Posts by Doctor Syntax

Intel, Apple, Cisco, Google sue US Patent Office – Tech police, open up!

Re: Long term

OTOH they have a massive incentive to rubber stamp them because of the fees.

The way to reverse this would be to make them liable for all the challengers' costs on successful challenges.

There might even be an argument for making them liable for the holder of the failed patent on the grounds that is the patent had been refused initially they wouldn't have made the failed attempt to assert it. However covering the costs of trolls ought not to be supported by public policy - best just to return their fees.

ByteDance says it will abide by China's new export laws

“personalized information push service technology based on data analysis"

Based on the sort of "your might be interested in" garbage the usual web souks* push at me I'd not expect the absence of this to make it any less valuable.

Perhaps this "valuable" technology could just be licensed. The licensing terms and audits could be based on those used by the successful purchaser for their own business software.

* to use standard el Reg terminology

Facebook rejects Australia's pay-for-news plan, proposes its own idea: How about no more articles at all, sunshine?

Re: Klaatu Barata Nikto!

"a newspaper coming out that is just a copy of the previous days competitor newspaper"

Not quite that but newspapers did make a habit of digging out odd stories from other papers. As the late Patrick Cambpell put it, "re-rehensilising some Bosnian peasants".

Dell: 60% of our people won't be going back into an office regularly after COVID-19

Re: Remember Marissa Meier

She ran a really successful business or something didn't she? I remember now. It was something.

Re: So the next logical step is...

face-to-face meetings may be the "gold standard" of interaction

My recollection of face-to-face meetings to start projects would be to look around, spot the two or three people you'll end up working with to deliver the project (i.e. those you've worked with successfully before), those who will get in the way, those will sit there doing neither and wondering about the new faces. The ones you'll work with you can work with by any means of communication. The oxygen-consuming obstructions will operate mostly through other meetings. The inert ones will get their time wasted by the previous group assuming they do stuff when they're not in meetings. The unknowns are only of value if they turn out to belong in the first group.

Gold standard? You can keep it.

Re: So the next logical step is...

"Many more people lose jobs. (Aside: do office workers realize how many people even a smallish restaurant employs?)"

I live in the country. I don't need to go into a city to help give employment to workers in smallish restaurants. I was about to say I can't remember the last time I went into a city other than to ask awkward questions at a Building Soc AGM - then I remembered. Summer of 2018 we took the grandkids to the Titanic exhibition in Belfast; even that's not really in the city centre. Before that? Must be years.

Re: salaries that vary considerably depending on which country you work in;

The reason cost of living isn't the same everywhere is because the notion of cramming thousands on office jobs into the same small area raises the cost of living for all those who work there. Commuting costs and the cost of housing because everyone wants to live as close as possible to cut down commuting time are the main drivers. Take out that distorting factor and cost of living can even out.

Re: Extroverts hate it

"Remember that extroverts recover from stress and get their energy by interacting with people face to face."

They don't recover from it. They just offload it.

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

"the lack of contact with your co-wokers"

Also the lack of contact with micro-managers.

I've been retired for years now. So I miss all those things you mention. Grrrrreat"

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

In city centres income per square (unit of choice) for commercial purposes will be far greater than that generated by using the same building for residential purposes, particularly if there is a stipulation for "affordable" rent.

You're assuming there's still going to be a market for all that commercial square footage. The essence of this entire thread is that there might not be. In that case those who change tack quickly will lose less than those who continue to base there policies on the assumption that income per square for commercial purposes will be far greater than that generated by using the same building for residential purposes.

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

"why you wouldn't want to buy some Lettuce off Amazon"

I get it out of the garden. Yet again I have a glut of it...

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

"working from home will be considered by the tax office to be a benefit "

Working from home involves costs to be set against income for tax purposes.

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

"when the mass evictions and foreclosures start,"

If people are being evicted or foreclosed because they can't afford rent or payments because of COVID 19 where do the landlords and lenders think they're going to get new tenants and buyers once the limited amount of slack has been taken out of the market? From other people who also can't afford rent or payments because of COVID 19?

Those who are able to afford to rent or buy will be in the driving seat. They'll be able to drive property prices down.

Landlords and lenders would be far better off, assuming the tenants/borrowers have been OK before, coming to arrangements and being prepared to write off some lost income.

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

"If rent dropped to say mid 90s levels and they've bought or refinanced a building in the past 25 years they are still going to be in trouble."

