Posts by Doctor Syntax

London class-action sueball against Google is a lot like Epic's case except fandroids might win enough for a pint

I suppose that having someone front for them Vannin are protected against being declared vexatious litigants.

On this most auspicious of days, we ask: How many sysadmins does it take to change a lightbulb?

This is all very well providing it doesn't conflict with a task that is more important and/or urgent, especially if the latter is something properly in your remit and the former isn't. The underlying problem usually arises from someone unable to distinguish from the importance of your proper work and their own self-importance.

Re: "It has a cord attached so it's YOUR problem."

"It's breathing"

That's the problem but it can be dealt with.

Re: First and only thought

"I presented a costed analysis on the waste of our time, which fell on deaf ears."

There's a lot to be set for internal invoicing. It might have happened once. After the charge hit the facilities account it wouldn't happen again.

You MUST present your official ID (but only the one that's really easy to fake)

I thought it was somebody not taking his pills. Again.

Re: but there is logic

It probably helps with having a professional reputation established before a change of marital status. My daughter's publications were in her married name which she kept on divorce whereas my cousin's daughter has reverted to her maiden name.

At least my daughter hasn't, at least as yet, remarried. Years ago one archaeologist, having become established in her married name (to another archaeologist) kept using it on remarriage. A journalist for the Irish Times who didn't see eye-to-eye with her on some matters referred to her in print on at least one occasion as "Mrs $CurrentMarriedName writing as $FormerMarriedName".

Compare this with the NHS system for recording a negative lateral flow test which doesn't actually require that the test was negative nor, indeed, taken. All that's required is the serial number of a test strip.

As regards personal ID I read in another place that the much vaunted Estonian electronic ID system has been reamed out to the extend of about quarter of a million ID photos.

BOFH: They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it

Re: Spatter shields deployed.

"Now to continue with the rest of the reading, safely not drinking anything."

It's BOFH. You should know better than to eat or drink whilst reading.

Re: Deja vu!

My experience was somewhat the converse of that. Also in a telecoms company in Leeds. There was another building with some consultants working on something or other that, AFAIK, never happened but they were using Notes. According to those in our building who had dealings with them the emails coming from the Notes users were regularly infected.

Re: Incredibly sloppy BOFH's

I see we share the same suspicions.

Re: So he was "visiting" during working hours

Not being allowed doesn't mean it can't happen, just that it shouldn't. Not being able to is a different matter.

Re: Who said anything…

Or having the charger disconnected?

Giant Tesla battery providing explosion in renewable energy – not as intended

Re: Entropy says no.

And a fire in a hydrogen storage battery is likely to be over before the fire-crews get there. Good luck stopping it spreading to the adjacent units - and beyond.

International Space Station stabilizes after just-docked Russian module suddenly fires thrusters

Re: System Integration is Hard. In Space it is Harder.

" A 'great' landing is one after which they can use the plane again."

But what about one where you don't want to use it again but accidentally do?

Great reset? More like Fake Reset: Leaders need a reality check if they think their best staff will give up hybrid work

Re: Going on-site has certainly been made redundant in IT

"Likewise, we had a dodgy SIP router that needed regular rebooting, how are you going to do that, from the outside? "

Do what you should have done already - get it fixed or get it replaced.

Re: Going on-site has certainly been made redundant in IT

"there are a few issues with outsourced workers which companies know about"

Which some companies know about. There seem to be some who don't, or perhaps just don't care.

Re: You can't expect to be paid "big city" salary

If companies have to pay over the odds to get workers in their cosen locations they should have been asking themselves some hard questions long ago - and if they disn't their shareholders should have done. If you're fixing the pay by where the worker works rather than on their value to the business you're doing it wrong, no matter how much handwaving goes into explaining otherwise.

Re: Have I landed on a different planet?

"Did any of them look out of the window during 2020 an see the empty roads?"

I saw a lot of delivery vans.

Re: Flexibility is key.

Offering $1.50 per day anywhere might not be productive.

NFT or not to NFT: Steve Jobs' first job application auction shows physically unique beats cryptographically unique

Perhaps NFTs are an idea whose time has gone.

NoSQL Couchbase launches schema-like features to take on the transactional databases of the relational world

In the Couchbase world, a database is a "bucket," a schema is a "scope," a table is a "collection," a row is a "document," and the column is a "feed."

