Posts by Doctor Syntax

AI 'bubble' will burst 99 percent of players, says Baidu CEO

"any fees incurred by those whose balances became negative will be waived"

And the big purchases - cars, houses - that fell through because the transaction failed?

"when you talk to a chatbot, a frontier model-based chatbot, you can basically trust the answer,"

You'll have to - there'll be nobody left on the hell-desk to ask.

Linux admin asked savvy scientist for IT help and the boffin blew it

Re: Token ring cabling in ethernet

"Stupidity clearly isn't the sole preserve of the aged."

Far from it. You've got to be reasonably smart to survive to become aged.

"generally cumbersome "official IBM" cables and connectors"

More or less cumbersome than the original iron rod hose-pipe Ethernet?

Re: All you needed was the T-connector and a piece of cable long enough to reach to the next box.

I did use a lab. network that was made up of 75 Ohm Coax, TV connectors & all. It consisted of a lot of little boxes with a Z80 in them, each with a D25 for RS232, daisy chained. I think it must have had a box at the other end to break it out into more D25s because at that time all you got on the back of your Unix box was serial terminal connections. Yes, it worked.

OTOH it was always easy to fit another box into the middle of the net. All you needed was the T-connector and a piece of cable long enough to reach to the next box.

Obligatory https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EDcrHchrT0k/WvIV4FCzQ1I/AAAAAAAAemo/yIZMt7Ttnxw7lScA5MqWZh-P0spfvjo5wCLcBGAs/s640/Dilbert-ethernet-ring.png

Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise

All this would matter less if it weren't for the fact that web developers - ore, more likely, the developers of the frameworks they use have forgotten the KISS principle. In search of bells and whistles the idea of a universal platform and applications has been lost. Many sites (and it bugs me no end that my own NextCloud server is one of them) will only work with a limited number of browsers.

Chinese chipmaker Loongson now just three to five years off the pace on the desktop

They're talking about desktop so it just spends a smaller %age of its time waiting for the user to press the next key. Not a big issue.

SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, orders staff back to their desks for three days a week

"This also applies to staff that specifically baked work-from-home clauses into their employment contracts."

I think the words he's looking for are "constructive" and "dismissal". It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Re: Can't recall the mechanism

There's a reason why HMRC prefer this. When a company is wound up the available cash has to be distributed between all the creditors according to the debts so that if there isn't enough you only get your pro rata x pence in the pound. But some creditors are more even than others and HMRC is more even than most (I can't remember off-hand where they stand in relation to payroll).

If they HMRC initiate wind-up they'll get their full due or as much of it as there's money to support. Only then do you and the others get a share-out. If a trade creditor initiates wind-up they either need to be sure there really is enough money there or else they've effectively written off the debt and are being vindictive (or public spirited depending on your PoV).

Re: How to go to jail in 1 easy step.

"I'd be leaving any place that did this"

Whether it was "the place" that did it would depend on the status of Iain's colleague. If he wasn't part of the management and hadn't done it with the connivance of the management then it's not really the business that had done it.

"and if they're lucky then on my way out I may not tell their client what actually happened and agree to swear to that under oath"

Given that it was hearsay it would be you who'd be lucky, or at least wise, not to do so.

Re: Important word

OTOH the judge won't want the case to go to a superior court where he'd be overruled.

Re: Can't recall the mechanism

See https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/enforce-a-judgment

It's not straightforward - note that "Enforce a judgement" is the last stage.

The ultimate detergent is this one https://www.gov.uk/wind-up-a-company-that-owes-you-money

"Nobody has an automatic right for a business venture to be successful."

Nobody said otherwise but if you're in business yourself it pays to keep a lookout to make sure you'r not extending too much credit to those who might not be.

Re: How to go to jail in 1 easy step.

Do you really think AWS, Azure or whatever would be hauled in front of a criminal court for cutting off a customer for non-payment?

Re: Bilaterally Binding Guarantees

"We're trying to pay you but computer says 'No'"

That's OK, we can help you. My big friend here can escort you to the cash machine.

Re: A company I know

I'm sure its correct attribution will be the versatile and prolific Anon.

But he didn't seize them because the customer paid up. There's nothing to stop someone rolling up to claim their own property back even if they have to go to court to enforce it in the face of a refusal. It's just "Can we get our ball beck, mister?" whit large.

