Posts by Doctor Syntax

User found two reasons – both of them wrong – to dispute tech support's diagnosis

Re: Back in the day

"Why does Windows have a wind sock?"

Just part of the junk.

"Mike decided the best way to support the teacher was to leave him alone."

I think I'd have told him that if the problem was too much stuff in the inbox or on the PC I could leave it to him to clear some space - he'd have to do it himself as only he knew what had to be kept. And then reply to the follow-up calls telling him that he needed to delete more stuff.

DOE recruits cloud, chip, and AI giants for Trump's Genesis Mission

Re: TROUGH – Backronym required

Trump's Regneration Of US Greatness Hubris.

"the Trump administration's Genesis Mission, which aims to use AI to drive scientific discoveries"

I suppose it will be trained to tell him what he wants to hear. Scientists are unreliable - they say things he doesn't like.

Sydney Uni data goes walkabout after criminals raid code repo

Re: “there is currently no sign that the data has been misused”

Corporate speak for "We're getting in theplausible denial before they've had chance to use it while it's true. It won't be much longer but we've said out piece."

"historical personal data stashed inside one of its online code repositories"

????

Why? Just why?

Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud

Like Amazon focussing on running a shop?

Re: Yes Airbus is big enough

You mean it's safer to go with someone you know you can't trust rather than someone you can trust for now on the off-chance that they might become untrustworthy later.?

For avoidance of doubt, Microsoft's president has admitted that they can't be trusted, although wrapped up in slightly longer phrasing.

Alcachofas has the right of it. It was my error.

Yes, SHE. Sorry.

Ah, well, not the only one. The account written up in another place, citing el Reg, says they're moving from one of the US corps, not from on prem/.

Re: "Sovereign".....Exactly What Does That Mean?

Expected. Not disappointed.

He has systems on his own compuers. He wants to move to the cloud somebody else's computer but isn't sure he can find a cloud somebody else whose computer he can trust.

Do those slight adjustments suggest a clearer course of action he might consider?

pearOS is a Linux that falls rather close to the Apple tree

Re: Midwinter? (Checks calendar) .. happier days

They've also managed to prove Stuart Broad wrong. Now Alex Carey will be remembered for two things.

Re: Midwinter? (Checks calendar) .. happier days

I see why you posted anon. I suppose you'll want one of these.

Infinite Machine e-scooter is like the offspring of a Vespa and a Cybertruck

"anodized aluminum and steel"

Steel isn't exactly a new material in motor cycles. Not even in scooters. I suppose the reference to Cybertrucks and De Loreans means it's stainless steel and the difficulty of working with that explains the fuggliness.

DVSA's clapped-out booking system gets bot slapped as new boss rides in

It's hardly rocket science but would require a rewrite, retest etc. Then there's be the H/W refresh*. Yes, it's not rocket science but it gets all the expense and complication of being a government job because an extremely complex set of rules have to be followed to ensure the government gets value for money.

Of course it would need new H/W. Whatever made you think it wouldn't?

Re: It's been a disgrace for years

Certainly no downvotes from me. It was always obvious to me at the time that Brown was busy ensuring that the future paid for the Blair government. That future started about 2008 - 2010 and we're still in it.

Re: It's been a disgrace for years

Does the UK have an "Einwohnermeldeamt" ??? My preferred translation helper only gives "local residents' registration office

Not really. There's voting registration but the only consequence of not registering is not being able to vote and it only requires listing of people of voting age. Apart from that there's the census* at 10 year intervals but I think some short-cuts are being put in place for the next one so it will probably become less reliable - the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if it all gets handed over to AI.

* It doesn't really tell where people lived, just where they were on census night.

Re: Oh please no!

"I think they just leave the message on as a tacit admission they don't want to speak to you"

They probably turn it off for a few minutes every few months so that they can deny leaving it on all the time.

The candidates are being defrauded. AFAIK fraud is amenable to quite wide interpretation and the threat might be sufficient. If the slots are booked with a false address or an out of the country address cancel them without a refund.

Re: It's been a disgrace for years

"grocery shopping could be means tested"

It is. If you don't want to mix with the rest of us you go to an upmarket supermarket or Fortnum & Mason or Harrods - whatever your choice.

Have an upvote but fraud is already an offence. If existing legislation isn't being used it seems pointless to add more.

BOFH: All through the house, not a creature was stirring except the homicidal vacuum cleaner

After the previous episode it was clear the Boss would have to go and go soon.

I've lived in an attic flat like that the door, first part of the hallway and bathroom were at a lower level than the rest of the flat and then there were four steps up to the other half of the wall and the living room, bedroom and kitchen. For some reason the hall was very wide. It could have had a studio flat built into the space.

Cornish recycling drive sows confusion among Reg Standards Bureau

Re: Proper Pasty

That achieved its ultimate destination decades ago in my experience. A Stranraer* to Larne ferry had something called a Scotch pie on sale in its definitely not restaurant. I made the mistake of buying one. It consisted of a rigid pastry case whose contents were a greasy smear on the bottom.

* Yes, that long ago. In fact, longer.

Re: Proper Pasty

"The Pasty was designed such that it could be carried in a lunch box or bag without disintegrating."

I thought it was designed to be dropped down a mine shaft without disintegrating.

"And certainly not on the window of the 11:30pm train after The Reg Christmas party."

So what was it that el Reg tried to stick on the windows of the 11.30pm train? Curious minds want to know. Or maybe it would be better not to know.

Brit broadband grilling descends into farce over targets and definitions

Both are now in politics. One has outside experience in electronics, the other in banking. Make of that what you will.

Someone with a background in law and history might at least be expected to be competent with words.

