Posts by Doctor Syntax

Tesla has a smashing weekend: Model 3 on Autopilot whacks cop cars, Elon's Cybertruck demolishes part of LA

Re: Is it actually becoming a thing

"False positives can be worse than false negatives"

Both are bad. If stationary obstacles have to be ignored to avoid false positives the system is not fit for deployment on public roads.

Re: I Can't Stop Myself

"a list of options with no statistical basis"

ROFLMAO

Where are the statistics to show the orders of magnitude reductions in deaths you seemed to be claiming a few posts ago?

Re: I Can't Stop Myself

"The reason that people have died as a result of the safety features built in to Teslas is due to human error, the Uber was due to human error."

So let's deride the human driver's ability. Let's deride the human driver by calling him or her a meatsack. But when the situation gets beyond the much-vaunted AI dump the problem in the human's lap, probably after a long period of having nothing to do has sapped the human's attention and almost certainly when it's too late to do anything and then blame the human.

Did I miss anything?

Re: I Can't Stop Myself

"limited understanding of the problem space"

Or should that be "understanding of the limited solution space"?

Internet jerk with million-plus fans starts 14-year stretch for bizarre dot-com armed robbery

Re: I feel sorry for the defence lawyer...

"Defence lawyer serves a few purposes, regardless of the defendant's guilt/culpability:"

0) Advise defendant about pleading guilty.

Admittedly plea bargaining taints this but if a guilty verdict is inevitable the best mitigation might be to plead and be as apologetic as possible. Back in the day in Belfast one of the QCs, if such advice wasn't taken would simply sit there ensuring the defendant got a fair hearing by making sure the prosecution didn't step out of line* but asking few if any questions. His car reg number, BTW, was FIB 1.

* He once intervened to stop the prosecution, who'd called me, from cross-examining me trying to get me to say more than I was prepared to about a hair comparison.

I never rated hair comparison as generally useful and couldn't understand why the FBI were so keen on it - they were internationally renowned for their enthusiasm. I was pleased to see years afterwards that they eventually fell flat on their collective face over it. The FBI were wrong and I was right. Yay!!!

Co-op Bank online and mobile banking goes TITSUP*

Re: The UK really is a marvellous country

"BNP, the Credit Mutuel or the Sogenal"

I'm sure they have even fewer branches here than the usual suspects.

Worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable and royalty-free: Amazon's Alexa NHS contract released

Re: Wow

"The Lib Dems came off much worse from that team-up."

Not surprising as most of their voters seemed to treat it as a protest vote. It came as a big surprise to them that the leadership actually acted responsibly given that the alternative might have been a continuation of BankruptciesRUs Brown.

The other thing that came as a surprise to then was that in government, especially in a coalition, you can't get all your policies implemented because reality gets in the way,. The big casualty there being student loans because that was how Blair/Brown had funded the expansion of Universities.

"An NHS spokesperson said: "...this company ... which takes data privacy extremely seriously"

Did nobody tell the spokesperson that this form of words is only used after a data breach? Or maybe they know something we don't.

The Windows Phone keeps ringing but no one's home: Microsoft finally lets platform die

Re: Great

Do it right - the W2K UI.

Two can play that game: China orders ban on US computers and software

Why would they bother? If they're going to use Chinese application S/W they'll write it for whatever API they choose for their Chinese OS. I suspect that that might be very Linux-like. Very, very Linux-like.

Re: Irreplaceable software?

"the visual appeal of Windows"

The what?

The visual appeal of Windows was ended by Windows for Teletubbies (or Fisher Price if you prefer).

Re: Just say "no" to Windows??

You mean the Chinese-made American computers? If they do take them out and dump them on world markets it's going to make for some interesting effects on prices.

Re: What a surprise

Yes. I can think of one person.

Re: Typical Chinese

Well played, sir.

In tribute to Galaxy Note 7, BBC iPlayer support goes up in flames for some Samsung TVs

The Beeb broke iPlayer for radio some time ago so I'm not surprised. They're great believers in "If it ain't broke, fix it.".

Re: DIY

And watch it follow the same fate as soon as $Vendor can't be arsed to support $Version any more.

