Posts by Doctor Syntax

Study backer: Catastrophic takes on Agile overemphasize new features

"I would love to see a bridge built following Agile methodology."

Half joint bridges like these: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqxjjp9nvg7o

Re: The backlog is agile's dirty little secret

Do the hard stuff first, if only to prove it can be done.

Twitter tells advertisers to go fsck themselves, now sues them for fscking the fsck off

We certainly wouldn't want him pottering about here.

Not Kelvin.

"I do post on there"

Why?

Microsoft punches back at Delta Air Lines and its legal threats

Re: "Upgraded"?

For some of us "hasn't upgraded their IT infrastructure" would mean "still running Windows".

As to not accepting help from Microsoft and/or Crowdstrike the two of them had provided instructions as to how to fix things. No doubt everyone at Delta who know how to do that was busily involved in doing it. Taking time off to show the cavalry around - once the cavalry had been security cleared - would just take them away from doing it. It's the classic Brookes thing of adding more hands makes things slower.

UK health services call-handling vendor faces $7.7M fine over 2022 ransomware attack

That headline...

Why would the UK ICO issue a fine for so many dollars?

CrowdStrike hires outside security outfits to review troubled Falcon code

It sounds as if they've fixed it themselves so were capable of that. Appointing outside experts is more a case of assurance. But (there's always a but) that's only going to be effective if the review is capable of looking at any decisions which underlay the immediate problem and that they are empowered to change things there. For instance, it has been said by several commentards that development was moved to India. If this the external reviewers determine that this was a problem then they need to be empowered to say it be brought back in-house or that inspection and testing of the code be improved and need the power to sign-off if and when this has been done to their satisfaction. They also need to be able to look at how that decision was made and ensure that action is taken there if necessary.

I'm sure their customers will be watching and won't be assured if the review doesn't meet their expectations. Ultimately this sort of external assessment isn't made to fix things for the company. It's made to convince customers that hings have been fixed an will stay fixed.

But does shipping pre-compiled trees preclude checking them as they're loaded?

Re: Wrong experts

This involved problems at all sorts of levels coming together. It's not just kernel development skills that are involved. As much as anything it's the manglement decisions that allowed everything to come together this way that need to be looked at.

Billion-dollar bust as international op shutters Cryptonator wallet

Re: Cash?

Collecting those ransoms in cash is much less convenient, as is getting payment for sanctions busting. Seriously, the logistics of moving cash can be quite a problem for criminals.

Re: Crimonator

Isn't a convicted felon in the US proposing a national cryptocurrency reserve?

Arresting him might have been the German police's role.

Need to move 1.2 exabytes across the world every day? Just Effingo

Re: Moving data is hard

"it's always exception handling that bites you"

Lack of it bites harder as recent events have shown.

Keir Starmer says facial recognition tech is the answer to far-right riots

Re: Only for the Far Right

"The mobs rioting this weekend were far right, racist scum egged on by Farage and Lennon Yaxley."

Would it have been better for the victims if they sere some other scum?

Re: Buy Shares In Hoodies.....ASAP......

"Apparently, the RoI is planning on banning balaclavas"

Bad move. Up North we found discarded balaclavas a useful source of evidence.

Re: Buy Shares In Hoodies.....ASAP......

It looks like a couple of people think it's necessary to label the possible* political leanings of those involved. Perhaps they'd like to post a comment to explain why those who are beaten up, have their shops looted or cars torched care about such details.

* Don't forget false flags.

Re: Hmm

"That was the point of gluing themselves to the road and blocking the roads as they did."

Personally I'd just have left them glued there and directed the traffic round them. The novelty would wear off pretty quickly and they wouldn't even be able to pass themselves off as martyrs for the cause, just hungry idiots with, eventually, soiled underwear.

I think it would be a bit awkward throwing bricks when you're under heavy netting. Even more so when the winches are started...

I recall someone being shot for carrying a chair leg he was going to repair.

Nor the officer who devised the system being used to get it wrong. By an amazing coincidence she also ended up as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Coincidence?

Re: Only for the Far Right

its difficult to distinguish between 'friendly local bobby on bicycle' ... and 'hired thug

The bicycle is a bit of a clue.

Re: Buy Shares In Hoodies.....ASAP......

Let's stop trying to apply the label d'jour and just keep it simple: scum.

