Posts by Doctor Syntax

BOFH: HR's gold mine gambit – they get the gold and we get the shaft

Re: Favourite CPU socket?

Or, in the case of James Galway's flutes, expensive.

Re: Unicycle test

"prove to be an opportunity in his subsequent career portfolio."

He described himself as a trick-cyclist and ended up in psychiatry?

Re: He's very quiet

"I accidentally got hold of the rejected CVs"

Good work!

"Gentle warning"?

Since when did either of those two words have meaning within the BOFH sphere of operation?

This is a website that could cost me a lot of time....

Thanks.

Re: Out of all these...

He should make plenty of dough out of it.

Re: And again

Don't forget the recording from last week. That means he has HR where he wants them. A shame the boss couldn't come to some kind of arrangement with him after that episode. Maybe once you've got the dirt on HR who needs the boss?

Waking up? Surely things are done more efficiently than that.

Re: Brilliant...

I'd never previously realised the BOFH's stairwells had doors. A lot of time must have been wasted by having to open them.

First steps into the world of thought leadership: What could go wrong?

Re: I never was on LinkedIn, and still get the occasional link request.

I've seen LI requests goe to a newsgroup. It probably scoured somebody's contact list. Possibly the same bloke whose out of office responder kept replying to posts.

It's probably the same person who just switches names as soon as everyone starts ignoring him.

If recruiters are unfamiliar with the concept of contracting there's something wrong with the recruitment of recruiters.

Re: Really?

You think a great deal of thought hasn't been put into BoJo's hair management?

"Basically, liars gradually get overwhelmed by the cognitive load of maintaining their pretense while those telling the truth don't have to."

This points to the basis of the BoJo technique. Don't overdo the cognitive load by maintaining the pretence of being consistent. Just say whatever you think the person you''re addressing wants to hear. Because they want to hear it they'll ignore the complete opposite waffle you're reported saying yesterday - or half an hour ago. If you can't be bothered remembering it why should they?

More than $100m in cryptocurrency stolen from blockchain biz

Re: What I find odd

That wasn't $100m of money, it was "$100m worth" of cryptocurrency. It was some days ago at least; it'll be less than $100m today.

Re: I might have a solution

Even so, between cryptocurrency exchanges and the Bank Of Bangladesh there's still scope to fit in a bit of security.

Re: Slush fund for hostile nations Vs ...

But were THEM really US?

From the onlooker's PoV it's all THEM.

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

Re: Not as much a coward, but...

You are Wally and I claim my £5. But why no mention of stealing office supplies?

Re: Happy to return to work if....

Explain that you're not a Grouch, you're the grit that produces the pearl.

Re: Happy to return to work if....

At my last client before retirement "informal discussions" in the office were top management toys out of the pram shouting matches. As there was a factory space next to the office and all development work centred on driving that working at home wouldn't have been practical.

"can't get the staff and the lack of enthusiasm for returning to the office"

Difficulty in putting two & two together. Must be brain fog due to long Covid.

"does that mean you can't do c++ at a new company in a different line of business?"

One thing it does mean - you can do C++ with the accumulated domain knowledge in a competitor's company.

Re: Warping from home

Warping at home is what my clothier ancestors did. They and their families also carded, spun and wove at home. They may well have outsourced fulling

NASA circles August in its diary to put Artemis I capsule in Moon orbit

Re: A hydrogen fuel leak, but everything's fine

Or the head of PR?

Trouble hiring? Consider loosening your remote work policy

Re: Outside IR-35

The company laptop issue is one that can be easily argued in IR35 terms. It's one I'd have used if challenged although in my case it would have applied to desktops and servers, the garage mechanic argument:

I am My company is hired to make some changes to my client's system. I may well use my own company's laptop as an aid but I need access to that system. My client's laptop provides that access. When your car needs servicing you take it to the garage. You don't expect the mechanic to do the work on his own car instead of yours do you?

All else apart, the economic model of commuting ever greater distances from ever wider areas into ever larger cities must be regarded as environmentally unsustainable. The pandemic has shown it's not necessary. The present escalation of fuel prices should be an indication that it's becoming economically infeasible. In the UK the return of rail strikes should be warning it might be impossible. Only the meanest intelligence (hi there, Rees-Mogg) can believe it can continue. It's time to consider the alternatives.

Some jobs such as logistics and manufacturing require physical presence but they're not part of the problem. Except for those catering to the immediate needs of the cities themselves, logistic businesses cluster around the transport network and property prices have long since squeezed manufacturing out of city centres.

The problem lies with office jobs and there the smart money must surely be looking at better ways. Long term home working might be possible and, in fact, preferable for some. For others it's been a strain because of the nature of their homes and new thinking is needed here.

