Posts by Doctor Syntax

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

I'm glad they realised they didn't need to make a video to make an announcement.

I'm not glad that they originally thought they did.

Crafty: Cricut caught out by user revolt, but will cloud stop play?

"it didn't occur to anybody that whilst it might achieve that, it was far more likely to incur massive reputational damage"

Beancounters are beancounters. If it ain't beans it don't count.

Re: Problem is that your hardware is bound to their software

A slightly different option - they can make one free release of S/W to be run locally reproducing the existing feature set. They can then operate a subscription model for releases to add extra features or provide any extra services. That should please customers who cease to be dependent on Cricut for anything further. Assuming they can make a sufficiently attractive offer for subscriptions they may make more money that way but in any case they'll have freed themselves from the ongoing cloud costs.

In the meantime their customers may have learned a useful lesson: if what you paid for upfront depends on a "free" cloud service to keep running then either its a badly thought out business model or a scam and, from the customers' point of view the outcome will be the same.

Teenage Twitter hijacker gets three years in the clink over celeb Bitcoin scamming

On the subject of Microsoft, their mail software and online services, how is it that the one category of scam spam they regularly fail to stop is that which claims to be from themselves warning that some mail service will stop working if I don't click on some link? Two this morning, apparently almost identical apart from the headlines, following closely on a couple of others in the past few days. Announcements that I've won this or that, and other unbelievable offers regularly get trapped but any cams claiming to come from Microsoft sail straight through.

"The NetWalker and RagnarLocker crews are increasingly adopting this, although the former is under attack from US authorities."

Good. And let's hope it's a throw-away-the-key sentence.

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

Re: At JGH re: checks...

"You should probably check"

Spell-check.

Re: One place I workded...

A person, not the software.

SAP exec reminds the world that Microsoft is a customer

"the DOS inventor"

Are Seattle Computer Products still around?

City of London Police warn against using ‘open science’ site Sci-Hub

Let's not forget JStor. Back in the day a friend produced a very cheap (I'm not sure how it was produced but certainly not letter-press) archaeological magazine/journal. I wrote a few articles for it. I find that JStor have picked up copies, scanned then and now have them pay-walled. They weren't even the publishers. They certainly don't have my permission and my friend died tragically young, before the web let alone JStor was even thought of so they couldn't have had his either.

Re: "data and research ... is ... more strategically valuable ... than copyright-busting"

Years ago I was in a society that published an archaeological journal. In its area it was the main journal in its area. It was where the local professionals would expect to publish. This was back in the days when the author's manuscript had to be type-set, no getting the author to provide a formatted publication-ready MS.

We produced an annual volume with several excavation reports and other significant articles. We did this without the aid of any large publisher and all for an affordable annual subscription out of which we also ran monthly meetings for most of the year. Nowadays the production costs are even less. It's become a racket.

Fire takes out Japanese chip plant, owner Renesas warns of more silicon shortages

Once upon a time we used to hear of contracts requiring second sourcing. I wonder what happened to that.

Re: Their chips are down

And a clockwork motor to start it?

Ministry of Defence tells contractors not to answer certain UK census questions over security fears

Re: Census 2021 -cash for stats is ridiculous. Gov have EVERYTHING already. The list incomplete

Gov have access to:

Online acitivity via ISP.

Location via mobile phone provider.

Let's start with one of my sisters in law. No internet. No mobile phone.

You were saying?

Re: threats of £1,000 fines being handed to people who don't complete the national survey

"one lucky voter wins a million quid"

And the rest get a politician.

Re: Important census-related questions for the commentariat

This morning it was working well. It clearly wasn't put together by the usual crowd. The only annoying thing was that with the longer pages trying to navigate down a list of radio buttons to the Save and Continue button by down arrows flipped the selection down to the next box.

Re: Without being too picky...

"Cameron and Blair were indistinguishable."

