Posts by Hollerith 1

Let's shut down the internet: Republicans vacate their mind bowels

Re: Fear and Loathing ...

Trouble is: they ARE all sock puppets, except Trump. He funds himself and so answers only to himself (the very epitome of a free man?), while the others must mind their paymasters.

Hollywood given two months to get real about the price of piracy

Re: From the other side

As punishment, you will be made to watch it. Twice.

May God have mercy on your soul.

Bungled storage upgrade led to Google cloud brownout

First, do no harm

And then do no evil.

(BTW, 'affected', not 'effected', Reg.)

I can turn Yahoo! around claims hedge fund manager

Probably right, but also...

Yes, he probably doubly damns this CEO because she's woman, but I suspect he is the sort of lice-comber who really only sees nits, and would gleefully point at the failings of anyone.

I think investors who never actually put in money to help start a company, but just buy into a going concern so it will rain pennies on their heads, have little savvy to offer about the actual running of a company. Not that I think Yahoo! is well-run, but I don't think Jehovah Himself could make a success of the Y.

Kids' TV show Rainbow in homosexual agenda shocker

Well, one on-line anyway.

Will this comment count?

Curiosity Rover digs into humanity's first alien sand dune

Re: A potent voyager?

We you get to the bottom of the sand, it's turtles thereafter.

France says 'non' to Wi-Fi and Tor restrictions after terror attack

Re: I rather like the French

Yes, their reply to ISIS (or ISIS wannabes) for terrorism o account of their bombings in Syria: more bombings in Syria. A pure and absolute 'f*ck you', rather magnificently.

Adobe: We locked our customers in the cloud and out poured money

Cloud at work, clapped out old copy at home

I wouldn't go cloud, so have hung onto my very old CS copy of Photoshop. When I've needed something like Illustrator, InDesign, etc, I have found cheap or free versions that do pretty much all I want.

Now I'm in a job where I just PS a lot, and of course am on the CC version. I've lost some effects I liked, got a lot of stuff I don't use, and on the whole am not convinced I'll need it in my semi-pro personal work. When and if my clapped-out personal copy dies, I'll check out Affinity.

It's the bad taste from being locked in that I don't like.

Judge adds new army to Uber driver suit

Re: Uber - a good idea so badly implemented

When the idea was part-time workers, mums, students etc (i.e. 'nice ordinary people') would drive their nice cars for Uber as a way to get cash, and you'd have a ride at a good price (unless rides were scarce, in which case you'd pay through the nose), it was appealing. As it turned out, and oh who could have predicted it, poor people with clapped-out cars desperate to put in as many hours as they could without dropping dead signed up and did the actual driving. Now they need legal protection, because the company is doing its best to treat them like amateurs when it's these people's only job.

The fact that the 'inventors' of the idea are gazillionaires, while the drivers are denied the most basic labour rights, confirms to me that the new wonderful world of internet businesses is right back in the 1890s. But where are our muck-rakers and social activists?

NZ unfurls proposed new flag

Re: Research

Yes, but it's not common or popular usage. I mean, do you really go around saying 'internet' when 'intertubes' is the common or popular commentard usage?

Re: Roll out any version of Fern

Yes, the two flags things was a nice fudge, wasn't it? A democratic process would have been a tricky one then -- we were still a bit 'colonial' and there would have been years of backing and forthing -- but perhaps we would have followed NZ's style now: a shortlist, a public vote, and then done-and-dusted.

I certainly like the Canadian national flag. Simple, clear, and also instantly identifiable. There are a few flags around the world that are like that: UK's, USA's, China's, a couple of others, and the rest are merely coloured bars. I hope to see the Black Fern adding itself to the cool countries' flags.

Roll out any version of Fern

I think the Black Fern versions look great, with or without the Southern Cross, although it will be a nightmare for graphics people and manufacturers of flags.

I know there was kerfuffle over 'don't lose the old flag and the Union Jack, under which our troops served, this makes a mockery of our veterans' etc etc. Canada changed its flag in the 1960s and I don't think Canadian veterans had collective heart attacks.

MPs slam gov heads over 'childishness' on failed farmer IT project

And not have to face scope drift

I loved the fact that they had to deal with changes to align to a new digital strategy. "We've had some new thoughts, chaps, and now everything you are doing has to meet these while still delivering to spec on time. Cheerio!"

Donald Trump wants Bill Gates to 'close the Internet', Jeff Bezos to pay tax

Ah, the fine dry wit

There's nothing funnier than making fun of poor white rural Americans, is there? They've been held up as the knuckle-dragging runt of the 'race' since the late 1880s and really, they always give value, don't they?

'Paedo hunter' who made £40,000 from blackmail jailed for 9 years

At first it seems 'well, they were asking for it', but...

My first, immature, reaction was 'glad someone was making them pay', but even without putting images onto their machines, he was still allowing these guys to do what they did, as long s he could get a cut. So he was merely the, as it were, yeast infection on top of the prurient knob.

