Posts by Doctor Syntax

BT to phase out 3G in UK by 2023 for EE, Plusnet, BT Mobile subscribers

"We did the sensible thing"

And what was that?

Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class

"After that, I will need reasonable alternatives to Google Calendar and Google Docs."

I'm curious as to why people need - or think they need - such services.

Is it because they want to share data between devices?

If so do they never have two devices in the same place at the same time? If they bring devices together then they can, at least in theory, be synchronised. If they can't in practice then look to the vendors for an explanation (or, more likely, an excuse).

Facial-recognition technology gets a smack in the chops from civil rights campaigners

You're assuming the AI does do a bit better.

"The technology doesn't put people in jail, the justice system puts people in jail, and the only way evidence can be used to support a conviction is if that evidence supports that conviction."

If he evidence is from the technology and the technology is faulty then it can indeed result in wrongful convictions.

As someone directly involved in producing evidence one of the most stressful elements in my job was the possibility of being involved in a miscarriage of justice if I got it wrong. It rather seems as if distancing from the actual business of going into court has removed that concern for those developing this sort of technology.

In the Horizon instance the system was producing evidence of crimes were there was none. In more general situations, if there is a genuine crime and someone is wrongfully convicted it also means that the real perpetrator will have got away. That's something that should worry even the keenest advocate of raising conviction rates.

Re: Customer Service

And possibly make it less likely that you'll be able to find what you really need.

Re: What's the problem?

And how do you even know if X is using face scanning?

Not that I really care that much - it's too much trouble to get into my nearest big town. Like so many they're hostile to cars and public transport from my own small village is not good. My best bet if I need to go into town is to drive to another, bigger village, park there and get their better bus service although obviously for the last year plus that's been a non-starter. But when I park there I might as well do any shopping there that's possible there or maybe some other village and for the rest there's online.

It had to happen: Microsoft's cloudy Windows 365 desktops are due to land next month

The tragedy is that it'll be sold as cheaper, you don't need all those expensive staff and manglement will go for it in a big way.

Re: Umm...

I suppose the browser could be run on a Pi. The the users might discover there's a lot of other interesting stuff on there as well. Ooh, look - a word processor ... and a spreadsheet - and email ....

Microsoft does not want it called VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). "We're not shipping anything that's infrastructure. We're providing all that as a back-end service... If you were to classify it, it would be most aligned with DaaS (Desktop as a Service),

Some mighty fine hair splitting there.

Google fined €500m for not paying French publishers after using their words on web

Re: If you can't tax 'em fine 'em

If they didn't have Google distributing their click-bait they might have to write interesting articles.

Re: Thick skin

"BTW. I imagine that Google's response other than sending a platoon of lawyers to France to argue compliance with EU copyright law will be to stop ever reporting news from French sources."

This seems to be the best option from Google's PoV, giving, as it does, the possibility of letting them pay to have sponsored snippets appear.

Hubble, Hubble, toil and trouble: NASA pores over moth-eaten manuals ahead of switch to backup hardware

It's getting difficult to keep typing with my fingers crossed. let's hope it works OK. If it does then it's time to reflect on how much more life it might have and prioritise observations.

Imagine a world where Apple shacked up with Xerox in the '80s: How might it look today?

Re: Big credit

In the early 1980s the money was to be made by flogging renting big iron. Nothing much has changed except for the nature of the iron.

The simpler alternative would have been for Xerox to realise that if they took the ideas they had in the Star, reimplemented the hardware using the new-fangled microprocessors and, by that means, brought the price down they could have owned the business market for years if not decades. Unfortunately that was never the Xerox way.

Report: 83% of UK software engineers suffer burnout, COVID-19 made it worse

Re: Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

The date is set for the sprint to finish and higher up management expect you to meet it.

Perhaps manglement would understand a car analogy:

Your car is in for service and is to be collected at 4 pm. An hour after it goes in the garage rings up and says "We've discovered a problem with the brakes, The parts won't be here until tomorrow morning. You can have it working at midday tomorrow or collect it at four today as agreed but it won't be fit to drive. Which do you want?"

Re: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

"If we managed R&D projects like we managed building motorways they'd be a disaster. They'd all under-deliver, late and over budget - just like software projects."

Cross Rail belongs to the same branch of engineering as motorways. Just saying.

Re: Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

For cycle times of less than a day it sounds as if testers == users. If i were a user in that situation "elite" wouldn't be a term i'd apply to the developers. They might look elite to those selling tools to them, however.

NEC to move its IT into Azure and give staff – all 110,000 of ’em – a cloudy Windows desktop

NEC made the same promise in November 2020 – but for AWS engineers. ... NEC and Google also struck a deal in 2018 to “better serve Japanese enterprises”.

