Posts by Doctor Syntax

Admin needed server fast, skipped factory config … then bricked it

Re: C'mon, Dr. S, this kind of trolling is beneath you.

If any part of the external chassis is "hot", for any reason, there is a flaw in either the design or the implementation.

Not necessarily hot but definitely giving a tingle that shouldn't have been there, hence the extra insulation. Having a satisfactory solution - and enough other problems - we never investigated further but put it down to insulation good enough for US mains not being good enough for UK.

In elfin safety terms in that lab it was relatively minor. One research student nearly burned down the lab twice. SMBO made analar meringues - at least the sucrose was analar - in the same oven we used in the open lab for evaporating benzene off of samples. Another drying oven ended up with no fan blades: the HCl content of what was being dried had eroded them. And it took me years to realise why one sink had always leaked: the HF that was sometimes disposed of in it had dissolved the glaze.

Re: Lightning icon required =========>

"A red anode was a warning from which you could recover."

We had a valve PA system (mono) in our hall of residence using a pair of 807s. Periodically it would go unstable with the familiar red anode syndrome. Simply swapping them round didn't work 807s were expensive on student finance in the early '60s so I bought an extra one. I then swapped one of the old ones for the new one. Periodically the same problem would reoccur and I then swapped them round again to get a stable combination.

"With proper controls, 240V AC is not a problem."

We had a piece of lab kit - a radiocarbon dating system, not less - that was made in the US. All the power supplies etc. were specced for 240V so no problem there. Insulation however... A piece of steel rod, part of a handle, acquired a length of rubber gas tubing solved that.

Zombie Cambridge Analytica told 'death' can't save it from the law

"the ICO must give 5 business days notice to the subject of a data warrant as the subject has a right to appear in court when the ICO makes an application to a judge to oppose the warrant."

Thanks for the detail.

Re: Pass out the torches and pitchforks!

"But I'm seeing a uniformity of posts here so far that seem kinda vicious, as if CA was staffed by actual demons in human form rather than living, breathing fellow humans."

I think there's more variance than that. Some of us are more interested in the enforcement of the actual C21st law rather than reversion to medieval practices.

"Directors claim data has been destroyed as per the request of Facebook before ICO were involved"

Contract - even if this was involved - does not override law. If they were destroying evidence having been told to do so by Facebook doesn't excuse them.

"nice delay the ICO provided btw, nothing suspicious in that at all"

I'm not sure of the law here off the top of ny head and CBA to go & read it but commentary on subsequent changes to the new DP Bill passing through Parliament suggests that their hand were tied by the current DPA. So no, nothing suspicious, but a need to get the forthcoming DPA right. Entitlement to turn up at 5am with a sledgehammer and preferably a few uniformed bobbies would be ideal.

"Who would you hold criminally responsible as there is more than one director?"

All of them.

"Will SCL now close?"

ICO has already said it won't make any difference. That was plainly stated in the headline.

"If it does what legal rights do the ICO have?"

It's not so much rights as authority. It has the authority to go after those who were officers of the company when the offence occurred.

"Would a judge side with the ICO?"

Side isn't the right word. Judges are impartial and will impartially conduct the relevant tribunal. If the defence haven't a leg to stand on (or, indeed, f they have) they'll proceed according to the law.

"What if they claim they don't have the data to give?"

They'll need to prove that they never had it, difficult given what they already supplied, so either they give it or they admit to having destroyed evidence which would be an offence in itself.

"I don't think they'll get anything."

Who's they? I think SCL or its directors are going to get what's coming to them.

IT systems still in limbo as UK.gov departments await Brexit policy – MPs

Re: The Agri & Horticultural Development Board impact study reckons most british farmers..

"But hey maybe the fishermen won't have to abide by the hated fishing quota system?"

And those who depend on the hated EU as a market for their catch (because we're only really keen on a limited range of species) aren't going to be able to sell what they do catch.

