Posts by pdebarra

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

Pretty sure I worked with that guy on wealth management software in a Fortune 500 company. I'm sure local authorities have much higher standards, though.

Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard

Very well done.

China's top EV battery maker announced a breakthrough, but top boffin isn't convinced

Re: I thought the US liked battery cars...!

If you plug it into two at a time, can you double that rate?

Bank of Ireland outage sees customers queue for 'free' cash – or maybe any cash

Re: Bank of Ireland Incompetent ?

That doesn't need any explanation. It's taken as read.

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

There's always one bloody pedant!!

(I came here to post the same thing)

Twitter 2.0 signal boosts Taliban 2.0 through Blue subscriptions

Paying to be able to use Twitter to its full is not the opposite of free speech. Free speech is the right to say pretty much what you want, not the right to be able to use a private company's product to say it - free of charge.

The author is confusing "free as in speech" with "free as in beer".

Cookie consent crumbles under fresh UK data law proposals

Re: Cookies - Yes, more options, see options, maybe, but never 'no'

You do see banners with a "Reject all" button. That's supposed to accept only the essential cookies. It should be the other way around, though. Put a little link at the bottom of the page to show the cookie preference centre, so that people really are making a choice to accept them.

Of course, a large number of sites that do have a "Reject all" button still aren't compliant, as it's only a dummy.

Re: More Misdirection...........................

Agreed. Cookies are just a distraction. What's more alarming is the proposal that the government have greater control over the ICO. The ICO and other supervisory authorities should be able to hold governments to account. They're supposed to work for the citizenry as a whole, not for governments.

Musk can't tweet about Tesla without lawyer approval – and he's still fighting to end that

Re: Advice from Twitter?

"or suing becuase your coffee is hot....." - watch the film Hot Coffee. There's more to that story than I thought.

Google Russia goes broke after bank account snatched

Re: Very bad idea

Bill Clinton? Sticky? My dear sir!

No place like GNOME: 41 in beta, features frozen for forthcoming release

Obligatory link...

...to David Bowie's finest work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SQdBxVjZx4

Indian mega-corp Tata unveils surprise 5G networking business

Re: So, 5G stacks are like buses

Ah. This must be why Nokia and Ericsson phones are the hottest property in - oh, wait.

After Dutch bloke claims he hacked Trump's Twitter by guessing password, web biz says there's 'no evidence'

Re: I'm more interested in

It is linked in the article.

Days after President Trump suggests pausing election over security, US House passes $500m for states to shore up election security

I came here only to point this out, but find I've been beaten to it.

Instagram influencer fools followers into thinking Ikea photoshoot was Bali holiday

Re: Good grief!

I watched about 20 seconds with the sound off. I don't think I'm brave enough to try again with the sound on. Books, covers, and all that, I know, I know - but "influencers" are surely the exception to that rule!

Use an 8-char Windows NTLM password? Don't. Every single one can be cracked in under 2.5hrs

Re: The Usual Response...

Gaaah, now I've to change my password for everything!

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave me tea... pigs-in-blankets-flavoured tea

You are obviously not including Ireland in "the British Isles", which is of course correct. We don't know here what pigs in blankets are. I knew because it came up in a table quiz once, but then I forgot. Now, I'll remember again. For a while.

Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...

Re: Eviscerated!

One, two, three, many.

Many one, many two, many three, many many.

Many many one, many many two, many many three, many many many.

Many many many one, many many many two, many many many three, lots.

Software gremlin robs Formula 1 world champ of season's first win

"...the reigning British world champion."

Which is he?

Viagra's Irish plant STILL giving local men and dogs stiffies (not really)

Since when is Ringaskiddy an embarrassing name? There is a town in East Donegal whose residents don't always like to tell outsiders where they're from, but I've never heard of anyone finding Ringaskiddy embarrassing.

Bonkers call to boycott Raspberry Pi Foundation over 'gay agenda'

Re: "pushing LGBTQI"

My organisation favours "LGBTQIA+".

I still haven't found what I'm malloc()ing for: U2 tops poll of music today's devs code to

Re: I mostly code to..

Lotta Tallis, but more Byrd, and plenty of their contemporaries from various other parts of Europe. And, on other days, Ministry, or perhaps Bach, or maybe Sabbath.

Eugene Kaspersky is now personally defending your feet

Who's footing the bill?

Irish eyes are crying: Tens of thousands of broadband modems wide open to hijacking

Re: bobby tables

Always good to see an XKCD reference!

Aussie trams equivalent to 30 skateboarding rhinos

I find neither the rhino nor the Pogba on your list. Am I alone in this? I have even cleared my cache, just in case...

Marc Benioff apologizes as Salesforce NA14 instance goes TITSUP

"We have determined that data written to the NA14 instance between 9:53 UTC and 14:53 UTC on May 10, 2016 could not be restored."

Oops.

CODING PEEP SHOW offers chance to hire devs as they program

Daft. I spend only a small portion of my time actually coding - and a good bit of that is deleting what I wrote half an hour ago and starting again. Add all the time I spend filling in spreadsheets, and reading El Reg while code is compiling and publishing, and it's going to be pretty damn dull. And utterly useless.

Imagine: "Oh, look, he's typed 'fro'! Oh, no, he's deleting it! Nailbiting stuff here! That's an 'f'. And an 'o'. And an 'r'. 'FOR'! He's written 'for'!"

Bollox.

Call of Duty, GTA V do not make youth more violent

Asterisk...

...but no footnote? You're just winding us up!

JPL wants to fire a laser at MARS!

Re: Wow.

Unfortunately, Mercury doesn't have a dark side as such. It's not tidally locked, which ruins many a good sci-fi story.

Germans purge selves of indigestible 63-letter word

Re: Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch

I sincerely hope you meant "phlegm". That sort of thing is frowned upon, even in Europe.

Re: Agglutinative languages

German wouldn't be an agglutinative language, though, as it's only nouns that get lumped together like that. Prepositions, articles (or other means of expressing definiteness) etc. are not included.

Crack Army pilot to be first PROPER British astronaut IN SPAAAACE

Re: why

I wondered about that as well. Is it because she's a woman?

Certainly, everything I see about her in the Fount Of All Knowledge suggests that she was British: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sharman

Maybe it's because she's from Sheffield?

Last remaining reason to order an iPhone 5 disappears

Excellent troll

Well done, that man.

Neil Gaiman’s saucy pop wife agrees to pay her musicians in money

Much ado

Those who volunteer are presumably doing so voluntarily. Volunteers tend to volunteer their services free of charge. She's told people up front that they won't be paid. So anyone who signs up is presumably happy with that arrangement. If nobody is happy to do that, nobody will sign up, and then she'll be forced to pay people to play with/for her instead. Either way, I'm buggered if I can see why anyone has anything to complain about.

Sony: Walkman, meet Android

Pluralisation

I believe the preferred plural is "Sony Walkman Personal Stereos".

Newsnight presenter pwned by snarky hack

I think the point was that Japanese does not divide nouns into feminine/masculine/neuter, as European languages tend to do. It was not to say that men and women speak alike.