Posts by Doctor Syntax

Ex-Apple engineer lifts lid on Uncle Sam's top-secret plan to turn customized iPod into 'Geiger counter'

Re: I call BS

"a scintillation counter"

Point of information - gas proportional counter also does this. It was the first system in use in the QUB carbon dating lab. But in terms of volume and need for high voltages, not in this application.

Re: Supposition!

"An iPod wouldn't send data back to base in real time"

Maybe radio transmission that was the extra hardware. Apple guy suggests something quite irrelevant to actual project? Thank him nicely and carry on.

Re: Apple should launch this for the public.

OP didn't explain ammonium nitrate. That's only half of ANFO.

Re: Apple should launch this for the public.

"Fertilizer by a government building = worthy of investigation."

Bovine fertilizer in a government building = completely expected.

SQLite maximum database size increased to 281TB – but will anyone need one that big?

"There are approximately 640 times more lines of code devoted to tests than there are in the database engine itself."

Who tests the testers?

With that degree of excess I'd hope that some of those LOC are there to test the tests of the engine and that some are there to test the tests of the tests...

Trump backs Oracle as potential TikTok buyer

Another for the abuse of office writs piling up for the day after he steps down.

Anti-5G-vaxx pressure group sues Zuckerberg, Facebook, fact checkers for daring to suggest it might be wrong

Tricky things, rights. Really they're nothing more than pre-negotiated agreements as to how we all behave to each other.

One corollary of that is that they have to apply all round. So if X has the right to post that 5G caused Coronavirus-19 then Y has the right to post evidence that X's post was bollocks. X can't then argue that Y shouldn't have that right without arguing that they don't have it themselves.

Another corollary is that as soon as there are multiple rights is that there's a possibility of conflict and precedence is needed to sort them out. We usually put the right to life first so freedom of speech has to take a lower precedence.

Re: Idiots

"We have villages missing an idiot"

The perspective from out here in the villages is that we're being invaded by urban idiots.

This is barely indistinguishable from middle-ages peasants who didn't know where the supernatural ended and science started

FTFY

One of the consequences of Thalidomide, of course, is that clinical trials have become more rigorous. If things didn't move on in medicine and epidemiology we'd still be catching and dying from the plague from rat fleas, cholera from dirty water, smallpox from each other and dying from numerous bacterial infections.

"I've had Corona"

Was that diagnosed with a specific test* or was it just some unspecified upper respiratory tract infection?

Assuming you genuinely did have it how many (obviously unvaccinated) people did you pass it onto? How many more got it passed on indirectly? How many of those did you indirectly kill?

"I've had Corona" isn't a straightforward statement to make for anyone. Unless they isolated themselves before becoming infected they must realise that there's an ongoing chain of infections extending before them and that people could be dying from what they unwittingly passed on. I'd have expected that the one thing anyone in that position, who thinks the thing through and has any trace of conscience would support anything that breaks that chain.

* And if you don't trust science how would you know that the test was right? Or even that the virus exists?

The group wants ... Zuck, Facebook, et al "make a public retraction of their false statements."

Let's have that generalised - the loser makes a public retraction of their false statements.

Linux kernel maintainers tear Paragon a new one after firm submits read-write NTFS driver in 27,000 lines of code

"let me build our half of the bridge" doesn't sound much like a flame-thrower approach.

Sun welcomes vampire dating website company: Arrgh! No! It burns! It buuurrrrnsss!

Re: vampires still exists

Well played, sir.

Re: Appearance et al...

"No. I'm sorry, I haven't the foggiest."

The better option is to call over to someone else "There's somebody here who's lost their memory. Do you know who they are?"

Re: Monkey on my back

It is. You got there first, dammit.

Re: Not me, but someone else

But satisfying.

Re: Not me, but someone else

"they took one look at this ruffian clutching a supermarket carrier bag"

One of the best - and truest - lines in LOTSW was along those lines. The scruffs were wandering through a car showroom. One salesman to another: "Shall I throw them out?" "Nay lad, round here they can look like that and be millionaires."

Re: Inappropriate garb

"almost an acknowledgment that your interview was just a pony show to get you in the door"

It is. Just like the CV is written to get past the gatekeepers in HR.

Re: Appropriate attire?

"Being both young and foolish I agreed, especially as it came with a 15% pay rise."

Nothing foolish about accepting a 15%rise. I trust you kept it after abandoning the suit.

Re: Appearance et al...

I suppose that's one occasion when "Do you know who I am?" really was appropriate.

Re: Dress Code

OTOH about 20 years ago I had gig where my client wanted me to do some work on site at their customer's HO and insisted that I wear a suit on site. So I ended up working in a rapidly dishevelling suit in a heat wave (spending as much time as possible in the machine room to take advantage of the aircon). The customer manager I dealt with was in shorts and sandals in the office. He was the one with appropriate attire.

"had time left to kill in Chicago"

Nice one.

Former HP CEO and Republican Meg Whitman – who split HP with mixed success – says Donald Trump can't run a business

"You wouldn't think she would want to draw attention to her miserable failure at HP."

Who says she failed? Everyone else,of course, but in her own mind there'd be no failure at all.

Re: China

his platform seems to be essentially "Vote for me, I'm not Trump"

To be fair, it's a line with a lot to recommend it.

I assume the shortened URL (a curse be upon all shortened URLs) was to something like this latest news of Dido Harding's relentless failing upwards https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53813480

CenturyLink caught trying to steal customers despite promising court it wouldn’t, promises it won't do it again

Re: May be held in contempt of court in future

On seeing the headline I wondered that. From what I understand of the report it wasn't a court decision in the first place, just an agreement with a Govt department who was trusting enough to to put in that provision originally.

