* Posts by Vincent Ballard

482 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Aug 2008

Page:

Queen Elizabeth has a soggy bottom: No, the £3.1bn aircraft carrier, what the hell did you think we meant?

Vincent Ballard
Stop

You must be new here. The official El Reg unit of area is the nanoWales. See https://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html

I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

Vincent Ballard
Coat

I remember one biology teacher claiming that the big gaps in the leaves of the Monstera plants at the back of the classroom were due to the times he'd missed when throwing a board rubber at a pupil.

Shall we strip price caps from .org, mulls ICANN. Hm, people seem really upset... OK, let's do it

Vincent Ballard

Re: Time for another European Antitrust Review?

My understanding of GDPR is that the WHOIS registry falls under its remit whenever and wherever it stores personal data of EU citizens. It has extraterritorial application, albeit with caveats about the ability to enforce.

That said, it might be possible in principle for European courts to seize money being transferred from European registrars to extra-European register operators as an enforcement measure against the operators.

Vincent Ballard

I'd go further. There is no good reason not to have a 10% per annum price increase cap on every registry contract. It doesn't matter what TLD your domain is under: once you've invested in branding using your website or e-mail address you're held hostage.

The Eldritch Horror of Date Formatting is visited upon Tesco

Vincent Ballard

Why did the vandal not also remove the s?

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: Julian dates WTF

18th? Try 20th. There's a reason that the anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917 is in November.

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Vincent Ballard
Joke

Re: I prefer PEBMAC

I once spent a day at work stripping models. Afterwards they rendered much faster, because the graphics card didn't have to recalculate nearly as much as when we previously sent individual triangles.

Vincent Ballard

Re: Dolt

No, the original fault description was "random lines were appearing on the website for a customer". I interpreted "lines" as "product lines" and thought it was about a database issue until halfway through the story.

Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings

Vincent Ballard

Re: Friend did something similar

When you say that a competent virus scanner should be able to detect a malformed zip file, I think you may be missing the point. I understood the zip file to be well formed. It's certainly possible to make a zip quine, and although I've never personally seen it done it should in principle be "straightforward" to extend the technique to a valid zip file which contains multiple copies of itself with different names.

Vincent Ballard

Re: Hire immediately

Where by "mental approach" you mean "consumption of psychoactive drugs"?

Mozilla returns crypto-signed website packaging spec to sender – yes, it's Google

Vincent Ballard

Re: Web, the new desktop...

I had to install Word just this week because a client sent a docx with a form to be filled out and returned and LibreOffice didn't support the ActiveX controls in the form.

My HPE-funded lawyer wrote my witness statement, reseller boss tells High Court

Vincent Ballard
FAIL

Re: legal system

Sure. But their lawyer should be au fait with the process, and shouldn't have put them in this kind of situation.

Need a Ferranti Pegasus board in your life? Brit computing history could be yours for four figures

Vincent Ballard

Re: What science museum

I went a few weeks ago with my brother and 3-year-old nephew. I was disappointed not to see some of the hands-on experiments I remember from when I was a child, but there was still some interesting stuff. My nephew's favourite exhibit was a couple of preserved transgenic mice. Mine was the working replica of Babbage's difference engine.

Brit Parliament online orifice overwhelmed by Brexit bashers

Vincent Ballard

Re: Random thoughts on this sad situation

I moved to Spain to live back in 2008, and I'm not sure what you're referring to with "what a PITA and often quite costly the Spanish make lots of services as an EU but non Spanish citizen".

Vincent Ballard

Irish and Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK could vote in the referendum. The franchise was the same as for a general election, prioritising simplicity of administration over making sense.

Vincent Ballard

I was not in the UK, but I was eligible to vote and had, in fact, sent in my postal ballot a week earlier. British citizens who move abroad can still vote for 15 years afterwards in general elections. The limitation to 15 years was a big bone of contention at the time: few people are as directly affected by Brexit as people who have taken advantage of freedom of movement to or from the UK, but a considerable number of British citizens in that situation were disenfranchised.

Freelance devs: Oh, you wanted the app to be secure? The job spec didn't mention that

Vincent Ballard

Re: Further study?

The follow-up study would be to see whether if you pay real cash you still get monkeys.

Eggheads want YOU to name Jupiter's five newly found moons ‒ and yeah, not so fast with Moony McMoonface

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: In fact Jupiter DID have a lover named Moony McMoonface

It's more complicated than that. The general rule is that the discoverer gets to propose the name, but the scientific community imposes rules (and the chemists, at least, aren't above a bit of horse-trading). So the rules about having a connection with Zeus and ending in the right letter are due to the International Astronomical Union, not the Carnegie Institution.

