" I really don't like where this is all going"
We might not but I suspect that Dominic Cummings does!
Posts by Spanners
1617 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Sep 2009
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Apple, Google begin to spread pro-privacy, batt-friendly coronavirus contact-tracing API for phone apps
Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban
Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?
Donald Trump extends ban on Huawei, ZTE telecoms kit in US companies to May 2021
Latest Microsoft 365 'wave of innovation' really just involves adding or renaming a bunch of update channels
If you're going to spend $3tn, what's another billion? Congress urged to inject taxpayer dollars into open anti-Huawei 5G radio tech
Wednesday 13th May 2020 11:53 GMT 
I have wondered this before
How many of SCROTUS' stupidities will be easy to reverse or cancel when they get adult in as president?
I imagine that he wins (aaargh!) in November or finds some semi-legal way to block an election, it will be even harder to undo the damage when he does go as even the most blatantly stupid ideas become more acceptable with time. (See, for example, how many counties in the USA are still "dry"and how they do not allow those under 21 to even drink beer 86 years after the, semi, repeal of the 18th amendment.)
If they get rid of him, they can undo so many of his bad ideas that the USA might even lead the world into recovery after the pandemic. We can always hope!
India says its brains saved the world from the last colosso-crisis – cough, Y2K – proving it can become self-reliant
Wednesday 13th May 2020 08:43 GMT
Are you insinuating something?
The reason the Y2K crisis did not "happen" is that a very large number of us spent a long time doing things about it.
I wasn't aware that we were all in India. I certainly wasn't there, but some undoubtedly were.
We are going to get the same sort of stupid statements about Covid-19 before long - perhaps like...
"The government said that the UK would have hundreds of thousands dead. What a waste of time."
"I know someone who knows someone who met a bloke in the pub whose sister was a nurse and she said that there were only XXX cases." and
"It was just a US disease. It didn't affect most of the planet."
The health workers who are still dealing with this are like the Y2K fixers. Either you don't fix it and get blamed or you do fix it and all the stupids say that there was never a problem. The big difference is that I didn't have to wear PPE and risk my life!
If India was a big fixer, thank you. It has certainly been since that time that we have noticed you more.
Serial killer spotted on the night train from Newcastle
What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you
Thursday 7th May 2020 12:43 GMT 
I used to see then called - Micro$oft
This had the dual features of showing money being a nearly central interest and that they are specifically USian.
There used to be a website www.microsith.com but it seems to have turned into a gambling site, or so my filters tell me. That explored the link between them and a secretive sociopathic and dangerous group and some people from Star Wars...
Baby Diesel? Little d'Artagnan? There is another child of Musk in the world
'VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue'... XML co-author Tim Bray quits AWS after Amazon fires COVID-19 whistleblowers
The Great British anti-5G fruitcake Bakeoff: Group hugs, no guns, and David Icke
Tuesday 5th May 2020 08:34 GMT 
Have you heard what they have not asked for?
I have heard that all the "protesters" in the USA that want everything to open up (to speed viral spread) have not asked for bookshops and libraries to reopen. I am still waiting to have this confirmed but my preconceived image of a redneck with a rifle does not include a library card in his pocket...
UK IT contractors slipping back into old ways of working now IR35 tax reforms delayed
Oracle faces claims of unequal pay from 4,000+ women after judge upgrades gender gap lawsuit to class action
As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother
Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink
Wednesday 29th April 2020 12:32 GMT 
Bizzarre!
Why on earth is anyone still using an inkjet? Why do so many people "need" colour at home?
I have a mono laser printer. When it is nor printing or copying, it does not use toner. Being mono, it does not use colour when I tell it to print black.
My daughter "needed" to be able to print colour for her homework prior to her GCSEs in 2006. When she was off to Uni a few years later, I got rid of it and got a laser/scanner/copier and that's another cut in the expenses! No more having to use more money on cleaning the print heads than I just spent on lunch! No more neing aware how the cyan toner level is going down even though I have set the thing to mono.
I am sure that there are valid reasons for having colour inkjets but I am also sure that most people who have them don't need to!
