Posts by Doctor Syntax

Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

Re: I I be a-goin there, I be-n't start from here

I always thought amps were "drawn" rather than pushed

If you push hard enough it'll draw the amps or die in the attempt. Usually it's die.

Re: Check the power supply

Perhaps it was before the days of no smoking at work and nobody noticed the extra smoke from the monitors.

Re: But surely

Maybe not. Maybe it's terminal.

22 million Brits suffer broadband outage blues and are paying a premium for it

"BT building their own factories to make the stuff, that same old 1960s public sector attitufde of make rather than buy, really going to go well wasn't it?"

If some utterly new technology is invented and you want to deploy it who is going to make the hardware? It's new. Are you going to wait around for somebody else to start making it so you can buy it or are you going to get off your backside and do it yourself?

"Although I admit and agree there are users left in the shit, even quite close or even inside major urban areas"

And a far better use of money is upgrading those rather than upgrading the bulk of the network which is already delivering better performance than those users get.

"Internet's down." Pick up phone to check for dial time. Oh, no DECT base station. "Electric's off - again."

Re: We have bigger things to worry about

Y2K was a known issue, lots of people put in a lot of effort and got stuff fixed. End of POTS is also a known issue and ... Well, and what? If PlusNet support is anything to go by it's "I'm sure they'll do something."

You're comparing apples and cheese.

"If everyone in the UK took the highest speed service they could get"

,,, the bottleneck would then be in the core network.

Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?

Re: It was only after the implementation began that they revealed that they couldn't.

"The problem here, in turn, is that the customer is unlikely to be proficient at defining requirements, while the people who are actually good at that are (1) not proficient in the customer's domain, and, worse, (2) on the side of the seller."

One solution might be a rather old-fashioned one: stage the contract with different deliverables, the first being to analyse the customer's needs. There's a risk of the specification being gold-plated but the advantage being that if the specification turns out to be inadequate the supplier will only have themselves to blame.

BMW deems drivers worthy of warmth, ends heated car seat subscription

"Škoda, from what I’ve heard, still have old-fashioned physical knobs and buttons for the crucial stuff like AC"

If VW have gone touch screen maybe Škoda have done so as well. My Škoda gripe - plastic button on handbrake failed - obvious internal stresses because the bits don't really fit back together. Cost of replacement button? No such thing - it's acomplet handbrake level assembly at £86 or nothing. You could buy a few days of BMW heating subscription for that. I suppose the newer ones have gone over to electric handbrakes like all the others. I don't think there's a new car I'd be prepared to spend money on these days.

UK rejoins the EU's €100B Horizon sci-tech funding program

't'wasnt us, it was covid'

Covid was a life-saver for Brexiteers.

Re: Indeed

Take a couple of minutes to think about this. First what does "ousted" mean? Blair decided to quit of his own acord as far as I'm aware. Should there have been an election then? You also end up with the situation where the PM is a liability to the country as a whole but the party in power doesn't want an election do they keep the figurehead in place. Is that a good outcome of your idea?

TSMC warns AI chip crunch will last another 18 months

I was going to say "Is that how long the fad's going to last?".

Power grids tremble as electric vehicle growth set to accelerate 19% next year

"Power grids tremble as electric vehicle growth set to accelerate"

Gosh, never saw that coming!

Google Chrome Privacy Sandbox open to all: Now websites can tap into your habits directly for ads

The prompt to update chromium etc - including the sandbox, appeared this morning. Being on a slow connection at the moment I shelved it, then read this so now it's apt remove chromium. Job done.

Re: Why can't we just be explicit about choices?

The advertising industry doesn't exist to sell you the things advertisers want to sell, it exists to sell adverting to advertisers.

As usual: Yes Minister episode 1 gave the explanation "Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title".

India warns ecommerce 'basket sneaks' and 'confirm shamers' their days are numbered

No, it just means the Indian government is consulting the leading experts.

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

"Clunky" can be a better descriptor for the problem.

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

Re: Easy win but challenging keep.

"And Birmingham Council is somehow unique among all councils in the UK, Europe or the world in this ?"

Probably in size. But there ought to be a good business in providing a system which has been designed from the ground up to deal with local government requirements*. Unfortunately there's a better business in flogging one-off customisations of something that wasn't designed for that purpose.

* At worst a system designed for local governemnt should require less customisation where the assumption fails.

Re: Easy win but challenging keep.

A good way of keeping on top of this would be to require each rule, working practice or whatever to have a rationale - we do it this way because it's required in Act so-and-so or we don't do it that way because it would fail to deal with this and that. It would provide a basis for reviewing practices against changing legal or regulatory environments and a count for manglers who want to impose their own bright ideas.

Re: Easy win but challenging keep.

"I'm not sure if this cachet is what led to low pay"

I think the root of the problem is that whenever economics push a government into a policy of pay restraint the only place they can actually implement that is in the public sector which progressively slips further back in pay which naturally gets reflected in who they can recruit.

Re: Easy win but challenging keep.

