* Posts by onefang

1954 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Dec 2017

New age discrim row: Accenture, Facebook sued by sales boss for favoring 'new blood'

onefang

'(I'll still be working until I'm dead, and then contract out as a ghost, during my "retirement")'

Ah, so you'll be a bombastic ghost writer, and we can look forward to bombastic bill.

Battle lines drawn over US mass surveillance as senators probe NSA's bonfire of phone records

onefang
Coat

Will NSA FISC up, or will it all be a bit of a FISA?

Grad sends warning to manager: Be nice to our kit and it'll be nice to you

onefang
WTF?

Re: This is normal in every human endeavor.

"you can find yourself caught with your pants down plunged into almost complete blackness."

I have that problem with this new place I have moved into. The downstairs dunny has a timed light, with the switch on the outside. You have three minutes to get your business done, or you bring a torch.

onefang
Pint

Re: I have the kids at school convinced I am a wizard

"since when is 'print' spelled 'pint ?' ;"

On Friday afternoons, coz that's beer'o'clock.

onefang

Re: Elphin safety

'a troublesome lavatory cistern whose owner explained to her theatrical paying guest, "You have to surprise it, Mr. ____" - which I suppose means a sudden sharp pull.'

Is that whacking off rather quickly, or a very quick jerk off, that you mean by "sudden sharp pull"? Sounds painful.

onefang

Re: Need an IT equivalent of mechanical sympathy....

"They've evolved to the point where they can recognise a tech' who actually knows what they are doing, so behave properly in fear of being molested."

Known in the industry as a "faulty technician sensor". I never did find out if it was the technician or the sensor that is considered faulty. I believe other industries have similar terms. Or perhaps that's "Fawlty technician sensor". I have seen it in action many times, recalcitrant computer gear that suddenly starts to work if even the threat of having me poke at it is mentioned within earshot of the device.

Boffins build a NAZI AI – wait, let's check that... OK, it's a grammar nazi

onefang
Headmaster

Re: What we really need

'I understand what you're saying but I don't "we need to buy fewer milk" has ever been grammatical English.'

As always, when pointing out the grammatical mistakes of others, you have made your own. Isn't there a law about that or something?

onefang

'tis only wen ya noes da rulez, dat ya can break 'em, coz reasons.

With apologies to every English teacher that has ever had the misfortune of having me in their classes.

onefang

Re: Commas (missing or extraneous) can change meaning

"Eats shoots and leaves. = Panda

Eats, shoots, and leaves. = Clint Eastwood"

Eats roots and leaves. = Wombat

Eats, roots, and leaves. = Aussie bloke.

onefang

Re: Futile.

"Living in a small village near Stockholm was a good place to learn Swedish - which I did mostly by reading Asterix the Gaul. That gave me a fairly good grasp of everyday usage - but did little for my pronunciation."

I have Esperanto translations of Asterix (er Asteriks I mean) books for that same reason. Though apparently my pronunciation is perfect. That's why they moved me to the advanced Esperanto class, so they could all listen to my pronunciation in awe, despite the fact I had no idea what it was I was saying. Which is why I left those classes, it wasn't teaching me anything. I later found out I pronounce Esperanto with the same thick Aussie accent I pronounce English with, just all the other Aussie Esperanto students and teachers didn't notice.

onefang

"You did that deliberately, didn't you?"

Considering the goal was to leave out any form of punctuation except the final question mark, I'd say that dodging an apostrophe was deliberate.

MessageBird, Twilio tout low-code tools for DIY comms app plumbing

onefang

Re: Imagine your kids texting at 10 cents a message

"It might encourage them to edit their thoughts."

Not if daddy and mummy are paying for it.

onefang

"who wouldn't recognise talent or experience if it walked up and kicked them in the nuts."

I was planning on turning up at my next job interview barefoot, wearing an old t-shirt, and cargo shorts. Think I'll try your idea to.

onefang
Flame

"Developer resources are becoming so scarce within companies,"

Um, hire more? In particular, hire more greybeards. Ah, to hell with it, hire me, and don't be so anal about what I look like. Stop trying to hire suit models, go for brains over beauty.

/rant

Now that's a dodgy Giza: Eggheads claim Great Pyramid can focus electromagnetic waves

onefang

Re: Puh!! Visit Dublin and try out their 121m whip antenna

"Croc clips are just like alligator clips, only not as tasty."

I tried eating croc once, it tasted just like chicken, very overpriced chicken. Not very surprising, that's what they feed them. So now I cut out the middle man, er middle croc, and just eat pure chicken.

onefang

I, for one, welcome our new pyramid shaped, smelling of fresh bacon, razor sharpening alien overlords.

onefang

Re: "building material with the properties of an ordinary limestone is evenly distributed"

"(using all the pharaoh's camels and all the pharaoh's men, of course)"

FTFY

onefang
Joke

Re: Correlation, causation, and all that

"The pseudo science lot will be over this like a rash."

