Posts by tiggity

Re: "who wouldn't enjoy a go on a steam train simulator?"

Visit the UK, lots of steam locos still in use.

I recommend Bridgnorth.

e.g. travel to Bridgnorth by train & last leg from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth will be on a steam train (they are in "proper" mainline use rather than trundling around on disconnected track sections of some of the more "hobbyist" lines, though must say those can be great fun too, live a few miles from a couple of different ones and enjoy occasional trips on them)

Plus it has a funicular railway in the town as an added bonus..

Re: Am I missing something?

@Jim Whitaker

But this is comments page on an IT related web site

People doing none (or only some) of your A, B, C are likely to be very, very small % of visitors here, but make up a hefty chunk of www users overall

@Zarno

Most "local" (small cartel of media groups run them) news websites in UK are awful for huge number of ads (& irritating ones) - only option is to go in fully defended. They lose any ad income from me as sites just impossible to use otherwise; intrusive ads, delayed render that "jiggles" page around so intended click target moves & you click something else just lose revenue in the end as people ad block or just stop visiting the sites.

Re: They set out to piss off the gun owners? Really?

Anti Terror officers have an axe to grind against lots of people.

FFS they would make the middle class climate protestors of ER a terror group if they had their way.

There's a lot more violent cops than violent animal rights activists.

.. I know plenty of wildlife monitors and hunt sabbers, they are all extremely NON violent (it's why I don't hunt sab, local sab group have policy of not retaliating to violence inflicted on them by the hunt / hunt followers - I'm too working class for that, if someone hits me, they get hit back

Re: Because of Les, She's No Longer on "The Talk"

WHo embeds an image in an email FFS?

Attachments the only way to stop email clients messing with your images.

Re: Bloody hell, nobody told me the police would cut my lawn!

grass is not a breeding ground for mosquitoes - eggs dropped in still water, which is where larvae feed and pupate.

Long grass can be good for wildlife - birds love the grass seeds, lots of bees & other insects visit the "wild" grassland area we maintain.

But I'm not in the "land of the free" - I'm in the UK, and ironically free to make my garden wildlife friendly

I used FTP in Firefox, until they broke add ons by going the chrome model, I occasionally used FireFTP addon as very nice browser addon tool for FTP upload when required.

A lot of places still use FTP internally & you would be surprised how many companies still expect you to get / send data via FTP rather than via API calls in their "integration" of data between systems.

... I can even remember way back when some third party card payment / authorization systems used FTP as the interface ... there's a bit of scary for you!

Re: The door

I doubt many old garages have room for some of the huge cars* people drive around in today, probably why a lot used for freezers etc (plus many UK houses tiny so space too valuable for a car).

*Fancy a laugh, compare an original mini to a modern "mini"

Re: Whether governments used it legally or illegally is not the point

@JulieM

"If the good guys can get in, that means the bad guys can also get in"

That assumes there are some good guys.

Cannot assume state actor = good guy.

??? Corbyn is one of the least racist MPs in the current parliament. Try looking at his voting record, political action, his history of protests.

Try a bit of research & less taking media / comments of those with an axe to grind at face value.

I'm not a Corbyn fan (for many, many reasons) but he is rare in being an honest MP, & someone who, although he compromised a lot as leader / repeatedly reached out to the "right" of Labour, he could not be "bought" be it financially or by promotions, gongs etc. (hence a lot of people demonizing him as a lot of people like their politicians to be of the bought & paid for variety)

Re: For those saying the OS data should be free ... it largely is.

@K Cartlidge

I don't think the detailed footpath data is free -would be delighted to be proven wrong.

If it was free I would have expected lots of apps out there competing with the (not very good IMHO) OS apps.

Re: central control

Confused as to why you need a particular app to go to another Country.

Never had issues in Europe with "needing" an app - but I'm not welded to my phone so probably have a different mindset as to what's needed abroad compared to most people.

Re: Source of wealth

Given the name of the financial services company, is it by any chance related to a financial company that Jacob Rees Mogg* is involved with as the names are suspiciously similar & cannot think of a great reason for "Somerset" being main part of a Dutch company name?

