Posts by Doctor Syntax

SAP blogger reveals top tips for keeping clients happy: Don’t swear, remember to write a pithy subject line, and TURN OFF CAPS LOCK

Re: Well I dunno

As an example of attitudes to customer care let me just leave this here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-53607183

Common sense may be sense but it's quite uncommon.

"The advantages of email marketing make it an important addition to a business’s Internet marketing program.” usually makes me think “Sometimes it seems as though modern businesses hardly care about their customers,”

Reply-All storm sparked by student smut sees school system shut down Google Classroom for up to a week

Re: Clearly run by dummies

Because it's the only thing they can think of to get removed. There's probably an email address for the list manager but nobody knows it. All they can hope is that it's one of the names on the list.

Re: Not possible?

I'm fairly certain I just heard someone saying "challenge accepted".

I wouldn't be surprised if similar thinking was behind the reply-alls that followed it.

Pot, meet kettle: Google claims Australia's pay-for-news plan could see personal data put to nefarious uses

"it is potentially a global precedent for how publishers and web giants interact "

I thought Spain and Germany had already tried this out with the results any disinterested observer would have expected. But then there's always the possibility that doing the same thing will have a different result next time.

Sun welcomes vampire dating website company: Arrgh! No! It burns! It buuurrrrnsss!

Re: Dress Code

OTOH about 20 years ago I had gig where my client wanted me to do some work on site at their customer's HO and insisted that I wear a suit on site. So I ended up working in a rapidly dishevelling suit in a heat wave (spending as much time as possible in the machine room to take advantage of the aircon). The customer manager I dealt with was in shorts and sandals in the office. He was the one with appropriate attire.

"had time left to kill in Chicago"

Nice one.

ANPR maker Neology sues Newcastle City Council after failing to win 'air quality' snoopcam project bid

Translation: Don't invite us to tender.

Where there's a .mil, there's Huawei: Pentagon allowed to keep using Chinese tech deemed too dangerous for everyone else – report

It sounds like the whole thing was just business as usual: act first, plan later.

Money talks as Chinese chip foundries lure TSMC staff with massive salaries to fix the Middle Kingdom's tech gap

Re: More blowback from Trump's epic mishandling of foreign affairs

I'm not sure. They might be worrying on their own account at what Trump's been setting afoot in China.

Re: Hardly surprising

unless China has already acquired set out to make the necessary equipment

FTFY but does it feel any more reassuring than the original

NHS tests COVID-19 contact-tracing app that may actually work properly – EU neighbors lent a helping hand

Re: More useful

"I had Covid-19 in January."

Diagnosed?

And if so how many others did you infect? A genuine infection back then must represent a considerable number of subsequent infections and maybe there'll have been a few deaths as well.

"It was rather harmless"

Assuming you did have it have you been checked for any damage which might give rise to long term complications?

And see above. If you spread it to others it may have been far from harmless to them.

"Therefore, I'm immune."

As per Spanners comment, are you sure?

In any case, these precautionary measures aren't to protect you, they're to protect the community at large from the possibility that you are are infective. An infection is a phenomenon involving one person, an epidemic or pandemic involves the population at large and the defensive response needs to be that of the entire population not of the entire population excepting those who feel they're somehow above it.

"and anyone else who was passing"

Providing they passed under social distancing rules.

Re: As far as I can tell, Northern Ireland is part of the UK....

The principle involved is called "Not Invented Here". The purpose is reducing the visibility of egg on face. It's got a long tradition in government circles but particularly desired by the current one at present.

Re: More useful

"I would like to keep my distance from them."

You should be doing that anyway because you should be keeping your distance from people in general. The whole purpose of the app is to tell when you've failed.

Re: Like to have an expert check the privacy statement & app

I agree it now has proper privacy terms. However it's not surprising that people will treat it with a degree of distrust.

Firstly the original world-beating plan was going to harvest personal details and keep them (strictly for limited purposes of course) for a few decades.

Secondly successive governments have shown themselves to be data fetishists and the current government's reliance on more of the same only makes things worse.

Thirdly the whole shebang has been put under the charge of a serial failer when it comes to protecting customers' PII.

