Posts by Doctor Syntax

Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly via TCP, UDP. Obviously, nothing can go wrong

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

"This is pure, unadulterated feature creep"

Creep? Headlong gallop. To be followed, if it happens, by belated closing of stable doors.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

"a potentially useful development for those who know what they're doing"

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Even if you think your know what you're doing.

Checks calendar. Yes, the only April involved here is April King, who's obviously no fool (thumbs up for that priceless tweet). And it's not even the first of the month.

Putting the d'oh! in Adobe: 'Years of photos' permanently wiped from iPhones, iPads by bad Lightroom app update

Re: "No excuse"

Let me reiterate: "A buggy release from a major software corporation should not need to be one of them."

Let me give you a car example: if someone drives into the car you're in they are not exonerated if you don't happen to be wearing a seatbelt.

No joke, just an excellent addition. I may use it in future.

Re: Karma

In this particular case Adobe is telling punters that this happened because they didn't use the cloud service.

Re: Class action suit in 3... 2... 1...

"That argument is largely analogous to arguing you aren't responsible for drunkenly driving your car through the front of someone's house because they didn't install an armco barrier at the end of their front garden."

The situation here seems to be that of a self-driving car going through the front of the house.

Apparently PhotoRec is available for MacOS. It might be worth a look unless downloading and installing overwrites the photos.

Re: Idiots

"Putting avoiding corporate embarrassment ahead of customer's data"

They failed on both counts.

Re: "While not as high-end as Photoshop"

And "managing" shouldn't mean "losing".

Re: so I never saw a need for backing up photos

"There's the problem right there."

It is, but maybe not in the way you're thinking.

The problem is in assuming that the customers would have their data backed up.

There is no excuse whatsoever - not even "you should have backed up" - for releasing an update that loses data in this way.

I've said several times here that the first requirement for a DBA is paranoia. Extend that to developers and release managers. Irrespective of whether the customer has backed up or not they should recognise that they themselves have a duty of care for that data.

There are many potential disasters which justify backup as a protection. A buggy release from a major software corporation should not need to be one of them.

Experience is a dear teacher but there are those who will learn at no other.

Re: Class action suit in 3... 2... 1...

"No doubt the EULA requires accepting arbitration rather than a lawsuit, and limits potential damages to the purchase price of the application like everyone else's does."

Whether it does or not, statutory rights will prevail, at least for consumers and in jurisdictions with reasonably good consumer protection legislation.

It's another of those tings we keep having to explain. Along with things like 5G does not cause coronavirus.

Utes gotta be kidding me... University of Utah handed $457K to ransomware creeps

"After careful consideration, the university decided to work with its cyber insurance provider"

I hope the insurers in these cases are adjusting the claimants' future premiums to levels that will encourage them to be a bit more careful and impose conditions that, if not met, could result in claims being refused in future.

Space station update: Mystery tiny but growing air leak sparks search for hole

Re: how to find the leak though.

You'd have to go outside to look for them.

Re: Call a plumber

Just find one with a fixed call-out charge.

Surely this is exactly what duct tape was intended for.

What legacy is IBM really shooting for? Cheating its own salespeople out of millions? Here we go again, allegedly

OTOH they need to be able to answer questions before the contract's signed so read all the paperwork and decide on questions before then. There have been times when I was at least as familiar with the details on the quote as the salesman, maybe more so.

Re: Savings

"It looks to me that when one works for IBM one should save up for a lawyer instead of pension."

It looks to me that when one works in sales at IBM once one reckons that the entirely non-existent cap on commissions has been reached the best thing to do is go on holiday for the rest of the period or take on a side-hustle and concentrate on that.

Trucking hell: Kid leaves dad in monster debt after buying oversized vehicle on eBay

That Paypal window that comes up when you go to pay through Paypal to enter your password has a pre-ticked option to leave it permanently logged in.

Don't take it. This guy must have done that and this is the consequence.

Annoyingly the only other option is something to the effect of not now. The option to never show it again isn't presented. I wonder if having a default which leaves the account exposed gives him some slight leverage.

You *bang* will never *smash* humiliate me *whack* in front of *clang* the teen computer whizz *crunch* EVER AGAIN

Re: took his hammer and smashed it to very tiny pieces

"These are essential for light persuasion when a bolt doesn’t go through a hole due to a burr, up to full force when loosening rusted bolts."

A long time ago I worked with a technician who used to work at Shorts (the plane makers). One of his stories was being given a design which required him to make a square hole in a timber component to take fitting a square-shafted fitting. Once he was left to get on with it he drilled an ordinary round hole, then got the fitting and a suitable hammer...

Re: With great power comes great incompatibility

They still don't have the universal plug I had at one time. It had all the historic round pins and the now-standard square pins which retracted into the plug body and a selector to mask all the holes except those for the pins you wanted. A work of genius except that it didn't have a captive cable clamp. There was a sort of floating clamp inside held together by a self-tapper what could quite easily float between line and neutral. After --->

I abandoned it.

Re: With great power comes great incompatibility

"Facilities they don't pass the message on to the company they hire"

Facilities will once they're told to either find the consequent costs from their own budget or pass it on the company.

Chinese State media uses new release of local Linux to troll Trump

Re: So 2021 will finally be the year of Linux on the Desktop!

The year of Linux on the Desktop must have been about 2005 for me. In part it succeeded SCO on the desktop..

spent 15 years trying and failing being out-politiced to replace Windows & MSOffice with Linux & OpenOffice

FTFY

Bear in mind that with the growth of "smart" whatever things it's getting to the point where many households would find it easier to go Microsoft-free than Linux-free.

What we really need to know is whether they've fought off that wicked capitalist attempt to undermine the world's computing systems, systemd?

