Posts by disgruntled yank

Scala contributor: Open source and diversity key to tackling dev skills shortage

Computing-related jobs

How many of the 500 thousand are in software development, as opposed to tech support, network administration, etc.?

Fields

Pretty damn near nobody who got to university before 1970 had experience coding. Guy L. Steele did (if it was before 1970) because he went to Boston Latin School, but not e.g. Donald Knuth. Somehow the Knuths, Ritchies, etc. managed to make a living.

I was screwed over by Cisco managers who enforced India's caste hierarchy on me in US HQ, claims engineer

Re: How did they learn he was Dalit?

... Maneuverings to find out name and school,/Subtle discrimination by addresses/With scarcely an exception to the rule/That Norman, Ken, and Sidney signaled Prod/While Seamus (call me Shane) was surefire Pape.

--Seamus (who else?) Heaney

Google Cloud partially evaporates for hours amid power supply failure: Two US East Coast zones rattled

Tweeted last November

"The cloud is just a computer in Reston with a bad power supply."

https://twitter.com/pragmaticandy/status/1168916144121634818?lang=en

(For those not familiar with the Washington, DC, area, Reston is a vaguely defined area in northern Virginia, close to Dulles airport, fifteen or twenty miles from Washington.)

An unfortunate bit of product placement for Microsoft as Liverpool celebrates winning some silverware

Clarification

Americans don't insist on call that sport football, they just call it football. It is affected for a native-born American to refer to any other sport as "football", roughly on a par with referring to the "boot" of a car or proposing to travel vertically in a "lift".

Hope this helps.

US Department of Defense releases list of firms allegedly linked to the Chinese Army. Surprise surprise, Huawei makes an appearance

Re: In China

So it was you Britons who dressed up in the snappy duds for the Victory Day parade in Moscow this week? I must say you looked spiffy.

Fasten your seat belts: Brave Reg hack spends a week eating airline food grounded by coronavirus crash

Valor deserves its reward

A Palatezer Prize, maybe?

Once again, racial biases show up in AI image databases, this time turning Barack Obama white

To point the moral

Comparisons are invidias.

Huawei going to predict the future? Nope, say company leaders when asked about Joe Biden winning US election

stands for

Joe Biden largely stands for not being Donald Trump. In 2016, Donald Trump mostly stood for not being Hillary Clinton, so we shall see.

Date of election:

"The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States."

(U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 1.) Note that the day here mentioned is for the Electoral College to vote. In the early Republic the states held their elections at considerably varying times. In some states the electors were chosen by the legislature.

The reference to Roosevelt above presumably refers to the 20th Amendment, which moved the date of the presidential inauguration back from March to January.

VMware and Office for Mac need patching, Microsoft can scan your firmware, and Anonymous takes credit for Atlanta police hacks

For the benefit of readers outside the US

"Brown has no shortage of sway on Capitol Hill"

Except that he does. He is a ranking minority member, which gets one only so far.

Australian PM says nation under serious state-run 'cyber attack' – Microsoft, Citrix, Telerik UI bugs 'exploited'

stonewalling

Well, maybe he doesn't want to get expelled from the university.

The incumbent President of the United States of America ran now-banned Facebook ads loaded with Nazi references

Re: Incumbency

I had not looked her up. You do have your sums right.

Re: Incumbency

A few of us boomers remember RMN. Interesting point, though. I can think of only TR and W among Republican presidents who were known by their initials.

As for AOC, she needs a few years before she is eligible for the office.

ZFS co-creator boots 'slave' out of OpenZFS codebase, says 'casual use' of term is 'unnecessary reference to a painful experience'

OK, but

Should we await someone's discovery of the etymological roots of "server"?

""

servus (-ŏs ), i, m., and serva , ae, f.,

I.a slave, servant, serf, serving-man; a female slave, maid-servant.

"""

(Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary, courtesy of perseus.tufts.edu)

California bigwigs rule Uber, Lyft dial-a-ride drivers are employees, not contractors

Re: I know many people who work so-called "gig economy" jobs here in California.

Does Sacramento have a Capitol Hill?

Two COVID tests, five-day quarantine, limited expense account abuse opportunities: Taiwan sets new rules for business travel

Risks

"Inbound flyers headed to Vietnam will find discos and karaoke bars have re-opened when they land. We’ll leave readers to decide if that’s a good thing or not."

According to the medical staff on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, you could end up a carrier.

Remind us again, why work for AWS? Petty Amazon sues marketing veep after he defects to Google Cloud

Starting with the press release

"namely that it starts with a press release announcing a service, and works backwards from that to build the tech around it"

The cloud does seem a fine place for vaporware.

Ooo, a mystery bit of script! Seems legit. Let's see what happens when we run it

Script?

Long ago I worked for a company that put its systems on Data General minicomputers. The system administrators at the customer sites were not highly trained, but could be counted on to do backups, restart the machines, etc. One day we received a call from a customer. The administrator there had been working his way through the Commands and Utilities handbook, and had arrived at FORMAT. I don't think he managed to format the root drive--for that, as I recall, one would have needed a systape. However, the disk that he did manage to format had a lot of files.

