* Posts by Robert Carnegie

4532 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2009

Nobody expects... a surprise haemorrhoid operation

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I think the story is that they paid him, but a lot less than you'd expect for medical negligence since they say it was substantially his fault as well.

'The box' Bones uses to fix any ailment on the Enterprise? Yup, it's real

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On the abstract patenting point,

This may vary between jurisdictions, but I think it's not that a patent isn't enforceable against someone who builds their personal-use copy of, let us imagine, a new ingenious style of ironing-board, but that the patent holder has to pay to sue and it isn't worth spending the money - a patent is just a licence to sue, you can't have someone arrested or anything.

Of course if I have patented a new way to make diamonds then it may be worth suing someone else who is doing it my way.

And life altering drugs? As I said, it's bad PR to squeeze the sick, but if you don't want to do that then should you be in medical research?

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Re: I'm stuck in the UK

I assume your "life changing drugs" are patented medical treatment, so, making your own at home must be rather naughty.

I suppose that a drug company suing a cancer or AIDS patient for self-medication by bootleg may look bad, but, if they drag the case out long enough, you won't be there any more when it ends.

No need to panic, says SwiftKey, as email addresses, phone numbers appear on strangers' screens

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Alternative

I like "FITALY", but you may need to use it on Windows CE or PalmPilot - or desktop/tablet Windows.

Microsoft delays Azure updates so you can catch up with the cloud

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Is it a Colossal Cavern?

Not to tell you your business, but I have a feeling that the more common verbal expression involves a sizeable chasm rather than a cavern.

It might be descended from the bible story about Lazarus and Dives - this probably isn't "died then got better" Lazarus but someone else with the same name - who found themselves on opposite sides of a particular chasm. Dives was in Hell, and Lazarus was in Heaven - one of the joys of which seems to be to look over to Hell and see people that you know. So the chasm is between heaven and hell. You're nominating Amazon cloud as heaven. Or, anyway, Microsoft cloud as hell.

Tor veteran Lucky Green exits, torpedos critical 'Tonga' node and relays

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I thought that "fast" probably was a technical term in the field and doesn't necessarily mean "rapid". The word also means "secure" and also "not eating".

World's worst exploit kit weaponises white hats' proof of concept code

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Re: Open source exploit affects IE

"Open source" just means that the source code is included. It doesn't mean that it's free to use legally. Especially here.

If we can't find a working SCSI cable, the company will close tomorrow

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Re: Not IT, but a similar experience

Not sure about oxidation - I thought it used to be that RAM modules in the "black plastic rectangle with silver legs all along the long edge" type, chips basically, were heated while the PC was in use and cooled when it was turned off, and basically slowly wriggled out of their sockets. A carefully placed thumb press on the centre of each black bit, not touching the legs, fixed that.

Later: a laptop's own UEFI memory test was apparently fooled by its memory cache or something, passed. Booted with SystemRescueCD (Linux) and that memory test said, yup, a dead module. That was DDR-something.

Please stop working and abuse your expense account at the beach

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I suppose

if you wait long enough, the system doesn't count as a "super computer" any more.

...What is the first step down from "super computer"?

Loose wrists shake chips: Your wrist-job could be a PIN-snitch

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Re: What about finger-only movement?

It isn't really "finger only movement", because your fingers are controlled puppet-like by "tendons" that are run through your wrist.to connect to muscles in your forearm. Grip right wrist with left hand and move the right hand fingers (other the other way around), and you'll feel things moving in there.

Magnetic, heat scanners to catch Tour de France electric motor cheats

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Re: Being blessed with a body honed by sitting at a desk all day...

Can we crowdfund development of this secret electric bike for office commuters?

400 million Foxit users need to catch up with patched-up reader

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Also

For those who don't know, Adobe also provides a PDF reader product.

If you try it I think you'll never uninstall it. (But if you find out how, pass it on.)

Maplin Electronics demands cash with menaces

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I don't think Asda is cheap for cables either. Their target market is people who haven't heard of Maplin.

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Cheeky but effective?

This seems to be asking suppliers to cut prices on LAST year's goods in return for continued business. An after-the-fact refund for no reason except for what smells to me like demanding a bribe. I think Tesco recently said they would stop doing the same thing to their suppliers, and Premier Foods perhaps hasn't - anyone know? But apparently it still sounds like a good idea.

The police should send in that American smut labrador.

