Posts by Doctor Syntax

Hi! It looks like you're working on a marketing strategy for a product nowhere near release! Would you like help?

"Marketing creates relationships with customers"

All too often it seems to be that they don't care what relationship they create as they're quite good at creating negative ones. Or would they blame that on over-pushy salesmen?

Firstly that the engineer with a product that is, seemingly, delayed by a year has so little work to do they have to stroll the corridors trying to find something to turn their hand at.

Ian describes it as "taking a break from the screen" which sounds like quite productive behaviour. Very often the insight into a difficult problem happens when taking a break or, as I've often found, on the journey home. I think the limited amount n information on the screen can inhibit looking at the problem as a whole; wandering off with the whole of the problem in one's subconscious but without that limited focus can be all that's needed to find the solution.

Other than that I agree, it was a very dysfunctional company.

P-p-p-pick up a Pengwin: Windows Subsystem for Linux boffins talk version 2

"It's the lack of usable enterprise end-user software in the Linux environment that is the problem."

Did you actually read what I and others wrote?

Re: Embrace....Extend...Extinguish....Except.....

"No doubt this will gain limited traction amongst the dinosaurs, but so far as 'Linux' and 'FLOSS' are concerned it's irrelevant."

Couldn't agree more. From my point of view the Linux desktop does almost everything needed and for the increasingly rare occasions when it doesn't W2K in VBox is enough.

But imagine if you absolutely had to do something that depended on Linux in JJ Carter's setup....

Anecdotal evidence from other comments shows that there are poor sods working in those circumstances and they see that they are the target audience for this.

Re: Embrace....Extend...Extinguish....Except.....

"Or am I missing something?"

Yes. A couple of comments on my earlier comment explained it, as did previous comments when this was discussed.

It seems the target for this is individuals who have to use Linux to do their jobs, possibly working on cross-platform development but are stuck with employers who absolutely insist on Windows and nothing but Windows. It's a kludge to enable them to do their work on an ostensibly single-boot Windows desktop.

It's a substitute for the sanity of providing employees with the proper tools to do their jobs.

It's not relevant to Linux servers.

Based on comments on previous articles about this both these kludges solutions are to support enterprises that need Linux but mandate Windows. Perhaps it's the enterprises that need to be fixed, not Windows.

What's that? Uber isn't actually worth $82bn? Reverse-gear IPO shows the gig (economy) is up

Re: PT Barnum

Add in "sharing" so get round inconvenient regulation.

Re: Holland, Tulips, early/mid 1600s ...

Schools don't need to put more effort into STEM subjects, they need to put it into teaching history.

Re: @Time Waster - I'm not sure I see how they get to profitability

"places that actually have winter and weather"

Also place with narrow lanes, visiting walkers with little sense of self-preservation and visiting cyclists with zero to negative sense of self-preservation, occasional straying sheep and horse riders. The horse riders are the least of the problems, they're usually local, don't try riding several abreast and have a good view over the walls of what's round the next corner.

Amazon agrees to stop selling toxic jewelry, school supplies to kids, coughs up some couch change ($700,000)

Re: The Ways of the World

Says an A/C

Re: "I've been a customer of theirs since 1999 when they only sold books"

"It's kind of difficult to find lead, mercury and cadmium in books. I think you really have to find a very specialized print shop to get that stuff into a book."

Fillers in the paper and pigments in covers are two possibilities. Maybe coloured inks as well. Or polluted water in either paper or ink manufacture.

Re: If I were a betting man...

"I don't even know why Amazon let that happen to them"

Trying to do too many things. Sourcing and selling was one thing. Add in Kindle, Prime, market place, AWS, launching rockets...

Re: If I were a betting man...

"Amazon never used to be like this, they could and should definitely do more to clear this up or they're going to find people deserting them in droves for a clear and trusted market place where there's quality control in the supply chain."

Whilst I agree in principle the problem with this is that the sheer size of Amazon makes it difficult for such a competing market place to get established. After all, it's not going to be eBay is it?

NPM today stands for Now Paging Microsoft: GitHub just launched its own software registry

Re: Looks like NPM has been successful after all

"I'm afraid NPM Inc will become another good example "how-not-to" in business school courses."

Do business schools teach the meaning of the word "not"?

Timely Trump tariffs tax tech totally: 25 per cent levy on modems, fiber optics, networking gear, semiconductors…

Re: Same old, same old

"He wrote the book...and has obviously read it"

Those with whom he's "dealing" will also have read it and understand what he's up to. Who needs espionage when your opponent tells you what he's up to?

