Posts by Doctor Syntax

Wondering when AI will turn up at your work? Microsoft says look behind you

Oh, yes it is.

"Microsoft says look behind you"

So it's going to be a bit of a pantomime?

Oracle ULA audits are a license to bill

"The things is, the software doesn't get sold to the people who get to install it."

So let the people in suits buy Orrigble but install something else. The suits aren't going to know and it'll frustrate the hell out of the audit vultures..

Re: Goods

Like the OP said, it belongs to a world in which goods and services don't figure.

The only way to win is to not play.

Experimental remix finally brings the former Unity 8 back to Ubuntu

I suppose it depends on your use of your system. I tend to be data-centric so I want a desktop that allows files and folders to be placed on it. Someone who's app-centric would welcome a UI that turns the desktop into a big start menu. We have a choice and everyone can get the sort of UI they want.

68 tech names sign CISA's secure-by-design pledge

No doubt the words of the pledge will be as meaningful to them as such statements as: "Your privacy/security is important to us.", "We always put security first." and the evergreen "Only a small number of customers were affected.".

Has Windows 11 really lost marketshare to Windows 10?

Re: "what happens next?"

"In the 1800's railways cut the roofs of 3rd class carriages to make the other classes better in comparison. Airlines do similar things now with economy class."

No, that's just Boeing.

"An 'AI PC' is just a reasonably-specced PC using modern components."

That won't be the manufacturers' PoV. As far as they're concerned it's a top-end machine with some fancy co-processor, preferably one that'll be outdated by next-year's co-processor. And it will be essential

"I realise that this is probably an unrealistic hope, but is there any chance we could have a thread on Windows which doesn't consist of a load of people telling us 'just use Linux'"

I suppose that might happen if there was a thread on Windows that didn't rapidly turn to its enshittification.

Re: "what happens next?"

Who would fancy the job of going to the beancounters to tell them they have to budget for replacing a fleet of PCs in good shape and working well before the H/W hits physical EoL just because Microsoft says so? Or alternatively explaining that paying Microsoft a subscription for extended support isn't really blackmail?

Tesla devotee tests Cybertruck safety with his own finger – and fails

Re: "The frunk is powered and shouldn't be closed manually"

Manula opening and closing, air struts etc. are for poor but sensible people. This is not the Tesla market. Closing it with a mobile app should tell you that.

Re: Stupidity is without limit.

It depends on whether they've already reproduced.

Dell to color-code staff based on how hybrid they really are in RTO push

"If they realize that, why would they compound the problem by making that real estate more expensive with HVAC, bog rolls, people using the elevators, etc?"

There's a big word at the start of that sentence. Just two letters but it's a big word.

The weight is just causing inertia.

That real estate is weighting them down.

"This is true of remote work everywhere, it limits your career advancement opportunities."

Could you explain in a little more detail how this might apply in the company my daughter works for? It's international with an HQ in Dublin. We think there's a UK office somewhere but, being interviewed online when she was recruited, she's never visited it. The professional staff are almost entirely working at home, meeting online and in teams which span countries and continents.

The irony here is that Dell specialise in the technology that makes this possible. How odd that they don't seem to have that degree of faith in the efficacy of their own products.

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Re: Input validation

A hacker with the key.

If the hacker already has the database key he probably doesn't need your passwrd.

Re: I've seen worse

I remember the end of Johners' obituary on the Beeb. It was a shot of a microphone with the sound of him dissolving into speechless giggles after the "failed to get his leg over" comment.

We shall not see (or hear) their like again.

Re: I've seen worse

The Asian theme continued with India St just down Botanic Avenue. When I started in research in QUB one of the undergraduate's family home was there, closer to the University than the halls of residence & most student digs.

Re: BS7666

"our timekeeping system uses decimal hours"

I've used a surveying staff marked in decimal feet. The Hiller borer was metric, however. My very first FORTRAN program was to combine the two into a nicely tabulated set of figures so I could draw out the sections by hand.

Re: Tail wags dog

"Logically, the other two should have been Huddersfield and Halifax rather than Kirkless and Calderdale."

I don't know about Calderdale vs Halifax but I doubt that Huddersfield actually outweighs that of the collection of other towns such as Dewsbury & Mirfield to any significant extent. What it does show is that the whole thing was an ill-conceived mash-up of two quite distinct areas - more than two when the rural areas are taken into account.

Nor is naming an area after Barnsley a good example. On that basis I can just about see Barnsley from where I live. It would have at least made more sense to have taken the ancient Agbrigg/Staincross boundary as the Barnsley boundary.

