* Posts by Robert Carnegie

4532 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2009

We bought a knockoff Lego launchpad kit from China for our Saturn V rocket so you don't have to

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Any chance

Live in your Lego Vehicle Assembly Building. Unless that is a Building to Assemble Lego Vehicles, in which case you live there already.

COVID-19 security tips: Ensure you sack your staff without leaving their IT access enabled, says Secureworks

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Macros

Kittens_Video.zip.xlsx

I'm not sure what point I'm making but I wanted to join in.

I think our shop just blocks zip files as well but I haven't checked lately.

UK govt advert encouraging re-skilling for cyber jobs implodes spectacularly

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Pearl Mackie is a British actress, dancer

I think that's the joke, she met the Cybermen and they were us.

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Re: A fine example of the offensiveness of anything

The T-800 apparently is made of steel or something space age (aluminium?) so probably is heavy as for-goodness-sake.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Those raising issue at the outrage.

I was going to say, not many 60 year old ballerinas. (And I think someone said this campaign, if not this ad, was running before anyone mentioned lockdowns. I or they could be wrong.)

So it's maybe not just "Re-Educate the Intellectuals" as it looks (and didn't Communist China have ballet anyway, I think Clive James wrote about it, however I think he thought it was rubbish)

It's not age 60 now though, they changed the standard UK pension age for women and changed it hard. And... got away with it, I think is a concise way to say how it went.

They did change it to the same as for men. And they changed that too. It's not totally unjust, far too many people are living long enough to get pension apparently. Because we're not smoking, I suppose.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: You can be whatever you want

Comic relief sidekick in "Danger Mouse".

Yahoo! Groups! to! shut! down! completely! on! December! 15!... Tens! mourn!

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: egroups?

Yeah... not especially fond memories of a group whose moderators evidently included someone who took a dislike to me and silently suppressed all of my contributions (as far as I could tell). And it was a while before I noticed that, which is by design evidently. No response, no forgiveness. Mind you, another forum - I'm going to call it Dosshouse - seems to have done that to me. Maybe it's the effect I have on people generally.

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

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So... I wasn't required to do it, but the day after that comment, I got to watch a colleague on video call sorting their table... I can't swear they only sorted one column, but it looked like it.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Ouch

Announced back in August to scrap PHE in due course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_England

You can imagine what Private Eye is saying: or take out a subscription and you'll know.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: CSV?

We put the text file in 7-Zip. If you want to go further, you can XOR the data against a one-time pad. Of course it isn't text at that point, but it will be... Or, use ROT13 code. Frphevgl guebhtu vapernfvatyl haxabja bofphevgl. :-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I'm feeling, if not confident, hopeful that the organisation I work in will now not require me to use Excel as a database - for about four weeks.

I am willing to release data by copying it to Excel if that immediately is someone else's problem after that.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: CSV?

I want to know, or rather to rhetorically ask, what happens if the data field contains a quote mark.

All the software tools I use want to know what an RFC is. Except for our change control system in which an RFC is a change order.

This one that defines CSV is from 2005 anyway: complying with it now would break all of our carefully managed incompatibilities.

My preferred way to deal with CSV data is to read the entire line and then apply my own decoder. Generating output, on the other hand, I take pains to remove line breaks and tabs breaks. In my field, nobody really wants these usually, so I just change them to space and to > , which hasn't yet bitten me, but may.

Another favourite is an external provider which sends us a "CSV" file in which fields are separated with | which is not a comma and also not a problem. Up to now.

A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong

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Do you know how long it takes for a new built property to get a post code?

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The incident in the BBC article is actually the reason why we're talking about Excel's problems. And the other reason... IS Excel's problems.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Similar issues

Transact-SQL apparently has a bug with converting string NNNN-NN-NN to "datetime" and which national convention is applied. Uncoincidentally? introduced at the same time as datetime2 type, which does not have the bug. You can explicitly CONVERT specifying the date convention by number (British = 103, personally I like 126), or use datetime2 if you don't understand the problem (which now you do), or if you're in a hurry 'NNNNNNNN' which consistently auto converts as YYYY MM DD, except in leap years after 2021 for all I know, let's find out together ;-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Anon because....

Agreement to not mention it? But you know. You all know.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

A Royal Mail written address has up to 12 possible distinct lines - some of them logically don't appear with others e.g. 'PO Box Number". Actual Royal Mail data has about 50 fields, one or more of which contain multiple values at once, e.g. "Property name" and "Number of property that is not a single integer e.g. 1A, or 3 & 5". However, around 200 other countries have their own address composition rules.

It's fairly unlikely that you need to do anything with an address besides send mail to a multi line printed address, so just store that - maybe with a nationally acceptable field separator like, oh, a comma.

Well.... maybe "person name" + "job title" + "business name at property" + "physical address of property", except that these blur into each other as well.

Anyway, yes you may also need an "Address Is Shit" column Y/N.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Scotch missed

Is that now or is it Friday 6pm for two weeks and one lost weekend, not sure.