For large employers there's the option of fragmenting their offices and scattering the fragments as smaller offices closer to where their employees live. For others the solution might be rent-a-desk arrangements; not the existing model of providing pieds-à-terre in urban centres but the equivalent of the fragmented office where the staff numbers are too small to support a stand-alone fragment.

As employment starts to move out of the cities the freed up former office space can become homes for those who prefer an urban life-style. Employment doesn't need to move out of the cities entirely. The physical urban structures aren't going to go away that easily, it's more a matter of achieving a balance so that those who want to live in cities can work there (or vice versa) and those who want to live outside cities don't need to commute for work.

Re: In Oz

"It cant be natural, surely"

Citation needed.

Re: Yes, But

Heretic!

US senators seek input on their cryptocurrency law via GitHub – and get some

The legislators must be in a race to get legislation on the books whilst there's still cryptocurrency to regulate.

We're now truly in the era of ransomware as pure extortion without the encryption

Paying to not have the data released depends on trusting the honesty of criminals. That's a very unrealistic concept. Indeed, who's to say (other than someone you intrinsically can't trust) that anything of commercial value hasn't already been sold on?

NASA wants nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030

Re: What does the gender, or a person's skin color have to do with qualifications?

It's probably a requirement to get grants these days.

Growing plants needs a supply of carbon dioxide. Whilst the astronauts' exhalations will supply this it's a closed system. Assuming 100% efficiency the total biomass, astronauts' body mass included, that can be sustained is entirely determined by the total mass of carbon dioxide and water that can be sent or found there.

Re: Arabidopsis thaliana

Only if you can provide suitable inputs.

Re: Are you stupid????

But there's always a first time.

The perfect crime – undone by the perfect email backups

Re: Email backups

That's where they learn the difference between permission and ability.

It may also have been that they gave the CCTV cameras a glance as they were leaving and realised they didn't cover much beyond the boundaries and would have been of poor quality.

And other email clients. That collection is also understood simply as "Read" by some users.

Re: You just never know...

filed away "in case it might be useful"

"It might come in" (the "useful" is assumed) is my family motto.

With a good RDBMS with proper backup of transaction logs then a restore to as close as possible to the point of failure might initially restore the deleted record if it was on the primary tape but subsequent progress should replay the deletion.

Re: Manager and Cashier

"So, a life-changing sum? Certainly - but life-changing in the sense of Her Majesty paying your board and lodgings for a few years."

Or if you worked for the Post Office, no sum at all.

Startup rattles tin for e-paper monitor with display fast enough to play video

I'd have thought that the use cases for an e-ink and a fast enough for video display were fairly contradictory.

SpaceX: 5G expansion could kill US Starlink broadband

Re: Well

The FCC does exist to prevent two people trying to use the same frequencies like this sell the same thing twice.

ZTE intros 'cloud laptop' that draws just five watts of power

And who wouldn't prefer a matt screen?

Re: Yay, we have finally reinvented the terminal

X-Terminals were fine, whether they were dedicated H/W or S/W on ordinary PCs. But they were on local Ethernet networks.

Original Acorn Arthur project lead explains RISC OS genesis

"The trick was to rig together a clock program that appeared to multitask but instead was one program pretending to be many."

Did whoever thought of that go on to work for Volkswagen?

If you didn't store valuable data, ransomware would become impotent

Re: The other option....

"Hmm might have overdone it with the meds....."

You might indeed. The value of PII isn't that only the data hoarders hold it, it's that it is unique for a given individual. The value to the data subject is intrinsic and not determined by the number of people holding it.

I can't off-hand think of a closer equivalent but this will do: it's like saying that if everyone were burgled then nobody's any the worse off because everyone else is in the same situation.

Let's settle for something easier. How about a standardised name and address entry form? For those who really can't - or can't be arsed - to type it in themselves they could have a matching text file and copy and paste it.

Yes, I'd put myself in the second category.

It would need some thought: no assumption that everyone lives in a "city", not assumption that all street addresses have a number and no assumption that postal codes are numeric.

DMCA can't be used to sidestep First Amendment, court rules

I'm sure Musk is pleased that the ID of someone who tweeted about him is protected by the 1st Amendment.

Halfords suffers a puncture in the customer details department

Re: Halfords IT Always a bit odd

It may have passed through several hands but if management teams aren't replaced from time to time you'll get the nth generation of managers who kept promoting underlings in their own image.

Europol arrests nine suspected of stealing 'several million' euros via phishing

Your mate's bank wasn't unique in this. I've had a similar missive, not pointing to a login but to a page for further information.