"Whatever deal was negotiated with the EU was, it was always going to mean massive changes to lots of IT systems."

And it was always going to be on the EU's terms because beggars can't be choosers.

Re: Shock

This fairly simple situation has been turned into a mess met reality.

Yes, I knew you'd come out with the "no true Scotsman" line but maybe not quite so soon.

Re: Excuses Excuses.........

"indeed the key administrative change that caused the problem was authorised while Labour were in power"

As the Home Sec of the time confirmed (maybe the brainwashing does wear off sometimes).

Re: Excuses Excuses.........

"The mess that is the negotiation is just a convent excuse to plaster over the militant incompetence that is a government IT project."

I think you'll find it was the other way around in a year or so's time. The militant incompetence of a govt IT project will be used to explain the mess that was the negotiation.

"I was talking about the civil service not wanting to do Brexit"

Of course not. Whatever's said about the Civil Service they have a much better grasp of reality than do politicians.

"To put it bluntly, if they had even the faintest clue of how much REAL work it is to execute successfully on this one, they would have never been waving the BrExit banner."

They probably would still have been waving it. Why should the amount of REAL work matter? Somebody else does that.

"Clearly those in government don't want to do Brexit"

There seem to be plenty who do.

"so we are going to be left with a big steaming turd when/if we leave."

No argument there. But it's not because the government don't want Brexit, it's because they want it so much that they just charged on without impact assessment, planning or anything else which might have been relevant.

My PC is on fire! Can you back it up really, really fast?

"We[1] have a Morris Minor car"

We had an MGB back in the days when it wasn't classic, not really old, just very second hand. It was prone to the occasional pre-detonation until the time when, for some reason, I had my FiL as passenger and the pre-detonation resulted in smoke from under the bonnet. The backfire had set the air-filter on a carb. on fire. Time to replace the exhaust valves and get the seats re-cut.

"Also the reminder not to get the fire between you and the exit."

We shared a greenhouse building with a company whose support number for some reason, occasionally got bomb threats phoned through. That mean both businesses had to evacuate the building on an alarm. Our procedure was laid down as leave by the nearest door and if that was at the back of the building walk round the end of the building to the muster area at the front. I had to make it abundantly clear that however likely it was that the call was a hoax I was not going to walk past the glass wall of a building that was alleged to contain a bomb nor should anyone else.

Re: I recall even my mum (a bit like Dilmom) telling me a fire story

"To demonstrate this we were led outside, with a similar, oil filled jar of cork sized potassium chunks"

Next up: caesium.

BOFH: But I did log in to the portal, Dave

Re: Quicklime and bodies??

"How about sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide"

Chromic acid made, IIRC, with conc. sulphuric and potassium chromate. Dissolves organic matter more or less instantly. Used to clean microbiological glassware. It was essential to warn new technicians by the disappearing filter-paper trick: dip a circle of filter paper into the acid.

"Also, I'm a bit surprised that the boss gets to lend a hand in the carpet roll and quicklime routine (instead of being the body in the carpet roll)."

It sounds as if the boss who had the accident on the balcony last time wasn't after all the new boss of the previous few episodes.

TSB's middleware nightmare: Execs grilled on Total Sh*tshow at Bank

Re: Why everything is always a "success"

"some rules to codify how IT management receive bonuses"

And that's all the management except those in the investment casino side of the business.

Re: To be honest, I'm rather fond of them

"They seem quite humble and don't take me for granted. They don't try and sell you stuff."

If "they" refers to TSB this is directly contrary to my experience of the local formerly TSB branch of Lloyds. It left me wondering what size of account is worth less to a bank than the £20 the arrogant so-and-so behind the counter tried to extract from me.

Re: It's TSB. This time around...

"I believe TSB should lose their banking licence"

TSB was hived off from the Lloyds group to provide customer choice. You can't achieve that by closing it down, at least not until the customers have exercised their choice and gone elsewhere.

