Posts by Doctor Syntax

German ministry hellbent on taking back control of 'digital sovereignty', cutting dependency on Microsoft

"Are Microsoft taking the piss ?"

When weren't they?

Re: Do you want to be held hostage by Microsoft?

And ISTR a rather vague statement somewhere that implied the German data trustee arrangement was no longer operative. If that's so it was withdrawn with a lot less publicity than it was announced.

"I wish them luck but we all know the inevitable backhanders and brown envelopes will stop this in it's tracks."

It seems to have done so at city level but maybe not at national govt. level. Microsoft can't open regional offices all over Germany.

Re: Do you want to be held hostage by Microsoft?

"If you want sovereignty & security then don't use another country's software."

And certainly don't use another country's servers.

BOFH: What's the Gnasher? Why, it's our heavy-duty macerator sewage pump

And I was sure it was going to be the bodies buried under the concrete that were smelling.

Chef roasted for tech contract with family-separating US immigration, forks up attempt to quash protest

The guy made it available under some FOSS licence, the company seems to have abided by that licence.

In fact they seem not to have. The licence is the Apache licence: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

See in secont 4.c: "You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works" (my emphasis). As far as I can understand from the article they have not done so.

Tesco parking app hauled offline after exposing 10s of millions of Automatic Number Plate Recognition images

Re: Bastards

There parking vultures sent me a snotty letter saying if I did it again I'd be fined. I decided the best way to avoid the risk of that was to never go into a Tesco car park again. The best way to avoid that was never to go into a Tesco again.

The really annoying thing was that when they looked after things themselves they sent someone out to control the exit gate when they were busy; that day they weren't, it appeared to be a day when half the population was spending a really hot summer day watching other people kick a ag of wind up and down a field.

Also annoying was the fact that I'd driven into town to pick up SWMBO, do some shopping in Tesco & go home for lunch. We decided to eat in town and were about to pass on the shopping but I decided that as we'd parked there it would only be fair to use the shop, otherwise we'd have been out, having bought nothing, in under the time limit.

It seems that Tesco don't actually want you to shop in their stores. It's amused me since to note how their market share has shrunk over the years and realise that my absence has contributed a good few £k to that by now. And the real irony is that as they'd outsourced the car park they probably had no idea about the letter and that that's why my card suddenly stopped being used; so much for their alleged expertise in number-crunching.

Call-center scammer loses $9m appeal in stunning moment of poetic justice

Always read carefully before you sign.

Belgian F-16 pilot rescued from power line after emergency ejection

Out of the fire into the frying-pan.

We asked for your Fitbit horror stories and, oh wow, did you deliver: Readers sync their teeth into 'junk' gizmos

I think it works like this:

You post something which is a matter of opinion somebody disagrees with and they can argue against it.

You post something which is self-evident and somebody who disagreed with it can say to themselves "Oh, that's right" and move on or, if they can't manage that they downvote it. As a further measure they seek out other posts be the same poster and downvote those as well.

Look on those downvotes as an acknowledgement.

First world problems...

Huawei to lob devs $1.5bn in apparent effort to Trump-proof cloud and mobile ecosystem

I wonder if nobody ever told Trump "never give a customer reason to review the market" or whether he didn't listen because that's what he's doing to customers of USA Inc.

UK taxman wins tribunal case against BBC presenters

"End result is going to be that contractors will just charge firms even more, renegotiate contracts to work part-time with multiple firms, or just leave"

If clients find themselves having to negotiate proper contracts for services it could be the end of IR35.

How about having all the employment benefits that come with "a proper job" treated as a benefit in kind and taxed accordingly. Because that's the logical conclusion of treating people who don't get them as equivalent to those who do.

WannaCry is still the smallpox of infosec. But the latest strain (sort of) immunises its victims

"Install updates from trusted vendors, procure up-to-date security software from reputable outlets and don't click suspicious links."

And make frequent backups.

Remember that security probe that ended with a sheriff cuffing the pen testers? The contract is now public so you can decide who screwed up

Re: it's a test of law more than penetration

Just invoice for the time spent in custody.

