Posts by Doctor Syntax

Web prank horror: Man shot dead while pretending to rob someone at knife-point for a YouTube video

Re: On the contrary

Her parents think the council should do something to prevent this happening. They did. They built railings. Sometimes I despair.

Re: Think of it as evolution in action

I'd like to think so but PT Barnum's dictum applies.

"not recognising that they are criminals, or recognising and not caring"

And that not recognising or caring is what makes them Darwin award candidates.

Re: Born idiots. All of 'em.

And yet the guy who did the same at Doncaster airport got all sorts of public sympathy and eventually, IIRC, got off or maybe had his sentenced reduced.

Choc horror: The UK's Information Commisioner probes its own mammoth £6,248 Hotel Chocolat spend

That's easy:

Closed

Closed

Closed

...

Faced with the sack, Nominet CEO half-apologizes for taking the 'wrong tone,' asks angry members to hear him out

Wrong tone

Translation: I've discovered the limits of what I can get away with.

Re: Not exactly rocket surgery

In other words he needs a big pay packet to retain him. An easy problem to solve unless you're the only person thinking he needs to be retained.

How do we combat mass global misinformation? How about making the internet a little harder to use

Re: Trust nothing, check your data, use various sources.

"I was lucky enough to be deliberately taught critical thinking during History GCSE"

Which is why I think the Yes (Prime) Minister Diaries should be set books in English. Amusing enough to catch interest (unlike the Jane Austin etc on which I failed English Litt) and enough to provoke a critical look at "authority".

Re: Wikipedia is far from perfect...

It's not unknown for the Wayback machine to tell you that the page isn't indexed, it's still online. Not necessarily if it's a real 404, but how many of those do yu see these days? All too often it's a chatty little page that says what you're looking for isn't there, tell the referring page about it. Or else it's a cybersquatter's parking page.

UK college courses show decade-long surging interest in computer science – just as new intake was locked down

Re: Basically schools need to be fixed in so many ways...

"(perhaps even Raspberry Pi)."

Better be careful there. Pi OS (the Raspbian replacement) has quietly added a Microsoft repository which phones home. Fortunately Devuan for the Pi doesn't.

A couple of weeks ago the Beeb news site had a story of somebody with a biomedical degree volunteering at the Manchester vaccination centre in his spare time from his regular job - delivering pizzas. It appears nothing much has changed in the British biological job market in more than 50 years apart from the choice of non-graduate jobs.

Microsoft suspends donations to politicians who backed attempt to overturn US presidential election

Re: Democrats need to do a full voter rights act

AFAICS the issues with counting votes also contributed. Paper ballots, hand counted, cuts out a lot of scope for dispute. It used to be the case that bank clerks, used to counting notes, could do it quite quickly. Maybe there aren't as many of those nowadays; a by-product of the cashless society.

DBA heroes don't always wear capes. Sometimes they just have a bunch of forgotten permissions

Re: They think they are gods..

I had a short contract as a DBA to cover somebody's 2 week holiday plus a week overlap either side. Most of that seemed to be occupied with the paperwork to get permission to add another chunk to the Informix database and to get the sysadmin team - who were separate and whom I never even saw - to allocate an LVM volume for it. This was in the same industry where, in a much large operation, my team handled everything - Unix and database administration, development and support. The contract clients are no longer in business.

All very well, but when all else fails fait accompli remains the most powerful tool in the box.

The Linux box that runs the exec carpark gate is down! A chance for PostgreSQL Man to show his quality

Re: Told off for it

" At least you get some satisfaction that it wasn't your fault when the car park gate tries to slice the execu-barge in twain."

You could get more if it was your fault, sufficiently well hidden, of course.

Re: Ah, the joys of leaving

"ah, but I dont need to pay this. You see, I never processed your resignation letter"

What he did or didn't do with it would have been his problem. Your resignation had been presented to an appropriate representative of your employer (assuming he was that appropriate representative). Anything further would be between him and the rest of the company.

