Posts by Doctor Syntax

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Re: an oldy

He's the superior officer of Major Error.

I was thinking more generally.

Certainly as regards error messages long numerals or alphanumerics are seldom going to be reported correctly. I do wonder how such error messages come to be generated.

Does some development manager tell a team "You can have errot numbers 00000333387000000 to 00000333387999999" while someone else has 00000333388000000 to 00000333388999999?

Are they some sort of mapping? Is the code file given number 00323334, the functions within it numbers starting 0000 and the errors within the functions also given numbers starting 0000 with the error reported as the concatenation?

A better approach would be to use a What 3 Words approach and map them to a short phrase which might be memorable enough for the user to remember and easy to map back to where the error was found. "Out of cheese" might well be a better way.

But there are other issues. Take the situation where the user goes to close the application with unsaved work. There are instances in which the user may reasonably choose to do this, one being that they've made such a bollocks that the easiest thing is just to quit and start again and a prompt which confuses the user into the wrong choice is not helpful.

Another, mentioned here recently is the GIMP prompt about unsaved work. The real issue there is that GIMP's idea of saving is saving work in its own format even if the user used it to edit a JPEG and pnly wants to save the resulting JPEG. In this case the "Quit without saving" option is quite often the one to choose as the user has already opted for the Overwrite or Export options which are the only ones to save as a JPEG. A bit of thought about that would maybe have steered the developers into a unified save function in which .jpg and .xcf were equally valid choices.

Getting that short message unambiguous can be crucial. A notice at a level crossing saying "Wait here while light flash" sounds OK doesn't it? In Yorkshire dialect "while" and "till" can have opposite meanings than expected. "Wait here while lights are flashing" is better.

Re: Twitter to the rescue.

But we're experiencing unusual demand. We've been experiencing unusual demand for the last 10 years.

Re: Why only an OK button on the popup?

The popup is only offering information, not alternative ways to proceed. If it opened and closed you wouldn't necessarily have time to read it. If it opened and offered no way to close you'd just complain.

Re: string manipulation

What sort of morons code these websites that say "Enter card number - no spaces"

A slightly better class of morons than the morons who simply say "Enter card number" but don't tell you they don't accept spaces or do but treat them as valid characters and truncate the entered string at 16 characters.

Re: Turbo Pascal - Missing Semi-Colon at line 454

Thinking you know where it's missing turns an error into a problem that you might not know you have until later.

Re: Turbo Pascal - Missing Semi-Colon at line 454

It tended to be a characteristic of compilers whose authors expected source to be on cards. There's not much else useful that can be done other than flag up the first error and stop. Blindly trying to continue isn't one of them.

Re: My favourite error message

"103: Program lost - Sorry"

It didn't even tell you who won?

A question for all of those of us who are, or have been, developers: How much thought have you usually given to the wording of dialog boxes?

Re: String is Not a Valid Number....

... neither are most other words in the dictionary.

Re: My "favourite".....

Especially when the code has far too many characters, especially far too many repetitions of the same character and is imune from being copied.

Re: Turbo Pascal - Missing Semi-Colon at line 454

And possibly the month after for the errata in the errata.

Re: Turbo Pascal - Missing Semi-Colon at line 454

This is a consequence of using the wrong early implementation of Pascal. UCSD Pascal would have taken you back into the editor at the point where the error was detected. After growing up on batch runs of FORTRAN* this was a mind-blowing revaluation. Even more mind-blowing was the fact that it would also do this for assembler.

* For added fun once the compiler had been thrown off track by the first error it would consider most following lines as being in error even if they weren't so there would be pages of error messages of which only the first was necessarily true - although some of the others might have been.

You could always fall back on "Problem between keyboard and chair" or "Problem with knob controlling monitor".

I think that was his comment on quantum mechanics.

Re: This!!

"If El Reg allowed screenshots I could give plenty of examples..."

You don't need to. You could just include a link to a bank website. Any bank website.

Re: Twitter to the rescue.

The only organisations which should attempt having one communication channel redirect the customer to another are those both small enough and competent enough to avoid this trap. Banks, by definition, are neither.

"Experts in this field apply simple principles of psychology to minimize the infuriation factor of error messages."

And yet they achieve the opposite.

ITC judge recommends banning toner imports that infringe Canon's IP

And all done without mentioning the word "monopoly".

How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?

"People accept ads in all sorts of other software"

Speak for yourself. A lot of us don't and won't.

You just have to wait an infinite amount of time for that to happen.

I suspect that Splurg is another of those of us who've done so.

I thought multiple tabs in file manager was one of the latest catch-ups. Taken long enough.

Re: So you are saying ...

"FOSS) Fix it myself or hire a programmer at a competitive rate to fix it."

Can't remember having to fix anything. It must be pushing 20 years since I wrote a line of C and that's because I was being paid. This stuff Just Works these days.

"Proprietary) Beg the monopoly supplier to fix it. Buy the next version and hope the fix is included and new breakages aren't."

Well, if you want to beg Microsoft to fix things, good luck. Personally, I'll stick with the FOSS route.

Edit: I'll just throw this in. One thing I did like about Windows back in the day was the cardfile program. It's one thing they dropped along the way. I don't think it can be made to run at all in W10. And that is one thing I have just written for myself - using Lazarus. If I had any reason to I could port it to Windows.

Y'know, I think you might have cracked it.

Added functionality doesn't get there accidentally. Somebody has to write it and, bugs apart, that's likely to be deliberate. This is a little too elaborate for a bug. Unless whoever coded it was sneaking something in for their own gratification we must assume they were told to. Telling them to do so must surely imply that usage was at least considered.

Where then is the scope for accident? Possibly exposing it at this stage? Hmmm...

