Posts by Gwaptiva

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

a bit late to this party but

I think we would be amiss if we didn't nominate a tub of lard

Twitter employees sue over lack of 60-day layoff notice

If Musk were interested in profit, he'd stay away from his Twitter account.

If that man already runs afoul of US legislation, wait until he gets bannded from the EU for failure to adhere to EU Law.

Business can't make staff submit to video surveillance, says court

Similar situation here. My boss has even offered to pay for a camera, but I don't feel comfortable being filmed, even if I get to control exactly when and where. And even if *I* may have agreed to being surveilled, anybody else that happens to share my working space (ie. living room) hasn't.

Thankfully, I have a good boss, and he's fine with this. He knows what I look like in a professional setting and has no need to see me in my bathrobe.

Soaring costs, inflation nurturing generation of 'quiet quitters' among under-30s

Re: Not quiet quitting, work to rule

Children that beg get nothing.

Children that do not get nothing either.

IT services giant Wipro fires 300 for moonlighting

Re: restrictive conditions?

But then, I would love my German employer to force a non-compete clause on me that goes past the end of the contract (like described in the article). In Germany, to make that stick, he'll have to continue to pay me for as long as he wishes to block me away from the competition. Bring it on, I can use some extra holidays

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Re: Examples?

Informality is certainly a turn-off; in English this is much more subtle than in languages like French, German or Dutch. So is trying to get me (M, 50+) interested by offering "free soft drinks/smoothies and a chill room with fussball table and Xbox, followed by Laser Tag and pub crawl"... ok, might join you for the pub crawl...

Google's plan to win the cloud war hinges on its security aspirations

Google, Microsoft, Amazon et al should be hard at work lobbying the US government to scrap stuff like the CLOUD Act and introduce privacy safeguards as strong as the EU's, or they can all forget about winning in the EU.

Yes, AFAIK, the existence of the CLOUD Act and its impact on GDPR has yet to be decided by the European courts, but if previous verdicts about Safe Harbour etc are anything to go by, the fact that an individual European citizen lacks practical legal recourse when their data are improperly handled by US companies, suggests it won't be long before cloud solutions operated by US-owned companies, even if those are EU subsidiaries/joint ventures etc, are declared non-GDPR, and as such will be off-limits to almost every operation in the EU

US is best place to be a software engineer, salary survey finds

And yet, they couldn't pay me enough to actually want to work there.

Db2, where are you? Big Blue is oddly reluctant to discuss recent enhancements to its flagship database

Re: Throwaway society mentality comes to IT

> these are things that are provisioned and priced like utilities now.

Ironically, IBM recognised very early on this was where the internet would be heading (with a bit of pushing from IBM of course); it was Gerstner's pet project (at a time when Microsoft was still trying to work out if this world wide web thing would be important or not).

But, as per usual, IBM cannot do joined up thinking

IBM researcher suing for age discrimination blames CEO Arvind Krishna for his ousting

Re: Who wants to work for IBM?

<insert picture of T-Rex trying to wipe its bum here>

ProtonMail deletes 'we don't log your IP' boast from website after French climate activist reportedly arrested

"In this case, Proton received a legally binding order from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice which we are obligated to comply with. There was no possibility to appeal or fight this particular request because an act contrary to Swiss law did in fact take place (and this was also the final determination of the Federal Department of Justice which does a legal review of each case)."

Hmmm, either some issue in the reporting or just utter BS: Where I'm from, and I suspect this is the same in other countries in the Council of Europe, whether or not an act contrary ot national law has "in fact" taken place can only be determined by a Judge. Not by the executive branch. These orders can (and routinely are) appealed or fought.

Dutch education IT crisis averted as Google agrees to 'major privacy improvements'

Except that regulators in small countries can issue the same fines as regulators in large countries under the EU's GDPR: Up to 10 million euros or 2 percent of the corporation's global revenue (note: revenue, not profit, not pretax, plain revenue), whichever is the HIGHER. And this is *per violation*.

What is your greatest weakness? The definitive list of the many kinds of interviewer you will meet in Hell

Re: My greatest weakness...

standard answer to the "what is your greatest weakness", I now always answer "Marzipan"

An axe age, a sword age, Privacy Shield is riven, but what might that mean for European businesses?

Go tell that to execs/shareholders of BA and Marriott... the UK ICO issued the two greatest fines under GDPR in the EU (200m and 100m, resp). Even for companies that size that's no sinecure

Total Eclipse to depart: Open-source software foundation is hopping the pond to Europe

Re: A long time coming

Well, they have Traditional ans Simplified Chinese, so seems small trouble to do the same for English

IR35 blame game: Barclays to halt off-payroll contractors, goes directly to PAYE

Re: IR35 idiocy

"Headhunting agencies will be hurt as well."

