Posts by Doctor Syntax

Hyphens of mass destruction: When a clumsy finger meant the end for hundreds of jobs

Re: I love QNAP

"I logged it under hardware failure"

This is the sort of situation where callouts should be charged to the department at fault with a full explanation of the reason given.

Re: Aliased rm

It's something tht used to be advised back......was it really that long ago? Where have the years gone? I want them back.

Re: Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

Not ust mainframes. In the 1980s I had one Unix box running several terminals on a Z8000 with 768K and then moved to look after another which must have had a similar processor but more disk space. We ran out of space on that one and had to fit a second 168M disk.

Somehow back then a workload could run on H/W resources less than a boot loader would use today. Bloat!

All of which was done as part of one of the various pushes by several govts to increase the number of University places, not least under Bliar. In other words, marketing schemes.

Re: SCO Unix

Of course it's that way on "real Unix". Where do you think Linux got it from? I suppose that a bit of pottering about in the future will change it sooner or later; everything else seems under threat.

Re: SCO Unix

In my case it was mv rather than rm but with much the same effect. The fly in the ointment (apart from the fact that it was my client's production box) was that the vendor of had installed the SCO OS and included a non-standard driver. I can't remember whether it was for the multi-port serial card or the disks. Whatever it was we didn't have a copy of it, we couldn't reinstall without it and spent much of the next day waiting for one to be emailed. Once we got that it only took a short time to get up and running again.

Vodafone UK links arms with Openreach to build out its full-fibre network

Re: Hmmm

If you test at 50Mbps and Prime can't find the bandwidth where do you think the bottleneck might be?

Any promises to extend rights of self-employed might win an election, hint Brit freelancer orgs

Re: IR35

"What he does get is close on £1000 per DAY! (I don't know the exact figure)."

Have you considered going into politics? You seem to have the knack of arguing from ignorance of the real figures. All you have to do is get out the the habit of issuing disclaimers.

Re: Parental rights?

That was my first thought. Then I realised what they were actually getting at. It's aimed at clients who are, or will be, putting or declaring their contractors as being inside IR35. Providing maternity/paternity benefits is one of the expenses of being an employer. You can duck that by taking on self-employed staff. The self-employed, if they're running their businesses correctly, make provision for such things.

For a regular employer the costs of providing this will affect profits but that in turn will reduce corporation tax liability because corporation tax is paid on profit, not turnover.

The same thing applies to the self-employed working outside IR35; the business can build up a reserve and continue to pay a salary during leave. This will result in a refund of previous corporation tax although, of course, income tax and NI will continue to be paid. In effect the offset against corporation tax is time shifted between the years when the reserve is being built and those when it's being used.

If, however, the client takes on a freelancer and dumps them into IR35 the payments are taxed as income tax and there's no corporation tax to refund. In short the IR35 victim is in a worse position than an employee (no income during leave) and in a worse position than an employer or outside-IR35 contractor (no corporation tax offset). The advantage to the engager is that the costs of providing such leave is shifted entirely to the freelancer.

And, if you look closely, HMRC also profits - they don't have to make any allowances against corporation tax.

The proposition negates this advantage to the employer and HMRC.

If you're an existing employee should you care? Well, what if your employer is sufficiently unscrupulous, especially if post-Brexit changes to employment law allow it, to tell you you're redundant but if you want you can come back at the same rates as a freelancer in IR35?

"Build a modern tax system: a full review of small business tax (including scrapping IR35 and ending the confusion over the Loan Charge) to unleash the UK's entrepreneurial spirit."

No chance of that. The tax system is designed by permanent salaried employees on PAYE at HMRC based on the nature of work as they know it, i.e. permanent salaried employment. They just don't understand that alternatives exist.

Teachers: Make your pupils' parents buy them an iPad to use at school. Oh and did you pack sunglasses for the Apple-funded jolly?

"The move comes as research suggests that kids and adults absorb less from digital screens than paper books."

It depends on the books. This laptop has a reference library of books which include many volumes of J. Yorks. Arch. Soc. and Wakefield Manorial Rolls. All searchable. Most of the later series WMRs I had in hard copy before they went on line on archive.org but they're less useful. An annoyance about that is the fact that Cambridge "helpfully" reprinted some of the first series of WMRs and they didn't get put online. I bought them but they're also less useful than the remainder of the online series.

Re: Where have I seen this before?

"Is there anything they need before university that school-hosted NextCloud + NextCloud sync app + Libre Office on hardware of their own choice couldn't do?"

I'd go a step further than that. There ought to be scope for Chromebook level hardware to run the client end of that. Apart from the educational use it would make a secure travel machine without depending on a Google back end.

