Posts by Doctor Syntax

Four women seek release from forced arbitration to sue Infosys for widespread gender discrimination

"failing to 'diffuse the conflict.'"

They thought she should have spread it a bit wider than just her and him?

Airbnb, or not to be, if you're headed to Washington DC: Biz cancels bookings over fears of inauguration insurrection

I suppose Trump will claim Biden was less popular because there were fewer people in the crowd and his was the biggest ever.

We didn't collude with Twitter to throw Parler off our servers, says AWS in court filing

Re: What about places that hinders me to enter if I don't abide to their rules?

"the politicians should advise and pass legislation"

I'm not sure if US has specific statute law about conspiracy to commit acts of violence but Common Law will usually do that itself - and the US inherited that from us.

That should be all AWS or any other service provider should need to compel them to throw off any customer who seems to be allowing that to happen, otherwise they'd be apt to find themselves in the dock with the customer and the users responsible.

Dropbox basically decimates workforce, COO logs off: Cloud biz promises to be 'more efficient and nimble'

Re: Is it just me.....

"the inconsistent interface"

If they have to make work by faffing with the UI they have too many staff.

Pandemic? Check. World in peril? Check. CES is on? Check. So of course Bluetooth Smart Masks are now a thing

"all without getting in a tangle of devices"

It'll still tangle with your glasses when you take it off.

Backers of Planet Computers' Astro Slide 5G phone furious after shock specs downgrade

Re: Another story from Douglas Adams?

Not too much scope for phone anitizers these days. Everyone has their own phone and if you can find a phone box these days it's probably listed and serving as a village book exchange. Maybe the phone sanitzers could switch to books.

The CIA's 'entire' collection of UFO records has been made available for you to sigh at

The problem with UFOs isn't the unidentified bit. It's attempts at identification by those who've never heard of Occam.

Trump tries one more time to limit H-1B work visas with new minimum salary requirements

Re: We beat you to it!

"the profound ancient wisdom of our elected members"

Ah, yes. Members. It's good to be reminded of its multiple meanings.

Re: Good idea

"You are a startup, you need an expert "

Wrong order. Should be:

1. Be an expert

2. Set up your startup based on what you know

Privacy pilfering project punished by FTC purge penalty: AI upstart told to delete data and algorithms

Re: Inconsistent decision is concerning

Let's get this clear. They were wrong to be permissive and now they're wrong not to be permissive.

Under that pile of spare keys and obsolete cables is an IoT device: Samsung pushes useful retirement project for older phones

Re: Until some passing low-life sees it & thinks "hey, a free phone", that is.

There have been videos of people stealing security cameras.

“Galaxy Upcycling at Home”

When replacing the black hole remember to dispose of the old one responsibly.

Salesforce relieves Republican National Committee of its tools citing 'risk of politically incited violence' across the US

Re: Remainers

It's as well when making these comparisons to remember the murder of Jo Cox. It wasn't Remain who deployed threats and violence.

Re: Liberty speech

"There is something dreadfully wrong when Twitter and Facebook become the final arbiter."

There's something dreadfully wrong if they have to become the final arbiters.

Re: So this is what we're going to have for the next 4 years

Back in 1968 there were student demonstrations about one thing or another all over the western world. I don't suppose many of those in Peoples Democracy in Belfast had terrorism in mind but it provided the starting point for years of that and a mob carrying arms and invading the legislature building are considerably further down that line PD ever were.

Re: Picking sides

"Trump never got around to articulating what he thought the true numbers were."

Just what he wanted them to be. And his definition of theft is the difference between his wants and reality.

Re: Picking sides

"These moves by the tech companies are not going to hurt Trump at all. But they are a kick in the nads to the millions of people who supported and voted for him. Those are the potential customers at risk."

How many of Trump supporters are decision makers in real and potential Salesforce customers (a) in the US and (b) in the rest of the world?

Re: Picking sides

"Do the players of big tech really think they have become so indispensable that their customers will silently stand by and do nothing?"

But which customers are you thinking about. Out beyond the US shores lies the majority of our planet and right now many of Salesforce's customers there are looking at Trump's party and forming their own opinions about it. Salesforce is concerned about what these customers might do.

Salesforce, like any multi-national, sells to a wider clientele than the US (yes, USians, you are just a part of this world). If they judge that Trump has tainted the reputation of his party as far as the rest of the world is concerned then disassociating themselves with is is the better overall step.

This is the same use of "consider" as in "consider your position" which translates as "it's time for you to resign".

That's the least of their problems. Somewhere on the Beeb (as ever, now unfindable) it was reported big firms were stating to reconsider political donations. That's their really big problem.

Parler games: Social network for internet rejects sues Amazon Web Services for pulling plug on hosting

Re: The bigger picture

You'll find they are regulated. If they sell facilities for conspiracy to overthrow the govt., carry out other terrorist acts, etc they are likely to end up in court as accessories. Now do you see why they discontinued that particular client? Not because they aren't regulated but because they are - by the ordinary law of the land.

Re: Thank god

"60+ judges (many of them Republicans too, some even appointed by Trump)"

Good for the judges but you can't imagine how bad that statement sounds to someone outside the US. The problem is that the political orientation of the judge, together with the fact that they're politically appointed*, is just taken as normal and acceptable.

* The problem with that is with the political nature, not the actual politician.

Re: @Mike the FlyingRat

Add one to the list of possibles: being held an accessory to any conspiracies being hatched on there.

Re: Thank god

The notion that they could start up from bare metal in a few hours suggests that they've never even tried this as a DR exercise to find out if they can do it for real. Your first DR exercise is.....enlightening.

