* Posts by myhandler

359 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jan 2014

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Former headteacher fined £700 after dumping old pupil data on server at new school

myhandler

Re: Puzzling

The fact the fine is small points to it being a stupid idea on his behalf, rather than any nonsense imagined by the Daily Mail reader in our midst.

Processing data at home would be far worse though, wouldn't it?

He then lied when he realised it was a serious mistake and thought the "bumbling idiot" defence might work.

I think the lie will stop him teaching again.

This one weird trick turns your Google Home Hub into a doorstop

myhandler

Plus one for the headline

Beats cling film for wrinkles

That 'Surface will die in 2019' prediction is still a goer, says soothsayer

myhandler

There was a rumoured Surface phone in the works too, or was that vapo-rumo-ware?

Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid

myhandler

I like it but I need mapping.

I want a minimal slurp free phone - I'd pay $350 for that.

This is no better than my dumb phone.

A story of M, a failed retailer: We'll give you a clue – it rhymes with Charlie Chaplin

myhandler

Re: "So you take on debt and spend dozens of years paying off the debt,"

Ah got you.. blimey.. still sounds dodgy re corporate governance.

myhandler

Re: "So you take on debt and spend dozens of years paying off the debt,"

50 years ago?? It was easily done 20 years ago - bought my house for £ 140k in suburban London 22 years ago. Nearly paid off and don't ask what it's "worth" now.

And thankfully I wasn't seduced by a pension mortgage or interest only.

More to the point why did the last buyer of Maplin (or their expert accountants and advisers) fail to see they were being stiffed?

Nameless Right To Be Forgotten Google sueball man tries Court of Appeal – yet again

myhandler

Re: "ABC's approach has greatly upset the legal establishment"

No - it's because he won't identify himself to the courts - that establishes unusual precedents.

How a tax form kludge gifted the world 25 joyous years of PDF

myhandler

Re: Print Definition File

Print publishing houses only wanted Word for author's text - everything else was in QuarkXPress.

There's still an enormous requirement for fixed documents that always appear the same.

T-Mobile owner sends in legal heavies to lean on small Brit biz over use of 'trademarked' magenta

myhandler

BP tried trademarking "BP green" about 25 years ago and were told where to go.

If you consider colour theory there is no such thing as a specific colour anyway.

Someone going to trademark black now ?

HP Ink to compensate punters for bricking third-party ink cartridges

myhandler

Re: Lovin' my HP printer

Blimey - I've got one of those LaserJets (4MP to be precise) though it won't feed pages through now - I need to follow that YouTube video again on taking it to bits and checking where the pinch point is.

Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain

myhandler

Re: The most amazing engineering

I live about 5 miles from Heathrow though not on the normal flight path. Concorde used to take off, do a sharp right and fly directly down our street seemingly very low - the house used to shake and I'd run out to try and catch a glimpse. My baby son called it Councoun.

And as a kid I used to see it doing the test fights high in the sky over Wiltshire. Amazing machine.

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

myhandler

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

Nice idea but who's going to pay for all that documentation?

(not talking about comments, talking about a full description and record)

On many projects it will need to be continually updated.

Over the long run, let's say 5 years, while that cost should be justified, it does load that cost to the front of the project.

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

myhandler

Firing the guy was a bit excessive but it's NOTHING to do with whether the word exists or not.

It's called attention to detail, doing your job, PROOF READING FFS.

Cambridge Analytica seeks data protection assistant

myhandler

Well if you've read any of the GDPR stuff, then yes, you need a degree.

Suspected drug dealer who refused to poo for 46 DAYS released... on bail

myhandler

So how were they going to get the incriminating evidence?

Do all cells have filter trough outlets on the WCs?

Who gets to go though it - PC Stool Pigeon?

Mobile phone dealer boss faces 12 years in director limbo

myhandler

Not personally liable for the debt, no, but if he broke the law he could go to prison

Who wants dynamic dancing animations and code in their emails? Everyone! says Google

myhandler

Re: some people may find this appealing

Grow up - if you exclude style formatting you can't view tabular data nicely for one - design and layout are there to make things easier to read and comprehend.

Though I agree that's all that HMTL email should allow.

Anyway Microsoft Outlook won't adopt any of this for at least 20 years.

