Posts by Domino

Female-free speaker list causes PHP show to collapse when diversity-oriented devs jump ship

Probably not what you meant..

"Can we focus on the other side of it?"

Female coders boycott PHP show and get it cancelled?

Peers to HMRC: Digital tax reforms 3 days after Brexit? Hold your horses, how 'bout 3 years...

"I suspect that was sort of what they were originally thinking - and when it was still at the planning stages some time back, I read stuff (on HMRC's site, I think) that suggested that during the submission process, the server could request more background data from the submission client. i.e. they could interrogate your software for the full data."

Then someone mentioned GDPR and they realised having a normal set of accounts and an anonymised one for tax purposes might not be the best idea.

I sometimes think big business has been lobbying for rules that force all small businesses to use their services. How many small businesses can comply with GDPR without handing off their IT infrastructure to a 3rd party?

This just looks like another step down that road to me.

US Congress mulls expanding copyright yet again – to 144 years

Cultural appropriation and control

It seems to me that the longer copyright is, the more chance there is that the largest companies will end up owning all the culturally significant copyrights (eg Disney + Marvel + Star Wars etc). There's a real risk to societies development in setting up this type of long term cultural appropriation by gatekeeper companies. What is promoted as a benefit to creatives can also be used to gag them and control derivative works. Can culture continue to grow incrementally when no one alive remembers the context and impact of the original work by the time it becomes public domain?

IBM thinks Notes and Domino can rise again

The downside was Domino running on Windoze.

I'm using Linux these days..

What's GDPR? Survey suggests smaller firms living under rocks as EU privacy regs loom

Re: Reminds me of PCI Compliance

[i]Absolutely no benefit whatsoever to the people it's aimed at protecting![/i]

I got through checkout at PC World without being asked for any personal info. Was I wrong in chalking that up as a win for GDPR?

Destroying the city to save the robocar

Re: Obviously the solution is....

@a pressbutton ... [i]Wont somebody think of the children[/i]

The ones in my imagination have discovered playing chicken with the automated cars sensors.. And throwing glitter at them from overpasses..

US military makes first drop of Mother-of-All-Bombs on Daesh-bags

Father Of All Bombs?

It's a pity they didn't go with Father Of All Destruction instead ..

IT contractors behind IR35 calculator to leave HMRC... because of IR35

Open Source Government

I see the plan behind ir35..

A team of permies whose job is to deploy open source government software.

If the open source doesn't do what is needed, hire contractors to add features to the open source software. The indirect delivery surely is outside ir35 with payment per completed feature rather than time based.

Solves some (failed) delivery, transparency and data protection issues as a bonus..

User rats out IT team for playing games at work, gets them all fired

This is making me feel old.

Am I the only one here who played Pacwars at the end of a day? Until Doom came out anyway..

Investigatory Powers Act signed into UK law by Queen

Department for Work and Pensions

Will now be looking to see who they sanction for being on Playstation Online, Netflix etc when they should be job seeking.

Forget 'shadow IT' – it's 'self-starting IT' now

Shared IT

Might give pause for thought about who they are sharing with and also those "high enough up" to ignore policy wouldn't want to share, they want their own ;)

Tencent makes first foray into open source

Known Issue: Due to Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement, we can't dynamic update our apk.

Presumably to 'stop' a clean app morphing into malware?

I've not looked closely but I think 'without the user having to restart the app' should be 'without having to reinstall the apk' so in other words, taking app updates out of googles and optionally the users control?

Having an app able to update its running code over the air seems like a very bad idea to me. Probably why it's targeted at developers who hopefully remember to remove it from releases..

User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert

Re: The computer Tao

arctic_haze 'Having said that I must add that there is an additional (mysterious) component. There are people computers seem to obey and ones the hardware and software itself seems to hate. I call it "computer Tao" as I don't have a better name for that. You either have it or you don't.'

I used to get regular calls to one PC that had some strike supporting sticker on it "Stop Working Now", I had a strange feeling that it was obeying the instruction and eventually removed the sticker. I never got another call about it after that.

Microsoft's HoloLens secret sauce: A 28nm customized 24-core DSP engine built by TSMC

Surely Microsoft learned their lesson about hotheads with Ballmer?

Facebook, Twitter and Google are to blame for terrorism, say MPs

I'm confused

How did they learn to use these web technologies with their stance on western education?

UK 'emergency' bulk data slurp permissible in pursuit of 'serious crime'

Re: Newsagent police poster.

Leeroy: I seen a poster on the shop door of a newsagents today it read 'Any crime committed against the owners of this company will be treated as a hate crime.'

In Nottinghamshire chat up lines are apparently now a hate crime, unless you are homosexual I guess..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-36775398

The force defines misogyny hate crime as: "Incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman."

