Posts by Doctor Syntax

Facebook fined £50m in UK for 'conscious' refusal to report info and 'deliberate failure to comply' during Giphy acquisition probe

It seems all regulators have problems with fining multi-national corporations. It needs a bit of international cooperation. Perhaps the agreement on minimum corporation tax needs a rider to agree that fines should be set in terms of percentages of global annual turnover applied annually as long as the corporation is out of compliance. A corporation that's accumulated several fines of several percent each is going to start acting a bit more carefully, otherwise the shareholders and bonusocracy are going to start getting twitchy.

Re: So...

If I read the articel correctly it can't. All it can do is forbid integration, whatever that means.

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Re: Honeypot

Do I detect a sly reference to the honey men?

Can we settle for Defunct?

Literally.

"Facebook will probably just be called "corporation" or "work""

Too complicated. "Money".

Weeks after Red Bee Media's broadcast centre fell over, Channel 4 is still struggling with subtitles

Re: C4 DR

"failing between them"

That form of words could be why not. It sounds too scary to manglement.

Re: Testing failover.

Wasn't it he who interviewed Ginger Rodgers and said it was always his ambition to dance with her? The look on her face suggested it wasn't one she appreciated.

Re: Testing failover.

"significantly faster than transferring it electronically"

That's what the old adage says. Nice to hear of it implemented.

Re: Missing a few key points here

In the case of TNA it makes sense. Properly boxed and shelved paper and parchment is probably going to survive the vibration. Spinning drives aren't, at least not with the same probability.

Re: Missing a few key points here

"They are all still on DR, see Channel 5 with the white and black square in the right hand corner"

Ah, that explains it. I thought it was just another bit of channel branding.

"The system works by discharging large volumes of nitrogen gas to displace oxygen and extinguish any potential fire"

The reason for extinguishing the fire is to prevent the damage the fire causes.

The operation was a success but the patient died.

Not just deprecated, but deleted: Google finally strips File Transfer Protocol code from Chrome browser

I hope KDE don't follow suit with kio-slaves". I have an ancient but still functional Buffallo NAS device on my home LAN. My Brother all in one device saves scans to it. Older versions of KDE would let me open that via SMB but the device was SMB2 and support for that was dropped. However FTP access is still an option. I could add the functionality elsewhere but it would be another make-work to replace something that is good enough in its context. If someone can eavesdrop on my home LAN I have bigger problems than sending plain text passwords to see my scans.

* Are they still allowed to call them that?

NHS Digital exposes hundreds of email addresses after BCC blunder copies in entire invite list to 'Let's talk cyber' event

Re: "deleting the original invitation"

And once it's been read it's a bit late to recall it. In fact, reading the response together with the account it's possible that by "delete" they meant the un-BCCed email to cancel.

Re: Lessons will be learned!

And then promptly already forgotten.

Electric car makers ready to jump into battery recycling amid stuttering supply chains

Re: Not enough batteries for recycle to be a significant supply source.

"released back into the grid when the wind stops."

Great. Come out of the house in the morning and find the car battery's flat because last night wasn't windy so it's been charging up the grid. You're not going to manage to jump start an EV.

Windows 11 Paint: Oh look – rounded corners. And it is prettier... but slightly worse

And way before that, allowing for doubts about prettier.

"They are the computing equivalent of the tools that come with flat pack furniture."

Just so long as they don't come with the sort of instructions that accompany flat pack furniture, designed to be equally incomprehensible in all languages.

"This new font compliments Windows 11's geometry,"

Self-praise. They would say that, wouldn't they. About as convincing as a gushing Amazon review.

Re: with twitches aplenty

Add the offence of "Continue", "OK" and/or "Cancel" in any dialog asking to confirm some sort of Cancel operation such as closing an application with unsaved data.

What does "Save" mean in modern, visually representable terms? It might be saved to a local disk which the user has never seen, to a USB "thumb" drive (shall we use a picture of a thumb?), to an SD card, to a corporate server or to Somebody Else's Computer? The same thing applies all over interface design. How do you represent the idea of "Home" in the sense of a home page? How do you represent Back in a world where a script might be written right to left?