Whatever they do some of them are going to be in trouble. Call it overshoot, call it a property bubble, whatever. It's taken this to start bringing home to people what should have been obvious for years now - the growth of big cities has exceeded rational limits. Their time has gone.

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

"Fewer people will want to live in the big cities if they're working from home and commute time is no longer a factor. You can live just about anywhere so long as you have decent broadband."

Not everyone will be working from home. Mixing residential and business would make it easier for those whose employers are dedicated to presenteeism to avoid commutes.

AFAICS the growth of cities has been in overshoot for a good while now. Simply getting people into work in big cities has been a major headache for years, not helped, at least in the UK for town planning policies which, for more or less the whole of the post-war period, have been dedicated to separating residential end working zones. Just to add insult to injury for those condemned to long commutes, they were then blamed for causing congestion.

It's time to rethink. Don't build more offices in cities. Look at the possibility of shared work spaces in the peripheral towns. Move as many of those who continue to work in cities and are prepared to live there into converted ex-offices. And accept that even then there will be redundant space there.

"So in the long run i think its better for some shops and cafes to go to the wall"

A better idea would be to let them go to smaller towns, villages, suburbs etc. were the people are now working.

Re: I get I'm in a microscopically small minority, but...

"some people simply don't have the space to be able to do that"

Enforced home working is serving to demonstrate a bigger issue: that the big office in the big city isn't necessary for any business that doesn't have a vested interest in big city property and services. A more practical idea might be the provision of shared workspaces or smaller offices closer to where employees live.

I hope that at some point, for instance, it might dawn on banks that they could start opening small offices in small towns and villages where employees who live locally could work instead of commuting into big cities to expensive offices. They could then cut down on that city office space and - who knows - they could actually open part of those small offices to offer a service to the public. It could even be competitive in helping them to attract more customers.

Re: I get I'm in a microscopically small minority, but...

"Added to which, many jobs simply cannot be done remotely."

This is true. After all I spent half my working as a lab. scientist. But the other half was spent working in IT where one of the major challenges has the hell of the open plan office and a good deal of it could have been done using my own equipment at home.

Re: Extroverts hate it

We've noticed.

Re: I get I'm in a microscopically small minority, but...

I often agree with Bob but usually give up under the barrage of caps lock.

However you've triggered me now. The lady in question was a talker. On the phone. Incessantly. In an open office. In the next pig-pen. And despite working for a phone company hadn't realised that with a phone you can talk to people a long way away without shouting.

Re: Efficiency gains

"Working with a number of blocking issues in testing and supporting test teams in bringup up of test, expect to take a week of my time to resolve"

Measuring claimed inputs instead of actual outputs. Not good before, still not good now.

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

Time to look at how best to convert it to residential.

China trolls Trump with tech export rules changes that could imperil TikTok sale

Re: but he's a late comer.

Who says he didn't know how to run a casino?

It sounds more like the banks that lost out didn't know how to run banking.

Re: Why buy it?

"They only want the userbase"

So does Trump. Some of those users pissed him off. If they'd used Faceter to do that a few national security letters would have identified them.

Re: The whole thing is a mess

"gives an authoritarian government open access to a lot of data"

Remember in all this that a forced sale would give that access to a different authoritarian government. Don't discount that as a motive.

Funny, that: Handy script for wiping directories is capable of wreaking havoc beyond a miscreant's wildest dreams

Makes a change from the Unix version.

Re: My contribution ...

"most of /usr was toast.... everyone's user directories"

The halcyon days when /usr was for user directories instead of being filled up with stuff that should be in /bin, /lib and the like!

What a time for a TITSUP*: Santander down and out on pre-Bank Holiday payday

Sometimes that, getting it in the media or emailing CEO* is the only way to get things done. With automated systems - including those with call centre drones in the loop - things aretoo often handled by repeatedly retrying what's failed. Surprise, surprise, the same thing happens again. Publicity is a way of breaking out of that loop to get the problem escalated.

* Yes, it can work, been on both ends of that although it might only apply to some companies.

Somebody's bonus depended on getting some change in before month end?

You Musk be joking: A mind-reading Neuralink chip in a pig's brain? Downloadable memories? Telepathy? Watch and judge for yourself

Re: Oink!

"Looks as though you have a fan/stalker Jake."

