Posts by Doctor Syntax

'There was no one driving that vehicle': Texas cops suspect Autopilot involved after two men killed in Tesla crash

Perhaps Tesla should name its cars after famous biologists. Darwin would be a good starting point.

UK digital secretary Oliver Dowden starts national security probe into proposed Arm-Nvidia merger

Better late than never but better never five years late.

Brit authorities could legally do an FBI and scrub malware from compromised boxen without your knowledge

"A company wants to publish information embarrassing to the government de jour"

The issue is malware. I think you're stretching the definition of malware a little more than warranted to include publishing information embarrassing to the government.

The alternative being posited was for the authorities to step in invasively to fix servers. Do you prefer that?

A better option would be the power to instruct the operators (the business owners, not the techies) to take it off-line forthwith until it's rectified. Add a backup power to tell the operator's ISP to remove internet connection if a response isn't forthcoming. Such a power would cover DDOS botnet members and the like. The downside is that it would give ammo to the "This is Microsoft" outfits but they need to be dealt with in any case.

Truth and consequences for enterprise AI as EU know who goes legal: GDPR of everything from chatbots to machine learning

"That’ll make marketing think twice."

Once would be a good start.

Adobe co-founder and PostScript co-creator Charles Geschke dies, aged 81

"Geschke was just continuing the family business: his father and grandfather were letterpress photo engravers."

Love it!

You want a reboot? I'll give you a reboot! Happy now?

The person who deserved the real bollocking was the mico-managing manager. Very likely, however, she didn't even recognise it as a learning opportunity, at least, not for her.

Re: Hands up, intentional mixup

I've always thought a good response to bean counters wanting to put a figure on the value of some system would be "Shall we switch it off and find out?"

Re: Background

It works in user territory as well. Several systems, all running similar backgrounds but against different databases. They were set up with different background images.

How not to apply for a new job: Apply for it on a job site

Re: How not to find anything on the web : look for it with a search engine

What's needed is a search engine that scrapes Google but binning anything on the top 5 pages or so.

Re: Good luck

"remember to re-write your profile for each job"

Makes no difference. they'll send it to some other job, rewrite it or both.

Re: "a freelancer feels the urge to seek solace in full-time employment"

I turned down a client wanting me to go permie as development manager. I don't think they realised how close I was to their mandatory retirement age and in any case one reason for being freelance is to continue in tech roles instead of following a career path into management.

Having said that it was the development manager they hired who finally persuaded me that retirement would be better than working with his complete lack of understanding of development or management. Thank goodness!

Re: Old farts

I was in my 50s when I moved into freelance for a decade or so.

"not to have to buy your own tools for the job."

Back in the days of developing or supporting database applications on Unix servers this wasn't necessary - the tools were all there. In other situations buying/having the tools can be your USP:

Early in 2000 I was slumming on Windows whilst minding a new Y2K Unix box that was capable of looking after itself. My client received a new contract. It required this new, shiny XML stuff of which they'd no experience - and neither had I. As a freelance I could make instant decisions that would have taken them weeks about buying both training and the requisite tools for the job if they were prepared to give me a contract for their new contract. They did so I did and then they had a similar contract and another... They eventually caught up but it was a good investment on my part.

Pigeon fanciers in a flap over Brexit quarantine flock-up, seek exemption from EU laws

Re: "This will kill the sport"

"In some parts of the word the betting syndicates around pigeon racing turn over as much as horse racing in the UK."

It's called having a flutter.

The absence of evidence might be a practical problem.

Re: Brexit.

"I'd argue it's back to the 1950s"

Specifically pre-Suez.

Re: Seriously?

"The paramilitaries in NI will use any situation to justify violence and boost their criminal activities."

For a long time they've been denied that opportunity but BoJo has handed them that one.

To some extent PSNI seem to have been handed the dirty end of the stick. it's a variation on the owing the bank money situation: you break COVID restrictions; you have a problem, 2000 people break COVID restrictions, the police have a problem. However, you're right in that the politicians who went to the funeral have to shoulder some of the blame.

Re: Seriously?

"You may have realised that the British government has put potential future trade with the US which is thousands of miles away above real actual trade and social stability with one of its own countries in its own union."

And failed because Biden is pro-peace process so isn't likely to be impressed by the mess that's developing.