That's OK though, sitting in the resonant focal point of their cardboard pyramid will cure rashes.

Uptight robots that suddenly beg to stay alive are less likely to be switched off by humans

onefang
Holmes

Has Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf not taught these people anything?

Basic bigot bait: Build big black broad bots – non-white, female 'droids get all the abuse

onefang
Paris Hilton

Re: You can "dehumanize" robots?

"As for color, who gives a fuck? They are machines. You can paint 'em any color you like."

I'm surprised that more robots are not painted green. Green is the new black. Though personally I'd want purple robots. Sexy, female, purple robots, with long green hair. That otherwise look like Paris.

Did you know: Lawyers can certify web domain ownership? Well, not no more they ain't

onefang

Re: A "phoencall"?

"The scary thing is I understood that perfectly!"

A sure sign you've been reading ElReg for a looong time.

DEF CON plans to show US election hacking is so easy kids can do it

onefang

Re: Apparently you Brits don't know how it works here.

' we'll be forced to stage a "shock and awe" invasion and regime change mission in New Zealand.'

But but .. I kinda like the current New Zealand government.

onefang
Coat

Re: SUBS!

"...At this point we wouldn't even know if we were being heckled."

Is probably what was meant.

Early experiment in mass email ends with mad dash across office to unplug mail gateway

onefang

'it didn't understand the "nbsp" character.'

Naughty and Bad Serial Profanity? (Yes, I know it's actually Non Breaking SPace.)

onefang

"Are you kidding? People come and bitch at me if the email doesn't arrive instantly now, $DEITY help us if it's not there across the world in two minutes or they're pissed."

I once sent an email that took three months to arrive. I have no idea how it managed that.

onefang

If all of those places didn't go and stuff their names with bits that are not pronounced, would be a lot less problems.

onefang
FAIL

Re: I've seen and/or heard of many folks ...

"we all know about recursive file deletion when in the wrong directory"

I did that last weekend. I had created a temporary directory in my home directory on my server, filled it with files, then SCPed the lot to my home computer. Since it was only temporary, I then deleted it. Only some network glitch, or perhaps a keyboard bounce, or just plain fat fingers meant I was doing it in the home directory instead, one level up from where I thought I was. Though I noticed a couple of seconds later, and desperately tried to abort the delete, it was too late, everything in my home directory was gone. I still had mc open on that directory in another tmux session, which confirm my suspicion that there was nothing important there anyway. Important stuff on that server actually gets backed up in several places.

Hurrah! Boffins finally discover liquid water sloshing around on Mars

onefang

Re: Money

"If anyone is coming here for serious up-to-the-minute science news updates..."

ElReg still hasn't caught up with the GREEEEAAAASE IN SPAAAACE story I sent them a month ago.

Get drinking! Abstinence just as bad for you as getting bladdered

onefang
WTF?

Re: One little pill?

"Alcohol is a natural by-product of the digestion process."

Ah, that explains something my doctor once wrote that I have been scratching my head about ever since. In a general report about my health he noted that I don't drink alcohol (which is true), but right next to that said that I should try to drink less alcohol. I've been wondering ever since how to produce alcohol from my body to reach this "less alcohol" goal. Now I know. I guess some carefully timed throwing up is in order.

Relax, Amazon workers – OpenAI-trained robo hand isn't much use (well, not right now)

onefang

Re: Excellent (what's with the trans bluhair style?)

"The sort of thing we do all the time without thinking."

We are thinking about these things though, just at a lower level. A robot has to think hard about walking on two legs, something that a human seems to do "without thinking". Take away the humans brain and they'll suddenly forget how to walk. And how to breath, ...

Linux kernel 4.18 delayed: Bug ate my rc7, says Linus Torvalds

onefang

Re: That's the advantage of running Windows...

"Sixty upvotes: you all do realize he's being sarcastic ?"

Which is precisely why I upvoted him.

You want to know which is the best smartphone this season? Tbh, it's tricky to tell 'em apart

onefang

Re: Cameras are a trade off

"Maybe it will be like razors and we'll see phones with three, four, five and more cameras someday"

Some of the phones in the article have three cameras on the back and one on the front. So that's four. Though you might be able to count the fingerprint sensor as a "camera", so that'll be five cameras. My Moto Z has three light / presence sensors as well, and a bunch of microphones. On the other hand, I've never owned a razor.

onefang

Re: At Daedalus, re: fins.

"Where did you find a phone with fins?"