Perhaps the better option now would have been to just break it up without the option on the basis that now the conditions have been breached the benefits can't possibly exist. Apart from anything else it would terrify the others.

How to have a more positive 'outage experience' according to Microsoft: Please don't rely on the Azure Status page

Outages are "an unfortunate inevitability of the technology industry"

Outages are an inevitable consequence of that attitude.

Australian regulator slams Google ‘misinformation’ in pay-for-news-fight

Re: Nope

"both the local and BBC sites covered some of them them. Today neither of them does"

So the local paper doesn't have the Beeb as competition any more. If it wanted to invest in building up its local reporting it could do so.

I suspect the malaise of local press is more that it isn't local any more. Many of the local papers got bought up by national chains that had no local focus.

How would newspapers and websits manage without Streetview when they need a picture of Backwater Street, Ballygobackwards when something happens there and they want to print the story they got from Twitter?

Re: Nope

"local press particularly hard hit and virtually out of business in some parts of the UK. I don't believe that Google is the primary cause of this"

Quite.

Taking "press" literally the problem is delivery networks. Our local newspaper shop can't get kids to deliver to us any more and I'm not trailing all that way every day just to get a paper.

Online they totally disregarded GDPR with needing to provide 100+ opt-outs every time you went online, one of the many reasons why I have one browser set up in amnesiac mode.

Since then things have got worse as, with so many in the group their domain is $OLD_TITLElive.co.uk and, amid the mess that's now its UI, persists in wanting to throw at me local stories from all over the place except here.

Please stop hard-wiring AWS credentials in your code. Looking at you, uni COVID-19 track-and-test app makers

Re: Phone is not person

"If you want them to stay on campus for 14 weeks, put a guard on the gate."

Or just close the place down for lack of students.

Re: Just another example of why

It makes no difference if they are when senior management find it too expensive, too inconvenient or just too unnecessary.

"The AWS keys are no longer present in that version, Q3w3e3 said."

They may no longer be present but that in itself is no guarantee that the keys have been changed. Without Q3w3e3 or anyone else who'd copied them actually testing you'd just have to trust the company based on its past record.

UK.gov shakes hands on cloud agreement with 'non-cloud service provider' HPE

"The main rule about cloud club is that you talk about cloud club... a lot"

The other rule is that you don't talk about the CLOUD Act at all.

Whoa, no Huawei wares, Hua-wei, livin' on a prayer: US government says we've got to hold on to what we've got

Re: Stupid US

"Block all Microsoft and Oracle products from China! Oh no, whatever would they do without Microsoft or Oracle products!??"

No problem there. And as regards Windows in particular the Chinese already have that in hand with Deepin Linux.

I suppose when the US has no remnants of feet left they'll stop shooting at them.

From per-processor licensing to... per-follower? Oracle said to be in talks to buy TikTok’s US operations

"Why Oracle would want any part of TikTok is hard to understand."

FOMO.

What else do they have that's a recognised consumer brand?

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

At about 7,000 miles per year I'll have to hope that our two current cars are enough to see us through to the end of our driving days.

SAP blogger reveals top tips for keeping clients happy: Don’t swear, remember to write a pithy subject line, and TURN OFF CAPS LOCK

Re: Well I dunno

As an example of attitudes to customer care let me just leave this here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-53607183

Common sense may be sense but it's quite uncommon.

"The advantages of email marketing make it an important addition to a business’s Internet marketing program.” usually makes me think “Sometimes it seems as though modern businesses hardly care about their customers,”

Reply-All storm sparked by student smut sees school system shut down Google Classroom for up to a week

Re: Clearly run by dummies

Because it's the only thing they can think of to get removed. There's probably an email address for the list manager but nobody knows it. All they can hope is that it's one of the names on the list.

Re: Not possible?

I'm fairly certain I just heard someone saying "challenge accepted".

I wouldn't be surprised if similar thinking was behind the reply-alls that followed it.

Pot, meet kettle: Google claims Australia's pay-for-news plan could see personal data put to nefarious uses

"it is potentially a global precedent for how publishers and web giants interact "

I thought Spain and Germany had already tried this out with the results any disinterested observer would have expected. But then there's always the possibility that doing the same thing will have a different result next time.

ANPR maker Neology sues Newcastle City Council after failing to win 'air quality' snoopcam project bid

Translation: Don't invite us to tender.

Where there's a .mil, there's Huawei: Pentagon allowed to keep using Chinese tech deemed too dangerous for everyone else – report

It sounds like the whole thing was just business as usual: act first, plan later.

Money talks as Chinese chip foundries lure TSMC staff with massive salaries to fix the Middle Kingdom's tech gap

Re: More blowback from Trump's epic mishandling of foreign affairs

I'm not sure. They might be worrying on their own account at what Trump's been setting afoot in China.

Re: Hardly surprising

unless China has already acquired set out to make the necessary equipment

FTFY but does it feel any more reassuring than the original

NHS tests COVID-19 contact-tracing app that may actually work properly – EU neighbors lent a helping hand

Re: More useful

"I had Covid-19 in January."

Diagnosed?

And if so how many others did you infect? A genuine infection back then must represent a considerable number of subsequent infections and maybe there'll have been a few deaths as well.

"It was rather harmless"

Assuming you did have it have you been checked for any damage which might give rise to long term complications?

And see above. If you spread it to others it may have been far from harmless to them.

"Therefore, I'm immune."

As per Spanners comment, are you sure?

In any case, these precautionary measures aren't to protect you, they're to protect the community at large from the possibility that you are are infective. An infection is a phenomenon involving one person, an epidemic or pandemic involves the population at large and the defensive response needs to be that of the entire population not of the entire population excepting those who feel they're somehow above it.