Posts by Doctor Syntax

Sorry friends, I'm afraid I just can't quite afford the Bitcoin to stop that vid from leaking everywhere

Re: Have fun with scammers!

"Take the contact email from one scammer, configure your email client to use that as "your" outgoing ID, & then reply to a different scammer as if you were the first one."

I've tried a variant of that by replying along the lines of that sounds very interesting but I'm too busy to deal with it at present, could you contact my colleague ....... While typing this I've just realised I slipped up. It should have been "one of my colleagues" and given them a list.

SEO and similar scammers are requested to send the results of "our" self-assessment questionaire (supplementary questions can be added prompted by particularly egregious lapses in spelling, grammar or punctuation):

1. Is the candidate a company registered in accordance with the legislation of the country in which it's based?

2. Is the company name given in the proposal?

3. Does the company have its own domain and website at that domain?

4. Does the website appear on first page in Google when searching for "first place in Google"? (Very important - if it can't promote itself it can't have any credibility for claims to promote others.)

5. Does the company use its own domain for email correspondence?

6. Does the proposal list the website(s) for which they're making a proposal?

7. Does the company buy cheap and utterly useless spam lists?

8. Did the proposal arrive in my spam bin address at [e-mail] rather than one of my real email addresses at my own domain?

9. Does the company actually write its own proposal email or did it buy it along with the cheap and utterly useless spam list?

10. Was the email unbelievably lucky to make it through Hotmail's spam filters?

11. Is the proposal from an out and out liar who lacks any competence to do the work themselves but is just generating leads to sell on?

Re: Racist?

"Being an old white bloke.... As a result, I have to be careful when dealing with people who are not the same sex as me"

Just accuse any complainants of being ageist, sexist and/or racist depending on which of their personal attributes differs from your own. It's a game that can be played more than one way.

Re: Racist?

"regard them as my equals in all pertinent respects."

It depends on which respects you consider pertinent.

Re: Racist?

"Maybe I am mistaken about this too."

If one of the professional umbrage takers are after you it doesn't matter what you write they'll put their own twist on it. The best way to deal with them is probably Dr. Johnson's: https://artsandculture.google.com/theme/UgKSIabPSjsSLw

Re: Damn

"How gullible are you ? Send £20 for our questionnaire."

Obligatory Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-06-09

Re: Racist?

Please can I give Dwarf a second upvote for "moisturist"?

Re: Racist?

Any email has to come from somewhere and if you're running a scam making it seem to be from somewhere safely foreign is a good idea, even if you live next door to the would-be mark. After all you don't want the plod getting involved which they might do if your text is in perfect English.

And in any case one has to abide by tradition: financial scams are obligatorily Nigerian, SEO proposals just have to be Indian etc. It would be unfair to leave the Chinese out of it - that would be discriminatory at the very least.

The best way to screw the competition? Do what they can't, in a fraction of the time

Re: Nah.

"The only people I've known well who are actual self made millionaires spend most of the time looking flat broke."

Memory of Last of the Summer Wine. The three scruffs wandering round a car show room. Salesman asks manager "Shall throw them out?". "Nay, lad. Round here they they can look like that and be millionaires."

Re: Nah.

"I'd rather lose a contract if the client is a shit."

On the whole I'd agree but in your particular case I'd have thought you'd have had a rather pliable client - you could always drop slight hints about grassing him up to his wife if he didn't behave.

Re: I'm quite happy

ethernet over a cable designed for it "an ethernet cable"

So ethernet cable is 10Base5 then?

Re: Nah.

"used a thick (1/2" dia)"

Was it really only 1/2"" dia? It seemed bigger than that. Maybe that was just because it was so inflexible.

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

Re: Regressions

"I'm not sure that firing the marketing folks will fix that."

It'll probably fix something. Reducing the reality distortion field is always a good idea.

Re: Of course I got down voted

"Msoft's growth figures out today show those down voters are counter to the general opinion & satisfaction for Msoft & Windows."

Or they show the effect of a rigid lock-in.

"Yes, file deletion was not good, but, only affected limited number of users with a specific bespoke configuration."

If you are one of that limited number it's a big issue.

"I have had no problems at all"

Have you considered the possibility that next time you may be one of the limited number of users affected? Have you worked out the possible financial impact is you are?

One of the requirements of an OS is to work properly for all users, not all except for a limited number.

DXC axes Americas boss amid latest deck chair musical

The A team bait and switch is so old hat now it's a wonder there's anyone left who doesn't know it yet. PT Barnum must have been right.

Re: Career damaging

"Sorry, they liked you but they're not taking anyone with DXC on their CV"

With that sort of judgement in their recruiting you can probably count it as a lucky escape.

Re: AC cause reasons

"These are competitive information."

At a guess I'd say any competitor who wanted to know would have seen the memo before it was posted here and in any case it'll be out of date in a few weeks.

"exec veep of Digital Transformation and Customer Advocacy."

I make that four Bingo squares in one job title, six if you also count the pairs of words.

Tech world mulls threat as new round of US China trade tariffs looms

Re: Just you wait...

"the Trump Trade War which he can't win."

Of course he can. Didn't he tell us they were easy to win?

"With 3 major markets there is the risk that 2 of them could gang up against the other."

There's also a risk that dick moves by the other will be what encourages that.

Meanwhile, here in the UK we won't be in any of those markets. That'll make us safe won't it? Won't it?

Microsoft promises a fix for Windows 10 zip file woes. In November

Re: If we're talking about search

Another bullet dodged.

Cathay Pacific hack: Personal data of up to 9.4 million airline passengers laid bare

I wonder what the GDPR situation with a breach before the go-live date but disclosure wwwellllll delayed until after. It's delayed disclosure that brings the biggest fines.

