Posts by Doctor Syntax

What bugs me the most? World+dog just accepts crap software resilience

"People can and do develop software without formal training and there is little that can be done to change this"

Some people without formal training develop good software, some people with formal training develop execrable software. The critical thing is that software is put into a satisfactory state before release and that "satisfactory" is a high hurdle to cross.

"the user didn't bother to learn how to use the software"

Or the S/W wasn't sufficiently intuitive, the developer decided to depart from existing norms of user interfaces to "differentiate" themselves, the S/W was poorly/not at all documented, etc. There are lots of things to lay at the vendor's door.

"interaction between software that was written independently (the cookie example: is the bug in the browser or the web app?)"

Products A, B, C and D work fine in the browser. Product E has to have the cache cleared. Is the problem with the browser or E?

"bad specifications"

Who writes the specifications? For commercial software, usually the vendor.

Re: Who bears the cost ?

The real question is ''who bears the cost?'' The answer is ''not the development organisation''

We need to change that question to "How do we ensure the development organisation bears the cost?".

VP Mike Pence: I want Americans back on the Moon by 2024 (or before the Chinese get there)

Re: Lead the way

"Pence is Trump's insurance against anyone foolish enough to want to assasinate him."

Or impeach him. I remember Agnew filling the same role for Nixon. I'm not into American history so I don't know if that was an original idea or if there are older precedents. Anyone?

The completely rational take you need on Europe approving Article 13: An ill-defined copyright regime to tame US tech

I'm not sure the A/C was contradicting you, just saying what the Big Media approach would be.

With the exception of taking out the role of the studio you're right. Without the financial backing the studio puts together the film wouldn't get made.

If you can't nail Mike Lynch with fraud claim, judge asks HPE, can he score a win over you?

"Someone ... snored out loud halfway through, being clearly heard throughout the courtroom... it came from the general direction of Lynch and Hussain's legal teams."

Was it a variation on Rumpole's trick of tearing up a newspaper during the prosecution's address to the jury?

But we hired a consultant, cries UK pensions biz as it swallows £40k fine for 2 million spam emails

Re: And the consultants were...?

Having read the penalty notice I wonder if this could be sub judice with an ongoing case against them. We can but hope.

Re: Fines are pointless

Note the dates, Oct 2016 to Oct 2017. It's outside GDPR limits. We're still working through old cases. At some point we should start seeing fines which amount to a good deal more than the cost of doing business. We should also see directors followed up if they fold and attempt to restart.

I doubt they were wanting to find out whether it was legal. They were more likely hoping it would cover their arses if they got into trouble. It didn't. Next question - did their advisers have more effective arse-covering clauses in their T&Cs to defend against being sued for their advice? Very likely.

6 days to go, no sweat, just more than a million UK firms still to sign up to Making Tax Digital

Re: Is it out of beta yet ?

"I'm waiting until its at stable release 1.0"

You'll wait a long time. All HMG S/W is beta. Permanently.

"6 days and we're still a trial?"

This is the new style HMG software - at least the public facing online stuff and, for all I know, behind the scenes stuff. It's all beta.

FAANGs for the memories: Breaking up big tech's biggest isn't a matter of if, but of when

"a single social network that is at least willing to follow the law"

Who's that?

Re: FAANG Doesn't include Microsoft

Maybe start a new acronym, MOLAR. The O is obvious and FAANG already has a surplus A. Add your candidates for L & R.

Note to self. Start working on TEETH which is what we need to arm ourselves with.

Re: "including an arthritic decision making process"

"old style companies"

Old style companies are that way because they've been around for more of the lagging disadvantages to have caught up with them. Newer companies have yet to get there.

"or buy any startup they think could be used - even just to gobble products and never let them available outside."

Apart from the killing competition aspect don't you think this is a sign of not being able to develop new stuff themselves? It's easier to make a few big decisions like this than it is to review every small item of expenditure that's involved in micro-managing day-to-day stuff with a big development team.

ISTM that there are advantages and disadvantages to scale, disadvantages including an arthritic decision making process that can't cope with the everyday small stuff and increased external scrutiny, both from the public interest and from a stock-market that demands growth. There ought to be an optimum where they balance but in practice the disadvantages lag so businesses grow beyond the optimum. Perhaps it's time for governments to wield the public interest arguments, start to break up the bigger monopolies and look far more critically at mergers.

The Old Black Magic

Plus one for the reference.

