Posts by Glenturret Single Malt

Vivaldi browser to perform a symphony of ad and tracker blocking with version 3.0

Re: I'll have to give it a go on Android.

It should but, in practise, I have not found it to be very good when looking for UK-based returns.

Facebook sort-of blocks anti-quarantine events – how many folks are actually behind these 'massive' protests online?

Scotland's secret bunker:

https://secretbunker.co.uk/your-visit/

Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style

Re: A real pizza

I come to a skidding halt in the first line. Russets are apples.

This hurts a ton-80: British darts champ knocked out of home tourney by lousy internet connection

Re: A home tournament ?

oche (but pronounced as you wrote)

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Re: Portakabins in Schools were "temporary" also.

Also post WWII prefabs as "temporary" housing in areas that had suffered badly in the blitz. In my home town, they were still there when I was going to school in the 50s.

Cloudflare outage caused by techie pulling out the wrong cables

Re: Cables with labels on

I haven't read all the way to the end of the comments on this thread but I am surprised that no one has mentioned the possibility that the labels could all be white and the the function is denoted by a shape. I am sure most people who drive in the UK will have seen the diversion signs or signs guiding you to a specific location which are usually yellow with black squares, circles, dots etc.

That awful moment when what you thought was a number 1 turned out to be a number 2

I am the treasurer of a small voluntary organisation with a reasonably sized accumulated reserve in the bank. In order to pay our bills I send a cheque but, for security, the bank requires one of two other named office-bearers to countersign it. How does this work with internet banking?

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

Re: It's not LOW and behold, people

Moo!

Re: Donald Jenius Trump

Your probability calculations are correct but only if the individuals in the samples are all identical. Any such sample has to take account of other human variables such as age, sex, height and weight, general state of health etc. etc, which means that the sample has to be significantly larger in order to be meaningful.

Not exactly the kind of housekeeping you want when it means the hotel's server uptime is scrubbed clean

Re: Vax keeps sucking

Nothing to do with sucking but I was seriously tempted to vandalism by the notice outside the local Baptist church proclaiming "Jesus Saves", I wanted to add "With Nationwide"

Disk stuck in the drive? Don't dilly-Dali – get IT on the case!

Chemical fun

As a PhD student in the distant past, I had a still set up to give me supplies of extra dry solvent. Each morning, I switched this on and it would gradually heat up and bubble away until I had enough solvent for my needs. Until the morning that I forgot to switch on the water on the condenser whereupon hot vapour emerged from the top just beneath the heat sensor on the ceiling. I had disappeared to the gents for my morning call and was caught, ahem, with my pants down when I heard the sound of the fire alarm followed shortly by the fire brigade who had been called automatically. Fortunately nothing actually caught fire and the situation was remedied by turning on the water at the condenser.

'An issue of survival': Why Mozilla welcomes EU attempts to regulate the internet giants

Re: If you want to see this in action.

"last month Google maps became unusable on Firefox"

I do not understand the comment. I am using FF 73.0.1 and Google maps without any problems.

Social media notifications of the future: Ranger tagged you in a photo with Tessadora, Wrenlow, Faelina and Graylen

Re: Due diligence

Another story from the distant past seen in the Sunday Post (a Scottish newspaper) concerned a shopowner whose shop had the name A Swindler in front. When asked why he didn't put his full name to avoid confusion, he said that his name was Adam.

Re: Due diligence

An old story that I may have dug out before but I once saw an article in The Times about an engaged couple called Tracy ........ and Mr ....... Tracey.

Bada Bing, bada bork: Windows 10 is not happy, and Microsoft's search engine has something to do with it

George W Bush lives

I see that the problem has been "remediated". When was it mediated? There's a syllable too many - what's wrong with remedied? Sounds like the comedians on Radio 4 mocking the late, great Dubya.

Tea tipplers are more likely to live longer, healthier lives than you triple venti pumpkin-syrup soy-milk latte-swilling fiends

Re: Sold as seen

The smell of herbal tea is its only attractive feature in my experience.