We have reached a situation where the icons for many operations are abstractions devoid of any physical meaning. In that respect a picture of a floppy disk is no less meaningful than any of the apparently random collection of lines that seem to constitute the "simple geometric forms" of "modern metaphors". It has, however, the saving grace of being the same as on the last version which where it had the saving grace of being on the last version right back to the version where saving to a floppy disk was actually a meaningful option.

It has the further saving grace, if being rendered as a small but perfectly formed coloured image of being instantly recognisable on a tool bar whereas "simple geometric forms" look just like a collection of apparently random lines and not easily recollected from the collection of apparently random lines on another application nor, indeed, on the same application when you closed it 10 minutes ago.

What user interfaces need are consistency both through time and between applications, to be readily distinguished one from another at a glance and hence for their meaning to be easily and permanently learned, even if that meaning is abstract rather than apparently physical.

Re: Having read Charles Petzold's Programming Windows 30 years ago...

Close was initially a problem. It was easily clicked with a slight navigational for the Max button. Existing applications assumed it wasn't possible to make such an error so easily, that Close meant Close and that there was no need to present an option of "did you really mean to do that without saving your work".

Apart from that description amounts to no more that a recital of existing common or best practice in GUIs. I suppose that for users migrating from character terminals it was a novelty. Our misfortune is that the apparent novelty was what appealed to commercial product managers and was perpetuated in place of the notion of common or best practice.

Access rather than Actions, I think. But, yes, it covered more than keyboard shortcuts. It also established an important principle: that the user should be able to do similar things in the same way to the extent that they have similar functionality such as opening a file.

That implies not only does the interface of one application match another in those respects, it should also match previous versions. The only excuse for failing to do that is that the previous version got it really badly wrong.

Sir Clive Sinclair inspired me and 'whole load of others' at Arm, says CEO Simon Segars

"There was another shop in my hometown, where I would buy individual transistors, resistors and capacitors"

Many hometowns had one. Those were the days.

Years later we had them back again as Maplin - a curse be upon leveraged buyouts.

Then a few weeks ago Google told me that someone had actually opened such a shop near me complete with a Streetview image to prove it. Alas, miracles don't last and by the time I got there I found a pet food shop occupying the premises.

Email phishing crapcannon operators TA505 are back from the dead, researchers warn

Re: Unimaginative template spam

Those who have been trained to click on links in spam by many years of dedicated effort of their banks' marketing teams.

Hitting underground pipes and cables costs the UK £2.4bn a year. We need a data platform for that, says government

But there is no uniform process for "asset owners" – the gas, water, telecoms or electricity companies who dig up roads to lay pipes and cables – to share their data about where exactly they have put everything.

The antics of those customers suggests the main obstacle isn't the lack of a platform, it's their existing lack of data about exactly where they've put everything.

What do you mean you gave the boss THAT version of the report? Oh, ****ing ****balls

Re: My work log book was redacted

"You can put payment in 30 days on your invoice, but some customers will take 90 days, because that is normal in the industry."

You can also increase the price, put payment 90 days, X% discount if paid with in 30 days.

I can't see that Matt had any problem other than the faulty switch. There was nothing wrong with the report he left in the correct place, the boss's in-tray.

The manager, however... Well, he's the one who handed the boss some random, sweary bit of paper.

And the boss is in no position to escalate it as he's the one who couldn't find a report in his own in-tray.

("Couldn't find a report in his own in-tray" Is that a euphemism?)

Darmstadt, we have a problem – ESA reveals its INTEGRAL space telescope was three hours from likely death

"To make matters more fascinating, the rescue happened while most of the control team were working from home – thereby presenting the best argument for ongoing remote work, for every job, forever."

All unmanned spacecraft control is a good argument for remote working.

Intel teases 'software-defined silicon' with Linux kernel contribution – and won't say why

Re: How much non-functional

If it can be used to screw more money out of the customer base overall Intel will have no problem at all with that.

What the customer base thinks about it is another matter, of course.The development work has been done. The production work has been done. If the price to the customer has not paid for all that it looks like the product has been deliberately sold at an initial loss to sucker the buying into paying for an upgrade that isn't an upgrade.

The mainframe industry was notorious for that and I doubt their customers admired them for it. Then the microprocessor came along and started eating away at the corporate computer market.

Who profited from that? Intel. Those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it but it seems Intel are going to play the role of the mainframe makers.