DXC Security exec: Yes, I'd have thought we'd spend more on certs and laptop kit for staff, too

Re: "Our success is dependent on ourselves and I find that exciting"

"just ticking the motivational box"

I always found this to be counter-productive as regards my own motivation. Are they deliberately and knowingly insulting my intelligence? Do they really believe this crap themselves in which case they're exposing their own intelligence? There's no way to look at this and feel good about what you see.

Re: DXC layoff strategy

Back in the mid '80s I felt very much the same working in the public sector. In those heady days it was relatively easy for someone who'd had an IT sideline in some other career to make the move into IT. I did just that, working for a smallish consultancy. The change of atmosphere made it seem like a holiday for many months.

Eventually I joined my client as an employee. over the years I watched them ditch employees one at a time and then in a bit of a rush when it relocated. As I watched that I realised that if those employees had got together they could have formed a small but very effectively staffed competitor.

In the end I baled to go freelance. It was as reinvigorating as the previous move from the public sector and not least because a few months later my former employer became my second client for the next six months. One of the benefits is that all those decisions about training and equipment can be made directly. In fact, that can be a selling point; at one time I rolled one contract into another simply because I could buy myself training for a new technology fast enough to pre-empt my client's decision-making as to whether to train any of their own staff.

Since then I've seen these slow-bleed stories over and over again. It's quite clear that, especially in businesses where the only capital investment is in knowledge and some personal computing, there's huge scope for staff to start their own businesses, either by going solo, as I did, or by getting together which could provide a degree of mutual support. Perhaps a chat with some of your colleagues would be worthwhile - could you make a go of it as a group even if you don't want to contract individually?

Re: "Our success is dependent on ourselves and I find that exciting"

"Exciting" is one of those key words telling you to run.

HPE lawyers claim Autonomy chief Lynch knew all about 'revenue-pumping' carousel

The other thought I can't quite get out of my head about this is that market value of something is what somebody's prepared to pay for it.

"the revenues – one of the key financial metrics that analysts were monitoring"

Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. Were the analysts monitoring the right things?

Geiger counters are so last summer. Lasers can detect radioactive material too, y'know

"An alpha particle is like driving an 8000ton bulldozer into the crowd"

Or a bus. It might plough on but once it stops it can pick up a couple of passengers.

Re: Bananas

"We need to know what that is in bananas."

K40

Alpha particles are helium nuclei so I'd have thought they're going to be pretty good at mopping up any stray electrons.

The tech lawsuit of the year: HPE v Mike Lynch and Sushovan Hussain

"The tech lawsuit of the year"

So you don't think Schrems vs Facebook is going to come to trial this year?

Brit broadband giants slammed as folk whinge about crap connections, underwhelming speeds

Re: Gmail?

"From fighting with BT to giving Google your emails"

I checked my address book for a local community group. About a dozen or more gmail, a couple or so BT and three or fourTalkTalk. No Microsoft brands at all. One of the TT ones also has a mac.com address. In fact both the known Mac users have TT addresses.

"Anyone who is unhappy with their current provider should take back control and switch to a better deal – you could get better service and save hundreds of pounds a year."

One thing that's probably keeping them locked in is that they're using ISP email addresses and it's just too difficult to change addresses, especially as they probably have it as the user ID on a lot of services.

It would be useful if Which advised against this.

Intel gets court order telling former engineer to return confidential docs in Micron row

Oh, you mean this drive with all the CMA copies of emails sent by management instructing me to do dodgy stuff?

Techies take turns at shut-down top trumps

Re: Not Just Server Rooms

"all new arrivals on their induction tour"

On reflection, better to find out about him at the start.

Re: minor in comparison

"the wrong serial cable on a UPS"

I remember an odd instance with a serial-connected UPS on a SCO box. At some low level it must have tapped into the network stack because doing something - I can't remember what - on the network started what appeared to be a UPS-iinitiated count-down to power-off. It took a couple of repeats to be sure it wasn't the UPS.

Re: The same problem every time

"they should be red and not any other color"

Remember that some people are red/green colour-blind. Maybe that explains the green EPO button. Perhaps a distinctive shape would be a better distinguishing feature - and better to identify if the room's filling with smoke.

NASA 'nauts do what flagship smartphone fans can only dream of: Change the batteries

If the mole can't be retrieved and relocated to try somewhere else it's a massive design oversight. Anyone with experience with soil sampling on Earth should be able to tell them that sometimes you have to move over and try again. There's no reason to suppose Mars would be different.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

Re: no such thing as "unsolvable"

"there is no such thing as an unsolvable problem"

Turning three mutually intermeshed gears.

