* Posts by A K Stiles

814 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2010

No, eight characters, some capital letters and numbers is not a good password policy

A K Stiles
Facepalm

I've lost count of the number of occasions where I've gone to log in to one of those '6 month' sites, failed to get the password right after several attempts, clicked the reset password notification, followed the email to reset the password and then get the message that the password I'm attempting to use doesn't comply with rules X, Y, z, 3, %, and then not had to change the password because I can use that information to figure out the particular arcane combination I used in the first place. Just tell me the arcane rules the first time I got my password wrong, dammit!

Abracadabra! Tales of unexpected sysadmagic and dabbling in dark arts

A K Stiles

Re: For those in the UK...

Ah is this the trade-off bank holiday for the ever-sensible 2 day holiday at Hogmanay?

Top Euro court: No, you can't steal images from other websites (too bad a school had to be sued to confirm this little fact)

A K Stiles

Re: New internet standard...

Yay! - new standards!! Who doesn't love a new standard?!

It does seem like the kind of information that could easily be embedded in any EXIF-like data. There'd be no need to remove it unless you were doing something nefarious, but there's no way I know to put an image on the internet and not have it readily 'stealable' by those with more than no knowledge.

The browser could readily display the relevant copyright and licence data on an attempted save / copy of the image.

There is also a lesson for the students (and frankly the school staff) regarding copyright and what is actually permitted use. Ignorance of the law is no excuse and all that - nor whether or not you agree with the law, sadly so in some cases!

Boffins build a NAZI AI – wait, let's check that... OK, it's a grammar nazi

A K Stiles
Headmaster

a pause as if their taking one deep breath

You did that deliberately, didn't you?

What if tech moguls brewed real ale?

A K Stiles

Dev-Hops IPA

Triple hopped, extra citrus ale, 6.66% ABV, leaves you with a bitter aftertaste - seemed like a good idea at the time you bought it!

Shouting lager, lager... Carlsberg's beer AI can now tell pilsners apart

A K Stiles
Pint

Also from the Register...

Very not surprised when about half the "Also from the Register" stories clearly keyed onto the word Lager and linked back to various episodes of BOFH!

You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way

A K Stiles

Fewer repeating headlines

Would be appreciated - If they're sticky, they don't need to be chronological and /or most read.

Having an easier way to access some of the article types (like On-Call, Something For The Weekend) that don't have specific sections (e.g. BOFH) would also be helpful. It's currently a pain to find them if you've been on holiday and are playing catch-up over a couple of weeks.

Open plan offices flop – you talk less, IM more, if forced to flee a cubicle

A K Stiles
Facepalm

Re: Lost In Space

I was on a train for about 4 hours last week, deliberately sitting in the 'quiet' carriage. The two old dears in the row behind me conversed solidly for the whole 4 hours about inane rubbish and whether cousin Timothy would be spending the next few days at the golf club - it didn't even sound like they paused for breath the whole time!

Everyone else in the carriage made not one jot of noise, except briefly when England scored, and once again when Colombia equalised.

Every step you take: We track you for your own safety, you know?

A K Stiles
Big Brother

An organisation I used to work for had a time recording clock system, which recorded time in decimal hours - 8.0 - clock was reading between 08:00 and 08:05, 8.1 - clock was reading between 08:06 and 08:11, etc. The system automatically removed a specific amount of time during the day to reflect a lunch break so you only clocked in on arrival and out on departure, at the building you worked in whilst the car park could be up to 1/2 mile away and car share people had difficulties from the divergent attendance where they worked in different buildings closer or further away from the car park.

In the morning you'd have a bunch of people hustling to get to the clock machine so it clocked you in before ticking across to the next 6 minute block, whilst at the end of the day there would be a queue forming as nobody would clock out when the clock read 29 minutes past the hour.

After a few years it eventually changed to recording the nearest minute, which at least reduced the queuing to leave issue. Joys of a big organisation and not trusting their highly paid staff members.

Senior managers didn't have to use the clock system as 'they obviously work longer hours anyway'.