Re: Ways to encourage payment

The thought that he was getting 5% probably kept the guy happer, even if he wasn't.

Re: Important word

"Demanding payment and securing it by disabling a computer system until you get paid has previously been ruled to be a crime."

I doubt that any cloud vendor cutting off a customer for non-payment is going to get a criminal conviction. And way back in the 80s/90s it was SOP for the packages to require a key to be entered to enable operation for another year. Circumstances alter cases.

What was annoying about one company was that they'd display a message on every user terminal. As we had a serial link between that and another system in order to look things up it wasn't welcome for an unexpected message to come down the line. In the end we understood how their files were structured and read them directly.

Re: Important word

You'd need to have a court rule on it. I wouldn't bet my freedom on a ruling that it isn't a computer, not when the functions have been explained, including the fact that it could be logged into, wiped, reprogrammed etc. Even more so when you reflect it may well include server functions such as DHCP..

Re: Finance dept. are at the root of this issue

"I managed to inform him of his error before the production ladies started loosening their garments "

Why?

"That business folded about year later."

The serial non-payment might have been an indication they were in trouble already.

Re: A company I know

As one of Tricky Dicky's henchmen said, when you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.

Re: Important word

If you take the router apart you're going to find at least one CPU in it.

"The support outfit needed more Iains"

To be able to afford more Iains they need customers who pay their bills.

Re: Sometimes there's a hidden benefit with irritating clients

"She could have stepped straight out of a 70s spy movie. It kinda made up for some of the angst."

You didn't realise she was the real chief and the other guy was just a front man? And haven't you noticed the same cars following you around ever since?

AWS boss: Don't want to come back to the office? Go work somewhere else

Re: Choices

"Sure, but those pastures have to actually exist."

They do. Some businesses have managers, not manglers.

Re: Cloud

To be fair he's part of AWS so it's his job to have his head in the cloud. As to whether that's where it actually is is a different matter.

Re: Just do it

Your employer sounds a bit like my daughter's - they have an HQ in Dublin and, reputedly, a UK office whose reality she's not actually confirmed.

Slightly different story but she'd left a working from home job just before Covid for one with a stupid commute (why???!!!) which obviously turned into a work at home job for the duration. After the duration they wanted to go back to their old ways but she'd realised by then what she'd let herself in for with that job.

Re: Inverted subtitle logic?

"they tried to call it eWorking when anything even vaguely related to a computer got called e-something"

Perhaps it could be retrindified by calling it iWorking.

Re: Inverted subtitle logic?

"a huge hit to the ego"

Not just huge hit to the ego, also some very difficult questions from investors enquiring about the cost of it all. In fact some of the public pronouncements such as the one at the centre of this article may be aimed at them as much as at employees, maybe even more so.

Re: It may be a security issue.

So he has to stick to simple stuff? It wouldn't be possible for people like him to cooperate, globally to produce something as complex as a computer operating system? And if they did it would be an impossibly buggy monstrosity, completely different to the product of teams working together in an office? OK, got that.

Re: It may be a security issue.

"Ultimately, it is their company, not yours."

There is, however, a matter of public interest here*. We have spent decades building a system in which businesses are compressed into cities and require workers to commute into them. The commuting radius of a large city may cover a few thousand square miles. Those commutes have an environmental cost. In practice the city governments who are trying to meet those costs do so by trying to beat up the commuters. In the UK wie have the Low Emission Zones - London is on and Sheffield has joined in. As it happens it was two news reports from Sheffield that put me onto this many years ago. One was from someone whose job was to bring businesses into the city, jubilant at signing up another big employer. The second was someone responsible for roads complaining about the ever increasing traffic. Clearly they'd not got together to look at what mattered to Sheffield as a whole.

I've heard the arguments that congregating businesses into cities boosts efficiency by improving communications. That argument stretches back into the medieval (I have a recently purchased history book right beside me making that argument amongst others). It wasn't an absolute argument then - the weavers of York and Beverley ran into problems when the West Riding weavers became a serious collective competitor - and I suspect it's not an absolute argument now. Now we have tools that can enable dispersed work forces to collaborate. As I've said before, if it's possible to build an entire OS by dispersed work what serious argument can there be that something less complicated needs to bring everyone together under one office roof?