I'm sure someone somewhere is working on a Moto Mod with fins.

onefang

Re: My wishlist

"And wireless charging !

Often derided by those who haven't actually used it."

I have used it and I still deride it. It's inefficient, and there is still a wire.

Cheap NAND nasty: Flooding market with chips threatens prices

onefang

Re: The sole aim of Greed is to Limit Its Own Fear - and vice versa.

amanfrommars, is that you?

onefang

"So Mr Nand Flash from India has a pet Egyptain snake that will slowly climb down a tree in the second half of this year."

Ah, that explains my babel fish dieing of fright, the snake scared her. All a bit of a QoQ-up really, I should have gotten a more robust fish.

Though wouldn't a 10% QoQ drop mean that Mr Nand Flash's voice is now a bit deeper?

onefang

“the ASP of NAND Flash will drop by around 10 per cent QoQ respectively in 3Q18 and 4Q18."

I think my babel fish just died of fright. Can someone translate that into English for me please?

Science! Luminescent nanocrystals could lead to multi-PB optical discs

onefang
Coat

Re: Sweeeet,

"petabyte sugar cubes. Just be very careful when you have your first coffee in the morning."

Coz the DR is a pain in the arse.

You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way

onefang
Happy

Re: "Expand comment" - we're Regtards, we have attention spans

'You can head to the "My Forums" tab of your "Edit my details" (account) page, and you can toggle the "Switch off automatic post fading" on if you'd like.'

I like, and I turned off, er on that option. No more "More", er I mean no more "Expand comment" for me. Thanks.

And now I've re-enabled the cookie to keep seeing the new stuff. Doing a bit of A/B testing.

FBI boss: We went to the Moon, so why can't we have crypto backdoors? – and more this week

onefang

Re: Eggs out of pancakes

"Didn't your mommy teach you that white cows make white milk and brown cows make brown milk?"

And you get milk shakes out of cows that have been bouncing on a trampoline all day. Just don't ask where yoghurt cums from.

onefang

Re: "...True, but a REAL blackmailer would provide proof..."

"As near as I can tell, everybody that I personally know has received one. I've received several, probably because I have several online identities."

Awe, I missed out. Do I have to stick a camera on my porn computer now?

onefang

"tell them where to stick their blackmailing demands."

Better yet, turn on your webcam, and show them where to stick it.

onefang

"You don't need back doors. Just Australian Law. As Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnball said, Australian Law trumps the laws of mathematics governing encryption."

Any day now I expect our Aussie governbent to redefine π to be 10, coz we is a metric country and it's just easier all 'round. Or maybe 1, that's even easier.

onefang
Boffin

Re: Man on the sun

"If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can calculate the exact value of π"

Just move to one of those places where politicians declared that the legal value of π was 3, or something almost as exact. If I recall correctly, there's some USA states amongst them.

Nah, it won't install: The return of the ad-blocker-blocker

onefang
Facepalm

Re: Back to the Future

Reminds me of an ancient D&D character I once played. Typical thick as two short planks fighter, so dumb she was glad her mother put her name on her clothes. Only that was a long time ago, and now she mostly wears metal armour. We called her "Dry Clean Only".

Sorry, Neil Armstrong. Boffins say you may not have been first life-form to set foot on the Moon

onefang

Re: Bacteria are not space aliens

"Actually I wrote a short story along these lines a few dacades back, but you're right in a way - it wasn't exactly a blockbuster."

I'm sure Asimov and / or someone wrote such a story. From a very vague memory, planet wide hive mind that included microbes. May have been called Nemesis, and I may be entirely wrong. I'm too busy these days to go and reread it.

Though I think they didn't use stasis.

Spectre rises from the dead to bite Intel in the return stack buffer

onefang

Re: What you are not being told is that which rules and reigns and reins you.

"I just love how Spectre makes amanfromMars1 parsable & even sensible."

I'd call that yet another variant of the Spectre bug. Does that mean amanfromMars1 is Intel powered?

LabCorp ransomed, 18k routers rooted, a new EXIF menace, and more

onefang

Re: Dark hole in home IT security.

"why not put a separate admin port in which doesn't forward traffic?"

Coz that would mean adding an extra dollar or three to the build cost, and many more dollars to the design cost. That'll eat into profits, and that's more important.

On Android, US antitrust can go where nervous EU fears to tread

onefang

Justice Bork wanted to bork Microsoft? Nominative determinism in action.

Yeah, I need sleep.

Oz digital health agency tightens medical record access as watchdog warns of crim honeypot

onefang

Due to popular demand, next week at the seniors place I volunteer at, I'll be sitting at my computer helping any senior that requests it, help with opting out. Although given how well their web site has worked so far, I'm not expecting a high success rate.