"We want to reassure our passengers that we took and continue to take measures to enhance our IT security,"

And why did el Reg publish this without challenging it.

Congrats from 123-Reg! You can now pay us an extra £6 or £12 a year for basically nothing

Re: Offered for domain already migrated away!

Similar experience with FreeParking - renewal notices for domain migrated away.

Re: Speaking of domain hosting

"how is the experience with Mythic Beasts, anyone?"

Been OK for me. I only host a few domain names & one email service with them so no idea about web hosting.

Re: I want to move away

Mythic Beasts

"123-Reg will never learn."

They will. What they learn depends on whether punters stay with them.

Erm... what did you say again, dear reader?

Re: Forsooth!

I believe "thee" is correct as I was using it - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thee - but I'm not an expert.

MW says, correctly of course, that it's the objective form. You were using it as the subject. When I grew up in Yorkshire second person singular was still in current use by older gernerations so, give or take the dialect pronunciation, it's second nature.

Re: Forsooth!

To olde English thee thou must be true.

Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait

Re: The bit I don't get with all this...

"They're probably trying to break WINE to ensure there's no viable migration path."

Once upon a time, maybe. Today WINE's just going to be another victim of general breakage.

Re: The bit I don't get with all this...

"What on earth are they doing fiddling with this stuff?"

If it's not well modularised adding a feature might well touch core code.

Re: "keep MS from taking over my computer."

"even battling with systemd is better than what windows has become today."

Don't bother. Go to Devuan.

Re: We need alternatives - good ones

"There simply is no alternative, we have to use it."

At some time their customer base is going to have to start telling vendors that they have to port to a better platform whatever that might be.

Re: Windows 10 is broken

"Why would they, they have your money and they know you'll be installing Windows 11 as soon as it's out"

That would mean a pretty big rethink (although it might be the only way to get out from under W10's reputation). They made it clear that everything from now on will be W10 even if the rolling upgrades mean not a single line of the original code remains.

Re: Home networking broken

"I think that is because they've switched off SMBv1"

Current Debian & Devuan have also switched it off which was why my ancient NAS disappeared. I found I could work round it by setting up an FTP network drive instead....

Re: "Sell Office on Steam, make sure it runs on Linux, too"

"Oh, the Linux dreamer who believes MS should work to kill Windows (and itself) and make Linux dominating the world."

So why do they sell Office for MacOS?

Big hint coming up: sell means they charge money for it whatever the OS..

Re: " *AND* Linux. Not just Red Hat either."

"ugly and limited widget sets for the GUIs"

Amen. I think it's because they're trying to ape the MacOS & Windows. There's an oversupply of W7-like decoration themes for KDE. With a bit of effort I have a nice, clean-looking set-up which looks very much like what W2K could have evolved into.

Re: ...or MacOS

"it just means that the OS is not compatible with my brain"

More likely it's not compatible with your learned habits.

Re: Replace outlook!

"Access is also a huge issue that is not typically addressed"

There's a line of argument that says losing that would be one of the gains of switching from Office.

Re: Replace outlook!

"custom job paid up front that's probably still being amortized"

If you've paid up-front for a custom job and don't have the source you're doing it wrong.

Re: Replace outlook!

"Imagine trying to deliver a Linux desktop in a non-trivial (>20) user space."

What do you do with Windows in the equivalent user space? You have a standard image that gets installed on all the PCs. Isn't that a clue to how to deploy Linux?

Re: Replace outlook!

"acts-like-Windows distro"

What? Slowly applies breaking updates at its own volition? Nope.

"a Windows approach to installation and operation"

Again, nope.

Re: Not listening

"I don't see Linux as it's too fragmented by too many distros at this point."

There are relatively few that matter and even then they have their particular niches.

If you want something to put on your rellies' PCs when you get fed up with digging them out of their malware pit it's likely to be Mint or Zorin.

If you want something for your own desktop or server to do serious work and don't want to spend time tending to the latest shiny it's likely to be Debian or Devuan depending on your take on systemd ditto with paid support OpenSuSE or Red Hat (maybe a few Red Hats for the support and a stack of CentOS for most users).

Re: "Quality" is a structural attribute, not a bolt-on

"changes are much more likely to be written, tested, and put into operation quickly if the codebase is modern."

Define modern. This sounds very much like the usual rant about having to periodically update legacy S/W i.e. the stuff that's earning the business's income.

And you shouldn't need to remember what that HEX code meant because there should be documentation, preferably as an old-fashioned comment in the source, to tell you what it means.

Re: "Office was always far more reliable"

"Except when the newer version couldn't read files created with the previous version."

And completely hung the machine to the point of needing a H/W reset or reboot whilst trying to do so.

Re: Peter Bright

"The only difference will be that they replaced the relatively cheap testers"

Pay peanuts and....

Re: QA Prestige

as developer I would rather be writing new good code

FTFY

Re: Please Please

"t works perfectly in 7, in fact, much, MUCH faster than in 10."

Update in 7 is an imperfect slug compared to what those of us who run other OSs are used to.

Re: Please Please

"plus a working update system"

They could backport that from Debian or most other Linux distros.

Re: But will they listen?

"However Fedora releases are quite polished and ready to use."

Maybe now. It wasn't how I viewed it back when I used it.

Apple boss decries 'data industrial complex' while pocketing, er, billions to hook Google into iOS

"Heiman said the reason the US tech industry is the envy of the world is that regulation was relatively light compared to elsewhere"

It depends on who's doing the envying. Would-be slurpers, maybe. The product (the rest of us) not so much.

What's his National Security Institute done for us?