Posts by Doctor Syntax

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

Re: I wonder if...

The “someone” might not have enough people

...or drones.

2018 ain't done yet... Amazon sent Alexa recordings of man and girlfriend to stranger

"something that Amazon claimed, wrongly, that it had discovered."

To be fair they did discover it. They just forgot to say how they discovered it. Somebody told them about it.

Facebook Like, social sharing buttons on your website may land you in GDPR hot water if data goes a-wanderin'

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

There's another aspect of that. The EU folks are smart enough to realise that far from harming the EU economy there are competitive advantages in establishing data sovereignty.

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

"f it was one of the Mirror(Reach) group then there is a button - I was wrong about measurement it is called information and storage."

And it does absolutely nothing to the huge list of pre-ticked opt-in boxes. At least it doesn't in my browser. Possibly it might if I opened up to the huge list of sites that want to run scripts on that page but that defeats the object. And in any case it doesn't affect the basic offence against GDPR. By being pre-ticked they're opt-out not opt-in.

Re: This was the case...

"Until the social media giants exercise their rights and prevent third parties publishing colourless images of their trademarks."

In that case the site owners would have to weigh up their options and not having the media buttons seems increasingly likely for someone who has taken this precaution in the first place.

"It is a great way to take your visitor's privacy seriously but still have the option of some of them choosing to 'Like' your site."

And as Facebook's public reputation sinks, it'll cause more people to dislike your site for having it there.

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

"corporate lobbyists will start a whisper campaign that the GDPR will hamstring the EU economy and some holes will be carved in it before long."

They'll find FB et al have irretrievably fouled the nest.

Re: "website operators should obtain the consent of site visitors before collecting data"

"I did look for any method of disabling them all, there wasn't one. I've landed on a few other sites that did have such an option. This one was just plain hostile."

Let me guess. What used to be Trinity Mirror Group? I think it's now called Reach.

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

Re: Cut off the GPS so it lands

"Lack of GPS will not ground airliners"

Especially the ones already on the ground that can't take off because of the drones.

Re: Other options...

"Whats the range on a good super soaker?"

Maybe there really is a use for Boris's water cannon.

Re: three methods

"if they actually have any which haven't crashed"

I think you've just identified the problem with using this approach in SE England.

"Triangulation , Triangulation, Triangulation."

Clearly you're thinking of Location, Location, Location. The operator (assuming there's only one) has a good means of dealing with that: Move, Move, Move.

Re: Flak

"so the shrapnel is smaller and lighter..."

...and there's more of it.

Re: They just need to make the penalty so outsized

"Even if you only catch 1 out of 50, why would anyone take that chance?"

Because they're idiots. Never underestimate stupid. Or should that be "overestimate"?

"What's the terminal velocity of such a spent rifle bullet as it finally hits the ground?"

Not entirely comparable to a falling round but IIRC someone in S Belfast was hit by what was believed to have been a stray round fired from N Belfast. It was a long time ago so I don't remember the details. But the danger zone can be quite large.

ICO has pumped almost £2.5m and 36 staff into its political data probe – but only 2 are techies

It's reasonable to hire in extra help for something that's perceived as more than BAU. It's also a good basis for going to HMG and pointing out that larger workloads will becomce BAU and more permanent staff are needed.

France next up behind Britain, Netherlands to pummel Uber with €400k fine over 2016 breach

Re: Thing are going well for Uber

"In France they get a fine that given the amount of capital they recently raised is comparable to a slap on the wrist."

How many times do we have to point this out? 2016 was 2016; since this May things are very different.

Re: Stolen ?

"In some places, it's illegal to leave your keys in the car"

It was - and for all I know still is - an offence in NI to leave your car unlocked on account of the fact that it could be taken and used as a car bomb. It didn't make TDA any less of an offence.

Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is: 1. More ad revenue, and 2. Good PR. Lots of love – Mark, aged 34½

Re: Dear Mark

there's plenty of companies that would pay him handsomely simply to be associated with his name and his "talent".

As his name becomes increasingly toxic I'm not sure about that.

Serverless is awesome (if you overlook inflated costs, dislike distributed computing, love vendor lock-in), say boffins

"that use case requires traditional understanding and experience of building out server and database infrastructure"

That's legacy computing. It's just not cool. All it's good for is running a business.