Google+ replacement ‘Currents’ to end beta and debut in G Suite on July 6th

Google+

How many persons actually used it?

Trump issues toothless exec order to show donors, fans he's doing something about those Twitter twerps

Re: @El Reg, teach your authors some basic journalism

@DoctorPaul

By Kent State, I assume that you are referring to the Ohio National Guard. Most of the time National Guard units are under state control, though the federal government can put them into US service.

@Miketfr

During the 1967 riots in Detroit, the Michigan National Guard went in to restore order. As was common at least then with National Guard units, they were under-trained. I don't think the Guard then had training in riot control, and certainly their fire discipline was deplorable. Some poor guy was shot when he lit a cigarette while standing in a dark window.

The US then sent troops for the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. I doubt they had been trained in riot control, but they were otherwise far better trained, and they improved matters as the Guard had not.

It is certainly unusual for regular troops to be used for such purposes, but it does happen.

Berlin's renowned nightclub scene is showing signs of life. Just one problem: No dancing

Sounds like nerdvana

You mean I can go to the nightclub with the cool kids and have a perfect excuse not to dance?

Because of America's odd relationship with alcohol, dancing has here and there, now and then been prohibited in bars. I remember reading of the college students in the 1960s somewhere in Ohio being allowed to do the hand-jive to the jukebox, but causing the owner to intervene with "You kids wanna lose me my license?" if they got up to dance. (OK, maybe it's America's odd relationship with alcohol and sex.) But I doubt anyone ever regarded Ashtabula, Ohio, as being as cool as Berlin.

Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War

"""

Historian Hugh Bicheno, in his 2006 book Razor's Edge: The Unofficial History of the Falklands War, excoriated Rowlands, writing that "this was the precise equivalent of publicly announcing, during World War II, that the Allies had broken the Enigma system used by the Nazis."

"""

Actually the Chicago Tribune stated after Midway that the US had been decrypting the Japanese Navy's traffic. The attorney general wanted to try the publisher for treason. The Pentagon, though, considered that this would in effect confirm the information; taking no action would encourage the Japanese to suppose that this was idle brag.

ALGOL 60 at 60: The greatest computer language you've never used and grandaddy of the programming family tree

Military uses

For a long time, the US Navy used JOVIAL, otherwise Jules's Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language. It may still, but I haven't looked at job ads in a while.

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

As Lady Macbeth said,

Out, out, damned Spot!

Salesforce chief Marc Benioff gets clear view of pandemic, 'new balance' from guru pal

new balance

Run on down to your local sneaker store, sir. They've got all the New Balance you can use (if not, clearly, all you can buy.)

Wakey-wakey! A quarter of IT pros only get 3-4 hours' kip – and you won't believe what's being touted as the 'solution'

right

I'd have been concerned if they stopped the survey at 255--what, you've got an eight-bit computer? But 257, that must be conclusive.

IBM == Insecure Business Machines: No-auth remote root exec exploit in Data Risk Manager drops after Big Blue snubs bug report

Enhanced support

Regular support: vulnerability scanning.

Enhanced support: vulnerability scanning plus vulnerabilities.

In case you need more proof the world's gone mad: Behold, Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels

A marketing idea missed

If you really want to show your economic clout, why not make your wheels out of toilet paper rolls? What could be spiffier than to show the masses that you not only have it to burn, you have it roll with? You cold slap an Apple log on the hubcaps for extra class.

French pensioner ejected from fighter jet after accidentally grabbing bang seat* handle

Elderly?

Is The Register written by and for a set of PFYs?

No, at 64 I do not think I'd enjoy accidentally ejecting myself from a fighter jet. But I don't think my 34-year-old self would have enjoyed it, either.

Reg fashion special: Top designer says 'video chat accessories' are in for spring!

A quick descent

"Business mullet" when I first heard it a dozen years ago was sports jacket with jeans. Ties might have been part of that.

COBOL-coding volunteers sought as slammed mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response

Volunteers

In a lot of US states, there are many volunteer fire departments. I can assure you that there is no conscription into such fire departments.

Half of organisations willing to be led into the first circle of hell, or what Dante might call upgrading an ERP system

Wonderful

I first heard of ERP systems from a techie who worked for a company that had been bought by SAP., and who described SAP and the course of a usual implementation to me. I said that it sounded to me like Vietnam: by the time you understand that you have made a mistake, you have invested so much in blood, treasure, and prestige that you sort of have to keep going and find a point at which to declare victory and cut your losses.

My own later brushes with ERP stuff were brief, and not personally painful. My employer paid for a system considerably over-engineered for our needs, but after a couple of years backed off to something more manageable without undue bleeding.

Infosys fires employee who Facebooked 'let's hold hands and share coronavirus'

Re: Can't shout fire in a theater

A few comments up, I posted the link https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/how-medical-chickenpox-parties-could-turn-the-tide-of-the-wuhan-virus/ . Do you really imagine they'll face any consequences?

