Posts by Doctor Syntax

The top three attributes for getting injured on e-scooters? Having no helmet, being drunk or drugged, oddly enough

Re: Obvious solution to reduce 200 San Diego road deaths.

And from that report On average, three pedestrians are killed in collisions with cyclists in Britain each year and 10 per cent of collisions take place on pavements.

I just love your accent – please, have a new password

"I pointed out I knew it was safe, that I hadn't provided ANY information aside from the validity of my email address"

And you see no problem in confirming it to a potential attacker?

I had a client who took security very seriously. At one stage they did use a business as described above to test staff although by means of phone calls. I fielded a few of those and replied pointing out that the first word of the company name was "Security" and that it meant what it said. AFAIK the staff came out of the test very well.

"a non-reflective disposition"

Salesman?

"The irony was that pretty much each time this happened we'd have had the mandatory IT security refresher not long before."

Was it irony or a test of the refresher training?

Re: I've been in small companies

"You need to review these things regularly and do a sanity check on them."

It's my view that a policy should include the statement of its rationale. It has the advantages of leading to a better understanding of its significance by those who have to follow it (senior management, is that you?) and aids periodic review.

I'm always puzzled by the fact that the makers of the hands-free in my car think there are a lot of customers with contacts with the surname Home pronounced Hume but that none of them have homes to go to.

Whistleblowing saboteur costs us $167m bellows Tesla’s accountant

Re: Are you f**king kidding me?

Unless you're missing zeros from the Tesla value or decimal points from the others there's an order of magnitude difference.

Re: Whose money?

If any(!) money were recovered by the company it would go into the company's bank account (less whatever the lawyers get) and thus become shareholders' property. The shareholders, however, might reasonably (a) prefer to keep existing funds away from lawyers and (b) want to know more about what Tripp has to say about the way the business is managed. But that's what AGMs are for.

No it's not Russell Brand's new cult, it's Microsoft's Office crew rolling out their Save Experience

Re: "I just want a way to turn all that crap off"

"have now settled on LibreOffice"

Where "Save remote" is just another option on the File menu and stays out of the unless and until you need to use it.

"If your organization does not use OneDrive, we recommend starting to plan an adoption campaign to take advantage of being able to charge customers more to use the cloud"

FTFY

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Re: So, to sum up. . .

Well, he's been talking bollocks for long enough, it would be hard to denay he hasn't got any.

Re: So, to sum up. . .

"The purpose of Brexit is to restore sovereignty to the UK."

Purpose and result are two different things. As an isolated nation the UK will have far less clout in the world than it did as part of a larger block. (Note that phrase "part of" because that's the situation, not "subject to" which seems to be the Leaver view.) I really can't see how having less clout equates to "restored sovereignty" but, hey, we'll have taken back control.

Re: So, to sum up. . .

Not necessarily but it should require a substantial majority, say 2:1, to overturn the status quo. Trying to do it without that condition is exactly why we're in this mess.

Re: So, to sum up. . .

"I meant singles market"

AIUI BoJo is quite keen on the singles market.

Re: So, to sum up. . .

"Most of the world are not members of the EU."

Most of the world haven't been UK business's home market or a major part of UK industry's supply chain for four decades. They still won't be so there's no difference there.

The EU has been UK business's home market and a major part of UK industry's supply chain for four decades. Now it won't be. That's where the big difference lies and it's not a good difference.

"If it all goes pear shaped..."

If by that you mean that when it all goes pear-shaped we'll end up applying, from a diminished economic status, to rejoin an EU that has evolved without our having had a say in its evolution and on terms such as adopting the Euro then I'm afraid you're correct. If you mean that that's what we want then you are seriously incorrect; that's what we want to avoid.

Re: Fire the lot of them!

"They've all proven to be totally incompetent, and only a clean sweep will sort things out!"

I can't see failure to implement the half-arsed idea they were lumbered with as incompetence. Or so you refer to their failure to have killed it off immediately?

"I agree with your whole argument and especially your assertion that MPs have failed."

Where is it that you think opportunities for success lie? AFAICS the whole idea of Brexit was a nonsense. Set aside the economic issues; the N Ireland border issue offers no solutions, only a choice of ways to fail. I can't see how MPs can have been accused of failing to solve it.

Re: Real nonsense

From time to time we have to look at the basis of govt. in the UK. The govt. gets its authority by being able to get Parliament to vote for its Bills. Govts don't like this but it's the truth. A govt. that seeks to bypass Parliament like this no longer has a basis on which to exist. It's an ex-government.

"Parliament has had 3 years to find a way through."

What sort of way? All the rhetoric and all the votes don't change reality.

One reality is that this country is one of the parties to an agreement about N Ireland that brought, as near as possible, an end to prolonged period of bloodshed. The agreement was reached in the circumstances of both the UK and the Irish Republic being members of the EU and although not explicitly stated the the soft border, part of that agreement depends on both countries being in the EU. Actually it could equally well work with both being out of the EU but that isn't an option. The only ways it could work with one being in and one being out are very few and those presented that don't rely on hand-waving are either a border in the Irish Sea - not going to happen as long as the govt. depends on DUP support - and the backstop which the Brexiteers themselves reject. The fact that Parliament hasn't found a way through that one might indicate idleness on their part. It might also indicate that there isn't a way through. It certainly indicates one thing: that Leave hadn't a solution when they asked for a referendum on the issue, otherwise it would have been there waiting for us the day the result was announced.

