Posts by Doctor Syntax

TalkTalk says WalkWalk if you've got a mouldy Tiscali email address, or pay £50 a year to keep it

Re: pipex

"One more strike and they're out,"

They took over Pipex years ago and you're still with them? I not only got out from under to Be but got out again when Be sold out to Sky.

Re: Alternatively..

I also had issues with Freeparking and went with a paid-for domain and MSP service from Mythic.

"Way back in 2010, Tiscali actually ranked second in the UK behind BT on broadband subscribers, before a 2009 merger with TalkTalk. Its corporate parent killed the brand the following year."

If by "killing the brand" you mean discontinuing it, OK. From my PoV their behaviour in "traffic shaping" killed it even quicker then although in my case it was Nldram which had been gobbled once prior to Tiscali's swallowing it although Tiscali's damage to customer support hadn't helped.

HP polishes the redundancy cannon, prepares to fire 16% of workforce

Re: Bon Voyage, HP Ink

I spent the second half of my working life in IT. As far as I could make out the result was enabling companies grow or at least run hard enough to stay in the same place.

"and so begins the demise of HP then"

Begins?

"even more customer focused and digitally enabled company that will lead with innovation and purpose."

Translation - back to the chips in cartridges to screw customers.

Cosmo Communicator: More phone than the Gemini, more pocket computer than phone

I had a Nokia Communicator. In fact I had two but the older brick was definitely the better one for what I wanted. Being retired I no longer have the business use case for either the Gemini or the Cosmo and can't justify either to myself at the price. Unless, as an earlier comment said, there are a lot of cheap Gemini coming onto the market.

Re: Software

If it loads Debian then it will be able to run LibreOffice. Does that meet your criterion?

When the satellite network has literally gone glacial, it's vital you snow your enemy

Re: Battleship!

Ah yes, the not leaving an unattended car parked. My children got a good few trips into town whether they wanted to or not.

Re: Wind and rain...

'87 we bodyshopees got into work (in my case after a long pause at Ruislip) but a lot of the staff didn't. '89 must have been the one that took the roof of one wing of my daughter's school. Like you, they watched out of the window while it sailed away.

I can't remember which one blew down the lime tree in Euston Square. I intended to go out and pick up a few slices of it (SWMBO had taken up wood carving at the time) but it had all been cleared away. A pox on efficiency!

Re: Battleship!

Strictly speaking it doesn't count as blowing up. They just use explosive charges to open the doors, boot and bonnet from a safe distance. The write-off is just collateral damage.

Re: Ah, those laser links....

Or a 600W microwave backup.

Oracle demands $12K from network biz that doesn't use its software

Re: So, Oracle is getting desperate ?

They started reading the Prenda Law saga but didn't get to the end.

Re: Glad Oracle did this..

Virtualbox is was an option

Re: So Oracle have joind the spammers...

"even by Oracle standards."

Are you sure?

"There's probably no way to phrase it any better."

Mr Berg has an excellent turn of phrase. His second paragraph is also spot on.

Linky revisited: How the evil French smart meter escaped Hell to taunt me

Re: the ability to remotely disconnect

They may well know where the stop valve in the road is. And so do you if you take care to look into these things although that might put you one up on them.

When we had a failed electric supply they discovered that our line wasn't taken off at the point where their GIS said it was but at the other side of the road.

Then there was the roadworks for the gas supply. I'm not sure why they were doing it but they dug up what they thought was the gas main and found it was a redundant, flooded pipe. Then they discovered the mains came from the next road under some woodland and an adjacent property. That wasn't on the plans either. In fact it caused a panic because they thought somebody's conservatory had been built over it.

Fake stone cladding on brick walls is a good indicator of a likely doorstep fraud victim

FTFY

The OS is 'no longer' important to Microsoft, and yet new Surface kit has 3 Windows flavours

Re: I wonder

There's a saying that the structure of software reflects the structure of the organisation that produced it. Maybe it says a lot about Microsoft development organisation.

