Posts by Doctor Syntax

IT departments often regret technology buying decisions

Re: Psychographics

Psychobabble.

Re: Psychographics

s/Oracle/Usual suspects/

Re: Psychographics

Why the joke alert?

Dev's code manages to topple Microsoft's mighty SharePoint

Re: Exchange

Maybe not yours, but whose job is it?

Re: Lotus 1-2-crash

There's a variety of manglement (usually most of them) who can't grasp the difference between a demo that only just works and a product that just works. Always build in a few crashes or at least gaps in the demo so you can say "That's because we can't implement it properly in $DemoVehicle. It'll be OK when we write it properly in $TargetVehicle".

Re: Bug Finder

Ditto, but I don't think my talents with self-service checkouts are unique.

Re: Microsoft phone support (baggy-pants edition)

a live DJ "hosted" the on-hold experience

There's always something somewhere out to make on-hold worse. Usually it's recorded messages telling you that you can use the web-site whose failings drove you to try to phone in. But a DJ person with verbal diarrhoea would take some beating.

Re: £ in passwords

Raspbian - Debian derivative for the Rapberry Pis. The Pi, the product of a UK company, yes?

Debian, keyboard set to UK, no problem with £ at command line, never has been as long as I can remember.

Raspbian, GUI application such as KWrite, LO etc. no problem with £.

Raspbian command line, keyboard set to UK - doesn't like £ at the command line or programs such as vi run from the command line at all. To be fair, it's some time since i had occasion to set one up so it might have been fixed in later versions.

Re: Exchange

Let's remember here that the users are (hopefully) using the stored emails to conduct the business the company exists to conduct. They should be enabled to store and find the documents they need effectively.

In the past big filing systems would have all sorts of weird codlings so that the discussion about production problems of the gimball-bracket spacers for Acme-co's MarkII version 2 widget, 1983 model was DDDLK/X23X/9782/3 so that if you knew that you could go straight to it and if you didn't know that you were in trouble.

Shouldn't it be possible to provide users with something better? Perhaps knowing a folder name, even a hierarchical folder name isn't the answer. Maybe it is the answer. But shouldn't it be IT's job to do something radical such as find out what the requirements are, what the constraints are and devise something that works?

Re: Exchange

"Did you know there's a maximum subfolder limit in a Microsoft Exchange mailbox?"

Once upon a time business communication was largely by bits of paper. Big companies received lots of bits of paper. They filed them in folders. They files the folders in filing cabinets.

If they needed more folders they bought more folders.

If they needed more filing cabinets they ... well, it depends: they might take the view that only really important stuff older than X years needed to be kept and the rest was dumped; they might take the view that it was important to keep old stuff but access time wasn't important so it could be bundled up and stored in some cheap, off-site location; they might just buy more filing cabinets. Whatever the choice extreme storage was a matter of company policy.

Now we have allegedly wonderful electronic systems replacing the paper. It takes less room. It should enable companies to manage mail more efficiently than it did in the days of paper and what happens? Storage is limited by vendor decisions and individual users are setting their own storage policies because companies (perhaps rightly, based on expectations of better faculties) don't.

60 million in the Matrix as users seek decentralized messaging

Re: What I'd like to see

"The last thing I want is to try to reach someone who then has to have an account with some service"

How do you envisage finding that someone if they don't have an account with some service? They, and, come to that, you, would need to have a unique ID. Who manages IDs in order to ensure uniqueness? You then need the system to be able to contact them. How do you manage that without using some form of service mapping the ID to some communications address?

Example: "I want it to be as easy as group chats or group calls on my phone"

The telecoms companies provide the ID, and map ID to the handset and locate the handset in the mobile network.

Digital burglary at recruitment agency Morgan Hunt confirmed

From what they said it seems like it might not have been an unauthorised third party, just an authorised one being naughty. Has the third party develop sufficient public liability insurance? And have Morgan Hunt informed the IOC?

Crypto lender Celsius in Chapter 11 deep freeze

Over?

It's just not cricket.

CP/M's open-source status clarified after 21 years

"Back in the day, so many replacement parts for various elements of CP/M were published that it was possible to build a complete OS without using any Digital Research code."

We had a system using cards from SC somputers (IIRC). They provided SDOS. What, if any, significant differences existed between that & CP/M I never discovered.

BOFH: Would I lie to you, Boss?

Re: A Tad Of Paranoia And A Pinch Of Preparation Is Always Helpful......

That depends on whose stick and whose computer are involved.

Twitter sues Musk: He can't just 'change his mind, trash the company, walk away'

Re: The sticking point was bots, surely that's the real news?

"After all, the entire Web2 ecosystem is built on advertising revenue that's tied to a particular user model -- if that turns out to be fallacious then the entire Web ecosystem could come crashing down (it only exists because people believe in it -- if we stop believing....)"

There's a whole lot more about the advertising lark that depends on people - to be specific, the advertisers who buy advertising services - believing in it. Remember, the advertising industry only sells one thing: advertising.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Re: 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now

You're forgetting the additional binary blobs. There'll be something buried in the systemd morass that requires it. Being OSS you will be able -in theory - to disentangle it an recompile. Good luck.

Hive to pull the plug on smart home gadgets by 2025

Re: Hands up all those who did NOT see this coming

It would depend on what you mean by subscription. If you pay a one-off price to buy something which is then dependent on a server somewhere it's almost certainly a Ponzi scheme unless the price contains a sum which can actually be invested in something that pays returns to keep the service going - an unlikely situation.

If, however, the subscription is an ongoing payment by you for the service then it's a somewhat better chance if there are enough subscribers to make it worth someone's while to keep the service running.

Re: Net zero in home automation

"For those people who did buy the extended warranty, what happens when they phone up in a couple of years to say it has stopped working?"