Unbreakable smart lock devastated to discover screwdrivers exist

A K Stiles

Re: Going equipped

I believe it also has something to do with how you answer any questions the police might ask - e.g

Polis : "I see you have a perfume spray there madam that isn't the perfume you are wearing..."

Woman: "Oh yes, that's so if someone attacks me I can spray it in their face and get away"

Polis: "...and that'll be considered an offensive weapon, if you'd like to accompany me to the station"

Now obviously you are allowed to carry perfume sprays, just not with the intention of using them as a weapon - same with many other things like wrecking bars, pipe wrenches. You just have to have a good, legal, and preferably verifiable, reason for carrying them, and for the most sensible law enforcement officer to be having a good day.

User spent 20 minutes trying to move mouse cursor, without success

A K Stiles
Coffee/keyboard

fuzzy balls

In a previous existence I used to regularly get someone complain that their "mouse isn't working!!!!"

For a while I would attempt to clean the things there and then, but that nearly always got the chorus of "Ew" and "humph", so instead I used to fetch a 'spare' from the stores, swap them out and then clean the previous one whilst waiting for something to load/install/compile, before returning it to the stores for the next time. We only actually had a couple of 'spares' and about 5 new mice in the stores. After 3 years we still had 5 brand new mice in their boxes.

Now don't get me started on the phone headset ear-sponges! (bleurgh!)

A K Stiles
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Trackball can be worse....

Oh jeez - there are some folks with trackballs here - I don't think they've EVER cleaned them...

My optical mouse generally gets its glidepads cleaned on at least a weekly interval. The keyboard gets a good shake when I know the cleaners are coming to wipe and vacuum round.

Shatner's solar-powered Bitcoin gambit wouldn't power a deflector shield

A K Stiles
Coat

How about the singing?

Woman sues NASA for ownership of vial of space dust

A K Stiles
Joke

Re: Three Monoliths just down the hall,

Three vertical, one horizontal across the top? Sounds like a wicket to me! Wonder where the bat and ball are?

First A380 flown in anger to be broken up for parts

A K Stiles

Re: This underlines one more thing

And yet the UK government seem to be headed towards yet more London-centric investment by adding a third runway to the already somewhat congested Heathrow Airport.

Someone may have their forecasts wrong or maybe it will all come out smelling of roses for everyone. Time will tell.

From my experience (Emirates), I'd rather fly A380 than B777 for anything 7+ hours. I can sleep in cattle class on the Airbus, no chance on the Boeing. YMMV

In defence of online ads: The 'net ain't free and you ain't paying

A K Stiles

Re: In Defence if online ads???

Aeh, I don't mind those sorts of bits on things like Blue Planet - frankly I'd quite like that to be a separate 30 minute programme with more details about the efforts of making the original. In fact, I'd be quite glad if the horrendous recapper ones just replaced some of the repeated dross with more details of the things they allege to be covering in the first place. I'm not (yet) a completely brainless idiot with a 3 second attention and retention span.

A K Stiles

Re: In Defence if online ads???

So much that - 'Factual' programme, scheduled for an hour with, in my instance, 3 mid-programme breaks totalling approximately 15 minutes. So, 45 minute programme.

But the first 5 minutes is titles and previous programme recap plus basic synopsis of this episode, and the last 5 minutes is the teaser for the next episode. and another 5 minutes or so is spread across the show in reminders of what they told you about 5 minutes ago, before they cut to a different section, so there are places for other networks with different ad regulations to insert even more adverts. Total 'content' time for the scheduled hour long programme, approximately 20 minutes. It's certainly a lot of the reason why I almost never watch programmes at broadcast any more. Hmm, I might have to try and re-cut one of the episodes into a single sequence of content with no self-referencing repeats, just to see how little content there actually is.

Send printer ink, please. More again please, and fast. Now send it faster

A K Stiles
Joke

The Perfect Crime

Well cashing cheques has to be the perfect, totally untraceable crime! No paper trail.... um...

