* Posts by Toby Poynder

21 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2011

Australian techie jailed for accessing museum's accounting system and buying himself stuff

Toby Poynder

Why anonymous?

Seems odd that none of the reports actually give the criminal's name. Is this some Australian thing? I know in Germany they are very careful about naming people even after a conviction (Jozef K....), maybe this is something similar.

Open-source leaders' reputations as jerks is undeserved

Toby Poynder

Speaking as an onlooker

I preferred the old Linus.

Samsung Galaxy A52 5G: Sub-$600 midranger makes premium phones feel frivolous

Toby Poynder

What about the software?

Samsung hardware seems nice enough but I've always been put off by their aversion to stock Android, not to mention the dreaded Bixby. What is the software like on these? Is there much bloatware to get rid of?

Harassers and bullies succeed in tech because silence is encouraged

Toby Poynder

What is the difference between someone speaking *the* truth and someone speaking *their* truth?

Adobe yanks freebie Creative Cloud offer – now universities and colleges have to put up or shut up

Toby Poynder

Creative students?

"this means Adobe ... is forcing us to license just for creative students and that means all the others ... cannot have access." I'm not sure what this means. Is a "creative student" a student doing an art or design course? Why should any other student want to use Adobe products? Genuinely confused.

Wanna force granny to take down that family photo from the internet? No problem. Europe's GDPR to the rescue

Toby Poynder

Seven years

The woman in question took down all the pictures of the kids except for one of her grandson - whom she looked after for *seven years* ("cared for from April 2012 through April 2019 while the boy and his father, separated from the mother, lived with her"). This is a grotesque misuse of GDPR.

Driveway karaoke singer who wanted to lift lockdown spirits cops council noise complaint

Toby Poynder

Re: Forgive me for being a miserable git but...

I'm not a clapper myself but the council estate round the back of my place erupts every Thursday evening to I can safely say it is not just a middle class thing, whatever else it is.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Toby Poynder

Note the arrogance and self-satisfaction here

If you disagree with us you aren't even worth arguing with.

And the very same people are surprised with the Brexit vote.

At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd

Toby Poynder

On a brighter note, there *are* alternatives

Anyone got any experience with S6? Looks promising to my uneducated eyes but would be interested to hear from anyone who has actually used it in anger.

Bose customers beg for firmware ceasefire after headphones fall victim to another crap update

Toby Poynder

Renting headphones

Nuraphone are already onto that one:

https://www.nuraphone.com/products/nuranow

When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences

Toby Poynder
Thumb Down

What an unpleasant display of smugness here

It may well seem very obvious to anyone who reads The Register why it is foolish to save your files locally, but some people - who may be vastly talented in other areas - find it difficult to understand concepts like mapped drives and local disks no matter how many explanations or threats are offered. Phillipe and his assistant need to grow up and understand that IT support involves people as well as computers. As for all this "well they disobeyed company policiy so they deserve everything they get" attitude - have you any idea how priggish that sounds?

tldr; we are none of us perfect, get off your moral high horse and show some compassion.

Virtual inanity: Solution to Irish border requires data and tech not yet available, MPs told

Toby Poynder

I have actually read the Good Friday (Belfast really) Agreement

It's not that long - 35 generously spaced pages.

The word "border" is used ten times. Eight times as "all-island and cross-border". One mention of "cross-border workers" and one mention of the need for emergency services to operate cross-border. This would seem to accept that there will indeed be a border.

It does state that there should be "as early a return as possible to normal security arrangements" but what could be more normal than a border post between two countries?

On the other hand there is a crystal-clear statement that "We reaffirm our total and absolute .... opposition to any use or threat of force by others for any political purpose, whether in regard to this agreement or otherwise."

So how come a customs post is a regarded as a clear violation of the Agreement yet saying darkly "The men of violence won't put up with a hard border" is ok?

Firm fat-fingered G Suite and deleted its data, so it escalated its support ticket to a lawsuit

Toby Poynder

Re: Under a cloud

Erm vapour is transparent. When you look at a nice fluffy white cloud you're actually looking a water droplets.

'Cynical and bullying' TalkTalk hackerhacker getsgets 4 yearsyears behindbehind barsbars

Toby Poynder
Stop

"Reach out" makes me retch...

"It was also claimed Kelley *reached out* to TalkTalk's then-CEO Dido Harding" (my emphasis). Can we stop this "reaching out" bullshit please? Horrible touchy-feely language and particularly inappropriate to describe the actions of an extortionist threatening his victim.

From MySpace to MyFreeDiskSpace: 12 years of music – 50m songs – blackholed amid mystery server move

Toby Poynder

We reached out to...

Please don't. Ghastly Americanism.

You attempted to contact. You asked for a comment.

Bruce Perens wants to anti-SLAPP Grsecurity's Brad Spengler with $670,000 in legal bills

Toby Poynder

No sympathy for GRSec

He Who Goes to Law Takes a Wolf by the Ears

Far Cry 4 review: It's a far cry from Far Cry 3

Toby Poynder

"losing magazine-after-magazine" ... what, did you accidentally drop them on people's heads to knock them out? Cunning indeed.

Lenovo IdeaPad U410 14in Ultrabook review

Toby Poynder

SSD

How does the 32Gb SSD help the system performance? Does it appear as a drive letter in Windows?

So, just what is the ultimate bacon sarnie?

Toby Poynder

On the Great Sauce Question

A friend of mine mentioned that he'd had a bacon sandwich for breakfast, and I naturally inquired whether he'd put tomato ketchup or brown sauce on it. "Daddy's", came the magisterial reply, "ketchup is for fools". I think that settles the matter.

Ten... freeware gems for new PCs

Toby Poynder

Some more

As mentioned above, Irfan View is a terrific image viewer

ImgBurn is a very competent CD/DVD/Blu-Ray burner, I've found it can do things that Nero can't manage.

NirSoft have a load of cool little utilities, check out their website.

Macrium have a free edition of their Reflect disk imaging software which works really well.

Thanks to all the developers who create this stuff and give it away!

Ten... all-in-one inkjet printers

Toby Poynder

Canon rock

I'm a happy Pixma MP600 user, always buy cheap ink and hardly ever have any problems. Unlike HP good quality, no bullshit software (I *hate* all those hpqmz123.dll type thingies). Set a friend up with the networked version (MP620) and it just plain works, day in, day out. No ADF, so a nice flat surface for the cat to sit on as well (though you do have to blow the hair out of the works occasionaly).