Posts by Doctor Syntax

Now that Trump is useless to Zuckerberg, ex-president is exiled from Facebook for two years, possibly indefinitely

Re: Punishment?

"Is being banned from Facebook supposed to be some sort of punishment?"

For a narcissist? Yes.

Today I shall explain how dual monitors work using the medium of interpretive dance

I remember reading, a long time ago, that the function of a Unix kernel* was to provide an illusion of place and an illusion of process**. Some people seem unable to perceive these illusions. I don't think it helps that modern UI (and that includes web) designers seem to go out their way to conceal them. UX designers, of course, are amongst those who don't perceive the illusions at all.

* Other OS kernels are also available

** The reality, of course, is a scatter of segments on a disk and slices of time on a CPU

Re: Qualifications before being allowed to use a laptop

"I'm too busy"

"So am I"

Re: Laptop + Monitor = two computers?

Maybe where other monitors display "no signal" it should display "this is a monitor, not an iMac".

Maybe something like this should be the standard message on all monitors. "No signal" is a message tor techies who would just as easily understand the significance of the luser version: "If you can see this message you haven't switched your computer on. This screen is only your monitor. If you're not sure what your computer looks like follow the cable coming out of the back of the monitor and it should be on the other end. Not the cable that leads to the power socket, the other one."

BOFH: I'm so pleased to be on the call, Boss. No, of course this isn't a recording

"I can't possibly do it as I'm spending most of my week writing off all the equipment people now don't want because it's been replaced by the gear we bought them over lockdown"

Better shred all that paper work. Oh, the original POs & invoices have already been shredded by Mission Control.

Microsoft to unveil 'what's next for Windows' ... Rounded corners and what else?

And a warning of things to come for those stuck with WIndows.

Re: Corporate Piglatin?

"Can you put this in technical terms?"

No. The essence of technical terms is that they mean something.

Re: How about.....

Too many idle hands in the development department.

Re: soon we will share one of the most significant updates of Windows of the past decade…

So far, so good until "They'll take over a major Linux distro next (Ubuntu is my guess)". How?

The common factor in all your failed job applications: Your CV

"hand shone shoes (never trust anyone who doesn't shine their own),"

Even Hush Puppies?

Re: Older applicants

Sorry, can't tell you. GDPR.

Re: CV's top tips

"You might want to see a sparse CV. You might know what you are looking for. The guard droid, however, is looking to tick boxes and most job advertisements don't actually indicate which boxes need ticking. " etc.

Perhaps the solution is to specify what sort of CV you want to see, both to the guard droid (to whom it should be made clear their own job is on the line if they don't follow it) and in the job ad.

Re: Get em while they’re young

"It’s not what you know, but who"

This can work two ways. One is that the person you know knows you can do the job. The other is how we get Dido Queen of Carnage running Test and Trace.

Advice about tailoring the CV to the job is all very well but one then finds that the agency sends the specially tailored CV for another vacancy with somewhat different requirements.

The best CV is one that's never written because it doesn't need to be.

Hybrid working? Buckle in, there's no turning back as survey takers insist: You can't make us go back

"replaced them with serviced accommodation for 40-50 seats."

I think this is the key. They'd better not be located in the cities, however. They need to be close to where people live. By the time the planners catch up with this it will be too late.

We've had a local neighbourhood plan produced. It would have been fine 100 years ago - everyone worked within walking distance of their homes. Fifty years ago the cracks would have been showing as the mills closed, their sites started to be built over for housing and people were starting to commute by car. Forward another decade and all those old houses with no off-street parking to facilitate charging electric cars will be useless without a return to local working - which isn't, of course, in the plan.

It's the UK contractor tax factor: IR35 outsiders gaining leverage in skills market, survey finds

Re: Seems that the market functions like the Internet

"So as businesses wait for contractors to starve and give in"

The moral of the story - at least according to the article - is htat it's going to be a long wait.

VC's paper claims cost of cloud is twice as much as running on-premises. Let's have a look at that

Re: This Is My Shocked Face

Also, from a security point of view, having ones family jewels not under ones control has always fallen into my "Bad" box.

Doesn't the customer interface fall into the family jewels category?

