Posts by Doctor Syntax

CEO of UK's National Grid warns of datacenters' thirst for power

Re: off peak power

800kv applied direct to the logic boards should solve the problem and be quite illuminating.

The UK Digital Information Bill: Brexit dividend or data disaster?

Re: Growth & innovation

I used to think it was a law of political organisation that any party of sufficient size would develop a Dunning-Kruger wing.

Then I thought of the opposite. Any party of sufficient size develops a non-Dunning Kruger wing. That fits observed data much better.

They've all got one. The best we can hope for is that the main parties don't have their DK wing in the ascendency at the same time and even better if the one in power doesn't.

Re: Northern Ireland's retained EU personal data protection rights

Still no mention of how the Bill will "handle" Northern Ireland's post-Brexit protections

We can work out the answer to that one easily enough: as badly as it has handled every other aspect of the Good Friday agreement because that assumed that NI and the rest of the UK and Ireland would all be in the EU. The only way they could have kept the process on the rails would have been for the Republic to leave the EU at the same time. I doubt they expected that to happen because I doubt they thought anything through to that extent.

Re: A gift?

AFAICS it had two objectives.

1. Get themselves elected

2. Escape from adult supervision once in power.

This is part of step 2.

After some thrashing about in the ball-pit they'll have gone and leave somebody else to tidy up what's left.

Uncle Sam's had it up to here with 'unforgivable' SQL injection flaws

Re: SQL is the problem

A good programming language is one which allows the developer to express the requirement clearly and should be equally clear to read for anyone who has to maintain the code afterwards. For its given domain SQL does just that and it's a good deal less verbose than what I understand COBOL to be.

I'm not sure of your preferred programming language but whatever it is could you give an example of how you think it should be done to extract data joining, say four tables, with selection criteria spanning at least five columns in at least three of the tables. At least one of the criteria should be a range of values and at least one other should provide the equivalent of a SQL OR clause to filter on multiple values for that column.

Then explain how the resulting code meets the clarity of expression and reading criteria better than the equivalent SQL.

The problem in TFA is not SQL It's in constructing the SQL on the fly as opposed to parametrising a pre-written statement. About the only benefit of your "real" programming language is that parametrising would be unavoidable. The downside is that you'd have to produce a complex set of statements for each individual SQL statement you replace.

I'm trying to cast my mind back 40 years to the time before Informix adopted SQL and we had to use a C library instead. Fortunately time is shielding me from that.

Re: “parameterized queries with prepared statements” are “brittle”

You're excused. The paragraph you're looking at uses "These" and "they're" ambiguously because it's not specified to what they refer.. You parsed them, quite reasonably, as referring to "parameterized queries with prepared statements" in the previous paragraph.. It seems more likely that "input sanitization techniques" was meant. If you read it like that it's consistent with your getting yelled at.

Fujitsu set to be preferred bidder in UK digital ID scheme

Really??!!!

Twitter's lawsuit against anti-hate-speech crusaders gets SLAPPed out of court

I wonder what his reaction was? To send the judge a poop emoji?

Time to examine the anatomy of the British Library ransomware nightmare

From the incident report:

"A few key software systems, including the library management system, cannot be brought back in the form that they existed in before the attack, either because they are no longer supported by the vendor and the software is no longer available, or because they will not function on the Library’s new secure infrastructure which is in the process of being rolled out."

There's no substitute for having source: whether it's your own, open, available or in escrow matters rather less than making sure is will be available and can be rebuilt if needed.

AFAICT the report mentions no changes in personnel management, yet it's the personnel management who orchestrated this disaster.

Re: "Too old to be safe, too expensive in time and money to replace"

Once a piece of software is built it should essentially work, as in keep doing the same thing (functional defects may mean this isn't the "right" thing), for all eternity. We need to rethink how we deliver applications.

Two things there. 1. It may have as yet undiscovered vulnerabilities built in. 2. What it does when delivered isn't necessarily what it will need to do in the future.

Development is the process of launching a software product into the maintenance cycle. Eventually most of the work that has been done on it may well have been done by maintainers. They need to be at least as good as the original developers.