Hear us out: Smartphone lidar can test blood, milk

Re: Too good to true?

"Think of it like the early days of Time Team as they went from metal detectors to radar and then lidar."

Those were for detecting three different indicators of archaeological interest.

Brit data regulator fines five cold-calling fiends £405k

What's the betting that these "firms" will go bankrupt

Which is why I advocate a PAYG (for the callers) of compensating the callee. Dial 1461 or similar and receive as small fee for taking the call, greater if you're TPS registered, taken from the caller's account. The going bankrupt before paying up trick becomes a matter for the telco's credit controllers who won't let big bills rack up.

Yes, it would require some monitoring to stop the bright spark who tries to get money from anyone who calls him regardless of who it was.

An yes, it would take some work and expense upfront by the telcos to set up the required systems. In fact, if OFCOM started proposing this I think the telcos would manage to solve this so far insoluble problem fairly quickly.

Are we springing into a Y2K-class nightmare?

"Russia will be further away."

Have you consulted Alaskans about this?

Re: The same will probably happen in the UK

That self-styled Unionist BoJo is making considerable progress on that front without horological assistance.

Re: The same will probably happen in the UK

GB time is also based on a meridian that's so far east it's almost off the island altogether so the winter mornings are darker as you go west as well as north. Permanent summer time might be acceptable in London, less so in Londonderry.

Devil-may-care Lapsus$ gang is not the aspirational brand infosec needs

"Why the crooks are ramping up their attacks so quickly is still unclear."

As is the reason why other crooks rob banks.

An open-source COBOL contender emerges

Re: Nostalgia

"But I really don't understand why one would develop a compiler for such an inferior language. Just emulate your AS400"

Why lose performance emulating something instead of compiling to native code? The COBOL code carries out the business that pays the bills for the company. There's nothing inferior about that.

Re: "guaranteed a job."

It's quite remarkable that... CICS is still so widely deployed - especially at a time when so many systems are being rewritten for no better reason than to be "modern".

Perhaps in this context modern means without CICs.

As one of the dying breed who can remember old-style toilet rolls I don't think there's much of a difference except in the size of the sheets.

Boys outnumber girls 6 to 1 in UK compsci classes

Re: Bring back the girls!

What do you suggest? Compulsory membership for girls?

Although the report isn't alleging anything it's very likely to be waved by some of the usual suspects making such allegations so the point of choice is worth making.

The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility

The finger pointing issue is a more general problem than utilities provision. I know of 4 instances in recent years of retaining wall failure and these seem to run on for years. One has left a house teetering on the brink of a landslip - and a closed road - for well over a year. In each case it seems to be the local council arguing responsibility with insurers.

We need legislation to ensure that, in the event of stand-offs between service providers (in the widest sense of the term) the individual has the right, after a reasonable lapse of time, to put the parties on, say, a week's notice to finally resolve the issue after which the costs of rectification and any additional costs, loss of service, etc, will be split equally between them. Providing those additional costs are made sufficient (maybe throw in some statutory compensation) to make attempts to game the system too expensive, the parties should have sufficient incentive to resolve things quickly. Perhaps as an additional incentive the extra costs should come out of the management bonuses rather than shareholders' funds.

As to the suddenly dumb "smart" devices - well, if you will buy such things..

Salesforce sued in attempt to block release of Capitol riot info

They seem to have come close to that: The RNC has tried to stop that from happening and made Salesforce a defendant, along with many select committee members.

Re: All parties

It's called hypocrisy, and it is shameful standard practice when you are supposed to represent The People.

Germany advises citizens to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Re: Just don't use ANY anti-virus

If you use Windows and you don't use any ant-virus then it doesn't matter whether their labs know about it or not, any malware will be damaging.

Arm to drop up to 15 percent of staff – about 1,000 people

Re: Haas, who has been in the chief exec's chair for about a month

So you're saying it can be de-Softbanked with no harm done?

Re: Haas, who has been in the chief exec's chair for about a month

"He's a salesman at heart,"

That explains a lot. They usually have a disconnect between what they sell and what's available to be sold.

Re: stop work that is no longer critical to our future success

"What if you get rid of that person?"

You have a problem with the next HSE inspection.

If they've been made redundant the present tense doesn't apply: they've left and it wasn't their decision hence going to competitors wasn't their purpose. If the former employer then starts to throw their weight around they're just making a case to be taken to an employment tribunal and subsequently to the cleaners. However I suspect your use of the term "General Counsel" means you're from parts where there might be less protection for the victims.

Microsoft slides ads into Windows Insiders' File Explorer

Re: Killing off their own golden goose

I'm sure if enterprise and business customers choose to pay enough extra they can have ad-free options.

This time round.

When they get their forced upgrades to W12 it'll cost more again.

Russian demand for VPNs skyrockets by 2,692%

Pro tip. Quoting statistics to 4 significant figures doesn't make your press-releases look more credible. Just the opposite.

Research finds data poisoning can't defeat facial recognition

Re: Data overload

Also the same image, real or fake, with multiple times with different identities attached and multiple faces with the same identity.

I wouldn't even call what they were doing poisoning. It doesn't force the signal to noise ratio into oblivion.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine tears open political rift between cybercriminals

Re: "Is the West OK when the gun points the other way?"

But not usually at the same time.

Startups bag billions to fill gaps left by chip world giants

"applications move to probabilistic computing models, in which processing and decision making is based on inferences drawn from large piles of data"

Back when I was doing these things it never occurred to me to decide where to address an order based on inferences drawn from large piles of data. I took the simple route of dispatching it to the address given with the order. This might be wild supposition on my part but I think that's still how it's done today and that that's how business collects money from customers. That raises the question of what extra value is added to a business by making inference and whether that added value, if it exists, justifies the expense of making the inferences.