They may be allowed to serve ginger or carry out.

IT Marie Kondo asks: Does this noisy PC spark joy? Alas, no. So under the desk it goes

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Location location location

The innocently sexy B/W 1960s comedy spy film "Carry On Spying" starts at a secret government research laboratory, very high security... the title sequence is a milkman walking in past every checkpoint and locked door.

Selling hardware on a pay-per-use or subscription model is a 'lie' created by marketing bods

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Good example.

Some householders were sold a solar panel deal where they don't actually own the solar panels, they are sort of leasing them... and when they don't get as much useful and/or re-sellable electricity as they expected to, it isn't the provider's problem. In other words, someone has managed to make free energy unaffordable.

From the Department of WCGW: An app-controlled polycarbonate lock with no manual override/physical key

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Cabeaux tape can get a cab.

I think I've seen professionals wearing their mask with tape across the edge to make it closer to airtight. Not all the way or you can't breathe at all obvs.

They may have been professional actors in "Holby City" or something but I'm counting it.

As for the intriguingly named "Cellmate" product, I read that the problem is overstated, you just need to pop the end off with a screwdriver. (Do not throw it away, you may want to re-attach it.)

Facebook's anti-trademark bot torpedoes .org website that just so happened to criticize Zuck's sucky ethics board

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Convention

Well...

Didn't Face Book start by illegally collecting university student's face photographs so that FB users could vote on their attractiveness... "violating privacy" says Wikipedia.

So I don't want to go anywhere near an "Arse Book" (while anybody's watching).

I actually incline to objecting to the word "Real", implying "The one and only actual oversight board". They may believe that too, but it's an opinion, and there is - or may one day be - an actual Facebook Board of Oversights run by the company.

If they said "Independent" in place of "Real", I'd approve. The Facebook Facebook Overboard Site clearly can't ever be independent, and probably isn't meant to be.

If the word "Facebook" actually is the cause, it can be argued as fair use, but as I said, "real" and "Facebook" is poor construction if you're not the real Facebook.

I suggest for their use Foocebake if that isn't already taken. But it appears that some of the 7.8 billion potential Internet users have indeed found uses for it. References to non-alcoholic intoxication abound.

Britain should have binned Huawei 5G kit years ago to cuddle up with Trump, says Parliamentary committee

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Admitting that now

The committee wants the UK to align with US demands made allegedly on security grounds. This isn't the same as aligning with Donald Trump, that is The Register's interpretation.

Having said that, I don't expect US relations with China generally or Huawei in particular to become suddenly cordial under a new President. Scepticism about Huawei's good faith is a British and American position by default anyway, and with the damage having been done already by the Trump administration, President Biden isn't going to reverse it in a hurry. He would lose face by doing it which is important, he would look like the traitor that Trump has been calling him since probably 2008, and if the decision was followed by any undesirable consequence whatsoever - say, a quarter of the Internet taking Chinese New Year day as a holiday for half an hour - Biden would be excoriated.

It can be imagined that the World Trade Organization would adjudicate that the US is unfairly discriminating against a Chinese business, but President Trump is no fool and he doesn't give a toot about that argument, so President Biden won't have to, either.

Now when it comes to the Tiktok thing, Trump looks like a child having a tantrum, even to supporters.

Was he sent on a spool's errand or something? Library staffer accused of stealing, reselling $1.3m of printer toner

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

"repeatedly convicted of theft and burglary of a building"

I would have thought after the first time, the owner would have not left his building out unattended. What was the guy doing, hotwiring and driving it away on joyrides... Folks, keep your building in a garage at night.

There ain't no problem that can't be solved with the help of American horsepower – even yanking on a coax cable

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I just posted a link to a fatality story where the coroner said words against "do it yourself" electrical work, probably illegal now anyway if not a qualified professional. What you say sounds straightforward, but best not.

(Confusingly, actual DIY which occurred had not been the fundamental problem.)

I know a house where one hanging light is hanging a bit looser than is properly nice. It's screw mounted in ceiling material that appears to be cardboard imitation MDF. Or rather it isn't mounted exactly.

What I hope is a temporary solution is to remove the lamp shade so that there is less weight on, well, the cardboard.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Death

I hope the fatal case I remember reading about is this from 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3735928.stm

Because otherwise it is happening much too often.

"Politics" because the married daughter of Member of Parliament Jenny Tonge was killed due to diagonal-ish kitchen wiring installed by "unnamed builders" "not according to best practice guidelines". And because her husband had screwed a shelf in past cable that shouldn't have been there. Some time later, the screw became live.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Some recent BBC News Web site reporting of closing the 1960s purpose-built "Broadcasting House" in Cardiff is very unsentimental about its suitability for purpose as of 2020.

The new building, which may or may not be called "New Broadcasting House", apparently has wall-to-wall "IP" for every broadcastable device. And from the pictures, funky multi colour LED lighting.

Let's hope that the funky multi colour LED lighting does not in any way interfere with the wall-to-wall IP and the broadcasting. But we'd have heard by now... or then again, perhaps not?

UK privacy watchdog confirms probe into NHS England COVID-19 app after complaints of spammy emails, texts

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Re: FFS!

Well, yes, but I am suggesting a way to make stolen PII be useless and to get naughty people to delete it from their database - in a small way. To have them not bother you.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: I got one...

Broadcast? Could be. I am in Scotland incidentally and I don't think I've had any of this.

What would test it is if a Scottish phone owner was in England that day, or vice versa. I hear that Margaret Ferrier MP popped down to London recently...

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: FFS!

Tip: If your e-mail address actually contains the word "spam", most spammers will just not use it, they will assume it's something like "Doctor.Syntax.hates.spam@nhs.uk" which of course a human operator can change to your real address but dumb software can't. This may not work though; no guarantee.

Robot wars! Scandi automation biz AutoStore slings patent sueball, claims it owns Ocado warehouse tech

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

What I was reminded of - I think I saw it on TV once:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_typewriter

1970s model - There are thousands of symbols, so you just steer the picker over the field of type pieces till you find the one that you want, and you type it. At least, I think that's how it goes.

I suppose there are more details in the warehouse overhead railway for robots thing, and if it is true that Ocado took a good look at the other mob's setup and THEN built their own, then that is a bit whiffy.

Director of nuisance-calls company ordered to cough up £114k after ignoring £40k fine from UK data watchdog

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Yes, are we allowed to do that? ;-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Sending muggers and burglars to jail also is very expensive, it would be cheaper to give half the money to the naughty people in return for staying at home and behaving themselves, but I expect you can see a big flaw in that plan.

Square Kilometre Array signs off on construction plans – UK last holdout before building phase begins

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Pure science benefits us mere mortals

I thought you were making a point about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel at first. Music of the spheres and all that. Though I had him muddled with the Halley Orchestra. ;-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

Re: Pure science benefits us mere mortals

No, as of 2020, UK policy is to create a new universe for exclusive British use (and Northern Ireland maybe) instead of using the European Galileo universe.

Well, I hope I'm joking.

Inflated figures and customers who were never there. Just another data migration then

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I assumed you came on the bike, it is rather a big pose otherwise? And I am a pedal cyclist but I don't want to be known to my operating system provider as "the man with the funny shaped helmet".

Sometimes it will be convenient to take car or train close enough to take a short bicycle run to finish, perhaps on a foldy uppy one.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Johnson, Hancock

Future headline: Government collapses when there are no people left in it whose names don't sound like words for the male sex organ. That weren't words for the male sex organ until now.

In the case of Dido Harding, two separate words.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

The remedy, always attend Microsoft training in full bike gear :-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

Rename them BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, etc.

Kioxia, the artist formerly known as Toshiba Memory Corporation, postpones IPO

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: "Adequate" is a good word.

Going by the dictionary, there seems to be not a great difference between "whelm" and current use of "overwhelm". It is when everything is under the rising water level, either way. Or to look at it another way, my cup brimmeth over?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

So that's why Asda now sells Kioxia USB memory instead of Toshiba! I was wondering.

I bought some (USB 3 spec); they seem adequate.

SAP S/4HANA rollout at Queensland Health went so well that hospitals bent over backwards to avoid using it

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This sounds like the sort of thing that goes wrong big when something big goes wrong, e.g. a worldwide virus epidemic. And shows up in Private Eye or an Australian equivalent.

Back here next year for Auditing 2: This Time It's Personal Protective Equipment?

Microsoft claims to love open source – this alleged leak of Windows XP code is probably not what it had in mind, tho

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: "the POS version"

"point of sale" i.e. tills and kiosks I suppose.

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Lots of great stories, as usual...

If user has printed 10 times a 30 page document that he wants once, the print queue is where the problem is now. Deal with that first.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

It's a bit tricky to get to my electricity meter... so I read it with my camera phone.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: this time with the correct polarity

I've put my own do-it-yourself batteries-this-way-round sticky labels into the battery compartment of some devices.

He was a skater boy. We said, 'see you later, boy' – and the VAX machine mysteriously began to work as intended

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: So what do we call a snooker bat?

it's brown and sticky... I'd call that a stick.

Tesla to build cars made of batteries and hit $25k price tag about three years down the road

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Applefying the car

Are the tubes broad enough to fill them with, say, size C cells? You could stuff them in and when they wear out, put in new ones. I changed the batteries in my radio today. You would need some special garage rig to pick the car up and shake it to get them out... and maybe you'd have to give it a whack when it stops working after you drive over a bump.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Paris Driving

I don't know if that is this, but I'm developing a taste for old films and TV where cars, trains, etc. are shown running at terrific speed just by playing the film faster, or recording it slower. I think "U.F.O." does it (set in a fabulous futuristic 1980), and the British "Avengers"... and a quite old British monochrome piece with no plot that seems to expect the audience simply to accept driving through central London at night at 100 mph (not really), or a train going faster than the speed of sound, and enjoy the spectacle.