Decades-old UK government papers show that they tried to roll out a 'Cab-E-Net' system in the '90s. It was crap

"augments a paper diary which the Secretary of State's diary secretary is completely wedded to."

I can guess why. Diary secs are reputed to use pencil so the diary can be frequently updated. It wouldn't take long before there were shouts of "Which is the correct diary.doc?".

Theranos destroyed crucial subpoenaed SQL blood test database, can't unlock backups, prosecutors say

"At the very least the judge can infer that to be so, and weigh it in passing the judgment."

It's the jury that's the tribunal of fact. But the judge can guide them.

I suspect that if this is reported back to the judge who issued the subpoena he or she might decide it's contempt of court.

Re: Stupidity vs Science?

"a good idea work ... her theory was weak"

That doesn't sound like a good idea. Wishful thinking, maybe; good idea, no.

Re: Sure thing

"The defendants can always claim that they weren't intending to be deliberately obstructive, they were just incompetent."

No guarantee of being believed.

Re: Sure thing

It's called being in a hole and digging.

"Holmes and Balwani face ... up to 20 years in prison if found guilty."

They might get a free sample fairly shortly if the judge decides this amounts to contempt of court.

Apologies for the wait, we're overwhelmed. Yes, this is the hospital. You need to what?! Do a software licence audit?

"Please take a seat in this waiting room. The big pile of stuff in the corner? Oh, that's just used PPE waiting to be collected. We're short of storage space."

Extreme Networks misses death-of-Flash deadline, suggests winding back PC clocks to keep its GUI alive

Re: I'm not at all surprised

"The developers will have been sending regular reminders to the project management, who will have been completely ignoring it until too late."

Maybe they should have sent reminders to marketing instead, pointing out the reputational damage.

Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?

Re: AWS now liable?

"The bottom line is this should make everyone hesitant to use AWS for any business critical infrastructure."

It's The Cloud. It's somebody else's computer. We keep telling you that. Why are you surprised when you find out what that means?

A possible alternative take on this is that what's happened over the last years has been a distortion of what even social media would normally allow under Trump's political influence. As that influence evaporates we're seeing a return to normal.

Thou shalt not hack indiscriminately, High Court of England tells Britain's spy agencies

Re: The great thing about British courts ...

The job of a court is to interpret generally written law for the circumstances of the case. Where the circumstances aren't those envisaged by the legislators - which is the sort of case that comes before this level of court - then their rulings are guidance as to how other courts should act in similar cases. In general they themselves are guided by previous rulings and by established principles. It's not exactly making stuff up and it's always open to govt. to come along with updated legislation. The sort of clash which could be in the offing arises when the judiciary think the legislators have stepped outside the existing principles. I don't think that happens often but I think we're in danger of seeing it in the UK.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"Whatever is done it must be better that the path to challenging these sort of edicts is shorter when the EU and the ECJ are no longer concerned."

You're probably right. Without supra-national jurisdiction the challenge would be thrown out PDQ.

We have a govt. that's chafed at having to obey international law. They've got rid of as much of that as they can. They've also chafed at UK law and judicial review and have shown indications of wanting to get rid of that.

Did you vote to "take back control?" What you weren't told is that you weren't taking back control. It was the govt and it's you they propose to control.

"the words of an enactment must be unambiguous before the court may interpret Parliament as intending to override rights"

Right now somebody in the HO is digging out the next version of an Act, ready and filed for just such an occasion, to go before Parliament containing just such words. They can do that now because the grown-up supervision has gone. That's why they wanted to take back control.

SolarWinds takes a leaf out of Zoom's book, hires A-Team of Stamos and Krebs to sort out its security woes

That's what's known as a stable door job.

Fearing she had stumbled across a body, dogwalker reports pota-toe to police

Not late, just main crop.

Developers! These 3 weird tricks will make you a global hero

Although it would be worth commenting that if they haven't tried a DR rehearsal setting it up on new servers is going to be a lot harder than they think. DR rehearsal? What's that?

Re: MS Windows started this

No, MS Windows did not start this. IBM started this with Common User Access. That goes way back to character terminals. Mac S/W also used it.

Facial recog biz denies its software identified 'antifa members' among mob that stormed Capitol Hill

Re: The main problem with trying to spot antifa members...

Who needs AI when so many of them outed themselves in real time on social media?

Buggy code, fragile legacy systems, ill-conceived projects cost US businesses $2 trillion in 2020

Re: Something to remember ...

"Can you imagine what the reaction in Corporate America would have been if DEC or Burroughs or Sperry or IBM had made just one release that was as buggy as the code that is run as a matter of course on modern computers?"

I don't need to imagine although the country was UK and the offender ICL.

The release was a package of semi-compiled (think library module) for FORTRAN that wouldn't link. In that case it lasted about half a day - just long enough to be detected given the turn-round times of punched card jobs. How long would it take to do the equivalent roll-back today?

Re: Praise Where and When Praise is Due.

Who are you and what have you done with AMFM1?

Re: Coding is just an implementation detail

The main language required is that the users speak. That includes the domain-specific jargon.

Re: I can code (program)

It exactly fits the password setup in the system my GP uses. The allowed character set is probably restricted by input sanitisation but no doubt the crayon dept decided that listing allowable characters wouldn't look well.

Re: The reason I'm only a geek in my private time

Back when I first moved into IT Analyst/Programmer was a frequent job title. Find out what needed doing and do it.

"There are simply not enough good software developers around to create all the new and modified software that users need,"

Surely a lot of the problem is that the last two words are more often "marketing wants".

Loser Trump is no longer useful to Twitter, entire account deleted over fears he'll whip up more mayhem

Re: won't be there

Sturgeon has already said e won't be let in. If he gets to Prestwick it might just be to sit on board while his plane's refuelled to go back.