Re: Input validation

It may be stored encrypted and decrypted as needed. It could also be stored as all possible digrams or trgrams, salted and hashed.

Slaithwaite in West Yorks is Slowit ('ow' as in 'wow') in dialect, Slathwaite otherwise but used to be Slaythwayte to British Rail.

Or the Isle of Axholme

"Street" in village names often refers to a Roman road. e.g. Spital in the Street on the A15, the old Roman road of Ermine Street and no doubt more hygienic than it sounds.

Re: I've seen worse

"So you looked for them, then"

The last, of course, brings to mind the classic line of cricket commentary "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey".

The villages of Overton, Middlestown and Netherton between Grange Moor in West Yorkshire were originally Upper, Middle and Lower Shitlington.

Re: BS7666

"some Amazon marketplace sellers put absolute gibberish on the labels"

And in the product descriptions.

OTOH I don't think there really was a Betty at all.

This apostrophe would cause non-locals a bit of puzzlement given that it replaces 5 letters not to mention the missing 'U' from 'BURY':

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.6449441,-1.7758415,3a,37.5y,171.44h,79.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6j2bb7p8he-sGAhCV59-6w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu

Re: Yes

Thanks & sorry about the typo. My fingers are getting a bit fat these days.

Muphry's strikes again.

Ouch!!!! Intruding apostrophe.

Slightly OT but still a place name...

Is the middle bit of Royton-XI-Towns pronenced "eleven"?

Re: BS7666

"to see how they cope with ç"

I wonder if that's why Brighouse no longer has aa road named Alençon Link.

Re: Tail wags dog

Consider yourself lucky. At least your metropolitan council is named after a place within it. I live in Kirklees, the council area, not the actual Kirklees which is in Calderdale.

Re: apostrophe problems

Do you mean this ASCII character: ' or this ASCII character `?

And another council with more things on it's mind than mending pot-holes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5k38lje2yo

Add the fact that almost all address forms in S/W assume that the address will be in a city however incorrect that may be geographically and historically.

The link includes the town of Street, Somerset as a counter example. I once worked with a database where an address was listed as a number at High Street, Somerset. When on holiday in Somerset I checked. The business was where I anticipated: in High Street, Street, Somerset.

North Yorkshire is in no position to complain about meaningless names, given that the county extends as far south as Selby.

Re: BS7666

Ah, yes. The Indian S/W house that replaced their programmers every few months as their visas expired and we, on the receiving end, would be sent XML broken by an apostrophised Irish name because the new guy had fixed the bit of code he didn't understand and must therefore have been wrong.

Re: Tail wags dog

"Maybe SAP could sell West Yorkshire Council a version with sensible input validation"

We have enough problems here in West Yorkshire and especially in Kirklees without SAP or new versions thereof and it wouldn't make any difference to the North Yorkshire anyway.

Cops finally unmask 'LockBit kingpin' after two-month tease

For $10million there's every prospect of him drinking in a bar in Moscow and waking up in Poland or some other country convenient to the US.

Palantir's CEO calls 'woke' a 'central risk to Palantir, America and the world'

Re: "a 'central risk to Palantir, America and the world' "

"And overselling yourself"

But if they don't oversell themselves nobody else will and he wouldn't want that.

"the central risk to Palantir ... is called woke"

So it can't be entirely bad, then.

Valve vexation: Boeing's Starliner grounded again

Have the crew done a runner or just demanded danger money?

Brit security guard biz exposes 1.2M files via unprotected database

I wonder if, when a contractor is working on a building that Amberstone guard, they send along one of their security guards to oversee the job.

Fed-run LockBit site back from the dead and vows to really spill the beans on gang

If any of them are named and then arrested and come to trial I'd expect their defence to argue that naming them in this way to be prejudicial.

Consultant charged over $1.5M extortion scheme against IT giant

Re: Security "consultancy" firm...

And irrespective of that the consultancy should have taken the precaution of cancelling his access to both their own system and the clients.

Ten years ago Microsoft bought Nokia's phone unit – then killed it as a tax write-off

Re: Beancounter in charge

HP

Re: Public Service Announcement

As a business which is doing fine but with their name used by HMD - what if they were to buy up HMD, bring manufacturing back in house with the build quality of the originals?

Techie's enthusiasm for decluttering fails to spark joy

I'd expect telling apt to remove one dependency to prompt with whatever else it was going to remove. Perhaps Monty added a -y flag.