. There's enough trade and investment advantages to make it a decent economic deal, and there's enough diplomatic advantages to make it a good deal on that side too.

For Leave, you have the fact that yes, the EU IS an undemocratic institution with serious structural problems, which is currently disintegrating like a Balkan nation in 1991 anyway. The Greek experience, where the Troika completely overruled a democratic government and imposed a ludicrous austerity regime, complete with loans that could not be paid back under the measures being enforced, really kills any argument that 'oh, it's really democratic'. Sorry guys, but it does. It's just a neoliberal watchdog which follows typical Washington consensus policies, regardless of the absurdity of the situation, and it's attempts to react to the crash have been the most crass transfer of money from the poor to the rich in 3 generations.

Ultimately, either way, we're stuck under a distant neoliberal elite who will continue to screw over anyone earning less than £100k a year for the forseeable future, and it doesn't make a great deal of difference if that elite is in Brussels or Westminster. So really, may as well do whatever directly benefits you in the short term, and in most people's case that's going to be a Remain vote - at least then there's no short-term economic pain for what is basically gonna be the same result.