Posts by Doctor Syntax

Thousands of orgs at risk of knowledge base data leaks via ServiceNow misconfigurations

It seems a bit odd that a company whose speciality is enabling businesses to share knowledge hasn't managed to share the knowledge of how to set up its product securely. Or maybe no - cobbler's children & all that.

ERP modernization? Admins have heard of it

Re: Can I be first

Yes you can because you got there before me. It runs the business. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Broadcom CEO predicts hyperscalers poised to build million-accelerator clusters

Are those predictions realistic? How close is this bubble to bursting point?

Putin really wants Trump back in the White House

Re: Make (some of North) America Grate Again

I'm sure he raised a stink.

The future of software? Imagine a bot, stamping on a human face – forever

It was always my view that as the Civil Service was the largest employer of scientists in the UK, at least back in my day, a bit of over-production of graduates was enough for them to justify keeping the salaries down. They got very worried when scientists started emigrating. It would upset the market they'd constructed.

Re: "AI" can't think – but it's coming for your jobs anyway

At least it didn't simply reproduce the FOSS library code which slightly surprised me.

Ultimately, training a LLM to do that sort of thing would need more than feeding it training code. It would also need to understand the RFCs and that's a completely different task. Unfortunately the library failed on that one: if you're using one of the MAC/timestamp formats and take a random or arbitrary string instead of a MAC address (frequently done for security purposes) you should set the least significant bit and last time I looked it doesn't. I suppose I should flag that up..

Re: Yes, but...

And if you were very lucky you didn't have to tear up what you'd written to fit it in. I had that about a fortnight before go-live. It converted a simple product list into one where the BoM had to be taken into account with some hastily written recursive code. At the end it worked but I wasn't convinced I understood it in detail once I'd finished and any changes were strictly forbidden.

"C-Suites are measured by their KPIs, which is either shareholder value, or whatever it is that contributes to that value — typically cost reduction, or revenue increase within that particular financial quarter, but usually both."

When a metric becomes a target it ceases to become a useful metric.

Re: Marketing-led

"it also means we're all already being bombarded by huge amounts of this type of marketing, all across the Internet"

Only if you don't use an ad-blocker. otherwise, nothing new there.

Re: Yes, but...

That's the most useful sort of contribution of all. It tells you who to listen to.

Re: Yes, but...

"we need a thing... to do ... a job, no not like that, more like ... umm, well I'll know it when I see it"

And 3 months later "didn't anybody tell you it needs to....".

Re: Complicated for fun

The odd think to me is that IME Linux Just Works whereas Windows Only Just Works, except when it Just Doesn't Work. So I wonder if some tinkering has gone on with his Linux installation.

Re: "AI" can't think – but it's coming for your jobs anyway

I asked a couple for Pascal* code to generate a UUID of a specific type (might have been type 1 or type 5). One generated a output statement with a literal UUID embedded in it. The produced code for a type 4 which wasn't what was asked for.

"Sneakily trying to see if they would spew out code from the Free Pascal Compiler library.

Re: Complicated for fun

"Smart guys enjoy complex syntax and high level abstractions."

If it were not for high level abstractions we'd probably have been programming plugboards these last many decades or flipping switches to toggle in binary op-codes.

The entire history of computing is a succession of higher level abstractions. Assemblers abstracted machine codes, relocating assemblers abstracted memory layout, higher level languages abstracted assemblers,processes abstracted flow of control, file systems abstracted disk layout, databases abstracted files. The only GUI programming I ever did for Windows used Delphi and Delphi's OO, specifically its VCL, abstracted all the GUI elements.

Re: Complicated for fun

"Linux freezes every second session"

You are doing something wrong.

"once businesses realise their mistake, they struggle to hire the technical people who have the knowledge they are after

£$€£$€£$€£$€£$€£$€£$€£$€

But think of the savings! Gotta make savings! After all, it might never happen.

"it paid much better than counting fossil spores and pollen for oil companies"

I'm sure oil companies paid better than archaeologists. But you and I know that hardware and software are here today and gone tomorrow but sporopollenin is for keeps.

Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war

Re: If I were a world leader or in the administration thereof. . .

That assumes the Hungarian operation made anything other than this set of pagers and perhaps fake Icom radios.

Re: If an Icom IC-V82

"whatever is needed to respond to a modulated signal."

Nothing new about that. Back in the 70s or 80s the IRA was using a circuit with a tone detection IC in quite a small package to trigger land mines. I don't know if it was ever deployed. They'd scratched the ID off the top of the can it was packaged in but once the top of the can had been sliced off it turned out that the part number was etched on the die and it was easily recognised as a part advertised in Wireless World.

Microsoft unveils Office LTSC 2024 for users that remain stubbornly offline

Re: Ob: LibreOffice

I do interact with people who use Word. Documents laid out with tabs and such like nonsense. No wonder they don't render properly. There's every chance they wouldn't render properly in a different version of Word. Or on a different version of WIndows. Or with different fonts available. Or, who knows, with different video H/W?

And anyone who thinks it's acceptable to use Word as a form to be filled in is probably ... let's think of a suitable epithet ... a Windows user who doesn't know any better.

Microsoft's Cloud obsession seems to be a curse. I got an email today from someone preparing a talk for tomorrow night saying

I have the same problem putting my power point onto a memory stick - all seems to be linked to files going automatically to Cloud. This means that I will have to use my own laptop. [i.e. as opposed to the one in the meeting room].

I'm not sure what he means but the worst case scenario could be that, deprived of an internet connection, his laptop might not work either.

Open source orgs strengthen alliance against patent trolls

Simple solution: if a patent office lets through an invalid patent it should be responsible for the whole of both sides' legal costs. It's then up to the office to decide whether the best solution is to simply pay or to limit its risk by more thorough examination and also to adjust its prices in accordance. My guess would be that an equilibrium would be reached where the price would pay for examination sufficient to chuck out the most obvious, reduce trollage by making the costs more expensive and ensuring that patents that were actually granted would be worth the cost.

Amazon CEO wants his staff back in the office full time

Re: Simple solution

Unfortunately half votes don't work. I'd charge for driving home as well. Actually IME the drive home represented actual value added. Several times once the inhibition of what was on the screen was removed and the conscious mind was occupied by driving, the subconscious would suddenly pop up the solution to the current problem.

Re: Simple solution

Unfortunately half votes don't work. I'd charge for driving home as well. Actually IME the drive home would have been worth paying for. Several times once the inhibition of what was on the screen was removed and the conscious mind was occupied by driving, the subconscious would suddenly pop up the solution to the current problem.

Re: flatten the hierarchy

Alternatively translates as micromangers not having enough time to get on reports' (direct or otherwise) backs.

Re: Here we go

"It's suited the vocally anti-social to work from home"

Does not compute. Working from home might suit those who might be classified as anti-social because they don't want to get involved in group communications. But the vocally anti-social? How would it suit them not to have anybody to shout at?

Re: Here we go

"I'd be willing to bet Amazon are sitting on a bunch of metrics"

I''d be willing to bet that such metrics don't show the amount of unpaid time staff spend on commuting. It's very easy to show productivity when you only include part of the time that those doing the producing are actually contributing to your company.

"I used to be happy that I knew with almost certainty that if I wanted to talk to somebody I could go to their desk and they'd be there"

Yes, and they were completely pissed off with your interruptions.

Re: WFH is a laugh

"You do the company’s time."

Good idea. Make commuting company's time.

"It lets them look after the kids and the dog, go shopping when they want, get up late and not shave, finish that bit of DIY they never had time to do."

Given that commuting takes time (at its worst, in my case, the equivalent of 2 full workdays a week) it's no wonder they value having their life back.

I think the unions have missed a trick here. Having demonstrated the feasibility of remote working for many roles commuting should be paid time for those where remote working was feasible was feasible if they're then forced back to the office.

Likewise governments with a green agenda should also be looking at this. Commuting long distances into big cities isn't really sustainable and imposing it should be subject to a tax.

