Posts by Doctor Syntax

Twitter says it may harvest biometric, employment data from its addicts

Re: Requiring IDs for everyone

"a new thing to replace Privacy Shield (forgot it's name as I'm pre-coffee)"

"Fig-leaf" is a suitable generic for all their attempts.

Re: Requiring IDs for everyone

Obviously the mugshot would be generated by AI.

You could have taken up their option and created a profile with their own address.

I wonder how close the bottom of the barrel might be.

Cops drill into chat apps, sink plot to smuggle tonnes of coke into Europe

Re: Every story like this is a godsend

The counter for this is that these are special channels wet up for criminal use. Targetting these is one thing, and a successful one, targetting those used by the bulk of the population is quite another. It overturns the presumption of innocence which is there to protect the public from wrongful attention of the state.

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

uman error is "a possibility with any type of tool."

Probabilities are more interesting than possibilities and some tools with have higher probabilities than others.

Re: My personal experience

"The police refused to acknowledge any of this as a problem: all my complaints, to both police forces and the IOPC were brushed off."

Too easy to do when the casualty survives. A coroner's verdict citing the problem might be trickier for them. As with so many other issues nobody wants to think ahead to anticipate the occurrence of a worst case.

"Thus the latitude and longitude of New York City Hall ... maps to clip.apples.leap"

To be confused with clip.apple.sleep, clip.apples.lip, clip apple.slip to name but a few.

I'll see your data loss and raise you a security policy violation

Re: No local storage allowed ?

OP wrote "your desk and chair" and omitted to describe the machine similarly, i.e. "your machine".

I assume that when you go into the office your personally sit on your chair at your desk at to do work for the company. And likewise you personally use your computer to do that work for the company. The computer is no more the user's to take home but it is one being personally used by the employee. Perhaps you're too young to remember when using a computer meant accessing a shared computer with a dumb terminal and that the separate computer on the employee's desk was called a Personal Computer - I don't think I know what the P stands for, I remember it..

Re: Outlook...

"Strata" and "Syncline" are not terms normally found in filing systems

But the old stuff can get quietly subducted into the bin.

Re: It can get worse...

Skeuomorphism is all very well but it will only get you so far.

Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

""A57 Snake Pass, Manchester to Sheffield""

Langsett to Ladybower with dodgy brakes.

Re: No local storage allowed ?

"Do you take your desk and chair home with you? Why is the machine different?"

Do you see a possessive pronoun you wrote in what I quoted? Why is the machine different?

Re: BTDT

An application that keeps WIP files in /tmp - which is what /tmp is for - should remove them on normal closure. If you close down the server peremptorily and don't let the applications close normally you should expect the stuff in /tmp to be important; the application developer might have anticipated the possibility of this happening and been able to use them for recovery. The only files that could be safely deleted are those that haven't been touched for a long time.

The basic rule is if you don't know it's safe to delete a file don't delete it.

Re: Outlook...

"Local storage was not allowed - company policy."

Then there's no point in having a PC. A thin client would have been much better.

Re: Outlook...

You should have reminded him that an empty desk is a sign of an empty head.

Re: Outlook...

Oh dear. Superfluous apostrophe.

Re: No local storage allowed ?

"You clearly don't know Windows users."

And forgot what the P in PC stands for.

Re: To be fair...

"you should really take a look at the folder you're going to purge"

Security might have prevented that. OTOH an enquiry wouldn't have been out of place.

Re: To be fair...

This also applies to staff.

Re: Outlook...

Predictable that this would be the first comment. It's a consequence of (a) email clients not being designed with reasonable use cases in mind and (b) admins not keeping up with growing storage requirements which is also part of Huon's users' problem.

Re: Outlook...

"a massive pile of photos, random bits of paper and possibly even DVDs on the surface of their desk, and complaining they can't find anything"

This is the One Pile filing system. It's advantage is that you always know where something is. It's in that pile.

Not being able to find something happens when it gets tidied into drawers. Anyone who uses that system can tell you that. Those empty drawers are a dangerous temptation.

BOFH: What a beautiful tinfoil hat, Boss!

Re: I am sure

Only if he lives long enough to get near the window.

