Posts by Doctor Syntax

HP Ink: No way, Xerox. We're not accepting your takeover. Well, we'd never say never. Maybe even maybe? Hello, you still there? Please?

Returning capital

In other words "we'll buy back shares" which takes money. Where does that come from?

They can borrow it which means that the remaining shares are loaded with debt. That, of course, is also the Xerox takeover solution.

Alternatively they can divert money that might have been reinvested or used to pay dividends to shareholders. The latter isn't a good idea if you're a shareholder looking for dividend income.

One possibility, which they can't possibly say out loud because it goes against everything stock markets assume, is that they realise the hardware market is now saturated; there's nowhere to grow and it makes more sense to trim manufacturing capacity to mostly replacement needs. They also need to trim ink prices to stop subsidising H/W sales that aren't going to be made.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

"And photos from great height showing curvature?"

If you want to tst things out for yourself you don't rely on optical instruments when the Mk 1 eyeball suffices.

"welcome back to port"

That's not port, it's beer.

Re: Stupid is as Stupid does

"To be what most would consider a "proper" rocket, you'd want fuel and an engine to burn that fuel, and control and direct the propellant."

What do you call things like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29

"there's _NO_ way I'd accept a 6,000 year old earth"

I wish Alan Harper, one of his successors, had issued an ex cathedra statement about that.

"It was founded by a guy called Ken Ham"

I don't know about Ken Ham but South Ken has quite a good museum dealing with creation amongst other things.

You don't need to get more than a few feet off the ground to determine whether or not the Earth is curved. Just go to the sea-side where there's shipping and watch the way they way they appear and disappear hull-down. Then work out how that happens.

World Wide Web's Sir Tim swells his let's-remake-the-internet startup with Bruce Schneier, fellow tech experts

Re: Well, Well, Well...

"Were I in his shoes, I would be rather disappointed in what humanity has done with it."

He is in his shoes and he's made no secret of being disappointed.

Huawei claims its Google Play replacement is in 'top 3' app stores after Trump turns off tap to the Chocolate Factory

"claimed it has as many as 3,000 engineers working on it."

3,000 engineers producing this stuff and that's only for a specific phone brand. Somehow I find that somewhat depressing.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Re: Electrics (especially batteries) are a problem, one of many

"the main fuse gave out. I tried replacing it, but I must have choose wrong because POP something else blew"

You should have replaced the dried out cap. that caused the fuse to blow in the first place.

Re: Instilling new timeframes of thought in a world beset by faster/shorter.

In 10,000 years it's going to accumulate a lot of leap-seconds.

Re: Beware survival bias

"Is there really such a thing?"

If there isn't somebody's missing a trick. A very lucrative trick. They'd be able to reissue cookery books with QR codes to scan to control the mixer.

Re: Beware survival bias

"it was built out of the best materials available and with the most precise mechanical engineering at the time of construction."

It was also built for a simple task. Add a perpetual calendar and day of week function and either (a) you have to be able to set d-o-w independently of the calendar or (b) you have to build in the correct leap year algorithm or (c) it goes out of kilter on 2100-03-01.

BAE Systems tosses its contractors a blanket... ban on off-payroll working under upcoming IR35 tax reforms

"On the one hand, they can spend lots of man-hours assessing each contractor individually"

Or they could hire those contractors the same way as they hire, say electrical contractors to do a wiring job.

Re: It's worse even than this...

"But my company (and indeed my family home) is outside the UK and I was told I would be inside ir35."

That's an interesting one. I'd been wondering about what would happen if the contractors worked via, billed from and were paid by Irish registered businesses. It would, of course, depend on the terms negotiated with the EU but I'd think there would be serious problems if HMRC were to try interfering with commercial contracts with an overseas company.

I suspect all these companies have been engaging freelancers via their HR departments. HR only understand employment contracts. Would they let HR hire a builder to put up the shell of a new DC? Or an electrician to wire it up? Or an HVAC technician to install the cooling? So why let HR hire the people to set up the computers inside it?

"People are still getting mixed up between being an employee under PAYE and a permanent employee. You can be the first without being the second."

Until somebody decides to nuke one of the employers by going to an ET.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago

Re: That's going about it the hard way ...

In 2010 finding suitable hardware might have been a problem.

Re: Serial overflow...