Re: What's the odds

One bullet point from the PDF dealing with improvements for the future:

"a holistic, integrated security suite that covers the whole organisation, backed by managed security partners for improved incident response, detection, and remediation"

I read that as "Single point of failure exposed to supply chain attack."

Re: The 21/22 annual report is instructive

They were getting round to it.

From the incident review document: in late 2022 the increasing use of 3rd party providers in the network was glagged as a risk. A review of security provision relating to is was planned for 2024.

Re: Reason #854637

"because I didn't manage staff and that's how the wagers were calculated."

And that goes right through the thinking and also a long way back. Investigating crime and giving evidence that could clear or convict someone on charges that could result in life imprisonment but don't manage staff? you don't have the responsibilities needed for promotion. (At least not until you hand in your notice at which time it's magically offered without any of the usual procedures.)

Re: Reason #854637

IT contracting is most definitely *not* the pot of gold it used to be.

It was only considered such by those permies who, for one reason or another, didn't want to partake of the fabled pot.

Re: Reason #854637

The is Britain, and the only "valued and rewarded" jobs are crap like sales or financial services.

And the only valued and rewarded qualifications are in the Humanities.

Boeing top brass stand down amid safety turbulence

Re: Whether they will look outside the company

Too big to fail lasts until it becomes too big to prop up.

Re: Whether they will look outside the company

"Ryanair ... already have their own QA inspectors embedded at Boeing factories."

QU inspection of aircraft is probably a chargeable extra on the ticket.

So it was the Alaskan Airlines blowout that was the watershed moment? Not the 737Max crashes? I suppose they didn't count as they were somewhere foreign, almost entirely out of USian consciousness.

DBA made ten years of data disappear with one misplaced parameter

If they didn't have all that busy-work to do somebody might notice that they're not really needed.

Re: This is why we ALWAYS test new procedures on a COPY of the production database

Not even it but because. We also COUNT the number of rows that will be affected. But is Oracle so slow that two month's worth of rows couldn't be SELECTed?

Labor watchdog wants SpaceX's gag clauses to disintegrate like its exploding rockets

Re: It is worse

"Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk's rocket company:"

I'd have thought that the usual ambulance chasers would have latched onto these PDQ.

Re: "Those would be big no-nos under US law"

Didn't the union bosses manage to acquire some of that sparkle for themselves?

Flox rocks the Nix box by conquering code chaos

Yet another project that can't build a website that says anything unless javascript is enabled. Also, yet another project that can't explain what it's about without assuming the reader knows all about another project. So what I take from this is just a guess but it's a development system for a development and/or packaging system that, like too many others, depends on taking the familiar, well understood - by some of us - Unix-style file system and rearranging it.

To which I can only respond by quoting two well-known sources:

"Oh no, not again" (Bowl of petunias)

"The great thing about standards is there so many of them to choose from" (Tannenbaum)

CNCF boss talks 'irrational exuberance' in an AI-heavy Kubecon keynote

"a quick tech demo, to the delight of the audience...went off without a hitch"

That's not what usually delights an audience

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

Re: glueing thin clients

You can buy adapters which are double size plates drilled with VESA-pattern holes, intended to solve the problem of one size mount on the monitor and another size on whatever you wish to attach (I have one to mount a Pi on the back of a TV). That's one option. Another is that you can also get an adapter with two parallel VESA plates joined with a bracket to sandwich your computer between them an fit the mounting bracket onto the back.

Re: Off topic

The thick "sticky brown" coating of nicotine

Did anyone not expect that to be the case in TFA when they read the article? Nice piece of redirection there, ed.

NVD slowdown leaves thousands of vulnerabilities without analysis data

I doubt the opposition is slowing down.

BOFH: So you want more boardroom tech that no one knows how to use

Re: Hmm ...

Put it down to research.

Re: Oh yeah !

If you're going to screen out all the bad ones you'll need ->

Re: Oh yeah !

On't work. You'll just get another board indistinguishable from the first. Oops, sorry, previous board. It can't be the first because we recently lost a board in that unfortunate accident at bonus time. In fact, with the BOFH about there must have been quite a few boards and accidents over the years.

