Posts by Doctor Syntax

It's more than 20 years since Steps topped the charts. It could be less than that for STEP's first fusion energy

Re: Mixed feelings

Recent experience with Covid vaccination and treatments has shown that if the pressure is there it's possible to restructure the processes and shorten the overall time. Parallel processing can be fast; who knew!

Head of Big Tech Expertise? Believe it or not, it's a UK.gov vacancy for a Whitehall job

"fulfil partnership opportunities" with the megacorps and "deliver against their needs and demands."

Really? This is the customer delivering to the supplier.

Do you know what TikTok is? Then you might make a good magistrate, says Ministry of Justice

Re: Who else?

There were such posts - stipendiary magistrates or the Irish equivalent, the RM - resident magistrate. Somerville & Ross's accounts of the (mis)adventures of one of latter are a good read.

I'm not sure if they still exist - it would involve paying real money.

Observing a few cases would soon dispel any notion that any magistrate or judge would be out of touch. As the slogan used to go, "all human life is there".

I did - very briefly - consider it when I retired, largely as a matter of curiosity as to what it looked like from the other side of the witness box. Very briefly because I looked at the bumf about training and decided it seemed to be all in managerial-sounding jargon.

22-year-old Brit avoids US extradition over SIM-swapping conspiracy after judge deems him to be high suicide risk

Re: Bad OpSec

The ones who are easily caught aren't.

From TFA: "Nothing about the case prevents De Rose from being charged and tried in the UK, added Judge Griffiths."

"This was not a case where the [requested person's] mental condition had only arisen after his arrest on the extradition request, as is often the case," observed District Judge Sarah-Jane Griffiths

There speaks experience!

Pakistan considers ten-year tax holiday for freelance techies

Re: What's to stop folks ...

A freelance business is a real business like any other..

Re: I hope I'm wrong, but...

I suppose the thinking is that if it works, then in ten years time they'll have built up their industry to the point where they don't need to offer the incentive. What happens to the freelancers after that isn't their concern. They're not doing it for the freelancers' benefit.

Pop quiz: The network team didn't make your change. The server is in a locked room. What do you do?

Re: Locked in at night

You were too kind. Just having the name and following through with the plan without explanation would have been a better learning experience for him.

Warehouse containing Valuable Stuff close to a football ground. It wasn't usually staffed at the weekend.

One weekend the network team went along to do some upgrades. They discovered some local ne'erdowells had lifted the gates off and were charging punters for parking.

Re: Under the floor

"a locked filing cabinet"

Things may be different now but back in the day there seemed to be a lot of filing cabinets with the same key.

Re: Dave?!

Rodney.

Re: Out of date building plans

"Of course the cabinet couldnt be moved due to lack of budget"

If you'd invoked H&S as to why you couldn't power cycle it and payroll had been held up you'd have discovered budget would have been immediately available.

Rolls-Royce consortium shopping for factory sites to build mini-nuclear reactors

Re: Money for old rope

Or wallpaper while they're sill in office.

Re: Money for old rope

As for nuclear, I don't think that many people are thinking "mushroom cloud imminent"

I'm not sure everyone is capable of making that distinction. If they were we probably wouldn't also have anti-vaxxers, Ng phone mast arsonists etc. Never under-estimate the technical ignorance of a Grauniad reader Sun reader substantial chunk of the UK population.

Re: SMRs are expected to produce 300MWe per unit.

"nuclear free zone!"

I've never worked out how they keep all the electrons in place.

Re: lets build more fukishimas, but in all the cities...

"who cannot plan for longer than to the next by-election"

Sir, experience suggests you are over-generous.

Re: Money for old rope

House of Parliament? They can't even tell the cabinet that.

Re: Money for old rope

"Because we don't design and build we just ask foreigners to do it."

It's actually a bit worse. It's because we gave up doing that. OK, a lot worse.

By definition $My back garden won't be where it is. That might be their problem.

LG promises to make home appliance software upgradeable to take on new tasks

Our (not Samsung) washer does indeed just ping when it finishes the wash cycle. Responding to the ping leads to disappointment. The door remains locked for a further period to no good purpose that I can see.

After a while it unlocks the door. Silently.

I can never fathom what happens in the heads of UI designers.

Re: to take on new tasks

"unblockable speaker"

Glue.

Employers in denial over success of digital skills training, say exasperated staffers

"on behalf of online learning provider"

Rice-Davies applies.

Twitter's top security staff out after incoming CEO shakes things up

Security? Who needs security?

Running Windows 10? Microsoft is preparing to fire up the update engines

"But OS fragmentation is not unique to Windows"

OS fragmentation imposed by a single vendor is, however, a Windows speciality.

I'm not sure about Macs but with Linux and BSDs you can choose your preferred version, your preferred UI and run those on multiple machines if that's what you want*. You don't have to put up with a mishmash and you don't get forcibly updated by the vendor.

