Posts by Doctor Syntax

It's always DNS, especially when a sysadmin makes a hash of their semicolons

vi. Accept no substitutes (other than those starting :s of course).

nvi is its free incarnation. You can just download it to replace your bloatware, no need to envy it.

Re: Anyone who ever dabbles in vi

Some of us have been using vi since terminals only had screens, not windows and before nano or even pico existed. Why do you think we should be unable to close a terminal window?

Snap decision: 74-year-old Florida man wrests puppy from jaws of alligator

Both lived to tell the tale? What about the third?

US Air Force deploys robot security dogs to guard base

Three years minimum seems very light in the US scale of imprisonment. Was there anything on the laptop other than his email contacts list?

Linus Torvalds worried Linux kernel might get messy around Christmas

I thought Christmas had been more or less cancelled this year.

The GIMP turns 25 and promises to carry on being the FOSS not-Photoshop

Re: 25 years and still a pain to use

"Then, if for you silly money for software means any sum above zero, that's another matter."

Money becomes silly if it's more than the S/W's worth. If all I need to do is rotate images of SWMBO's patchwork back and forth to get the orientation right and them crop them for here weekly class handout then 150 of any currency units above pence is going to be silly.

Re: I found the learning curve

Definitely +1 for Pinta. Kolorpaint can also be handy.

I regularly have to prepare images of SWMBO's patchwork for her class handouts and Gimp gets used for rotating the images backwards and forwards to get optimal orientation - and yet somehow Gwenview seems easier for the final crop.

I end up using a combination of all four - in Gimp the simple and complex are often equally obscure to work out.

European recommendations following Schrems II Privacy Shield ruling cast doubt on cloud encryption practices

It looks like a case of stating the bleedin' obvious. Necessary, I suppose, if manglements have been ignoring the bleedin' obvious.

Adiós Arecibo Observatory: America's largest radio telescope faces explosive end after over 50 years of service

Bill Gates is otherwise occupied with vaccines. But how about Larry?

Re: Yeah I know it's obsolete

Old != obsolete

Re: 60 years old? -- Time to build a new one

Lulworth Cove is much more bowl-shaped but then you'd have Darwin candidates diving into it.

2020 strikes again.

Manchester United working with infosec experts to 'minimize ongoing IT disruption' caused by 'cyber attack'

Re: Social engineering techniques

Provide a separate lan with its own separate internet connection for them then even if when someone gets control of one of their PCs they can only get at the rest of them so no damage done.

Because they're local and they seem to have something to do with this cyber attack stuff.

Why just stop at one of them?

No, not a fan, why do you ask?

When even a power-cycle fandango cannot save your Windows desktop

Re: We from the movies

What monitor? It's usually the reel to reel tape that explodes.

Re: some people have a block

So often the block is just "It'll be all too complicated for me so I won't even try.".

Re: Too Many Stories!

The website can't even display images without javascript enabled. That should be a clear warning in itself. Kids today. Mutter, mutter.

Re: Too Many Stories!

I can't help feeling that although the spark mightn't have been that bright neither was a tour that didn't start off with a warning not to touch any controls they weren't instructed to touch.

Re: a perfectly understandable error

If you try to keep explaining it to real people you'll drive them quackers.

The one with K&R in the pocket.

Re: a perfectly understandable error

Experienced computer professionals always click through the first time. After all, if it's real it will come back and if it doesn't - well, what could possibly go wrong?

Amused? You should have been relieved that they realised there were two.

Re: Always check everything

And instead of a clear printed label it would simply be moulded into the case, effectively invisible so it wouldn't be obvious there was even a control there.

Re: a perfectly understandable error

"hang around a bit in the morning to witness just exactly how she managed to mangle her desktop icons like that every single day."

More likely something that happened gradually throughout the day.

One does not simply shove elephants on a ballet shoe point and call it an acceptable measure of pressure

I'd have thought elephants per ballet shoe point would have been an excellent addition to the Register Standards.

Re: Liquid mercury is not very dangerous unless you spread it over a wide area

This light at Cragside appears to have no electricity supply.

https://i2.wp.com/heritagecalling.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/cragside-lamp.jpg?resize=358%2C361&ssl=1

In fact one of the contacts is the copper base it stands on (the body is cloisonné enamel on copper) and the other is a wire dipping into a small bowl of mercury. Lifting the lamp turns it off, setting back in its correct position turns it on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq2G4JIWbEw

Re: But what then

"the mercury sphygmomanometers were deemed ‘too dangerous for the students’"

A few years ago I was recalled to my GP. They'd taken my blood pressure on their electronic gubbins which was subsequently found to have been out of calibration so they had to redo it the old-fashioned way. There's a lot to be said for instruments where you can see exactly what it is you're measuring against (e.g. the traditional chemical balance) but the lure of a number (so it must be right) on a display is too strong for some people.

"Liquid mercury is not very dangerous unless you spread it over a wide area "

The second carbon-dating system in QUB used a chemistry based on acetylene. As it tends to explode at pressures of about one and a half atmospheres the entire gas processing line was run at below atmospheric with a mercury manometer at each step so that if the pressure got too great the manometer acted as a pressure release valve. IIRC the surface of the mercury in the pots was covered with oil.