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Not a gay hookup service... I hope

To avoid embarrassment - I am pretty sure that Maplin is not where gay men go to connect.

Maplin is not for sex, it is instead of sex.

Israeli researcher fans fears: here's another way to cross the airgap

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I'm worried

What is the British equivalent of kilobyte or megahertz? We haven't had our own computing standards since Turing.

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Just fanless. Can do.

Get ready for Google's proprietary Android. It's coming – analyst

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Oracle

may be considering launching a proprietary Android product.

I have no particular reason to think so, except to make a joke. But maybe they would.

Our CompSci exam was full of 'typos', admits Scottish exam board

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Re: English, 1st language?

If it sounds right, it is right for all intensive purposes.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/8-embarrassing-yet-common-malapropisms/

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Re: Q5 is wrong

Wrong in what way? It looks OK to me. SELECT * FROM StudentLocker ORDER BY YearGroup ASC, LockerNumber DESC

ORDER BY HouseName, LockerNumber gives the same result, but that isn't the point, I think.

The punctuation goes wrong when it starts talking about football.

"The second level of sorting only takes place when there are any matches, like a phone book with people with the same surname. They are then compared on forename or in football tables when teams have the same points. They are then sorted on goals scored."

It should say:

"The second level of sorting only takes place when there are identical values in the first level, like a phone book with people with the same surname. They are then compared on forename. Or, in football tables when teams have the same points, they are then sorted on professional fouls."

Who's to blame for the NHS drug prices ripoff?

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Drugs patent length

The argument that I referred to is the claim that too much of the term of a patent for medicine has to be spent expensively testing it for safety and for how good it actually is, before they can sell it and make their money back.

I think the system isn't failing yet (although medical science ought to be led by government and above commercial limitations), but cutting from 20 years to 10 probably would cripple drug research as private business.

As for music and words... they are protected for a very long time, but mostly that doesn't matter, you can write your own. Whereas the patent law is designed to give the man who invents the square paperclip his just reward, and then share his invention with the world.

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Re: I've read the original article

As far as I can tell, this isn't "cheap medicine for the Third World" generics of patented drugs as you are apparently reading it, it is drugs whose patent term has ended and anyone can legally make them, for a rather restricted set of "anyone".

There is a claim that patents should be longer, but they are not.

Software snafu let EU citizens get referendum vote, says Electoral Commission

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Error?

"The Electoral Commission said it is working on identifying how many EU citizens have wrongly been issued polling cards allowing them to vote"

They didn't say or shouldn't have said that. The polling card does not allow you to vote. I'd say it invites you to vote, but, as explained, you may be not entitled to, and the card doesn't prove that you can.

Maybe you could apply for quick British citizenship if you do want the right to vote, but that isn't easy to get if you don't have it, unless you are rich.

Computerised stock management? Nah, let’s use walkie-talkies

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Re: Floor standing foot measurers

After the X-Ray machines (perhaps more dangerous to the operators, who got it all day), there was a machine that just slid metal bars in from all sides to gently grip your foot and report a measurement. a bit of a gimmick, but so was the X-Ray machine.

You deleted the customer. What now? Human error - deal with it

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Re: A cautionary pair of tales (pt2)

I think Notepad++ struggles with files of even a few hundred megabytes.

OTOH I think it now has a "tail" mode i.e. when the file grows on disk, its view in NPP is updated.

Alternative suggestion though - have your routine editor be one that quickly fails out, SAFELY, on oversized files. MS-DOS EDIT or EDLIN may qualify, may not.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Delete some things.

Sometimes, responsible use of data includes deleting it when you don't need it any more, such as when it's the law regarding personal data or credit card numbers. Keeping what you shouldn't keep means it also can be stolen and misused and it's your fault.

Marketing by opt-in, opt-out, consent or legitimate interest?

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"The Bottom Line" - details

The programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07c4tqf

The company: https://www.davidnieper.co.uk

Beware - if I heard correctly, not only does Christopher Nieper want to reach out to non-customers at will, but I -think- he said that the business also relies on sending goods without bothering to have a customer order them first - apparently something that there was a risk of the European Union banning, but averted..

People who have never heard of him are safe for now (so, whoops), but put the two together and he will be sending -you- his cashmere T-shirts with an unexpected invoice. A ticklish situation.