I'm reminded of an old saying: "once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is getting to be a habit". Or do they believe in "third time lucky"?

Western Approaches Museum: WRENs, wargames, and victory in the Atlantic

Re: Seems a security risk

"they weren't interested in British Atlantic convoy routes"

They did, however, have a strong interest in the success of those convoys and the Arctic convoys to themselves.

Re: Merchant Marine

It's only relatively recently that the UK got round to issuing campaign medals for the merchant seamen on the Russian convoys.

A classmate at school had lost his father in the Merchant Navy. Just because they weren't shooting anyone they seem to have been largely overlooked.

Re: More info

Thanks for that. An excellent read.

We're terrified of sharing information, but the benefits of talking about IT and infosec outweigh the negatives

Re: The sanctity of the confessional

The solution to this, as in the aviation industry* is a statutory inspectorate. It would need powers and resources for pre-emptive inspection and prosecution.

Unfortunately we have a govt. that keeps bleating about being the best in the world for whatever issue drifts across their minds on the day but usually mean by that an absence of "red tape" when, in fact, the said red tape holding in place the security of the supply chain would actually be more beneficial.

* Withou Boeing-style self-certification.

UK govt draws a blank over vaccine certification app – no really, the report is half-empty

Re: OPtion?

"Maybe the validation app/reader is a work in progress?"

Not until it's urgently needed. A half-arsed version will then be delivered more or leas working, for some values of working, 8 to 10 months later.

REvil ransomware gang's websites vanish soon after Kaseya fiasco, Uncle Sam threatens retaliation

I can't help thinking that at some point a few Russians will start drinking in a bar in Moscow or wherever and wake up in an hotel room in a country that has an extradition warrant with the US and the local cops knocking at the door.

Euro space boffins hatch comms satellite hijack plan to save Earth from extinction

Re: Am I missing something...

The cost of doing that before they're needed. We'd still be haggling with the beancounters when the damn thing hits. Also, with the current Hubble situation in mind, would something that's been in orbit for a long time be in a workable condition when it's needed?

Re: Implausible

That's not what's being proposed although it was how I read the headline.

What is being proposed is something akin to what you suggest, except that the large mass is stuffed into it into the satellite chassis instead of the usual electronics. Presumably the idea of doing it this way is that the satellite itself has all the necessary bits to connect to the launch vehicle although a lot of expensive stuff that wouldn't be needed. Why not build a fleet of deflectors containing no more than is required to do the job designed to fit each generation of launch vehicles? It would cut out a lot of arguing and lead time if all that had to be done was commandeer the actual launches.

Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

Re: Am I the exception?

"well not yet quite for email, I have my suspicions that MSFT are working on that"

Judging by the rest of the comments you've now got a lot of people worried.

"From the support issues I've seen it is the users who get confused, not the system!"

It may or may not be the users who are getting confused but if they are it appears to be the system that's confusing them. The role of system designers and developers is to produce systems that deliver the services that users need in a form that users need them. If a system results in so much confusion then it's to those designers and developers that you should look to place the blame.

Re: Clearly

Sorry, but no. Microsoft knows where the OP works, it's the OP who's clearly wrong.

In fairness, simultaneous use of multiple IDs is rarely handled well by modern UI'd desktops and remote services. All systems assume you have one ID, and if you have the temerity to want more, then you must log out and log back in again, an idea unchanged since mainframes stalked the earth.

KDE has had a "Switch User" option on the Power/Session section of the menu for a long time. Opt for that and whatever's running stays running but you're presented with the login screen which you'd obviously need for the other ID* - there'd be something wrong if you could just waft over into a different ID without presenting any credentials. Log out of the other ID when you've finished and, again, you have to present credentials to get back to your original session but it's still there as you left it. I don't see anything wrong about having to provide ID & password, in fact I'd count it as a problem if you didn't.

* This is assuming you're not just wanting a terminal session for the other user in which case you can just su.

Linux Mint 20.2 is a bit more insistent about updating but not as annoying as Windows or Mac, team promises

Yes. /home needs to sit where it won't be reformatted if you reinstall - which you might do, even for a version upgrade. Likewise if you have other a large data requirement. The other requirement which you might have that needs to avoid reformatting is locally installed S/W, /usr/local and/or /opt. But, yes, /usr on the root partition might not be a problem these days.

The other thing to remember is that in the Unix/Linux world we tend to have swap on its own partition.

Stuff has moved around a lot over the years. I can remember when everything was in /bin, /lib and so forth with /usr being for users' home directories plus a few things like /usr/spool. Then it got more and more crowded so /u was set up for users and that started to get crowded and it was split with a /u2 before /home was used. All these changes had a rationale, sometimes clearer than others. I still don't get the rationale for putting www and mysql data in /var. Yes I know it's supposed to be for changeable stuff but you're liable to find you have to reformat it to do a reinstall because, certainly with apt based systems, there's a install-related files in there and the installer seems to expect it to be clean. I tried not reformatting as an experiment and got errors so those files live in /srv now with links back to where they're expected.