IOW he didn't manage to offload a lot of office space and it doesn't look good if it's sitting around empty.

The case for handcrafted software in a mass-produced world

It could be a case of being careful what you ask for. Demand software with guarantees and you get no software.

What about the data?

It's easy for programmers to think that the value of IT is in the code. The real value to a business is in the data; that comprises all the work in progress, on order, accounts and information held for regularity reasons. Without it the business can't function and can't meet tax or other requirements for keeping records. Backward compatibility is about far more than running your new code on older H/W.

It's all very well having an LLM tweak code or rewrite it based on analysing the code to work out what it does. But it also needs to analyse the existing data to work out what that tells the business which might not be explicit in the code.

Re: Use an LLM to translate from C to some Oberon dialect, say

I'm reminded of a tool I used long ago to covert C programs using the old Informix ALL-2 library to use embedded SQL. It ended up with a lot of if statements whcih essentially tested nothing.

S&P 500's AI FOMO fizzles: Less than half mentioned it in Q2 earnings

Does "holding steady" mean the same companies as last time or is it new hopefuls being on about the same level is the disillusioned?

23andMe settles class-action breach lawsuit for $30 million

Having done a fair bit of family history I can only see the point in DNA analysis if there's a question which could only be resolved with it and I haven't come across one yet. There are some which can't be solved but DNA isn't going to help. That several times ggfather who I suspected of having done a runner really died aged 24, buried several parishes away near his parents, and with a different spelling of his name to the one recorded here (damn homonyms!) but found by conventional means - and it did lead me to discover who his parents were*. My ggggrandmother wasn't married and didn't name the father(s) of her children but there's nothing to be done about that. My paternal ggfather's brother can't be found after the 1851 census, probably emigrated but I really don't care. Etc

* There would have been some interesting genetics given suitable material there because there is a history of dyeing unusually young running through a good many generations although whatever gene might have been involved seems to have been lost

"three years of privacy, medical and genetic monitoring"

Genetic? Do they think their customers' genomes are going to change in three years?

And compensation should compensate.

Microsoft's Copilot 'Wave 2' is a tsunami of unanswered questions

Re: AI - just say "no"

So jobs in marketing and PR are most at risk.

Elon Musk's assassination 'joke' bombs, internet calls for his deportation

"We've contacted legal experts to learn more about how his comments might be interpreted by a court,"

The only real way to decide how comments might be interpreted by a court is to have them interpreted by a court. How many views you get otherwise depends on how many legal experts you ask.

See also asking economists for economic projections.

Prison just got rougher as band of heinously violent cybercrims sentenced to lengthy stints

Re: US long sentences

It's not as if they can do a controlled experiment to see if shorter sentences would have a less deterrent effect on the rest.

Re: A warning message

Given he reparations he's required to make he migh have to break out any stash and when he does get out I'm pretty sure he'll be watched carefully and any possible ill-gotten wealth sequestered. Also, don't forget the effects of 45 years of inflation.

Thank you, Reg Readers: On Call has turned 500!

"a marvelous demonstration of your wit and wisdom"

As opposed to the marvellous demonstration of witlessness and utter lack of wisdom that is "Who, Me". Keep thm both coming.

I don't know what pressing Delete will do, but it seems safe enough!

Re: Cameras, Too

"Perhaps it's because I was only 15/16 at the time ... Now that I'm old"

If you only mid teens when the ribbon was inroduced you're not old yet.

Re: This is a common problem

Did they test it with usrs? Did they first take the precaution of removing anything which might be used as a weapon from the room?

I often say that the first requirement for a DBA is paranoia. This goes for other admin roles too. Postman Pat appears to have lacked that basic qualification.

BOFH: The Boss is right, the applications of AI are truly staggering

Re: I need

The appropriate response is "You can have weekly production or you can have a meeting but not both. Make your mind up."

Re: Verbal communication

It's always done purely by accident.

Meta back at it, harvesting Britons' public Facebook, Insta feeds for AI training

"don't have an account "

Maybe you didn't understand "3rd party".