* Posts by Robert Carnegie

4557 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2009

What do you mean you gave the boss THAT version of the report? Oh, ****ing ****balls

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: My work log book was redacted

Hmm.

"We pay when we feel like it"

"?i have input your coordinates in this artillery computer, expect to hear from us soon"

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Redirected repercussions

I've been wondering how far I should regard America Ferrara's "Superstore" as a remake of "Are You Being Served". Apart from the concept, it may be mainly "Coworkers are not friends" and "Dress the one gay character in one ridiculous costume after another", so am I misreading it. Would Dinah's birds fill the role of Mrs Slocombe's cat...

Oops, they did it again – rogue Soyuz spurt gave ISS an attitude problem

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: unexpected thrusting

Just what kind of movie is this...

Scoot on over for a wheely tricky mystery with an electrifying solution

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Childcatcher

Re: As nobody else has mentioned it

Probably quite soft wear...

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: School science.....

A scientist on a recent-ish BBC radio programme asserted that a virus inside you counts as alive but if it's not inside a host then it is not alive.

Ubuntu 21.10 brings GNOME 40 debut and a focus on devs

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: I think the numbers speak for themselves...

It works... isn't that (1) good and (2) the point?

Fatal Attraction: Lovely collection, really, but it does not belong anywhere near magnetic storage media

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

To specify, I think the claim isn't that the non-standard magnet pulls all of the bits on the disc around, but that it interferes with the drive writing process.

The type of disc write that depends on heating up the disc locally, if that isn't all of them, also could be affected.

I should mention also that some of these magnets are of much greater magnitude than others, even leaving out ones taken from inside disc drives or earphones that may be industrial-strength.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-11-24

The key word being "magnets". Not "bracelet", which wasn't strictly mentioned.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I think the magnetic field and high voltage is (meant to be) at the "back" of a cathode ray tube display, but PC disk drives are installed at the front - away from the PSU as well.

...which way around were problems with "home computers" like Apple II and certain TVs or monitors with and without built-in shielding? No picture, or no disks? Or both?

These stories won't be made up 100 percent of the time, surely?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

This may vary but I tried waving a few fridge magnets past each other, fridge face to fridge face (back to back, I suppose). These seem to have typically a flat disc of magnet stuff maybe 1.5cm diameter, and it appears that the centre of the disc is one pole, and the edge of the disc is the other pole. So, face to face, they repel, but oriented like a simple "Venn diagram", they attract.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/math-concepts/venn-diagram.htm

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Me too...

Do you currently work for an security training company which gave me a personal account with, as it turns out, a user name of (Female colleague's forename) (My surname)?

If so, I was told to wait for it to be fixed, so I'd like it to be fixed, thanks.

I'm suspecting that I have not been given (Female colleague's forename) especially, probably everybody has been named (Female colleague's surname).

EU readies 'antitrust charges' against Apple Pay for locking rivals out of iPhone NFC chip

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I decided to use my PIN more often anyway

since with contactless all the time, I forgot what my PIN was. Oops!

Computer shuts down when foreman leaves the room: Ghost in the machine? Or an all-too-human bit of silliness?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Light Sensors

Have you seen the video to Fat Boy Slim ft. Bootsy Collins, "Weapon of Choice"?

Christopher Walken. Dancin. And more, watch to the end!

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

You puzzled me for a minute. The curious incident of the router in the lunch time was that nothing went wrong with the router at lunch time, or at any other time. If the router was in the cabin, then you would see the router being switched off with everything else, and you would have chased that issue sooner.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Have I got this right, your work room has sockets, the storage room does not, or is that backwards... or you have sockets but not any wiring...

Maybe you could install something that activates the motion sensor for your light. I'm thinking (1) a fan which turns from side to side, or (2) a sparkly disco ball next to the sensor, or (3) a shiny hanging decoration which might turn itself in the air current around the slightly hot light. Perhaps something like this?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002754722406.html

IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Excuses, excuses

You might keep your supply tucked behind a particular ceiling tile, so if the cameras are only observing the above false ceiling space then there's some argument for it. I think the principle of having to be told that you're being watched still applies, though. But... you could be told that, perhaps without being told where all the cameras are.

I would drive 100 miles and I would drive 100 more just to be the man that drove 200 miles to... hit the enter key

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Remote finger

"A Dark Traveling" specifically has an electric security golem on loan from another universe (read the book) who is passed off by the child characters as not speaking English. Which is true.

"Futurama" has Bender, an evil robot built to bend things, whose closet space is explored in "I, Roommate".

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Remote finger

Science fiction novel "A Dark Traveling" (1987) proposes a humanoid robot that's stashed in a closet until it's required. Come to think, so does "Futurama". I would have really loved to have robot remote access to some remote sites over the years.

tz database community up in arms over proposals to merge certain time zones

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Don't mention the...

