Posts by Doctor Syntax

Nadine Dorries promotes 'Brexit rewards' of proposed UK data protection law

Re: A cunning plan

Not Baldrick. This is Yes Minister Series 1, Episode 1: "Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title".

Sir Humphrey lives!

Salesperson's tech dream delivered by ill-equipped consultant who charged for the inevitable fix

ISTM that the problem was caused by the business unit that implemented the new function in three respects. First, not meeting the requirement as to the format of the emails being sent, secondly mishandling bounce and finally, not testing before release.

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Re: Skeuomorphism

"WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE WIN95-WIN2K DESIGN LANGUAGE?"

Nowt!

And, contrary to what Rupert says Linux desktops (always excepting Gnome) have remained pretty consistent - differences between the various DEs but on the whole they seem to roll on from one iteration to the next. The one thing that I lack from KDE3 is the ability to specify a corner rather than an edge to unhide the panel (is that tool-bar in Wondows parlance? The thing across the bottom with icons on it.).

Given the right collection of artwork for buttons, colours etc. a KDE desktop can look very much like something from the W95/NT/W2K era. In fact that's just what mine looks like except the desktop icons & fonts look a bit better then the W2K that lurks in a VB. That and multiple workspaces.

The theory behind splitting the interface from the implementation was that the interface could remain stable while the implementation could be changed for improvement. This releives consumers of the interface from having to change to keep up with the mplementation. Microsoft seem to have turned that on its head: the interface is changed for dis-improvement whilst the implementation doesn't necessarily change that much (or so we are reassured from time to time).

DeFi venture OptiFi permanently locks up $661,000 of assets in code snafu

Not news nowadays

Cryptocurrency news would ba about some outfit where everything works and nobody gets robbed.

EU proposes regulations for tablet battery life, spare parts

"the way that some manufacturers require major dismantling of the front of the car to get at the bulb fittings"

Well, if we're into establishing right to repair by regulation there's an obvious solution to that one.

Former Microsoft UX boss doesn't like the Windows 11 Start menu either

Re: Use the windows key not start button

Yes verbose commands such as DIR and DEL are so much more comprehensible than ls and rm.

Re: Genius?

Maybe you never used CDE - a block of several in the middle of the bottom of the screen. That gave us the "Which menu is it on" problem. A good set of cascading menus in one place is a better solution. I've always assumed it was a inspired by a desire to simplify the CDE UI.

But then with a WIMP interface you have other alternatives. You can have application links on the desktop. And you can automate the choice of application according to the file to be opened and have file icons on the desktop. There's two additional approaches. You can have most frequently used applications as buttons on tool bars. So the premise - everything si squished into one button - is false and it's not intrinsically a bad idea any way. And there's no sign of it being patented - the KDE desktop in front of me also has a single button in the bottom left although arguably it's better implemented.

Re: I believe I see what is going on

Maybe it's just a touch of "Not Invented Here" where "Here" is the latest lot of crayon wielders.

I'm not sure if the typography of the KDE menu would suit this particular critic but it just works and what's more, just works the way I want it because I can edit the options as I want them. Just works is the first thing that should be expected of any UI gadget.

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

Re: Legacy tech v New tech

"Needless to say the vendor has been axed along with the service contract."

I hope you got as high powered as possible sales team along to try an flog the next generation and then explained to them why they were being excluded.

Re: Software engineering is an oxymoron.

One quote from TMMM is particularly relevant here: “The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination.”

Many of the professions quoted previously are rooted in basic laws of physics. Biology*, the root of medicine and pharmacy, is slightly less well tied down (we're usually pleased to get 2 sigma) but still based on the physical world. The difference between these and software is real.

* A long time ago there were threats to make the practice of various sciences dependent on membership of the relevant chartered institutions so I took the pre-emptive step of joining mine. If its regular publication was any guide it seemed to be largely populated by biology teachers and the best bit of said publication was the regular page of exam howlers.

You can never have too many backups. Also, you can never have too many backups

"I think our system was a Singer System Ten at that time."

It ran like a sewing machine?

Re: Hardly on topic

"He even uses multiples of 10 to allow for later intermediate additions if creation order isn't ideal."

A FORTRAN programmer obviously. Basic programmers never bothered about ideal order.

Re: Stack popped reading that procedure....

The application used both the fixed and removable disks. The problem was then to back up both of these whilst only having the removable drive. The only backup route is fixed to removable.

