Posts by Doctor Syntax

Bharti big shots storm BT boardroom after £3.6B raid

"This largely centers on BT concentrating on UK customers and scaling back its global operations"

The end of the great idea of the 90s - concentrate on creating businesses abroad that would be out of reach of the regulator.

It should really have been limited to a maximum 10% beneficial ownership limit when it was privatised.

Curious connections: Voyager probes and Sinclair ZX Spectrum

"The best technologies have a cultural impact that far outlives their original purposes, and to feel an intimate connection to them as that happens is worth celebrating indeed. "

They also illustrate another important lesson - don't lose your documentation. Nor, come to that, your build tools.

Bring back your old Mac: 5 ways to refresh the OS on elderly Apples

Re: Webless

My neighbours should have thought of that one. They did a trip last year but hired bikes over there.

I keep thinking I should try a 2nd hand Mac but the laptops mostly seem to be weeny 13" - suitable for students but not ageing eyes.

Re: Nice to See This Being Done

"The clock is ticking on the days of expandable, upgradable computers. It was just a passing phase."

Shudder.

Re: An alternative.

One of the odd things about the way commercial websites are built is that having JavaScript off prevents some of them running but in other cases prevents something such as a paywall from getting in the way.

HybridPetya: More proof that Secure Boot bypasses are not just an urban legend

If you used those devices for business you should have had a solicitor on the job right away to start off challenging the original warrant, loss of earnings, devices containing commercial in confidence material, etc.

US House Appropriations Committee saves NASA budget, Prez holds the veto pen

Re: Might be possible to achieve on budget

"Should be possible to get an old Soyuz."

But beware of pinholes.

What if the $85m runs out before they get it there? Does some lucky town find its main street permanently occupied by a Shuttle?

Data destruction done wrong could cost your company millions

"We have some clients who require us to shred stuff down to a fraction of an inch, and we have other clients who are okay with our shredding stuff to, you know, say, a quarter or half an inch,"

Until I read this I was sure half and quarter were fractions.

From TFA: "However, many systems are only partially encrypted and some systems store their keys in the cloud. For example, Microsoft BitLocker keys are available in the cloud."

I'm out, says OpenSUSE: We're dropping bcachefs support from next kernel version

Re: Total non-issue, IMO

"Nobody should be relying on that [32-bit hardware] for a long time"

Translation "Richard 12 doesn't have anything 32-bit only so nobody else should either."

Not 32-bit only but something along the same lines:

I have one of these ancient net-tops. It was bought as a compact, very portable laptop for occasions when a very portable compact laptop was needed. For a long time it ran Mint. In fact its network name was and still is "mint". But one day a Mint update left it with a black screen and even the Mint installer now suffers the same effect.

The video H/W is from Imagine who were, as I recall, a bit arsey about FOSS drivers back in the day. I haven't investigated further but suspect the explanation is that Mint have decided to drop the driver, thus killing an otherwise functional device as far as running Mint is concerned.

It is, of course, still functional and now running, rather slowly current Devuan. It still is a very portable, compact laptop for those occasions when a very portable, compact laptop is needed.

Just because some users don't have a specific type of hardware doesn't mean that nobody else not only does but has a specific application for it.

Re: Yes, that's what should happen for experimental filesystems. News at 10.

"Bloody Linux and the 'I must have new shiny *now* even if it inconveniences other people' attitude"

The "new shiny" is being kept out of the mainline kernel - as per the rest of your post. So where does this last line come from?

"In a sane world all the Unix beardies would be running a cross between Plan 9 and Inferno, and the rest of us who know a variable from a filename would have some modern incarnation of a Dylan-based Lisp machine, or a Smalltalk box"

Why? What we run does the job.

Einstein's dictum of everything should be as simple as possible but no simpler is a good guiding principle.

Re: Have you ever heard of NTFS?

"End users can still decide to get the kernel source and build just that one module to use with their distro kernel. Or get the latest source for that filesystem from somewhere else, and build it as a module to use with their distro kernel."

Which is exactly what FOSS is about.

Re: There is a slight problem with this

MS and Google would very likely fire a developer who didn't abide by check-in rules. Linus can't do that because he doesn't employ them so all he can do is not accept their patches. On the whole his approach works pretty well: it doesn't deliver overwight "Do you feel lucky?" updates on a monthly basis.

Hack to school: Parents told to keep their little script kiddies in line

Re: School IT

"The analogy is like having hotel public wi-fi networks have access to all the back end systems."

In an hotel earlier this year, a little of the beaten track. The Wifi picked up a number of SSIDs including, apparently one for each room which didn't seem to work with the password in the room information pack. There was also one labelled Starlink, unencrypted so I just used that. Asking later I got some incoherent explanation about the room-by-room SSIDs being to do with the TVs and pointed to the one I should have used. I casually mentioned seeing Starlink and was told that they used Starlink for their internet, being so far out in the sticks. I didn't mention the SSID was wide open and I'd actually used it. My guess is that if I'd been inquisitive it would have been wide open into the hotel management network as well..