It took 'over 80 different developers' to review and fix 'mess' made by students who sneaked bad code into Linux

"SystemD will find it much much harder to get new 'features' added."

Hope springs eternal!

Re: The only sane thing to do

"it's a volunteer OSS project"

It seems we have to keep repeating this: there are published statistics on who contributes most to Linux. The main contributors are inevitably corporate. It's in Intel's interest, for instance, that their products are supported so they're always there are thereabouts at the top of the list. From memory Google and Red Hat are also leading contributors.

It's a lot cheaper for someone who needs an OS kernel that can be almost met by Linux to take it and tweak it than to develop from scratch and it's also cheaper to contribute their changes back than to have to keep applying them to every new version of the kernel.

It's called collaborative development.

Re: How to deal with Lennert Poettering

"use the money to bribe Microsoft to hire him away from Redhat"

What makes you think he isn't working for Microsoft?

Help wanted, work from anywhere ... except if you're located in Colorado

Re: Ah, the good old days...

"it is kind of naive to assume that salaries, and the corresponding taxes, social contributions, QoL are similar to where you are."

OTOH it's naive to assume that if a job can be performed remotely the value to the employer would depend on where the employee lives.

Proposed amendments to UK Finance Bill target rogue umbrella companies ripping off contractors after IR35

Re: Pennies and Pounds

And also an unpaid collector of VAT.

"The main reasons for things like IR35 and similar rules designed by HMRC...."

I rather think the main reason is that HMRC staff are salaried employees. That's the way of working they understand. They prefer PAYE - a tax system designed by employees for employees. Anything else is foreign to them and hence automatically suspect.

The future is now, old man: Let the young guns show how to properly cock things up

Re: Regomised

Or Eric.

Your private data has been nabbed: Please update your life as soon as possible while we deflect responsibility

Re: Hope he doesn't try publishing this in The Register.....Oh Wait!

OTOH the usual command for a Sunday evening stitching SWMBO's notes together to email out:

pdfunite [AB]*pdf ProjectName.pdf

is a damn sight simpler than faffing about with some GUI program to assemble the article.

Re: Hope he doesn't try publishing this in The Register.....Oh Wait!

You can always spot those who've never used any modern Unix of Unix-derived OS.

Re: Bellowing Boss!

This is a technique that should always be used by any of us when preparing the budget for a project.

Re: Fake PII FTW.

"If you give your phone number as that of said police department,"

If you can discover it, make the phone number that of their marketing department, HR or, for preference, CEO.

Tor users, beware: 'Scheme flooding' technique may be used to deanonymize you

"That means it is 91.75% unique."

A bit like being 91.75% pregnant.

Protip: If Joe Public reports that your kit is broken, maybe check that it is actually broken

Re: Local council wasting money by not spending it

"no one ever got into trouble for deciding to not spend money today"

Back in days of yore if you didn't spend your budget it was likely to be cut next year. The result in NI was known as the Spring Sales. DoE would have had contingency for road clearance to cover a bad winter. This was inevitably more than needed so that in the run-up to the end of the financial year there was money going spare for other departments. Given that lab consumables were fairly predictable it was possible to stock up on a few things for the coming year to help them out.

Re: "Either that, or they fib and say "of course I have, I'm not stupid"."

"Gorm, a range of storage furniture sold by Swedish outlet IKEA"

Almost any collection of letters is the name of a range of some sort of product sold by IKEA.

Re: Civil service paying for excuses

"my laptop has no camera, as various customer sites ban laptops with them from cleanrooms and other sensitive areas"

On a visit along with one of my client's managers to their client's office. Cameras on phones were fairly new at that time.

"Anyone with a camera on their phone, please leave it outside."

Slight over-specification there: nothing about a camera per se so my companion said nothing about the camera in his pocket.

Re: PC Upgrade

"A manager of my acquaintance managed to have laptops stolen 3 times from restaurants when entertaining clients."

In that case I think we can only let you have an old, used one as a replacement. It'll be much less attractive to thieves.

China says its first Mars rover Zhurong has landed on the Red Planet

Interstellar exploration? That's ambitious.

