Posts by Doctor Syntax

'Evolution of the PC ecosystem'? Microsoft's 'modern' OS reminds us of the Windows RT days

It's largely a list of the things I don't want in an OS and the good things in the list I already have. I wouldn't, of course, have them if I were running Windows.

One thing I think would be a good idea would be separation of applications and user data. Have a separate, versioning storage engine, either running in a separate container or possibly even on a different processor providing storage as a service, preferably with some sort of authentication to authenticate the application as well as the user ID.

War is over, if you want it: W3C, WHATWG agree to work towards single spec for HTML and DOM

"a single Living Standard."

Translation: Obsolete before the ink's dried.

DXC Technology seeks volunteers to take redundancy. No grads, apprentices, and 'quota carrying' sales folk

Re: How F***ing Much?

But what's the standard deal?

Re: What this really means

The saddest thing of all about this is that they don't expect clients to notice that there's something hopelessly wrong about it. They must assume that client managements are looking at this, nodding sagely and saying "Good Idea". Given that those managements have already decided that outsourcing critical* components of their operations was a Good Idea the assumptions may well be right.

*whether they realised it or not

Google relents slightly in ad-blocker crackdown – for paid-up enterprise Chrome users, everyone else not so much

Re: My eyes, my bandwidth, my choice

"My response will simply be to move to a browser that doesn’t try to control what I do"

Move to? Why? Why aren't you there already?

It's the Round Tuit effect that allows these abuses to continue.

Germany mulls giving end-to-end chat app encryption das boot: Law requiring decrypted plain-text is in the works

Re: Das Boot?

"Once out in the wide world, secure key transmission becomes impractical."

If you agree on some sort of hashing algorithm then you can let some third party generate your one-time pad.

If Alice and Bob want to communicate they each sign up to el Reg and let each other know the handle they use. When Alice wants a OTP to communicate with Bob she selects an article and posts a comment. They both apply the hash to the article to generate the OTP. As a variant, in order to reply Bob selects a comment to hash and posts a reply of which the selected comment is a grand-parent. Or to really hide the OTP in plain sight they just use an amanfrommars comment as it stands.

The generation and distribution of the OTP is looked after by el Reg (other discussion fora are available). The shared secret is simply the means of identifying it to each other. There has to be a meeting to share the secret but once that's done there is a ready supply of OTPs with no risk of interception.

Re: Das Boot?

"Hmmm, maybe I should write a dystopian SciFi book."

You might not be able to write fast enough to keep up with reality.

Re: Das Boot?

"There is PGP and decent one time pads are REALLY easy and unbreakable, the issue with them is purely key distribution."

It certainly is for one-time pads. One reason for suggesting encryption be built into SMTP rather than being on top is that there is already a framework in place - the mail servers.

Re: Mystified; how will they force it?

"It's possible to load whatever you want on some Android phones, but most of the targets won't know how or otherwise won't do it."

The targets will know. It's just the innocent users who won't.

It really is time that SMTP was updated to include encryption as the default.

That's a hell of Huawei to run a business, Chinese giant scolds FedEx after internal files routed via America

Re: "Inadvertently misrouted." Wow, that's what I call a spectacular display of contempt.

This seems to be typical of managerial thinking in general. I've never quite worked it out.

Do we put it down to them being so stupid they actually think it? Or do they know it's wrong but they're so stupid as to think it's credible? Or do they just not care? With a few other gradations in between.

Re: I will not attribute your post to malice, never.

"Yeah, watchacha gonna do about it!"

Send another package with some mysterious white powder in it and see who panics.

"This instance is not indicative of the exceptional service our 450,000 team members provide on a daily basis around the world as they work continuously to live up to each of our customer’s expectations."

Translation: The NSA isn't interested in most packages we carry.

Uh-oh .io: Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains as UN condemns British empire hangover

Re: .US was the first ccTLD

Either that or they consider that basically the whole internet belongs to them and the country TLDs are just the bits they're renting out so they don't need to use one themselves.

Re: Those who do not learn history...

"Unravelling it might prove even messier."

Unscrambling eggs comes to mind.

If servers go down but no one hears them, did they really fail? Think about it over lunch

I'd have thought that a few returns of kit as being unsuitable would hammer home the message fairly quickly.

Re: I understand setting English language as a software standard, but hardware?

"not knowing how to get letters with diacritics on a US keyboard,"

I'd assumed it was a country where not only was lunch important but the script didn't need diacritics.

Re: Lunch isn't always a bad thing

What about Karma #2.1? Choosing the moment to hit the salesman with "By the way, did you know I used to work there?".

Let's make laptops from radium. How's that for planned obsolescence?

Re: Details please

If it's genuinely biodegradable, carbon dioxide and water. If it's composted then partially that and partially that gel complex we normally call humic acid as an intermediate stage.

Re: Biodegradable ?

They represent a small amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere in permanent form. Think of it as doing your bit to save the planet.

Re: Plastics and CO2

CO2 tends to get removed from the atmosphere in 40-50 years which is used to justify burning forests as "renewable energy"

Wood burning is essentially a closed cycle - the wood that's burned has been a standing crop that has been building up for a few decades. The C in the CO2 it releases into the air is the C that it removed from the air when it was growing so there's an equilibrium.

Burning fossil fuels releases as CO2 carbon that was fixed many millions of years ago and that amount of C will hang around until it finds its way to another long term sink.

They may degrade but only into smaller particles that find their way into the oceans.

Re: Why is it...

"if plastics do not decompose, its really hard to find original 1980s toys?"

We have a container full of two generations' worth of Lego waiting for the third generation to come along. Sadly, I doubt we'll actually see them playing with it.