You make that sound like it's a bad thing

600 armed German cops storm Cyberbunker hosting biz on illegal darknet market claims

In Germany, some police are more armed than other police.... I'm still shaking at the memory of the morning an Arrest Team (SEK) stormed my neighbour's flat. I'm just a regular nerdy joe, and I was in the flat next door, but I nearly peed my pants at the shock and awe. And that was just a regular SEK... GSG9 are another level altogether

I got 99 problems but a switch() ain't one: Java SE 13 lands with various tweaks as per Oracle's less-is-more strategy

As long as the JDKs continue to support compiling and running to Java 8, I'm fine with release schedules. Java 9's Jigsaw is a nightmare that will stop uptake (by most significant legacy applications, at least) of any new features post that; until the powers that be admit it was a mistake and remove it again

Freebie tier coming to issue-tracking Jira, but you'll have to cough up to unlock the good stuff

Jippeeee, we'll be saving 20 bucks a year! I'll go ask for a raise immediately

There once was a biz called Bitbucket, that told Mercurial to suck it. Now devs are dejected, their code soon ejected

Re: That was a close call.

I was a wee bit earlier to that decision, but chose Mercurial as the reviews (and mine) showed it was easier to use that Git, something that was highly critical in a legacy environment (where people thought Subversion fixed ALL issues that CVS has). At that point, it was maybe 50-50, maybe Git a bit ahead due to its "made by St Linus" predicate.

Now, we don't host our source code externally, so I am much more concerned about continued support for Mercurial in Atlassian's SourceTree.

As many as 100,000 IBM staff axed in recent years as Big Blue battles to reinvent itself from IT's 'old fuddy duddy'

Trust the Brits

to produce electric wheel chairs, that they'll then have to push around by hand...

Ozzy app maker cancels hump day: We've tripled profits! scream slackers

I sure hope my boss doesn't get any ideas; I already have to suffer through 2 days a week (plus 30-odd days a year on top of that) that show me I have no friends

Vodafone: Daft Huawei comms gear ban will cripple UK – and cost punters loads

Not like the UK needed any outside help with crippling itself

Another German state plans switch back from Linux to Windows

Re: Corruption is the word

In that case, your sympathies should be even greater for Schleswig-Holstein; not only is it moving to Linux etc, but it's also part of the real surname of the British queen, who married Mr Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg

Have we got a new, hip compound IT phrase for you! Enter... UserDev

I just wish someone would tell my boss we need at least half a dozen extra people to support a 2 person development team :)

Wang, bang, thank you, mang: Acer exec off to sell PCs for Lenovo

Re: Wang

And ruined a perfectly decent ice hockey club :)

Oracle finally targets Java non-payers – six years after plucking Sun

Re: All very dubious

"Gives clever people 3 years to leave."

And the very clever ones to smile quietly knowing that their rates are going to rise and rise.

I mean, COBOL is still around and those that know how to maintain it are making gold money. You all move to your fun languages, and I'll fatten my pension account with the Java left-overs.

Microsoft, Slack et al will 'laugh their asses off' at IBM's biz messaging tool

Re: NIH

half-arsed Slack clone's half-arsed IRC clone

Not-so Secret Rulers of the World gather to talk cybersecurity, AI and, er, TalkTalk?

Massive lecturer-audience discrepancy

So, 100-odd clueless world and business leaders are going to be Clueless in Dresden for 3 days. I mean, they invited the Dutch king who is already happy when he manages to tie his shoelaces in the morning

Software snafu let EU citizens get referendum vote, says Electoral Commission

Unfortunately, the average citizen will be average, and therefore will be smarter than nearly half the population... that's very worrying indeed :D

The EU wants you to log into YouTube using your state-issued ID card

This is going to be so easy to sabotage

Just use the I'm Spartacus principle. Just takes one person to share his ID card details and then the rest of the world can use that. Suddenly Mr Joe Bloggs will appear to have a bandwidth of a few exabits and the whole system comes tumbling down.

Colander-wearing Irishman denied driver's licence in Pastafarian slapdown

Obviously a parody

No, to qualify as a religion you have to believe in normal rational things like virgin births, spontaneously combusting shrubberies and mountaineering aphorisms

BMW complies with GPL by handing over i3 car code

Re: Life in a Call Center

And this is the exact reason that once you made the phone call without a resolution, you write a letter (or email if you are in a hurry) to the CEO or Chairman of the company you are trying to deal with with your complaint.

In the majority of organisations, these "executive complaints" get handled by a special team, with loooads of leeway and leverage, considering they were told by the CEO -- in reality his/her secretary, to make the complaint go away.