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

Re: Big data is good for the NHS and good for all of us

So you can cite - well, not cite but I don't suppose PR folk with their first post really understand what a proper citation is - a study that relied on large amounts of data obtained prior to this data grab. Doesn't this pose a problem for the argument you're putting forward? After all if such studies are already possible with ethically sourced data why would we need this? Or does the study you cite say happened have an ethics problem?

Re: Freedom Now!

Hi, Julian.

have you worked out to avoid duplicate posts, yet? After all, there's an implication that you don't consider yourself stupid.

Re: Get your tin foil hat on!

"So how will the poor shmucks hired on an NHS IT salary manage it?"

That problem doesn't arise. It can be outsourced to Palantir or the like.

Re: Hmm

"The fragmented NHS which still uses fax machines"

Assuming they were too tardy to modernise the Irish health service is probably glad of its fax machines right now.

Re: Why opt out ?

"GDPR is still a UK law"

To clarify that, the specific UK law is the current Data Protection Act.

Re: "The UK enacted GDPR through the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018)"

"30/12/31"

??

Even if you make that 30/12/21 ??? applies. I can't see any means by which any of Max Schrem's (more power to his elbow) from this February onwards will help protect us. The difference isn't just the highest court of appeal, it's the entire jurisdiction which has changed.

Re: "The UK enacted GDPR through the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018)"

"You're on your own now - it's what you wanted, isn't it?"

Only about half of those who voted. We have no idea what the non-voters might have wanted, of course.

Re: Why opt out ?

it puts this data into the "significant national interest" exemption of GDPR

This is an example of why the ability to apply for a judicial review of government actions is important. No government which respects the rights of its citizens would want to curtail that ability would it?

Re: Why opt out ?

"The hospital was then hit with the biggest fine in the UK."

The hospital, not those responsible. So a double whammy for patients and possibly a not very good annual report for a manager.

Hospitals cancel outpatient appointments as Irish health service struck by ransomware

Re: Sanctions?

"we'll just see the attacks move to other countries"

If sanctions include blocking traffic then there's an immediate preventative element. But a longer term element would be deterrence. If condoning or even being over-casual about enforcement were to lead to life becoming difficult for the offending country then it would become difficult or risky to make such moves.

It might be a good move for Health Services (and similar organisations) to instruct the local offices to run an overnight job to print out next days' appointments and explain why. The explanation might at least concentrate minds and the print-out should avoid cancellations for the next day and give the clean-up a day's start.

Of course going back to something as old-fashioned as paper might offend those who thought it would be a good idea not to have fax, pagers or the like as backup.

Audacity's new management hits rewind on telemetry plans following community outrage

Re: Telemetry

"t is now extremely easy to restrict telemetry to the functioning of the OS itself, which is entirely reasonable"

Have they changed their T&Cs then? Or have you read them? Certainly when I read them the alarm bells were rung no so much as by what they said as to what they didn't say.

For instance they gave themselves permission to extract data about transactions. Innocent reader looks at that and says "Quite reasonable. If I conduct a transaction with Microsoft of course they're going to need that." Anyone used to reading more carefully notices what it doesn't say: that they're restricting that to transactions with Microsoft or some affiliate. If they syphon up a few transactions with your bank that's quite OK, their T&Cs allow it.

I think there were a few other bits like that. Don't take my word for it. Go and read it for yourself. It's possible they've changed the wording and those limits have been imposed. But read it with a critical eye as to what limits it does or doesn't impose. Compare the reality of the legal statement with the PR puffery. What's the worst case, not the sales patter? If you do that critically you can make an informed opinion about FUD for yourself. Do the same with any telemetry - do the T&Cs restrict the vendor in the way your first sentence suggests? The legal agreement is what matters, not the PR promises.

"It was a completely innocent mistake that ended up doing the announcing for us... in the worst way imaginable."

It was a completely stupid mistake resulting from a complete lack of understanding of what their users would let them get away with. Does "innocent" cover that?

NHS-backed org reacted to GitHub leak disclosure with legal threats and police call, complains IT pro

Re: I smell a rat here.....

So do I. First post, I see.

Rapping otters and automated database knob-twiddling: An obvious combination in some universe or other

Before twiddling the engine parameters start by looking at the actual queries and query plans they generate. A few bad ones will eat up far more resources than you'll ever get back from tuning.