* I was really well behaved & did not add a #ToryScum hashtag

Re: No mention of those this is copying like the Aya Neo

Hope https://www.ayaneo.com/ hardware is better than their software skills - I will never know as web page shows zilch for me when visiting (as its an unknown site so enter with most JS disabled by default).

Always code your site based on non JS browsers (lots of screen readers struggle with JS heavy sites too, its not just us malware averse cautious people). It's not difficult - by all means use JS to "improve" (opinions vary on whether its a real improvement) your site, but render content & allow navigation if JS is disabled

Re: Wait...

Yes they are edible.

Carp very popular in some areas e.g. Poland

Re: "it has proved effective"?

@AC Personally I would be happy if people had to mask up in flu season

As someone who suffers respiratory problems (& react really badly when I get a respiratory system targeting infection such as a cold, never mind flu) my health has really benefited from mask wearing reducing prevalence of various infections as a by product of anti COVID measures.

Would be happy if we went more along the regular mask use culture route that some other societies have had for a while.

Re: Open Season on the ICO

Why are you surprised?

One law for the few, another for the many.

As it always* has been

* since legal frameworks were developed

Re: What precedes Patch Tuesday?

Nothing stopping people having all sorts of drinks.

Always a few single malt Scotch whisky knocking around the house (amongst other spirits), but also often a bottle of Southern Comfort (or similar bourbon style spirit) around.

Different drinks but also drunk in different ways / for different reasons - I'll irk the purists by saying I will occasionally have a small single malt (or a bourbon, or a rum, etc.) to accompany a dessert - depends on dessert flavour & sweetness but its a matter of picking something to complement it e.g. simplistically if you are going the contrasting flavours approach a "tangy" dessert gets a sweet drink such as rum or bourbon, a "sweet" desert gets a single malt etc. The appropriate drink for a meal course is a thing of argument though (some go for "matching" approach e.g. a sweet drink with a sweet dessert).

Verbosity aside, context is key, no such thing as a "bad" drink in the right circumstances.

Re: If you can't tax 'em fine 'em

Beat me to it on the robots.txt

At least Google obey it (glares at Baidu & many others)

When I use a news aggregator I often click through to the actual site to get details so "publisher" gets their hits (unless its a site I have blacklisted for over intrusive ads as they can swivel)

Don't if its a clickbait or mickey take headline e.g. a lot of "local" UK newspaper sites (in reality owned by a handful of big companies) have a penchant for headlines construct such as "[potentially interesting] event in [countyname]", which the aggregators dutifully just give the headline

e.g. "300 new homes to be built in Kent town" "Major accident in Yorkshire village"

.. in these cases I don't bother as chances are its going to be irrelevant (most counties big & area of the county you are interested in relatively small) - if its near enough to be "local" to me I will eventually hear about it via friends or other news sources.

Re: App based stuff, and if someone steals my phone ?

Don't do payments on my phone, banking etc.

It has very little useful info on it as its mainly used for calls and texts (and the occasional game / bit of web browsing). Zero chance of it getting the NHS app - it does not have the COVID app on it (as, shock horror in these times, most of the time I do not have my mobile phone with me, only when I'm out and about without my partner do I take my mobile for emergency contact use (very rarely take it if I am expecting an important call) & usually if I am out I am out with my partner).

Re: svelte aircraft-inspired design

I'm happy to have something thicker, if it means more ports, occasionally useful stuff like an optical drive, better battery (preferably easy to remove and replace), better ventilation / cooling. Don't get this mania for the ultra slim... Obviously you don't want something massively heavy but the thinness mania irritates me (same on phones - give me a thicker phone with an easy* to replace battery please FFS)

* and by easy I mean a few seconds (unclip the old one, clip in the new one) - not "easy" in terms of a "solution" that involves faffing around with screwdrivers to remove screws (that always seem to be the one head type you don't have a tool for) and / or heat guns to melt glue etc.

Re: air gap - Air Gap - AIR GAP

Fully agree, some of my early IT roles were in industrial systems & security of the PLCs and other hardware was minimal, but nobody cared as it was expected to be an internal only system (no external exposure)

Re: 50 Shades of Grey

Had similar with old, but good condition, furniture when clearing mums house (due to her going into care home)

Charities turned their nose up at lots of furniture (even though it was well built & would massively outlast flatpack hardboard / thin pine / plywood flatpack junk) as it was too "old fashioned" (bear in mind this was a furniture charity that was giving furniture to people in need for free so you would think that they would be less picky. If I was skint and had no table and given choice between a "dated" design of table or continuing with no table, I would pick having a table.