UK national debt hits 1.46 Apples – and weighs as much as 2 billion adult badgers

As elephants are involved, pink of course.

We've heard some made-up stories but this is ridiculous: Microsoft Flight Simulator, Bing erect huge skyscraper out of bad data

Try this one: go to http://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.6088429,-1.8845179,3a,75y,17.25h,86.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNaDhbBqb3_gUqVS9RcF3EA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en and then click to go forward into the side road.

Re: Intentional Error?

I'm currently trying to find a "Hare Lane" (it isn't any of those StreetMap knows about). It's on a modern hand-drawn copy of a supposedly medieval map. I suspect it's just a misreading of one of the listed landmarks at the bottom of the map but it would be nice to be certain.

Re: Intentional Error?

Back in the days of hand-engraved OS maps cartographers would try to get their names or initials onto the map. Unfortunately I've never found any.

Re: Is it ...

Well, virtually everything.

If you can't understand how Instagram 'influencers' make millions, good luck with these virtual ones doing even better

"Marketing is getting weird"

Getting?

Warehouse management software biz SnapFulfil hit by ransomware: It's not just the big dogs getting KO'd

How about, if you're selling ?aaS, you keep the production network well isolated from the office network?

It wouldn't be a cure-all but it least protects the punters from an office junior or CEO who hasn't got to grips with the notion there might be something nasty in emails.

Experian says it recovered and deleted data on 24 million South Africans after giving it to random 'marketing' person

"fraudulent data enquiry"

I thought the primary purpose of credit reference businesses was to prevent fraud.

50%+ of our office seats are going remote, say majority of surveyed Register readers. Hi security, bye on-prem

Re: Major benefits

"but not for all the people in who work in the shops surrounding your office"

It will be an improvement for people who work in shops near the homes people are now working from.

Aw, Snap! But you should see the other guy – they're in dire need of a good file system consistency check

the same state of disrepair as the signalling and points on the Metropolitan Line (over which Chiltern runs), and what should have been a 30-min trip home stretched to three times the usual scheduled amount of time

FTFY.

It was quite usual for the Chiltern line in my day and it looks like nothing much has changed from 30 years ago.

Marketing: Wow, that LD8 data centre outage was crazy bad. Still, can't get worse, can it? Finance: HOLD MY BEER

"The Register contacted Equinix to get its take, and it has yet to respond."

They'll get back to you once you've paid £170.

While the world pushes back against COVID-19, Facebook has a pandemic of a different sort – medical misinformation

Re: TSDR

Yes, I'm increasingly regarding all this as applied Darwinism.

Ex-Apple engineer lifts lid on Uncle Sam's top-secret plan to turn customized iPod into 'Geiger counter'

Re: I call BS

Primary counter was, IIRC, 1.5 litre Cu cylinder surrounded by a longer toroidal counter with multiple wires (at this remove in time I can't remember whether they were anodes or cathodes) in anti-coincidence. I think there might have been a shield between them possibly a mercury-filled lining for the anti-coincidence .

All several feet down in a brick-lined pit covered with a few sheets of old steel (have to avoid cobalt) and then concrete floor slabs to walk on. You can tell how long ago this was - they eventually also used the pit as a fire safe to hold backups of the punched cards.

The sample was converted to methane and was the actual counter filling, geologically old methane for the anti-coincidence ring filling.

And thanks for the extra info on solid state PMs.

Good news: NASA boffins spot closest near-Earth asteroid ever. Bad news: We never saw it coming. Good news: It's also really small

Re: Reputation

"Teslas on autopilot must miss things well over 32000 times per day but that almost never appears on the news."

Non Teslas drivenby humans miss things many, many more times than that. That's not on the news either.

Pass that Brit guy with the right-hand drive: UK looking into legalising automated lane-keeping systems by 2021

I think the article must have missed something out. I'm sure there'd be something in there about making the UK the world leading country for....

It's a government statement; hubris is mandatory.

Anti-5G-vaxx pressure group sues Zuckerberg, Facebook, fact checkers for daring to suggest it might be wrong

Re: Covid 5G

It's a very nicely planted one. When they present with symptoms and say they got it from 5G you don't medicate them (unless they demand bleach), you tell them to protect themselves with a tinfoil hat and self-isolate hide in a Faraday cage. Darwin rules!

Re: I don't understand

Signal transmitted: "You don't have a chance of winning"

Signal received "You have a chance of winning"

Signal remembered "You have every chance of winning"

"At least in this case people know how bad Coronoavirus can be."

I don't think we do - which adds more weight to your argument of course.

Research is just starting on the extent to which there can be long term damage to people who think they had it lightly. It's going to make assessing the overall consequence more difficult. HMG have just revised their death toll estimates by putting a 28 day limit in place having realised that under the previous methodology someone previously diagnosed but dying from a road accident would have been counted. But now it's looking possible that damage to various organs could contribute to death some years down the line.

Re: Idiots

Errrrm.

Re: @Jamesit ... @Mark 85 Tossing their toys about

They're being censured, not censored.

And vice versa/

Not now, Gartner. We've had enough of the future to last a lifetime: Meet 'Formative AI' and 'Algorithmic Trust'

" a flurry of technologies as yet unproven outside the lab"

Only outside?

SQLite maximum database size increased to 281TB – but will anyone need one that big?

Re: 281TB. Cant wait to index that so I can search it in less than a day.

What's your problem? Only 280 rows, they just have 1TB blobs in them and a 1 byte primary key (with nulls, of course).

Re: Bad Developers

When they're using unit tests a good approach would be if it's an aspect of behaviour that's not covered by a unit test don't rely on it*. So did the early unit tests specifically check for nulls being allowed in primaries?

* A consequence is that future unit tests shouldn't specifically contradict the specific expectation of an earlier test.