Gaming apps, mugging and bad case of bruised Pokéballs

Saw quite a few players in the local park when walking the dog today. After briefly considering getting one of those doggy pikachu costumes to mess with them, I decided to get out of the rain while wondering how many water ingress faults this game is going to provoke.

Kids racking up huge in-app bills on Kindles, Android is all your fault, Amazon – US court

Not a new problem..

My parents had to worry about their phone bill racking up thanks to a modem and C64 MUD :)

Britain is sending a huge nuclear waste shipment to America. Why?

Re: Odd Decision & Odd Timing

"... the adage that "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't"."

The adage goes - "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

Neither really say whether it's [probably] true or not though. Are we talking about 'too good to be true' or just 'true' when we say it is or isn't?

Barbie-brained Mattel exec phell for phishing, sent $3m to China

Re: Hypocritical

"So, when the company experiences an embarrassing loss of monies, they get the heavies in to recoup, but when they release a product that has so many security holes you can wash and drain your vegetables in it, no one gets involved?"

I wouldn't say no one got involved. The crackers must have had some reason to think Mattel were an easy target.

'No regrets' says chap who felled JavaScript's Jenga tower – as devs ask: Have we forgotten how to code?

Azer's childish decision

I'd have done the same thing and don't think it is childish at all. All that was in dispute is the modules name. How that could be used to justify transferring ownership of the module is beyond me and I'd have immediately protected the rest of my code by removing it from the service too.

Subjects! Speek your branes to Parliament on the Snoopers' Charter

Re: Letters to MPs time, everyone

Did you point out that it will be technically impossible for MPs to be excluded from the bulk collection?

Point out that any attempt to create filters for them just provides a spy upon list that all ICR collectors would have to have, so would definitely leak and the risk to National Security that would create?

Or that the history for new MPs would already be available and thus available to pervert the course of democracy for bad players?

UN rapporteur: 'Bad example' UK should bin the Snoopers' Charter

Shadmeister: 'I'm relatively a hermit. So how the law enforcement arrived at the conclusion I was involved is astounding.'

This one hardly ever shows up on CCTV, he must be avoiding them and up to no good..

No tit for tat, or should that be tat for tit ... Women selling stuff on eBay get lower bids

What's in a name?

If both auction items were shown and I had to choose which to bid on..

Brad and Alison - I'd have gone for Brad..

Brad and Brenda - I'd have gone for Brenda..

I've no explanation why, the names feel different somehow but gender doesn't seem to be the decider for me.

Alison and Brad - somehow feels like a closer decision than the other way around.. How strange..

Who's right on crypto: An American prosecutor or a Lebanese coder?

Speeding is illegal

And so much easier to prosecute when people carry their own GPS tracker for average speed checks.

Phone-fondling docs, nurses sling patient info around willy-nilly

Re: Is is really that important?

Cynic_999: The information is unlikely to be profitable for anyone

Except insurance companies, and maybe blackmailers if STDs are involved..

HP slaps dress code on R&D geeks: Bin that T-shirt, put on this tie

Fancy Dress

Always remember the announcement for one of the Red Nose Days where everyone had to wear fancy dress or get "fined" a donation. I went in dressed in the normal dress code of suit & tie. When confronted I pulled a whip out of my desk drawer and said I gone as a manager. The look on my actual managers face was priceless :)

Natural geothermal heat under Antarctic ice: 'Surprisingly high'

Re: It puzzles me too

I guess it depends on whether volcanism is the earth's equivalent of sweating.

Top Eurocop: People are OK with us snooping on their phone calls

Re: "pre-policing"

Like the royal wedding zombies for example.

Dutch efforts to decapitate Pirate Bay could end up before ECJ

Re: Trademark Infringement

Wasn't there a limit though so that the content went public domain and the original promisers would be able to use the content in their lifetime? Without that, would they still have promised?

Get paid (airline) peanuts with United's new bug bounty program

Re: Its a good job all the bad guys live in America

I thought Africa was home of the braid.

Ad-blocking is LEGAL: German court says Ja to browser filters

Re: re: And that this would be extortion

Search engines are handy if you know or at least suspect that something exists. Adverts are handy to let people know something exists. Two different things, both of which get abused to some degree - the more you value your privacy the larger that degree seems.

WHAT did GOOGLE do SO WRONG to get a slapping from the EU?

"<widget> price" didn't give me the reults I'd expect, and "<widget> price comparison" is worse. I'd expect the relevant page from price comparison sites to show up for those terms. To use google for this search I have to find "price comparison" then go to each result site to find "<widget>".

Trade body, universities row over US patent troll act proposals

So students get to spend thousands to learn something they won't be able to use unless they spend further thousands on a patent license?

Not to mention some of those patents are no doubt student inspired, which raises red flags on the "obvious to someone in the craft" stuff that patents aren't supposed to be.

Bone-tastic boffins' breakthrough BRINGS BACK BRONTOSAURUS

Welcome back

Advice to other 'saurs

Encryption is the REAL threat – Head Europlod

Re: Election Time

Got a telephone call from the Labour party to see if I was going to vote for them. I mentioned that privacy was important to me and as they had ignored the TPS registration for my number and invaded mine, then no, I wouldn't be voting for them. It's not just internet privacy they don't have a clue about.

'What don't we want? Robots. When don't we want them? Ever.' Anti-droid hipsters hit SXSW

Steven Hawkings is one, who famously said "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

He later clarified it was a suggestion that AIs should be good at spelling.

Freedom of Info at 10: Tony Blair's WORST NIGHTMARE

Re: FOI

@RonWheeler

With all contracts being made public, wouldn't the result be more due diligence?

And if all losing bids are also made public, then such sales tactics would die a natural death under the glare of shared knowledge.

Unless the "scumbag" is a better alternative - they know the terms of the current Blackberries from the availability of the contract, they know about the increased due diligence, so why waste money pitching unless they are a better option?

Watch it: It's watching you as you watch it (Your Samsung TV is)

Re: "Oi Donna...

TV snooping seems a small concern when fridge freezers have evolved to the point where they go down the pub for a pint!

Breaking news: BBC FINALLY spots millions of mugshots on cop database

Dear Mr Plod

Please note that I would like to assert my rights under section 12.1 of the Data Protection Act 1998 to prevent automated decision making based on my data. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Your friend,

Domino

Scientific consensus that 2014 was record hottest year? No

Re: Cut the sh*t! @Stuart 22

@Gordon 10: Forget whether Lewis is a warmist or denier - he's saying its very disingenuous to be making such headline grabbing statements.

His headline has "NO" not "MAYBE"..

Microsoft turns the power of fine print onto enterprise licensing

Re: Solution: give them what they ask for

Are you sure you want to risk being told you now need extra HOME editions for those laptops?

FBI boss: Sony hack was DEFINITELY North Korea, haters gonna hate

Re: This has to be one of the biggest porkies from the FBI..

@hate - Is high speed required for this anyway?

Didn't I read an early report about torrents that originated in Sony? If correct, then crackers setting up seedboxes on compromised machines seems the likely exit route for the data.. If so the load would be spread, no doubt on receiving end too.

BBC clamps down on illicit iPlayer watchers

Extended warranty

I bet a few high street retailers might come to regret the hard selling of extended warranties on everything ;)

STONER SHEEP get the MUNCHIES after feasting on £4k worth of cannabis plants

Off to the butchers

For some grass fed lamb.

Doctor Who and the Dalek: 10-year-old tests BBC programming game

It was asking someone how they got their name all down the screen on the ZX Spectrum in WH Smiths that got me into programming. It was like learning the secret behind a magic trick, I saw something awesome and wanted to know how to do it.

My first hack was

10 PRINT "DOMINO ";

20 GOTO 10

From there I progressed onto loops to vary the number of spaces to get my name to bounce backwards and forwards across the screen. Before I got my own Spectrum, I'd already written a frogger game in basic, complete with redefined character set for graphics (I took a cassette with me to WH Smiths during school lunchtimes to load & save my work).

Having said that, just the year before I declined taking computer studies at school as all they were displaying was a hack/rogue game and ascii art. I don't remember there being any mention of the programming side of things.

Wow.. Im rambling a bit here.. Anyway, if I'd seen something like this dalek thing in primary school I'm sure I'd have got into computers earlier than I did - though I'd probably have gone the rude word route as having a dalek poop out my name doesn't appeal in the same way.

Premier League wants to PURGE ALL FOOTIE GIFs from social media

Re: Did they ask their lawyers?

eucational ??!!!

I guess my subconcious had something to say about the educational content of my post :/

Did they ask their lawyers?

What if howtoscoregoals.com gets registered to take advantage of the eucational copyright exceptions?

Are "dive" videos covered by the caracature exception?

If a site with robots.txt (disallow: /footiegifs) and a honeypot gif gets a takedown notice, will we be liable under the computer misuse act?

Orange unleashes API assets, hires San Fran firm to lure in devs

Should be fun when everyone complaining about the NSA realises what data the mobile telecos have been collecting :)

One EURO PATENT COURT ruling for all from 'early 2015'

Re: Identical Patents

Both of their patents predate the EU one, so it'd be very risky to take it to court as instant invalidation of the EU one for prior art could be the result. But that's assuming common sense applies!