Something about this story reminds me of the saying about the bandwidth of a van-load of tapes on the motorway...

Re: One Per Desk

Did anyone other than ICL and BT (which is where I saw them) ever use them for actual work?

Re: Those were the days

And don't forget you'll need to renew an encryption certificate or too as well.

Then the company running the subscription serve goes AWOL and that's the end of that.

Google product boss cuffed on suspicion of murder after his Microsoft manager wife goes missing, woman's body found, during Hawaii trip

Re: Evidence?

"I am not sure how they determined it was a homicide without information from the autopsy being released."

To some extent it's their job to assume the worst. At the very least a missing person is something to be investigated as is a sudden death once the body turns up. As there is at least the possibility of homicide arresting the most likely suspect would be a precaution. Note also that he was released, suggesting that until the full PM results are in it's an open case.

This is your last chance, HP. There's no turning back. You take blue poison pill, the story ends. You take the red Xerox pill, you stay in Wonderland

Re: Xerox ... how sad

"Just goes to show imitation beats innovation when it comes to profits."

Actually it shows that innovation is of no use in itself unless management has the wit to make use of it. Xerox's didn't, Jobs did.

Re: @J. Keith

"With what did you replace the HPs?"

It depends when you bought the HPs. In my case it was a long time ago and it's a laser printer so it seems unlikely it will ever be replaced but as it's a single-sided mono it has a Brother.

"as well as being reliable for its entire life"

Entire life? Make that the sun going red giant.

Re: the HP board of directors fear for their lives

"and will need people to do work and make their investment profitable"

No. Modern management practice is to keep firing people year after year. The fact that they do the actual work is of no consequence. It cuts costs in the next quarter. The wise heads in the stock markets nod approvingly and increase the price. The execs get bonuses based on this. The is proceeds until the company is unable to function but by that time the execs have gone to spend more time with their money and everyone in the stock markets say what a dog that company was.

There are extra bonus points for the bankers if they can catch the company, put it into administration, buy it out again, leaving its creditors to absorb the losses, load it up with even more debt (the driving force of all this for the banks is to load it up with debt and collect the interest).

Nothing in this does any good at all for employment. Any work that has to be done will be ousourced. Expect the outsourcers to be amongst the disappointed creditors.

Galileo got it wrong – official: Jupiter actually wet, not super-dry: 'No one would have guessed that water might be so variable across the planet'

Re: Juipter's water is already contaminated by human waste

"7.8 kilograms of Plutonium"

i.e. of the order of 1x10^-26 the Jovian mass.

Re: Really?

It's not so much what drives the circulation as the fact that on Earth the disparity between wet and dry parts of the atmosphere is driven by the underlying distribution of water, land and even the relief of that land which, together with the pattern of circulation, determines precipitation and hence removal of water from the atmosphere. It's easy to see a mechanism for the removal of water. In comparison such variations on a gas giant look odd. And in science the most interesting comment isn't "that's obvious"; it's "that's odd".

Re: Really?

On Earth we can look at the distribution of land and sea in relation to the circulation of the atmosphere and see why the variation of water vapour arises from that combination. How do you see that variation arising on a gas giant from circulation alone?

Re: Dodgy analogy

As per your example: the mixed atmosphere on Earth is due to the fact that an almost (but thankfully not completely) negligible atmosphere is circulating over a large solid body with an irregular surface partly covered in water. But how does a gas giant come to be so irregular?

Duped into running bogus virus scans at Office Depot? Dry your eyes with a small check from $35m settlement

"and thus must go up against Office Depot's lawyers on their own."

None of these are for huge amounts individually. If the US has anything like the small claims arrangements in the UK it would cost them more to defend than simply pay up.

'Don't tell anyone but I have a secret.' There, that's my security sorted

"cheap pad of unsticky notes"

Have a word with Griveaux. He can probably supply some sticky ones.

"so he wasn't in any good position to get elected as mayor of Paris."

But what good position was he in?

Re: Not a freebie in sight

The alternative seems so often to be wooden pencils containing pre-broken leads. Start to use one and the lead wobbles. The end quarter of an inch is loose. Remove it, resharpen and start to use it. The lead wobbles....

Re: Freebies

Cool stuff? You can never tell what it'll turn out to be. Years ago my kids decided the actual bags, company-branded, from the shop on the ground floor below the office were the coolest items. They used them to take stuff to school.