Re: Execu-barge

They're put in because they're required to enforce 20 mph areas. The possibility that they might cause damage leading to an accident outside the area isn't a concern because obviously the cause can't be traced back. The road safety industry is very good at denying its the consequences of its actions. It's currently working hard at denying that "smart" motorways* are dangerous.

At the same time they ignore dangerous features: I know of one stretch of road which has notices up along the lines of X casualties in 5 years (not very specific as to which 5 years as the notice has been there for at least 10). That stretch of road has 4 junctions with extremely poor sight lines including an oblique cross-roads with another A road which very clearly needs a roundabout. The only remedial action has been to reconfigure the major crossroads to make it even more dangerous and to provide onesmall, inconspicuous convex mirror.

*Probably somebody thought it smart to add an extra lane without having all the hassle and cost of widening the wayleave.

Re: The Joys of Departure

More than likely there'd be times when yu were nominated by whoever actually dealt with it in the past.

Re: I don't support the barrier sorry

"It was your assumptions that got your PC into this mess. Don't make them.

Re: Execu-barge

Back in the day my boss had a VW Karman Ghia. It turned out it didn't laugh at speed bumps. We met in the ferry car park at Stranraer. He hadn't seen a set of them in time on the way into the town and said he bounced off the roof.

Re: Had a call...

Minimum 2 hours.

Re: Had a call...

"Had a phone call the night before the last day offering me a new job at 50% more dosh, start immediately."

What a pity it wasn't in writing, then you could have waved it in their faces.

No, the soon-to-be-ex-employee worth his BOFH certification will taken out the repository first, along with its backups. If a jbo's worth doing it's worth doing right.

Re: Execu-barge

A long time ago I had an MGB, an early one before they installed a suspension that made them look as if they were on stilts. Driving over a "sleeping policeman" (speed hump) outside North Queen St police station in Belfast it grounded amid ships. I had to get out to get more clearance to push it forwards.

I've never liked speed humps. I'm sure the accumulated wear & tear on suspension components must contribute to accidents but, as they're not happening at the actual places they were caused, they reasons go undetected. Rumble strips are a different matter; if yu take them fast enough the suspension filters them out.

Re: Execu-barge

Hoist by his own bollard!

Re: Had a call...

"No."

Quite right. You had no right to do that. The security company should have known that.

NASA offers foodies, boffins $500,000 to find ways for astronauts to make their own dinners on the Moon, Mars

They should concentrate on making weeds (no, not that sort; those plant ecologists call "ruderals") palatable. Why? Because IME they always grow better than whatever it is I'm trying to grow.

War on Section 230 begins in earnest as Dem senators look to limit legal immunity for social networks, websites etc

"That should help cap the frivolous notices"

And extend the harm done by posts where the takedown was serious.

My bad! So you're saying that redacting an on-screen PDF with Tipp-Ex won't work?

Re: The Weekly Cultural Moment

Don't forget the gevinegar.

Vote machine biz Smartmatic sues Fox News and Trump chums for $2.7bn over bogus claims of rigged 2020 election

Re: “We are proud of our 2020 election coverage ..."

"And fined them $2.7bn"

Why would a judge fine them? This is a civil suit, he would be asked to award damages.

"as well with subsequent bankruptcy."

In his case it's just SoP.

Brit IBM veteran wins unfair dismissal case after 2018's Global Technology Services redundancy bloodbath

Re: Older vs Younger

"Well younger people are going to find it easier to find alternative employment."

But they're not going to start looking until they've been there long enough for disillusion to set in.

Re: Never mind the quality, just look at the cost

Nevertheless it's an interesting experiment in just how long a company can circle the drain before actually going in.

Nearly 70 years after America made einsteinium in its first full-scale thermo-nuke experiment, mystery element yields secrets of its chemistry

Re: Just remember kids

It's a good argument for not naming elements after people. Einsteinium is fine but einsteinium just looks wrong and yet the names of elements are not proper nouns.