Re: Seriously?

"Remainers slammed the UK over not joining the EU procurement and how we will be left behind and back of the queue."

Here's one who didn't for reasons already stated.

Re: Seriously?

"This is evidenced and supported by the fact that we did this whilst still under the EU rules as part of the transition period."

There's absolutely no use pointing this out to the rabid leavers. As far as they're concerned Brexit Was Done in 2020.

Re: Stop touting the vaccination programme as a Brexit benefit. It's not.

You should only believe it if you see it written on the side of a bus.

Re: Seriously?

The actual comparison should be between the risk from the vaccine and the overall risk of not being vaccinated, not just blood clots as a result of not being vaccinated.

The biggest clots here are those who won't get vaccinated.

Re: Seriously?

The UK biomedical community start putting together a scheme to get the Oxford vaccine manufactured before government in either the UK or the EU got their act together. For better or worse HMG insisted on AZ when they got involved which is turning out to be a mixed blessing for them (AZ).

It's not possible to determine whether things would have been better or worse here than in the EU if had been left to HMG alone but it would have been worse than has happened, at least as regards vaccination.

Re: Seriously?

"No it didnt. Germany started negotiating against the EU for vaccine. Other members going off and buying from Russia and China which is the very competition you say was avoided."

And yet we wanted to take back control so we wouldn't be bound by the EU in exactly the way Germany and the others aren't.

Yes there's a problem with inept politicians but the EU doesn't have a monopoly on that as numerous other countries have demonstrated, including our own with Track & Trace. We got lucky with vaccination largely because of the actions of the UK biomedical community.

Westminster, not Whitehall.

"Fiber To The Pigeon"

Don't you mean Feather To The Premises?

Just take them across on a ferry, release them from the deck when the ferry docks. Keep the vehicle that brought them on board for the return journey. Nothing to quarantine. You'd have to be bird-brained not to see that.

Re: Seriously?

If you look carefully you'll see the EU nations flapping about doing their own thing to a large extent and, were we still in the EU, we'd also have had that option.

Where we got lucky was that the local biomedical community got together and presented the govt. with a fait accompli comprising the basics of a vaccination programme. Where we got unlucky was old mates being put in charge of Track and Trace and I doubt any lingering influence of the EU can be blamed for that.

Re: Seriously?

"but the yes votes were not necessarily for the Brexit the UK ended up with."

In many cases they'd be for lies read from the side of a bus.

Re: Seriously?

The government will use the pandemic to deny any blame for anything.

Best of FRANDs: Judge allows Apple retrial following $506m patent infringement ruling

Re: We need a patent court

Just make the USPTO responsible for everyone's costs in the event of a patent being invalidated. It might take a few payouts by them before they cottoned on to the need to sort themselves out but it would quickly result in fewer but better patents being granted. By collecting fees without financial risk they're incentivised to choose quantity over quality.

I find this odd looking at it from a UK perspective although admittedly my experience is with criminal courts. The jury is the tribunal of fact. An appeal will consider if the original trial jury was misdirected about the evidence in front of it, including errors about the admissibility of evidence, but won't make further findings of fact unless new evidence has been unearthed since the trial. Evidence of FRAND known to the defence at the time of the original trial wouldn't, on that basis, be considered new. I suppose this arrangement allows the lawyers to milk the system but it seems to be a system ripe for reform.

OTOH if not raising FRAND in the original trial was to Apple's advantage why didn't PanOptis' raise it?

AFAICS from TFA the reason the jury weren't instructed was because it wasn't raised in that trial. If it's important to Apple's case why didn't their lawyers raise it initially? Weren't they instructed? If not it seems a bit late to be raising it now.

Age discrimination class-action against HP and HPE gets green light to proceed

Re: Don't understand

"That resulted in Meg getting a ton of employee negativity from anyone with history there. The more history, often the more negativity. It doesn't take to much employee survey demographics to show that the most negative comments came from those that were older and more years with the company."

Let's translate that. The more experienced the worker the more able to see what was wrong with the company. If Meg was being logical her next step should have been obvious: take advantage of that experience by listening to it and acting on what she heard.

Far from the logical solution you suggest this appears to be a classic case of managers who insist on being told what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.

