Posts by Robert Carnegie

A pub denied: One man's tale of festive frolics postponed by the curse of the On Call phone

Either you or they are meant to say "for that was not his name" in these cases.

On one project that the Fates may have disliked from the start, I had a need to substitute human names with different human names, consistently. So I made a lookup table, and I made it (1) preservative of binary gender, (2) limited to common names, and (3) changing any name in the first half of the alphabet to the second half, and vice versa. So no one got their own name back.

The Fates, or management, objected that my system could give people with different original names, the same new name. At least I think that's what they didn't like... I don't remember if I tried to argue that some people have the same names anyway, or that confusing the data was the actual point of my activity. At length, the project quietly died; I was doing other things anyway.

Hollywood drone pilot admits he crashed gizmo into cop chopper, triggering emergency landing

"A pharmacy had been burgled, and the officers who showed up had requested some eyes in the skies."

Excuse me, does that mean that the drone guy was a volunteer filming on behalf of the police? Or does it only refer to the police helicopter that he banged into?

Yes he pled guilty. Everyone in the United States has to plead guilty because of the consequences if you don't. It doesn't mean that you did it.

Linux developers get ready to wield the secateurs against elderly microprocessors

Re: what is linux good for?

Let's see... smith is a metalworker, Smith is a name. That seems fruitful... fruit, one thinks of Apples...

Parler games: Social network for internet rejects sues Amazon Web Services for pulling plug on hosting

Re: Surprisingly

They do have a bit of trouble "censoring" social multimedia... can breastfeeding be shown? How close does the child have to be to the breast? What if the "child" looks suspiciously like an adult?

It's not a special interest of mine but I think one of their "censors" was on BBC radio the other day talking about these nuances and the head-spinning rate of changes to policy in exactly this area.

And whenever content is posted, it also has to be censored.

Re: Thank god

"the terrorists who burned down American cities for months"

Well you don't deserve to have any.

Theranos destroyed crucial subpoenaed SQL blood test database, can't unlock backups, prosecutors say

Re: Why 'science'?

Another story elsewhere under "Technology": https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55613452

"Stickers supposed to protect users against mobile-phone radiation have no effect, scientists have found."

Scientists! So it counts as science!

Pope Francis

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55617851

is a Catholic. (Scientists find.)

Salesforce relieves Republican National Committee of its tools citing 'risk of politically incited violence' across the US

We don't know what the RNC were using Salesforce product to do. Salesforce does, probably.

Apologies for the wait, we're overwhelmed. Yes, this is the hospital. You need to what?! Do a software licence audit?

Re: Microfocus

Sell the rights to SARS-COV-2 to Microfocus, so no one can have it without a licence?

Never mind the sodding upgrade...

We should have specified to write SARS-COV-2 in Adobe Flash...

Brexit freezes 81,000 UK-registered .eu domains – and you've all got three months to get them back

Re: I want a .EU domain...

A low lying area close to water (if that's anything to do with anything)...

Re: holding address?

The last that I heard, keeping a UK bank account from EU Europe was going to be no go in most cases, with customers already warned that they'd be cut off. Something about needing to set up a separate "Yorkshire Bank" or whichever in each EU country where service was to continue.

I suppose if you are already with Santander then you can't complain.

Actually, you can't complain. https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/customer-support/brexit-and-santander-uk-plc

Re: I want a .EU domain...

What about "Fog in Channel, Europe cut off"?

"Untraced" says https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/fog_in_channel/

Re: How about virtual citizenship?

An office in Estonia might give you standing to register a .eu domain, but it may have to be more than virtual, and I'm not an expert in these rules.

Re: I want a .EU domain...

What part of "EU" are people not getting? You seem to be puzzled by E but maybe the problem is U.

"European Union citizens, independently of their place of residence or any natural person, company or organisation residing in or established within the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway may register a domain name under .eu (or its variants in other scripts).

"The Terms and Conditions explain who is eligible to register a .eu, .ею or .ευ domain name and the obligations of domain name holders. Additionally, this document describes the terms and conditions under which domain names may be transferred. Together with the Privacy Policy and the WHOIS policy, they provide information on privacy and data protection."

So, EITHER citizens of the EU, OR a person or a company residing in the EU or three friendly independent countries can have a .eu domain name. We in the United Kingdom are not friendly, so we get what we deserve.

Re: This is to punish the UK

Boris Johnson claims to be eating the cake and having it right now. Pig-faced? I don't disagree. And unaware or not caring that everybody - EVERYBODY - knows he's lying. Apparently he expects us to not care, as well.

Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off

Accidents happen. Sometimes expensive ones. And I don't think they're claiming that a delay in vaccination can be undone.