Re: Talk to the techies

"doubtful that they'd understand the techies."

That's true but having the answers out in public would mean that they'd be accessible to a lot of people who would understand. Nevertheless this is not the time to be asking them; they've got better things to do.

In any case the generic answer to "What's wrong?" is "If I knew it wouldn't be wrong and when I find out it won't be.".

Re: yep, lying

"No, not at all, and the compute and memory cost of rejecting them is very small."

But what about the customer reaction?

"Obligatory Dilbert. (From more than 20 years ago, nothing changes!)"

Quite so. Look at today's.

Re: yep, lying

"I have designed big systems and the underlying auth system should also control the number of active users."

Don't you then have customers complaining that they can't get access and then overwhelming the auth system with repeated retries?

the main "challenger"

Close. Just a letter astray. "Challenged".

Time to ditch the Facebook login: If customers' data should be protected, why hand it over to Zuckerberg?

Does the site you're planning to use have a log in with Facebook option? If so treat it as a warning even if you're not going to use it because you never had a Facebook account.

It's World (Terrible) Password (Advice) Day!

Re: By some strange coincidence

"Has henceforth become Mary Sue Day."

Who's Mary and who is she suing?

Re: What's the point?

"There's just been two articles about very popular sites writing passwords in plain text, so what's the point of the complexity when the website writes it out in plain text, stores it in plain text, and sometimes spafs it all to world+dog+gerbil"

In both cases the suggestion is that the password is stored in hashed form but that a log grabbed the plain-text password before it was hashed. I didn't read up on the details of the first instance but the second was that the logs were internal so no splashed to world with or without dog but only to the sysadmin gerbils who had sufficient integrity to flag up the problem rather than try to hide it.

That is not sufficient reason to give up on complexity.

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

Re: Try Linux. - Or DON'T! (My love/hate Linux rant.)

"As well as having to settle for slightly older hardware to ensure best operation"

There's the opposite side to this coin. If you have some particularly aged piece of H/W that needs to be supported you're apt to find that someone else with the same H/W has made sure the drivers are kept going in more recent kernels. Users have a motivation to do that whilst manufacturers don't once it's gone out of production.

Re: Try Linux. - Or DON'T! (My love/hate Linux rant.)

"I will NEVER build a PC for a friend or family member that uses Linux. I will ALWAYS pay the MS tax. Not because I want to. ONLY because I do not want to spend the rest of my life ADMINISTERING the PCs of my friends and family members."

Oddly enough I take exactly the opposite course of action but for the same reason.

E.g. I managed to recover a cousin-in-law's files from ransomware but I'm not going to rely on all ransomware authors to make the daft mistake of that one. She now runs Zorin and the Windows partition was left there as a frozen relic in case there's some needed file there that didn't get transferred to her home directory.

Twitter: No big deal, but everyone needs to change their password

Re: FTFY

"platform coder."

Could we both be thinking of the same code and the same coder?

"What, did they use the same code as Github?"

Once is an accident, twice is coincidence. If there's a third then we definitely need to start asking questions because it would suggest that there's a problem in some common piece of platform code.

Whoa, Gartner drops a truth bomb: Blockchain is overhyped and top IT bods don't want it

Re: Your all missing the point.

"But one thing to remember, a business that has a working system is not going to implement a new, mostly unproven, system if they have any sense."

Are you sure? Oh, sorry, the bit about sense probably rules out the example I was thinking of.

Texas residents start naming adopted drains

Re: Community in Action!

"RE the potholes ... there are standards that are supposed to be followed"

Councils are pretty efficient at providing British Standard Potholes.

Or, if somebody adopts more than 1, they could be The Man With Two Drains.

Or Willetts?