A very good question. The answer's probably buried deep in the T&Cs of the extended "warranty" denying all responsibility for failure of the vendor to supply the service. If they missed that trick and have to make good on all these warranties there's going to be business available for lawyers.

UK's Ministry of Defence awards Boxxe multimillion Microsoft license deal

Is it going to be an ammunition Boxxe or a money Boxxe?

Watch a RAID rebuild or go to a Christmas party? Tough choice

Re: The server was ok - after all, it could handle a failed a disk.

"ignoring, for the time being, that a 2nd disk failed after the fact, during the array rebuild and is not pertinent to the initial server death"

Not one of the downvoters but AFAICS the above statement is the problem. As I read the whole story there was no initial server death. It was the failure of the 2nd disk that was labelled as the death of the server.

Re: IBM Engineer...

Make sure you have old steel for the reinforcing rods. The Belfast C14 dating lab had the counter in a pit with a few concrete paving slabs (no reinforcing rods at all) sitting on top of old steel plates. Back then we had a shipyard just down the road so sourcing that from breakers was quite feasible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

API rate limits at the core of Elon Musk’s decision to ditch Twitter

Who do you think "they" are?

The word "company" in business terms means the company of shareholders. Musk wasn't offering to buy them, he was offering to buy their shares. The reason they want him to go through with it is that they would then realise a good profit on their investment. Onve he's bought their shares they have no further interest in what he does.

AI inventors may find it difficult to patent their tech under today's laws

Re: There's no problem here

I'm not sure about that. There was that case of the ?chaimp's photograph being denied copyright so it doesn't seem likely that something that isn't even a sentient being could be credited.

Re: This is ridiculous

I don't think the uK patent office took that line except in the case of perpetual motion machines. They, of course, would have to be watched until the end of time to make sure they deserved the patent.

There's actually something the USPTO won't patent? Who knew?

Now extend that to all S/W patents.

Now-frozen crypto-lending biz Celsius accused of devolving into a Ponzi scheme

Re: Lending

"and of course the wallet apps"

Which sometimes turn out to be mysteriously empty.

Re: basically paying someone else to go to the casino on their behalf

"that solve real problems for real people"

Real people who pay real money to have them solved. That's the crucial bit.

Re: A strange business model anyway

And trustless.

T'other way around. The plaintiff loses money because it's a Ponzi scheme.

It's like a mousetrap. A mousetrap doesn't become a mousetrap when it snaps, it snaps because it's a mousetrap.

Re: A strange business model anyway

" I really don't understand this one."

I'm sure you do understand it. OTOH the entire operation seems to have depended on a ready supply of people who didn't and were prepared to back their lack of understanding with cash.

Yes, that point struck me as well. I suppose someone was feeling charitable.

How data on a billion people may have leaked from a Chinese police dashboard

"10 Bitcoin ($215,000 at time of writing)"

Sill above 20k? How it lingers.

More and more CS students are interested in AI – and there aren't enough lecturers

Re: more CS students are interested in AI

"everything looks like a nail"

Faulty image classification - again.

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

Re: I don't believe it!

And if you're working on such a system you'll have been warned about the consequences.

Florida man accused of selling fake, broken Cisco devices from China to hospitals, schools, military

After all the C & D letters and being kicked off Amazon & eBay several times he's not going to be able to make a convincing plea of it being a first offence.

Elon Musk considering 'drastic action' as Twitter takeover in 'jeopardy'

Re: what that "drastic action" may be is unknown

Can you actually drop a marble from orbit? It would just keep going round with you.

I said it's his best chance. I didn't say it would work.

Just about anything can be argued in court and often is. It doesn't necessarily work.

Re: Burn

"This is not an IT or tech issue, but a financial regulation issue."

But most of the points you then make are technical.

The point others have made that you ignore is that he waived due diligence so why is he making a fuss now other than to wriggle out of a bargain that he didn't just enter freely but insisted upon?

This isn't going to be like HP/Autonomy waived due diligence. In that case it was a US coumapny in US courts vs non-US and even then HP had to swallow their losses. This is one US company in US courts vs another.

Re: It's Off!

"Bar the lawsuits"

IOW it's only just getting going.

Re: BBC reporting Musk's bid is ended.

Not entirely. You also get a faceful of unwanted and pointless solicitations to log in for entirely unspecified benefits.

Re: Surprisingly honest wording from Twitter

Yup, the workers will get screwed.

As for the users & corporates, they'll go elsewhere. They were getting a freebie anyway. Maybe they'll revive MySpace or GeoCities.

For a supposedly "brilliant" man, he's remarkably ignorant of basic philosophy and logic rules.

Not necessarily. A failure to do so on Twitter's part is his best chance of wriggling out of the deal.

Re: Burn

"He's estimated to be worth more than $200bn"

That estimate is based on market value of his holdings. Realising that would be a different matter. If he sells a substantial chunk the market price goes down. That sort of estimate isn't worth the paper the money's not printed on.

Re: what that "drastic action" may be is unknown

This is a man with what amounts to a missile company. Would a near EoL battery pack make a reasonable warhead?

America's chip land has another potential shortage: Electronics engineers

Re: Shortage of skilled workers

One of my cousins' daughter took aeronautical engineering but then went straight into accountancy. An engineering degree doesn't cut you off from the big money - it's what you do afterwards.

If hardware jobs can't won't pay more...

Restating the problem is often the starting point for the solution.

Microsoft delays controversial ban on paid-for open source, WebKit in app store

Re: Alternative engines

Correct but stinks.

Microsoft's Dublin datacenter to help take pressure off Ireland's renewable energy

A similar thought struck me - is there any way they could monetize their backup media that are just sitting there doing nothing? Maybe rent them out to RTE to play out the evening's TV?