Since the late 1960s in Belfast I've often thought that riot control technology should take a hint from ornithologists. One of the techniques for bird ringing is the use of rocket propelled nets - the rockets take the leading edge of the net forward too fast for escapes. The net is then dropped over an area and whatever's immobilised under it can be dealt with at leisure.

Users call on Microsoft to update Outlook's friendly name feature

SeaMonkey and, presumably Thunderbird shows the "friendly" version when listing (it saves column width which is reasonable) and possibly at the head of the view pane depending on the window size, it always displays the full address when replying. Doesn't Outlook do the same or is it too much trouble to glance at that to check just who it is you're writing to?

Japan stops measuring train crowding by ease of newspaper readership

Re: Because Science!

Trading quality of life for productivity and probably discounting commuting time when calculating output in a given time.

Re: Lets improve the other metrics first

Surely the base unit should be the Corbyn - the level of crowding at which a politician is enabled to create a photo-opportunity by sitting on the corridor floor.

EVs continue to grow but private buyers are steering clear, say motor trade figures

Re: Second Hand?

"A second hand ICE vehicle will have some wear and tear, but if the previous owner maintained it - should give me a lifetime of use."

Unpredictable. Years ago I bought a 2nd hand Sierra with 60k on the clock - suspiciously exact but that might have just been good fleet management - which was up to about 180k when it finally had to go. This was at the time when I was freelancing and tearing up and down the country a good deal*.

In 2013 and already long retired I bought a new Skoda Superb thinking that that, carefully maintained, should probably last out my driving days. The famous VAG build quality & all that. It was scrupulously maintained despite not doing that much mileage, what with Covid & all that. Last autumn it started using oil and it was discovered that the sump was rusting through & leaking - something I'd never experienced before in nearly 60 years of driving but which the garage tells me is frequent these days**. It hen started using oil again, no good reason, it was just starting to burn it. I decided it was time for it to go. So from brand new and well maintained, to less miles on the clock than that old ex-fleet Sierra and already showing signs of engine wear. Maybe my new Subaru hybrid*** will see out my driving days instead - it should certainly get up the hill in snow rather better.

* There was an episode where it refused to engage 1st at M1 junction 37 - seized 1st motion shaft. On thinking back the last geat change had been M40 Junc 9

** Quite possibly old engines used to lose a bit of oil through breathers etc so the outside of the typical sump was too oily to rot.

*** I did look at a Tucson PEV but it was even bigger than the Skoda which I considered as more or less the limit for narrow lanes. In consequence I miss the boot size of that the Skoda and Tucson had. The Subby only just fits my friend's wheelchair.

Dell starts new round of layoffs while it looks to 'unlock modern AI'

Re: Layoffs Should Be From The Marketing Department

The obvious conclusion to that is that they'd already lost the staff who knew what they were doing.

Michigan probes Musk-backed PAC website that weirdly tried and failed to help register people to vote

Re: Musk backed PAC "Helping Voters Register"

Or registering someone else to vote in their place.

Re: North Carolina is also looking into this

There could be a 3) Collect data to enable impersonation.

Stock-trading apps fall under the feet of stampeding panicking investors

"Probably a good day to go outside and enjoy some fresh air."

Probably a good day to buy some cheap shares. Not Crowdstike or AI,of course.

UK axes plans for Edinburgh-based exascale computer

Re: Hmm

What not to cut - and, if possible, raise spending on - is stuff that stands a chance of increasing GDP in the future. Whether the Edinburgh supercomputer or any of the other cuts would have fallen into this category I have no idea. But one thing I'm sure of - no government is going to be willing to invest in anything likely to start bringing in GDP increases in the next electoral cycle rather than the current one.

Does anyone care to list the actual, genuine STEM graduates we've had as PM?

"I was a lot younger then"

We all weere.

That was later. I suspect its problems were too expensive and just too different for the industry to handle.

Wilson's statement of his true colours was cancellation of TSR2.

I'm old enough to be reminded of Harold Wilson and his "white heat of technology" looking around for a big, advanced tech project to cancel.

CrowdStrike unhappy about Delta's 'litigation threat,' claims airline refused 'free on-site help'

Re: Blame where blame's due

More likely they're from people who have read enough of how the Crowdstrike system works to realise that Cloudstrike S/W downloads the files itself so that the OP's comment, and yours, are based on a false premise about staging systems and the like.

This was Crowdstrike's responsibility to create valid update files, Crowdstrike's responsibility for all forms of QA before release and Crowdstrike's responsibility to code their kernel-privileged S/W defensively because they were the only people in a position to do those things.