I remain convinced that the reason Cameron was selected was because he was the nearest thing to Blair that they had available.

Re: Census data

I've got one like that. A childless couple took in the husband's nephew. In a society of small farms and no welfare society except the parish poor relief or, later, the workhouse, a family depended on the next generation to take over the load. Sometimes it was a middle or younger son. The deal seems to have been that that son would be the one who inherited the farm; older son(s) would marry and be set up with their own farm. I've even seen a will which mentioned an indenture which seemed likely to have been a formal agreement on those lines. It can show up as a late marriage. That happened with my 5x great-grandfather's family where one son remained unmarried until the father died (and then married very soon after) although even younger sons had married. Sometimes it went wrong. Same 5x ggfather's only younger brother was clearly the intended as the successor but died a few months before 6x ggfather. The vicar's Latin inscription in the burial register showed that even he was upset by the turn of events.

Re: Census data

"and then post incorrect information onto Ancestory and FindMyPast, poisoning the record!"

Any tree posted on any of such sites, but especially the old Mormon IGI should be treated with the deepest suspicion.

Re: Back in the old days

Their own.

Re: Bootnote

Do you know whether any of this entirely random collection of letters is a security clearance? And this? And this? ....

Any one used to dealing with historic census returns learns to treat the answers with a degree of caution. It's not unusual to find a couple in their 50s or 60s with daughters aged about 30 and 2. I also recall one family who lived on the canals who were always, it seems, born wherever it was they were moored at the time of the census. And the 1841 census has a 5 year old Queen Caroline.

Responses on other official documentation can be equally misleading. I recently came across one man who declared himself as "Gentleman" on his marriage register but three years later was a gamekeeper.

Re: UK Law

Maybe but I doubt those organisations' HR/Establishments offices are breaking the law.

If working as a contractor I'd have thought the correct answers of the contracting company's name and the individual's job title within the company ought to be satisfactory for the MoD. BAE/Senior Engineer or Capita/Hell Desk Slave don't give too much away.

Microsoft nudges Windows 10 21H1 toward commercial customers

Re: Windows IS a virus

I read that ad Debloader and thought that a script that replaced W10 with something that loaded its S/W via .deb files would do the job nicely.

From Maidenhead to Morocco: In a change to the scheduled programming, we bring you The On Call of Dreams

One of the Yes, Minister programmes has a complete set of explanations as to why none of these can be bribery. "Special commission" etc.

Re: Foreign travel

"That doesn't quite count as foreign travel."

I think Norwich does. Not the place which is fine, it's the long drag across from the A1.

Staff and students at Victoria University of Wellington learn the most important lesson of all: Keep your files backed up

Re: BOFH

or, more likely, the about to be ex-boss.

Re: The Simple Things

Maybe it was trying to do that that caused the problem in the first place.

Re: New variation on “my dog ate my homework”

"Perhaps in say 10 years from now, there will be a "Who Me?" article that will explain what happened."

Make that 1 year.

Grotesque soundbyte alert: UK government opens wallet to help rural areas get 'gigafit'

Re: Money-go-round?

This is how the government gets value for money. They announce it multiple times. That means thy're getting multiple value for it. Even better value if they don't actually spend it.

Move aside, Technoking: All hail the Sweat Master and his many inspirational job titles

Re: Uptitling

customers --> Extended QA Department

FTFY

Re: Mock tech-knocking as much as you like ...

"Although he is a bit wealthier than me, so he must be doing some things right."

There's a non sequitur.

Being asked to rate fake news may help stop social media users sharing it, study finds

People get paid to write for the tabloids.

Re: Pointless.

In practical terms it depends on the actual numbers who quit and who stay.

"Although misinformation is nothing new, the topic gained prominence in 2016 after the US Presidential Election and the UK's Brexit referendum, during which entirely fabricated stories (presented as legitimate news) received wide distribution via social media,"

Yes, entirely fabricated stories presented as legitimate news happened well before that in whatever paper BoJo was writing for at the time.