Re: Quirks for jerks

I was once interviewed by someone who had one of those strange semi-kneeling seats that are supposed to be good for the back. It set his eye level about a foot lower than normal and was on castors and he kept zipping it around the room. Very disorienting.

Re: ECO DECT

Respiration from animals (and plants) provides plenty of CO2 for photosynthesis.

Good news for Key Group ransomware victims: Free decryptor out now

Explaining the mistake was not a good idea. Just say the decryptor is available and hope that ignorance leads them to keep making the same mistake.

The Pentagon has the worst IT helpdesk in the US govt

The thing about user satisfaction surveys is that they reflect the expectations of the user. I'm pretty sure that sometime in the past I've answered a question "Did we meet your expectations?" with something along the lines of "I'm afraid you did.".

Arm wrestles assembly language guru's domains away citing trademark issues

Just thinking aloud...

... I wonder what the response would be if everyone wrote the tech support for the company named after the TLA for the Acorn RISC Machine and asked if they could recommend a website promoting a good book on their assembly language.

"its actions were necessary to protect its Arm brand."

They may have confused their trademark with their brand. It's more likely to be damaging to the brand.

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Re: No sh!t Sherlock

This confirms everything I thought about coffee: too damn complicated. I think I'll stick with tea.

Re: No sh!t Sherlock

It's called a Freudian Slip.

Re: No sh!t Sherlock

Maintenance as a product.

Re: No sh!t Sherlock

I thought it was deliberate.

Re: No sh!t Sherlock

"then you're not making a machine for use but a revenue stream to exploit."

Standard 21st century operating procedure.

Re: Wait, their milkshake maker works like an HP printer ?

"What business school told them that was a good idea ?"

Probably any/all of them.

As VMware says goodbye, leadership thinks Broadcom buy is a win

Re: The real questions that have customers, partners, and employees worried...

I always thought of CA as the retirement home for software products. It's a strange old world.

Germany's wild boars still too radioactive to eat largely due to Cold War nuke tests

Re: Care?

'Quaternary Geology", my arse

I take it this is a view based on long and detailed exploration of the field? Or is it a case of "who needs experts"?

Re: Care?

K-T boundary: Cretaceous - Tertiary Paleocene boundary

The idea of an Anthropocene is more than plastics deposition. It reflects man as a major factor in the Earth history: deforestation, release of CO2 from fossil coal and hydrocarbon sources, occurrence of transuranic elements, fly ash etc in stratigraphy - how long a list of changes do you want?

Re: Care?

Just because "some scientists" have said something, doesn't make it settled.

A most Moggisn point of view.

Re: Care?

"but that would mean consensus"

This sort of thing? http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/

"not a headline-grabbing fringe"

So would that exclude the International Commission on Stratigraphy

Re: Question

It would be the situation in a nuclear reactor before it had a big hole in the top. What came out of the big hole would have been what was produced before the big hole was made.

Re: Care?

Geologists define geological periods. If they define us as being within a new period than, by definition, we are. It may, in your eyes, be an arbitrary definition but that's the nature of geology. On the one hand changes are unusually gradual but they are none the less real and it's not feasible to understand the Earth's history without dividing it into phases of some sort. Given that we have become a major influence on the processes that happen on the Earth's surface it would be foolish not to recognise a new phase.

Grant Shapps named UK defense supremo in latest 'tech-savvy' Tory tale

Re: Xitter...

The preferred term for posting there is Xcrete.

"most tech-savvy in history,"

A low bar if ever there was one.

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

Thunderbird? Mail, RSS and Usenet all in one place.

Re: IRC

"Google intentionally killed it."

When? It was working last time I looked, about 10 seconds ago.

PlusNet offers Usenet. I know because I use it. I don't know off-hand whether parent BT does.

They also still offer email as far as I know. Dropping that would be a silly move because it locks in users - which is why I haven' used an ISP provided email for years.

Chinese vendor apologizes for claiming Microsoft open source code was its own product

Maybe it could be forked by adding a start up popup displaying a random entry from the FONT (File Of Naughty Things).

Re: "with a small amount of modification and some functions added"

A good programmer would have dealt with the copyright notices?