Re: It would be nice to have 5g

"objecting to the new masts and then complain online about how bad the mobile phone network is"

There's a conflict between providing a mobile voice coverage and going to shorter and shorter ranges to provide more digital bells and whistles.

It's worth remembering that it's voice coverage that provides for calls for help in possible life and death situations.

Trump Media jumps aboard the speculative nuclear fusion bandwagon

Re: Tokamak and Stellerator

"I read what I mean not what I wrote."

We all do.

"an arguably impossibly ambitious goal of breaking ground on a utility-scale fusion power plant in 2026"

Not at all impossibly ambitious. They can break ground. All that means is they dig a few trenches, even pour sume concrete into them. It doesn't mean they build anything operational on them.

GOV.UK to unleash AI chatbot on confused citizens

"We want people to be able to ask questions as they would in everyday life; for example: 'I've just had a baby, do you know what help I can get?' Responses would combine material from multiple departments including HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Department for Education into "a single, simple conversational answer."

Simpler, less new shiny, of course, but probably better, to have a single, well written, information page bringing all that information together, linked from wherever someone might look including the sites of those departments and NHS.

I suppose it's the "less new shiny" that's the killer. If it's AI it must be better, mustn't it?

Mustn't it?

Ten mistakes marred firewall upgrade at Australian telco, contributing to two deaths

Re: yank trained manglement ?

World-wide manglement attitude.

Your car’s web browser may be on the road to cyber ruin

Re: I must be getting old ...

oh to go back to the time when the headline wouldn't even make sense - as it shouldn't in a saner world.

BBC tapped to stop Britain being baffled by AI

Re: White heat of technophobia

Likewise all the actual broadcasting. It went ti Arqiva.

Re: The time has past...

"Nobody does serious education via broadcast TV anymore, let alone on a fixed schedule!"

That's no reason for not going back to do it. OTOH I do agree that HMG's idea is junk. It's the consequence of being duped by the idea of yet another magical solution to our ills.

Re: Big problem there, BBC

"And yet many who have jobs and work with AI will tell you that is clearly not the case."

Rice Davies applies

You may not have noticed my omission of the comma between "Culture" and "Media". I've seen some nasty things grown ofn culture media.

Re: Why a TV licence?

Factual post downvoted. Interesting.

Re: British spelling returns?

Reply "You have a question?" - with the intonation that you're asking a question, not making a correction. They may catch on that it's not normal usage here.

Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) says it wants the Beeb to become a "trusted guide"

Given what I suspect they want the Beeb to tell us, trust might be difficult.

Re: Why a TV licence?

Think of it as a subscription.

United Nations agrees to persist with multi-stakeholder internet governance

Re: All your DNS in one basket case

The internet is not just the cloud.

Re: Par for the Course ... More of the Same for Nothing to Progress

"The first WSIS process saw participating nations pledge “to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented information society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge."

That's just getting the necessary PR speak out of the way.

"It also saw participating nations agree to the multi-stakeholder internet governance arrangements that persist to this day, and which sees organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Society (ISOC), and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) each play a role."

This is the meat of it: the realisation that if the politicians try to take over they'll find they're holding nothing because the engineers will go away and create something new to replace it, probably taking the chance to clean up on a few issues of the sort that led to the IPv4/IPv6 situation.

Former UK chancellor George Osborne finds something to do at OpenAI

Re: Wonderful choice... not

Why was he unsuccessful as a PM? Because Blair stood aside at exactly the moment the full effect of his financial policies were due to hit.

What were those policies?

1. Charge current expenditure to the future. e.g. start taxing dividends on investments in pensions. That killed the final salary pensions. OK for those of us already in a scheme but not for our children.

2. Have interest rates target 2% inflation on an index that excluded housing costs. The result was that cheap money went into house price inflation and cheap loans secured against house values. 125% mortgages? That brought about the credit crunch. It painted future chancellors into a corner as any correction would have wiped out those with over-priced houses and those whose savings had been loaned on them. All in the name of a low headline interest rate.

Arguably the after-effects are still with us. I haven't seen anyone successfully pick up the pieces. No wonder he was followed by austerity.

A successful chancellor? I don't think so.

CEO spills the Tea about massive token farming campaigns

"Some CISO, somewhere, every day is looking at his tens of thousands of packages that he approved for use"

There's the problem.

UK surveillance law still full of holes, watchdog warns

"He took issue with the fact that the TCN was referred to essentially as a backdoor for government snooping, describing the nomenclature as crude and erroneous." But effective.

"lawful access can be achieved in a way that strikes a balance between maintaining strong encryption and ensuring law enforcement and the government can protect the public from terrorism, serious crime, and hostile state activity." How?

All those in favour of this have to do to persuade us is to produce a proof of concept that withstands expert scrutiny. Failure to even attempt this speaks volumes.

UK plans right for flat owners to demand gigabit broadband

Re: @Doctor Syntax

Meeting regulatory requirements is a cost of doing business, not some sort of cross-subsidy. There were - probably stall are - rules about BT not subsidising one sort of business from another. It was attempts to get into non-regulated areas that started BT manglement on their loss-making international ventures in the 90s.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"Rural. Its different from Urban. One having a sparser population than the other. As a result there is often an infrastructure difference. You feeling ok today?"

I'm feeling fine living as I do in a rural location. We have neighbours on both sides of the road back down to the pub, church and cricket field and there are houses strung along the road with very few gaps all the way back to the exchange. Off the lane there's an estate with 48 houses and a smaller one with a few retirement flats. A couple of hundred metres up the road is are three more houses and another cluster a hundred or so metres further up. That may be sparse by urban standards, it's not isolated. You need to get out more.

Fair enough we do have good connections on this side of the valley. It's not clear why the other side isn't as well served - except for the fibre that was laid for the mobile mast.