'Buyer's remorse' drove HP's legal crusade to go after Lynch, High Court told

Re: Sold as seen

Singing

Flinging

Clinging

Stinging

Ringing

Winging

Whinging???

Bingeing

Cringeing

Hingeing

Impingeing

Singeing

Language, eh!

50 years ago, someone decided it would be OK to fire Apollo 12 through a rain cloud. Awks, or just 'SCE to Aux'?

Since carbon fibre is graphite and at least partially conductive, balls of diamond might be preferable. Or, perhaps even more appropriately, balls made of buckminsterfullerene, C60 (don't know how to get subscript here) which is, of course, the "football" molecule. But it hadn't been discovered fifty years ago.

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

Re: Pedant alert

Scientific definition of a split second: the time between the light changing to green (you are the front of the queue) and the driver behind hitting the horn.

Action to be taken: get out of your car and go slowly round it while asking the driver behind if there is a problem with your car.

A trio of boffins scoop the Nobel Prize in physics for the first exoplanet discovery and big bang model

Re: We have signed emails

The subheading on the article is correct but in the daily digest I receive, it says that the two lesser prizewinners "share" a quarter so that only threequarters of a Nobel prize is accounted for.

Careful now, UK court ruling says email signature blocks can sign binding contracts

Re: We have signed emails

That takes me back a bit to when we learned the synthesis of ecdysone in final year chemistry.

Microsoft spreads the Cortana love to more Insiders with new Windows 10 preview

Re: Cortana: tell me a joke. No, I don't mean the terms and conditions...

It tickled your funny bone?

Rise of the Machines hair-raiser: The day IBM's Dot Matrix turned

Re: Let's face it, who amongst us hasn't lost a tie to the...

Cathartid to refer to a single specimen; cathartidae is the name of the family. Compare arachnid/arachnidae.

How do you like dem Windows, Apple? July opening for Microsoft's first store in Blighty

Re: When they eventually close it..

What is a BSOD? I have never seen one.

Bug-hunter reveals another 'make me admin' Windows 10 zero-day – and vows: 'There's more where that came from'

"...the main problem in the West are greedy people..."

And this isn't a problem elsewhere too?

Essex named sexiest British accent followed closely by, um, Glaswegian

Just as long as you don't pronounce Clydebank with the emphasis on the first syllable (confusion with Clydeside, compare Tyneside, Wearside).

I remember the revelation when I went to university in Glasgow and met my wife-to-be's family (Vale of Leven and Dumbarton) and friends from various points across central Scotland between Glasgow and Edinburgh. There is a continuum with subtle differences as you move west to east and so an undefinable number of different accents.

So, that's cheerio the nou to Dundee Satellite Receiving Station: Over 40 years of service axed for the sake of £338,000

Scottish pronunciation

It is more likely that any Scotsman worth his salt would pronounce now as noo (rhyming with moo). See also coo (cow) and doo (dove/pigeon).

Make America Infringe Again: Trump campaign video pulled over Batman copyright

And discreetly too.

The butterfly defect: MacBook keys wrecked by single grain of sand

Reminds me of bread sold in Co-op supermarkets which is labelled Parisien Baguette, presumably in order to try and add some "authenticity". Its a pity that their marketing people hadn't done their French homework and would have appreciated that baguette is a feminine noun and (more subtly) that the adjective would be after the noun as in Baguette Parisienne.

Artificial Intelligence: You know it isn't real, yeah?

Recidivism my algorithm

The "cidivism" part of recidivism is pronounced with the same emphases as algorithm (and its anagram logarithm) so if you can pronounce one you pronounce the other. (OK, I know it was a joke, but just saying).

Users fail to squeak through basic computer skills test. Well, it was the '90s

Re: Not sure...

My (ancient) keyboard has a non-detachable cable. Would that go in the dishwasher too?1

World's first robot hotel massacres half of its robot staff

Re: The room doll was removed

That is actually the first time in the many years of my chemical life that I have seen that spelling mistake that way round. Does this mean that computers and their inside bits are now more commonly encountered than furniture polish?

