Posts by Doctor Syntax

UK government resists pressure to hold statutory inquiry into Post Office Horizon scandal

Re: Statutory inquiry

"Why did judges not know about software evaluation, CHECK or CREST certified technical testing of software, how System Administrators manage user accounts and query the PO lawyers on them?"

These were, or should have been, facts brought to the attention of the juries. It is the juries who determine facts, not judges although the latter do sum up the evidence for the jury as well as acting as referees in terms of application of the law.

The juries (and, for that matter, judges) didn't know because they were not resented with evidence of it.

Shadow over Fedora 34 as maintainer of Java packages quits with some choice words for Red Hat and Eclipse

"the first time since GNOME 3.0 came out that there's a real rethinking of the basic desktop experience."

As an onlooker from a safe distance I wonder to what effect? That last real rethink prompted two new desktop projects to reinstate the original desktop experience. Would it actually be something that would lure me away from KDE?

At least in the Linux/BSD world we don't have to just get on with what a vendor chooses to inflict on us.

Does the boss want those 2 hours of your free time back? A study says fighting through crowds to office each day hurts productivity

Re: What an outdated view

"remote working does not allow teams to collaborate"

Of course it doesn't. You'd never be able to create something like an operating system kernel or all the rest of the S/W than makes an OS or package it for distribution working that way.

Re: No company ever forced its staff to do 90 minute commutes...

That's only half of it. The other half would be stopping the brownfield sites nonsense. A brownfield site is where there used to be jobs. Convert those to housing and there are (a) less places where jobs could be created and (b) more people looking for jobs. Do that and the area's commuting problems get worse.

Can HMG make things worse than that? They surely can. In an old rural industrial area like mine there are a lot of older houses. They're part of the character that planners want to keep. We have one or possibly both sides of the road lined with parked cars because there's no off-street parking, no off-street anything except the house & back yard or maybe 6 feet of empty space in front of a basement or six feet of path and flowerbed. So by mandating EVs as the only available vehicles where are the replacements for the current parked vehicles going to be charged? If it becomes impractical to own a car any longer and no local employment WFH is going to be the only option other to create an underclass of people who can't find any work they can get to. Does the new, shiny neighbourhood plan make provision for dealing with this? Of course it doesn't. It's a plan for the last few decades rather then the next few.

Re: Up next

As per TFA - it might be obvious but there's still manglements to persuade.

Re: No company ever forced its staff to do 90 minute commutes...

I don't know where you work but a great proportion of jobs are in cities so large that they require a few thousand square miles of commuter belt to house the workers. Property within 15/20 miles of work is likely to be hideously expensive and it's only practical to supply a small percentage of that space with single ride public transport so that property in that percentage is also likely to be hideously expensive..

Yes, "we" as a society have done this to ourselves. "We" as a collection of individuals haven't. It's been an article of planning policy for all my working life and earlier to separate workplaces and homes. It was done in the name of getting rid of slums surrounding factories. No thought was given as to how the gap between the two was to be bridged; hand-waving assisted public transport was probably envisaged.

It was stupid. It is stupid. Will you ever get the planners to admit it was stupid? Not until the whole lot collapses in a heap. Hopefully the present situation might give it the push it needs but if the "come back to the office" movement succeeds we're going to have to wait for an even bigger failure.

Re: "Maybe a handful of people can work remotely"

Time to get out whilst there's a company to get out from if that's their grasp of what's happening around them.

Harrow? Out in the Chilterns and beyond there are fields where these grey woolly things live.

Re: You misquoted your own poll

For those commuting by train this days in, days at home alternation is going to play havoc with the economics of season tickets.

"near-weekly suicide attempts by fellow Tube users."

Sheep on the line was one of British Snail's excuses in my commuting days. Less funny were the couple of occasions of sleepers on the line (wooden or possibly concrete, ties in USian-speak) somewhere around Ruislip.

Words to strike fear into admins' hearts: One in five workers consider themselves 'digital experts' these days

Re: Lusers vs. IT Gods

How long did the CIO lag before moving the "official" network to TCP/IP - or just to yours?

Re: Digital experts....

"until I am thick"

That should curtail the length of screaming.

Actually, the best way to kill this particular issue would have been to murmur something about auditors.