I suppose with a bit of effort we could go back and find some numpty post, probably about IR35, that Jake picked up on and work out who it is.

Still, it makes a change from just going round downvoting every post which some of them do.

"telepathic summoning of Tesla cars"

Road hog.

Re: Eyes Back Head

New here?

Techie studied ancient ways of iSeries machine, saved day when user unleashed eldritch powers, got £50 gift voucher

or "very carefully"

Re: That whooshing deadline sound...

I must say I was nervous about the expect stuff. It could have been done a bit easier to script with ex. Yes, probably a parametrised shell script would have done the job but --- don't fix it, don't even be tempted to take a look.

Re: You get told "We're not renewing your contract anymore"

That's the nature of contract work. Leave on good terms, keep in touch. Sometimes there are more contracts down the line.

Re: That whooshing deadline sound...

"Inevitably, the systems were so flaky"

The worst one I inherited included some jobs that used tcl/expect to run vi to write and run scripts on the fly. Distinctly "if it ain't broke" territory. Fortunately it stayed unbroke.

Re: However, he also got a reputation...

"That worked very well up until my particular section of IT ended up under Marketing, the Head got my number and I ended up getting a call a scant two weeks later while I was on holiday to try and clear up one of their messes."

There are times when the pain of changing a number is worth it. Or have separate work and life numbers and leave the life number at home when you're on holiday.

"However, he also got a reputation as being the chap to go to when everything went wrong"

Letting one of the less destructive ones go -> might be a good idea.

Don't be seen as too infallible.

Southern Water customers could view others' personal data by tweaking URL parameters

"The practice of threatening people who make responsible disclosures of security cockups has long passed out of the IT industry in favour of bug bounty schemes and proper pentesting; perhaps other industries are still playing catchup."

Well it has in those parts of it that actually take protections of customer data seriously as opposed to just stringing together some words they'd heard.

Ex-Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain loses US appeal bid against fraud convictions and 5-year prison sentence

Re: This is still HP's fault

Not only didn't read it, didn't wait for it to be completed.

Re: This is still HP's fault

If a professional inspector didn't find it it could be hard to prove the seller must have known.

Here's some words we never expected to write: Oracle said to offer $10bn cash, $10bn shares for TikTok US – plus profit share promise

"So what is it exactly the the US doesn't want China to know about American teens"

T'other way about. Trump wants to find out who organised the mass bookings that messed up his rally. A China-based TikTok is outside the reach of the CLOUD Act.

Re: I've never used Tik Tok

Even if they don't buy it I never will.

Although it seems there's a never ending supply surely there must be a limit to advertising budgets. The more platforms there are the thinner it gets sliced. They should be grateful to those of us running ad blockers. It means there's more to spend somewhere else.

"HP'd probably mess it up so badly"

They'd still claim they'd be cheated, sue and try to get whoever they could from the vendors jailed for wire fraud. Maybe the CEO who baled out thought they were going to bid.

I can't see that amount being justified by the IP nor any tangible assets they may have for a US operation. It can only be justified by the user base and the prospects for growing it further. But there's no guarantee that a use base can be retained let alone grown as MySpace demonstrated years ago. Somehow I can't see Oracle managing anything in a manner that keeps the user base regarding it as cool.

All of which prompts the thought of where do Social Networks go in the future? There seems to be a generational issue. A new cohort of prospective users is likely to reject the network their elders are using simply because that's what their elders are using, even if that means their elder siblings. Could the future be the ability to pop up new ones every few years? Could social network servers become commodity software? I rather suspect you could even cobble up something to get a new network off the ground out of a selection of NextCloud modules and some UI bells and whistles. SNaaS? SNSPs?

IBM ordered to pay £22k to whistleblower and told by judges: Teach your managers what discrimination means

Re: Discrimination ...... is like a virulent disease

"It doesn't take one long to shoot oneself in the foot, does it, and make yourself an enemy of the people to boot."

The boot must have been on the other foot.

Re: Just wish I'd done my SAR request a lot sooner

Lesson learned. Keep your own copies of emails.

It sounds like the discrimination training they need is how to to discrimination what they need to hear from what they want to hear.

Re: £22K? Is that all?

"Yeah, her slate will never be wiped clean. This will follow her at IBM for the term of her employment."

By court order the judgement is added to her file. Any future manager will have to take account of it because any future tribunal will. And better not lose it from the file because a tribunal will take a dim view of that.