Oh, wonderful. Marathon/Informix went through three lots of vocabulary for the same concepts over a very few years about 4 decades ago. Will Couchbase also end up using the industry standard?

Ex-health secretary said 'vast majority' were 'onside' with GP data grab. Consumer champion Which? reckons 20 million don't even know what it is

I keep getting pinged by SMS spam, allegedly by my GP, to go to a site to enter ethnicity data. A phone call to the GP confirms that this if kosher within a very restricted sense - it's the NHS that requires it and I suspect it's they rather than the GP who are doing the pinging. There are a lot of issues with it, not the least is that the URL goes to a site (of which I'd never heard) and includes a code that goes straight to a page which greets me by name.

Yes, that old, crusty, noob security hole. I've no idea how sparse the code space might be but it looks likely that a bit of experimentation with variations would pull up someone else's details - what details there might be I don't know because I haven't pursued beyond the greeting page for my own code let alone trying anyone else's.

I'd have hoped that these days the work experience child responsible - surely nobody more experienced would have done this - would have been quietly advised by an intern to have another go and do better, but no, it's released for use. Perhaps there's scope for a bit of investigative journalism here. Hint.

Re: Dentistry?

"No problems, since you ask"

I'm more likely to ask "How?" as the local dentists are almost entirely just dealing with emergencies, allegedly because NHS is limiting the numbers of inspections they're doing.

Over 100 Taiwanese political figures' messages leaked outta LINE app

That'll be a few politicians who can see the consequences of unencrypted communications. Will they see the solution as one that should apply only to themselves?

eBay ex-security boss sent down for 18 months for cyber-stalking, witness tampering

Re: "As a result of being drunk, Mr Cooke did not fully comprehend"

It would have been an excuse he'd heard many times in his police career. It's surprising he didn't come up with something better - although that might have been difficult.

D'oh! Misplaced chair shuts down nuclear plant in Taiwan

Re: system was running at 6-10 per cent of operating reserve ratio.

"yay, it's still working"

But is it still working now. After all, you've just issued a challenge to Murphy.

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: A contrarian view

I used to carry a spare fan-belt back in the 70s although, AFAICR I only had to replace it once. OTOH I had a Sierra with an alleged 180k on the clock (alleged because the 60k when I bought it was suspiciously exact).

The thing is that failure modes now are different and more frequent. I've had two Subarus which had warning lights come on due to a switch failure in the gear selection. It may well have protected the engine in the event of some sort of fault but whatever that might have been the sensor failure was more frequent (for a small sample) than whatever it was protecting against.

On my current car I've had two wheel sensor failures in about 40,000 miles.

The modern failures might not be show-stoppers but not only are they likely to be costly to fix they don't leave one with confidence that they actually would protect against a show-stopper.

Perhaps the farming equipment manufacturers will learn the valuable lesson of making their equipment user repairable when farmers go out of business sue them for the consequent losses

FTFY

Rather than campaign directly for right to repair maybe they should campaign for legislation to ensure contract clauses weasling their way out of liability are not enforceable.

'Login infrastructure issue' blamed as sustained Xero outage threatens payrolls

Re: You Keep Using That Word; I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

I'm not sure that what you described as Keynesian is what's implied in the bit you highlight. In any case when I was in business I regarded doing my own books as about as welcome as doing my own dentistry.

You, too, can be a Windows domain controller and do whatever you like, with this one weird WONTFIX trick

Re: Right to repair

It's more likely that elsergiovolador's proposal would work by obliging vendors to fix things. And, of course, with BSD and Linux the users have the ability to access the source ode anyway. Of course there's always the possibility that the vendor might opt to provide entirely undocumented and incomprehensible source code.

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

Re: @45RPM

"If it takes a kWh to do a job then it will, give or take, proportionally more time to do it with less Watts. You save nothing."

In fact, you'll be worse off. Depending on the quality of the insulation it loses heat whilst it's above room temperature. During the elongated time to boil it will be losing moreheat which will take more energy to replace.

Re: @45RPM

You omit to mention nuclear power. For the whole of my long adult life we've been shoving far more fossil fuels up power station chimneys than need be, not because their were adequate available renewables to replace it for most of that time but because of opposition to nuclear put us far behind the curve, both in terms of supply and of technology development.

