Posts by Doctor Syntax

IT boss left root session open for bring-your-kid-to-work day

Re: Papertape punch

"We 'ad to nibble holes in tarmac"

The local council does that for you.

Could have been worse

rm -rf /

Microsoft says 8 GB of RAM should be enough for anyone running Windows 11

"If Microsoft release a freshly laid turd with a Microsoft logo stamped on the side, I have absolutely no doubt our CTO would order one for every employee."

I thought you said you were already running W11.

Re: They're joking, right?

"Open more than two webpages, one document and start a teams call and the thing starts swapping heavily."

You mean you're wanting to do something with the programs you're running?

"Delivering a faster and more efficient out-of-box experience."

First you have to work out what customers mean by "efficient".

"Redmond adds new items to its make-Windows-better list"

There's a design philosophy that says a design is complete when there's nothing more that can be removed.

To be clear, that doesn't mean removing everything, just stuff that is clutter.

Claude Code is revolutionizing digital archaeology. Enterprise better dig it

"Forensic science owes a great deal to archaeology, such as excavation methodology, taphonomy – the study of what happens to organic remains after death – osteology, and the analysis of mass graves and conflict sites."

As someone who has been involved in both not only is that rue but the overlap is much larger. The big similarity, which applies here too is "You have to make do with what you have". The quality control lab in the glass works, for instance, can take as big a sample as they want, the forensic scientist has just tiny fragments and nothing more. It's all about pushing analytical techniques. There have been - maybe still are - university departments combining the two.

Update Teams mobile app by October or lose your calendar

All those people using Outlook/Exchange don't realise that there's another world out here where S/W adheres to a long established open standard and calendars don't disappear because of a decision iby some magacorp's marketing dept.

Re: Teams diary functions?

I take it "an error" in 2 or 3 means "doesn't match 1".

Headteacher had the most guessable username-password combo you could imagine

Re: Yeah, folks

I define security as the ratio between the ease the good guys and the bad guys have getting access, Poor access for those entitled to use it is just as bad security as not being difficult to by-pass.

'Leaving the DB locked for the next poor soul who just gets a message "Retail password.kdbx is locked by another user"'

Keepass is a many-headed beast these days. I use KeePassX. If it accidentally gets closed without saving it asks if I want to open it read-only which would fit your use case.

Also I use NextCloud to sync it between devices. I'm not sure what would happen if it synced in locked condition but I haven't seen an issue with it.

Re: Sue the bastards!

Also Suse, Zorin and others.

"Nobody to sue" is yet another of the myths as, of course, is the idea that you could usefully sue Microsoft (other than in the small claims court which, I believe, has been done).

I'd expect the local fire officer to come round periodically to check the fire readiness of the school: working alarms, fire doors not blocked or locked, etc.

It's a pity there isn't a similar inspection routine for school IT security -all that personal information held on youngsters. This is one instance where "think of the children" might actually get meaningful results.

And even more secure once the ancient laptop goes to join that great landfill in the sky.

"one in a hidden key safe that only a couple of very senior people had the number for."

Sitting in the Crown Room at Crumlin Rd courthouse, waiting for the trial I was involved with to start. One of the police witnesses - photographer, mapper or whatever was also sitting there. There was a key safe lying about so to pass the time he picked it up and started trying the combination lock. After a few minutes he had it open.

Re: Not a problem

The special control boxes might be running special interface cards. They might not even plug into a modern motherboard and even if they did modern bus speed might mess with them.

Re: Not a problem

Why? If it's specialist S/W tied to a specific Windows version then that's what it needs to be. The same would apply if it were an S-100 ox running CP/M, a Linux box running a kernel in the 4 range or even a MicroVAX running VMS. Just treat it as the dedicated appliance it is, but isolate it. The real problem comes when the H/W dies, of course.

LinkedIn realizes its users have been bathing in AI slop, offers a shower

Re: Quite why LinkedIn still has the draw in terms of having to use it when job hunting is beyond me

But maybe not as overrated as career placement companies.

Re: "the difference between a toaster and a badger"

The Uxbridge English Dictionary would give a more concise answer.

Re: you have to be really desperate…

"Got a job via word of mouth as per usual."

The most effective way. LinkedIn's original purpose was to monetise by-passing that.

"several changes designed to rehab the platform’s reputation"

As far as I can see LinkedIn has two reputations held by two different groups. One group is the wankers who post on it and the other held by those who consider those who post on it to be wankers. Which reputation is it intended to enhance.

Techie lured out of retirement to support software only he remembered

Re: Proof of pension

Which doesn't help if the jobsworths want the original documents.

With the freelancing I ended up going about 2 years over what would have been my last employer's normal mandatory requirement age and my last client's mandatory requirement age. I think I must have looked a bit younger than I was because the client wanted me to join them as their programming manager. In the end it was they guy they recruited's lack of ability to make a decision that finally made me decide to pack it in. That and remembering that all my male paternal relatives of previous generations died about 71 or 72 and I wanted to get more retirement in than they did.

