Posts by Doctor Syntax

IBM to GTS staff: Not volunteering to leave with a redundo cheque? We'll give you a helping hand

Are you inside IR35? If you're a contractor global bank is not your employer, at least not unless you own global bank. Your employer should be your own company.

Re: my proudest moment

"My proudest moment has been finding a position that makes me happy to do what I do every day."

Just like the OP.

Re: So, Covid 19,..

"on prem compute is looking like it doesn't have much of a future"

It'll be back. Everything goes in, out and back in fashion in IT.

Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket's tanks just disintegrated in Earth's orbit

Re: Elon Musk isn't helping, is he

"when starship flys"

Providing it can get through the litter layer unscathed.

Microsoft doc formats are the bane of office suites on Linux, SoftMaker's Office 2021 beta may have a solution

"These experiments show that getting perfect reproduction of Office document formats on Linux is still not easy."

"It is worth noting too that there is an interaction with the printer driver in word processor documents, so you will not necessarily get exactly the same appearance on different computers even with Word."

Quite. And who really needs another proprietary document format?

Fancy some post-weekend reading? How's this for a potboiler: The source code for UK, Australia's coronavirus contact-tracing apps

Re: Sage & onion

"Finally, it might be worth checking the last paragraph of the article quoted in the parent thread to this."

Very interesting. The author seems to think this sort of thing should be left to insurance companies who have proper data scientists and academics should keep out. I wonder who trained those prper data scientists.

Re: Am I missing one huge thing.

" This also allows for the possibility of it telling you that you had received a false alarm and can go back to life as normal."

False positives are likely to be feature. Being told - maybe - that it was a false alarm might come as a relief at first. After a few false alarms, maybe discovered false by being told or more likely by the non-appearance of symptoms, leading to days of unnecessary isolation, will likely lead to the app being removed or at least disregarded.

What's needed is the ability to follow up all these alerts with a test with a quick turn-round.

Re: And the BCS position?

I got through most of the paper before going into skim-mode. In fact it doesn't quite seem to say what you think it says. That's just a summary of a large number of statements about how the system should work without pointing out that the govts. offering fails at a number of them. I wonder if it was written, at least in draft, before HMG confirmed what they were going to do. Alternatively it may have been craftily written so that at some future time they can point out that they were actually critical but without saying anything that will enable HMG to beat up on them right now.

I do like their phrase in support of mass-testing: “you cannot ‘big data’ your way out of a ‘no data’ situation”.

The technologists have been asked to build a system in a certain way and it's likely there's no body in the loop saying, 'You don't really need this.'

That seems particularly generous in this particular case. A less generous view would be that there's someone in the loop saying "We really want this."

In the wider sense of the govt's response there really seems to be a lack of somebody in the loop asking "How do we do this?" or "Could you clarify that?". The logistics of just about everything have been abysmal and the alleged "rules" of lockdown only get defined when some over-zealous enforcement hits the media.

In the circumstances it's right that somebody needs to make big top-down decisions but they also should ensure that there are people to deal with the bottom-up details of implementation and that the inevitable questions that raises get answered promptly and consistently.

Re: The first thing we do, ...

"Is all the source code there? ... and that's just the Client side."

That's the problem right there. Leaving aside the matching algorithm what is there that protects the data against access beyond that algorithm's requirements and what is there that provides for deletion on the data subject's request?

We know the answer to that because we've already been given it; nothing at all.

Penny smart and dollar stupid: IT jobs slashed in US, UK, Europe to cut costs – just when we need staff the most

I agree risking a GDPR fine isn't going to enter into their calculations now and it probably didn't before. There's always budget to pay the fine even if there isn't budget to comply in the first place.