IBM Power9 processors beset by Cardiac Osprey data-leaking flaw as Spectre still haunts speculative chips

Re: It's the world we live in

I used to buy stuff from the local shop for more pounds because buying stuff over the internet took too long. Unfortunately, by the power of the leveraged buy-out, my local Maplin is no more. And conversely I find myself wasting time going to a local shop* when it would be quicker to have gone to the net first because the local shop doesn't have whatever it is I'm looking for anyway.

*Although recently a local shop did point me to https://www.screwsline.co.uk/ when they didn't have what I needed.

Not sunshine, moonlight or good times – blame it on the buggy

Re: Infamy! Infamy!

I don't think any of Rowlandson's oeuvre ever made it onto film.

Re: Infamy! Infamy!

Your handle seems strangely appropriate.

Actually, my favourite line was "Sic transit Gloria". Did she have that name simply to make it possible?

Hence the assembly instruction:

DWIM - Do what I mean.

Re: "It's the system"

If you remember Windows pre-95 the icon for the button at the left of the title bar had on oblong on it (I suspect it was an image of a space bar because I think some incantation involving space could substitute for it). It was said that a good tester could look at that oblong and see a minus sign.

Re: "It's the system"

"the wrong buttons were pressed"

These days it becomes difficult to distinguish the button from anything else on the page. Or the button is further down the page, below the several inches of white space that extends to the bottom of the screen. Or work out which bit of text is a link and which isn't because the User Experience Designer has gone to considerable lengths to ensure they're the same colour.

All because of style over function, style is a matter of fashion and fashion dictates flat design.

Designing an interface takes knowledge, intelligence and thought. Anything cobbled together with crayons is an experience even if the adjective in front of it should be "bad" so a User Experience is substituted for a User Interface.

Place the blame where it belongs.

Bloated middle age beckons: Windows 1.0 turns 35 and is dealing with its mid-life crisis, just about

Re: You can see the Xerox Alto on YouTube...

Yes, even Jobs got taken in by the "Jobs copied it" thing.

The original Mac, only a single floppy for storage and not really enough memory was more a proof of concept. W95 looks to have owed rather a lot in functionality to MWM, HP VUE and their successor, CDE with a good deal of underpinnings from HP New Era.

Dell joins the 'fast object storage revolution'

Re: What a load of Crap

When someone offers massive increase in speed or whatever I always wonder what's being traded off for it.

EU says Boeing 737 Max won't fly over the Continent just yet: The US can make its own choices over pilot training

Re: Brexit?

"aircraft parts produced in the UK WILL NOT BE AIRWORTHY."

Thy might not be certified as airworthy, but they might still be physically airworthy. This entire saga hinges on the difference between certification and reality.

Re: Brexit?

"I gather Boris is not a details man."

Only when he can invent them.

"Even the smallest of changes to an aircraft triggers a huge chain of events in motion, with each event starting its own chain and so on."

The correct way of doing it is not to get it wrong in the first place. Then there are no costs for making a change and no costs, human and financial, from not doing so.

Re: Consumers need to know what aircraft will be used before they book.

How long have you been in this line of work?

Re: Consumers need to know what aircraft will be used before they book.

This can be simplified to avoid having to keep up with the obfuscation: if it's Boeing I'm not going.

UK Court of Appeal rebukes Home Office for exceeding its powers with bunkum 'national security' GSM gateway ban

The Home Office doesn't seem to have had a lot of luck over the last several decades.

In 2016 Australia's online census failed. Preparations for the 2021 edition have been rated 'partly effective'

Census at 5 year intervals? I suppose that's a recent thing. It reminds me I should maybe have another try at following ggfather's brothers who emigrated in the 1840s. I'm sure I found one of them and his wife in the 1880s but they were claiming to be Sydneysiders.

Re: Business as usual then

Governments are particularly prone to that outlook. I think it's because they make laws which are supposed to be obeyed so there's a presumption that they will be. The evidence given by the existence of a large law enforcement system is overlooked. There's also an assumption that laws will be obeyed in the way they intended - it's the sort of thinking that sees nothing could possibly go wrong with back-doored encryption.

NCSC's London HQ was chosen because GCHQ spies panicked at the prospect of grubby Shoreditch offices

Re: mandarin-friendly Victoria

"I must re-read the Yes Minister books again."

One or other of them should be a set book for GCSE English. Every year. They're now sufficiently old to be considered classics (which they always were, of course) and far more relevant than the classics Dickens and Jane Austen were in my day.

BTW Lossiemouth was a warning to Bernard that it might be his diet.

The first two episodes of YPM were on BBC4 the other evening. It doesn't seem to be part of a plan to rebroadcast the lot.

He also said "lessons will be learned", for what it's worth.

Pure reflex action.

UK reveals new 'National Cyber Force', announces Space Command and mysterious AI agency

Did anyone follow the link to BoJo's statement? He managed to avoid the phrase "world beating", perhaps wisely given the subject matter, but it was the same hubris and even more Boris guff than normal.

Police warn of bad Apples that fell off the back of a truck after highway robbery

Re: And then they were gone.

Not via Felixstowe.

If it's an Apple product it will be iScrumping.

Re: Calvados?

SWMBO had much the same reaction. "Apple" and "apple" are pronounced the same.