Web searching died the day they invented SEO

myhandler

Don't you lot use Google's "verbatim" option?

Hidden under tools > 'all results' dropdown> verbatim

I used to have a plug in that got Firefox to always do that, but sodding Quantum scuppered that

Verbatim is good .. but can you combine it with date range filter .?. No.

It's pathetic that the evil bastard Google shits on us from on high, just to prove they are the fuckers who don't give a shit about end users.

Software that predicts whether crims will break the law again is no better than you or me

myhandler

So is The Register now US centric?

The article implies "all" courts till you get down to paragraph 4.

Even if it is US centric the Reg writers should remember the US is not the only country in the world.

Amount of pixels needed to make VR less crap may set your PC on fire

myhandler

Re: Glasses anyone?

Um - not going to work until they can project the image directly onto the retina.

Hold on to your aaSes: Yup, Windows 10 'as a service' is incoming

myhandler

Re: Innovation is what's needed...

Yes but Apple tend to tie in their software with OS updates - so if the OS is updated you *have* to update Logic Pro to run the latest version and that's not free.

Proposed Brit law to ban b**tards brandishing bots to bulk-buy tickets

myhandler

Doesn't work for tickets as gifts or for parents buying tickets for their kids.

Do you want your teenage progeny taking your credit card to a gig where they will no doubt lose it?

Kids will also optimistically buy tickets but then find their friends can't go (or their parents won't let them) and have to sell them all. I speak from experience. (But easily sold via Gumtree not the bastard agents)

Microsoft Surface Book 2: Electric Boogaloo. Bigger, badder, better

myhandler

Re: Real alternatives?

CAD/CGI calls for a desktop machine, loads of RAM, high power graphics, a normal Wacom and ideally two monitors.

If you need portable with touch screen as well this seems a bargain.

Microsoft's 'Surface Phone' is the ghost of Courier laughing mockingly at fanbois

myhandler

Re: Mechanical hinge

Well there's the nylon hinge made of a bendy piece of nylon - no moving parts anyway.

Why dont they make one out of a zip.. that should work. Let me call my patent lawyer.

Hackers' delight: Mobile bank app security flaw could have smacked millions

myhandler

Banks will usually push blame back onto users - see recent reports of students getting scammed out of their funds.

London mayor: Self-driving cars? Not without jacked-up taxes, you don't!

myhandler

The problem with Singapore's car tax model is that it relies on having poor neighbours where cars past their use by date can be dumped. It's a very eco-unfriendly use of resources.

Anyway there's no opposition in Singapore so government can do whatever the hell it likes. (The opposition is a symbolic pantomime.)

Here it would be political suicide, not that they need much help on that score...

I think Khan has been wilfully misrepresented here.

Lord of the Rings TV show shopped around Hollywood

myhandler

Re: @DougS Wait, the dragons are dead?

Pussy Willow surely?

If your websites use WordPress, put down that coffee and upgrade to 4.8.3. Thank us later

myhandler

Only just spotted this - upgraded the personal WP site I maintain.

Looking at Mr Ferrara's post it seems that WP still uses the mysql database driver, not PDO (or mysqli).

How long has it been deprecated ? Six years? That's inexcusable.

But I still don't see why fixing it properly should break plugins?

39 episodes of 'CSI' used to build AI's natural language model

myhandler

Re: visuals?

It's essential it knows that humans take their sunglasses off to think.

Can you get from 'dog' to 'car' with one pixel? Japanese AI boffins can

myhandler

So is the general rule that AI pattern recognition works off perceptual hashing?

There must be more to it - that seems fundamentally not AI but just massive statistical guesswork.

They should be converting to vectors, like SVG etc, then looking for patterns.

AI bot rips off human eyes, easily cracks web CAPTCHA codes. Ouch

myhandler

Re: Tell the website authors

If you cc the message back to the sender you deserve to be penalised.

Email verify and then allow posting.

In forum posts filter out all html, or just the links, until user is marked as genuine.

Tories spared fine after being told off by ICO for election telemarketing

myhandler

I live in a marginal lib/con area. Got phoned by a Lib Dem canvasser the day before the vote, but he was in Canada - FFS if they can't use local companies they won't get my vote.

OTOH the young conservatives at my front door, accompanied by an obnoxious Aussie bastard who said a vote for the lib dems was a vote for Corbyn, made the choice very simple.