Essex named sexiest British accent followed closely by, um, Glaswegian

"Belfast NI"

It varies enormously. SWMBO's accent is a world away from Sandy Row or Newtonards Rd although, in fact, only a few miles. I think of it as a QUB accent. Whatever, I've spent the last half century or more with it very happily.

Re: popular belief

Allegedly he thought he was doing a really good accent and nobody told him otherwise, either because he was the big star or they were too polite.

Re: "the Dublin accent"

Likewise Belfast.

Re: No accent?

"I've always found it amusing when people assert that they don't have an accent."

One of the things I find about Plus Net as an ISP is that if I ring them they don't have an accent.

Re: They've kinda missed abit...

"The Yorkshire accent is pretty much North Yorkshire and some parts of West Yorkshire that wish they were in North Yorkshire"

Not so much now but it used to differ from village to village. And I can only assume that large parts of the North Riding were envious of the West Riding given the way they were grabbed into North Yorkshire in 1974. (We'd like Saddleworth back as well.)

Re: They've kinda missed abit...

"to be honest, there is actually quite a lot of under-rated pleasant countryside in that part of the world: trust those Yorkshire folk to keep it to themselves"

A former neighbour said he'd met someone convinced LOTSW countryside had been filmed somewhere else. If you show 'em and they still don't believe, what more can you do?

Re: Same for NI

"Not to mention the Ballymena one"

IME N Antrim is even more extreme.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin unveils 'Blue Moon' lander, making it way too easy for manchild Elon Musk to take the piss

It makes a change from leaving your stuff in the neighbour's bin.

Photo 'memories' storage biz Ever uses family snaps to train facial recognition AI

There seems scope for a little innocent amusement here. Uploading many copies of the same photograph - or even better, multiple copies of several different photographs of the same face, all tagged with different names and many photographs of different people all tagged with the same name. Maybe for the latter, the output of one of these systems that are supposed to generate photo-real images of faces.

Re: “We have always taken steps to ensure that Ever is in compliance with all applicable laws"

That "in compliance with" seems to be latest PR speak. Given that it sidesteps the simple word "obey" it raises immediate distrust.

AI has automated everything including this headline curly bracket semicolon

I thank you commentards for reinforcing my avoidance of shopping malls. It's better to learn from other's mistakes.

Re: Are you sure real stupidity get us there

Jerry Pournelle said it didn't do well with real-world problems such as losing your luggage at the airport.

"if said Electric Monk were to go wrong, and start believing everything it saw on the internet?"

How do Electric Monks handle schizophrenia?

If they did, they'd never hit [deadline|pub].

Just helping things along.

Sushovan Hussain told me to fiddle revenues, says Autonomy sales chief

"All in all, the scene was not typical of what one would imagine from High Court exchanges between 2019's Commercial Litigation Silk of the Year and the attorney-general of the Duchy of Lancaster, himself a part-time High Court judge."

This sounds like the sort of legal fencing barristers are paid for, just the scene I would expect.

Re: Another witness?

Only if he can get a Round Truitt.

Uber, Lyft rides among the biggest reasons why you're probably sitting in traffic right now – study

Re: mass transit systems that work

"Where I live, I can get within 400 meters of any point within the entire metropolitan area (population 3+ million) within 30 to 90 minutes using public transit, at any time between 5 am and 1 am next day."

Another case of "works for me so it must work for everyone". It doesn't.

A little while after I retired I had to go back to my former client to sign off some paperwork. I tried working out how long it would take me by public transport. It turned out that the best effort to get there as close to 9 am. as possible would involve starting out just before 6.30 to catch a bus. The bus trip to town takes 40 mins. (used to be 30 when I was growing up but they re-routed it). There was them a long wait until the next bus was due. That leg went by a frequently blocked motorway route to the next bus station which had about 4 minutes to change to the final bus; any delay on the motorway would have added at minimum another 12 minutes. The best effort as still a few minutes late assuming a 9 am. target. The journey by car was about 40 - 45 mins setting off in diametrically the opposite direction which is a good indication of why the public transport route was so inefficient.

Even with a straightforward radial route option travel isn't always that good. I used to live in High Wycombe and work in London. The best train option was 35mins (only one of those a day each way), most were IIRC up to 50mins (allegedly). Add on getting to the station and then a choice of longish walks or a few changes of tube to get to the final destination and the best case would be nearer 90 minutes. One of the worst cases would be getting to Paddington hoping to get the fast train, finding that I'd missed and then having to waste more time shlepping back to Marylebone to wait for BR to find enough working DMUs to make up a train.