Amazon: Trump photon-torpedoed our $10bn JEDI dream because he hates CEO Jeff Bezos

After watching what's been happening in the world over the last many years - and that extends well beyond any the tenure of most heads of government - I feel that the standard of government would be much improved if, immediately after any head of government ended their tenure, a formal investigation were to be started as a matter of routine to determine whether any criminal offences were committed by their government whilst in power, maybe extend that to the election process by which they got there and, should any evidence be found prosecution would follow.

No political element as there is in impeachment and no possibility of interference which could be exerted whilst they're an incumbent. Just concentrate minds on whether they could, if need be, defend their actions in court against cross-examination.

Remember the Dutch kid who stuck his finger in a dam to save the village? Here's the IT equivalent

Re: In memory of

"the copy function targeted DD statements in the reverse of a disk to tape backup"

Ah, the sanity of Unix where everything's a file and treated equally, real files, disks, tapes... It makes for consistency.

Re: Junior Customer Engineer

"it was just a beautifully architect 3 mm allen key"

I remember the HP engineers turning up to remove a transit bar from a tape drive. It had been fixed with the then supposedly rare-as-hen's-teeth Torx headed bolt. Except I had a set of Torx bits in my really quite cheap screwdriver set and the tape drive was already in use.

Re: About the same time that ...

And Little Venice is in London.

Re: About the same time that ...

It can also be a stream. But hereabouts a stream can also be a sike or syke, giving rise to the surname.

I guess it is too late to stop calling ourselves "admin" or "administrators", a pity as it makes it sound like we're doing minimum wage work

The trouble is that if your title is system manager they want to know where are all the people you manage. The manglement mind is unable to grasp that there are major responsibilities that don't involve budget or head-count.

Re: Once upon a time in Brighton...

It's so long ago that that I had to think about it. When I started to write it up that was my recollection but it seemed so unlikely that back then we'd have bothered with mixed case passwords...

Re: From Experience (and In Hindsight)...

"could've had some investment if there was catastrophic failure tbh."

It never happens like that. Inverse sod's law.

Re: Once upon a time in Brighton...

Over telnet (them were t'days) it was reasonably common for the various characters in vt100 escape sequences to get separated and in vi the tilde would flip case. And in those days it was normal to edit passwd directly. So root became Root.

No problem, just log in as Root. Except also back then Unix had a built-in assumption that you might well be working on a teletype which only had upper case so if the first character entered on login was upper case it would obligingly switch to doing everything in upper case. Root, root and ROOT were all one and the same so the user name wasn't a problem. But when you're in upper case only you can't enter the lower case characters of a password and get them hashed to the correct value.

Fortunately there was an already logged in root session on the console.

Behuld – zee-a internet ouff tuilet tissuoe at Meecrusufft Sveden. Bork bork bork!

Re: Smart meter saved a few £

It's surprising how quick they can turn up when there's a problem like that. A few months ago there was a problem with the neutral. Once I'd reported it they were quite panicky about making sure everyone in the houses affected shut things off to avoid damage. It's probably the possibility of being on the hook for damage that motivates them.

"the UK government admitted this year that only half of households would have smart meters by next year"

I don't count that as an admission, I (dis)count it as another optimistic electioneering statement.

Re: Know your people

Take the laptop with you and you actually regain cubicle working. Winning all round.

Ad network ransomware crook to flog £5k Rolex after court confiscates £270k in ill-gotten gains

How many bean-counters did it take to calculate the forfeiture down to 8 significant figures, especially seeing as the watch is only estimated at one?

Ericsson throws $1bn at US authorities to make bribery probe go away

Re: So basically

It may well be the case that bribery is a standard cost of doing business in those countries. Another way of looking at it might be that in those circumstances the US Govt. has decided to join in the game and get its own bung.

Listen up you bunch of bankers. Here are some pointers for less crap IT

Re: The problem is no senior technical people

This is where consultants come into play. They cab listen to the junior staff who know, pass that information up to the board adding price (which is, to the board, indistinguishable from value) and get listened to.

"The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street warns that banks and Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) are expected to take responsibility for their resilience."

Expected? Make that "required". And enforce it with audits.

Re: Legacy still all over the place

How often is it the legacy that fails?