Re: "client platforms become less critical in the Web app age"

"Are you sure? Mobile platforms shown exactly the opposite - native applications for the platform."

Is this Microsoft running a few years behind and reaching the place mobile was a few years ago?

£99,999, what's your emergency? Paramedics rush to OAP's aid after shock meter reading

Try asking for their registered address (AFAIK they're obliged to do that) as you need it to start legal proceedings.

Alternatively ask the call handler for their full name as you'll need it for your Ofgem complain.

"We have also offered to investigate the fault with his in-home display unit and we are in discussions about what further support may be available to him."

Support such as replacing his meter with a proper one?

Microsoft has made an Android phone. Repeat, Microsoft has made an Android phone. A dual-screen foldable mobe not due until late 2020

The X moniker was also slapped on the Surface line...The fondleslab smacks of Microsoft turning to makers of Arm-compatible laptops, and saying "this is what we meant by Windows on Arm."

What I mean by Windows on Arm also has an X: X-windows.

Google Maps gets Incognito fig leaf: We'll give you vague peace of mind if you hold off those privacy laws

Re: Ah, targeted advertising

It's AI but at the level of salesman's intelligence.

When one of NASA's sun-studying satellites went down, AI was there to fill in the gaps

"Probably just another buzzword funding round"

We used to call it interpolation.

DXC has picked a brand new people person: Finch lands as freed Mason preps to depart

"Our employees are key to achieving our goals and aspirations"

That seems to be a belated recognition for the industry as a whole unless there's a silent "Getting rid of" at the front of it.

If you really can't let go of Windows 7, Microsoft will keep things secure for another three years

Re: Features? Bah!

And what happens when those regulations meet a requirement that whatever the system supports needs certification, the existing certification only applies to the previous version and recertification is going to take a few months?

Re: Given the cost of a Windows 10 Pro license...

Not so bad in comparison with W10. In comparison with the alternatives it's another matter.

Medic! Uncle Sam warns hospitals not to use outdated IPnet freely on their networks

Re: Make these a federal crime.

"because C-suite don't want to invest in replacing it and individual departments can never afford to."

The replacements will probably have the same problem because general purpose OS vendors' products have shorter life cycles than expensive H/W. Tying H/W replacement to the life of the OS effectively means that working H/W which cost serious money is junked and the cost of using it is inflated.

I'm not sure to what extent this still operates but there used to be public appeals to buy a scanner or whatever for the local hospital. Such appeals are likely to fall on deaf ears if the public realise that the product of the last appeal has been dumped prematurely for no good reason (and an OS vendor abandoning their product isn't a good reason).

Even if the OS is replaced the revised system would need to be recertified and that's also expensive.

AFAICS the long term solution is to ensure that the components, including S/W of medical systems adhere to well-defined stable and open interface standards so that any one component, and especially the more peripherals ones, can be replaced with certification applying only to the interfaces they present.

IR35 blame game: Barclays to halt off-payroll contractors, goes directly to PAYE

Re: Pay your taxes

"As a thought exercise"

If this establishes two classes of employees, one receiving untaxed benefits and one not, how long do you think it would take for HMRC to realise they've left money on the table? The only thing protecting permies would be that HMRC employees wouldn't want to give up the benefits. However, in the gig economy the political pressure could start to build.

"10 years?"

If BoJo crashes out in defiance of the Benn Act there'll be a good case for arguing that we never left so the whole mess could be unwound fairly quickly. Once a few factory closures have been announced and it dawns that the increased price of foreign holidays isn't entirely down to the demise of Thomas Cook getting back in will be a political imperative After all it'll be almost impossible to find anybody claiming to have voted Leave.

Once their backers have collected on their bets they'll lose interest.

Re: Interesting

The average domestic painting, plumbing or whatever projects lasts a few days (at least the home-owner hopes so!). The average IT project might last from months to years. That's why an IT contractor might be there for longer.

Re: How's this supposed to work?

