Posts by Robert Carnegie

Liposuction from willing volunteers who want to be made of money. In a certain science fiction comedy they'd be known as The Dosh of the Day.

Re: 'Your Qs can be answered by reading the linked-to blog post.'

I speculate you can expect at least the version number of the virus program to vary...

Re: Zombie hard disk

"Re: general rule that UI element can't be clicked when it just appeared."

"Eh, what? Do you realise that is going to piss nearly everyone off nearly every day to fix an infrequent problem of the few?

"How about a blanket OS rule that shit apps can't grab focus unless the last user command was to launch that app? How about shit devs go die in large holes rather than allowing elements to move after display, unless user directed?"

Punishing developers is attractive but sometimes I am one. A developer can't anticipate every circumstance where a program is used. On the other hand, sometimes the intruding message comes from the same application.

I say that a new prompt or dialog shouldn't accept input until a user has had time to read what the prompt says, textually or iconically. If that means waiting a little longer while you're working.... how often aren't you doing that with your computer?

Or how about this - a new dialog or whatever has to slide in quite slowly from the side of the screen to the centre, and until it gets there you are still typing in your original focus...

....or even, while you're typing, a new prompt isn't allowed to appear? Except by projecting noises at you.

Re: Ruddy Hell

See "Private Eye" magazine - or more likely you already do.

I don't yet quite have the stamina to get through all the serious stuff as well as the jokes, but I'm working on it.

missing word being "is" in between "inches" and "closer".

(PUERILE)

"Ubuntu 17.04 inches is closer to production"?

If 17.04 inches is a reference to membrum virile then that would be quite a boast for a male human being. But as you say it's probably an animal Stupendous Stallion, perhaps, or simply Titanic Tonker. (I'm not going to find out the size of a stallion's tonker... yet.)

And "production" I suppose means "reproduction". Or...... "market penetration".

(Fnar.)

However, I think the original response was meant to pretend to believe that this year's first new Ubuntu was in some sense a distance of 17.04 inches away from its... final release.

(Once again, Fnar.)

Re: Best traps

Agreed, glue is mean. Humanely catching and releasing is impractical and maybe illegal, as noted. Therefore the real humane option is a death trap, plus planning how to execute (humanely) a trapped animal that wasn't killed. I think I had in mind "crush its head flat with a brick", but it didn't arise.

I had mice. I'm not an unkind person, I think, but I decided that the only way to not have mice was to kill all the mice.

Dispose of bodies in little tied plastic bags, like dog poo. (although, not hung around tree branches in public parks. Although, would feed birds, of a certain kind, in winter.)

One mouse may have got away, perhaps mortally injured, since the last time a trap (rat size, guaranteed kill, I got two once) was tripped, there was no mouse and no bait but after that the traps, and also my food supplies, were not disturbed.

The expert system should appear as an animated paperclip.

Then everyone will be careful to never, ever risk summoning it.

Re: WHy????!!!!!!

http://www.sectorgeneral.com/shortstories/theconspirators.html ?

In which laboratory mice in space become super intelligent - well, for mice. A little later, so does the ship's cat. They make peace. But they all know what Big Ones (that's us) do to laboratory mice...

Just in time, the Big Ones also become super intelligent, so the mice are saved. And the cat.

In the author's other stories, mammals in space, including us, generally don't become super intelligent, or at least not going by how the action goes.

Re: Fear of heights

The Netherlands explicitly comes under

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

which means what it says: low. Even below sea level. Actual sea: they have dams to keep it out. Many people actually know this.

On the other hand, geographical confusion exists between "Netherlands", "Low Countries", not the same thing, and "Holland", also not the same thing really, nor lexically - Wi'pi' says it means "wooded land".

When everything belonged to the Wholly Roman Empire, it didn't so much matter.

It could happen to you.

It happens to me - papers falling down the back of a desk drawer unit. You have to take all the drawers out to reach the stuff. That doesn't make it all right, you'd still have to look, but it's very understandable. Upvote.

On the other hand, the stuff may have been a few files in a drawer normally. Less excusable but still easily done.

I've just been reading 1970s sci-fi novel [Tomorrow Is Too Far] where a factory security manager gets a clue - not the first as it turns out - to Something Going On, when an empty storeroom, never used - is the site of a small fire, destroying a small quantity of mysterious documents. My point is that you can be equally confident that your old drawers don't contain leftover documents, but you do still have to check at an appropriate last opportunity, just as I check my trouser pockets as they go into the washing machine, for overlooked love letter !s from a secret admirer, or non-washable banknotes, or really anything. The first two are almost never found, but it's still better to check, than to be sorry later.

Re: @Deltics

Practically it's useful to keep a zip file of an important data file or document as you received it. For instance - an Office document (old-compatibility Excel in particular) is liable to be changed by viewing it without "saving" it: presumably not intentional as Excel 2010 doesn't do this to its own files. If it's liable to be important to prove what you received and when, zip it. You also get a convenient CRC32 signature of the file, but you may have to beg for it. This isn't secure against serious attack or if you have a very large number of files to distinguish (say 2^30, or just every source file that has ever existed in Linux), but it serves for basic use.