There should be a lesson for governments here. There will come a time when you really need peoples' trust about handling personal data. Trust is a fragile thing. Once you lose it it's not very readily rebuilt. Best not to lose it in the first place.

Re: How will they know it's a false alarm?

No it is not better. for reasons given in the post to which you replied.

Look at it on a personal level. If, having emerged a day or so ago from your 3rd groundless period of self-isolation - unpaid if you can't work from home - what are you going to do when you're told yet again you're a contact?

If you lack the imagination to see how it plays out in that way ,let's try reductio ad absurbam. If false positives are good let's just declare the entire population as contacts and have everyone self isolate. A bit rough on those depending on carers to live but once everyone's emerged again and cleared away the bodies we're free from the virus. Was it a good idea?

The requirement of any sort of test is its ability to discriminate with a minimum of false positives and false negatives. The problem with this sort of test is that it hasn't really got a good discriminating power. The appropriate response isn't to bias it towards false positives toavoid false negatives and leave it at that. False positives are just too expensive at both the individual personal level and at the collective economic model; we can't afford them.

What should be done with a test like that is to refine it as much as possible but then treat it as an indicator that a more definitive test is needed. The number of tests currently being processed is well below capacity. Instead of telling the positive contacts to self isolate use that spare capacity and test them. I suppose in another month or two the idea might dawn on Cummings or somebody.

Docker shocker: Cash-strapped container crew threatens to delete 4.5 petabytes of unloved images

Re: Docker tweaked its terms of service

"When will Terms of Service be recognized as a binding contract for both sides ?"

When the service is paid for. A contract provides something in return for a consideration. No consideration, no contract.

Single-line software bug causes fledgling YAM cryptocurrency to implode just two days after launch

Re: So

"We are agile."

Any investments in it certainly were.

Re: YAM = ??

"the South Sea Bubble (ca 1720). It was an early financial scam,"

Money's been around a long time and I'm sure scams followed PDQ. You couldn't really call the 1720searly.

Re: Software verification

"Developers never got near the production builds."

So how could they tell whether what they developed was what was built for production?

Re: Investment?

"a huge implied "Beta" tag on its front door"

That's an insult to Beta.

Mr Barnum can explain it to you.

Re: I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Or was it money in, garbage out?

Of course that's been going on a long time as well.

US govt proposes elephant showers for every American after Prez Trump says trickles dampen his haircare routine

Re: "followed closely by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson"

"Can I join your fringe?"

Sorry, no. I need to keep what's left to myself these days. Have to avoid the PHB look.

Re: "followed closely by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson"

If you seriously think that look at the picture the Beeb used to illustrate this story. it's ill-hair-ious.

How do you solve a problem like Privacy Shield? US and EU policymakers kick off discussions

'different wallpaper, same cracks'

A gem. Give the man a

"Or perhaps those in the EU could be given rights to challenge US surveillance programmes before US courts?"

Give them rights to challenge them in EU courts would be better. What a pity that for us in the UK it's all academic now.

Trump administration reportedly offers Oracle cheap end to $400m wage discrimination case

Re: Wish us luck. We'll need it.

"Which shows that the open ended language in the Constitution should be tightened up"

That's the problem with a written constitution. It's harder to change to adapt to new circumstances.

Re: Wish us luck. We'll need it.

"It's now 244 years since the people of the United States freed themselves from the rule of George the Third. "

And yet they didn't separate the head of govt. and head of state roles.

"all the folks who didn't toe the line have been forcibly removed."

And in some cases sent to the HoL to make sure they don't get re-elected to challenge the clique later.

Ink tanks park themselves all over the lawns of Western Europe as orders flood in

There isn't a complete division between colour documents and colour photographs. If I want a good quality print of a photograph then a special photo-quality printer is needed but for occasional use it's far cheaper to take it to a print shop. OTOH it's perfectly satisfactory to produce written material with colour photographs included as illustrations.

"if you are not careful, colour lasers can be very expensive to run"

My experience with a Brother is that it has a separate black cartridge and that by default when printing black text it only uses the black cartridge so this is no more expensive to run than a monochrome laser give or take the price per page of the respective models.