Capture your late-night handbrake turns with this 'autonomous' car-chasing camera drone

A K Stiles

Re: A petrolhead selfie stick

Either Darwin, or the constabulary identifying the individuals from the online shared video and either extrapolating speed from passing street furniture separation / car model and rpm sound, and requesting the owner's assistance with their investigations.

Church of England will commune with God for you via Amazon's Echo

A K Stiles
Joke

Pizza

Ask the Buddhists - they'll make you one with everything!

The future of radio may well be digital, but it won't survive on DAB

A K Stiles
Coat

AM ? Luxury!

Some of us can remember listening to "Longwave Radio Atlantic 252" with a signal to noise ratio on a good day of approx 1:1.

Not old enough for Radio Caroline though!

Swiss sausage sizzler 4.0 hits 200 bangers per hour

A K Stiles
Mushroom

specific sausage style

from the picture, it'd struggle to deal with something like a cumberland or a boerewors, but maybe they're not standard bbq fair in Switzerland.

( icon for what usually happens when I get let loose on the bbq/braai )

It could be you: National Lottery hands £16m to England's Jodrell Bank

A K Stiles
Coat

Re: Money transfer

Last you recall was possibly the jackpot odds of 14ish million to 1? It's gone up since then! Now it's around 45 million to 1, for a jackpot of 2 to 4 million quid per £2 spend (obviously smaller prizes also pay out on better less bad odds but, you know). It's such rubbish odds that it usually rolls over a couple of times to get to 8 or 9 million (best I can see for the last 6 months was 24 million).

Okay, okay - mine's the one without the lottery ticket in the pocket, thanks.

Brit ISPs get their marker pens out: Speed advertising's about to change

A K Stiles

Honest advertising?

Or at least, 'more reflective of reality' advertising - who'd have thought that was a good idea (from a consumer perspective at least)!

And who would have thought that the self-regulation model from a few years back wasn't going to work in terms of more accurately reflecting the likely outcome of the advertised product...

Surface Hub 2: Microsoft's pricey whiteboard gets a sequel

A K Stiles

Re: Inevitably...

At least you CAN scrape a CRT...

A K Stiles
Devil

Re: Inevitably...

"Have you tried turning the whiteboard off and using an erasable marker..."

How long before someone tries writing on it with a (possibly not erasable) marker? or pokes at it with a biro? So many of the screens in a previous job had little blue and black poke marks all over them...

Bowel down: Laxative brownies brought to colleague's leaving bash

A K Stiles
Joke

Giving a crap

Well that seems like a shitty thing to do...

No top-ups, please, I'm a millennial: Lightweight yoof shunning booze like never before

A K Stiles
IT Angle

Re: Side-effects

Possibly people are realising that kids are expensive (along with almost everything else, including booze) and they actually can't afford to have 3 kids.

Or maybe falling religious participation and improved healthcare over the last 50 - 100 years means there is no longer the need / encouragement to have many spawn to bolster future member counts?

Perhaps some complicated combination of multiple causal factors that are difficult to quantify with neat categories?

IT angle? Well, there's booze involved, so that's good enough!

Machines learned to assemble IKEA’s semi-disposable furniture

A K Stiles
Joke

Instructions

And here I was hoping that the system was starting from scratch and using the instruction sheet to determine the correct assembly procedure - in my experience the most time is taken trying to understand the hieroglyphics in an IKEA instruction manual (well second only to the time it took to get around the IKEA store to find said item and then pay for it and leave again)

NASA's TESS mission in distress, Mars Express restart is a success

A K Stiles

Re: re-orientated itself

"That's how language works: people invent new words, and if people use them then they are correct."

Unless you're French apparently... </sarc>

From the OED link above,

Orientated, adj (1857). Oriented, adj (1875). Unlike many 'Americanisms', it appears that this one isn't actually a case of America retaining an older usage whilst the British evolved the language further. Interesting.

A K Stiles
Coat

Re: It took an hour to reboot?

28 minutes to send the reboot command, 4 minutes to reboot and self-test and transmit the reply message, 28 minutes to send the response back to earth, or thereabout I suspect.

Did I miss your joke icon?