How to make your HTML apps suck less, actually make some money

myhandler

Can't they use SVGs for 90% of the use cases?

The case of the disappearing insect. Boffin tells Reg: We don't know why... but we must act

myhandler

On the Guardian page on this report someone linked to a study suggesting electro magnetic radiation disrupts insects bio mechanics - I have no idea how valid the study is but :

https://ehtrust.org/science/bees-butterflies-wildlife-research-electromagnetic-fields-environment/

(one of the reports cited there is by a certain Cucurachi, C - he's hopping mad about it)

- joking aside if this has some truth to it it should be front page news

Hollywood has savaged enough sci-fi classics – let's hope Dick would dig Blade Runner 2049

myhandler

Re: Electric Dreams

Yup they're pretty good I think, they get the essence of the man's stories.

Last week's probably the best. mostly down to Timothy Spall's acting.

No idea if I ever read the originals

Angst in her pants: Alleged US govt leaker Reality Winner stashed docs in her pantyhose

myhandler

I bet that's a name she gave herself, by deed poll or however they do it in the US

.. and when she didn't win she did something silly to find fame

Welcome to the future: Bluetooth jackets you can only wash 10 times. Gee, thanks, Google

myhandler

"...said Mark Hung ..."

We all know which garment he'll be sporting.

Want to keep in contact with friends and family without having to sell your personal data?

myhandler

Re: Well I'm sold

That was on BBC Business Live last week - early morning business items on the news channel.

You forgot that you hired me and now you're saying it's my fault?

myhandler

I used to train small groups of six or so who would travel miles to a training centre for the day.

Some wanted to lap up what I had to say, some couldn't be bothered at all.

Worse were the ones who simply saw it as a day to get out of the office and a nice place to chat to their buddies.

One group went to the pub at lunchtime after scoffing the complimentary luxury sandwiches, and came back pissed two hours later. I so wanted to tell them to FO home.

Shoddily-set-up Elastisearch hosting point-of-sale malware

myhandler

You can't blame MongoDb for lack of HTTPS.

It HAS to be the cusotmer's choice. The problem is everyone and everything is going 'click click click' and nobody knows what the hell they're doing.

London Tube tracking trial may make commuting less miserable

myhandler

Re: Local Knowledge?

Why does she use the Americanism "folk", if she's a Brit?

It's official: Users navigate flat UI designs 22 per cent slower

myhandler

That's comapred to developers and their latest JS framework gizmo methodology?

Fewer than half GCSE computing students got a B or higher this year

myhandler

Is it really so bad in schools? My daughter did a bit of Python programming in year 9 ICT.

Virgin Media mulls ditching 1 in 3 UK facilities, starts £20m spend audit

myhandler

Re: I don't understand...

>>Why people fail to grasp that at the end of the day, a business is not there for the good of it's workers, it's there to make money.

See Anonymous coward.. that's just a line put about by libertarian capitalists.

It wasn't always that way - not by a long chalk.

Be carfeul what you read - a lot of it is propaganda horseshit.

Reg reader turns Geek's Guides to Britain into Geek's Map of Britain

myhandler

I read there was a Colossus in Bedfont, now BP labs, just west of London.. must be an article in that.

(The guy who saw it there in his youth is on a forum I frequent - slip me a fiver Mr /Ms Reg Journo and I can put you in touch)

Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

myhandler

Species diversity.. maybe they can get a cyberman to play the Doctor next?

Let's go to work: How bots took over business

myhandler

Re: I feel left out

>>>Sorry, I'm real.

You would say that, wouldn't you?

Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? Get this – It's just hit the US appeals courts

myhandler

Re: Devil's Advocate

No they don't - many will be unaware they made any decision to trigger a picture.

So no decision was made.

NASA flies plane through Earthly shadow of Kuiper Belt object

myhandler

Thanks for the clarification on 'a sun' v 'the sun.'

Was Simon Sharwood being bloody-minded or is he just crap at explaining?

It's called disambiguation, me old china.

DIY music veteran SoundCloud flounders, lays off 40% of staff

myhandler

Bandcamp seems much better for us little guys and less anonymous as you can add pictures.

And none of the stupid cross linking where you get random crap in someone's listing.

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