"So put it in your wife's name"

That would still be beneficial ownership - unless you're divorced in which case it would be ex-wife. (Or other spouse as appropriate.)

Re: How's this supposed to work?

Dammit! More, not less.

Re: IR35 idiocy

"Most Brits cannot speak another language, so Anglophone countries only, more or less. And for many people, uprooting your whole family because you have to pay tax is not going to fly as an idea."

For a spell I did a weekly commute to N Ireland. Dublin would be just as commutable.

The alternative approach will be to ensure contract and day-to-day working terms are outside IR35. It depends on how the various client companies - and agencies - see their interests.

OTOH, post Brexit, will there be enough contracts to make it worth bothering with?

Re: Interesting

Ministers and people who work in HMRC and make policy are familiar with the idea of getting a painter or a plumber in to do work on their house. They have no difficulty in recognising that they aren't employing such trades. They don't usually have computing contractors in to work on their houses so those are "different".

Re: How's this supposed to work?

My recollection was that it targeted individuals with less than 20% (or maybe 20% or less) shareholding in the company. Presumably that would be taken as a beneficial shareholding.

Re: How many hours a week?

"if you have two distinct employers"

If you have two employers you're employed by definition.

Re: IR35 idiocy

"but also contractors that I am amazed managed to get past the interview."

As a contractor I was amazed some of the permies got past the interview.

This won't end well. Microsoft's AI boffins unleash a bot that can generate fake comments for news articles

Re: No thanks, we've already got one...

Is this talk like a bot day?

Google will not donate Knative framework 'to any foundation for the foreseeable future'

"Knative continues to be an open-source project"

In that case there's nothing to stop it being forked. In the past that's been a response to governance issues.

EU's top court says tracking cookies require actual consent before scarfing down user data

Re: Well that ruling has a timespan of about 30 days in the UK

The recent DPA is based heavily on GDPR. And if the UK crashes out without a deal once BoJo's backers have cashed in their bets they'll have no objections to him or his successor starting work to get back in.

Re: That was nice

"GDPR is currently being revised"

Lets hope the revision makes provision for some form of pro-active enforcement. I'm thinking of something along the lines of some combination of sensitivity of data and size of the site's audience requiring an annual audit of practices.

"tGDPR compliance by the digital advertising industry cannot easily be achieved without close cooperation by all involved."

A few court rulings and stiff fines will ensure close cooperation. To quote Chuck Colson "When you have them by the balls their hears and minds will follow".

Re: Well that ruling has a timespan of about 30 days in the UK

But what significance has an Act of Parliament compared to the opinion of an A/C who can't even distinguish between a title and the body of a comment?

In 21st-century tech dystopia, smart TV watches you, warns Princeton privacy prof

Re: Hmm, isn't that trivial to obtain?

"You could just buy a monitor and separate sound system."

Our TV these days is mostly used as a monitor with inbuilt sound. Even the Beeb programmes are mostly watched from the Myth box for time-shifting. In fact, for some odd reason the colour reproduction from that is somewhat better than direct reception. The other major input is a Pi running OSMC.

HMRC 'disciplined' almost 100 employees for computer misuse over 24 months

Re: It's not clear from the article what the offences were.

"I would hope intentionally mis-handling the public's data would be grounds for instant dismissal"

They'd just count it as work.

You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals, so let's watch for tech sales VAT weirdness through the channel

"HMRC, to be fair, does try to sort the wheat from the chaff: it visits newly formed companies, especially those that import and export, and provides information on MTIC and hands out such forms as VAT Notice 726 on Joint and Several Liability for unpaid VAT."

This isn't going to do much good when the company has been formed as part of such a chain. They're going to be one of those who disappear.

Perhaps HMRC could be more proactive; set up a help line so people could enquire "I'm thinking of doing business with X. Do you have any concerns about them?". And, yes, I can see a couple of reasons why they wouldn't want to do that, not least because they want a fall guy they can collect from.