I hope that there isn't too much time lost by people attending the appointments which were cancelled. Apart from key health workers, the people currently being vaccinated don't have much on, being elderly or poorly.

I expect the vaccination site would like to have a surplus supply on site to avoid cancels, But as you say, it's a limited quantity available..

Re: Can't be that bad? Really?

It could be cockup but I think these are all steps required before someone is let into a hospital in a white cost with Doctor printed on it. So that people like me with none of the qualifications don't do it for a prank. Look, it was just once, and almost no one died.

Is this one of the reasons why certain vaccines of current interest are taking longer to be available than we'd like?

Re: four legged tripod

If you call a dog's tail a leg, then how many legs?

I assume that's what you meant!

Re: Grauniad fluffed it again.

Are these photos or is it rendered?

I'm not alone evidently in suspecting that DC Comics' villain "Gentleman Ghost" has got involved. He being (usually) a dead dandy highwayman with no visible head but a visible monocle and top hat, you are correct in inferring that it's a... bother to pull this off in action figure modelling. Usually they give him an extremely high coat collar, and the hat is stuck to that, and the monocle to the front of the hat. He actually can be entirely invisible, and keeps his face invisible because he died about 200 years ago (give or take several history rewrites) and he isn't looking his best.

Buggy code, fragile legacy systems, ill-conceived projects cost US businesses $2 trillion in 2020

Re: I can code (program)

Referring to notes on Sainsbury's online shopping account, (1) the password must have big and little letters, numbers, and NO spaces, (2) I didn't know that when I went about setting it up, and (3) I've never yet used it.

Another service apparently doesn't work with a Yahoo e-mail account - I mean, yes, I know, but why shouldn't I. Nowhere does it say, while creating an account, that it won't work. This includes the account user authentication e-mail. Result, no usable account and a big waste of time.

Leave.EU takes back control – and shifts its domain name to be inside the European Union

Re: So Leave have left?

"Gross Britannien" in German.

"Little Britain" is a rather coarse comedy with actor Tom Baker narrating.

Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'

chiz chiz chiz

Re: Proof reader

I actually don't type any more when I can avoid it, but "helath" used to come out frequently when I meant "health".

At the moment, I'm on a touchscreen where a reach to the left for "a" is quite likely to hit "s", for "s" hit "d", and so on. Yed, wuite likely.

Re: Proof reader

Just a mistake, he or she or thing meant Trans Posing. ;-)

Word and quotes

You can switch off the Smart Ypants behaviour in Word, or, type " and ' then immediately press Ctrl+Z to undo the "secret" mutation of what you typed.

Canadian Windows demands a jolly good bit of validating

Not to be confused with "Président® Cheese", I imagine.

As further confusion, I looked closer in the supermarket and it was butter.

Blackberry Cylance's consumer antivirus product won't work with macOS Big Sur until end of January

Cylance is not golden on this occasion.

Trump's overhaul of Section 230 stalls, Biden may just throw the web legal shield on the bonfire anyway

What about e-mail?

And Usenet, but that goes without saying. I still use it... Maybe you prefer Quora.

E-mail... will the owner of a server be held responsible for the content on it? Will anyone provide the service under that condition?

Windows 10 ends the year with more than half of PCs on a 2020 flavour

Re: Consumer versions

I don't think it's wrong for Microsoft to use their own browser to display system state information and documentation. The other browser makers might introduce a special creative interpretation of data issuing from Microsoft. That's happened before!

Happy New Year: Jan 1, 2021 security cert expiration causes havoc for some Check Point VPN users

"We are shipping new laptops to our executive and support teams"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Serves you right.

But don't the executives just get an Etch-a-Sketch, I didn't know those were affected... I must check mine.

Canadian uni blamed users after Workday HR switch, but some teaching assistants say they're still waiting to be paid

Re: Do they have

Or the wonky financial software that the UK post offices had?

Welcome to the splinternet – where freedom of expression is suppressed and repressed, and Big Brother is watching

Re: what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing?

Everyone needs to stay anonymous for some things. As far as I remember, I haven't used Tor... but I probably should: to provide support and cover for people who need privacy more than I do.

I have limited internet capacity, though, so AIUI Tor might cost me a bit too much.

Re: HORNET or death

Like the special naext-to-name badges some readers have here, yes.

Speech is silver, but silence is golden.

All I want for Christmas is cash: Welsh ATMs are unbeatable. Or unbootable. Something like that

Re: To be fair

So are they in trouble for displaying non-bilingual signage?

Nid oes bysellfwrdd. Pwyswch yr allwedd i barhau. :-)

(Perfformiwyd y cyfieithiad gan Google.)

