Posts by Doctor Syntax

Inside the datacenter where the day starts with topping up cerebrospinal fluid

“In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world.”

Making claims like that is likely to bring his University ethics committee down on one, assuming it has one.

Microsoft veteran Rajesh Jha prepares to retire, triggers yet another reorg

On second thoughts, make that "humbly admits responsibility and apologises for".

Re: MS Works!

Nowadays, instead of Works you might well get a copy of LibreOffice. That or one of the other FOSS office suites seems to be the solution for pre-installed home edition or whatever its called.

My SiL got a new laptop last week and as she was willing to pay some local Windows specialist to set it up and transfer everything from her old W7* I happily kept clear but called in yesterday prepared to install LO if she didn't have anything to open her old documents. No problem, he'd already done that. Much the same seems to apply to other Windows users I know. LO and the others are probably in more widespread use than many here think.

Fun additional observation. After whatever happened in transferring her email over she's now got a message from Microsoft telling her she's over 100% of her 5 gig email allowance. I took a look and advised her to clear the 620 messages in her spam folder.

* No, it's not getting any form of Linux installed. It's just too knackered to be worth the trouble.

At Microsoft "taking credit for" should be "admits responsibility for".

GitHub infuriates students by removing some models from free Copilot plan

Free or subsidised access to technology for students has been the norm for some time. It ensures that in due course there will be a glut of graduates trained on the vendor's products which in turn makes the products attractive to customers because they can employ them cheaply.

When this stops happening it tells you something about how well the products are fairing in industry.

Re: Try brown-nosing, it might work

OTOH it enables them to learn the industry's standard working practices.

Re: Economics lesson for life

And doesn't know that the vote can be reversed (but not cancelled so we have the RVA* of -1 +1 = +1 and +1 -1 = -1)

* Register Voting Arithmetic

Re: What a cluster-fuck

He's got more immediate concerns than that such as hanging onto his job when the investments in all this garbage show no ROI.

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

How long did it take you to work your way round that?

Re: They did work, though

Laws against murder don't get repealed* because despite "failures" there's no downside.

Prohibition was repealed because failed, was unpopular and had substantial downside in terms of fostering organised crime.

You have to look at the operation of laws in the whole. Legislators are not good at doing this. They want to achieve some specific object and are unwilling to consider (1) that those against whom their law is intended to work will not simply obey it but will look at ways to circumvent it and that (2) if it adversely affects a large part of the public else it will become unpopular.

A law which requires registration and verification of every computer user, risking leaking of personal data will have sufficient downside, taken in connection with its likely failure rate, to get repealed.

* Strictly speaking, I think murder is contrary to Common Law. If so there's no specific legislation to be repealed but we'll let that pass.

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

South Yorkshire has a similar but more masculine problem.

One consequence of poor engagement is that votes are all too often cast against something rather than for something. Give a group something to vote against and its members will be more likely to vote. A thousand wound up kids vs ten thousand adults would can't be arsed? Not good numbers for a candidate.

Where are these privacy protecting efforts of which you write? There have been multiple demands over the years but surprisingly (or maybe not) nobody has produced a proof of concept to be picked apart by real security experts.

Legislators need to remember that in a few years the current under-16s or whatever will be voters. They will have created new cohort of voters already pissed off with them.

Re: Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

Laws need some relationship with reality. A law to abolish gravity could be written but wouldn't be enforceable. The enforceability is tested when it comes before a judge. A test case with a good battery of expert witnesses could be its downfall.

However, in the US the real problem could be the 1st amendment. Until the FBI solved their problem another way Apple was contesting the order to put in a back door on the grounds that it was compelled speech and therefore unconstitutional, code being established as speech in Bernstein vs US.

Re: new file in /etc/

"man shadow" is your friend. They're to do with password ageing. There's one field reserved for future use.

"Linux is for the young, intellectually gifted, and curious."

Is it that US legislators are not happy with voters with these characteristics?

Medical equipment techs beg for right-to-repair lifeline

Re: Medical equipment techs beg for right-to-repair lifeline

What would be you attitude to an anaesthetic machine that hadn't been serviced because of lack of attention from the OEM?

Re: delays in receiving parts, service keys, manuals, and other necessary repair materials

A few coroner's summonses to niquests might have a similar effect. Corporate manslaughter might be even more effective.

'Are you freaking crazy?' Bot harasses woman, gets led away by cops

Interesting thought. If one of these things got too annoying, could it be kidnapped?

Quicksort inventor Tony Hoare reaches the base case at 92

Re: OCCAM and Transputers

Live long enough for the kid to produce one or more of their own. Grandkids are even better to look after - yu can hand them back when they start to get tiresome. For myself, hoping to see a further generation in due course.

I'm not sure we want that many obits although there's scope for a few exceptions.

Re: OCCAM and Transputers

In my previous car the instruction "call home" brought the response that "home" wasn't in the list. Getting it to read the list revealed that "Home" was produced as in Sir Alec Douglas of that ilk. I can't hep feeling that the manufacturers must have had more customers who had homes than Homes to call.

Re: OCCAM and Transputers

I maintain that Pascal is the worst possible starting point for learning C - similar ideas, different notation and only one has traps for the unwary.

I doubt Hoare had anything to do with the course but my start in computing was 4 days of a 5 day* Fortran course at QUB when he was prof. there. It all seemed very straightforward so when microcomputer based systems became a financially realistic proposition for lab computing (by which time I'd moved from QUB to the forensic lab) I implemented a microspectrophotometer using Microsoft Fortran on a CP/M clone.

