Posts by Doctor Syntax

Brexit freezes 81,000 UK-registered .eu domains – and you've all got three months to get them back

Re: I won’t be able to use what I’ve paid for

Where in PandyH's post does it say that they "rage-quit" anything or even voted Leave?

This is just one of the many things brought down on us by a slim majority of the gullible.

Re: This is to punish the UK

"In simple terms the UK chose to leave the club"

Nothing is simple. It was a far from unanimous decision. Some people voted to leave, some didn't. The former were a majority but, in percentage terms, a small majority. As someone posted earlier those with .eu domains were most probably in the latter.* It would be smarter for the EU to stand by its UK friends.

*A few weeks ago when the Beeb was covering the approaching changes they quoted one firm most of whose business involved exporting to the EU. Its directors were wondering whether their decision to vote Leave had been the right one.

Canadian uni blamed users after Workday HR switch, but some teaching assistants say they're still waiting to be paid

Re: Wondering...

They might if they knew what it was. There's probably a shortage of people who know that. Or who know that the job of paying employees isn't the computer's, it's the employer's.

"outdated systems"

Translation: working.

Julian Assange will NOT be extradited to the US over WikiLeaks hacking and spy charges, rules British judge

Re: Expectations

Having effectively jailed himself for several years this seems unlikely.

AFAIK there were no moves to prosecute him until the outgoing POTUS arrived in office. Perhaps there will be another change in attitude.

Explained: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32

Re: Future proofing size constraints

And it's always going to be tricky. Use bigger block sizes and you end up with wasted space for small files as described. Use small block sizes and increasing levels of indirect Unix-style and you end up with the performance hit of multiple indirection. It's never going to be easy and the next use case can shatter your ingenious solution.

Welcome to the splinternet – where freedom of expression is suppressed and repressed, and Big Brother is watching

I've often thought that quite early on the whole internet community should have adopted the principle that countries abide by openness principles or they get cut off. Stop routing data to them for an hour a day. After a while double that. Then double it again. Move to full days a week, full weeks a month, full months a year, entire years. Not even the elites in the country get to use it for any purpose at all during those times. No using it to dabble in other countries affairs. It wouldn't just apply in the case of governments causing problems, it would also apply in cases of them failing to clamp down on criminal usage. There would be few countries willing to go full Nork - and even if they did full Nork would still preclude causing mischief elsewhere.

No chance of it ever happening, of course. Self-interest putting pressure on ICANN.

Server won't boot? Forgot to make that backup? Have no fear, just blame Microsoft

Re: A hard lesson...

I had a client running on very ancient H/W (e.g. the processors were Pentiums and the biggest disks were 4Gb but a lot of each). The disks were mirrored on a belt and braces principle. They were mirrored at the controllers and each mirrored pair was mirrored in the database. There were, of course, database and OS backups (tested by being restored as part of the the BC plan). There were rumours of disks failing to restart so it was still a stressful time when the installation had to be powered down for a rewire. There was even some debate as to whether it could be kept running on an emergency supply. In the event it all went smoothly and the system came back up.

When the entire business resides on your storage system, whatever that might be, an element of paranoia about every single aspect of it isn't a failing; nor is it a luxury. It's an absolute essential.

File format conversion crisis delayed attempt to challenge US presidential election result

Re: 2020?

Or butterscotch.

"Asking for a 1 hour extension suggests that this is what they were doing."

Or hoping that in the extra hour somebody would come running up with real evidence in spite of all past experience.

What can the 1944 OSS manual teach us before we all return to sabotage the office?

Re: passengers?

Your definition is one that crossed my mind very regularly when commuting via British Snail. Keep would-be travellers in range of the forecourt concessions at Marylebone.

Yes, Microsoft Access was a recalcitrant beast, but the first step is to turn the computer on

Re: Access Fan

2) might also count as a con.

Re: I'd be shocked if ...