Since I got it I've printed quite a bit of colour work. I run off handouts for my wife's patchwork class with a colour photo of the current week's project on the front page.

"If you absolutely must have colour, then an inkjet coupled with a cheap monochrome laser makes the most sense, unless you are printing a *lot* of colour stuff that needs to look professional."

Your way is also expensive if you're printing colour rarely because inevitably the ink has dried up since the last run. So you then have the situation where an ink cartridge only lasts a few sheets and your have the inconvenience of having to go out and find somewhere to sell you a cartridge or wait a few days for an on-line purchase to be delivered when a colour laser would print it out right now.

Just get the colour laser - which includes a black cartridge - and set the driver to only use the black cartridge for black text. You might have to replace the black cartridge more than the coloured ones but so what?

How's that cheap-printer,-ransom-via-cartridges business model looking now?

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced techie is indistinguishable from magic

I remember a chemical balance that changed its reading as you leaned over it. It was one of these https://oertling.com/balances/top-pan/tp-series.php used to weigh out small amounts of expensive reagents. The reading would change as you leaned over it which made using it a tad tricky.

It was on a bench on the first floor of a building put together by some 'orrible '60s steel-framed pre-fab technique. The concrete floor slabs were supported on a triangulated mesh of steel tubes sufficiently flexible to move very slightly in response to the movements of whoever was standing on them.

We didn't have any problems with the replacement. It was replaced after the building was destroyed in a fire and the replacement building was a nice solid reinforced concrete job.

Splunk sales ace wins sex discrimination case after new boss handed her key accounts to blokes deemed 'flight risks'

Now will she really rub salt in the wound by joining a competitor, calling on all her old contacts and nicking the accounts?

Bratty Uber throws tantrum, threatens to cut off California unless judge does what it says in driver labor rights row

Don't argue with judges and certainly don't bluff them. They'll call your bluff and raise you contempt of court.

Re: I am conflicted on this

It's not at all a simple issue. The right to be in business - and sub-contracting is one way of running a business - is something that I think should be protected against the predations of the likes of HMRC. OTOH, back in the days when I was on the PCG's consultative committee we were concerned about forced incorporation of low paid workers.

It's something that needs to be properly addressed by legislators.

You weren't hacked because you lacked space-age network defenses. Nor because cyber-gurus picked on you. It's far simpler than that

Re: Too hard, too frequent, too unreliable

" We were sold this package on the basis of 99.999% uptime."

And there's the flaw in the thinking. Start thinking in terms of useful availability and downtime. You're trying to manage for minimum loss of useful availability due to downtime. If downtime isn't planned - you had a hardware failure, you got hacked, whatever - then there's no guarantee of it falling into a time of minimum usage. Planned downtime can be arranged fro when it will have minimum impact and its purpose is to minimise the risk of unplanned downtime. But risk is harder to measure than uptime.

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

I think my Latin teacher was teaching from personal recollection in the '50s.

Irony, thy name is SANS: 28k records nicked from infosec training org after staffer's email account phished

Re: Eh, what?

It's not very reassuring that they don't know the difference.

I think they meant spam lists.

UK.gov to propose new rules for online political campaigns after last election marred by an avalanche of fake news

Re: Proposal

Poacher turned gamekeeper or, more likely, putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

Re: The real problem with the BBC

"do the right thing and resign"

When did that last happen in the UK? Resign in a fit of pique, maybe. Take responsibility for a cock-up? Maybe the occasional minister might have jumped before he was pushed but otherwise, no.

"Did you see Boris Johnson on your ballot paper? Or Michael Gove? Or Dominic Cummings?"

Depending on where you lived you might have seen BoJo or Gove. Cummings, no.

Firefox maker Mozilla axes a quarter of its workforce, blames coronavirus, vows to 'develop new revenue streams'

Re: You know,

Your Netscape Communicator lives on. It's called Seamonkey.

What are you gonna do? Give me detention? Illinois schools ban pyjamas in online classes

"everyone is on mute (enforced)"

You could set up backgrounds with pictures of yourselves in them and do something useful (or otherwise) whilst manglements mangle.

Re: It would be good to see him back.

No sign of BOFH for some time either. Bring 'em all back!