Re: Buried the lede

The difference is that car manufacturers have spent many years concentrating on refining their products to make sure cars just work. The IT industry has spent years adding more an more complexity so that computers all too often continue to only just work. However, with encouraging the motor industry with aspirations to self-driving cars they seem to have found a way to close the disparity.

The news will delight IT administrators charged with supporting them

So it should: "You're an expert now. You fix it."

UK Court of Appeal rules Tiny Computers' legal remains can sue Micron and Infineon over 2002 DRAM price-fixing cartel

I'd have thought that any money due as a result of price fixing would be to those who actually paid the fixed prices: those who bought the computers.

PCs continue to sell like hot cakes and industry can barely keep up with demand – analyst

It looks as if not everyone agrees with the notion that you can do everything you need to do on a tablet.

Emotet malware self-destructs after cops deliver time-bomb DLL to infected Windows PCs

My immediate thought was why wait several months? Was it that the malware only checked in with its C&C server at rare intervals or was it time taken to gain political/legal backing?

Don't cross the team tasked with policing the surfing habits of California's teens

Re: PCB Assembly

Sometimes this - deservedly - backfires on the unions.

For some reason the union representing scientists in the NI Civil Service (a) seemed to have more money than those for the general service grades and (b) was quite complacent about the fact that we were paid less than the equivalent general service grades and had crap promotion prospects.

One day they inveigled everyone to take a day off which wasn't quite called a strike because pay negotiations were going badly. Afterwards it transpired it wasn't even our pay that was being negotiated, it was general service grades'. A union official came to try to pacify the staff and got roasted. In this case the staff kept their jobs but the union must have lost at least 30 subscriptions members.

Re: High-level manglement can be just as much a nuisance as unions

"What I was proposing was that they had to do some work, instead of enjoying expensive lunches at fancy restaurants."

Until some more entrepreneurial firm realised the advantages, took their work and ate their lunches.

Re: Free school meals

"From now on I attach this thank you message to my every post until they fix battery drainage problem they introduced in iOS 14.4.2."

At least that'll be one AC we can recognise.

US Supreme Court puts a stop to FTC extracting big bucks from crooks to refund victims

Re: How strange

Only if it has the legal right to do that. It appears that it doesn't. The remedy lies with the legislators.

BOFH: Postman BOFH's Special Delivery Service

But not neessarily the intended front garden IME.

Re: Peace and quiet

"anyone who thinks saving money on work space will pay in spite of increasing the stress and discomfort levels on workers, is a moron."

Sadly, there's no shortage of those in manglemnt.

Re: Peace and quiet

"I think I'm running a bit of a temperature"

Without explaining that it's your laptop that's running a bit hot.

Re: Peace and quiet

And that's against strong competition.

India seeks locally developed open source CRM and ERP for government users

Re: Here we go again...

"All companies"

last time I looked India was a country and not a company. I can certainly see a logic in this from the point of view of data sovereignty.

OK, so we don't have a flying car yet, but this is possibly even better: The Internet of Beer

I remember an outfit that was stealing them and melting them down for scrap. I don't think the tracker would help with that. The cheeky bit was that the forensic lab started out as a wing of an industrial lab and they were bringing the ingots in to the industrial side to get an analysis to show when they were sold on.

Something went wrong but we won't tell you what it is. Now, would you like to take out a premium subscription?

An interesting feasibility study. Work out how many possible calculations are possible for n digits. Then work out where you're going to get a list of "right" answers against which to validate them.

Re: Preemptive Ticket Closing?

"a well-known Outsourcing Company (known for comprehensively screwing customers)"

You worked for all of them?

My current point of interest is a login screen which will throw an error on the first attempt irrespective of what credentials if any are given to it. It might, I suppose, be an attempt to discourage any bot with a set of leaked credentials for the site. I now just click on the login button before entering anything and then log in.

I suppose an ideal way of handling those would be to automate bundling up the entire pile of crap and bundle it back to the third party's support email - assuming they have one and failing that the CEO's email address and simply advise the user that there's been an error which has been passed to $Named£rdParty. Bonus points for giving the user the ticket number to chase up themselves.

Yes but they were rapidly promoted to management roles to get them out of the way. At least, that's the only explanation I can think of.