Re: Milk Snatcher

"Sounds like a quite a few people went to schools where the staff had no idea how to store the daily milk delivery."

Milk delivered from the farm was unpasteurised and fresh. Milk delivered to the school had a cooked taste; whether that was simply age or over-zealous pasteurisation I'm not sure but living in the country one knew the difference.

Re: C-90s

Weren't C-90s the trendy newfangled ones?

"You might have a bit more luck with a big compost heap that gets left out in the rain"

The previous generation didn't compost in a compost heap. I'll see what happens to the current generation.

Re: "the fantasy bliss of climate-change denial"

"the cold-blooded dinosaurs that roamed beyond what is now the Artic and Antarctic Circles"

You do realise, don't you, that the bits which are now beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles weren't always where they are now? There's this thing called plate tectonics...

OTOH climate and relative sea levels have never been constants. Those who insist that they are regardless of burning fossil fuels and those who insist they would be if we stopped are both deluded. However there has been no excuse for decades for the amount of valuable fossil carbons that have been stuffed up power station chimneys for the last many decades and the greens of past generations are largely to blame for that.

Re: I scream

"All glass contains some radioactive bits of rock - it's a pain making some optical detectors, you have to chemically purify the glass to get the background down"

K40 for one. When the Belfast carbon dating lab looked into the problem they calibrated and reused supposedly disposable containers for the scintillation counter samples.

Re: I scream

The uranium in glass was a colourant. That's a separate issue to the fad for radioactive materials in Edwardian times. Individual fads come and go; fads as such are always with us.

Re: better way to dish out the dosh

"but when that encouragement is no longer needed, you get that virtual money repaid back, and can delete it."

Slight snag here. We don't seem to get to that position, at least not until inflation has devalued it to the point where it's become loose change.

Re: But the company boards and stockholders won't like it one bit.

Have you taken into account the fact that if you have a pension scheme or various other forms of savings you're a stockholder yourself.

Re: Stop it.

"It's back to the everlasting lightbulb scenario."

At least as far as filament light bulbs were concerned there was a trade-off between life and efficiency.

Re: Stop it. Disposal tax

"There is one (with several points) obvious flaw in your plan. etc"

There's a great deal to be said for ring-fenced taxes, not least that the Treasury absolutely hate them. The hate, of course, is indicative of the fact that it prevents them playing the silly tricks the OP describes.

Re: Stop it.

"Erm, it's the same in the UK too"

At present.

The delivery guys who brought our new washing machine a couple of years back got a nasty shock at the weight of the old-style one they removed.

Re: Stop it.

"Go one better, and levy a disposal tax at the factory gate / port / border.

This tax would be based on the current cost of disassembly and responsible disposal."

Let me add another category. Junk mailers to pay the recycling costs to the councils to whose areas they address mail.

"For three years the British car owners had to listen to tales of its total reliability, routine servicing only, everything just worked."

There was a certain amount of sampling bias. The UK manufacturers were certainly making some dreadful cars but if you compared the state of the average Japanese car in the car park with the average British car you needed to take into account that the Japanese were newcomers and the average Japanese car was going to be a few years younger.

Re: I recall...

"It's all held together with glue made out of horses hooves"

Not entirely a horse-less carriage, then?

DXC: We axed 10k staff, shut nine data centres, closed 4.6m sq ft of office space... and sales tumbled, funnily enough

Re: Another corporate sacking them off...

"Feel sorry for the clients who have long term contract with this toxic puddle called DXC."

I wouldn't worry about them either. (a) They outsourced so they deserve it. (b) There's such a thing as breach of contract, assuming they were smart enough to insist in service levels written into the contract and if not see (a).

Re: Hiring for SUCCESS

"And we can't understand why we're losing business."

Re: 40,000 people jobless in two years.

"I realise that’s pure speculation as I don’t have an MBA."

I'm sure DXE have some spare they could lend you.

Millions of personal files exposed by insurance biz, serial web hacker strikes again, and more from infosec land

Re: Baltimore wierdness

An alternative view: If the raiders did their job right they should be able to provide a backup for the scrambled data.

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

I used to work at a site which had checks on the way in to the car park but an induction loop trigger to raise an unattended barrier on the way out. I often wondered how big a squashed can you'd have to throw into the induction loop so you could drive in.

Re: How do I know you're an auditor

We occasionally get people turning up at the door to sell things and waving a badge to show how genuine they are. The looks on their faces are priceless when I tell them that their badge is meaningless outside the building where they work - if, indeed, there is such a place.

Re: Wouldn't Happen Here

"Yet they seem to have blamed the IT people, who did everything well as far as they knew."

Not an IT issue anyway. IT don't fit doors. That's Facilities/Buildings/Procurement or whoever was responsible for the fit-out of the building in the first place.

Re: Golden Rule of Audit

I'll take that with a pinch of salt.

That's just Huawei it goes, shrugs founder as analysts forecast sales slump for embattled biz

Re: This is what I feared would happen

The smarter you think you are the more likely it is that the law of unintended consequences is lying in wait for you. And Trump thinks he's very smart indeed. The smartest.

"Trump has recently changed from describing Huawei as very dangerous to saying it could be included in a future trade deal."

So just how dangerous was it? Not that his fans will notice any inconsistency.

Coverage concerns dog UK Emergency Services Network as boss admits scheme too ambitious

"boss admits scheme too ambitious"

It took time but he got there eventually.

That magical super material Apple hopes will hit backspace on its keyboard woes? Nylon

Drinking the wine instead of spilling it could have the same effect. Maybe drink another couple to be sure.

Re: Apple keyboard malfunction issues and IFixit.

I never got into the habit of using the little finger for the return key. On my first typewriter I'd have broken the finger if I'd tried. And that was a portable!