Working at home obviously doesn't suite every role. Factory work is obviously one for which it doesn't work and, as a sometime lab. scientist, I know lab. work is another. I've read that some landlords of buildings that were, until recently, tenanted by financial businesses are now trying to attract bioscience businesses; they at least have worked out where office work is likely to head in the long run.

But returning to the public interest - what should be the public response, or at least the response of governments which are supposed to look to the public good? They should be adopting policies that discourage the centripetal forces that make businesses congregate in this way. Raising taxes on arrangements that require commuting would be one way. Encouraging the conversion of city centre property to residential would be another so that as to minimise the loss of property values that have been one argument against WFH and also enabling commuting free options for city centre work.

Another would be to look again at history - those rural West Riding weavers eventually ended up working in mills but still close to home as they had no option but to walk work. Currently there are a couple of mill sites quite near which have been, as so often happens, been granted planning permission for housing as brownfield sites. With the closure of almost all the mills this has become commuter country, ill-served by public transport,** dependent on commuting by car and at the same time with much old housing unable to provide home EV| charging to support future commuting needs. Planning policy needs to be reversed so those brownfield sites can become workplaces again, either for single businesses or shared between multiple businesses.

* As a retiree that happens to be my sole interest now.

** Even if it were returned to the levels of the 1950s it s wouldn't suffice, we are between several conurbations so that huv-and-spoke public transport wouldn't work. This village and many others like it are, in their own right, hubs with multiple spokes.

Re: Alternate world line

I long ago came to the conclusion that either mangelers (as opposed to the rarer managers) either don't care about demotivation of staff or don't have the faintest idea of what demotivates them. What they care about is motivating themselves by showing off, threatening, etc.

OTOH he's telling the world - and that includes potential customers - that AWS won't deploy its software to support remote working. What if those businesses want to support remote working for themselves? Might they take the view that "won't" means "can't"? Might they wonder if, by not using it themselves, AWS might produce a sub-optimal product.

It's a far more convincing sales story for a large IT business to demonstrate that it eats its own dog-food.

FCC fines be damned, ESPN misuses emergency alert tones yet again

Re: you could see people start to pull over thinking it was the law.

"traffic reports"

No EON?

Post Office CTO had 'nagging doubts' about Horizon system despite reliability assurances

Re: If there's no audit log how can there be prosecutions?

They've put themselves in a position where they can't - or shouldn't be able to - convict even a genuine case without completely independent proof.

Re: Why always 'someone else'

This is the new version "I was going on what I'd been told." It should carry as much weight when you're in a position where you can demand the truth.

Re: I could empathise....

I call it fear.

If he had nagging doubts he was the best placed person to satisfy them yet he didn't. In his position plausible deniability isn't. There were obviously too many who didn't want to start turning over stones for fear of what might lie beneath.

UK electronics firms want government to stop taxing trash and let them fix it instead

If the company doing the repair or refurbishment is big enough to be VAT registered then they're obliged to charge VAT to the customer. They'll also reclaim VAT on their purchases so it makes no difference as to whether VAT's charged on components. The most effective way of dealing with this would be to make repair and refurbishment zero-rated services which would mean the the business can be VAT registered, reclaim VAT on its purchases but not charge VAT* to the customer.

Technically they do, but it's zero.

Re: Stop it!

At least they got 2 letters right.

Datacenter CEO faked top-tier IT reliability cert to snag $10.7M SEC deal, DoJ claims

"Yesterday's charges make clear that the Criminal Division will not tolerate fraud schemes that threaten the security of the government's electronic data."

The contract was signed in 2012 & they're charging him in 2024? That's a lot of not tolerating>

Elon Musk's X isn't important enough to feel the full force of EU regulation

Re: Erm

I'm not sure. It's going to hit him where it hurts - his pride. The thought of him clamouring to be regulated is rather pleasing.

Openreach reveals latest locations facing the copper chop

Re: Power pair laid in with each fibre?

I doubt they'd be able to supply the current needed for everyone's routers. And I'm glad for you you get a decent mobile signal. My SiL who has an emergency alert that relies on a reliable connection would probably also be glad for you.

I see you've never worked at BT.

Pentagon stumped by mystery drone swarm flying over Langley Air Force Base

"I say was a home brew kit"

But whose home?

Re: the most sophisticated agencies on earth could not track them once they left

"Who knows what the truth is?"

We can reasonably suspect that whatever it is, it's not what we're being told.