We could, however, jut unilaterally break that international agreement and get on with making all the new international trade agreements we'll need to make whilst wondering why nobody else trusts us.

Re: Relax

"We need a sarcasm icon"

Not for that one, we don't.

Re: About Time

"yet-to-be started trade negotiations."

Be fair. There was announcement just the other day about a completed agreement. And there was one some time ago as well so that's a couple of countries signed up, South Korea and the other one which was, let's see...oh, South Korea. They announced the same thing twice.

Re: About Time

"I've seen so many people write comments exactly like this but not one of them, not one, ever has any facts or figures to back it up."

But he's right. So many people who aren't economic, business, technology, industry or finance experts have said it so it must be true.

Re: Inaccurate

The only reason not to run the suspension until 1st November is so he can claim that "it was nothing to do with Brexit"

And he doesn't need to. That's assuming he lasts that long as PM. I'd guess that there'll be a pretty swift vote of no confidence as soon as Parliament reconvenes.

Today's Resident Evil: Ransomware crooks think local, not global, prey on schools, towns, libraries, courts, cities...

"Modern DR is based on replication/mirroring and built-in resilience."

Where are those replicates and mirrors? If they're all on the same site as the primary system then consider that they don't exist. The fire that takes the primary will take them as well. You've not had a fire yet? Note that word "yet".

Re: @AC

And 2.1. It's a good way to learn that strangers can't always be trusted.

"even the testing requires time, money and infrastructure."

IME the testing was very valuable. You learn how best to structure your backups for quickest restoration.

Re: Danegeld

It made a nice rhyme but in fact it was the geld we never got rid of.

Re: Insurance

"naturally the insurer will do what they can to not pay, otherwise they wont make money."

Insurers will always make money. They just raise the premium.

"the city's insurer, who pointed out that paying the demand would be cheaper than a data recovery effort "

Long or short term thinking by the insurers?

They can save money by paying the ransom. That encourages more ransomware attacks but paying more for recovery would make ransomattacks less profitable and would save insurers money in the longer term. However, in the longer term the insurers can just raise premiums to cover it.

Yes, even in the long term insurers make more money by paying ransoms instead of recovery costs.

Despite billions in spending, your 'military grade' network will still be leaking data

IOW about one in 5 errors would be avoided by email defaulting to BCC rather than CC. It sounds like it could be a cheap win.

Clutching at its Perl 6, developer community ponders language name with less baggage

Re: "Want a simple, efficient and elegant programming language? C"

"in *nix world useless complexity is what people like"

Maybe, but here in the Unix world we like simplicity. Guess what we think of systemd.

Apple blinks on iPhone repairs, touts parts program for independent tech mechanics... sort of

Re: Soo....

The saddest thing is that they think we won't notice.

Vodafone hurls sueball at Ofcom over plans to relax BT leases

"But what's to stop the competitors forming a single joint-venture company"

Having to put their own money up front instead of having BT do it and then getting a regulated price to piggy-back on that. If the banks had had that option available to them would they have built SWIFT?

"it will never be cost effective for multiple carriers to all build their own physical links in low density areas."

It will, however, be very cost-effective for multiple carriers if they can get BT to pick up the bill for the areas they don't want to cherry-pick.

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: Dick

That change took place because the project was being forked and you couldn't expect them to end up with two projects with the same name.

Re: Dick

I love to see this sort of medieval place-describing surname surviving.

Re: Come on, Pedents...

That's Muphry's law for you.

Oh, very well played, sir.

Re: On the other hand.

Better?

Scrolled down a long screen to reach the choices: Mac, Windows, iPad. So, no, there's a reason why I won't be buying it.

They have a modicum of sympathy, though; Google Affinity Photo and there's an ad for Adobe at the top of the list. <spit>

Re: Dick

The root problem there seems to have been with the surnames. The parents would have been well aware of that having plenty of experience themselves. The only option would have been to change their own name first. The fact they haven't suggests that generations of them have each learned to live with the consequences and maintained solidarity to their own parents.

The initials thing... Yes, we carefully avoided any pronounceable set of initials for our own children although it's only just occurred to me that if our daughter had married someone whose surname began with a Y she'd have become DRY. What we hadn't spotted was the potential confusion when, as happened, she started post-grad research.

Re: With that name

What? You can get used to it in only a month? Must try again.

Re: Divide and rule

"Sorry, but I don't buy it."

Go and buy something else then. After all, you don't have to believe a commentard speaking from experience.

Gov flings £10m to help businesses get Brexit-ready with, um... information packs

At least they're helping some businesses. Those getting the contracts.

Re: Looks like el Reg is being as disingenuous as the Biased Broadcasting Corporation

"not for anything specific and enactable out of a huge range of outcomes."

AKA a pig in a pole. And now the cat's out of the bag.

I'm not sure I can see the difference between a wasteful governmental business funding operation and Brexit and Parliament. In fact I'm sure there must be an Uxbridge Dictionary intro joke in there somewhere.

Re: Looks like el Reg is being as disingenuous as the Biased Broadcasting Corporation

"It's that schoolyard bully that tries to yell at everyone and talks utter bull$hit until people just walk off. Then they claim victory because no one can be arsed to talk to them anymore."

There's a Dilbert for that: https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-08-04

Bloke who claimed he invented Bitcoin must hand over $5bn of e-dosh in court case. He can't. He's waiting for a time traveler to arrive

"Wright has not proved he can’t get the Bitcoins"

I'm not sure how one can prove not to be able to do something but the idea that such proof is possible fits in very nicely with the rest of the case.