I'm not clear on how this works in general, but BBC World Service radio (Europe anyway) broadcasts in English and in Greenwich Mean Time twelve months of the year. I suppose if you're halfway round the globe then converting that to your local time needs knowing how far away Greenwich is and whether you have local daylight saving, which you probably know, but it excuses you knowing whether it's daylight saving in Greenwich, because how would you.

So in this sense at least, Greenwich Mean Time exists while London (except the BBC) is not using GMT.

Don't touch that dial – the new guy just closed the application that no one is meant to close

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Headmaster

"Do not log off, nor close this application"

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: So there is a message in the background...

There's ways to put a program window in the foreground and basically nail it there whatever a user tries to do. I mean intentionally ;-)

Check your bits: What to do when Unix decides to make a hash of your bill printouts

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: £ vs #

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign#History

(sic)

"It is believed" that "lb" weight was written with a cross stroke, then with two cross strokes in a loop, then just as # .

"Why" probably is to make it distinct from numerals, either Roman or a variety of versions of Arabic numeral i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc., some of which have had very different shapes over time and with development of different types of pen.

Specifically distinguishing "lb" from an extra 1 is mentioned.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I'm imagining the fax arriving, "Purchase order, To: emergency support, Payable: #1200.00"

Btw as a point of order, the £ symbol isn't ASCII anything. ASCII (US-ASCII) actually does stop at decimal 127 which was a type of Delete code (DEL), and basically, only US needs are served by ASCII.

I think I recall that certain (Epson?) printers could be set for UK use by a DIP switch setting that mainly caused £ to be printed on paper when the ASCII code of # was received. So the PC could be allowed to output # when it wanted £.

£ was decimal code 156 on a PC, and then 163 in what Windows calls "ANSI", which is just an acronym of a US standards body. So you could and can (?) hold down Alt and key 156 on the PC number pad to type £, but in Windows you also can do Alt and 0163.

These and Unicode UTF-8 include at least the printable codes of ASCII, but codes outside the range decimal 0 to 127 are not ASCII.

Apple emergency patches fix zero-click iMessage bug used to inject NSO spyware

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Apple screws the pre-iOD 13 customers

Ah, not this time: behold iOS 12.5.5. Took a few days though.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/24/apple_zero_day/

...fixes another nasty thing too.

But allegedly not some others which are also in iOS 15.0. So... next week?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Apple screws the pre-iOD 13 customers

I keep saying here, we don't know when they will stop updating iOS 12 alongside 14. Unless it is this time.

If you're Intel, self-driving cars look an awful lot like PCs

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Fuck it. I'm buying a peddle car.

How about a memorial Sinclair C5?

Apple tried to patch this security hole in macOS Finder but didn't consider upper and lowercase characters

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Again with the "remote"

It says I can (theoretically) send you an e-mail with this in it. If you click on the e-mail, and why would you not, then (theoretically) I pwned you. Remote compromise.

This is different, of course, from you creating the compromise file on your own desktop and running it manually. For one thing, if you built the file yourself then you probably gave it permission to run. The bug is that it can run even without that permission.

Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: My Cynical Mind...

Thank god for that, but you left out chopped into little pieces or was that Samsung...

UK Ministry of Defence apologises after Afghan interpreters' personal data exposed in email blunder

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I'm not clear if this has just now happened, or if the BBC held off on revealing the story until an initial attempt could be made to clean the mess up.

A mess which apparently includes one or more recipients doing a "Reply to all".

Electron-to-joule conversion formulae? Cute. Welcome to the school of hard knocks

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: At least two ways of dealing with problems

Similarly: https://notalwaysright.com/this-lesson-really-stings-part-3/233328/

...third adventure of a story protagonist with a title that really refers to episode one. So, confusing.

Is it OK to use stolen data? What if it's scientific research in the public interest?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Ethics is one thing but in the UK and EU isn't it simply illegal to hold or process people's personal data without their consent? Hmm... if we're talking about "Machine Intelligence", which apparently we are, then perhaps it isn't a human being doing this, therefore not breaking the law? Or, if you're the secret police or Britain's NHS, then you have legal permission to hold any data that you want to about people, even about body organs that they don't know they have. Or... this is from Switzerland and again, laws may be different there.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I thought Nazi scientists mostly were like Soviet scientists - they were told in advance what the results of experiments were to be. In which case, not required reading. The rocket scientists though - worth collecting apparently. So...?

Dowden out, Dorries in: Is UK data protection in safe hands?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

Re: You can't spell clusterfuck without Dorries.

Her current password is "red dorries yellow dorries". :-)

Myanmar junta demanded telcos activate phone interception tools – and we refused, says Telenor

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Not to say there aren't problems here, but the U.S. government will declare you a terrorist if the President doesn't like your cheese. Just ask Alex James. :-)

Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov on CLU and why programming is still cool

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

A Turing Award apparently resembles a science Nobel Prize in the time that you wait to get it. Reasons including that it may take a while for the world to realise that you've done something brilliant, and then, there's a queue. (Have they given a Turing Award for queues yet?)

