Posts by Alan Brown

> 1b) Ability of European academics to work at our universities and corporations.

> 3) Subsidies to science, agriculture, renewable etc... and ability to participate in pan-European projects.

Uncertainty about those has already resulted in enough stuff going titsup that I probably won't have a UK job by the middle of 2017.

On the other hand, I'm skilled and experienced enough that I've already been getting offers to go and sort out stuff in outer bumfuckistan for £UNGODLY_AMOUNTS and come back in a decade.

By then the property bubble will probably have collapsed and I'll be able to afford a house, but more likely I'll brush up on my romance languages and park up on a french coastal village somewhere.

Re: Daylight Savings

"guess where the clown sparky put the detection head,"

The good thing about the internet is you can put this stuff on youtube with the sparky's name and employer prominently featured in the video title.

Let's just say such postings generally result in things being fixed, quickly.

Re: now,now children

"Gates said exactly that about Windows ME "

Yes he did. Several YEARS after the event.

Re: Statistics

The 9,000 loss is the net figure, on top of churn.

To be honest I'm surprised it's so low but inertia is a big factor and there's generally a feeling that once a company's been hacked they'll work hard to cleanup so it's better to stay with them - except that TT proved they couldn't find their arse from their elbow by being hacked 3 times in less than a year.

Whilst changing the rules so that companies can't put lots of charges in the fine print is nice, I'd like to see Ofcom put a deadline on IPv6 availability - as in "If you don't offer it, then you can't call what you offer 'Internet' ".

I raised this with them a couple of years ago and they claim to be watching IPv6 deployment. The factor that there are more IPv6 connected hosts _now_ than there were IPv4 in 2001 seems to have whizzed over their heads.

Re: Hell, yeah!

"It is cars going 20-30 mph that it is helpful to hear"

Which is why a bunch of electrics have a noisemaker up front.

it's usually some form of pink noise generator. I want one that sounds like George Jetson's flying car.

F-111

"the F-111 did finally become an almost respectable aircraft"

The F-111A did, but there's a reason it's called "the pig" by its fliers and has nothing to do with the Aardvark designation.

The F-111B was cancelled and lessons learned from that begat the F14 and F15 as "better, cheaper" aircraft (ironic that the F16 is a "better cheaper F15")

However the primary lesson learned from the F111B debacle was how to setup the system so that it COULDN'T be cancelled - which is why the F35 is still here.

Re: Nonsense.

"people who have been trained what buttons to click, but have no comprehension of the underlying principles or technologies."

Those people exist in every arena.

They're the ones who answer that XYZ is done that way because it's always been done that way.

They're the ones who never thought to ask WHY things are done that way

And they're the ones who will keep trying to do things that way when circumstances have changed and that way is no longer appropriate.

Many of them gravitate to civil service, teaching or large multinationals because such organisations are tribal and punish the brilliant whilst encouraging mediocracy.

They are the people who will eventually cause those organisations to fail unless they're periodically weeded out and the brilliant allowed to succeed.

Re: Windows 10? So What?

"My machine is mostly running 24x7 doing large transcodes etc "

For that, you want Linux or BSD - and as a nice side effect those transcodes will go much faster.

"As it hits 888mph (we have moved on you know) the flux capacitor will kick in and the whole thing will disappear leaving but a trail of flames."

Will it reappear on the other side of the mountain range? (Yes, I know. Different movie, but it does start with a speed record attempt)

Re: Look to your own house

"creepy and talentless Paul Reubens/Peewee Herman"

He has played roles better suited.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKmHBFgIoX0 (1:06)

Re: A distant memory

"I seem to remember reading somewhere that fingerprints were not actually unique, "

They ARE, but the number of points used by police, etc for ID are insufficient to establish uniqueness.

It wasn't a problem when only known criminals were in the system but once you have all and sundry in there there are too many false positives.

The same applies to DNA sampling, which is why the number of data points needed to be expanded (the original set were chosen to avoid racial profiling and the number of early cases where "matching DNA" has later been shown not to be is rather startling). It's worth noting that the earliest use of DNA sampling was to eliminate suspects, not to match them.