Users fail to squeak through basic computer skills test. Well, it was the '90s

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: "Have you ever stifled your laughter"

You've missed filets, fliest, and flites.

Top GP: Medical app Your.MD's data security wasn't my remit

Vincent Ballard

I think you've overlooked the sidebar which explains the context.

Happy Thursday! 770 MEEELLLION email addresses and passwords found in yuge data breach

Vincent Ballard
Coat

"Unique"

If there are "22.2 million unique passwords", how many non-unique ones were there? Or are you confusing the word "unique" (occurring once only) with the word "distinct" (counted once only)?

Come mobile users, gather round and learn how to add up

Vincent Ballard
Joke

Re: Better One Innit

I've just checked with my slide rule, and I get 4. HTH.

Senator Wyden goes ballistic after US telcos caught selling people's location data yet again

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: The bigger issue

The two privacy gotchas I saw in the newspapers at the time were (1) the "shrouded in secrecy" visit was leaked several hours in advance when a plane-spotter in Yorkshire recognised Air Force 1's livery overhead; (2) the President posted a selfie naming the special forces unit he was with and without concealing the soldiers' faces, in violation of convention.

Um, I'm not that Gary, American man tells Ryanair after being sent other Gary's flight itinerary

Vincent Ballard

Re: It'll never happen...

@"Ian Lavender", their data quality is awful (or GDPR has meant that the Open Register has only a very small proportion of actual names on it). They tell me that I share my name with around X people in the UK, where I know that back in the late 80s I shared my name with at least X people registered in the Kent library system.

Heard the one where the boss calls in an Oracle consultant who couldn't fix the database?

Vincent Ballard

Why should IT people understand BCD? Only a very small percentage of them work with VAX nowadays.

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: no joking matter

Ryanair Spanish incidents, plural. They managed three emergency landings in Valencia due to lack of fuel in a single afternoon on the 26th July 2012. I think the rules have been changed since then.

What the #!/%* is that rogue Raspberry Pi doing plugged into my company's server room, sysadmin despairs

Vincent Ballard

ISO9000

Surely you're fine with ISO9000 as long as you sneak a line about "Consulting outside expertise" into the process document.

Assange catgate hearing halted as Ecuador hunts around for someone who speaks Australian

Vincent Ballard
FAIL

What's he doing with his time?

He's been in the embassy long enough to be completely fluent in Spanish if he made half an effort. Why does he need an interpreter?

Spent your week box-ticking? It can't be as bad as the folk at this firm

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: “were quoted a ridiculous price and told it would take four months”.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, surely.

OMG! Battle looms over WTF! trademarks

Vincent Ballard

Ok, I give up: who has a trademark on "invigilator"?

Phased out: IT architect plugs hole in clean-freak admin's wiring design

Vincent Ballard

Re: get out quick

An organisation I volunteer for moved into a building which I suspect (from labels found) was previously a print shop or something similar. The power sockets in the main room were in little clusters sticking up from the floor, with cables running through ducts along the floor, up the walls, and into the ceiling space. I was asked to remove these obstructions and put sockets on the walls instead.

Before starting work I checked that the mains breaker was off, then used a multimeter on one of the sockets to be sure. Disassembled that socket, and moved onto the next one, which gave me a nice 230V electric shock. It turns out that the building had two rings, and the sockets alternated between them.

Ecuador's Prez talking to UK about Assange's six-year London Embassy stay – reports

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: Makes no sense

It would be an insult to Sweden to ask it for such assurances, because if Assange is extradited under a European Arrest Warrant then the receiving country cannot extradite him without approval by the sending country. Or if you prefer a different perspective, Sweden already gave such assurances way back in 2004 when it implemented the framework directive which established the EAW. See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:2002F0584:20090328:EN:PDF Article 28, paragraph 4.

Python creator Guido van Rossum sys.exit()s as language overlord

Vincent Ballard

Re: Futuristic progression of Programming Languages?

90%+ of software is pedestrian.

UK Foreign Office offers Assange a doctor if he leaves Ecuador embassy

Vincent Ballard
FAIL

Many things but not a traitor to the US

Assange may be many things, and I can think of a few pejorative terms I would apply to him, but any Americans who think that he is a traitor to the US are objectively morons. You can't commit treason against a country of which you have never been a citizen.

Don’t talk to the ATM, young man, it’s just a machine and there’s nobody inside

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Retasking aircraft for a combat role

Retasking aircraft for a combat rôle goes back at least as far as 1911, when Italian recon pilots started manually lobbing bombs at Libya.