Crims with ties to Tesla and SpaceX 'fess up to computerized conspiracies

SpaceX engineer named James Roland Jones - aka “Millionaire Mike” - has pled guilty to insider trading.

ISTR that his boss had a run-in with TPTB about making financially significant statements.

Swiss security provocateur who leaked Intel secrets indicted by US authorities

authorities have quickly moved to rule out free speech as a defence.

The DoJ’s announcement features a canned quote from Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman, to the effect that: “Stealing credentials and data, and publishing source code and proprietary and sensitive information on the web is not protected speech–it is theft and fraud”.

I'm not sure an AG's view, Acting or not, counts as ruling out a defence. That's the judge's prerogative.

DARPA picks Intel to automate conversion of FPGAs into ASICs for military applications

What's in a name?

"Structured Array Hardware for Automatically Realized Applications program – aka project SAHARA"

That's the tricky bit done. Getting a cool project name is essential for the CV.

Windows 10 Insider build fixes the fix it sent out to fix the fix that broke printing? Afraid not, but here's a new Notepad icon

It's catching

I read the same thing yesterday in a review of the latest KDE Plasma. So long as they haven't broken the alternative cascading menus it'll be OK, otherwise I'm not looking forward to it landing in a distro I use. Why do UI developers insist on fixing what isn't broken and leave the irritants in place? (In KDE's case, restore the ability to specify using just the corner to unhide a panel that was removed in KDE 4.)

PSA: If you're still giving users admin rights, maybe try not doing that. Would've helped dampen 100+ Microsoft vulns last year – report

Re: A critical but overlooked matter

Add mail clients to that, thanks to numpties who want to sent HTML mails or don't know how or why not to.

Keep track of what the policy is costing the business. Make sure those costs are reported up the chain so senior management gets to see them.

"Let's assume a particular market sector of "subject to the GDPR"; because how are you controlling and securing data access if your letting home users store the data on their personal equipment?"

How do you control the salesman who has all his contacts written down in his private notebook "just in case"? Because that is also as much a potential breach of GDPR as having it on a personal laptop or personal phone. Data is data whatever its physical representation.

Re: Why do I need admin rights? Well, because of IT

"The shoemaker's children and all that..."

Alternatively, "Eating your own dog-food". This might be the service they provide to customers. If the manglement can't see what's wrong with the service they provide to themselves they're not going to see what's wrong with the service they sell.

Re: Better idea.

If I wanted. But it's not how email should work by default, is it? It's style over substance marketroids and the like who made HTML email a thing. A better solution would be to bounce it all and let the offenders learn. There is absolutely no reason why email should be sent in HTML. None.

Northern Ireland hands deal worth up to £87m to Fujitsu: Now keep our 15-year-old Oracle HR system up and running

I wonder just how far back the origins of the system go. It might well descend from something running on ICL kit and ICL had enough NI manufacturing to be looked on as a local company to be supported. In that case Fujitsu could have inherited it along with any other worthwhile bits of ICL.

Re: "a transfer of intellectual property rights"

The clue's in the article: "The current contractor has acquired the intellectual property and know-how to maintain and develop the system over the last 15 years to reflect the varying requirements of the NICS departments and their associated bodies."

Big problem: Nominet members won't know how many votes they're casting in decision to oust CEO, chair

Perhaps Companies House should be requested to send along an observer.

Ofcom says no price controls on full-fibre broadband until 2031, giving BT's Openreach the kick to 'build like fury'

Not just lose the internet, lose your phone as well.

Re: £1.70 more ... justified due to the speed and reliability fibre offers over copper

I take it you're expecting the fibre to be provided for free by the manufacturer along with the equipment and to be installed for free by people working just for the sheer joy of it.

Re: Meanwhile in the real world...

And meeting the vocal calls by those who already have an urban service of FTTC to get that choice means that the rural roll-out will falter.