Internet users don't understand security or privacy, says survey

Re: Government mistrust in Germany and Korea

Also, the German population seems to realise that "for valid national security reasons" tends to mean "for valid national security and business interests of the United States of America and its corporations"

Spanish launch heroic bid to seize Brit polar vessel

A compromise suggestion

How about RRS Chatham?

It sure wouldn't be as "offensive" as Michiel de Ruyter :P

BBC encourages rebellious Welsh town to move offshore

Re: Way to go, beeb! Increase your viewership at home. Any way to help us smaller left-pondians?

Jon Oliver did just that a few months back: Just start the Church of Small Convenience (Stores)

A quarter of public sector IT workers have never used the cloud

The Cloud = The Ultimate in Vaporware

Thank FSM, the company I work for has been hosting our business application for some customers for 10+ years but we still call it Hosted Service. We occasionally joke that we should call it Cloud Edition, but we're afraid our customers will think our servers are hosted by the NSA

The 'echo chamber' effect misleading people on climate change

As others have already pointed out, the issue is with actually finding out what the facts are, not just the facts we are being given. If nothing else, the Climategate affair demonstrated data is being withheld. I don't care about the reasons for this, it is not the way science should be done, and has dragged this science into the area of homeopathy and iriscopy: cherrypicked results to prove a position

Angry Austrian could turn Europe against the US - thanks to data

In case of a verdict that tips the US Safe Harbour thingie, it would be interesting to see if the same can be done with the UK. Because data stored in the UK is as unsafe

Lonely this Xmas? Nerds, n00bs and no-hopers' guide to dating apps, Pt.1

Re: Rugged?????

My body type is athletic

Shotputters are athletes, right?

Btw, real nerds don't own a smartphone, because they know it's a waste of money if nobody wants to talk to you

Amazon workers in Germany stage Christmas strike

Re: logistics? @ratfox

The city of Berlin tried to, and then got overruled by the federal courts. Sunday trading laws are the most relaxed in Berlin, but they do exist.

Buy Your Own Device: No more shiny-shiny work mobe for you

I don't even own a phone to bring into work. *Luddite icon please*

How many telecoms firms left in Europe? Another mega-billion deal slated in France

So, the EU ban on monopolies with a market impact has led to fewer telecoms companies than when each state operated its own... whoddathunkit

Origins of SEXUAL INTERCOURSE fished out of SCOTTISH LAKE

Well, since we've invented it...

the word FUCK is oors!

But we'll let you use it for a very reasonable license fee

Hey, non-US websites – FBI don't have to show you any stinkin' warrant

Re: illegal abroad surely

Ok, so they get away with this line of defence without sparking a full-blown international scandal because it's possible to search a server in Iceland from the US.

Which is a bit rich for an agency (and its government) that is hellbound on treating the internet as the same as the physical world.

Can you imagine what the reaction would've been had the FBI flown out to Reykjavik to search suspect's appartment without a warrant... or even with a warrant signed by a US judge?

But if it's all the same, can the Met please perform a search of Mr G.W. Bush's private residence? No warrant needed, because it's abroad, and the crimes he's suspected of are quite serious

So long Lotus 1-2-3: IBM ceases support after over 30 years of code

Re: Notes

Bit unfortunate way of saying it, but yes, the scripting/programming in Lotus was powerful but badly implemented. It was often quicker to develop from the ground up than to implement a change or a bug, even if it was your own code to start with.

Germany strikes again over Amazon warehouse pay

Re: Who's being exploited?

Taking into consideration the still high levels of unemployment in the areas where Amazon has its distribution centres in Germany, plus the types of employment offered (low/unskilled manual warehouse/shipping work), the fact that in Germany you need to complete an apprenticeship to stack shelves or <strikethru>flip burgers</strikethru> work in system gastronomy, plus the relatively high numbers of immigrant workers, your free market idealism falls flat. There is nowhere else to go for a lot of many of these folk.

The free market is neither free, nor a market... if it were free, it would be Deutsche Bank, AIG and others that were broke and not Greece

Uber alles... nein! Germany imposes nationwide ban on taxi app

So, there we have it. There are illegal minicab drivers in the UK as well. The only difference appears to be the definition of what is a minicab. It just seems that German courts are going to interpret the definition of minicab to include cars booked through Uber (and possibly in the UK they aren't).

US regulators OK sale of IBM's x86 server biz to Lenovo

Re: Quote from advert on El Reg

for "expect exciting changes", read: mass resource actions

Pleased to meet you. I'm Joe Bloggs, MVP, vExpert, Cisco Champ

Re: T'was ever thus

Also, the risk with any kind of certification in IT is that people forget that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Plenty of people know their stuff without ever bothering (or being given the resources to bother) with the tests, paperwork, brown-nosing, or whatever else it takes to be noticed.