Gee, S/4HANA. Just what I always wanted: Customers are wary of what's in SAP's sack

Re: It really is impressive

"I hope there's some other advantage that justifies spending all that money all over again."

Of course there is. SAP want that money.

Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup

Re: You should apply for a job with Aga,....

And roast them.

Re: SMS

"or watch Digging For Britain"

What really makes you feel old is seeing archaeologists you remember as students (when you yourself were post-grad) and who have now freelancing as retirement jobs.

Slowly.

Some first time rounders will have learned. Some will be on their second or third time round and will now have learned. Some will go round the loop again. And meanwhile some of us will just have seen all this stuff and worked it out for ourselves.

Just why?

About the only extra tech I'd like to see on a battery operated drill is something that warns me that it's going to need a recharge before it actually goes eeeeeaaaaaarrrruuuugh.

BOFH: I'd like introduce you to a groovy little web log I call 'That's Boss'

Re: This is the best recipe since sliced bread!

Blue cheese in Yorkshire puddings? No wonder you posted anonymously.

Re: Ooohhh ! We're back to sneakily dreadful.

For a BOFH Boss that's 70 days. And the parachute's ripped paper.

Re: Ooohhh ! We're back to sneakily dreadful.

Yup. Another Boss being lined up for defenestration. I think he's already exceeded previous longevity records by some margin.

FTC kicks feet through ash pile that once was Cambridge Analytica with belated verdict

"in violation of the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework."

I didn't know that was even possible.

Asteroid Bennu is flinging particles of dust and rock from its surface – and scientists can't work out why

Nah, it's just litter louts. Look carefully & you'll find it's all bits of polystyrene cups, crisp packets & sweet wrappers.

Pentagon's $10bn JEDI decision 'risky for the country and democracy,' says AWS CEO Jassy

Rice-Davies applies.

Icahn and I will force a Xerox and HP wedding: Corporate raider urges HP shareholders to tell board to act 'NOW'

Re: Yes it can

"they can get funding based on their future worth."

Once they're loaded up with debt they can't afford their future worth is apt to be less than zero. Maplin was a case in point.

Re: @adam

"He is literally ONLY concerned with the shareholders"

Not shareholders in the plural. Just one shareholder. Himself.

I really hope both lots of shareholders turn him down. Preferably with both boards then suing him for their costs.

Boffins believe it was volcanoes, not just life, that made Earth what it is today – oxygen rich

Re: A big misunderstanding

From what I can make out of the synopsis on-line it is photosynthesis and the argument is that it was out-gassing from volcanoes that raised the carbon-dioxide levels so photosynthesis produced more oxygen. It then depends on the fixed carbon (and hydrogen) being buried and not burned or respired so that the oxygen has a chance of remaining in the air although as said elsewhere in the comments it was initially used up geochemically by oxidising free previously elemental metals.

And yes, that makes more sense.

AT&T subscribers back in court to crack open telco giant's $60m FTC settlement over limited 'unlimited data' plans

Doesn't the US have a small claims route? A class action is probably more efficient for a big corporation to fight and undoubtedly more efficient (at reeling in fees) for lawyers but it doesn't seem very efficient for claimants. A big corporation can't effectively fight a few million individual claims for small amounts when it can't claim costs if it loses; settling promptly is its best option.

Since the FCC won't act, Congress finally moves on robocalls by passing half-decent TRACED Act

Re: Color me skeptical

"However, the FCC has clearly demonstrated that it doesn't actually want to do anything about this problem, and so I don't think they'll start unless they're legally compelled to."

Which is why I think the effective scheme would be one which enables the recipient to charge a fee for handling the calls by dialling a suitable code. It would be necessary for the telcos to put n place a tracing and charging system but would allow each telco that has to pass the charge back to add on its own handling charge. Any telco that failed to be able to trace back would carry the can for that charge.

It would never actually come into operation, of course because the telcos would realise they'd be lumbered with costs they'd never recoup through those charges because it would bleed the robocallers dry within days. But it would achieve the required end because the prospect of having a nice little earner turned into a money pit would result in the telsos suddenly discovering they could put a stop to the whole thing without going to that trouble.

Larry leaves, Sergey splits: Google lads hand over Alphabet reins to Sundar Pichai

Re: Cast into the memory hole

The "Closing things down" value seems to have endured.