Posts by Doctor Syntax

BOFH: You'll have to really trust me on this team-building exercise

Re: Not Team Building

I remember (very vaguely!) one away week where someone had discovered the previous week's bar bill and was determined to beat it.

Re: Ahh, Team building/break the ice exercises....

A company having two teams working on the same thing without being aware of each other's existence? The company has more problems than needing team building exercises.

Re: Back up plan

I bypassed that. It was obvious from the start that the presenter had OD'd on his pep pills. The usual "introduce the person sitting next to your" had become "introduce the two people sitting next to you".

"Will this help me with $CurrentWobblySystemIsThrowing"

"No"

<Leaves>

Re: Ahh, Team building/break the ice exercises....

"Is there a point to team building with people you are unlikely to ever meet again?"

Yes. It pays good money to the snake-oil salesmen who run the events and the hotels or whatever that host them. A point for the company you work for? Why would you expect that?

As a variant of that, vary occasionally I would have to visit crime scenes in extremely dodgy areas. I would have an armed escort, sometimes RUC, sometimes army, sometimes both. I've never worked with them before. Woah! I'm trusting my life to the protection these guys are providing, I've never met them before and I can do this without even a team building exercise? Im Possible!

Well, actually I expect them to look after my safety, they expect me to do my job efficiently so we can remove ourselves from the dodgy neighbourhood ASAP. We're all professionals at our respective tasks. What more do we need?

(OK, let's gloss over the fact that a combined operation once took me to the wrong address in Twinbrook.)

Re: Oh god

at the next meeting decides to berate me on the basis its currently logged at 53 seconds

Best reply: "Engineering, unlike accountancy, relies on precision and accuracy."

Re: Ahh, Team building/break the ice exercises....

"suddenly WFH is a beautiful thing"

As is retirement.

One IT managert seemed to believe in murder mystery evenings for team-building (obviously a lack of judgement on her part). I think she shied away from trying to involve me. I was looking forward to being asked so I could refuse on the basis that I don't do amateur nights*.

*Ex-forensic scientist here.

Jamie's obviously smarter than we thought. And smarter than the usual snake-oil dealers in this line of business.

Confirmation dialog Groundhog Day: I click OK and it keeps coming back

Re: Cancel

Maybe you should wait to cancel.

Re: Effect and "impacted"

The point at issue is that there are words which have only a minor difference in spelling, stationary and stationery for example, which mean quite different things. The spillchucker won't help with those, you need to make a personal* effort to distinguish between a shop that's the opposite of mobile and one which sells envelopes.

* As opposed to personnel.

Re: Ethnicity

"if your program freezes and you're about to lose hours of work (and potentially your job), chances are you'll read the error message like a holy tenet"

The second time it happens.

Re: [ae].*tive

With the aid of a GUI wrapper it's a crossword assistant for SWMBO.

Re: Golden Path Specifications

Hopefully something better than "it's broken"

It will still be passed on as "It's broken".

Re: Golden Path Specifications

"the only real thought that goes into user support is how to reduce its cost."

But never reaches the conclusion that the best way to do that is to get things right in the first place.

Re: Oh. My. God.

The BIOS on my Mythbox has been set up with a box ticked to say that a keyboard is not expected. On boot it doesn't stall but still displays an error message saying the keyboard hasn't been found an an error is being logged; where it's being logged is unspecified.

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

Re: ""Don't you know who I am?"

Not in Yes Minister.

Re: latency vs. bandwidth

I think you've just achieved a breech presentation of Brooke's argument in TMMM.

Re: How to get the right answer from an engineer

"Not all sales bods have this practical attitude. There are courses where you learn how to talk complete bollocks."

My experience of most salesmen is that (a) they don't need the course and (b) would be too arrogant to accept that they needed a course for anything.

I agree that not all salesmen talk bollocks. The exceptions were selling Leitz microscopes and HP kit back in HP's glory days.

Re: Not that surprising

A Grace Hopper nanosecond would probably be a good start for an explanation.

If you get a subsidiary peak you know that some of the results under it are wrong but not which.

See Boeing.

Re: I love demands to do the impossible

Here's a classic to start you on your journey: https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-04-03

Re: I love demands to do the impossible

And for elonmac, many happy hours of catching up.

Re: ""Don't you know who I am?"

How do they award the Order of the Thistle?

If they wanted to they could just go out and buy it.

Re: But it's in the contract

"sub-10ms, with a tolerance of +/- 4 seconds."

I think +4/-0 would be more achievable.

It didn't take Dunning & Kruger to see what was perfectly plain already.

The most succinct statement of it I've ever read was in Tracey Kidder's "The soul of a new machine" when the project leaders had decided to staff the project with recent graduates (who by now, of course, are probably retiring). Having done this they started to worry about whether their new staff were as smart as they'd represented themselves in interview: "Are they so full of shit they don't know they're full of shit?"

In that case, of course, the answer was no.

If we were able to fix it your radar wouldn't work.