"govt provided laptop ( the so called Rudd laptops) kept throwing errors"

Must have been the hashtags to blame.

Good teachers are like that with the ones who take a particular interest in the subject. I'd include a couple of biology teachers in that. One or two of us would have the run of the lab, stock up one of the sinks with toads, etc. in the spring. (My mate took one home at the end of term and released it in his garden. Said it kept him awake by croaking all night.M

Re: "Caused by students"

"without having stolen the physical item itself first"

And?

That's like saying a door with a glass panel and a cylinder lock next to it can be locked.

You do not deter someone intending to commit an offence by providing them with another offence to commit.

It's the ones who think its dull and reach out beyond it that you need to recruit.

"Policies on photography would be independent of that, since they may have any number of other things they could use to take pictures."

Ah, yes, policies. I went with a client's manager to the office of their client, one of the usual suspects in the outsourcing world. When we got there we were told any phones with cameras had to be left at reception. Policy.

They didn't mention regular cameras so my client kept his in his pocket.

Think of the children

For once it's the right approach to overall security.

BOFH: These office thefts really take the biscuit

Re: When I were a young lad...

That would be alleged chicken soup but the tea is invariably worse.

Re: MAYBE THERE NEVER WERE ANY BISCUITS!!!

There are not enough teabags in the world to fill the potholes in Kirklees.

"Can't eat dark chocolate"

Not downvoted as one shouldn't be cruel to the afflicted.

Re: cookie != biscuit

"it's more like a small stottie"

Now you'll really confuse them.

Re: When I were a young lad...

"However, the touch screen control had over 4 pages of options, each page having about 6 items and some with variations on them."

I am not in the least surprised. Coffee is far too complex.

Re: Slimy layer

And more acceptable.

You mean Wheelbarrow Wheel?

Re: MAYBE THERE NEVER WERE ANY BISCUITS!!!

A factory that supplied teabags worth nicking? It's usually better to bring your own.

I've always found Jaffa cakes as too weird to consider edible. It's that slimy layer between the cake and the chocolate.

‘IT manager’ needed tech support because they had never heard of a command line

Jack had the professionalism to bring it to a successful conclusion.

Re: Why do people put up with the abuse?

It must have been a good firm to work for if it had an MD to whom tickets could be escalated.

Re: Some truth, some obvious lies

"supposedly originating at Harvard Business School, that a good manager could manage anything: the students needed to learn how to manage"

The first words spoken to any new students on a management course should be "Respect can only be earned." It wouldn't be a bad idea to repeat them at the end of the course. In reality I suppose it's an unknown fact to those running the courses.

"hiring delivery managers (God knows what they're delivering"

I was sent on one of those intelligence insulting courses attended by various victims from different parts of a large telecoms company. Our local director was one of the big bods running the show and one of the ways he distinguished himself was by demonstrating he knew nothing about the Iron Triangle - couldn't see why you couldn't have all three.

Anyway, typical introduce yourself start. I went first and explained what my job was. Succeeding victims said progressively less untill it came to a complete wanker who simply announced loudly "I deliver". I don't know how I resisted an audible murmor of "Oh, a van driver.".

Re: WTF?!

s/ECHO/echo/

Odd to have used the pedant icon and not to have understood the word "immediately".

Re: Thus it is

Necessary but not deemed so when appointments are being made.

Re: I've seen that type of manager before

It's called the Peter Principle. No, it's not named after Mandelson.

Fire up the gas turbines, says US Interior Secretary: We gotta win the AI arms race

"responsible for safeguarding the US' natural resources"

I don't think safguarding anything has a place in the current madhouse.

Re: Bubbles popping

But this is different. It's AI. It's also not tulips, nor the South Seas company so nothing can go wrong.

Inventor who encouraged Elon Musk to make Optimus says most humanoid robots today are 'terrifying'

Re: You are looking in the wrong direction

"Robots will not be replacing cheap labour this decade and probably not next decade either"

It would be feasible if they're cheap labour dressed up as robots.

Re: Entertainment

That's a lot of balls.

"recently predicted robot revenue could surpass $5 trillion by 2050"

That's a safely remote target. Long before 2050 everyone will have forgotten he said it.

All your vulns are belong to us! CISA wants to maintain gov control of CVE program

How to make your country less trusted than it already is.

Boffins invent DNA tape that could pack 375 petabytes into an LTO cart

I'm sure they can already do that. They're not going to digest all the rest of the goodies and leave that behind.

1,200 undergrads hung out to dry after jailbreak attack on laundry machines

Think of the benefits. In a few years these students will be going out into jobs where they'll be able to bring an understanding of the problems of making machines internet connected, smarter than they need to be etc. and an appreciating of IT security. A valuable education.

Google lands £400M MoD contract for secure UK cloud services

"The aim is to strengthen secure communication links between the UK and US, adding to the security partnership the two nations share."

Make more effective, at least in one direction. Strengthening security is a different matter.

Huntress's 'hilarious' attacker surveillance splits infosec community

Re: Can an AI company claim the moral high ground?

Yes to both parts. The first part should enable them to provide evidence at the trial that should be the outcome of the second.