"I think that is a little unfair. In my experience, at least 80% of listed companies seem to have crap IT strategy"

I think you're being generous with your paise by calling it s strategy, even if they do call it that themselves.

Probably going to follow: Kirklees - Labour

That monstrosity was the product of the 1974 reform of local government. It welded together two local authorities which had no common history and named the result after a place that's actually in neighbouring Calderdale.

One of this year's gems has been to spenf goodness-knows what building out this corner to create a one-way, yes one-way, cycle lane about 10 metres long. It will probably last until the awkward turn into Acre Lane causes an accident. Or more likely well beyond the point when it causes several accidents. I suppose it contributes to some target for length of cycle lane.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.5916726,-1.8384101,3a,75y,99.83h,91.48t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgsGiaMKCmb2M0QWNsv9J6Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu

"The trouble with that, is that it is less efficient staffing wise. Hence why unitary authorities were created, so as to cut down on mismanagement of HR."

Is there any evidence that mismanagement has been cut down in HR - or anywhere else?

Microsoft tells partners unbundling Teams is a 'compromise' with the EU

Yuan also told the conference that Zoom has spent the last few years building video collaboration, phone, team chat, whiteboard, meeting scheduling, email, and calendar functionality into its client.

Isn't this the bloke who said that despite all that staff had to be in the office?

Mozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'

Re: A long time ago...

"It will continue as long as people want instant gratification and do not think about consequences"

Or until regulatory action stops it - the latter is more likely to happen, at least in jurisdictions that promote consumer protection.

The only thing launched for Amazon's Project Kuiper is a lawsuit

Re: Random braking

Brake would be lack of whoosh.

Well, when that "favorite supplier" is the world's leading launch provider, and demonstrably cheapest, then the situation is different.

It's different again when the favourite supplier is also the project's competitor.

Microsoft billing 3 cents a minute to revisit tedious Teams meetings via API

Re: Where are the privacy and security guarantees with this?

"It'll be even worse when they start offering it for free if you allow them to feed the text into their Bingbot AI training."

I'd like to see the effect on one of their bots if it had to deal with a suggestion Microsoft might offer something for free.

Also take into account that possibly several attendees all decide they want their own record.

Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye

"Surely a program thats been around since the 90s can't take that much developers time to fix the odd bug or security vuln?"

But it can take a few potential sales of Office.

Re: @Dr Syntax

I've replaced to element in a kettle several times until the body of the kettle developed a leak. Since then I've had to junk one name brand hot water jug because (notoriously) a moulded plastic component in the latch failed. An appliance designed to be thrown away - but not to be replaced like with like. The much maligned Amazon Basics replacement just keeps working.

Re: @Dr Syntax

Oops. I think the query was addressed to my Doppelganger.

Re: @Dr Syntax

Last 3 laptops were an ex-display for a nice price and the others from PC Specialist bought sans OS. Other then laptops - home build. One of the things I learned from my dad - don't buy what you can make.

Re: So LibreOffice it is then.

Word had a long history of not opening documents written by later versions, no doubt a means of putting their customers on the update treadmill. Old habits die hard.

In the meantime someone who, for whatever reason, has accumulated a stack of .rtf documents, or may has some application that produces reports in .rtf form and doesn't wish to be dragged into Microsoft's online world, will be able to open them with LibreOffice.

Attackers accessed UK military data through high-security fencing firm's Windows 7 rig

If some expensive and otherwise functional manufacturing kit specifically required W7 then that's what have to be installed. But did it really have to be exposed to the net?

Northern Irish cops release 2 men after Terrorism Act arrests linked to data breach

"but not the one(s) responsible for making the information public."

Given that the information was released in error how do you think they'd go about proving the intent necessary to get a conviction?

IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?

Re: Exams as a system

If exams were simply a test of recall they wouldn't be too bad. But they're also a test of being able to write legibly at speed.

Having staggered through O level maths i always reckoned I learned O level algebra doing A level physics.

Sure, give the new kid and his MCSE power over the AS/400. What could possibly go wrong?

There's a lot to be said for being an all-rounder. If you know you're going to administer it you pay attention to making it easy to administer. If you've developed it you know what's in the tangle of code. As a DBA I've encountered some stuff that probably looked OK in development and test but caused problems at scale and, with my programming experience, been able to go through the code and find the problem. The skill sets and experience are complementary and it's best to have at least some of each even if you want to concentrate on one or the other.

You mean the company survived?

True, but it's best if you can arrange to have other people make them.

Re: Umm. Mainframe?

If the business is small enough to get by on an AS/400 VAX or whatever they'll consider that a mainframe.

The world seems so loopy. But at least someone's written a memory-safe sudo in Rust

Re: Lameness

"Five downvotes, no counter arguments."

OK, let me give you some: you're trying too hard, being tiresome and still not explaining your own position.

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

Re: If you build it - and don't fuck it up - they will come!

I think the principle is "If it ain't broke it ain't making enough profit.".

Re: xeeted

An Xcretion.

Re: User consent....

Bravo!

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.