39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into question

Re: Lock up

"It aint gonna happen, most will have either moved on or more likely gone into retirement by now."

No reason not to prosecute.

Microsoft loves Linux – as in, it loves Linux users running Linux desktop apps on Windows PCs

"the fragmentation of desktops and distributions still stops it from ever happening."

Ah, yes. The fragmentation of desktops. Nothing like Windows where W10 is just like W7 is just like W2K etc (leaving out a couple that even Windows fans would be hard pushed to praise).

I've got news for you. If you run Windows you're stuck with whatever look MS push out today. If it doesn't work for you, tough, just use it all the same. If you have a choice of desktops you have...well...choice. Maybe that's too hard a concept to deal with?

What's that? You can change the wallpaper? That's fine.

Re: Want more integration

OK, let me give a more considered answer which yes and no.

The skills you have as a Windows admin or whatever are in wide demand but a lot of people have them. They're a commodity to be traded, at least that's the way agencies and HR will look at them and at the people who have them. Wages will stagnate because there's always somebody who hasn't got a job will take your job at a low wage.

So, yes, your response should be to teach yourself new stuff but no, not so you can stay in the low wage trap. You do it to get out of that trap. What you need is to know stuff that's just coming into demand but that relatively few people have.

You also have to remember that the new stuff you learn will become a commodity skill in due course by which time you need to be somewhere else.

Re: Yes, of course

"and i replied no (obviously)"

Not at all obviously. The correct answer is that there's no need.

Re: Want more integration

"Or we could just provide the bear minimum, much like the salary offering"

It sounds like a grizzly fate.

Re: Want more integration

"Next up I dream of Git integration in Windows"

Remember who owns GitHub and be careful of what you wish for.

Watchdog 'enables Tesla Autopilot' with string, some weight, a seat belt ... and no actual human at the wheel

Re: Genuine Question

Any crashes into the back of the now stationary traffic are presumably somebody else's problem.

Re: Defending Tesla

Why restrict this to known idiots? Surely unknown idiots should be allowed to join in. The line needs to be drawn at those around them who aren't willing participants.

George Clooney of IT: Dribbling disaster and damp disk warnings scare the life out of innocent user

Re: Am I Old?

Was there anyone who was there then who doesn't remember it? The AT killed it IIRC because the audio was derived from the processor clock. As clock speeds rose it would have moved through dog-whistle and into bat communication.

Re: It is very important to select your victim carefully,

"Person selected was known to be both able to take a joke and deliver one"

Tell us about his revenge.

University duo thought it would be cool to sneak bad code into Linux as an experiment. Of course, it absolutely backfired

Re: Time for an Audit?

The University should have immediately and voluntarily offered to pay for it. I would, at the very least, have given the appearnce of having some ethical sense.

Re: It touched the IRB - which is an alternate name for an ethics review board

So where's the ethics review board that deserves the name?

Re: A punitive sanction against the Uni for approving it

Perhaps the board should look on it as an attempt to QA the board's processes.

Re: Place your bets...

"If their careers are destroyed, no one did that but them!"

I have a sneaking suspicion that it will have enhanced their careers in a fairly restricted field. But in the wider industry it isn't going to enhance the University's reputation.

Re: Place your bets...

"and THEN banned the Uni, as the ethics committee refused to intervene."

When the department finally issued a statement it was the most anodyne they could have got away with. An apology at this stage would have been appropriate pending the results of an investigation.

Re: Place your bets...

First, remember that Linux gets used in a lot of places these days. It's critical infrastructure.

Second, if the sanity check I suggested test is too complicated for you here's a simpler one. What would your reaction be if you were the guinea pig in this research?

Huawei wins big intellectual property case in Europe – against fashion house Chanel

" a tub of moisturiser that inexplicably costs around $100."

Nothing inexplicable. The target market wouldn't buy anything at a price anywhere near cost of production plus reasonable mark-up. It would would damage their self-image. The value is based on the price, not the other way around.

Signal app's Moxie says it's possible to sabotage Cellebrite's phone-probing tools with booby-trapped file

Re: On a more serious note...

That's clearly implied in the story.

However, if Signal start providing booby-trapped files as part of the installation all Celebrite have to do to find out what the exploits are is to install Signal on a phone and that gives them a test-bed.