The particular failure here was not separating server from one of the user's client machines. Client and servers play by different rules. Clients can, and maybe, for security reasons, be shut down when not in use. Servers must be left on.

Re: "You mean her PC needs to be on in order to read the hard drive?"

What's changed is that going into Ken's office to turn the PC on won't fix it.

Re: I always worry

So much for routing around problems.

Brexit trade deal advises governments to use Netscape Communicator and SHA-1. Why? It's all in the DNA

Re: 20 year old tech...

"Funnily enough, the stuff we send abroad has to comply with US regs.... or it does'nt go

we have no say on what those regulations are, nor any vote on who gets to set the regulations in the first place, and yet we trade with the US very successfully

...

If the product goes into the EU (which it does), then it has to comply with EU rules,"

What you don't say is that whilst there was no say on the US regs we did have a say on the EU rules. Since last year we haven't.

The US market was your export market. The EU was your home market. Now the EU is an export market and your home market has shrunk to just the UK. If the UK deviates from the rules the EU makes then you have three sets of rules where previously you had two. If it doesn't then the home market rules are set by the EU with no UK input into making them. It's called "taking back control".

Re: 20 year old tech...

By definition the opportunities now exist. Don't you see them? You're freed from all the EU red tape!

Re: The lawmaker problem

"as clueless as aging boomers when it comes to tech"

I see the kids are out of school and still clueless as to who invented tech.

Re: Wot abaht GDPR then?

I'd be somewhat surprised if the outdated bits are still applied in practice. If you know what you're doing when you write this sort of stuff you might make references to "best current commercial practice" or state they're minimum requirements knowing that as time goes on the norms will change. Alternatively specify an ongoing process that can keep the specification up to date without it being in the main document. I worked on a job for some time where extra products kept getting added to the contract; the workflow involved data transfer by XML and while some stuff was necessarily dealt with at sales and management level the XML additions were organised at working level.

This has PHB interference written all over it and I'd be surprised if hadn't been left in the dust long ago. As I pointed out in another post, key management is ignored; if the folks who knew what they were doing felt that encryption had to be specified they'd surely have included it.

Re: 20 year old tech...

Not sure if it's right but according to The Black Farmer the ban applies t chilled products but not to frozen so that'll be the way round that.

Long experience of project teams & the like is that you roll up at the first meeting, look round, spot one or two people and know that between you you'll be doing the work. Some will be problems and some dead weights. A few may be new but you'll come to categorise them as the project proceeds.

The sub-set doing the work should bear in mind another rule: it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission, especially when it's up and working.

Re: 20 year old tech...

It's unlikely that they will diverge. No govt. is going to want to do that. Any rational govt. will understand that this is already the best of a bad job and no Brexiteer govt. is going to want to expose the hollowness of the whole thing. Meanwhile we've now got a boundary in the Irish Sea (imposed by a PM who professes to be unionist and promised such a thing would never happen) and over time the little problems will creep out; the fact that Scottish producers can't sell seed potatoes to Europe nor, it's reported, to N Ireland.

Re: Wot abaht GDPR then?

It's just an existing agreement copied into the new agreement and pre-dates GDPR by about 10 years.

It illustrates at least two well-known principles: (a) there's [at least] one on every committee and (b) nobody gets round to updating the documentation.

It's not too difficult to visualise the sort of thing that must have happened. A working group is appointed and deals with all the techy bits around data representation with the actual communication being dealt with on a level of "Just email it, encrypted and signed". Then some pedant says "No, you need to specify that" so some poor soul gets the job of writing it up.

The draft of that addition goes back to the committee and some PHB pipes up with "Ooh, that sounds very complicated. Won't it cost a lot of money?". It gets explained that Outlook, Netscape or whatever he's using handles that already. "Well put that in, then." And so the document ends up with an explanatory paragraph that didn't need to be and shouldn't have been in there and which has aged to the point of ridicule. But, of course, nobody wants to revisit it to take it out; as the article indicates, when the documentation is an international agreement the inertia is a few orders of magnitude worse than what most of us experience in this respect.