A K Stiles
Headmaster

Re: re-orientated itself

Orientate as a word has been in usage in British English for approximately 200 years. After that length of time I'm not sure there's any validity to the suggestion that it is not 'correct'. In my UK experience, it is much more common than 'orient' which I've only ever heard uttered by folks from the ex-colonies (US, Oz, Southern Africa).

from The OED

"ORIENTATE: More commonly used in British English than orient, while the latter is the more frequent of the two in American English. Orientate is commonly regarded as an incorrect usage in American English."

Data watchdog fines Brit council £120k for identifying 943 owners of vacant property

A K Stiles

Re: I apologize for being ignorant in this...

I think you can get the name (and possibly contact address) of the owner of a property from the land registry (for a nominal fee), but that doesn't tell you whether the property is occupied. The council will know this from the council tax record for the property (single occupant pays less than multiple people occupying, zero occupants pays less again I believe), but that isn't a matter of public record.

Knowing how many properties in an area might not be a DPA problem and be in the public interest, but knowing which properties those are and therefore to whom they belong may well be.

In the UK I believe you have to have a recognisable reason (and possibly be registered?) to be able to request a vehicle owner's details e.g. controlling local parking restrictions, so this isn't considered public information.

A developer always pays their technical debts – oh, every penny... but never a groat more

A K Stiles
Coat

Re: If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand!

"One of the basic rules of XP is "Don't repeat yourself." This is a central tenant of maintainability."

Sorry, I think the word you are looking for is 'tenet'. I only point this out because another tenet of maintainability is clarity of communication.

going now...

I say, I say, I say: What's the difference between a king penguin and liquid?

A K Stiles
Coat

Re: What's average airspeed velocity

Um, airspeed... in a vacuum...

No tea yet so running at full pedant.

The one with the box of Yorkshire Gold in the pocket please.

(Guessing it'll be a close approximate to 1.0 Sheep)

User fired IT support company for a 'typo' that was actually a real word

A K Stiles
Meh

Re: "Mangers feature prominently in the Christmas story"

"My cousin is married to a vicar - who in the 1960s was one of the more trendy types. She is appalled that I am an atheist - and said that she couldn't countenance any of her many children being atheists."

Friends had their child christened/baptised/whatever the catholic equivalent is. Mother was born and raised by a fairly ardent catholic mother, father a somewhat uninterested atheist. My (atheist) wife and the mother's notionally catholic brother (one of them *HAS* to be a catholic apparently) were named as god-parents and when it cam to the bit about renouncing and casting out satan (satin / santa?) and all his works, 3 of the 4 voices could only be heard to utter "mhmhmmm hmmhabbm m ms tm emem".

During the post ceremony gathering (in a pub) the brother freely admitted to having actually said "Mumble mumble mumble" because "who has time for all that crap?"

Kid's father apparently mostly went along with the whole thing for an easy life and because he'd had to promise to christen any kids when they'd got married in the same catholic church - so he wasn't prepared to break any of his wedding vows.

Slap visibility beacons on bikes so they can chat to auto autos, says trade body

A K Stiles
Headmaster

Re: Reality Check.....

"Condensing the jargon down to the taught..."

presuming you meant "taut" rather than "taught"? There didn't seem to be any lesson in the statement?

NASA fungus problem puts theory of 'Martian mushrooms' on toast

A K Stiles
Coat

Re: Suggested title...

Took a couple of reads to get where you were going with that - presumably you're pronouncing the 'g' and the end of 'among' in a more hard / glottal way to match the 'g' in fungus, rather than a soft/ringing way like an example I can't think of if you pronounce all your 'g's the first way...

Meh - it's too early on a Monday for fully formed thoughts!

Sysadmin held a rack of servers off the ground for 15 mins, crashed ISP when he put them down

A K Stiles

build around them or open front and back and slide it in whilst 2x4 support staff steps though the cabinet?

Veteran NASA probe Dawn: Winter is coming on Ceres (sort of)

A K Stiles

Re: Another extended mission coming to an end?

but more fuel means bigger tanks and more fuel required to get to the destination - it's all a bit Zeno's paradox with diminishing returns for your money.