"a wee one in Brussels"

Thank you for sharing that.

FCC forced by court to ask the public (again) if they think tearing up net neutrality was a really good idea or not

"It is a virtual certainty that net neutrality advocates will gleefully take the opportunity to rail against the FCC"

On past form they'll be crowded out by an overwhelming messages of support from the FCC. Suspiciously overwhelming.

Worried about future planet-cleansing superbugs? But distrust AI? Guess you're not interested in these antibiotics

Re: Overuse

"AFAIK this is banned in EU, but pretty rampant in US."

And in due course the products from the US will be on sale over here because "we" don't like over--regulation.

The self-disconnecting switch: Ghost in the machine or just a desire to save some cash?

Re: Armoured cables no problem mate

I remember a case from about then. Not what you'd call a supermarket but a privately owned shop big enough to employ several staff. The owner couldn't have been keeping close enough watch on his accounts as it was either his accountant of bank who warned him. Surveillance cameras went in and worked out that several staff were working together. The cashier would wipe her hand along her thigh which looked innocent enough until you realised she'd palmed a note and the action rolled it up. The note was then deftly passed to another member of staff who just happened to walk by.

Re: Well, two switches maybe would have still filled half a rack?

As a precaution against bailiffs - add asset tags showing it belongs to someone else.

Re: How much?

"Steps, which we hasten to add, could lead to an unpleasant day for you."

Steps down which you might fall. Onto the roll of carpet.

Forcing us to get consent before selling browser histories violates our free speech, US ISPs claim

Re: Stop the Press

"If you think your country sees them any differently, you should probably take an economics course."

Economics? Try law, because that's where how a country sees companies is expressed. And one of the provision in UK law is that at least one director has to be a natural person. UK law distinguished between companies as persons and actual real human beings as persons. Your rhetoric might sound great but sometimes you have to look at facts.

Re: Stop the Press

Legislators do actually like to have someone on whom to come down like a ton of bricks.. UK company law, for example requires that at least one director is a natural person. I'd be very surprised that US legislation doesn't have that provision. The responsibilities of the directors under UK law include a requirement to act within the company's constitution and that is a set of documents registered with Companies House who aren't going to accept a declaration that the company is going to act outside that law, The legislation also makes reference to common law responsibilities. It also makes reference to offences being committed by the company and any officer in default. You'll also find other legislation putting officers of the company on the line, for instance the current DPA sticks closely to GDPR and does just that.

I've probably been on this planet longer than you and certainly long enough to have spent a decade or so as a company director. Whilst the above might not have been a day-to-day concern it was one to be kept in mind.

How public-spirited of these ISPs to draw their customers' attention to the fact they can't be trusted with those customers' data.

Re: Stop the Press

"Funnily enough it seems to be hard to send a company to jail if it breaks the law"

It's not hard to send its directors to jail. Surely even in the US they're obliged to see that the company conducts its business in accordance with the law.

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

Re: Sigh.

"single track, with multiple blind, right-angle bends...The speed limit is NSL (60mph)"

Even more interesting I have a road like that - not actually single track but narrow. For a vehicle depending on this sign reading it would be NSL coming from one directions and 30mph from the other.

Now Internet Society told to halt controversial .org sale… by its own advisory council: 'You misread the community mindset around dot-org'

Re: Sniff of some cash

"you can be pretty sure that they've consulted their lawyers about that"

Who may well have told them pretty well what Kieran concluded but wrapped up in a lot more, very expensive words.

Among those pardoned by Trump this week: Software maker ex-CEO who admitted hacking into rivals' systems

Re: King Trump

The Lib-Dems' problem was that their supporters were largely protest voters. For them it wouldn't matter what the party's policies were, it just enabled them to wash decry whatever the government did because, left or right, they hadn't voted for it. When Clegg made the entirely responsible decision to go into a coalition they threw a collective wobbler because the party they'd voted for now had to deal with real situations and make real and hard choices.

Re: "now he’s not a federal felon because of the president"

That's the general idea of a pardon. Nothing new in that.

Re: King Trump

"The US and the UK are suffering from the same political nightmare"

Ultimately, the US's political nightmare is to combine Head of Government with Head of State. They have no excuse for that because by the time they became independent separating them more or less accomplished in Britain.