You've got to admire Whtman's even handedness in all this. Having ensured the staff got fired she handed them the evidence they needed to sue on a plate.

Home office setup with built-in boiling water tap for tea and coffee without getting up is a monument to deskcess

With all the drinks to hand there's no need for a timer to tell you to get up and take exercise. Nature provides it.

And when you've done all that you get back to your desk and find that your sub-concious has solved the problem which had been holding you up for hours.

Something that I haven't had or needed in any kitchen in more than 70 years and, indeed, has not existed for millennia of human home-making is quite definitely not essential.

Ex IBM sales manager, fired after battling discrimination against subordinates, wins $11m lawsuit

"The company will consider all of its options on appeal."

A good option is to realise you lost & are going to continue losing and issue a statement that it was all down to a former manager who is no longer with the business. After all,the number of people no longer with IBM's business makes it entirely credible.

Mobile app security standard for IoT, VPNs proposed by group backed by Big Tech

I don't suppose there's any requirement that the mobile app be allowed to control the IoT device without the vendor's server mediating it.

Irish privacy watchdog sticks GDPR probe into Facebook after that online giveaway of 533 million profiles

Not a legal requirement. In fact, in this jurisdiction, a legal disrequirement.

Re: Googlified

And does that require an actual date of birth as opposed to over x years old? ANd why not cite it as part of the request?

It's an interesting situation. US federal law may require them to ask some minimal question. I'm damned if I can see any US law applying to me, here, which compels me to answer.

University of Hertfordshire pulls the plug on, well, everything after cyber attack

Re: TurnItIn keeps copies of work

"It's students who are about to submit which are at the biggest risk, unless they've followed the advice of their university library SMEs in both letter and spirit."

After KCL immolated their storage without assistance from any malware TPTB were very insistent that in future users should rely on the very services they'd just banjaxed rather than keep their own copies.

Re: a *very* high turnover, but

Like he said, least privileged.

Re: Learning without a computer

Since retiring I've spent a lot of time (apart form wasting it here) on historical research. My library is very largely on my laptop, downloaded from archive.org. Perhaps if I were actually a university student I might have access to a library with a reasonable subset of those books but even then I'd have to share them with other readers If, at 10 to midnight I want to consult, say, volume II of Yorkshire Deeds I can do so with a few clicks; if I were dependent on a library I'd have to wait until morning.

Yes, I love books, would be quite happy living in a library and feel a twitch if I see a nice set of oak card-file cabinets like those I used to use in the Science Library years ago but in practical terms the real benefit of a library would be those holding archives of material that hasn't yet been published or digitised.

Re: Learning without a computer

At 76 I've been a member of that generation for decades I never could read my own handwriting. The very first purchase with my grant was a cheap second hand typewriter. I'm not sure where it is now. Last time i saw it it had started suffering from woodworm.

Vote to turf out remainder of Nominet board looks inevitable after .uk registry ignores reform demands

Re: Its time...

Grace appears to be one of the qualities that they lack.

Zorin OS 16 beta claims largest built-in app library 'of any open source desktop ever'

"Why do people keep trying to replicate the Windows interface, in Linux?"

Which Windows interface - there've been so many?

For users migrating from Windows it does, of course, make sense because it provides familiarity.

In fact good system design separates interface from implementation for the very reason that users of the interface, human or software, do not suffer any penalty in the form of breakage when the implementation changes. The exception is the removal of rough edge that shouldn't have been there or the introduction of something new and useful - multiple desktops is a good example of the latter.

This seems to be largely forgotten these days. In fact there is a breed called user experience designers whose sole purpose in life is to inflict such penalties on users, presumably for self-gratification or because, for some perverse reason of their employers, it's their job.

I'd like to say that this was a speciality of Microsoft but unfortunately it's not. However with a little effort and use of KDE I seem to maintain a UI which has evolved gently and usefully from the pre-Windows for Teletubbies UI. The main menu is still hierarchical but with a layout which I determine to suit myself. It acquired multiple desktops years ago although I understand Windows eventually caught up with that. Icons are not eye-jarring. Window decorations - buttons etc - are discrete, in the same positions and more or less the same shape as years ago. In short, it just works how I want it to work and if you think it looks rather like an ancient Windows UI it's because in my view Microsoft got that largely right a couple of decades ago and haven't been able to resist messing with it since.