Whistleblower raises alarm over UK Nursing and Midwifery Council's DB

Re: Includes sexual orientation

"Given the difficulty in recruiting nurses you want to be sure the number of reasons limiting recruits aren't more than the pay and conditions on offer."

So the offer should be made without asking questions other than qualifications although those will include the checks on barring or whatever the term is now.

"but you don't know how well you're doing if you don't measure it."

And if it's not your business to know you won't need to measure it.

The underlying problem here is the busybodies and professional umbrage takers who make it their business to know, probably because it's an easier gig than getting nursing or any other useful qualifications.

Obviously ideas from the op are worth more than those at the coal face. Those at the top are paid more so their ideas are worth more. Stands to reason & all that.

"gender, sexual orientation, gender identity"

To think that we just used to use a single CHAR column with 7 wasted bits.

UK council won't say whether two-week 'cyber incident' impacted resident data

Re: BZZZTTT FAIL

"Your ERP goes down and you're not giving the CFO hourly updates on the expected recovery time and process - your IT dept is a clown car."

The best responses here are along the lines of "It'll be back when it's back. Now get off my back." or "Do you want me to fix it or stay here talking to you about fixing it?"

As to the OP's comment he is actually saying the same thing as you and making the point that what both of you are recommending isn't being done in this case.

Re: Pilots have an axiom for emergencies:

"I suspect those on the ground haven't told those at the top how fucked they are yet."

They must have tried. But there's none so deaf as those who won't listen.

If they're saying nothing things must be really so bad that they've even lost the scripts to "Your security is important to us, only a small number of people etc".

Nominet to restructure, slash jobs after losing 'major deal'

Re: I'm sure at one time, the companies coffers were considerably stocked...

I'm beginning to wonder if the new CEO is an actual improvement on the former.

Why France this week fined Google €250M over web news

As I read it the complaint is that the French want the brioche to be provided to them not just for free but they want to be paid to have them provided.

"In 2019, Google said it would not use snippets from French publishers without explicit permission due to the copyright law. But the FCA deemed that refusal to negotiate an abuse of market power."

So the French want to have their brioche and eat it?

Euro-cloud consortium CISPE calls for investigation of Broadcom

The merger got a lot of scrutiny from the various monopolies regulators before being approved. Were there no undertaings given about this?

Canadian arrested for 'stealing secret' to speedy Tesla battery production

It could also make proving someone else isn't using it - i.e. it's not that secret - difficult as well.

Is that the secret information that's published in the patents or other secret information that they didn't bother to patent?

European Space Agency to measure Earth at millimeter scale

Re: What are they using as their zero point?

Fortunately it also falls twice a day.

Re: What are they using as their zero point?

"To achieve this goal down to millimetre level,"

Note spelling.

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

I think that claim can be explained by some people liking to brag about anything.

Re: Correct me if I'm wrong...

"And isn't that also where you tend to find banks branches and/or ATMs?"

Not any longer, these days.

Re: Pronoun police

Taking "company" as a collective noun (the company is the collection of those who have investments in it) we can turn to Fowler* for advice. The advice there is that consistency is essential but either usage is acceptable. So you and your friend can both be right.

Fowler falls foul of Muphry's law in giving an example of incorrect usage:

"The government is pressing ahead with their policy or privatization"

Note the "or".

* Yes, I have a copy tucked away in the "Misc user guides" folder on my desktop. Why do you ask?

Re: A Suggestion Or Two......................

The general point is true but with cash the counter is no longer tightly bound to the computer so the system is tolerant of quite long outages unless..."If a POS system fails, the retailer may not be able to process transactions at all, regardless of the method of payment."

There you introduce a tight binding and if the PoS depends on a PoS at head office (or The Cloud) then when (not if) that goes out so does the entire business. If individual tills at the counter only need intermittent connection to head office, say to report the day's takings, then the rest of the business continues. In fact, if there's more than one till available even that branch's business continues. At the very worst tills depending on a single branch server only result in loss of the branch in the event of a server failure.

Tight integration may not be necessary for day-to-day business but it is for business-wide failure. Designing a system that way for a business with a national or international chain of branches is an abominable mistake.

They know how many beans make five.