Posts by Doctor Syntax

PETA calls for fish friendly Swedish street signage

"When is a strawberry dead?"

Good question. The juicy bit is dead when you've eaten it but the seeds could still be alive when they come out the other end.

Re: If numbers count

"those animal-righters should have themselves infected with malaria or an other Plasmodium species a.s.a.p."

And let's not forget tapeworms either. Or lice and fleas.

Re: Wow.

"And how are you supposed to know that someone is a ve...."

The same way you get to know someone uses Apple.

Re: Wow.

"until they actually meat a vegan."

Deliberate or Freudian?

Re: Free advertising

"PETA doesn't benefit much from the exposure they get over this kind of thing."

I'm not sure. Going back to your previous post, it probably brings more crazies into the fold. It also provides them with the satisfaction of getting publicity; their most appreciative audience is themselves.

Have to use SMB 1.0? Windows 10 April 2018 Update says NO

Re: FFS microsoft

"wonder why MS can't let you override it by group policy that you can apply to only certain laptops as needed while you wait for the big wigs to finish approving the migration to the new cloud based ERP"

Perhaps you could arrange it so it's just their salaries that don't get paid one month...

Re: So for a while now...

but still has a broken keyboard

Perhaps you should look up the meaning of the expression "taking the piss".

England's top judge lashes out at 'Science Museum' grade court IT

Re: On the up-side

"You know, your system is supposed to DO something."

Have we got to the stage where a system isn't considered to do something unless it has a direct internet connection?

"When you're standing up in court being confident that you can quickly find the piece of documentation you need, and see its contents, probably while also paying attention to what someone else is saying or while speaking yourself, is fairly important."

I'll second that from the point of view of the witness box. I'd want both my original statement of witness, reception forms listing exhibits (double sided) as submitted to the lab and lab notes (single sided as lab notebooks took carbon copies) to be quickly accessible.

In my day there wouldn't have been any alternative to hard copy but I can't imagine any electronic form being as rapidly accessible other than a very wide hi-res screen capable of displaying several A4 images side-by side. And, going back to the OP's point: A4 not A5.

"The reason they ask for clarification is not because they don't know, but because they want precise details in the court records."

And not only that, they want what's on record to have been agreed by both sides so one of them can't turn round later and say "That's not what we meant".

Also, a moment's thought should be enough to realise that judges the cases flowing through the court rooms keep judges very much in touch with current life

Re: On the up-side

"That makes them very difficult to hack in to."

That was my immediate reaction. In the case of court documents there's not only the risk of data being copied, there are obvious incentives to change or delete documents. And that might not just be the result of deliberate hacking; the Atlanta ransomware incident resulted in some permanent loss of data: https://www.myajc.com/news/local/atlanta-police-recovering-from-breach-years-dashcam-video-lost/dowuJGBMcW7PLOdK0UhgJJ/

In defence of online ads: The 'net ain't free and you ain't paying

Re: Targetting the ignorant?

"should not."

should note, not not!

Simple solution. Host the ads off your own server then my ad-blocker won't even work. That will, of course, mean that you become liable for any malware you serve up so you'll have to take care about what you host.

Re: On & Off

As the phrase "this generation" typically refers to the youngest generation of adults/consumers, this generation has never been the target audience of salaried journalists, unless you're specifically talking about gaming hardware.

And "this generation" is particularly ridiculous in terms of el Reg readership's age range which must span at least 40 years.

Re: Just one thing

"The closest thing I have to a cow is a box of frozen burgers in my freezer."

The closest thing I have to a cow is the neighbour's herd but so long as the wall between us keeps them out that's OK.

Re: Targetting the ignorant?

"They aren't targeting you, or almost all readers here. They are targeting those too stupid or uneducated to figure out how to block unwanted stuff. "

The difference between those who block ads and those who don't isn't necessarily one of education or of a desire to be targeted, it's just the technical knowledge.

A few weeks ago a Times columnist, archetypal arts graduate (1st at Oxford apparently) so not entirely uneducated wrote an article about GDPR welcoming the end of spam by not responding to "Please may we continue to spam you" emails but then adding something about ads in terms suggesting he didn't know* about ad blockers. Apparently he'd already posted the gist of this online to great popular acclaim, something those castigating GDPR as yet another unwanted bit of Euro red-tape should not.

* It could be the case, of course, that as the Times is available online as well as in print, he did know about ad-blockers wouldn't be allowed to let on about them in public.

Re: Too little, too late for advertisers

"Simple solution: page hit count. Been done in the past by many."

An even better metric is the number of comments.

Re: The thing is... it's nothing new.

"It makes it very convenient to drop all that crap off."

At election times if a party worker comes delivering bumf when I'm working outside I'm often tempted to point to the green bin.

(OT A few years back instead of the usual single sheet of most parties the Greens produced a multi-page newsletter. Whoever delivered that one couldn't even be arsed to put it in the letter box or even get as far as the doorstep.. They simply dropped it as litter on the path So much for green.)

I can never understand why vendors would pay good money to the advertising industry to try so hard to piss me off so I'll never touch their products unless I have no choice.

Re: Free IS the problem

"And adverts will have to improve their game immeasurably as the throw-shit-at-the-wall approach will become impossible."

Even better, in the situation you describe advertising wouldn't be needed.

Re: It's not like we don't have a micro payment rich alternative ecosystem...

"Also few people complain about ads, what people complain about is tracking and Javascript which are completely different things."

I complain about all three - or would if I didn't block them.

"I'm fine with ads as long as they are static and not making any noise. Can't stand anything moving in the corner of my eye!"

That was my point of view until a site I use quite a lot repeatedly showed a jiggling animated GIF. That's when ad-blocking went in and it's stayed in. It's a shame for that site but if the couldn't or wouldn't curate their ads then that's the consequence.