Rounded corners on Android phones cost Samsung $548m: It will pay up to Apple after all

Re: How can anyone patent radiused corners?

Try trademarking a symbol that is a checkmark with a rounded curve ad see how fast Nike are onto you with measurements. Try trademarking a curved M for your fast-food company and see how quickly McDonalds comes knocking about infringement. Or try having rear lights on your luxury sports car that show a line that curves down and see how fast Jaguar are phoning you up.

Design is not a triviality in today's world.

McAfee Security Manager lets anybody bypass managers' security

Re: McAfee security product ..

Oh Mr Haflinger, you wit!

Most businesses collecting data they never use, survey finds

How much data collected actually used? Used for what?

Following suspicious behaviour from specific groups (to pluck an example our of the air, Chechens who had visited the home country, googled radical sites, were flagged up by Russian security agencies) is apparently not done, but following your hot ex and her new husband as they shop and go on vacation, that definitely. Because spy boys will be boys.

Sysadmin's £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking

Re: James is a dick...

Actually, I think professionalism is a one-way street, like honesty or fidelity. Your standards should be your standards no matter how you are treated. To the gazillions who down-voted me: I hope I don't work with you in some future gig.

Re: James is a dick...

No matter how badly you are treated, you are a professional person and should do what an honourable and decent professional person would do, which is to take responsibility. In this case, it could have been a pleasantly-worded email to the Powers That Be reminding them of an expensive time-bomb ticking and what the next steps should be. I think that the said Powers That Be in this case would have done nowt and the results would have been the same, but you could go to your next employers with head held high knowing that your conduct and your commitment to quality were beyond reproach.

Goodbye, Hello Barbie: Wireless toy dogged by POODLE SSL hole

I am despressed

It is possible for children to have privacy and to be able to use their imaginations, supplying their toys with voices and having a cheerful conversation. It' one way children expand how they understand points of view and creativity and all that brain-expanding stuff.

Now we strap them in push chairs and feel responses to their dolls and turn them into passive consumers of technology.

I know this point has been made before, but still.

How I found a small, weird-looking horned dinosaur from eastern USA

Re: why is this on the reg

Miss Bee remains a tender memory. But I think the bro-life in the office did her in.

Oh em gee – Adobe kills Flash Professional (it's called Animate now)

World to Moiety

Most people use both. They are the ordinary punters who just want thinks to work, and have no deep feelings for the security breaches Flash and Java assist. Turning them off makes a lot of popular sites cease to work well, or at all. What do you want them to do? The intertubes are for everyone, not just us super brainiac types.

BlackBerry axes BBM Meetings a year after launching it

Best subhead ever

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Outsourcer didn't press ON switch, so Reg reader flew 15 hours to do the job

Re: Milan

Proved wrong threre...yes, yes you have been.

Kids' tech skills go backwards thanks to tablets and smartmobes

Re: Smartphones don't need brain power

My nephews live on their smartphones. They ski, film with a GoPro or film others, edit the clips into little films on their phones, and share them with friends, plus they post them to various social media sites. They are able to send nifty formatted invitations with embedded maps, etc. from their phones. They do not consider these to be IT tasks, but the way they live their lives.

I don't think any of the tests would have them blinking an eye.

Brit cops accused of abusing anti-terror laws to hunt colleague

Yes, plus

Why would you do to hear 'No' when you don't want to hear 'no'?

And BTW, it is 'free rein'.

Yahoo! spills! user! account! beans! in! 60%! of! gov! data! requests!

Re: Joke

I! Still! Like! It!

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

Re: Other tips....

See wrongdoing, decide to say nothing and do nothing about it, accept you are part of a corrupt and immoral organisation, and let your soul be eaten away.

He could suggest that.

However, he didn't do it.

Most developers have never seen a successful project

Re: Bollocks - Right stat wrong conclusion

We know what we're involved in ISN'T a well-run project, we sort if know how it should be being done, but we can't do anything about it. Most project managers can't put A, B and C in the right order, so when a project is handed to them, isn't a fail from the start. But mostly the project fails before that point, because the goal, the purpose, etc is so fuzzy that the project could take a hundred different tracks and still appear to be right.

Condi Rice, ICANN, and millions paid to lobby the US govt for total internet control

Re: I wondered why DropBox got Condosleeza Rice on their Board of Directors

It was the thing that pushed me away from Dropbox.

Re: Bloody Hell!

Two older women are that scary and need a health warning? Man up, Mr Fortensplibe.

Skype founders planning non-drone robodelivery fleet. Repeat, not drones

Flip and twist

Let's put it through its paces. I see a tilted ramp so it can launch itself in the air, do a roll, and land again or its wheels. Or not.

I also see using one as a random Segway. Have a seat and go on a mystery tour.

Or a place to park my empty coffee cup and sarnie wrapper: go, little ones, and enjoy your adventure to lands I know not where...