To avoid that Titanic feeling, boffins create an unsinkable hydrophobic metal with laser power

Re: Could this reduce friction?

Yes, but they're aquatic organisms and the whole ide of this is to leave the surface dry. Would they even get a chance to settle there?

Senior GitLab exec resigns over plan to stop hiring engineers in China and Russia

"t's suggested in the discussion that an enterprise customer asked specifically for a guarantee that admins in China and Russia could not access its data through GitLab and GitLab has no technical means to prevent that."

If the last part of that is true they have bigger problems than where their employees live.

All bets are Hoff: DXC exec is standing for Brexit Party in UK General Election

Re: West Worthing?

"when politicians decide that they need to start beating the drums to get elected and folk fall for that old trick yet again, you can be sure that the villages will be burning soon."

I read On Agression about the time the troubles were starting up again in the late '60s. It was an amazingly accurate description of the behaviour displayed by politicians then.

Does Worthing really have more Neolithic flint mines than Grimes Graves?

Re: West Worthing?

" have no doubt some did vote in particular to end free movement (particularly in historically Labour areas) as said free movement was at least perceived to be depressing wages."

They're going to have a bit of a shock when they find what happens to wages when their employer, who's in the UK as an EU base, or their employer's direct or indirect customer for similar reasons, buggers off. Even without that particular exposure disappearing businesses will affect wages through unemployment. Still, don't worry; jam tomorrow.

UK Home Office: We will register thousands of deactivated firearms with no database

Re: Of course one can't store details of deactivated weaponry in an email system...

That's the way it goes.

It's the Home Office. They have the hashtags.

Re: "no requirement of 'registration' for deactivated firearms"

A long time ago now but some guys were pinched for making Sterlings (IIRC) in a workshop in the basement of the David Keir building in Queens, Belfast.

Re: Sounds like a job for...

Not on the server. Download them, delete them and keep them in the deleted bin. SOP.

Re: Sounds like a job for...

Overkill. It'll be a spreadsheet. Or possibly several so everyone in the office has their own.

One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark

Re: Sounds a typical

"government project where the poor guys trying to run the damn thing are micromanaged by 6 dozen competing agencies all trying to assert their control of said flagship project."

The first thing to specify on a project like that are the locks. The ones on the doors that keep the micromanagers out.

Who, me?

Go on. You know who you are and you know you want to.

When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences

Back in the days before the PC if a business didn't have a mainframe (most of them) there would be well established manual procedures for handling documents. In particular there would be trained secretaries and filing clerks. Part of starting a new job would be to learn what the procedures were to follow. For instance when I started in the lab I'd be shown how case files were started at reception, why we used duplicate lab notebooks with the top copies going into the case files and case files and typed up reports going back to reception to be filed.

We now have a situation where "the computer" is expected to take over a lot of that handling. But the business-wide manual procedures haven't been replaced by ones suitable for the new environment. Part of the problem might be that a lot of what the secretarial or clerical staff did has fallen to those who those staff used to support. Part of it might be that older secretarial staff who were trained in a pre-PC world haven't been retrained or that training hasn't kept pace with IT facilities. Part may be that such practices as are in place are heavily influenced by the days of stand-alone PCs. And a huge chunk of it is that "the computer" simply doesn't do that job on its own.

It should be up to the business as a whole to decide and tell new staff "how we do things here". Obviously it's going to involve IT to ensure that what users are instructed to do works with backup procedures etc. That's part of the deciding by the business as a whole; IT is part of the whole business (What? You've outsourced it? Now you really have a problem because a big IT-shaped part of your business is missing.). But because it's how we, the business, do things it's not IT telling people what to do.

The deciding is going to have to involve senior people, those who traditionally had the support of the secretarial staff because the "we" in "how we do things here" is going to have to include them. The VP and the legal secretary of earlier comments who kept stuff on their desktops would previously have had somebody else to do their filing; now they have to use whatever's provided to do it themselves.

Re: Er, happened to me last month

Just coming back to say that sync a reasonably deep directory and you'll discover that Microsoft are rank amateurs in interesting completion predictions.

Re: Beautiful

It probably works better for people with a Unix background otherwise it sounds more like their domestic stuff.

Re: Er, happened to me last month

"This would never happen on my linux systems."

It depends what you're using. The Next/OpenCloud client has that as an option.

Which reminds me, I must get more of my directories synced.

Re: "Your backup routines suck!"

"I think you mean the user was not educated"

Previously. After the event they were.