But let's look again at that 90 min each way. That's 3 hours a day. 15 hours a week. About 2 additional working days each week unpaid. You might find that acceptable; in my book that's getting one's life eaten up.

Re: But are Uber and Lyft the root cause?

"When at uni I used to do the weekly+ shop, took a rucksack and skated along cromwell road, then back again with a heavy pack."

Probably persuading a number of other people that walking in a city wasn't safe.

Re: But are Uber and Lyft the root cause?

"It can be done if you have the will to do it."

There are a few other factors to think about. Your fitness. Not everyone matches it. Your ability to ride a bike - not everyone can manage it without falling off (SWMBO tells me she's never managed it).

So yet another example of "works for me so must work for everyone else.".

Just in time for the Wiki-end: Chelsea Manning released from prison

Re: "Chelsea will continue to refuse to answer questions..."

"when Trump has done 7 years in prison"

Is that a promise?

Double-sided printing data ballsup leaves insurance giant Chubb with egg on its face

For all companies who have a balls-up, here's an example of how to communicate with your users afterwards:https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/05/technical-details-on-the-recent-firefox-add-on-outage/

How about starting a blog/social media account and feeding the stuff straight into that? Email them one last time reminding them of previous communications and tell them you're going to do that so when their lawyers come storming out you can point them to that and tell them to go back and tell their clients that they should have cleaned up their act long ago.

Re: Seriously?

"This however is the source of the problem as its impossible to test in that setup."

It possible to test. It just results in the test run going to the shredder instead of the post. Unless, of course, that last step goes wrong....

Eggheads confirm: Rampant Android bloatware a privacy and security hellscape

Re: Oh but you can remove bloatware to a certain degree ...

4) Any bandwidth consumed talking to its owner.

Amazon backtracks on planned S3 changes that would hamper free speech activists

Re: Well obviously

"I myself had no idea that AWS was being used as a refuge from censorship. I learned something today, and I'm sure Amazon management has as well."

You and me both.

Amazon management? Not sure about that. However it offers an opportunity to other service providers.

Holy high street, Sainsbury's! Have you forgotten Bezos' bunch are the competition?

" Outposts – servers designed by AWS to be housed in on-premises data centres"

And so the circle is completed. Computing in customer's premises and (presumably) a subscription to the vendor to keep it running. Give it another few years and somebody will invent Personal Computing. By using Personal Computing user departments will be able to free themselves of the mainframe cloud in the data centre.

Home Office cops an earful for emergency network feck-ups - £3bn overbudget and 3 years late

"It is already allowing people to make 999 calls from areas where it was previously impossible"

999 calls are made from the public networks, whether POTS or mobile. What's that got to do with this project?

I can only assume that the HO has got a replacement for Rudderless, someone so lacking in technical nous that they can relay this without a trace of cognitive dissonance.

Techie with outdated documentation gets his step count in searching for non-existent cabinet

Yup. Given the antics of senior managers and others it might be difficult to believe but contributing to whatever pays the wages is what anybody should be doing. In the article it's difficult to believe that the manager had grasped that simple idea.

You're not still writing Android apps in Oracle's Java, are you? Google tut-tuts at dev conf

Re: maybe that Java lawsuit wasn’t so great after all, huh?

"Java’s loved by its core constituency but not much liked by others."

That applies to any programming language. It's one of the great traditions of IT.

"the company wants developers to write their Android apps in Kotlin rather than Java"

Coming next: Oracle sues them for abandoning Java.

US minister invokes Maggie Thatcher, says she would have halted Huawei 5G rollout

Re: Condescending, arrogant and patronising

"Post Office Telephones"

AKA the black telephone rationing organisation.

Given that it was, as you say and understand, unavoidable what, exactly, was your original point? Some ramblings about privatising 5G? Given that it will be privatised network operators installing it (unless Corbyn gets in first) that seems to be a no-op.

Could Ecuador be persuaded to take him? I believe they come space has just become free in their London embassy.

Blame Canada! Zuckerberg subpoenaed to face Cambridge Anal. probe from Canucks

Re: @phuzz

"no-one complains about how the EU is going to turn us all into small pink ducks, because it's not sodding true."

I expect it to be part of the Brexit party's platform at the forthcoming grandson's day off school. (He's doing well for his last May in primary school - two Bank Holidays and two closures for use as a polling station.)

CryptoQueen on the run from Feds, lawsuit after her OneCoin slammed as 'an old-school pyramid scheme on a new-school platform'

"If her lawsuit has even a snowball's chance in hell of making any recoveries, all the other victims are going to pile in with their own lawsuits whether she likes it or not."

She needs to instruct those well-known solicitors Sue, Grabbit and Run.