Re: Sorry, but no.

"Every ecosystem contains parasites."

You mean like advertisers who use the bandwidth that users paid for to send them ads they don't want for things they don't want just so the advertising industry can con the advertisers* into paying them to do that?

* Strictly speaking, of course, it's not the advertisers paying, its the advertiser's customers who actually want the product, might well have bought it without the adverts but, because of the advertising tax, are having to pay more.

Re: Too little, too late for advertisers

"And surely they need to know which articles are most popular with various demographics?"

Why?

Re: Beeping, flashing and semi-naked women...

Is it the semi- bit you object to?

"In the old days newsgroups - rather than web pages - were a major source of everything. It soon became obvious that only a few big players had the resources to catch all the postings in all the possible groups. That was worth a subscription"

Until recently I paid a subscription for a newsgroup service as, unlike the ISP bundled service they did a reasonable job of spam filtering. A few months ago one of my regular groups started to get lots of spam which they failed to filter. I didn't renew the subscription. I do, of course, still pay for newsgroups - it's part of my ISP sub.

Re: Short-lived but well-received

"The problem with advertising on the Internet is that it doesn't actually generate much income - either for the publisher or the traditional advertister (the intermediaries seem to do OK...)"

As I keep saying: the only thing the advertising industry sells is advertising. It's the only thing they're interested in selling.

Re: The thing is... it's nothing new.

"Postal mailshots? That's what the paper recycling bin is for."

It's what the sender's paper recycling bin is for when their litter's been posted back to them.

Re: World Gin Day

"my mouth demands to know why the heck I'm drinking Pine-Sol again."

1 bottle of gin + 1 lb of sloes + 1 lb of sugar. Allow to mature for several weeks. It improves the gin no end, even the commercial sloe gin.

"Momentous Time Period of Global Importance of one sort or another."

Some Hyped International Time?

Android users: Are you ready for the great unbundling?

Re: EU not content

"It's very funny that now Google being the new Microsoft, people who complained a lot about MS behaviours 20 years ago now are fully ready to praise them from Google."

I'm not sure about that. I think people who complained about M/S then are also complaining about Google now.

ICO smites Bible Society, well fines it £100k...

Re: OK if they pro-rata the fine when its applied to big business

"Whether this was done under the old rules or they were particularly lenient is the next question."

The breach was 2016 so that'll be old rules.

The hits keep coming for Facebook: Web giant made 14m people's private posts public

Re: In 2018, its getting harder to see the satire anymore:

It certainly is. See FuzzyWuzzys' post.

Re: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, but everything is ok - really...

"Because Zuk & Crew apologized."

My mother used to say that saying sorry meant you were saying you wouldn't do it again. Their mothers must have told them something different.

Hmmm, we can already seize your stuff, so why can't we shoot down your drone, officials mull

Just declare open season on them for anyone with a shotgun.

Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO

Re: Gitlab's 10x claims

"The rest will wait until Microsoft actually does something they don't like."

Waiting until the horse bolts before closing the stable door?

FTSE has a nap after a full English IT glitch

Overnight batch running late?

1,300 customers of Brit bank TSB defrauded due to botched IT migration

Re: First Hand Experience

"Recommendations?"

Any other bank. They might be slightly better. Just slightly.

Re: Cashless Swedes

"How does this work if you are a child? Want to buy a bag of toffees for 0.5Euro?"

Toffees are probably banned 'cause they're bad for your teeth.

I'm not sure how Swedish prices compare with Norway but a while ago someone at a client came back from a trip to Norway and said "It's a great place. You can buy anything for £25 - a beer ... a sandwich...". On that basis there'd be no problem; nothing too cheap to buy with plastic.

Re: Truly Shambolic Bank

Didn't they used to be known as, "The Bank That Likes To Say Yes"?

Under the Lloyds' ownership I found them to be the bank, or at least branch, that says "don't care".

Re: Another false claim...

what an incredible typical response

Re: For goodness' sake

"If I was a Project Manager and this was my project, I'd have been pushed out of the door a *long* time ago!"

He probably was pushed out to save costs.

Re: Loss of customers

"they still only lost less than .25% of customers."

The other 99.75% are still trying to get enough access to switch.

Re: "CEO said city law firm Slaughter and May is conducting an independent review"

"They know they can't get rid of it, so they do what they can to strip it to the bone."

I wonder if we may be reaching a turning point. When everybody's reached the bottom the next logical step is a race to the top.

Re: Another false claim...

"I would buy an edible hat if I were you, his yachting/golfer mates will soon find him some other highly paid job ideal for an ignorant and lazy of his kind."

Note the OP said in an FI regulated business. That may well be the case if the regulators so decide. But it wouldn't stop him popping up in another capacity. Perhaps a career in politics beckons.

"There is no one who feels more for TSB customers than me," a grovelling Pester told MPs.

By now we've learned exactly what credence to attach to your statements.

GNOMEs beat Microsoft: Git Virtual File System to get a new name

"The SC part reminds me of this piece of crap: Visual SourceSafe."

You must be too young. SCCS. Where do you thing MS got the idea from?

The really smart thing would be SCVFS: Source Control Virtual File System which would only define an interface. The interface would provide the semantics but the implementation could be Git or any other source control S/W.

Tor-forker Joshua Yabut cuffed for armoured personnel carrier joyride

I didn't know you needed an armoured vehicle to transfer cryptocurrency.

At last: Magic Leap reveals its revolutionary techno-goggles – but wait, there's a catch

Re: How do you keep an idiot in suspense?

"Given how long this has been going on does it have competitors?"

That Spectrum console thing?