Office junior had one job: Tearing perforated bits off tractor-feed dot matrix printer paper

A K Stiles
Boffin

It's printing upside down!

Several times (now in history) I've had to deal with people complaining that the printer was printing the letters upside down, to go to the print room, pause the print run because clearly leaving it to carry on printing 100 letters in the meantime was the best plan, open the paper drawer and rotate the sheaf of headed paper by 180 degrees so the heading was in the correct location - as stated by the large label I'd previously affixed to the front of the paper drawer ("Headed paper only, heading this end, face down"). Also removing the plain paper from the headed drawer, readjusting the paper-size margins and the old classic of pressing 'resume' on the printer to compel it to print the 'letter' format document onto the A4 sized paper when it has "stopped working again". Amazing the number of times one could resolve a problem by simply reading the information displayed on the LCD screen and doing what it said.

Most IT contractors want employment benefits if clobbered with IR35

A K Stiles

Re: Re. "Why don't they just get a proper job"

To those of us outside this thrilling discussion, it just seems like there's one AC with multiple-personality disorder who's let their mental turmoil loose on the keyboard!

Oi Reg, any chance we can identify all the posts from an AC together within on forum thread? AC1 / AC2 etc...

Administrator PwC chops Maplin staff

A K Stiles

Velleman can only do so much I suppose - time to cable-tie up the loose ends.

'A sledgehammer to crack a nut': Charities slam UK voter ID trials

A K Stiles

Re: Doesn't seem to understand how voting works

"Switch the right 68 votes and the Conservatives are down two MP's http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/mps-maj.htm"

and actually it's only 35 votes, as those numbers are majorities so it not only comes off their majority total but gets added to their opponent total - 14 votes taken from Davies and added to Labour total, 21 votes from Solloway and added to Labour total and neither would have had their seats in 2015 ( Both of them lost their seats to Labour by 2000+ majorities in the 2017 debacle / general election )

A K Stiles
Coat

Polling card

My recollection is that I've always received a polling card through the post before a local or general election, which I've presented to the officiating officer at the polling station prior to voting.

As has been said, you don't need the polling card to vote, it just tells you where and when you should go to vote. It also tells you that you don't need to take the card with you to vote. If you can't be arsed to read all of the information on the poll card how much other information don't you read? Maybe don't be arsed to vote and express an opinion that is likely to be not fully informed? (unless your voting opinion agrees with mine of course, then you should definitely go and vote at the earliest opportunity!)

La, la, la, I can't hear you! Apple to challenge Bose's noise-proof cans

A K Stiles
Joke

Re: Wait - am I a weirdo?

"Coo, Mavis - look at that Cock in the fancy car there!"

A K Stiles
Thumb Up

Re: MacGuyver solution in the wild

Similar concept - squishy earplugs then (sub £50) noise cancelling headphones. Engine drone gone, plus some good practice lip-reading the cabin-crew when they ask what kind of booze you want!

Apple's new 'spaceship' HQ brings the pane for unobservant workers

A K Stiles

surely every pane of glass will shortly have a giant frosted Apple logo on it, or will it need to be some sort of clever thing where the asymmetry in the chomp and leaf look correct whichever side of the window you are?

Reg man wraps head in 49-inch curved monitor

A K Stiles

Re: Stuck with training wheels if you need them or not

...place your frequently used actions just one click away...

I want them to be no-clicks away. I'm using the keyboard to enter the data - I don't want to have to move my hand all the way to a mouse, move it to a toolbar icon, to expand another window, to select an option. Just leave me with the keyboard control.

I've previously done (company mandated) excel training and it was terrible - if you tried to use keyboard shortcuts to menu options it complained you were doing the wrong thing, even though you were applying the same ultimate controls, just not using the mouse!

A K Stiles

Re: Stuck with training wheels if you need them or not

ALT-E, S, V Excel hackery 101 - still use that frequently, even though there is no longer an 'Edit' menu.