Ebuygumm doesn't break t' Nominet rules, eBay and Gumtree told

Ee bah gum means "oh my god" in the Yorkshire dialect.

Correction: bah is "by", not "my".

"the phrase is archaic, originated in Yorkshire and is used almost exclusively there, is not commonly used and will not be known to the majority of people outside Yorkshire or to young people"

IME it's used exclusively by people who think they're putting on a Yorkshire accent.

UK.gov confirms: Yes, our former DWP perm sec will join Salesforce

Re: Public Sector Sell?

So senior management from DWP would fit right in.

Congratulations! You finally have the 10Mbps you're legally entitled to. Too bad that's obsolete

Re: subsidies

"Providing services inside a city is relatively cheap.. on the countryside it is very expensive."

You mean that remote rural area called London?

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN04033

Scroll down to see the table and histogram.

Re: Fibre

"And if we have to pay BT for that, then we need to prevent them cherry-picking sites, perhaps by requiring 100% coverage of a county before each payment."

Unlike the cable companies who were allowed to cherry pick whilst BT wasn't allowed to provide anything other than POTS and who then want to piggy-back on OpenReach's fibre when it's in place.

Re: That Reminds Me...

"Boris Johnson 'surprised' by level of Irish border checks"

How could he have been? As a journalist he covered the EEC as it then was so he's familiar with such regulations as the necessity for straight cucumbers. You're not suggesting he made that up are you?

HP printer small print says kit phones home data on whatever you print – and then some

Re: polluting the well.

Sue, is that you?

Re: polluting the well.

Despite all their vaunted number-crunching skills Tesco almost certainly don't know why I stopped shopping there years ago. It's what comes of handing over a part of their operation to a 3rd party. In that case their car park to a parking vulture who I very much doubt shares data with them.

Re: Not me!

Same thing applies. Dumbos are willing to pay. They get data. What actual use is it? At the end of the line it has to either get written off or has a false valuation attached. I suspect the entire data trading economy is an example of making a precarious living by taking in each other's washing.

Re: Competition and Award Suggestion

If it ain't broke don't replace it.

Re: Not me!

"in order to boost the bottom line."

I wonder if this, ultimately, is any more than fool's gold. Does HP actually make anything out of this data (as opposed to the sign-up for ink)? Do they just accumulate it and put a valuation on it in the accounts irrespective of that?

Re: Competition and Award Suggestion

My HP printer is one of the old-school all-in-one mono single-sided jobs that depends on an external Jetdirect box for an Ethernet connection. It's unlikely to be able to send anything back. OTOH it looks solid enough to last until the heat death of the Universe. When I decided to get a colour duplex printer as well I remembered the quality of the more modern HP all-in-ones my daughter's employers had provided for her home office - and bought a Brother.

Re: polluting the well.

I'd just have left all the stuff at the till and walked out although I might have returned after looking up the address of their registered office I might have found it a tad difficult, however as I haven't frequented a clothes shop in years.

US government sues ex-IT guy for breaking his NDA (Yes, we mean Edward Snowden)

"Nixon was just unlucky to be president in a time when journalists still used to serve the public interest."

And a time when he couldn't bypass them.

The defendants are in Russia and Germany but then US justice spans the world.

Brit government WLTM one Chief Digi Info Officer

"the Minister for the Cabinet Office"

Whoever that might be by then. Wouldn't it be great to have a minister with sufficient nous to make intelligent decisions on their own? And don't say Matt Hancock.

If Syria pioneered grain processing by watermill in 350BC, the UK in 2019 can do better... right?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that the UK has been under an economic cloud for years? Firstly we had the economic crash and more recently UK industry - what's left of it - has been under threat of losing most of its home market. Why would anyone resort to capital expenditure when cheap labour needs no long term commitment.

UK.gov's smart meter cost-benefit analysis for 2019 goes big on cost, easy on the benefits

Re: Ha

"My 'phone number is evidently linked to my account number, so 'phone back - system knows it's me (well, my house/gas account), select a couple of push button options, key in the meter reading. sorted."

Mine obviously was, that's why they called - either that or they were calling the wrong number. And maybe now they could make the link if I called back, something they should have had in place from the start. But I gave up on them and have no intention of wasting time to see if they've debugged their system (if they were paying me to debug it for them it would be different).

So I ignore them and they send somebody out to read it. Sorted.

That would suit me. The meter is inside the house. The feed is underground. Their documentation is bad enough that they probably wouldn't be able to work out where it comes from and f they did they'd need the live jointing crew to do the work for them.

Re: Ha

"Now I get an automated 'phone call from British Gas asking me to read the meter and supply the result online or by automated 'phone line."

I keep getting that. The first few tries they'd rung off by the time I got to the meter which is on the opposite gable to the front door. Then I tried the ring back and it assumed I had my account number to hand (no attempt to match CLI with the number they called on). So now I've given up and just ignore their calls. They might have improved things since then but how would I know - I ignore them? Moral: get it right first time.

They keep writing letters to get us to set a date. We keep ignoring them.

Re: SMETS2?

"the largest pump storage is in Wales"

There's also quite a tidal race that could be utilised in the Menai Straight.

Re: SMETS2?

"Capitalism at its very finest."

So long as it keeps this intrusion in check, definitely the finest.

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

"just had a huge chuckle at his rider."

I could at least sympathise with "Some hosts even feel that they ought to try to fill up my time as a matter of good hospitality. Alas, it's not that way for me."

I had a day taken out of a very crowded week that way.

Re: Tracking

"How does he think a pager works?"

One directionally.

OTOH calling back from a land line, which is how I read it? The phone company knows exactly where that is.

Re: A product of his time

Some of us are older than that.

Re: He should have stuck to what he knows

I suspect that these days such policies would fold under a human rights challenge.

Re: Please don't call them hackers. That's offensive to us hackers.

I think that's a lost battle.

Re: He should have stuck to what he knows

There's a very odd passage in the linked article: "the [MIT] administration created a very specific and well thought out policy, which basically says that any relationship where two people are in different positions of power (professor*-student, director-staff, etc.) cannot coexist with a sexual/romantic relationship or any type of sexual activity."

My own marriage was, I suppose, technically a staff (research assistant)/(research) student relationship although there's not much, if any, difference in power there. But in my undergrad days the wife of the acting head of department had previously been his research student. Later, n the department where I met SWMBO, one of the lecturers was married to a technician. It's not uncommon for people to meet their partners at university and not entirely unusual for those to be in different roles.

This rule seems to be harking back to the very bad old days when a married woman had to resign or the nearly as bad days when a married couple couldn't work in the same department. AFAICR even in our case we had to check that that wouldn't be an issue.

My advice to the people drawing up this sort of policy would be to be very careful what you wish for.

* AFAICS in the US any tenured member of staff seems to be termed a professor. In the UK this is not so. For comparative purposes a university lecturer would have to be regarded as a professor in these terms.

Google age discrimination case: Supervisor called me 'grandpa', engineer claims

"A performant is an actor."

A very small actor.

UK Home Office primes Brexit spam cannon for a million texts reminding folk to check passports

Re: Middle aged Golfers

"Oh, and a lot of working class areas voted to leave. eg Scunthorpe."

The consequences for steel workers there might not have been what they thought they were voting for. There'll be seasonal vacancies for Ag Labs, however.

"The invocation of Article 50 was very much in line with the country's constitutional processes."

If BoJo goes ahead on the lines he was suggesting earlier (he seems to have been back-pedalling on that) the overall process wouldn't have been. If a new HMG and the EU were looking for a basis to unwind the whole thing I'm sure they'd deem it a breach of the Art 50 terms.

Re: Motorways

Maybe not a bad idea.

In the distant days when I was a teenager I went to Paris with a group of schoolf riends. It involved a long coach ride to Lydd, being catapulted taking a very short air trip to the nearest air strip across the channel and another long coach ride to Paris. And then the same in reverse to get home. On the coach ride back from Lydd we had an extra passenger. He'd come down by coach for the next week's trip and didn't realise he needed a passport.

Re: To get back to the issue

So what you're saying is that the UK and France, whilst both are still in the EU can have different rules about this; there isn't an overarching EU law telling us all what to do?

Re: What's your excuse?

Pro-establishment leftists?

Does not compute.