Re: Piss poor IT management

How hard is it to insert a step before the "reformat drive" where the support dude he sent makes a quick copy of My Documents?

It depends on circumstances. If the user is screaming to get the PC back in action they're not going to be happy if you start booting up a recovery CD to get the files off.

Re: My current organisation is like that

"you must be an expert on it so it's suddenly your responsibility to fix the mess they've made."

Expertise costs money. Before clearing up their mess ask for their cost centre code because it'll have to be charged.

Re: Not an IT problem

At which you point to the poster on the wall which says "Experience is a dear teacher but there are those that well learn by no other."

Instructions and warnings are two different things.

Re: Beautiful

"What you don't do is wash your hands of it because you sent out an email and now your arse is covered."

Now wash your hands.

Re: Not an IT problem

I'm with you up to a point but it's also management's call on what's a long dead system. The system you might want to get rid of might be the one that does the work that brings in the money that pays IT's wages.

Congress to FCC: Where’s the damn report on mobile companies selling location data?

Do they have the power to have him subpoenaed arrested and brought before them to be questioned under caution? And tell him he'll stay there until they're happy with his answers.

Here are some deadhead jobs any chatbot could take over right now

Re: "Microsoft scammers"

their details were getting forwarded to action fraud etc /dev/null

Re: why don't phishers script a few skills so that a voice-AI can make unsolicited phone calls

"Remaining silent makes them hang up."

Eventually. Or have they wised up since the days they used to ring me? I seem to have got on a blacklist & never get any of those these days.

Re: why don't phishers script a few skills so that a voice-AI can make unsolicited phone calls

"What question do I ask for Windows?"

Tell them you really need the licence number otherwise you won't know which one they're ringing about. Yes, you're looking after about 1,000 of them. Really get his hopes up that he's landed a big fish. Or phish.

What do you get when you allegedly mix Wireshark, a gumshoe child molester, and a court PC? A judge facing hacking charges

That doesn't preclude the DA having instructed the court IT staff to do that. I wouldn't have thought he'd be entitled to do that but maybe the reality is different. She should have issued a warrant to the investigator and made it official.

Open wide, very wide: Xerox considers buying HP. Yes, the HP that is more than three times its market cap

Sounds like a lot of balls to me.

Re: Bottom of the barrel

"they used to produce good quality printers. Adding a scanner on top really should have been easy for them"

They did that. My HP all-in-one works just fine. And keeps on working. Unfortunately for HP it means I'll never need to buy another. They don't like that so the later ones are cheaper to build and you will need to buy another. That seems to be the thinking. It back-fired. I wanted to buy a colour one. Having seen more recent HP printers I didn't buy my colour one from them. Maybe it does work overall because there do seem to be places where nobody ever got fired for buying from HP.

Re: How are they going to fund it?

Then they file Chapter 7 because none of the "leaders" have any idea how to actually make and sell products at a decent price.

Re: How are they going to fund it?

And economists still wonder why productivity has stayed flat.

Dough! Jobs microsite for UK's data watchdog set hundreds of cookies without visitors' consent

Re: Dumb, dumb, dumb

" What in the name of all that's clueless were they thinking"

It's Hays. That probably negates your question.

Blood, snot and fear: Why the travelling lone tech reporter should always knock twice

"a young lady who I vaguely knew. She seemed to think it was obviously pre-ordained so I stayed."

And got to know her less vaguely?

Re: Interesting problem

Poisson d'Avril?

Re: Hope the hack is up to date with his TB jab

"which IIRC contains 23 separate needles for the strains"

It's a long time ago but IIRC the multiple needle thing was the test which was supposed to come up and leave a scab if it was positive. The scab could leave a permanent scar. You used to see people with one or even two scars the size of an old halfpenny on their upper arm. My test? Not the slightest reaction so I got the jab with a singe needle.

Have you been naughty, or have you been really naughty? Microsoft 365 users to get their very own Compliance Score

First step to compliance: don't put your stuff on somebody else's server which can be accessed by a foreign - or any other - busybody just by telling the operator to hand it over.

Sure, we made your Wi-Fi routers phone home with telemetry, says Ubiquiti. What of it?

"Ubiquiti told customers all of the information is being handled securely, and has been cleared to comply with GDPR"

By whom?

And did nobody think of what might happen when this hit the fan? Actually, it's quite possible somebody did and were told to stop being negative.

Communication, communication – and politics: Iowa saga of cuffed infosec pros reveals pentest pitfalls

Re: Due diligence

One can almost hear the sheriff saying "Boys, you in a heap of trouble."

Until the writ for malicious prosecution lands.