"The upgrade notes also suggest running a utility called usrmerge, which simplifies the directory structure. This has been done since Linux 20."

This is something that's always been a bit variable across different Unix/Linus implementations. I'm a bit concerned about the logic of merging /sbin, though; IIRC the logic for this was that it contained stuff root might need in single user mode when /usr might not have been mounted.

South Korean uni installs lavatory that pays out when you spend a penny

"Honey men" was one of the euphemisms for those who had the job of emptying the urban closets in the days before Mr Crapper popularised alternatives so Ggool seems appropriate.

BOFH: Where there is darkness, let there be a light

Re: All these comments

It's items purchased up to but not including the 31st. Obviously.

I have come across a church register entry for February 30th. I'm not sure if it was a leap year or not.

Medieval courts almost invariably gave dates relative to saints' days or, between Shrove Tuesday and Trinity Sunday, the various moveable feasts. In a run of several years i found two calendar dates given. One was Friday April 1st. April 1st was a Saturday that year. I'm still not sure whether it was an April Fool's joke delayed by over 9 centuries or the scribe just wasn't used to handling actual calendar dates.

Ah, I see you found my PowerShell script called 'SiteReview' – that does not mean what you think it means

Re: Easy way out

I think the manger shouting something to the effect of "Me, me, me" might also have been a factor.

Where's the boss? Ah right, thorough deep-dive audit. On the boardroom table. Gotcha

Re: Bah!

No, but have an upvote for reminding me of one of the stalwarts of British TV of a bygone era.

Re: Happened to me at my first job

That's assuming it got to tribunal. It'd almost certainly be settled out of court and out of the papers by the company for more than that but that way the manager gets screwed, for want of a better word.

Biden order calls for net neutrality, antitrust action, ISP competition – and right to repair your own damn phone

Re: Land of the free

Sort of - but it's cells dividing too much that form cancers.

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Re: add condiments to taste.

"the great brown sauce vs ketchup wars"

Neither. You can't fry them.

" tattie scones, but these are surely so similar to soda and potato farls"

To potato farls, possibly. Not to soda bread.

That time a startup tried to hire me just to push clients' products in job interviews

Re: At Werdsmith, re: deceptive interviews.

I'd have submitted an invoice and a warning that a county court judgement for non payment wouldn't be a good advert for them when, not if, the local paper got to hear of it.

Re: "Fronking "

If the laws at the time included GDPR either they told you what happened to the data or they weren't following the laws.

Re: "Fronking "

These days?

It couldn't have been a PII gathering scam then but I came across one of those nearly 40 years ago.

One half of it was the sort of intelligence test I'd first encountered a few decades before at 11+ and that my son was now encountering for the same reason. The only difference was that now they had, or merely pretended they had, some sort of scanner to read and mark it. The guy came back looking puzzled and asked "Have you been practising taking intelligence tests?" and I was puzzled because I'd got one wrong.

The other half was a series of head-shrinker questions from which I learned one thing: it's harder to write those things in a context-free manner that its devisers thought.

One question was "Do you sometimes have feelings of panic?". We're sitting in a quiet office in a quiet side street in the centre of a peaceful town like Cambridge. I live and work in a different part of the UK with an on-going terrorist campaign. The job I do could make me a target. I sometimes have to have an armed police or even military escort. There was an attempt to bomb my place of work which was subsequently burned down, probably because a live incendiary device got taken in along with a number of imitations. Does the answer "Yes" mean the same thing for me as it does for you?

I suppose that one could be gamed. Send one of your employees to an interview at a rival to point them in a direction you know will fail.

Only if the interviewees don't realise what's happening.

Suck on this: El Reg forces dog hair, biscuit crumbs, and disconcertingly sticky stains down two mini vacuums

Re: destroyed another robot vacuum cleaner

They get confused when they look but don't see one.

And forget filling with water to use as a mop, it needs a quicklime dispenser.

Re: Why an app for the upright?

"I really don't get this obsession with connecting things to a phone 'app' these days."

I just set up a DSL router modem. One of the options for managing it is an app, apparently so it can be rebooted whilst the user is at work should the necessity arise. In order for this to work it has to be configured to allow management from the vendor's cloud. Really? Let the router be controllable from to WAN? That's one option to be left off - at least off was the default.

Re: That's it?? Where's the rest of the review?!

"it's a somewhat entertaining piece"

Of course. Which site did you think you were reading?

The human-devoid AI-powered Saildrone Surveyor ship just made it to Hawaii from SF

Maybe the IBM one was having trouble with its email.