De-identify, re-identify: Anonymised data's dirty little secret

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Nothing says "this is bollocks" like an office e-mail reminding you that you haven't submitted your anonymous employee satisfaction survey form yet.

NYC subway SNAFU probably caused by someone turning it off accidentally, say reports

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Blame the lowest-paid guy in the room

"And why has some fool left this plastic cover over it?" Rip cover off, throw into trash.

Ghosts in the machine learning pipeline will be impossible to exorcise

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: For Whenever Taking a Walk on the WWWild Side of Life .......

"amanfromMars" always writes nearly meaningful gibberish. With this he steals processing time from your irreplaceable life, as you foolishly try to find sense in his output.

I suspect that some of the other people I meet in chat contexts had a similar motive, and died some time ago leaving their respective automatic provocation programs running.

Microsoft releases new Windows 11 builds, confirms running on an Apple M1 'is not a supported scenario'

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

What of Windows 10 21H2?

Interested.

The magic TUPE roundabout: Council, Wipro, Northgate all deny employing Unix admins in outsourcing muddle

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Well, if there wasn't a TUPE rule, then they'd just fire everybody who wasn't specifically needed in this situation.

Another approach would be to make it illegal for this work to be outsourced at all, so that the workers would be council employees and that's that. TUPE is a compromise between "fire everybody" and "a job for life for everybody". Or until the national government reorganises local councils, this council ceases to exist, and everyone id fired anyway... but you do still get TUPE with the next generation of local government.

Miscreants fling booby-trapped Office files at victims, no patch yet, says Microsoft

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Don't forget about Windows 95/98/ME. That platform didn't have user security - but it did have the software that users wanted on a personal machine. And that software wouldn't install on Windows XP except for the Administrator, so the user had to be the Administrator.

Facebook apologises after its AI system branded Black people as primates

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Shame to feckbook!

Someone was on radio the other day talking about online trolls who told her she is an animal. Since the trolls didn't mean it in the "technically, correct" sense, I do recognise it as a problem.

Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: "System App" bollocks

OK, I did a bit of checking, there's this from July: https://www.laptopmag.com/uk/news/windows-11-install-requires-a-microsoft-account-heres-how-to-avoid-it

Despite what the URL says, the actual article quotes from "a source close to the company" that you CAN install Windows 11 Pro creating a "local" account.

Other Windows 11 versions - no.

And it says with Windows 11 Home "You will be able to move to a local account after you have completed installation", but since I got the firm impression that if you install Windows 10 with a Microsoft account then after that you can only use Microsoft accounts, I'm sceptical that that would be different for Windows 11.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: "System App" bollocks

I may be wrong but I think it's slightly subtler - that you can't install current Windows 10 to log in with a local account if you let the installer connect to the internet. A Microsoft (online) account is the only option offered, then and later.

If you install offline, I think it still encourages you towards a Microsoft account, but you can resist.

Windows 11 I think is Microsoft accounts only.

A question: I gather that Windows 10 21H2 update is in development, but do we know I repeat, know - if it will actually be released and if you will be able to choose it instead of Windows 11?

Oh! A surprise tour of the data centre! You shouldn't have. No, you really shouldn't have

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Go on...

I for one will be happy to hear another story? ;-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: year 2000

Smoke alarms: I expect that if you press the test button on each one, then the one that's dying will give an unhappy indication.

Smoke alarms and also clocks: Then, or more or less then, you replace the battery in each one of them, because the ones that aren't dead will be nearly dead at the same time.

Norwegian student tracks Bluetooth headset wearers by wardriving around Oslo on a bicycle

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I think the risk there is less "government which can afford to install a billion CCTV cameras and face recognition that even works" and more "kidnapper or mugger".

I won't describe how you might track someone going home with an expensive looking phone if you aren't the government and also you don't want to spend your whole day following them, but knowing their route and choosing a good place for an uninterrupted robbery is one purpose of the exercise.

Volkswagen to stop making its best-selling product for Wolfsburg workers: VW-branded sausages

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Alternatively...

You have to grow the vegetables anyway and then feed them to the meat animal. And there's the question of methane - which BBC World Service Radio covered at length this week. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1hsw

(One of the contributors is a big producer of methane, which a. is worse than CO2 and b. turns into CO2 anyway.

So the one thing worse than burning methane, is not burning methane.)

How to stop a content filter becoming a career-shortening network component

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: implementing Surf control was fun

I don't really want to invest time thinking of something witty to say about "insider dealing", but it could apply.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Keyword filtering

Not sure if I should do this or if it works -

"Scunthorpe is a real place? I thought it was made up for comedic purposes."

https://twitter.com/Ben_Aaronovitch/status/1400732052576739331

"Rivers of London" is an urban fantasy series, novels and spinoffs, about police and magic in the 21st century, but this is "just" arresting a young street thief: the women are police officers. But the boss of the street gang turns out to be an elf. (Probably not. It isn't all out yet.)