Posts by myhandler

Typical. Museum of London Docklands display would be ready to set sail were it not for no-show cast member

Re: Ah the heady days of Director

I always thought Director and Lingo would make a great way for kids to learn about coding and simple animating. Go the frame, yeah!

What a Hancock-up: Excel spreadsheet blunder blamed after England under-reports 16,000 COVID-19 cases

Re: CSV?

Ceci n'est pas une pipe?

The perils of building a career on YouTube: Guitar teacher's channel nearly deleted after music publisher complains

Happened to two people on a musician's synth forum, that they and I have been members of for years. Not some random comment off Farsebk. I could email one of the people now if you want?

FWIW: if you post a piece of classical music to YouTube, that you have *recreated using synthesisers* you will get a take down notice from Wendy Carlos' lawyers. The system is out of control.

Adobe Illustrator's open source rival Inkscape delivers v1.0.1 - with experimental Scribus PDF export

Haha - I did that in Thailand in a Thai version of Illustrator, I was a shortcut user, so it took a few tries to find the n'th item down in the fourth menu across! (Commerical printing if you must know).

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot to save their hand

I've been using Illustrator since version 88 (you may not believe it but in 1988 they chose '88' rather than version 2 or 3 or whatever).

Scribus is usable, but not at all refined, not even to QuarkXpress standard as it was in 1988. (Yes I've used more recent versions).

But why is this export not just a straight "Export as PDF"?

As for Freehand - oh, the delights of orphaned Freehand EPS files that can't be edited!

Illustrator has a very good interface, better than Photoshop, shame about the rental license.

Highways England primes market for £2bn tech spend as part of massive investment in crumbling roads network

More "Smart" motorways ?

Miles and miles of 50 mph average speed limits, that take months to complete and all you get are fancier road warning signs.

And no hard shoulder for added extra accidents, so they can show off the new signage.

Facebook accused of trying to bypass GDPR, slurp domain owners' personal Whois info via an obscure process

faecesbook.net is available for only $7

Ex-eBay security execs among six charged with harassing, threatening bloggers who dared criticize web tat souk

So Kenton in Devs was based on these guys? Nice.

25 years of PHP: The personal web tools that ended up everywhere

Re: Frameworks

Yep I give you Laravel - complicating a well organised set of custom code into thousands of sub sections just for the sake of making the job harder. meh. And don't get me on bloody Twig.

Nice wallpaper you've got there. It would be a shame if it bricked your phone

Ah the Tweet thread is fun - full of people defying the instructions and seeing if it really 'works'.

And then they video the result.

NHS contact-tracing app is best in the world, says VMware CEO... whose company helped build it

Re: Why the heck not a UK developed app?

*Union Jack tin foil hats are also available.

The iMac at 22: How the computer 'too odd to succeed' changed everything ... for Apple, at least

Re: Remember when *everything* was translucent "Bondi Blue"?

Yeah I had a modem in transparent blue plastic, it did 14,400 Baud and was for my Quadra 840.

These iMacs came along a good few years after the funky SGI boxes. My Quadra was contemporary to those.

Thanks Apple, but I went to Windows just after the iMacs arrived. Macs, even the big ones, were too slow for 3d rendering (plus the 3d software for Macs sucked).

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

White is the colour of death in China and red is the colour of good luck and energy.

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

FF5

Custard yellow to express my excitement.

So how do the coronavirus smartphone tracking apps actually work and should you download one to help?

Re: Maybe I have missed the point

The thing is countries should have opened new factories to manufacture this stuff, PPE in particular. They haven't. (Yes I know there's a big lead time on injection moulding).

However when every country needs the same stuff at the same time, in large quantities, there are going to be *lots* of problems.

What's inexplicable about a Chinese user's phone suddenly going Red in the middle of the day when at work?

Nothing.

Someone else just got marked infected, the coordinate records show the two had been in close proximity.

NASA's classic worm logo returns for first all-American trip to ISS in years: Are you a meatball or a squiggly fan?

Re: I worked for that outfit for 33 years

Nothing mean spirited or trivial about it - it's very bad communcation to use two different logos on one thing. Shouldn't use two diffferent logos at the same time either.

Brand identity has knock on effects. Using two logos clearly displays that the organisation is NOT a single integrated, coordinated entity.

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

You had a cold not flu.

Re: But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone.

Who going to want to contact him?

Freedom of Information coverup clerk stung for £2k after deleting council audio recording

I bet someone else put her up to it and the spineless toe rag agreed. Clearly not fit to hold that position and must now resign.

London's top cop dismisses 'highly inaccurate or ill informed' facial-recognition critics, possibly ironically

On another occasion an old guy in the East End who was carrying a table leg wrapped in cloth. He was taking the leg home to repair it. They thought it was a gun.

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

Re: Sigh.

Great until car in front slows unexpectedly and you drive into it.

After just one phone, Essential Products ascends to the great venture capitalist in the sky

How much money did they burn through and whose money was it ? VCs?

Just curious..

Feel free to use the Bozo approved term 'spaffed' in any reply.

This AI is full of holes: Brit council fixes thousands of road cracks spotted by algorithm using sat snaps

They just need to nip over to Blackburn now. They were told about those holes 50 years ago.

Iowa has already won the worst IT rollout award of 2020: Rap for crap caucus app chaps in vote zap flap

Re: Don't blame the users for the app failure

Tell that to Labour UK and their process to pick Jezza's replacement. But I s'pose automatng it takes all the fun and potential candidate cock-ups out of it. Bozza ya knobhead - how about it?

SF tech biz forks out $146m in fines, settlements after painkiller makers bribed it to design medical software that pushed opioids to patients

There must be one or two doctors involved who'd signed the Hippocratic oath.

And the bastards are going to take over the UK in all manner of chlorinated ways. FFS.

Thunderbird is go: Mozilla's email client lands in a new nest

FYI: FairEmail app for Android is good as a mobile client if you want to avoid the great beast Goog-it-up.

Re: I've stopped using it

TB stores your email text so that a stemming algorithm can search it looking for word roots.

If you search for 'Weds' hoping to find Wednesday abbreviations it will also show 'wedding'.

If TB simply added a verbatim option it would make it much more usable. The filtering on search results is also very clunky. I have 10 years of emails and it's a pain to find anything without 20 clicks. Other than that TB is very good.

Stiff upper lip time, Brits: After bullying France to drop its digital tax on Silicon Valley, Trump's coming for you next

Re: He's threatening Italy as well

Which rather highlights the problem of having the one size fits all economic policy, as dictated by single currency Euro. I'm a remainer but the problems aren't going to go away anytime soon.

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Re: I went to the bank on Saturday...

You can still do it for free though... it accepts W7 keys

Re: yes, yes...

My screen is ok but it's a default blue MS thing. Got 10 on a dual boot SSD but can't bring myself to make that jump yet. Maybe tomorrow. Fuck tiles.

You're not Boeing to believe this: Yet another show-stopping software bug found in ill-fated 737 Max airplanes

Re: Isn't THIS why we've got to teach 2nd-graders how to "code", rather than how to think?

Almost all degrees used to do this - including arts and humanities. It's the modern vocational degrees that tend to forget the 'why' question.

Step away from that Windows 7 machine, order UK cyber-cops: It's not safe for managing your cash digitally

I consider myself a power user and switching is really difficult. As a Mac fanboy from 1988 to around 1998, the s/w I needed was Windows only so I moved over.. and recently doing a project requiring a Mac has been a pain. There's nothing I like about the experience. I even asked some Mac experts I know for usability tips but it was "Oh, no, I don't think you can do that."

Privacy activists beg Google to ban un-removable bloatware from Android

From what I've read Google are keen on Android One being taken up - a clean base install with minimal bloat - just the one utility app on my Nokia - and it makes it easier for Google to roll out updates. Only a few Motorola and the Nokai range on it I think - but of course still Google's own bloat on there.

The Nokia 3.2 is a phone your nan will love: One camera's more than enough, darling

Nokia 7.1 is available *new* online for £120 - it must be unsold stock but meh. A little older than this but much better spec all round - works for me.

Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways

There's a video online of it burning in the night sky as it comes down. Big fire on board.

From Soviet to science fiction icon, the weird life of Isaac Asimov 100 years on

Re: He certainly wasn’t misogynist in his science fiction..

You "read" EE Doc Smith? - I gave up on chapter two of whatever book it was - absolute trash.

Google security engineer says she was fired for daring to remind Googlers they do indeed have labor rights

Re: Companies have no God-given right to exist

And here you are invoking a straw man on " businesses will find ways to not employ people, or not operate in your jurisdiction/market, or at all."

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

I always remember being called "Einstein" in a broad Hampshire twang as I pushed a broom around a factory. Quite proud of that.

If you want an example of how user concerns do not drive software development, check out this Google-backed API

Re: No Chrome,...

Sadly this is how things work on the www - one player comes to the top and everything else falls by the wayside. The web accelerates the creation of monopolies.

Being able to operate with impunity across borders means the majors can evade much legislation.

Without state interevention we, the public, are stuffed, done up like a kipper and hung out to dry.

Brian Eno's latest composition: A giant Christmas card with Julian Assange on it

Re: A bit unfair, IMHO...

A *bit* unfair? - it's a nasty piece of writing when it refers to Eno - he's made an enormous contribution to music and produced what are seminal albums.

Richard Currie shows how ignorant he is when all he can do is make jokes about ambient and Roxy Music. Perhaps you can look up Wikipedia next time?

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

Re: Details

Are we sure that's a digital printer? That ain't a printer - it's an industrial press.

Looks identical to an offset litho press - I used to work in print.

Each lump of that thing will be printing one colour, the fifth lump will be for a fancy Pantone colour or spot varnish.

Mind... you should see a magazine /newspaper press if you think that's big.

Android dev complains of 'Orwellian' treatment as account banned after 6 years on Play store

Re: Absolutely not...

Correct - and just today I spoke to a real human at Microsoft to cancel and get a refund for my son's XBox account, which he's had enough of.

The real human was careful, listened well, gave me the refund, asked if there was anything else he could help with. The hold queue to get through to this human was all of 40 seconds.

That call cost Microsoft at least 5 minutes of time for a £50 refund to a consumer.. and Google can't be arsed to have a real contact line with real humans ??

Arrogant bastards with the ethics of rattlesnakes.

Surprise! Copying crummy code from Stack Overflow leads to vulnerable GitHub jobs

Re: Dumb community

Tradiontal forums were so much better in that you'd know which posters were expert. SO is a lottery. The fact that many posters want upticks is madness.

Context and discussion is critical - but it's verboten on SO.

It's ace that UK.gov 'in 2030 will be joined up, trusted and responsive' – but what about now?

Re: Rulez for Government IT Projects

You forgot "award contract to Crapita"

Google age discrimination case: Supervisor called me 'grandpa', engineer claims

Performant? Que?

Right-click opens up terrifying vistas of reality and Windows 95 user's frightful position therein

Re: Taking the Trash

Gor blimey trousers is where it's at you young'uns.

Apple blinks on iPhone repairs, touts parts program for independent tech mechanics... sort of

And what wil the trainingg cost be for the "Apple certified techicnian"?

Timpson's Shoes had a guy who fixed the battery on my daughter's iPhone 5 - a tricky operation by all accounts.

Time off for training? not worth it for many small places.

This does nothing. Sell the damn parts at a reasonable price too.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Re: So, to sum up. . .

That's hilarious - 411 votes - sorry how many? did you say four hundred and eleven?

Versus 1 million seven hundred and two..

(at 28 8 2019 23.10)