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/distance-selling-regulations

doesn't mention what to do if you are sent stuff you haven't ordered. I think I remember that if you open it then you may have to pay for it, but the smart thing is to call back and say "Something I didn't want has been delivered, do you want to come and get it?" Something like that.

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This week on BBC radio business discussion show "The Bottom Line"...

Topic: British membership of the European Union - good or bad for business?

One contributor was complaining that the EU wants to legislate over and over again to restrict his ability to collect data and locate and market directly to prospective customers...

That's spam, I do believe. Spam, or maybe junk post.

I was slightly surprised that no one said so on the air.

Feds raid dental flaws dad

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There is a password, though.

It's "default". Or it may as well be. But it -is- a password.

You wanted innovation? We gave you Clippy the Paperclip in your IM client

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Re: A.I. or M.I? There's a big difference

I dunno. An artificial hand may be a fairly good hand if you don't have enough natural born hands for the job at... the moment. An artificial leg may be a satisfactory leg, at least on a table. And artificial grass may be a good alternative to grass - at least a colleague's neighbour apparently thinks so.

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Of course any human can distinguish between sarcasm and irony.

Pastejack attack turns your clipboard into a threat

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Apparently yes

http://www.dpriver.com/pp/sqlformat.htm is an online service to make SQL more readable[*]. It provides a "Copy to clipboard" button - and using that produces a message saying that I'm also giving it permission to READ the clipboard. Oh, and I'm also giving a stranger some SQL program that I wrote with my own hands. (The program's owner is my boss, though, so I don't much care if it's stolen by sinister Eastern European database engineers.)

It's useful, probably legitimate - maybe, and probably honest - maybe.

It seems to say "Copy Successful!" even when it isn't. I think my browser is lying to the web site. At least the browser is on my side today.

I think Notepad++ also comes with a desktop SQL formatter, but my boss says we can't afford to get Notepad++ (it's free).

[*] Feed it this:

select a, b, c from someTable

Much more readable now! :-)

Microsoft bans common passwords that appear in breach lists

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Your password must be changed monthly.

So I have set it to ChangedMonthly-May-2016. in a few days I will set it to ChangedMonthly-June-2016.

Not really. But what -is- the point of that compulsory change anyway? My best guess is it's so that everybody that I myself told my old password to can no longer use it. Unless they understand my system. And perhaps they now use it for their own... why don't I ask them.

Want a better password? Pretend you eat kale. We won't tell anyone

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A capital, a number, and no repeated symbol

No repeats is another annoying condition that leads to reasonable pw choices being rejected.

I therefore use N letters, the first being a capital (which may be too obvious or may not make much difference), excluding repeats, then two digits produced by looking at minutes and seconds on a digital watch which may or may not show the correct current time - whenever a new password is required.

I may also add spaces in a regular pattern, just to help me read and type the thing.

Now, how big should N be?

Norton bans kernel.org

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Now it says "OK"

https://safeweb.norton.com/report/show_mobile?name=kernel.org

I don't know if it's possible to see what the threats are believed to be, while they are shown. You could try putting in a risky site name. Note that 4ch*n.*rg is also "OK" apparently, so goodness knows how bad it has to be.

Being an IT trainer is like performing the bullet-catching trick

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Good news,

This is a dream! Wake up!

And the bad news. Today isn't Friday, it's Monday!

My last memorable dream involved having accidentally a mouse having got into my parents' old house... it was wearing fancy dress... possibly clown.

Nuisance caller fined a quarter of a million pounds by the ICO

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Coincidence?

I rarely get marketing calls on my mobile but I got one this morning - presumably: it was an 0845 number reported, I didn't answer, I put it into Google and various web sites say it's a nuisance service, usually for car accident claims.

Perhaps it was this company or a reincarnation of it making a rude gesture by spamming everyone in the country.

The fork? Node.js: Code showdown re-opens Open Source wounds

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Re: "Then what?"

Strictly, open source just means that users can see and/or use the source code if they want to. It doesn't mean that no licence applies or even that no non-restrictive licence applies. Just that there is source code. But it may be still mine and copyrighted and if I decide to take it away, which this bloke did, then I can. Since he could and he has.

Big Pharma wrote EU anti-vaping diktat, claims Tory ex-MEP

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Nicotine?

Presumably the nicotine is in fact extracted from tobacco plants, so is a tobacco product?