Re: I keep filtering this story through the BOFH's eyes

You need to be careful with hydrofluoric acid. It will dissolve things you'd rather keep intact. Such as where the bodies are buried.

"Now we know where the Fleet Street droids went."

Not necessarily. Every walk of life back then seemed to have its own home-grown lot.

Re: No good deed...

"Yes, says I, I do"....

...I'll have that sorted for you as soon as I start.

Campaigners cry foul over NHS Digital plans to grant policy wonks and researchers access to patient-level data

Yesterday we were in the local outpatients' department for SWMBO to attend a clinic. Today we got an automated patient survey with questions such as "would you recommend it?". What sort of answers do they expect? Yes, I'll tell all my friends to go there irrespective of whether they have that particular condition.

Unfortunately SWMBO picked up the phone. Had it been me I'd have logged it as a spam call to a TPO-registered phone.

Matt Hancock strikes again. Is there no limit to his enthusiasm/knowledge ration? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47652060

Brit Parliament online orifice overwhelmed by Brexit bashers

Re: Too Late.

"I expect there are a lot of people who can tell their grandchildren in future that they wanted the Euro currency in the UK."

I can and would tell them that now were they to ask. I think the long term result of this is that we'll be back in, tails between legs and the Euro as a requirement.

If avoiding the Euro was your objective I;d say battle won, war lost.

Re: Populism

"An MP is not a delegate who must vote with the majority opinion of their constituents"

TM has taken note of this. Her constituency was predominantly Remain.

"they are supposed to use reasoned judgement of the facts of the issue to arrive at a sensible solution."

Hmmm.

Re: Hang on

"If all EEC/EU-related votes had required even a 2/3 majority of those who voted (never mind 2/3 of the electorate) Europe would look very different today."

I'm with you on that. But having known that they were going to have to sell their product to a 2/3 majority those negotiating the Maastricht treaty would have had to come up with a different product. It's by no means certain that there wouldn't have been an approved treaty.

I mean, the SANE way to have started this 2 years ago, would be to simply (but loudly and publicly) kick off full prep for full independence/normal status (relabelled by one group as "no deal").

Yes, but the brayng hordes of Leave demanded Invoke Article 50 NOW; don't even ask Parliament, just do it.

This is the state the Leave campaign engendered. Leavers can scarcely complain now that things weren't done in a sensible order.

Re: Can you blame us?

"Is EVERYONE just taking their "facts" from partisan newspapers' headlines?"

Leavers seem to.

Re: Scotland/Wales want increased powers locally

I agree with you about the Euro being a bad idea. It's a pity that the likely cost of getting back into the EU to repair our economy will be to accept it.

Re: Scotland/Wales want increased powers locally

I'd go a bit further than that. The cross-party group should start by revoking A50 so we can go back and do things properly. The first step of doing things properly would be to to conduct a proper impact assessment on the economy. On the basis of that make a recommendation to the country of what the pros and cons are of the alternatives and then seek approval of that, either in the form of a general election or by a binding referendum conducted on a basis of requiring a supermajority for a change to the status quo.

Re: Scotland/Wales want increased powers locally

"She really seems to have never understood anything about the EU, despite her years in the Home Office."

Despite? More like because of.

She'll have been through standard Home Sec brainwashing to regard Europe as a problem purely because of the ECJ and the ECHR although the latter isn't actually an EU institution. When she crashes us out of the EU she'll have achieved one of the goals the Home Office set her.

Debate around Huawei espionage fears in UK about as clear as those darn Brexit negotiations

"it is completely devoid of any meaningful content"

Civil Service reply writing at its finest.

Overheard at a Brit mobe network: On the count of Three UK, smile and say, er... we lost how many customers?

"Especially as I was using the landline in the local O2 shop (as otherwise I'd be paying for the call) and customers could hear me."

Perhaps you should have told him that at the start.

Children of Wales to be prepped for the vibrant world of work with free Office 365 ProPlus

"Welsh Assembly lobs cash Redmond's way."

It's bad enough to see a public body doing promotional work for a commercial entity. To find that they're actually paying to do this is appalling.

Altered carbon: Boffins automate DNA storage with decent density – but lousy latency

As far as I can see reading it will destroy it so there'd be a need to replicate pre-read or create a new strand after reading. If I'm correct it poses a further issue. How do you verify what you wrote?

Russian sailors maroon themselves in Bristol Channel after drunken dinghy ride goes awry

Re: 4am?

"what was wrong with the much closer Minehead?"

Maybe they'd been banned there already?