Re: Valid policy

I'd be out there pursuing exactly this strategy. But my vulnerable/invulnerable dowsing rod got lost last time we moved.

Constitutional rights

An acquaintance was a consular officer in Asia at one time, probably 40 years ago now. One of his duties was to look in now and again on jailed citizens. He said that his conversation with one such tended to run:

citiizen: I was framed!

co: I've seen the video tape of the drug deal and it looks very convincing.

citizen: They violated my consitutional rights!

co: Not under the constitution of ***********.

Meanwhile, for what it's worth, persons who apparently mean to be taken seriously are making odd suggestions over here:

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/how-medical-chickenpox-parties-could-turn-the-tide-of-the-wuhan-virus/

Analyst calls it: This is the 'biggest fall ever in the history of the worldwide smartphone market'

the history of smart phone market

I must ask whether we are counting according to Sark TLD rules. In other words, does the history of the smart phone market go back 450 years, or only 20?

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

Might work to track the young

If I go for a walk around my neighborhood, I might or might not take my phone along. My wife is as likely as not to leave hers charging when she is out and about. No, we are not millenials, we are (OK,) boomers.

What's inside a tech freelancer's backpack? That's right, EVERYTHING

"an overgrown and woefully misguided sense of self-belief who have no idea what working in them can be like"

I think that you got the We Work folks there, but "in them" is redundant.

We regret to inform you there are severe delays on the token ring due to IT nerds blasting each other to bloody chunks

Around 30 years ago, I worked on a government contract supporting Data General MV/Eclipses used for office automation. It turned out that some gifted person had written a terminal-based version of Space Invaders that ran on these machines. Now, they were good-enough minicomputers, and would support a lot of people writing documents and sending email, but they were not made for the sort of computing to support descending and exploding aliens.

One day, one of our operators decided to fire up Space Invaders in the middle of working hours, and brought that machine to its knees. A quick run of the equivalent of "ps -ef" quickly identified the problem, we killed the process, and talked to the operator.

What? You're right, no network was involved.

If you're writing code in Python, JavaScript, Java and PHP, relax. The hot trendy languages are still miles behind, this survey says

Re: COBOL

@jake:

"I do not know any proficient COBOL programmers who have issues finding work"

I believe you, but at this point all the COBOL programmers I know are retired..

I heard somebody say: Burn baby, burn – server inferno!

Re: Oh so special's

The American author Guy Davenport claimed to have once seen Jean-Paul Sartre when the latter's jacket pocket was on fire. After trying and failing to call Sartre's attention to this ("Monsieur vous brulez!" or thereabouts), he or his friend poured a glass of water into the pocket.

Your McDonald's demo has expired. For full functionality, please purchase a licence or try another fast-food joint

Re: "those content to let their vehicles smell like ground-up cow."

You are probably correct about diesel. I don't remember them mentioning the starting.

Re: "those content to let their vehicles smell like ground-up cow."

A couple I knew had their car converted to run on recycled fast-food cooking oil. But during the last few minutes of any trip, the car ran on gasoline so that they wouldn't arrive smelling like a McDonalds.

The self-disconnecting switch: Ghost in the machine or just a desire to save some cash?

Re: How much?

At one of my first jobs, the accountant told me that one can be off by thousands (45 years of inflation ago, so no doubt millions now) in other accounts, but somebody will notice immediately if petty cash isn't perfectly balanced.

Wake me up before you go Go: Devs say they'll learn Google-backed lang next. Plus: Perl pays best, Java still in demand

Re: I miss perl

@YAAC

Quite. But mod_php would I suppose have tried to interpret it.

Re: I miss perl

Increasingly I use Python where once I'd have used Perl, chiefly because the young and energetic all seem to know Python, and they may inherit my scripts in a few years.

Once, though, I was looking over a lot of PHP scripts for a system we were bringing in house, and not liking the quality of the code or the quantity of the documentation. Then I a found file that actually had decent structure and documentation. It turned out to be a Perl script that I had written to demonstrate something to these folks. It turns out that you can put all the Perl you want in a file with the ".php" extension, as long as the first line is

#!/usr/bin/perl

Social media notifications of the future: Ranger tagged you in a photo with Tessadora, Wrenlow, Faelina and Graylen

Brigham?

I would just point out that Brigham Young was the second leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, otherwise Mormons, and led them from Illinois to Utah. Brigham Young University is said to be an excellent school. I have to imagine that Utah has more than a few young Brighams.

Sorry to be blunt about this... Open AWS S3 storage bucket just made 30,000 potheads' privacy go up in smoke

Re: Dude...Where's my data?

An S3 leak list that ends in 2018 is something like one of those old globes one encounters at yard sales that shows Czechoslovakia. Actually, given the speed of the internet, maybe I should say "shows the Ottoman Empire".

New SAP co-CEO 'runs simple' to Davos in Mercedes hydrogen car

Re: Greenwashing

Or maybe SAP has heard of the think called "skiing".