But a word of advice. If you've something you want to get done, do it before you retire. You'll be too busy afterwards.

Re: Ah, the tax man

It's not the being taxed on it, it's the sheer amount of embuggerment involved in dealing with HMRC. Unless you have an accountant you're likely to end up worse off than you were and if it's only a small amount of money the cost of engaging an accountant will ensure you end up worse off than when you started. It's a matter of having some money versus having less money.

Re: Ah, the tax man

"when it comes to UK tax it's always a good idea to run it past an independent financial adviser as you can often save yourself from making some expensive financial mistakes"

That's always assuming the amount is big enough to make it worthwhile after paying the fees for the advice.

Dammit - blank!

It's alarming to think that my own children, born in the 1970s, are now about the same age as I was when I was booted into early retirement, AKA freelancing.

Re: Ah, the tax man

A member of our local history group was a popular speaker for various local organisations. He always told them to give any fees to charities of their choice rather than get entangled with tax issues.

That's almost point plank range for her.

Despite all the MiL jokes I always got on well with mine.

Three becomes one as Vodafone buys out merger partner

So we're back to more or less where we were 40 years ago. The former BT Mobile/Cellnet & VoodooFone. Just the two.

Tech buyers are baking in sovereignty from day one, says Forrester

Re: Meh

I'm sure that those who are capable of working out that they need sovereignty over their systems included that as part of their thinking.

Amazon's Q2 was great, but the earnings release is packed with baloney

Re: Same revenue booked thrice?

SOP for UK governments of all colours.

"up to 30 to 40% better price-performance,"

Two tiny weasel words in there.

Curiosity rover spots field of giant honeycomb on Mars – but no giant space bees

Re: Curious

I'd suggest a mass of mud shrinking, forming columns from lateral shrinkage and horizontal cracks from the vertical shrinkage followed by an intrusion of more mud, which sets to become harder, into the cracks,

That's what I was thinking. They're the tops of basalt columns.

The production is quite similar of course. A liquid cooling, solidifying and shrinking as it does so.

30 years ago, AT&T gave Internet Explorer the default advantage

It's been a rough 30 years since then.

Big vacuum is watching as robo-cleaners put humans behind the wheel

"learns where household items belong after a few recurring visits and returns them there"

Picks up the post,opens it, dumps it in bin.

Excuses like 'AI did it' don't exist in the eyes of the law

"Seems a bit unfair that they're on the hook for liability for whatever the AI does"

They chose to deploy it. No lack of fairness tor taking responsibility for the consequences.

“Our laws generally know how to ask questions about things like human intent, organizational oversight, and corporate responsibility.”

They also know how to handle lack of those things: negligence.

NOAA ditches weather-predicting supercomputers for Google Cloud

Re: I suppose it has nothing to do with ...

"Well it does run the US National Weather Service."

WHoosh.

"the UK's Met Office is also in the process of moving its own weather prediction system to Microsoft Azure "

And a US president could turn it off at a whim. Great thinking.

Word worm crawls into Copilot, spreads chaos

"Ideally both of these should be for coloured text on same coloured background, not just white on white."

The workaround for that would be a single LSB difference in one of the colour channels betweeen text and background.

Re: tip of the iceberg

Those businesses worst hit will be less able - or unable - to offer those jobs.

Burnham's spanner in the works leaves UK government tech scattered across Whitehall

Re: Since When Was The Electorate Interested in "Government Computing"?

Any time it got something wrong for them - like their tax, for instance - and they can't get a reply from actual humans.

Re: Relax. Nothing will change.

Consensus is actually a good idea. It might even lead to good, effective government. it ensures that we stop lurching from one half-completed thing to another ever time government changes. That presupposes that the policy being applied is a good one, but again, consensus might help with that.

Wasn't there a DCMS a couple of reorganisations ago? It's hard keeping up with all this shuffling but I think he's just put things back as they were.

NHS England rapped over inaccurate Palantir patient data disclosure

Re: Incompetence or malice?

"any confusion this has caused"

Straight out of the PR non-apology play-book.

Do they think we can't parse this correctly (where "correctly" is not in they way they intend)?

"NHS England states that this access is technically necessary. As an independent body not involved in the platform's operation, we are not in a position to independently verify that assessment,"

Really? Then exactly what is the National Data Guardian for?

Being an independent body is the prime requirement to independently verify something and independent verification of the way data is handled should be with their remit.

Openreach nudges another 112 exchange areas toward full fiber

A friend lives quite close to a mobile mast which must also have a fibre connection for the back-haul but her FTTC came from the same cabinet as mine but she lives on the opposite side of the valley about a mile further down towards the exchange. They finally gave up and got a cellular modem.

This whole mess is the main reason why I disliked the push for FTTP. Those who get a good FTTC service get FTTP if they want it while those who can't remain out in the cold. Either a universal provision of FTTC at acceptable speed should have been a prerequisite for allowing FTTP or else the new fibre rollout should have been to the areas that didn't have any.