So first remove the working removable and replace with a blank disk to back up the fixed. Half the job done.

Now how do we back up the working removable? Because it can only be backed up from the fixed disk it has to be downloaded to that first, then backed up to a second blank disk.

We now have the fixed disk occupied by the copy of the working removable so that has to be overwritten by the backup taken at the first stage.

All understandable when you think about it. It's also easy to understand how it can go wrong if you're not thinking too carefully about it.

Germany orders Sept 1 shutdown of digital ad displays to save gas

Re: Pointless laws are pointless

If it's presented as the consequences of not thinking ahead it might be a very good thing in the long run.

Re: FRA airport is very nearly in compliance with this law....

The New Rurals are like that everywhere. If it's not aircraft it's the village church bells, the farm animals, the tractors - anything that's been around since the estate agent brought them to view at the quietest time of the week.

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

A comment above suggests just that. At this point any self-respecting FOSS project would be forked.

Re: Ho, hum...

Didn't is simply return "Bingo!"?

Re: Classic BOFH

"the teabags with the string and paper tag"

Them's southerner's teabags. Yorkshire Tea has no such accoutrements.

Re: you owe me

And....

"How did you glue it back together?"

"With thermal paste,"

Re: This work has already been done

There is the opposite phenomenon - appearance of teaspoons dissimilar to those already present. I think quantum tunnelling is responsible.

Then there's the mystery of disappearing socks although it has been claimed that socks are the larval form of coat-hangers.

"the SFTW weekend column has been axed"

Not USian enough I suppose.

Sephora to pay $1.2m to settle Cali privacy law claims – and why this is a big deal

The money to buy out should also be large enough to ensure the shareholders take action such as replacing the board with one which will sue their predecessors, fire the CEO and sue him as well. It shouldn't be enough to write off as a cost of doing business.

I'm not sure it's that big a deal. A big deal would be a criminal conviction and a fine. A modestly sized but just about reasonable deal would be a settlement that includes an admission of guilt and a ban on subsequently spouting bollocks claiming they did nothing wrong.

Doctor gave patients the wrong test results due to 'printer problems'

Re: re: How do you add fuel?

"on the righthand side of the dashboard"

Memories of a fortunately brief spell with an old Hillman. The handbrake was on the right hand side between the seat and the door.

Re: Photocopier challange

They should have stopped people sending their children out to work.

Re: Accountants and modern technology

"The head accountant pointed out that modern technology had done nothing to make life easier."

If he wasn't using it then it couldn't, at least not for him.

Re: Backups and Restores

Disk packs. Yes, that really was once upon a time.

Re: Backups and Restores

Your first go at restoring a backup can be educational.

Re: Photocopier challange

My first car was an Anglia so I never thought a Ford gearbox was in any way mysterious. One day we were helping out with a student field trip to a site which my wife was investigating. We rolled up on site with the equipment, possibly in my car, more likely in the Botany Dept Mini. No sign of the lecturer with the hired Transit-based mini-bus full of students. When he finally arrived it turned out he'd missed a turn-off, Never having driven a Ford (his car was a Hillman Imp) he couldn't find reverse and ended up driving miles to find his way back without reversing.

Re: Photocopier challange

I love the "Crkrkrkrk" when you pull it up that leaves you feeling secure that it's not going anywhere.

Press the button to release the ratchet, pull it up silently so the teeth are not wearing with the "Crkrkrkrk". Then release the button. That way that you increase the probability that it's not going anywhere.

Re: How do you do

Not in a Legacy.

Re: Photocopier challange

This nonsense cost Subaru at least one sale.

I'd had two second hand and was in the market for new one when I discovered that they'd adopted this. I looked into "what happens if the handbrake jams?". It turns out that some sealed cover has to be removed and some tool used to release it with some inordinate number of turns. Because the sealed unit has now been unsealed it has to be replaced at some similarly inordinate cost. And how do I do hill starts? It seem that this is to automate hill starts. Including riding motorbikes I've been doing hill starts for the last 60 years or more and given that there are a lot of hills round here and everywhere else I've lived, I think I've got the hang of it.

The problem here is that the doctor did not understand the connection between the printer and the computers. That problem was not solved. Instead he was given a printer switch a load of guff about channels instead of a printer switch and a sensible explanation.

I had a client with a backup server room at the opposite end of quite a large building. Everything done right, no shortage of money or IT savvy? None of their IT team had noticed that the overnight backup to the standby server ran out of time every night.