And they used to laugh at the communist countries and their "neighbourhood obligations"

Communist countries? This is straight out of the middle ages. E.g. Wakefield manorial court Oct 3rd 1433: " James Norres <8d> and John Thomson did not scour defective ditches at Norreskerr so were pained 12d"

Well, that went well: Withings founder buys biz back from Nokia

Re: Closed Systems

"So I end up with Withings (weight/blood pressure), Polar for rowing, Garmin for cycling, Sleeptracker for steps(walking), and Beddit for sleeping."

Do you actually need all these things?

I suppose they're good for weight loss. One's wallet would be much lighter after buying them all.

Irish High Court slams Facebook's conduct, smacks down bid to drag out data probe

Re: GDPR

"the reality is that FB should just shut up and comply with the law as it is now and comply with new one when it takes effect."

It's also the reality that they won't see it that way.

Even when the cases finally reach conclusion under each set regulations they'll still be saying "We're examining the judgement but we did nothing wrong". It's not as often used but it's just as much part of the PR phrase book as "Only a few users" and "We take your $topic seriously".

Fancy that, Fancy Bear: LoJack anti-laptop theft tool caught phoning home to the Kremlin

"four suspicious command-and-control domains, three of which have been associated with Fancy Bear in the past"

I suppose the good news is that it's exposed the 4th domain.

Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata

Seems to be working

The Beeb haven't noticed yet.

Re: Claim They Did Nothing Wrong...

"It is as if as soon as they become senior managers or above, that they believe their own lies, and everyone else will too."

It's not necessary for them to believe their own lies. They just need to get others to believe them. As that's been what they did for a living it's not surprising that they're continue to do it in their own interest.

Blighty: If EU won't let us play at Galileo, we're going home and taking encryption tech with us

Re: Chokes with laughter

Because of all of the crying about the result of the referendum, the EU has us bent over and all lubed up ready for a forceful screwing over.

FTFY

Brexit has put us in the inevitable position of negotiating from weakness. It's glaringly obvious in every news item and you still don't get it!

Re: Hypocrites

"Also, we happened to ask the opinion of everyone in the country and the majority disagreed with you."

No they didn't, that's the trouble. It was a very close split. It's customary when a referendum is binding to require a substantial majority, something like 2/3, to overturn the status quo.

And it's not customary to hold an advisory referendum and then treat it afterwards as binding.

Re: Hypocrites

"Sadly, there are many who would prefer to see the UK fail rather than accept the outcome of the largest democratic vote in British history."

Actually we would rather see Britain succeed. That's why we think that Brexit is a huge mistake.

We don't want to be proved right but fear we will be and we can also imagine the terms under which we'd have to be let back in. The Euro will be one. Probably the ever closer union crap will be another. It's just a huge strategic mistake which will end up with us back in the EU in 10 years time under conditions that nobody likes and with absolutely nobody willing to admit that they voted for it.

And I suspect this "Remainers want Britain to fail" is a line born of increasing desperation of Brexiteers realising that the EU isn't folding to their every demand, maybe realising that we're negotiating from a position of weakness and seeking somebody - any body - to blame for this other than themselves and their madness that put us there.

Post-Facebook fallout: Americans envy Europeans' privacy – top EU data watchdog

"Hence for instance why the whole planet uses Prince 2 and ITIL from the UK."

Nice one, A/C. A lot of whooshes there. I think el Reg is starting to accumulate a lot of readers with poor comprehension.

Re: "Its about time politicians and lawmakers realized their limitations"

"It's also up to voters to select better ones and not old gits who just seek re-election."

Better old gits with some knowledge of what privacy means than millennials who've never heard of it. That's the irony of the situation.

Re: 'Anyway, the monopolies they are creating are destroying jobs, not creating new ones.'

"We need some real innovation in Legislating Digital. Its about time politicians and lawmakers realized their limitations and re-tooled / re-schooled. Max Schrems has been the only real hero to praise here."

While I totally agree re Max Schrems it still remains the case that without the legislation that had already been made he wouldn't have had a means to do what he had.