Re: Social Distancing

British people don't talk to each other in queues.

Certainly there are different queues. I think I gave someone the Liff book for Christmas (place names recycled as new words for things) without reading it all myself first, so I might ask if it's covered.

A queue at a door or other service point which is currently closed.

A queue in a shop that extends outside the shop. Or, similar, and current, a queue outside the shop because they are limiting how many people can come in.

A queue for buying eight items or less (with no sense of grammar) or fewer, probably called something like a minishant, with two verbs for (a) joining the queue with more than eight items, and (b) looking suspiciously at the basket in front of you whom you suspect of indeed being a fullerton.

The adjacent queue (other than a minishant) which is moving faster than your slow one is an adlingfleet, unless the book says different. (If there are n queues, the probability that there isn't at least one which is faster than your randomly chosen one is 1 divided by n, i.e. that you chose the fastest queue is 1/6 if there are 6 queues.)

Then there's the queue in the Post Office where everybody waits in one line for your turn at six service windows, two of which are open.

This is similar to the single queue for the stockade of tills which are self service anyway.

And the not-quite-a-queue at a bar or a barber shop, where you sit or stand wherever there's a space and you try to remember, or to count, how many people are technically in front of you or behind you. When crowded, this may become a stramash, and that's not a place name.

Any others...

Brexit trade deal advises governments to use Netscape Communicator and SHA-1. Why? It's all in the DNA

Re: 20 year old tech...

So you decided you'd get in a time machine and live in 2020 instead...

Everybody's time is precious, pal: Sometimes it isn't only the terminals that are dumb

Re: when modems were frequently found attached to dumb terminals

I'm guessing that you meant "kitchen gloves", rubber or plastic ones to wear washing dishes for instance...

They come in wrist or elbow length...

Looking for "kitchen globes" on Amazon also produces heat insulated gloves and mitts for handling stuff from, and indeed to, the oven. I suppose if you don't have time to wait after powering down a hot modem...

Cats: Not a fan favourite when the critters are draped around an office packed with tech

Did you try putting the switch in the dishwasher to clean it... oh, wait, no.

Re: Cat tree

I put a handful (exaggeration) of catnip powder on our cat's scratching post. Immediately she fell in love with my hand. I still have it.

Re: No cats but...

Um, not a fan of covering up the life-saving sensor, as a solution. Even partly. But what to do instead?

Hong Kong's Hutchison Group, which runs mobile carrier ‘3’, protests as USA puts it on new China ban list

Re: Dear World. I'm sorry.

Boris Johnson is a patriot, loyal to the country of his birth. Which is the United States of America. He's as British as Sandra Birgitte Toksvig.

Windows might have frozen – but at least my feet are toasty

Re: Keeping the windows open at Christmas

I,have a brown microwave oven. Before I misjudged heating a fish potato pie, it was a white microwave oven (inside).

Dell Wyse Thin Client scores two perfect 10 security flaws

FTP does things that telnet can't!

And shouldn't!

Top tip from the original Task Manager taskmaster: Don't put your phone number on that debug message box

Re: You're exaggerating

My Transact-SQL code is baffling, to me, in twelve months. That's when I start adding in comments. ;-)

Next year: more comments...

Tim Cook 'killed' TV project about the one website Apple hates more than The Register

Perhaps "department" is meant, but does that apply if it is one person as you suggest?

A 1970s magic trick: Take a card, any card, out of the deck and watch the IBM System/370 plunge into a death spiral

Re: Those were the days

Any relation :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hacker

The patch that wasn't: Cisco emits fresh fixes for NTLM hash-spilling vuln and XSS-RCE combo in Jabber app

The linked article actually says that eight character passwords are inadequate. Not just "fewer than eight".

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

When I was at school, "oxidation" was defined as "loss of electrons" in a chemical reaction. Oxygen famously causes that, but what's left is the same whether the oxidiser is oxygen or something else, and fluorine can cause oxidation of oxygen. Of course, that happens when they have nothing else to react with, and it is quickly and I expect noisily undone when there is something else.

'Malwareless' ransomware campaign operators pwned 83k victims' MySQL servers, 250k databases up for sale

Re: Double extortion?

When you get the data back, every customer forename of "Denis" has been changed to "Penis".

And you have no way to know which of them were already named "Penis" before your data was stolen.

There are two sides to every story, two ends to every cable

Re: Hmmm

If a cable only has one end, then arguably the actual cable part isn't required at all. You know you can get a cordless mouse with a separate tiny little USB plug... that id where the wire is, for wireless operation.

I think.

Or you can just loop the wire round and connect the output signal to the input channel. But you are only talking to yourself then.