But being in a situation where their operations have become more complex doesn't make sense to cut down. The probably explanation is that manglements don't realise the added complexity and vulnerabilities they've taken on. They're not prepared for the budget to pay to support it - there may come a day when things go so badly wrong there won't be a budget bigi enough to fix it

Users of Will.i.am's Wink IoT hub ask 'Where is the love?' as they're asked to pay for a new subscription service

Re: Let's start a new fad

"My cloud-free, disconnected and decidedly unsmart light switch has controlled my room lighting perfectly for decades."

Mine too. Even better, four switches collaboratively control the same set of lamps. Isn't it great to be so far ahead of the curve!

Re: I am reminded of the wonderful Joan Sanderson...

Haven't seen the film but thanks for the reminder of Joan Sanderson.

"That [pay once, use forever], obviously, isn't sustainable for a service that incurs ongoing costs"

It would be if the upfront price was big enough to generate income to pay for the service - but then you'd probably never sell any.

Even worse - the company has been taken over a couple of times so that some of the users no longer represent payments to the present owner, they represent payments by him.

There's a world out there with a hexagon vortex over its pole packed with hydrocarbon ice crystals. That planet is Saturn

Re: silly names

Chemistry seems to have acquired the same taxonomic pedantry that botany did.

Re: My theory

And watch out for the Saturnian Murder Hornets.

Just as we all feared, killer AI is coming... for weeds: How to build a grass-monitoring neural network for your home

Putting weedkiller under the Roundup banner seems strangely appropriate.

DBA locked in police-guarded COVID-19-quarantine hotel for the last week shares his story with The Register

Re: And this is why the Aussies are on top of it

"because so many children (with their parents blessing) have not done any of the work"

Would things have been much different in school?

Re: And this is why the Aussies are on top of it

"garbled and incoherent announcement from Boris"

Be fair. Garbled and incoherent is what Boris does.

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

Re: It's easy to detect the Aarons of the world nowadays.

"You need a server running ... monitoring software"

Then Aaron unplugs it and walks off with it...

If it feels like the software world is held together by string and a prayer, we don't blame you: Facebook SDK snafu breaks top iOS apps

"A more privacy-friendly design would allow those using apps that insist on integrating Facebook technology..."

Does not compute.

BT suspends shareholder payments as folk forgo pricey sports TV deals for matches that won't happen anyway

Re: About those shares.....

£500? Have things changed? I'm sure it used to be about £50.

Behold: The ghastly, preening, lesser-spotted Incredible Bullsh*tting Customer

Re: "Lying" to your boss

"The CTO said he had phoned the CEO of my company and asked for help"

I wonder what the T stood for. Not Technical, obviously.

Unless they had a transfer charging system in place.

They do, however, have people they know who can't get rid of them.

As coronavirus catches tech CEOs with their pants down, IBM's Ginni Rometty warns of IT's new role post-pandemic

I don't think you could class Emily Maitlis as a drone. OTOH whoever considered Rometty as someone to interview on the subject....

Go on, hit Reply All. We dare you. We double dare you. Because Office 365 will defeat your server-slamming ways

This is Microsoft (or whatever TPTB at el|Reg Virtual Towers have decided it shall now be known). Isn't testing always a career defining monment there?

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Adobe.

Re: LaRedmond Tar Pit

Welcome.

Top quality first post.

Re: The Redmond Redwood

"try repeating that 10 times in a hurry"

You'll probably conjure up a 5 reboot update.

Re: The License Factory

Somebody else has prior art on that.

Now that IBM has reversed itself into Red Hat do we need to replace "Big Blue" as well?

My offering for that is Wearing Purple. It's how they've always seen themselves but the real reference is "When I an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat that doesn't go."

Given the way they keep redoing the user interface, changing the branding everywhere and now profess themselves to be in favour of open source I offer you (roll of drums)

The Shape Shifter.

(Looks carefully - yes the f key is still working.)

Re: The wolf enrobed in penguin feathers.

I like it but it needs to be shortened: Wolf Hall

O2 be a fly on the wall during BT and Vodafone's video calls: Telefónica's UK biz, Virgin Media officially merge

Any from the really old days in Eversholt St.?