* In practice you might want to run different setups. For instance SWMBO suffers from macular degeneration and has had lens replacement. Her laptop also runs Devuan and KDE but some settings are changed to adapt to that.

Australian Prime Minister's WeChat Shanghaied by Chinese patriots

"the account in question was originally registered by a PRC individual and was subsequently transferred to its current operator, a technology services company"

IOW it was never his account but that of some media company working for him.

Team behind delayed ERP project was aware of problems but didn't inform Surrey County Council for months

Re: Cheop's Law

This is something those who consider themselves Masters of the Universe can never grok.

IPv6 is built to be better, but that's not the route to success

Re: re: In a global pandemic

"Many of those who refused are probably no longer with us."

And neither are their victims. Masks are primarily to filter exhalations.

Re: Won't happen in my lifetime

"you actually connect with your friends"

Or, for some values of "you", you actually connect with your prey.

UKCloud acquired: Public sector specialist finally bags investment from current chair and private equity after reporting steep losses

"our ... privacy rules"

For what they'll be worth when Patel's finished with them.

To my way of thinking taking it in-house means that you do it properly and that includes staffing - both in terms of numbers and expertise. There's no actual law that prevents the Civil Service doing that - it's just that the generalists who run it don't really like employing specialists and even less do they like paying them properly.

It's more likely that a directly employed team with a proper career structure will be a less security risk than a churn of expert managers elsewhere (who, BTW, would have to be vetted).

I'd go a step further. Something that's supporting SECRET and above ought to be run in-house.

Almost there: James Webb Space Telescope frees its mirrors and prepares for insertion

Re: Pounds ( No Stones)

Historically pounds are a more basic unit than stones which might have been more local standards. From a C18th diary: "I was weighed there and weighed 11 stone and 1 lb—15 lbs to the Stone. I was weighed at Banks woodmill several years since and weighed 11 stone 14 lbs"

Pounds, of course, are good hexadecimal units - none of this decimal malarky. What we need to do the job right is a 16lb stone.

"attention can turn to adjustments in the micron and nanometer ranges in order get the telescope properly aligned"

Stop it! You're doing my head in. Micron adjustments in microscope focussing - fine (literally fine, that's what the fine focussing know is for) but nanometre adjustments on a telescope...

Re: SO TRASHY

"Bunch of hokey jokers is what is makes them sound like."

Looked at in another way - it's an addition el Reg unit of measurement lexicon.

Wolfing down ebooks during lockdown? You might want to check out Calibre, the Swiss Army ebook tool

Re: Buying consumable content online for immediate consumption

I'm not sure we were reading the same Wikipedia article but the one I read was contrasting consumables with durables. Food and water are given as examples but only as part of a wider range of examples. Just as well really, or else consumer protection legislation would have a very much narrower scope.

Re: Upwards thumb

I suppose it depends on whether she has established prior expectations of how user interfaces will work.

If you were to design a vehicle control on the basis that the vehicle will turn in the direction in which the lower part of the steering wheel turns then a new driver will learn that and find it natural. Experienced drivers would crash within minutes.

European silicon output shrinking, metal smelters closing as electricity prices quadruple, trade body warns

And the owners of those back yards are unlikely to have changed their stance.

Arm rages against the insecure chip machine with new Morello architecture

"The Morello programme was started in 2019 by UK Research and Innovation and intended to span five years."

Span five? With Morello involved that should be Take Five. Just to drum up some business of course.

'95% original' film star Spitfire could be yours for a mere £4.5m (or 0.05 Pogbas)

"If you've got £4.5m gathering dust in the bank, today might be your lucky day."

If only I hadn't forked out for that Hurricane...

UK, Australia, to build 'network of liberty that will deter cyber attacks before they happen'

"Just how that will happen was not explained."

Maybe with advice from that well-known cyber-securtity expert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Rudd

Why should I pay for that security option? Hijacking only happens to planes

Re: Guess the PA's previous job was ...

A nice blast from the past. I can't help thinking Centos should have told him to go ahead, call the FBI if he wanted.

The alternative answer would be that you did and here are copies of the emails telling manglement that it would unless more memory/storage or whatever were provided.

BOFH: What a beautiful classic car. Shame if anything were to happen to it

Re: Ever alert

those videos have to be "accidentally" deleted

Have to be? Oh, ye of little faith. Have been.

'Please download in Microsoft Excel': Meet the tech set to monitor IT performance across central UK government

"Everything eventually becomes an email client."

And a web server.

Privacy is for paedophiles, UK government seems to be saying while spending £500k demonising online chat encryption

Alternatively:

Do you shop, bank or use any other service online? If so read the T&Cs of those services and you will that there are things you are contractually obliged to hide.

Re: Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide....

Same thing, different coat of paint.

Re: Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide....

Just reading this article would be a good start.

First they came for Notepad. Now they're coming for Task Manager

How about implementing top to be run from the command line?