I think you missed out something about "Cloudstrike's failure".

For something which should have been completely prevented after the event isn't "swiftly" enough.

As far as the monetary aspects of real world problems are concerned (and money is certainly part of the real world) things are apt to be resolved in court unless an agreement can be negotiated first and, like it or not, that's going to involve lawyers.

offering support to the airline "within hours" of the incident unfolding

And what's the cost of the disruption caused "within hours"?

IBM Canada can't duck channel exec's systematic age discrimination claim

"Canadian rules of civil procedure allow courts to disallow pleadings that: (a) may prejudice or delay the fair trial of the action; (b) are scandalous, frivolous or vexatious; or (c) are an abuse of the process of the court."

Doesn't that describe IBM's pleadings to a T?

50 years ago, CP/M started the microcomputer revolution

Re: The biggest ballache

"Amstrad ... made the best CP/M machine of them all"

That would depend on what you wanted to do with it but I don't think you could add the sort of interface boards that some of us needed. I suppose the difference is between a machine built around CP/M as opposed to a computing machine which could run CP/M as its OS.

Re: Alternate origin story

"Even at the time that CP/M was a mature OS"

Yes, CP/M was a mature, serious OS, not just a toy. The whole microcomputer revolution was a marvel for those of us who had a use for which, up to then, a mini would have been the answer but no budget for one. People like myself, working in a lab and with previous experience with FORTRAN and punched cards on mainframes. In fact it was likely that not even a mini would have done the job that could be achieved with an S-100 box. There were all sorts of cards available such as ADCs to aid interfacing with instruments. I build a microspectrophotometer and, realising that the 9-bit ADC wasn't enough, added another 4 bits with an op-amp and a 4-bit CMOS switch and a stepping motor controlling the continuous interference filter. Microsoft FORTRAN had I/O equivalents to POKE and PEEK (PUT and GET IIRC). I'm not sure one could have added the necessary interface cards to a mini.

Some of my colleagues went on a computing course which taught Pascal so I changed to UCSD Pascal which ran on the same H/W but subsequently on an IBM PC clone. Maybe another subject for an article Liam?

Re: CP/M Gets AC From Idiot To Mostly Competent!!!!

about 60 times more efficient economical

But a good point non-the-less.

Re: CP/M Gets AC From Idiot To Mostly Competent!!!!

"Ditto. Wordstar on a Amstrad CPC6128 did my degree dissertation."

Pampered kids!

Typewriter, editing with scissors and stapler.

And back in the day, publishing involved galley proofs and page proofs where edits had to preserve the line length to avoid having to reset entire pages. However it did save the day when I was given somebody's page proofs to read and realised there were errors converting imperial to metric (or possibly the other way about) which really mattered because it dealt with sea-level changes. They had been missed in his thesis by both his supervisor and the external examiner, by the journal editor and reviewer and in the galleys.

Re: @AC - CP/M Gets AC From Idiot To Mostly Competent!!!!

I wonder how many proof runs it took to get an acceptable layout. The original Unix development was effectively financed at Bell Labs as a means of WP of patent applications. A networking textbook is more hardcore than that.

OTOH try a book which has maps and photographs, keeping the text describing them onto the same or a facing page as far as possible. Add the complication of some of these being split across facing pages. That's harder core. And wondering why adding a few words at the op of a page has suddenly left a white gap at the bottom until you realise that there was no longer room for both a footnote an the paragraph that referenced it.

Complex layout is tricky. The advantage of WYSiWYG is that your proofing happens continuously on screen in front of your eyes.

Re: CP/M Gets AC From Idiot To Mostly Competent!!!!

And good luck to anyone wanting to do really complex layout such as splitting a map across facing pages using rules based layout. They're either going to have to be very, very good at applying the rules in their head or else use a lot of proofing runs to get good results. For that sort of writing using WYSIWYG is the equivalent of moving from punched cards and batch compiling to programming in an IDE.

Re: CP/M Gets AC From Idiot To Mostly Competent!!!!

if I was writing a modern replacement for "War and Peace", surely I'm interested in the words and not the fonts?

If you were writing it for self publishing you might well be more interested in fonts etc. Even more so if you were writing non fiction with a need to provide headings, sub headings, insert images and tables, keep track of references to these in the text etc. Alternatively you could use a plain text editor and then something like Scribus or InDesign to separate text from layout.

A word processor is more than a simple text editor. Both have their uses.