How archaeologists can use AI to date our ancestors

Re: "The only alternative is ..."

True, and I wouldn't call DNA dating an independent technique - it's dependent on assumptions made about the material dated. That way lie circular arguments.

Archaeological dating 2.0

The premise of archaeological dating is that you can put objects into sequence, estimate dates for the sequence and then apply those dates to other, similar objects. It all depends on (a) getting the sequence right and (b) getting the dates right. No problem, the dates for new objects fall into the right places and confirm the system.

Such circular reasoning fell apart many times when C14 arrived. For instance rustic Western European passage graves must be derived from the magnificent Egyptian pyramids so add on a few years to allow for the idea to be spread and you get more recent dates for the passage graves. Oops, the passage graves turned out to be older.

The premise of this DNA technique is that you can put mutations into sequence, estimate rates of mutation and get dates out of them. The dates will confirm each other brilliantly. Can anyone spot the similarity?

The advantage of C14 is that it depends on a measurable quantity, the half life of the isotope*. Just like the traditional archaeological dating systems this DNA dating depends on assumptions. Like many other fields of archaeological research DNA's value will come from combining it with a better dating technique such as C14, much as C14 itself was improved by applying the better technique of dendrochronology.

* It does, in fact, depend on a couple of assumptions: freedom from contamination and the constancy of C14 concentrations in the atmosphere. The first is a problem which DNA shares, of course. The solution is clean up techniques to get as close as possible to the component of the sample which is meaningful. It was something we were looking at when I was working in C14 dating half a century ago and something which exercises my successors in forensic science to this day in regard to DNA. The second is calibration against tree ring sequences which reminds me that dendrochronology is another dating technique which has come into its own since Libby invented carbon dating over 70 years ago.

US plans to open up government-funded science research papers to all

Re: So the USA will save $800M

"is the solution to have no public funded scientific research?"

This solves two problems. The other is that it means there are no experts and We Don't Like Experts.

Heroku to delete inactive accounts, shut down free tier

"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product,"

This is a bit out of date. Nowadays you can pay and still be the product.

Smartphone gyroscopes threaten air-gapped systems, researcher finds

"Engineers don't often think like an attacker."

Neither do clients: "the client wanted some LEDs to show data activity".

Lawsuit accuses Oracle of facilitating sales of 'billions' of folks' personal data

I suppose there's a good defence: Larry admits to spouting BS.

In a time before calculators, going the extra mile at work sometimes didn't add up

Re: £sd

I should have added the explanation as to why Latin terms were used. In medieval times written records were usually in Latin. The original transactions in court would have been conducted in English but they were written up in Latin so naturally the words used for money, even in abbreviation, were Latin.

Re: £sd

"The country used £s, shillings, and pence well before the Victorian era, and only started the £sd nonsense during the Victorian Imperial era."

At the first surviving court recorded in the Wakefield manorial court rolls - 16 Oct 1274 - the second entry records half a dozen local worthies paying lxxiijjs. iiijd. for the farm of Soureby mill for a year. That's a while before Victoria.

The only reason it's as late as the second record entry is that the first, for Rastrick mill, was given in marks.

Modern education!

This scheme was referred to as "£sd" – it was basically wizard money. And don't get us started on why the abbreviation for "pence" was "d" – little in that era made sense.

£ : Libra = pound

s : solidus = shilling

s : denarius = penny

(£ is just a fancy L)

We were promised integrated packages. Instead we got disintegrated apps

Re: Cloud access?

Strictly speaking, that's the LIghtbird calendar, also part of Thunderbird.

Re: Cloud access?

As a quick test I entered a recurring event in Seamonkey which syncs to next cloud and that showed up as a recurring event in the Nextcloud calendar and would have synced on to the mobile calendar via DavX if I hadn't deleted it again.

Re: You're holding it wrong!

Those who don't adapt will miss their appointment in the calendar.

NASA builds for keeps: Voyager mission still going after 45 years

Re: Technology Perspective

I think you're confusing atheism with agnosticism. Like every belief system atheists say "I know", they get very boring and the fundamentalists get extremely unpleasant - just like those of other belief systems.

In the UK one probe would be developed to prototype stage and then the project would be cancelled.

Re: Spacetime

"There is a coherent rule"

Whose?

Re: Spacetime

I shall start calling you the Bbc

"Beeb" would do nicely.