For a true display of wealth, dab printer ink behind your ears instead of Chanel No. 5

Re: from a reputable third-party supplier

"Who is a reputable supplier?"

OTOH, what's a page? Some might use a lot more ink than others.

My B/W HP laser printer is much older than that & still going strong. I'm not sure I'd say the same thing about a newer HP.

Windows 11 comes bearing THAAS, Trojan Horse as a service

Re: Forgive me for saying this...

"Is there a problem with a monopoly if the tool in question is actually good?"

Yes. A monopoly is a problem.

In the Navy, we want to share data with some ease. In the Navy, can someone help us with this please?

Re: The RN Marketing Dept. wrote this one

It should be a hint to the NAO to start their investigation now to save time later on.

Everyone cites that 'bugs are 100x more expensive to fix in production' research, but the study might not even exist

Re: Somtimes the odds are stacked against you.

Odd usages should be commented to prevent someone being "helpful" later.

Hole blasted in Guntrader: UK firearms sales website's CRM database breached, 111,000 users' info spilled online

Re: Why bother with plasma cutters?

The kind of people wanting to steal "guns" don't want either a highly accurate metre plus long single shot rifle, or a double barrel shotgun

Apart from the fact that not everyone looking for an illegal weapon is a regular criminal, they might also steal an angle grinder to go with the shotgun.

Re: They set out to piss off the gun owners? Really?

"Only an idiot would do it."

There are shortages of a lot of things these days but not of idiots.

Some of a previous generation of NI lawyers had, in their younger days, seen active service in WWII, several of them in special forces. I was told of an RUC constable on protection duty for one of them who'd become a judge. The judge made clear that the officer's job, if he thought they were under attack at night, was to wake him up rather than responding himself. When he asked why the judge opened the door of the long case clock in the hall. There was a rifle inside.

"the most safe and secure gun register system on today's market."

The last part appears to be correct.

UKRI denies pulling funding from Newport Wafer Fab over Chinese ownership concerns

Re: Chunky chips...

"in the Belgian style"

Certainly not. That's in the EU.

Re: uk.gov don't need an excuse ...

In Boris's view satellites seem to be where it's at. They still need their EU-free GPS system* which is why they bought a communications satellite business.

* Insert usual guff about being world-leading etc.

Microsoft has a workaround for 'HiveNightmare' flaw: Nuke your shadow copies from orbit

Re: AC Naturally

All attacks are local for some value of local.

Even Facebook struggles: Zuck's titanic database upgrade hits numerous legacy software bergs

Re: Didn't know they were still using MySQL

"Or they could ask Oracle for help"

As it's Facebook that sounds like a good idea.

UK celebrates 25 years of wasteful, 'underperforming' government IT projects

Re: Competence

"top civil servants and minister who actually have personal experience of IT and understand it"

Dido would claim that. So would Hancock, he of the personal app. Dunning-Kruger explains a lot about government over the last few decades.

Re: Asked whether they thought the criticisms were fair, a government spokesperson...

I think your sympathy is misplaced. They reel out the usual meaningless boilerplate, collect their money and carry on.

Re: The main problem is...

"a manager can manage anything"

And a politician, trained in PPE, classics or some arts subject, can govern anything.

Tech support scams subside somewhat, but Millennials and Gen Z think they're bulletproof and suffer

It's a pity Microsoft are concentrating on phone scams. The most frequent emails on my old Hotmail account are threats purporting to come from Mcrosoft to close the account ( a few of the les competent are emailing a Hotmail address threatening to close a gmail account!) and it's very rare to see any of these trapped by Microsoft's spam filters. This is surprising given that they are 100% effective at other scams.

The other group that get through a would-be leads generators touting "their" SEO or web development services. They get my "prospective supplier" questionnaire which gently leads them to the realisations that they look unconvincing and they've paid good money for a crap email list.

Re: Wasting their time

Unless you need the phone for something else you don't need to spend your time wasting theirs.

"That sounds very interesting. Oh, there's someone at the door. Could you hold on a minute & I'll be back."

Eventually hang up the phone.

One salesman got that treatment twice. Then his manager rang to say they had trouble getting through with the phone. Slow learners.