Re: Purely naive but...

"This is a service that ought to be like the Post Office (maybe as it used to be in the Good Old Days), not the Mafia"

To be honest it reads like a replay of what happened in New Zealand with their domain registry company back in 1998-2000. You have to wonder how many of the same people are involved in the background.

Re: Is there a story here?

"Every sane driver would KNOW that van wasnt going to stop at the red light."

Whilst I expect that there's a chance of someone running a red for a couple of seconds(*) into the green, the factor of the green having been there for 5-8 seconds means most people would have been tboned by bozo the vandriver. I'm betting the GooWagon was second or third back fro the line when the light turned green and virtually noone back from the leading vehicle in the train expects a opposing vehicle to enter an intersection like this once traffic's flowing.

(*) Most US intersections have the green come on as soon as the opposing side goes red. In most other countries there's a pause between the red and green - in the UK and some other countries that pause has the "red+orange" phase in it, which gives an extra second for red-runners to clear the intersection.

As for the cameras...

The irony of security devices with zilch security shouldn't be lost on anyone.

The way forward is to prosecute a few people for participating in a DDoS.

If they turn around and sue their suppliers, things would change pretty fast. Finding there are liabilities involved is a rapid way of making people aware of the consequences of their negligence.

Re: Fighting over cities

"Expecting super-ultra-fast broadband to be available as early as in the cities for the same cost is rather pie-in-the sky thinking."

The problem is that when countryside groups get together to sort this stuff out, BT suddenly decides that an area's viable after all and runs an aggressive doorknocking campaign to get people signed up, thus nobbling the upstart (in some cases after the equipment's been put in but before it's activated).

They then usually take 2-4 years to actually roll out the promised service - the sooner the upstart folds, the longer it'll take to get the BT broadband.

This is blatent anticompetitive behaviour, yet ofcom don't give a monkey's.

Re: Big pipes are the only protection

"Nice to see Google take up the challenge."

Google are connected enough to be able to work out who's behind the attacks.

This is the only long-term solution.

The (totally non-ironic, honestly) part of this story is that the vast majority of the traffic is coming out of IoT "security" devices such as cameras. I'm surprised that El Reg didn't pick up on this part.

Re: fixed hazards will be the real challenge

"Dog poop everywhere. "

That's a bot opportunity all by itself. Two of the biggest impediments to decent street cleaning are the cost of human operators and the size of the equipment needed so they can ride in/on it.

Paris was awash with dogshit prior to the bicentennial but discovered after the clean up for that, the citizens liked it. For many years there were mobile cleaning squads (https://anotherbagmoretravel.wordpress.com/tag/france-dog-shit/) but they're gone (costs) and you need to look where you're walking.

Re: A few notes

"that glass internal wall"

Are you sure it isn't transparent aluminum?

(more seriously, 4-6 laminated 6mm glass will stop most things thrown at it and an internal partition wall would be just as susceptable to being blown out for the event envisaged (the glass has much higher mass)

Bomb/blast resistant glass walls have been a thing for quite a while. I encountered my first one in the mid 1980s. (http://www.wrightstyle.co.uk/curtain-wall-facades/blast-resistant-curtain-wall-facades/) Some bright spark decided to try and shoot his way through one where I worked and only scratched the top layer.

"Apparently +net are moving away from BT's network to their own"

Why would a wholly owned brand of BT be moving to another network?

Re: LG no longer Less Good

"My only gripe is that the design of the user end of the hose is too big for me to get it into some of the shelves and smaller spaces"

You can buy generic adaptors for that.

And yes, the paddle thingie is brilliant.

Re: Interesting person

Well well...

Company struck off some time back. Someone should be letting HMRC and trading standards know.

He could end up staying a little longer at Her Majesty's pleasure.

"And 62KG seems awfully specific."

62kg ==140 pounds == 10 stone

Someone's being overly precise when converting measurements which are plus or minus 10 pounds anyway.