It's happened; we downloaded an important data set, then the compiler changed it without telling us, or anybody at all. How professional is this transaction? Well, the data set was in Excel... but we think we're professional. So when a partner asked why their later data download was different from ours, we had a riddle. But we also had document revision history. #smugface as it says in the commercial.

Re: BMP to Excel

Ooh. Can I have?

Since Excel stopped including a data-to maps tool, I craved a map consisting of a thousand Excel cells linked to the geographically correct data, and colour coded according to cell value - that's fairly versatile, so e.g. you could represent Glasgow with a Glasgow-shaped area of cells that would all be coloured magenta by setting an appropriate input number (it's a while since I programmed my Spectrum but I think magenta may have been 3). But I didn't actually make it, because that seemed quite tedious.

Command-line password manager?

Hashing with each web site address does in principle breach the rule of "don't re-use one password on multiple sites", even with variations.

I generate random letter-number passwords and, when I have to write them down. If a web site visit calls for another new password, I pause to decide if I really want to take the trouble.

Re: Problems

I don't know if this is as -well- as football but I assume it is still going to be five a side, if that helps.

"Upon"

I think it's short for "You XXXXXX" where the second word presumably is very rude or possibly a playing piece in chess. Or it's peach-wreck cognition or textile author-connect shoving its bad lady in.

Either Reg or The Inq used to say very rude things about GroupOn.

Re: Often wanted a warning beacon/klaxon

The scene in "The IT Crowd" where Richmond the server minder confides he has no idea what the flashing lights on the thing mean. Is that good? Is it supposed to do it?

In the grand old days of computing, your IT staff would program the hard drive lights to display a Christmas tree shape, or rev the drives to play popular songs of the time. Giving them a shiny toy that doesn't actually matter if they play with it seems an excellent idea.

Server names

Obscure, all alike, difficult to spell minerals. Not mine; someone who left the company abruptly. For all I know he came to work stoned :-)

What about Roku?

I may be misremembering, but I think I saw a Roku video box on sale in the Asda supermarket with a shelf ticket saying "fully loaded". Should I go again and check? Or quickly buy?

Good news recently reported about CMD.EXE

CMD is being nudged away from its role in Windows scripting, so its bugs will be less of a problem.

Instead, there will be Powershell.

CMD bugs are not being fixed, because they're afraid to touch the code and break it worse. Also, people have scripts that their business runs on, that rely on bugs in CMD; if fixed, the scripts are liable to break., It's the same as the cryptkeeper situation.

I may regret asking: what is the issue with the ? wild card? I think I know of ambiguity as to whether specimen.txt needs wildcard of *.* to pick it up or just *, .

I have a requirement for a "Monday following the last Friday in the month" reminder.

My implementation is a reminder set every Monday for me to work out in my head - or by looking at calendar - whether this is the one or not.

The Onion

One or two Onion stories a year get passed around as factual, maybe as a prank initially but then by people who take it as true. It does belong on a "web site of news that is not true" list.

Re: Clarification

As far as I can see, it's not about DRM.

It seems to bé mainly about software called "epubcheck" which is supposed to catch errors in e-book data files and possibly make sure that all files which should be included as part of a book are there. But while doing that, this software itself either can be interfered with, or cn bē made to include harmful data in book files, Imhaven't got that quite straight.

Union rep is probably another employee of the business anyway.

Opera Mail

I think you can get a self-contained copy of Opera's e-mail system, and keep using that. Maybe.

It's "innovative" too.

Re: Costs to government??

I think it was Mr Angry who employed assistants to spill out coins from their paper rolls into his wheelbarrows, not the government, but I may be misinterpreting.

Re: How is a keylogger illegal?

It's legal to install a key logger on a computer you own - with probably some qualifications. This software gets installed on someone else's computer and is built for that - hiding from virus scans is a clue to that.

As for making him work for the government, um, allegedly that's how justice happens in Russia.

Re: Excuse me while I try to understand this.

Audition material is one thing, actually having your likeness used in the product.

Mind you, for me the graphic could be meant to be Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane with a very deep tan.

Re: The pontification of Lara Croft with swishy hair and swaying breasts...

Isn't Lara Croft usually standing facing away from us? So, her hair, I would see that.

I haven't played that game.

"Gamification" can work, but it has to be more than calling what you're already doing a game.

A cyber exercise bike that plays "Luke Skywalker Spaceship Fights" would qualify as the thing to peddle.

Re: ahh, floppy disks

British electricity sockets aren't watertight (normally).

Admittedly neither are "blanking plugs", but, they help.

Sockets set in the floor - usually covered I admit - may not stand up to a stiletto-heel shoe, either.

My situation: washing machine space under the kitchen worktop, with a socket in just the plate to get thoroughly sprayed if something goes wrong with the water side of things.

Re: Wow.

No judgment on Google, but the SEO who may have Googled himself onto the Reg's page did also have the "muscle" of the ARM processor, as mentioned, to attract him.

Anyway, isn't there still plenty of room on Reg's pages for proper paid-for advertising?

I say Reg tried the shake-down on Patrick and he didn't go for it.