But then my colleagues went on a computing course by which time Queens, under Hoare's influence, had moved onto teaching Pascal so I switched the project to UCSD Pascal (not that any of the Pascal-trained colleagues touched any of it). Then the Unix box arrived... (And with it serial number 33 of what went on to become Informix.)

A couple of decades later, having installed a couple of SCO boxes I was asked to extend the contract for a few weeks to make sure everything was OK and in the meantime could I look at something else. The something else turned out to be Delphi so I got reacquainted with Pascal.

* It was compulsory, something that's never sat well with me so, as we had some field work in Scotland for SWMBO** planned just it I wasn't in a hurry to get back in time for the Monday start. To this day I don't know what they did then but Fortran started on Tuesday.

** For some reason - maybe because it wasn't considered women's work - she was the only one from the lab. not sent on the course.

Re: OCCAM and Transputers

"It made me feel very old, but I'm used to that these days..."

It's OK, Liam. You're not. I discovered Unix in mid career.

This sort of thread gets worrying. So many contemporaries - including slightly younger contemporaries - of my Belfast years are gone and we lost a couple of our local history group last year, one of whom was, I think, younger than me.

For several years he was also prof. at Queens, Belfast.

Azure startup credits don't apply to Claude via Azure AI Foundry, reader finds – after $1,600 charge

Probably not possible in this situation if everything has to be done through web interfaces but a good ploy when you think each will blame the other is to send one email to addressed to both of them asking them to sort it out between themselves and provide an agreed answer. In deciding exactly what email address to use ceoemail.com is your friend, at least in the UK.

Blustering Blackbeard's PC was all at sea, sysadmin got him shipshape in seconds

There's always the opposite problem - the equipment that won't switch off. A cousin-in-law brought over his laptop (coincidently a Toshiba) that despite having had shutdown clicked was still running - fan on, etc. Pressing the power key had no effect either. Hold down the power key for 5 seconds.

Re: Walk-trhough diagnose

Rules should be accompanied by a rationale which should, in turn, be rooted in requirements. Part of the rationale for this rule is that it means that rules have to be properly considered and, if need be, justified.

"Users of that system usually just logged off and switched the monitor off at the end of their shifts."

Having users who log off could almost be a bonus. We used to have a reminder in MOTD ending with "this includes $RECENT_CULPRIT". Eventually they learned.

He sounds quite jolly.

Having a physical switch whose position can be observed is better than a random function key bearing a hieroglyph, totally meaningless and yet intended by the manufacturer to convey the information that this is the wifi switch. Accompanied by a pinprick of an indicator LED in the case edge marked by the same symbol shallowly impressed nto the plastic of the case next to a few other equally inconspicuous LED with similar symbols.

BOFH: What physics defines as impossible, sales calls a challenge

Re: Lucky

You're old enough to know better than to read BOFH and consume food or drink at the same time.

Re: Sales

"It will be a drop in replacement for your existing system."

I knew it wouldn't be and as I'd be the one traooed between the client and the office as soon as about that time I bumped into a former client who offered me a job I left.

Re: That OS...

Only if someone pays him. He doesn't like to think work might not be paid for (even when it is).

Watchdog boss calls Capita's £370M DWP win 'extraordinary' amid pension portal dumpster fire

The point being made is that Capita made an incomplete pig's ear of the CS pension scheme and are being awarded a contract at a suspiciously low rate.

See my previous comments about the alleged golden pensions. TL;DR I did better pension-wise as well as career-wise getting out of the Civil Service.

Re: Whitehall 'theatre'

Oddly, given the handle, facts are irrelevant to VoT.

Atomic Britain: UK plans regulatory reset to boost nuclear power

Re: "Planning"

And, famously, Aberdeen.

Lloyds Banking Group apps play mix-and-match with customer transactions

play mix-and-match

Lots of mix, not much match.

Perplexity Comet hurtling toward Amazon ban

I'm not sure what Perplexity provides but if it were to filter out all the products that don't match the search terms it would be vastly improving the user experience.

Whitehall seeks lone C++ coder to keep airport passenger model flying

Re: So 30k a year

It's on an as and when basis. I suppose the contract goes to the lowest tendered hourly rate. Looking at the tender notice it manages to say it's £100k excluding VAT, £120k excluding VAT and £120k including VAT.

Smart mirror shows dumb Windows in elevator

In the world of BOFH just be grateful there's a steel box there when the doors open.

Britain turns up the heat on homegrown ceramics for hypersonic missiles

Re: Homegrown ceramics

Wilson's white heat was more of a white flag - "we'll just buy from the Yanks instead".

Forget missiles. Just scatter Lego bricks on the battlefield. Probably against the Geneva Convention but who takes any notice of that these days?

Re: Homegrown ceramics

The British Catering Industry Standard Teapot is guaranteed to dribble when poured irrespective of whether it has a lid or not.

And have you checked out the Cadogan teapot?

An energy-saving suggestion. Just use the raw material. The heating on re-entry will fire it in flight.

Re: Homegrown ceramics

Sugar, no milk. Ah, that's better. A nice cuppa.

So much for power to the people – AI datacenters could jump UK grid queue

Re: Can't take the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero seriously

"Data centres that don't come with their own power supplies should pay the necessary costs ... And if they're not prepared to do this, then they're not serious."

These are AI data centres. If they're not prepared to pay for their data they're hardly likely to be prepared to pay other costs.

It certainly will be if you spell it like that.