As to levels of encryption maybe reality has already replaced that specified. Presumably keys will have expired and been reissued using later releases of PGP the S/W. Of course, as diplomats will have been involved there might have been undue influence of the US who don't like the rest of the world using encryption at all. And on the subject of keys - the document is, as far as I can make out, quite bereft of any mention as to how these will be managed. That's consistent with the committee considering that the whole communication issue was outside its scope.

Netscape Navigator, of course, lives on. It's now called Seamonkey. It's what I'm typing on right now.

As Uncle Sam continues to clamp down on Big Tech, Apple pelted with more and more complaints from third-party App Store devs

Re: Its about the money

"If Amazon wants to have an e-commerce platform, it can't sell on it itself."

I think this concept needs a but more thought. It's like saying you can't own a shop or even a market stall and sell stuff there.

Providing a 3rd party sales platform isn't in itself monopolistic because it has a rival, eBay.

Having its own product lines is not, in my, admittedly limited, experience, a problem providing it sells them under its own name. The one such product I've bought is far superior to the once-prestigiously branded article it replaced*.

Moving into areas such as grocery isn't monopolistic either - there are some big beasts there who've used their own resources to move into e-commerce on the one hand and into other product areas on the other.

In fact Amazon may well have got too big for comfort but it's difficult to pin down this part of it on sufficiently objective grounds to put up a plausible case for the prosecution.

* Why this should be is an interesting question in its own right. The famous brand got bought up. The predatory buyer can shove out crap and be able to sell it on the basis of the name. By the time they've trashed the brand image they'll have made their money back and a profit and go stalk another prey. Maintaining bought-in brand reputations isn't their business plan. Somebody like Amazon, trading through a single brand has an interest in maintaining that reputation.

Re: Its about the money

Amazon has a number of more obviously separable chunks such as AWS and the video operation than separating 3rd party sellers from the main store and these could easily survive as independent operations. From a customer's PoV removable of the endless nagging about Prime would be an improvement: there's no way I'm going to sign up for a subscription for something I don't want so not having it constantly shoved in my face would most definitely be an improved user experience.

Re: Another reason why

How about neither?

I might have to give some data to the massive hog. Data is easy.

2943720.

That's an example of data. It just doesn't contain any information.

Re: Is it me?

They looked at IBM of old and learned.

I built a shed once. How hard can a data centre be?

I've mentioned before the time, about 50 years ago, when a scintillation counter was delivered to QUB. About the same height as a typical rack but half as wide again and largely occupied by a complex sample changing mechanism. It arrived in a van without a tail-gate lift. It must have been loaded with a fork-lift but nobody advised we'd need one to unload it. It was eventually unboxed in the van, lowered onto its side and slid down a long plank. I don't think we'd worked out whether we could get it through this door and the narrow passage way behind it but it did just fit. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.5858855,-5.9347162,3a,75y,165.71h,80.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1st90JWAEKBeh2W1l4YPAH_w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en

All I want for Christmas is cash: Welsh ATMs are unbeatable. Or unbootable. Something like that

Re: To be fair

Quite. How do they think they can get away with it?

The curse of knowing a bit about IT: 'Could you just...?' and 'No I haven't changed anything'

Re: Printers attached to PC's

A cousin's new wireless HP printer had a set-up disk for his W10 laptop. It insisted in trying to set it up with a 10.x.y.z address even though the laptop itself was on 192.168.x.y. Fortunately it also had a USB connection so I could configure it via CUPS from an old Dell he had which ran Zorin (relatives ask for IT assistance, they likely end up running Linux).

North of England NHS buyers name IT consultants who got in on £200m framework deal

Re: Wouldn't it be cheaper....

"Zoom is a pretty good way to deliver healthcare"

Really?