Microsoft decrees that all high-school IT teachers were wrong: Double spaces now flagged as typos in Word
Tuesday 28th April 2020 11:51 GMT
Re: It may be a US "standard", but...
The serial comma (assuming you are referring to the Oxford comma)...
I am well aware that the OUP is very keen on it but my, Oxford educated, English teacher was not.
Certainly this was a while ago (1975 and after) and errors have been made into standards in cases ranging from Chaucer to Shakespeare but I have now reached the age where I can be critical of "modern" things and feel that if I limit this to such petty matters as this, I will do no harm...
Monday 27th April 2020 12:51 GMT
It may be a US "standard", but...
What the USA defines as correct, is not necessarily so.
Will the next update expect me the use the "serial comma"? I am not going to. I was taught that was wrong and see no need to change,
Before I got into IT, I learned to type. I did Secretarial Studies in evening classes and have a Scottish Higher and an RSA2. I was taught to tap the space bar twice after a full stop to try and help legibility. I know there were other reasons too but legibility still applies. It makes sentences more discrete so that people can see where one finishes and another starts. This can make it easier to understand. We have enough problems with people not reading blocks of text without actively discouraging them!
Apple and Google tweak key bits of contact-tracing privacy plan
Monday 27th April 2020 10:35 GMT
My biggest concern
While anything like this sort of app carries potential risks, the risks from governmental abuse are far lower than the possibility that Apple, or even Google, might misuse it or pass it onto some other organisation.
The problem is that US "medical insurance" looks to be one of the most profitable scams in history and it desperately wants to spread to the developed world. Any help could help them make Billions!
Work from home surge may work in Wi-Fi 6's favour, reckons analyst house
Thursday 23rd April 2020 14:18 GMT
@Filippo
The 4G where I live is very good and I tend to have the WiFi on my phone turned off.
This works fine until I get a system update that refuses to download until it can go over WiFi to save me from "unexpected additional costs".
I don't get an option to download over 4g anyway. This means that I have to park the phone close to the router.
I cannot get "unexpected additional costs" from downloading without WiFi. I have "unlimited data". I suppose it is not infinite and if I had high resolution Netflix running 24/7 I might get an email or two by the end of the month. I don't so a couple of GB is not going to make any difference. I can't be the only person with this. I am sure I had the option in the past but, as I was not unlimited then, I didn't do it
Now I want to download updates over the PhoneCo internet, it won't let me. Is this the fault of Google, phone manufacturer or telephone company?
Scots NHS symptom checker pings Facebook, Google and other ad peddlers
Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'
From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard
From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G
NASA's classic worm logo returns for first all-American trip to ISS in years: Are you a meatball or a squiggly fan?
Microsoft expands AI features in Office, but are they any good? Mixed, according to our vulture
Wednesday 1st April 2020 08:45 GMT 
"US English" can be very different from English
This sounds like an automated version of a fax conversation I had with a US supplier 25-30 years ago. He criticised everything from my spelling and grammar to my "bizarre date format".
My date format was correct, rather than the backasswards one they use in the USA.
My spelling was correct. I had not randomly substituted Z for S or removed the letter U from words like colour.
My, Oxford educated, English teacher at school taught me not to use what people in the USA laughingly call the "Oxford comma".
I had not phrased things in a manner that would have indicated I was about 6 and had, several times used words of more than 3 syllables.
(I can't remember who the supplier was but I think they made UNIX back up software and were in a "flyover state".)
That conversation was fun but having this discussion with a computer would be tiresome.
Infosys fires employee who Facebooked 'let's hold hands and share coronavirus'
That awful moment when what you thought was a number 1 turned out to be a number 2
Saturday 28th March 2020 13:04 GMT
On this side (west) of the pond, it's "check".
On your side of the pond, the misspelling "check" is acceptable. It's still wrong.
The word "check" means to ensure that something is free from error/fault.
A pilot will do checks before he starts the aeroplane. Men will check that their flies are done up before leaving the toilet. If my dog wants to run across the road, I will check her by holding the lead tight.