US Congress mulls expanding copyright yet again – to 144 years

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: And who made copyright possible?

@Old Used Programmer, your chronology is somewhat unconventional. The phonograph was from the second half of the 19th century: the printing press is from the 15th century.

Flamin' Nora! Brit firefighters tackle blazing fly-tipped boat

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Re: Sir Nelson??

@Dr Syntax, Spain still has an Armada. The word just means Navy.

Supreme Court to dig into Google's very cosy $8.5m deal with lawyers over web search leak

Vincent Ballard

Re: Classic that they missed the most honest solution..

I quite agree, but I would add that if the lawyers think that the settlement they negotiated doesn't adequately compensate the victims, maybe they should reduce their fees and thus increase the amount going to the victims.

Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes

Vincent Ballard

Re: What are IBM going to do? Wave a fucking magic wand?

My inside information from a former colleague is that Sabadell tried to port their existing code for their Spanish bank, which was cowboy quality. Hard-coded values including IP addresses for servers and telephone area code prefixes. Copyright-violating ripoff of a Netflix library from GitHub where the copyright header was changed but not the references to Netflix in error messages. Compounded by the insistence of the suits that 500 simultaneous users was a sufficient load test.

Vincent Ballard

Re: I pity the poor schmoes working on this.

Anonymous Coward is spot on. A former colleague of mine is caught up in the middle of this, having joined Sabadell recently in a QA role, and reports that people are pulling seriously illegal amounts of overtime and staying awake with the aid of pills and Bolivian marching powder.

UK Court of Appeal settles reseller's question: Is software a good?

Vincent Ballard
Coat

@Doctor Syntax, actually that's not true. Where there is a reasonable ambiguity over the interpretation of the letter of the law, judges can look at the debate surrounding its passage through Parliament to work out what the intended spirit was.

US govt's final bid to extradite Lauri Love kicked into touch

Vincent Ballard

That seems to be how it works in general. In another recent high-profile extradition case, the Belgian prosecutors were acting for the Spanish state against Puigdemont.

Google to 'forget me' man: Have you forgotten what you said earlier?

Vincent Ballard
Coat

Expunction

@BlockChainToo, actually some states have a concept similar to spent convictions called expunction. Under certain conditions (which, of course, vary from state to state) you can apply to a judge to have your conviction removed from the public record.

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

Vincent Ballard

Re: To be served with chips & curry sauce obv.

Talking of a limited number of trips up north... In honour of Peter Mandelson's infamous visit to a Hartlepool chippy, serve with guacamole and tell anyone who asks that it's the done thing up north.

Are you taking the peacock? United Airlines deny flight to 'emotional support' bird

Vincent Ballard

Re: What about my emotional support chainsaw?

Back in 2005 I spent a few months in South America, and after thinking hard about gifts to take back for my brothers I opted for a machete each. I got back to Blighty on the day of the Tube bombing. A couple of weeks later, while the country was still on high alert, we had a family gathering, and I arranged to meet one of my brothers on an afternoon train from Victoria and travel down together. We were chatting on the train, and he told me that that very morning he had been randomly searched by the police while going into a Tube station, and had received a telling off for carrying a small penknife. But apparently they only operated searches until midday, so I had carried two 18-inch machetes in my rucksack across London without passing through any (visible) checkpoint.

Julian Assange to UK court: Put an end to my unwarranted Ecuadorean couch-surf

Vincent Ballard

AIUI the charges haven't been withdrawn. Rather the investigation has been put on ice, but can be reactivated at any point until the statute of limitations expires in 4 or 5 years' time.

Vincent Ballard

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:2002F0584:20090328:EN:PDF

Article 28, paragraph 4: Notwithstanding paragraph 1, a person who has been surrendered pursuant to a European arrest warrant shall not be extradited to a third State without the consent of the competent authority of the Member State which surrendered the person. Such consent shall be given in accordance with the Conventions by which that Member State is bound, as well as with its domestic law.

WikiLeave? Assange tipped for Ecuadorian eviction

Vincent Ballard
FAIL

Re: "a very respectful way"

@AC, no-one stopped diplomatic planes to try to catch Assange. You're confusing him with Snowden.

Engineer named Jason told to re-write the calendar

Vincent Ballard
Meh

Screen grab

Nowadays I mainly get photos taken with a phone and sent over WhatsApp.

ISIS and Jack Daniel's: One of these things is not like the other

Vincent Ballard

Re: As a resident of Switzerland myself...

I clicked through to the original article, and saw that he's flying the JD flag above the Italian one. I'm pretty sure that Italy will take that as an insult. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Italian law forbids flying any flag higher than the Italian one except possibly the EU one.

Page: