Posts by Doctor Syntax

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: Come on, Pedents...

That's Muphry's law for you.

Oh, very well played, sir.

Re: On the other hand.

Better?

Scrolled down a long screen to reach the choices: Mac, Windows, iPad. So, no, there's a reason why I won't be buying it.

They have a modicum of sympathy, though; Google Affinity Photo and there's an ad for Adobe at the top of the list. <spit>

Re: Dick

The root problem there seems to have been with the surnames. The parents would have been well aware of that having plenty of experience themselves. The only option would have been to change their own name first. The fact they haven't suggests that generations of them have each learned to live with the consequences and maintained solidarity to their own parents.

The initials thing... Yes, we carefully avoided any pronounceable set of initials for our own children although it's only just occurred to me that if our daughter had married someone whose surname began with a Y she'd have become DRY. What we hadn't spotted was the potential confusion when, as happened, she started post-grad research.

Re: With that name

What? You can get used to it in only a month? Must try again.

Re: Divide and rule

"Sorry, but I don't buy it."

Go and buy something else then. After all, you don't have to believe a commentard speaking from experience.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

"If it all goes pear shaped..."

If by that you mean that when it all goes pear-shaped we'll end up applying, from a diminished economic status, to rejoin an EU that has evolved without our having had a say in its evolution and on terms such as adopting the Euro then I'm afraid you're correct. If you mean that that's what we want then you are seriously incorrect; that's what we want to avoid.

Re: Fire the lot of them!

"They've all proven to be totally incompetent, and only a clean sweep will sort things out!"

I can't see failure to implement the half-arsed idea they were lumbered with as incompetence. Or so you refer to their failure to have killed it off immediately?

"I agree with your whole argument and especially your assertion that MPs have failed."

Where is it that you think opportunities for success lie? AFAICS the whole idea of Brexit was a nonsense. Set aside the economic issues; the N Ireland border issue offers no solutions, only a choice of ways to fail. I can't see how MPs can have been accused of failing to solve it.

Re: Real nonsense

From time to time we have to look at the basis of govt. in the UK. The govt. gets its authority by being able to get Parliament to vote for its Bills. Govts don't like this but it's the truth. A govt. that seeks to bypass Parliament like this no longer has a basis on which to exist. It's an ex-government.

"Parliament has had 3 years to find a way through."

What sort of way? All the rhetoric and all the votes don't change reality.

One reality is that this country is one of the parties to an agreement about N Ireland that brought, as near as possible, an end to prolonged period of bloodshed. The agreement was reached in the circumstances of both the UK and the Irish Republic being members of the EU and although not explicitly stated the the soft border, part of that agreement depends on both countries being in the EU. Actually it could equally well work with both being out of the EU but that isn't an option. The only ways it could work with one being in and one being out are very few and those presented that don't rely on hand-waving are either a border in the Irish Sea - not going to happen as long as the govt. depends on DUP support - and the backstop which the Brexiteers themselves reject. The fact that Parliament hasn't found a way through that one might indicate idleness on their part. It might also indicate that there isn't a way through. It certainly indicates one thing: that Leave hadn't a solution when they asked for a referendum on the issue, otherwise it would have been there waiting for us the day the result was announced.

We could, however, jut unilaterally break that international agreement and get on with making all the new international trade agreements we'll need to make whilst wondering why nobody else trusts us.

Re: Relax

"We need a sarcasm icon"

Not for that one, we don't.

Re: About Time

"yet-to-be started trade negotiations."

Be fair. There was announcement just the other day about a completed agreement. And there was one some time ago as well so that's a couple of countries signed up, South Korea and the other one which was, let's see...oh, South Korea. They announced the same thing twice.

Re: About Time

"I've seen so many people write comments exactly like this but not one of them, not one, ever has any facts or figures to back it up."

But he's right. So many people who aren't economic, business, technology, industry or finance experts have said it so it must be true.

Re: Inaccurate

The only reason not to run the suspension until 1st November is so he can claim that "it was nothing to do with Brexit"

And he doesn't need to. That's assuming he lasts that long as PM. I'd guess that there'll be a pretty swift vote of no confidence as soon as Parliament reconvenes.

"Frankly I couldn't care less about it"

Does this mean you're not from these* parts? If you are then it will certainly affect you but by then it will be too late for you not to have cared.

* Note the .co.uk in el Reg's URL.

Re: So, to sum up. . .

"The remain version has almost 340,000."

That's https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/269157 and now over 370,000

So BoJo is making a serious bid on George Canning's record.

Home Office told to stop telling EU visa porkies

Re: @Alien8n

"May started with brexiters negotiating and the EU were found wanting"

Only wanting in the view of those who said a deal would be the easiest thing and so forth. The EU negotiating team wasn't being run to help Leave! No shit, Sherlock.

"WTO conditions are there to protect those too incompetent to make their own deal doesn't seem to resonate with them."

It seems like a pretty good resonance to me.

Re: ASA told the Home Office not to run the advert again

"So the Home Office need to coordinate with the DWP and HMRC."

Those three! Shudder.

Re: ASA told the Home Office not to run the advert again

I doubt it's just Patel. The HO seems able to get all Home Secs working in the same mode PDQ. It's just that she was set up as a Home Secbot straight out of the box.

"The campaign was factual and complied with all necessary clearance processes for radio advertising."

No matter that the relevant adjudicating body says otherwise. Clearly this is the Ministry of Truth speaking.

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

Re: Incorectly organised.

"...rampant in the hard sciences and the entire ecology..."

How I miss the days when "ecology" was a science and not just a piece of convenient short-hand.

That's three. Probably close enough for PHP.

Re: A little sample of some of the comments here...

OTOH the opposite sort of comments are also flung around fairly freely when these sort of rows are going on. I can't see any of either persuading anyone that this is a good field to enter as a career unless, of course, they are the sort of profession umbrage taker who prospers in said rows.

Re: Meanwhile in other news...

Ours has been crap for years. Austerity is just another excuse for them.

AMD agrees to cough up $35-a-chip payout over eight-core Bulldozer advertising fiasco

Re: Advertising

Advertising and marketing bullshit are more or less synonymous.

HPE may as well have stayed at home in bed: Biz turns non-profit as sales fall, costs rise

HP Ink might not want to re-merge.

Android PDF app with just 100m downloads caught sneaking malware into mobes

Re: "The Register has reached out to CamScanner's developer"

There are, of course, purists who insist that "contact" is only a noun and el Reg should have said "attempted to make contact with".

JR-M probably has it on his banned list because his 2nd deputy nanny told him not to use that because her primary school teacher told her not to because her English teacher told her not to because Dr Johnson didn't define it as a noun. (Actually my old Pocket Oxford doesn't either but I'd guess a newer edition would.)

Re: "The Register has reached out to CamScanner's developer"

"It always reminds me of the phrase reach around"

This sort of around?---->

Can't bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year

Re: Where is Windows 9?

You'd probably find problems with all the applications that would think they were running on 95 or 98 because they don't do the right thing to suss out the version number.

Re: Good. Another year for people to move away from Windows

"You mean your business didn't see this coming years ago and start migrating to web-based tools?"

That's the trouble with posting anon. You can't use the joke alert icon.

Re: Good. Another year for people to move away from Windows

"My only gripe with Debian Linux being that infuriating Libre Office software that won't let me install Apache Open Office."

1. I've never come across that one. Really? I've had LO & OO on the same box in the past with no problems.

2. You do know you can remove S/W you don't want, don't you? Although I run LO myself it's the version from the LO site, not the distro version which I removed.

3. OO is still a thing?

Re: "things have moved on, like it or not"

I haven't tried anything with a 2.0 kernel lately but what I have found is that I could install new versions of Linux on very ancient H/W. Subsequently used than ancient H/W & Linux combo talk to and set up a brand new printer that the user's W10 infested laptop kept trying to set onto a sub-net that the laptop itself wasn't on. So new gadget worked better with Linux & old S/W rather better than with new W10.

Yes, TfL asked people to write down their Oyster passwords – but don't worry, they didn't inhale

Re: Mad

"We recognise that where possible this process could be improved and work is under way to identify options."

The proper way of doing things is to get all the technical underpinning in place before launching the service. Could marketing have been involved in this?

Re: Smells like a work-around

"I assume their admin interface and/or access control is broken"

You also presume it exists.

Biz forked out $115k to tout 'Time AI' crypto at Black Hat. Now it sues organizers because hackers heckled it

Re: Why would you take that talk to BlackHat?

"hat would have probably done well at a middle manager or PHB conference"

Maybe they thought that that's what Black Hat was. Didn't do their research on it? Their problem.

Re: Look into my eyes

"They are obviously aimed at anyone EXCEPT the very people they really need to persuade"

Not really. They're aimed at management who'll have made their minds up before anyonewho'd go WTF! gets anywhere near it.

I couldn't possibly tell you the computer's ID over the phone, I've been on A Course™

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

"The long weight one is actually common enough to be both an urban legend AND true."

In my part of the world it has to be a long stand. Different accent.

Re: This is this bank

Most banks don't seem to care that any time their users use this thing they're in breach of the contract with their bank (the "do not give your details to anyone ever not even the police" bit).

This is something the "nothing to hide" crowd fail to grasp. There are perfectly legitimate things which you're obliged to hide.

Re: This is this bank

"At a bank? Surely you jest!"

I did think it the less likely alternative.

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

"IT is a service"

Quite right. It's a service within a business and it's the business that's the unit. Working in IT I always found it was most useful to the business if I got to know something about how my users worked. It didn't even do any harm if some of the users got to know something about IT. And the most effective way for that was face-to-face communication so not only did I not take offence at them coming and talking to me, I went to talk to them. In fact, at times, the seating arrangements were a little ad hoc and I found myself seated next to them.

Apart from anything else the "keep users at arm's length" approach is an invitation for users to keep IT at arm's length. Perhaps an arm long enough to reach to India.

Re: Can't say white / black

"Before that, I lived in the Peoples Republic of Islington,"

A very long time ago, when David Blunkett was in his pomp, I went to a couple of talks by a pathologist from Sheffield. His standard opening (maybe not the best term in relation to a pathologist) was "Greetings from the People's Republic of South Yorkshire".

Re: This is this bank

"I think my bank may have me on a list about this."

Either that or your bank may have had an outbreak of sanity.

American ISPs fined $75,000 for fuzzing airport's weather radar by stealing spectrum

Re: Sensible suggestion

My preference is for requiring the telcos to automate the process but at much lower fees, say a couple of quid or a fiver for a TPS registered number. Get a call, dial a code when you put the phone down, the fee gets credited to your account and the caller charged with the fee plus the telco's fee. The call came from a different telco? No problem, the charge gets passed to them, they add their own fee and pass it on to the caller. Multiple telcos? It goes on accumulating more handling fees. A telco doesn't know where the call comes from? Tough, they pay the bill and realise they need to keep better records.

Downsides?

There'd be a need to prevent fraud - someone trying to collect a fee on every call whoever it came from so there'd need to be some statistical work to verify problem callers and maybe charge the would-be fraudsters for their trouble.

There'd also be an upfront cost for the telcos putting the mechanism together. In theory their fee covers it, in practice as it would close down the problem PDQ and they'd lose out on their investment. You know what would happen? They'd suddenly find ways to cut down on the problem rather that do that. Not being faced with a mandatory investment they couldn't recover is also good for the bottom line.

Pokemon Go becomes Pokemon No as games biz Niantic agrees to curb trespassing addicts

Don't rely on class action. Just bring your own action under small claims or equivalent rules.

Oracle OKs Oracle investors to sue Oracle: Put NetSuite suit before a judge – board panel

As far as I can make out the action is aimed to getting Oracle to sue Ellison & Katz on shareholders' behalf. Why the shareholders don't sue them directly is less clear. After all, if they get a payout from Oracle its their own money - shareholders' funds - that the payout would be taken from.

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

" in fact, I wonder if a thief's instinctive response to the siren would be to not simply drop the laptop, but to fling it away as hard as possible."

That's the point of making it conspicuous and publicising what it is. The object is deterrence.