Canon makes 'all-in-one' printers that refuse to scan when out of ink, lawsuit claims

TBH, the "subscription" model is already too far down the road

It's something like this that might haul it back.

Microsoft called out as big malware hoster – thanks to OneDrive and Office 365 abuse

Re: Same for Phishing Attacks

"poor spam filters allow emails that look an awful lot like they are from Microsft"

If there's one thing Microsoft really ought to be able to trap it's spam that claims to come from them and doesn't and yet it seems to account for most of the spam that gets through. The usual Nigerian Prince and similar stuff is routinely trapped.

Give us your biometric data to get your lunch in 5 seconds, UK schools tell children

Re: The only relevant question....

Quality of school dinners must have gone down since my time. Either that or you were a fussy eater. (See my previous post ablut the idea of choice.)

Re: Not much of a surprise

"East Germany would baulk at"

Or envy.

Re: Informed consent?

That's a fairly persuasive alternative.

Re: Simpler Solution - Free school meals for all?

"not enemies of the state"

Not necessarily the state's view.

Re: "they could simply stagger lunch 'hour' by a bit"

Also a very long time ago we had a fixed seating plan - tables of six, 5th or 6th former in charge of each (no separate 6th form college). Food prepared in batches for each table and shared out by or under supervision of the pupil in charge. No multiple choices, eat what the day's menu was. Any facial recognition was by the senior pupil on the table. If, fr whatever reason, you weren't having school dinner you wouldn't have a table.

Microsoft admits to yet more printing problems in Windows as back-at-the-office folks asked for admin credentials

Re: Windows ain't done 'till the printer won't run.

"fix it using other methods."

Extreme percussive maintenance?

There are 875 million good reasons why the paperless office won't happen soon

Re: I'm fairly paperless

"they don't send me paper bills any more"

Which means that if you tried to open a new account somewhere you might as well be homeless. "Sorry, we need a utility bill".

Re: The continuing non-arrival of the paperless office

Agreed. Proof-reading and marking up is much easier on paper.

Ubuntu 21.10: Plan to do yourself an Indri? Here's what's inside... including a bit of GNOME schooling

Gnome continues to remind us why a choice of desktop environments is a good thing.

Oops, they did it again – rogue Soyuz spurt gave ISS an attitude problem

Yes, but they do need that much fuel. If a thruster doesn't turn itself off in time there might not be any left at all. OTOH if, after initial departure the thruster continues to burn there are all sorts of extra problems there, such as landing a few thousand miles from the ground crew.

Computer scientists at University of Edinburgh contemplate courses without 'Alice' and 'Bob'

Re: It's not just the names ...

Just be careful running it.

Having been married for over 50 years I have a very firm barrier against marrying anyone else of any physical characteristics.

Amazon textbook rental service scammed for $1.5m

Re: Portage...

It's also the term for transporting stuff, including the boats themselves, between one navigable river system and another. It covers both the act and the place where it happens so is the likely origin of the place name.

Toyota needs more than its Cheer Squad to deal with chip shortages, as five more home factories forced into idleness

For years car manufacturers have had dedicated suppliers who simply asked "How high?" when told to jump. They hadn't realised that in the semi-conductor world they're just another customer and cancelling orders has made them not particularly good customers. It's easy to see why they'd like a supplier who's as captive as he others.

Bank manager tricked into handing $35m to scammers using fake 'deep voice' tech

Re: Of all the scams in all the world -

As I read the article the company was the bank. There's no mention of a customer.

Presumably he thinks it was a fake because he's been told it wasn't who it claimed to be. But was it?

All I want for Christmas is a delivery address that a delivery courier can find

It wouldn't have happened then. Data entry had just swapped the day number and month number.

Re: Uber Eats/Deliveroo/dominos/pizza hut absolutely hopeless I've given up on food delivery

Or simply give the GPS coordinates of the entrance. W3W will be reduced to that anyway so cut out the non-standard middleman.

2, 3, 4 all on the same side of the road- 4 has two front doors, BTW, or at leas two doors facing the road. 1 is would the back. 1a and 1b are further back down the road and on the other side, fortunately nobody went as far as issuing negative numbers. All the rest have names, not numbers. On an adjacent road the second of only two houses is 16. Fortunately it has a name as well so to avoid confusion the number is on the back door out of sight.