Posts by qwertyuiop

What's Welsh for Orange?

But which version of Welsh?

Because I think there are at least three! In a past life I worked with an NHS computer system which was developed and supported in Cardiff but used throughout England and Wales. It used English throughout, but within Wales all of the bespoke stationery it used had to be bilingual. The development team had two staff who had Welsh as their first language, one from the North and one from the South. Apparently translating the forms etc. caused many arguments between these two, with each producing their own (differing) version. Eventually they would reach a concensus at which point the whole lot went off to the "official" Welsh language team at the Welsh Office. As surely as night follows day this unit would send back a third version...

Long wait for health records

Not on laptop

@Always wondered

If they were ward notes (as stated) then they were probably on paper and not on a laptop. In either case, given that you know how many beds there are in the ward working out how many records have gone missing is hardly rocket science!

Yorkshire cops accused of copyright theft

Thick as two short ones?

@ Anonymous Coward 01:51 GMT

I think you'll find that's "Planck" and not "Plank". One was a distinguished physicist who was the father of quantum theory, the other is a piece of wood.

NASA promises 'greatly improved' Moon landing footage

Cleaned up?

So these will be the cleaned-up tapes with all of the mistakes that reveal it was filmed in a studio carefully removed?

</tinfoil hat>

Rosetta Stone rocks Google with trademark lawsuit

Fastest way to learn a language?

How on earth did they get away with trademarking that? How on earth do you prove it?

If I use Rosetta Stone's method to learn French I can't then try learning French by, for example, the Michel Thomas method in order to make a comparison - I already know it. If I try to learn German using Michel Thomas' method and it takes me less time than to learn French what does it prove? It could be that the method is better, or just that (for me) German is easier to learn than French, or that having learned one foreign language learning a second or subsequent one is easier - or any permutation of those possibilities.

Don't even get me started on trademarking everyday English phrases like "global traveler", "language library", etc.

Shell issues 12% pay cut ultimatum to IT contractors

Why BP?

@chris

"boycott bp garages that will see their profits hit"

Why would Royal Dutch Shell (featured in the story) give a sh*t if you choose to boycott BP garagres - owned by BP Amoco, a completely different company the last time I looked?

German old timers torture financial adviser

@Alan 40

" maybe someone wanted to re-live his war glory days ..."

Would that be the one who was only 2 years old when the war ended? Or the one who was 10? Or maybe it was one of the two who weren't even born?

FFS - what they did was wrong, but so was your cheap war jibe just because they happened to be German.

Apple releases Java patches (finally)

@Muscleguy

So, no need to patch unless there's an exploit? *REALLY* clever! This would be the famed Apple security would it?

Oh, of course, I'm forgetting that the blessed Steve *KNEW* that there wouldn't be an exploit for at least six months and so it was safe to do nothing. Get real - if there's a vulnerability you patch for it, you don't wait for it to be exploited.

Johnson shuffle returns ID cards to the table

How do I get one?

Nobody has ever asnwered my very fundamental question about these cards - how do I prove who I am in order to get one? If the idea of them is that none of the existing forms of proof of identity - passport, driving licence, etc. - is sufficiently secure (because they can be forged) then how do I prove who I am when I apply for my all singing all dancing ID card? On the other hand if the issuing authority is going to accept some existing form of ID then why do I need the ID card? Clearly I can already satisfactoriy prove my identity!

I'm also concerned that people are putting too much faith in the biometrics making them incontrovertible proof of identity, and this has nothing to do with my scepticism about biometrics. For the few agencies that will (eventually) have the equipment and the links to read the card and compare it against the database then it will be fairly secure. The problem is that it will be used in all sorts of other situations to prove ID where you are dealing with somebdoy - your local shop, a hire car company, a pub doorman, whatever - who won't be able to make that check. Just so long as you can produce a convincing forgery (ie. it looks and feels right) then it will be accepted, which puts it back on a par with existing identity documents. So what's the point?