Microsoft staff giggle beneath the weight of a 52,000-person Reply-All email storm
TeamViewer is going to turn around and ignore what you're doing with its freebie licence to help new remote workers
Monday 23rd March 2020 15:18 GMT 
There's always Google.
My Chromebook has acquired such apps. It had Google Hangouts and Skype already, it has now got Teams for work and Zoom for some voluntary activities. Telegram has gone on for some secure stuff.
I think the big problem is that there are now so many of them. I used to have several IM apps and an application called Pigin on my PC that pulled them all together. We need something similar for video chats.
It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin
Monday 23rd March 2020 14:28 GMT
Re: Naomi Klein
I thought the UK Government was following a declared strategy
It was, but the Daily Mail and the Telegraph did not approve. That's, for example, why schools are now closed. As soon as Boris announced the policy, social media was full of idiots parroting the amazingly bad idea that closing schools was a great idea.
Now we have kids with their grandparents, older kids playing with their mates, kids off to relatives and so on. In theory, "key workers" are fine as we can stick ours into the schools as a childminding service.
Tech won't save you from lockdown disaster: How to manage family and free time while working from home
Captain Caveman rides to the rescue, solves a prickly PowerPoint problem with a magical solution
UK Defence Committee probe into national security threat of Huawei sure to uncover lots of new and original insights
Tuesday 10th March 2020 11:23 GMT 
Let's be clear
The main reason not tu use Chinese kit is so that US companies can make more money.
A secondary and minor reason is that Huawei is not as susceptible to US courts and when some some company owned judge in the USA wants a US corporation to have access to stuff, Huawei will tell him to get lost.
I would suspect China is less likely to spy on me than the USA. When US spooks finish finding what they want, they will pass it on to a US company, either for money or out of financial patriotism. I find the idea of a Chinese corporation knowing about me less likely to send me junk mail.
If this is on UK national Security grounds, US back doors in our 5G are precisely as dangerous as Chinese ones but the US ones are less predictable.
Take it Huawei, Pai: Senate passes bill to rip 'dodgy' kit from rural telcos
Sunday 1st March 2020 22:13 GMT
Re: Broken political system
America used to have a centre-left and a centre-right party.
Nowadays, they show no signs of anything left of the middle. Obama was centre-right and the Republicans seem to be somewhat to the right of that.
The nearest they have to a socialist candidate has the full weight of their press, "aristocracy" and wealthy lined up against him.
Campaigners cry foul play as Oracle funds conservative lobby group supporting its court case against Google
Admins beware! Microsoft gives heads-up for 'disruptive' changes to authentication in Office 365 email service
Why so shy, Samsung? Weird Find my Phone push notification did not only affect Galaxy mobes
Monday 24th February 2020 09:28 GMT
Re: Disabled sadly does not mean removed...
This was one of my main reasons for leaving the Android ecosystem.
I would think about it but there doesn't seem to be an alternative.
My first workphone was a Blackberry. They had a possible something in the works.
Nokia were working on something when MS destroyed them.
I thought the Windows Phone looked promising.
The various Firefox and other Linux variants seem to have vanished.
The only possible future alternative may be Huawei and that depends on Trump staying in office indefinitely abd I doubt many want that...
Hey, Brits. Your Google data is leaving the EU before you are: Hoard to be shipped from Ireland to US next month
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a flying solar panel: BAE Systems' satellite alternative makes maiden flight in Oz
Talk about high tech: Tens of thousands of Cali marijuana convictions to go up in smoke, thanks to algorithms
Friday 14th February 2020 09:15 GMT
Re: Interesting
when it's decided who should be sued
Let me make it easy for you. They can't sue the main instigator because he is dead. On 17 June 1971, Richard Nixon got it going with a speech where he declared drug abuse to be "public enemy number one". He created a special action office to combat it.
What was the motivation?
Well I suspect that, although Watergate had not happened at that point, he was already a crook but the biggest motivation may have been they the perception was that the biggest users were "African Americans" and other people with too much melanin. Certainly the incarceration records show that it was a heavily used tool in the attempts to keep them in in their place.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