So lots of perfectly good stuff ended up at the tip (fortunately some stuff went to family & friends, biggest of which was a 3 piece suite that charity turned down!)

Re: Awaiting FlatTards....

I'm sure there's plenty of people involved in flat earth stuff as important "influencers" (or whatever) just as an easy way to make a living, in the same way that many church leaders seem to be in it for the foldable green stuff rather than New Testament (rather socialist so a lot of them don't like that) ideals.

Re: Question

It's a bit complex in NI as individuals can choose to be in Team Ireland or Team GB (in some sports).

In other sports its Team Ireland as your only option (e.g. boxing, unless you move out of Ireland to a GB club).

Isle of Man etc is fun, Team GB for Olympics but their own entity in Commonwealth Games (just like Scotland, Wales etc. (so someone IOM born, like Cav*, could (and did) represent their birth island in the Commonwealth games)

* Chose Mark Cavendish as IOM example as he may well be in the news soon for record equalling performance in Le Tour

Re: sub-£500

Yes, nearly all my phones have been "cheap" too (not cheap in my view, but cheap in the world of phones, i.e. sub 150)

(only exception was years back when I used to do some Android dev work & had a google Nexus phone for some dev use - but still had a basic model phone to make sure apps ran on that too)

Re: Optional

your analytics would not see me as their cookies are blocked (analytics only work if users are not blocking various cookies)

However, your web server logs would get my IP address so in my "visit" case would be more useful than analytics.

.. Yes, I know IP does not mean a unique user, could be a whole company behind it, might be from a VPN, tor exit node, whatever but limited data beats zero data

Re: “Re-wilding”

All the places I have lived in the last 20 odd years have had high radon levels - just a fact of life due to the geology of many parts of the UK (some of which were mentioned above).

Sadly lacking in any superpowers / glowing in the dark / advantageous mutations from it all.

Re: meh

@Timto

I have used the (various versions of) Process Hacker over the years (whenever possible, some corporate IT places ban it as their AV* stuff does not like some of its low level behaviour, even though you can get the source code, check its benign and build it from source rather than downloading it! ... could be because it lets you kill just about anything so various processes e.g. AV (that are essentially unkillable with windows task manager) could be killed by it if you so chose).

I find it far better at killing processes than the default windows task manager

*AV = anti virus

Re: Why only M1? Also applies to Intel Macbook's

Flawed belief that you will use the laptop with an external monitor.

I'm happy to use a laptop just with laptop screen... BUT .. do want to have external mouse & keyboard plugged in if I'm using it for anything more than a few minutes.

If I did use an external monitor it would not have lots of ports (I use kit until it dies, I don't replace stuff just because something newer comes out) - & monitors have long lives.

Re: Let's move away from remuneration shall we, and consider the wider society

I would be very happy if fully self driving cars were imminent (I can drive but really dislike it & use public transport whenever possible) but, certainly for UK driving, it's going to be after my lifetime before an AI car can cope with what UK roads & weather throw at it with zero human intervention required.

Disclosure: Live in a rural area so all the fun of cattle crossing, single track roads (with 2 way traffic, so the "negotiations" with other road users as to who reverses into a passing place), horses (& even horses leading carts) not uncommon (and needing a real wide and slow overtaking scenario to avoid spooking them)), crossroads with no lights / roundabouts (so again, "negotiations" with other road users).

The "negotiations" bit will be interesting - person to person sometimes it can be done via lights, horn, small movements of the vehicle but often massively aided by a facial expression / hand gesture (not an option open to an AI unless start adding external animated screens so AI can do a "beckoning on hand gesture" or whatever.

Re: Interesting dichotomy here

@Pascal Monett

The Indian suspension was over copyrighted material inclusion, given how so many corporations do a totally over zealous approach to "copyright issues" (& often give users no way to argue its not copyright infringement (e.g. white noise debacles) or that its fair use of a snippet (in places that doctrine applies)) I am not surprised - may well even have been a fully automated process.

Whereas Trump issue was not about copyrighted content, so rather different (& Indian IT minister account was reactivated).