As for prominent display of products in TV shows, there is a reason for that. There also is a notification symbol for that. In UK TV programs it is a rather small letter P hidden somewhere on the screen nearly the same colour as the background and/or made to look as though your digital telly is playing up. Try to spot one this weekend and win my sincere respect! (quantity of respect may vary).

In Swedish television I think the equivalent symbol appears as a birthmark on each corpse when it is found. Or if the camera dwells on the rather nice wristwatch it is still wearing.

Switch survives three hours of beer spray, fails after twelve

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Re: Football clubs

The comms stuff will be in some server room or cabinet surely, not in the bar. Mind you, that probably will be physically secure as well.

I suppose you can either disable it remotely when not paid for, or divert POS electronic payments to pay your outstanding bill first. Surely it must be possible to write a contract with a clause that says you can do that.

Sysadmin given Licence To Perve shows why you always get it in writing

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Filtering never works.

Detection and alerting is feasible. An Internet connection with an absolute smut block is impossible, unless Far Eastern computer appliance vendors have finally stopped displaying their electronic delights by having them cuddled by young ladies in swimsuits... maybe that doesn't sound like porn to you, but back in the day it was something to... notice in the classified advertising in dear old "Personal Computer World". There must be middle aged ladies now who still have indentations in the shape of the BNC port or the Dvorak keyboard.

I think also that warning the browser before letting them see anything that might be inappropriate is simply fair, and, even better, applying a browse time quota to ALL internet access, not only the fun stuff. Most people don't need more than a limited time for work-related browsing, and it will be humiliating and worse to use it all up even on adorable kitten videos and then be not able actually to work. I wonder if any office has tried it that way?

Admin fishes dirty office chat from mistyped-email bin and then ...?

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On reflection: Return to sender. Not an option?

I think this is different for external and (genuine) internal e-mail. (I've had spam "from" my own address, presumably used because assumed to be whitelisted.)

External e-mail is likely to benefit the business, even if it's just social. it should be delivered as the sender intended.

Having reflected on the unwanted harassment question, internal e-mail should return to sender, with a covering message that looks like an automated response, but with a hint of doubt. If they want to correct it and send it again, that's up to them. If they're ashamed to, that may be for the best.

I quite often get e-mail intended for a colleague with the same forename, but it is almost never as much fun as the case described.

Pair programming: The most extreme XP practice?

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Re: Agreeing (but quietly)

God forbid the child makes an arbitrary decision on their own.

(I suppose by definition that makes them an innie.)

Would you let cops give your phone a textalyzer scan after a road crash?

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According to the article "driving is illegal in New York". It's got tougher since the time Woody Allen shot a moose.

Just don't fool around with your other devices while in your car. Just don't.

By next year the phone will be driving, anyway, not you.

Bug hype haters gonna hate hate hate: Badlock flaw more like Sadlock

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Re: Bah!

Competent professionals won't be distracted by the hype. Instead they will use the hype to increase non-IT colleagues' awareness and understanding of the need to maintain and patch all the systems that a business uses, whether there is a logo campaign and T-shirt or just a faceless bug number.

Field technicians want to grab my tool and probe my things

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Things To Come

Goodness, why would the Thing Replacer be a person? Either there will be a Thing made for the purpose of bringing you a new Thing and taking away the old one, or your Things themselves will do it: those that are mobile anyway or supposed to be. Your front door will have a Thing-flap so they can let themselves in and out - or rather you will have your own app for control of your flap.

Fake CEOs pilfer $2.3bn from US biz pockets in three years – Feds

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Think twice

if you are asked to provide "a wire fraud transfer", it may not be an authentic request.

Flaw found in Lhasa makes for compression confession depression

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If I've got this straight, everyone in Japan uses "Lhasa" as their zip tool?

Let’s re-invent small phones! Small screens! And rubber buttons!

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To hold a big tablet phone,

I think several products exist - cases etc. - which basically fix a large handle to the back of the tablet, to hold it securely with one hand, operate it with the other.

Mine however is glued and taped inside old hardback book (desk diary) covers which I can wear on a cord around my neck, like a slate accessory for someone lacking the power of speech. Sometimes.

You can't dust-proof a PC with kitchen-grade plastic food wrap

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Screen saver

Nowadays your PC or laptop does "screen saving" by turning off, more or less. Or by turning everything off. It's a standard feature and it saves electricity.

You can however set the display to stay on, for applications where the device needs to keep running while not being touched.

The screen saver or lock screen mainly reminds you that you haven't actually turned the PC off.