TalkTalk attack: UK digi minister recommends security badges for websites

Mr or Ms Coward, I agree: it is a point of personal pride

I do a lot of things, as it is clear you do, to meet my own standards of quality. These are usually higher than what my dearly beloved company would ask, but they don't know what to ask for, would be content to take the lowest-possible threshold of acceptability, if proffered by a consultant, so I don't tell them what I am doing and am willing to spend the extra time creating security etc that would not shame me if I fell under a bus and a colleague such as you replaced me. If someone like you can look at what I' created and think "well done, good job", then I know I've achieved the standards I aim for.

We can't all live by taking in each others' washing

Following Tim around

Thanks to my fellow commentards for supplying link to Tim's blog. Also to Tim for Forbes etc links. I read people, not sites, so I follow the people.

NASA deep space scope serves up EPIC Earth snapshots

Re: Death Star

My first thought.

Google wins book scan battle. Again. Can post pages online. Again

Shockingly bad scans

Google scanned huge numbers of books 'for' libraries, who then had to pay to use the digital copy of the books they owned, and the scanning, in my experience, is pretty bad. Chunks are missing, whole sections are alphabet sphagetti, it's sloppy, and obviously books are ways Google can get eyes on their ads, as opposed to offering a service. I can't think of how I (as a published writer) will benefit from Google doing this to my books. If people want to buy them, they will look me up and go buy them.

Radio wave gun zaps drones out of the sky – and it's perfectly legal*

Re: eff that

Except if it plummets to earth over, say, a playground or beer garden or what have you.

Amazon Echo: We put Jeff Bezos' always-on microphone-speaker in a Reg family home

Re: Incredibly useful?

I can see for many people this will be a useful device, but I ran through a typical day, then an untypical day, and considered my tinnitus, and thought: this doesn't do anything better than I can do now and with more privacy, and it is yet another source of sound, which I don't want. I am sure I'm in the minority.

Twitter reduces BBC hacks to tears with redundancy notice

Re: When the licence fee goes ...

BBC World Service was slashed and burned not too long ago. Fantastically interesting programmes and, for many countries, a trusted source of information, went up in smoke, and lose experienced journalists were lost. I can think of a lot of other things I would have given up, funded by public money, than that.

Science Museum celebrates Ada Lovelace

Because let's remind ourselves

That women are really about sex.

‘Insufficient evidence’ makes Brit cops drop revenge porn probes

Re: May not be me after all

Because a women as hallow, stupid bimbos, amirite?

Five things that doomed the big and brilliant BlackBerry 10

Re: My Wife will be gutted...

I still have my pre-GPS Bold. It's a bit thick, but has never caused me a moment of trouble, does what I want from a phone (calles, text, emails) and fits in my pocket and can be used one-handed if i have to. I will be as gutted as your good lady wife when (if) it goes.

Re: Not just me then...

I really wanted to like the Passport, but I tried in a range of pockets and nope. I tried using it with one hand. Nope. And so I was done.

Blighty's GCHQ stashes away 50+ billion records a day on people. Just let that sink in

Re: #include <std/quotes/spiderman>

Sadly, pressure cooker + nails + rucksack + Russian warning that these two brothers should be kept under observation + two American boys heading off to Chechen land for a summer vacation all did not add up to 'maybe we should send the police aroudn to have a word'. They do that later in the fear that there will be a copycat, but it would be really nice is they used their gazillion petayetaflops of data from us to, ya know, stop atrocities before they happen. You can call me a dreamer...

Will IT support please come to the ward immediately. Weeeee have a tricky problem

Re: "Don't do IT"

Let us handle the IT, and let them handle the medical stuff. Just sayin'

Re: in ye olde days

My first day at a job many years ago and I managed to upend my carton of orange juice all over my new keyboard. I turned it upside down and let it drain, then quietly mopped as best I could (I did not want to draw a lot of attention to myself), wiped the keys, but every day it stank worse of heated, elderly juice until I found a PC bundled up ready to be taken out of commission and swapped keyboards. Can't drink orange juice at work to this day.

Bletchley Park remembers 'forgotten genius' Gordon Welchman

Joan Thirsk!

A giant in her field, and I read all of her books while a graduate student. To think she was a Bletchley girl and never said!!

Happy birthday to you, the ruling was true, no charge for this headline, 'coz the copyright's screwed

Re: xkcd... @Brenda McViking

I am guessing that you do not write books or songs or poems. Is a book that took five years to write going to get fifteen years worth of royalties? Is a song that was slowly developing in a composer's head over a decade, but which finally took a couple of days to write down, worth more than a sudden inspiration dashed off on the back of a table napkin? What about copyright in prioprietory code? If it taks a team of 100 working over four years, do they get a century or so of copyright?

If we leave it to the public to pay what they think is fair, creators would get about 5p each. Thats' why copyright laws exist.

Anthropology boffins solve 9,000-year-old headless body cold case

How can they tell?

"ritualised decapitation, instead of trophy-taking"

What exactly would be the difference? Are trophy-takers universally messy and quick, chopping fast, while decaptators are slow and careful? Or are they making it up out of whole cloth from a few v-shaped cuts?