Overkill in one sense: a telephone call is sufficient to discuss symptoms.

Insufficient if a physical examination is needed.

The gap between the two cases seems to me to be vanishingly small. In fact, the only effect I can see would be to rule out health case for those patients not equipped for it

My website has raised its anchor and set sail into the internet oceans without me

Re: Yep, I even come across W Richard Stevens website occassionally

Or a good friend. See the explanation at www.kohala.com

Re: Our ISP the domain squatter

In that position telling the boss I'd see him in court would have had the effect I'd have had in mind.

Re: It's a wasteland

Back in those days I knew someone who had a sideline repairing TVs - he himself rented one. His rental company wondered why it went through so many vales.

Re: I hate Interviews

"He commuted to work on a motorbike he never owed a car always had motorbikes."

As did my dad. Back in the '30s a driving licence was just a driving licence - no differentiation into classes so when those came it it just got renewed into all classes so whether you could drive a car or not you were licensed for one. I'm not sure if dad ever had to take a driving test to get the licence.

Re: Nether web

"The Wayback Machine?"

Erratic in coverage. All too often you find that only part of the site was archived. I just tried one old site which lapsed some time ago. A friend offered to take it over from the guy who didn't want to - or maybe couldn't - maintain it but the offer was declined. The domain is in the hands of a reseller and although the Wayback machine tells me unarchived pages are still available on the web they now resolve to the reseller's advert.

BOFH: Time for the MMOCC. You know, the Massively Moronic Online Christmas Call

Re: Pardon?

"The contract is outside ir35"

HMRC may disagree if you go around referring to your client as "employer".

Re: Pardon?

"a business laptop (contractor) and a laptop supplied by my current employer."

Either these are one and the same or else you're IR35 fodder.

A pub denied: One man's tale of festive frolics postponed by the curse of the On Call phone

"Which paid for a new garden shed."

The spouse wanted a garden shed?

Expect €5m cloud, says European Centre for Midrange Weather Forecasts

Re: "Portmanteau"

Maybe you should expand your vocabulary a little. "Portmanteau" is the normal term to describe a new word created by the elision of two or more pre-existing words.

US Department of Homeland Security warns American business not to use Chinese tech or let data behind the Great Firewall

The document argues that China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law is a primary source of risk, as it “compels all PRC firms and entities to support, assist, and cooperate with the PRC intelligence services, creating a legal obligation for those entities to turn over data collected abroad and domestically to the PRC.”

That seems eerily familiar but some other country was mentioned, not China.

Re: Don't trust anyone?

You could always try buying your encryption gear from Switzerland. Or maybe not.

Re: So Basically

Have they got involved in the fishing rights negotiation?

Re: On a similar subject, and it is sad to have to say but necessary to have it said ...

I think that sometimes somebody else has got control of the account. That one mostly made sense.

'Best tech employer of the year' threatened trainee with £15k penalty fee for quitting to look after his sick mum

Re: "Best Tech Employer of the Year (50-500 employees)" by the UK-based Women in Tech organisation

"my loyal workforce, that is, myself"

Self is always the best employer.

Re: Restriction of Trade

"I've known managers that have done that for decades!"

That's probably best. It's when they start doing stuff that the trouble starts.

UK on track to miss even its slashed full-fibre gigabit coverage goals, warn MPs

Re: FTTP costs

"Yes, if power goes out you'll lose landline. You can either keep a mobile phone for emergencies"

And Sod's law will ensure the power goes off just as you put the phone on to charge.

Red Hat defends its CentOS decision, claims Stream version can cover '95% of current user workloads'

"since I don't generally recommend Debian derived distros."

Debian is, of course, a distro in its own right. You can recommend that rather than a derivative.

Re: Wow

Ubuntu might be a good introduction for someone coming from a non-Unix/Linux background but personally as a long-time Unixer I found Debian - and subsequently, of course, Devuan - closer to past experience.