Stable is easy. Just take all the outputs and average them. It won't be fast and accurate only applies if you knew what the correct answer should be.

"Don't you know who I am?"

"no, but I'm sure one of the crew must. Why don't you ask them."

Most organizations hit by ransomware would pay up if hit again

Re: Incredible

People object to victim blaming but in such circumstances - well, if you're going ot paint a target on your back, what do you expect?

"64 percent of companies surveyed already having suffered an attack, but more worryingly, that executives seem to believe that paying the ransom is a reliable way of addressing the issue.... In contrast, among those that have not so far suffered a ransomware attack, only 67 percent would be willing to pay, and they would be less inclined to do so immediately."

Which way does that causality run?

Is it that those who have been attacked had and still don't have anything in place to deal with it other than paying ransom and those who haven't been attacked have not yet seen that particular version of the light?

Or is it that those who haven't been attacked haven't escaped by chance but, being less inclinedt to pay, have put in place stronger protections?

Coinbase CEO says everything's OK after SEC filing gives netizens the jitters

Re: At some stage

"Bitcoin is the world’s best performing asset over the last 10 years."

At one time you could say that about tulips. Or shares in the South Seas Company.

Those who do not learn their history are condemned to repeat it.

Maybe this slight rearrangement fits the case better: "your funds are just a safe at Coinbase, as they've always been."

Warning: Windows update breaks authentication for some server admins

"the Windows Cryptography, Identity, and Authentication team"

The CIA?

Demand for GPUs used to mine crypto 'disappearing', says ASUSTeK

Re: Not Only That

There's an assumption in that line of argument: that the crypto-currency and NFT fads keep going. Rarity won't support the price of something nobody wants.

Researchers find 134 flaws in the way Word, PDFs, handle scripts

Headline: "Word, PDFs"

Text: "Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat"

PDF != Acrobat. There are other PD|F handling applications..

Microsoft tests ‘Suggested Actions’ in Windows 11. Insiders: Can we turn it off?

Re: Clippy

You can't. Microsoft can.

That requires trusting something that you don't actually trust to be switched off when it's supposed to be switched off. Better that it isn't there. Ah well, something only Windows users need to worry about.

Workstation, server, IoT? No worries. Fedora 36 is out – all 13 editions of it

I think he'd prefer zero.

"But this is probably the future of Linux distributions"

I hope not. Fortunately, the way the Linux world works there'll be distros that retain sanity. More distros are a Good Thing.

Mystery of industry-targeting backdoored NPM JavaScript packages solved

Were these pen tests commissioned by the targeted companies? If not do Code White propose to reimburse the costs the targets spent on investigating the test?

Open-source leaders' reputations as jerks is undeserved

Re: Something missing here

"Wanting software to work in a way that makes sense to how the users work in real life"

Sometimes in real life users seem determined to not use the S/W in the way it was intended, even if the way it was intended was a management requirement.

A long time ago I put together an order processing system. It printed a picking list (the clue's in the name). After picking the goods the users had to enter the serial numbers picked into the system and then print out a despatch note (the clue's also in the name) to go with the goods. Instead of a neatly printed despatch note customers were apt to get the picking list with the serial numbers added by hand.

Re: Offensive and poorlt thought through

On the whole the worse group are "Computers are too difficult for me so I won't make the effort to learn how to do my job use them".

Re: rude maintainers

"understanding it is the first step to avoiding it"

And that step might well be providing an FAQ.

Re: Giving nvidia the finger

"One that apparently went over your head."

Not difficult, it seems.

Re: Giving nvidia the finger

"A high end graphics chip is of no use at all in email and web servers."

OTOH they are just what's needed for number crunching.

"Yeah, open source is the way to go. Not. Said the people at Nvidia."

Didn't you read the article. Nvidia disagrees with you.

And yes said the people at IBM. Not that that is necessarily a desirable fate for Red Hat's employees.

IBM's autonomous Mayflower ship breaks down in second transatlantic attempt

Re: (sings)

I came to the same conclusion about the next bit of We Sailed the Ocean Blue. It starts with balls flying. Did people really express themselves that differently then or did Gilbert get away with a massive double entendre? I suspect some of the gentlemen in the audience had a snigger.

Ukraine war a sorting hat for cyber-governance loyalties: Black Hat founder Jeff Moss

I don't think it's that simple. Just about every government includes its authoritarian-inclined element and the outcome is the balance between those and the liberally-inclined element. It's best to place all of them in the undecided camp and just note the current balance.

Europe proposes tackling child abuse by killing privacy, strong encryption

Re: So what they're really asking for ....

"Are they going to try to make TLS illegal?"

Yes, they'd need to if they are to achieve what they want.

Re: How to kill the proposal...

"I don't think the proposals are about publishing everything into the public domain."

Not intentionally. OTOH how would you feel about your online banking becoming insecure? They don't intend it but nevertheless it's what the proposals are about. You can facilitate surveillance or you can have secure online business: choose one.

Re: How to kill the proposal...

Distributed Denial of Secrets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Denial_of_Secrets