Re: Open YouTube

Ruthenium still scores fairly low. We used it to catalyse reduction of CO2 to methane in the carbon dating lab back in the day.

Apple offends devs by asking for Developer Transition Kits back early, then offering them a measly $200 off an M1 Mac

It's more pejorative.

How do you fix a problem like open-source security? Google has an idea, though constraints may not go down well

Re: You want all this, Google

The downside of that is that this is Google. The Google that simply dumps any plaything it gets tired of.

UK Test and Trace chief Dido Harding tries to convince MPs that £14m for canned mobile app was money well spent

"Interesting how most news stories on the subject mention Harding's time at Talktalk, even though that has very little bearing on the matter at hand."

It has a great bearing on the matter at hand. It shows that she should never be put in a position of responsibility. Her record there should be a stick to beat anyone involved in her current appointment.

And by "public service" we thought that meant keeping out of the way.

Re: Boris north of the wall

It appears that you've flushed out a Boris fan. Awaiting the downvote to complete the set.

Re: Not fit for purpose

Sort of. It gets the occasional member promoted for actual expertise. What would really be an improvement would be to make senior members of professions (say presidents of the Royal Society, Royal College of $MedicalProffession etc) ex officio members.

However, the HoC is very reluctant to having an elected second chamber as it would be more of a challenge to them so having a second chamber appointed on the basis of actually knowing what they were talking about would really be an anathema.

Re: Test and Trace actuality

Her name is a recursive acronym: Dido In, Disaster Out.

"That must have taken 1 day max to implement."

Unfortunately. They should have taken longer to get it right.

Re: Those consultants

I thought it was the MS users - Sequel Server. ("Swivel" and "Snivel" are acceptable alternative. "Squirrel" is far too cute.)

Re: Those consultants

"Every country that made such apps available has quietly dropped the whole idea. etc"

Yup. But that wasn't here.

Re: Those consultants

"Every country that made such apps available has quietly dropped the whole idea."

Except one.

Re: Classic drivel, top notch!

I wonder if Google and Apple know about that.

Probably Along the lines of "Is she still saying that?".

Re: Classic drivel, top notch!

Was Boris' presence the reason it was abandoned?

Re: Catch 22

I didn't notice this - just booked the two. But...

SWMBO g ot a call from the GP on Tuesday a couple of weeks ago to go to their centre in the local cottage hospital behind their surgery. Just after the call was hung up there was a second one from them which dropped straight through to on-hold and eventually picked up by a receptionist who didn't know the call originated with them or what for - "If it's important they'll call back." Was it a fumbled call for my appointment or an artefact of their ACD - who knows?

Next day I got my letter & went online. The closest centre was in the middle of a town where I wasn't sure about the parking & didn't fancy the two bus journeys each way to go by public transport. I booked tor the centre at Manchester City football ground instead on the basis that it should be straightforward to find somewhere with more than adequate car parking. It turned out that the car park for this wasn't the obvious one on the map or that the SatNav database knew about. In fact I couldn't find a list of centres and coordinates online at all. That would be a very obvious benefit given that people are going to have to go to centres in unfamiliar locations.

The organisation at the Manchester centre was impressive. Kudos to whoever put all that together on that scale. The local centre - a pity it coincided with the surgery having builders in, blocking one car park and entrance so they couldn't work a one-way traffic flow but SWMBO says the organisation of the vaccination centre was fine.

But they day after I got my vaccination I got a text from the GP inviting me to make an appointment there. When I rung them they said they could see my vaccination record so would cancel. Then I got a second text telling me the appointment that I hadn't actually made woas cancelled and to get in touch for another.

Re: Catch 22

"Maybe we could swap Dido for her South Korean counterpart?"

Or make a free gift of her to N Korea.