Re: Cellnet

Ditching Cellnet was a long short term solution to a mid-term debt problem.

FTFY

Re: Cellnet

And the cost of owning EE was to sell part of themselves to Deutsch Telekom. Splitting off O2 was a classic piece of BT top manglement short-sightedness. I suppose, however, they disliked that business as much as those who worked there disliked them.

I wonder if there are any old BT hands still around in O2. If so there'll be a touch of schadenfreude around the virtual office today.

Re: combined 46 million subscribers ...?

"Am I missing something?"

Overlap.

'A' is for ad money oddly gone missing: Probe finds middlemen siphon off half of online advertising spend

Re: Wanamaker was an optimist

Very much so as half his money probably wasn't just wasted, it was actively putting off prospective customers.

However, he was before his time. Nowadays there are ad-blockers. The people he was trying to sell to could have told him which half. He needn't have wasted his money and needn't have spent it counter-productively unless, of course, those rip-off intermediaries charged him extra for trying to get past the ad-blockers.

And remember, the advertising industry only sells one thing. It's not soap or cars or whatever the advertiser's product might be. It's advertising and the people hey sell it to are advertisers.

Re: Useful summary of the reason

"Or more likely, not."

Of course not. Otherwise marketing execs would have to start buying their own lunches.

Re: No surprise, but what to do about it?

Agreed. And your handle seems strangely appropriate.

California’s privacy warriors are back – and this time they want to take their fight all the way to the ballot box

Re: Quelle surprise...

I doubt they're surprised at all. Maybe the tech lobby are surprised because if they couldn't see this one coming they wouldn't have watered it down as much last time.

Australian contact-tracing app sent no data to contact-tracers for at least ten days after hurried launch

The first of the bullet points brought to mind the saying that to fail to plan is to plan to fail. That was misleading. The rest made it clear that they'd knowingly planned to fail.

The only possible explanation for this is the politicians syllogism: something must be done, this is something therefore it must be done.

Dad to kids: I've decided you don't get to take over the family business. Kids to Dad: Who wants to run Samsung anyway?

"Some critics see Lee's announcement as less penance than a shallow PR trick to lift the company's reputation with the public."

Or maybe it's what we've always reckoned - directly enforcing the personal responsibilities of corporate officers with a bit of attention from the courts helps concentrate their minds on what the law requires of them.

We beg, implore and beseech thee. Stop reusing the same damn password everywhere

Re: In other news....

"Some of the username password stuff is EU law mandating businesses know their customers/users."

Oddly enough, if I go into a real shop either they're flouting this law or it doesn't apply. As another commentard wrote, I've lost count of the number of shops who didn't ask me to create an account.

For very obvious reasons neither Twitter nor Facebook have my phone number unless they've stolen it from someone else's contact list. I have a couple of gmail accounts for whom Google who have nothing resembling a name; admittedly one is on my mobile.

Re: In other news....

"Millennials It’s all about me, me, me, me, me"

If you're calling me a millennial you'd better get the right millennial.

For avoidance of doubt, my banking passwords are important to me as I suspect yours are to you.

My password on a site which demands it if I have the temerity to download an information sheet for their product isn't, nor I suspect, would yours be important to you. I doubt such a site would be able to find an explanation of why it would be important to them that would satisfy either of us.

Re: In other news....

"There's only about 20,000 English words in common use"

cd /usr/share/dict

wc -l british*

99156 british-english

341393 british-english-huge

650656 british-english-insane

OK, that includes proper nouns, possessives and borrowed words with diacritical marks although there's no reason not to include them and certainly not to stick to those in common use.

At a conservative estimate an English word must be worth at least 16 bits.

Re: In other news....

Perhaps he doesn't know who his dad is.

Re: OK, sp which password manager to plump for?

NextCloud on the Pi on my desk and definitely not accessible from outside.