Fake news? More like ache news. Grandma, grampa 'more likely' to share made-up articles during US election

Re: Don't believe ANY of it

Re Gene Cash

You state a view that I have often observed myself. I have frequently been shocked/appalled/disappointed by the inaccuracy of detail in newspaper articles about a familiar scientific subject (in my case, chemistry). As a consequence, I now mistrust any articles on other areas of science with which I am less familiar.

What happens when a Royal Navy warship sees a NATO task force headed straight for it? A crash course in Morse

Re: After you. No, after you!

When walking towards someone on a pavement just wide enough for two people to pass, my tendency is to pass on the left (must be the Scottish Country Dancing experience). Unfortunately, an awful lot of people seem to have the opposite tendency leading to the "Shall we dance?" moments as described, if not actual collision.

Re: Great article

pavlovian?

LG's beer-making bot singlehandedly sucks all fun, boffinry from home brewing

Re: Does it despense vast amounts of bog rool??

The Americans have a lot to answer for with span (spun), dove (dived) and fit (fitted) among those I can immediately think of.

Re: Does it despense vast amounts of bog rool??

In a similar vein: I was once in a pub where the gents facility was just to one side of the bar.Which led to the scribbled inscription on the wall saying "the beer in this pub is the next thing to piss".

College PRIMOS prankster wreaks havoc with sysadmin manuals

Whoops, difluoride.

Second most common spelling mistake I ever met in school chemistry (after "seperate").

The lead/led confusion (see an earlier post) I find funny.

Tech support discovers users who buy the 'sh*ttest PCs known to Man' struggle with basics

Re: Alternatively...

This discussion reminds me of the time when, as a final year undergraduate studying chemistry, I set out to read the venerable professor's book on Crystallography. The first paragraph consisted of a sequence of words that I could recognise as English but I had no idea what they meant collectively.

Re: It's 2018

In older, simpler days, the one question I always used to ask when hiring a car was how to put it into reverse as that was the one thing that seemed to vary from one type to another. More recently, I discovered on a trip to Thailand to see my son that, in his car, the control stalks behind the steering wheel were the exact opposite way round from my car in UK. Much potentially dangerous confusion there until I got used to it and then again on my return home while I readjusted to "normal".

Expired cert... Really? #O2down meltdown shows we should fear bungles and bugs more than hackers

Re: Incompetance

You've been saying it wrong. It's incompetence.

Townsfolk left deeply unsatisfied by Bury St Edmunds' 'twig' of a Christmas tree

Re: Lighting

I am happy to say that in my lifetime of over 70 years, there has never been a Christmas tree in any house where I have lived. Decorations, cards etc but no tree.

'He must be stopped': Missouri candidate's children tell voters he's basically an asshat

Steve West post script

Did not get elected. His opponent got about twice as many votes as he did.

Cops called after pair enter Canadian home and give it a good clean

Re: Milk in Bags?

Many years ago, I recall laughing at the Goons plans to export water to Brazil in brown paper bags.

SQLite creator crucified after code of conduct warns devs to love God, and not kill, commit adultery, steal, curse...

Re: Christian Berger

As also in Cristiano Ronaldo

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

Re: Regressions

Hey. Hey with the Monkies........? Monkees..........? Monkeys !

Haunted disk-drive? This story will give you the chills...

Anyone who has ever taken a bottle of cold liquid out of the fridge at breakfast time will know that the condensation forms when it is brought out into the room and not overnight in the fridge.

Microsoft points to a golden future where you can make Windows 10 your own

Re: Connect!!!!!

I removed Mail with no problem just to see if it worked. I had to use Powershell (Run as Admin).

Take my advice: The only safe ID is a fake ID

Re: Terrance

My wife's stepfather's parents couldn't agree on what to call him so both registered him separately and he had two birth certificates. Consequently he was Thomas/Tom to some people and Henry to others.