"got out of the mindset of relying on code running on a particular server quite some time ago."

I'm genuinely curious about this sort of thing.

Is your data purely ephemeral?

If not, how do you manage connections between the not-a-particular-server and the server holding the persistent data? Each time you invoke service you'll need to set up a connection between wherever it's running and the data server and that would include authentication - hopefully two way because the application server would need to know it's connected to the real data just as much as the data server would need to know the connection comes from a genuine application. This takes time and resources. In fact if I understood the account of the TSB debacle correctly it was this sort of issue that was the underlying problem.

Another aspect is that if you don't have control over where the application runs you can't be sure of the speed of the link to where the data sits.

I'd expect issues like this to be serious hit on performance when it gets into production.

"Serverless computing, which does actually involve servers"

That's called "Getting rid of the difficult bit in the title". YM 101

"it's an expensive disappointment for all but a few simple applications."

That ignores its true basis. It's a lucrative business for vendors.

German cybersecurity chief: Anyone have any evidence of Huawei naughtiness?

"there were rumors of stolen Cisco code over a decade ago."

So maybe there is something in suspecions of back doors after all: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/15/compromised_cisco_routers/

Re: Evidence? You want evidence?

"Of course, cell phones and communications equipment from Chinese-branded companies are not the only threat."

Of course they aren't. There's equipment from the US (NSA) and the UK (GCHQ) to name but two others.

Evidence-based policy; there's a novelty!

IBM: Co-Op Insurance talking direct to coding subcontractor helped collapse of £55m IT revamp project

"Back in the day, we had developers and we had users."

Yup. I was there. I had a strong preference for development tools which would let you lash up a working demo/prototype on the fly whilst talking to the user. It did depend on having good users. I had a colleague who'd put together a demo and then find the users rejected the whole proposed system because they didn't like something about it and couldn't get their heads round the idea that it was intended to refine what it was they wanted.

"Then, slowly, all the hangers-on moved in - the business analysts"

It depends on the business analysts. If you get a good one it's great to be ablel to bounce ideas off each other. I've had that a couple of times.

AIUI Agile involves users talking directly to developers. Presumably in IBM terms it just means removing a couple of links in a much longer chain.

Pork pulled: Plug jerked out of beacon of bacon delight

"IoT - Internet-of-Trotters"

Why did I instantly think of Del-Boy running a website?

Re: "Everyone's love for bacon"

"devout vegetarian ... had occasional lapses for love of a bacon butty."

A Jewish director at one of my clients decided to unilaterally declare bacon kosher.

Re: It could work. I wonder how it tastes....

"Like chicken."

Or cardboard turkey.

Re: Mixed feelings

"Sorry, but while you were in a comma for the past 20 years"

I think a 20 year comma might be a full stop, even for a colonial.

Still using Azure Scheduler? Schedule in 30 September 2019 'cos it's being euthanised

"long-in-the-tooth Azure service"

Five years old. Long in the tooth? I offer you cron: goes back at least to V7 Unix (1979) in my experience.

American bloke hauls US govt into court after border cops 'cuffed him, demanded he unlock his phone at airport'

Re: Like many laws, a smokescreen for dominance

"The US Government has the option of allowing it to be sued. They usually disallow lawsuits against them."

The trick here seems to be to sue the officers personally.

Brexit-dodging SCISYS Brits find Galileo joy in Dublin

Re: Sadly with May running the clock down...

"But surely the fundamental problem with this negotiation has been the threat of violence if any physical monitoring of the Eire/NI border is deemed necessary to meet WTO rules?"

It's more basic than that. There was no way to do this without either breaking the Good Friday agreement or else damaging the Union that the Conservative and Unionist Party stands for.

Re: Sadly with May running the clock down...

"Split the country down the middle north to south."

This is no better than blaming it on the old. Some of us are in the north and old and in possession of our marbles.

Re: Sadly with May running the clock down...

"Whatever happens now half the country will be pissed with it. We're fucked. It's a critical defect and there is no fix."

Your last sentence explains why it'll be a lot more than half the country when the consequences finally becomes evident.

Re: Sadly with May running the clock down...

"Then all we would need to deal with is the serious civil unrest that I suspect would arise from that."

I doubt the civil unrest would be greater than that when people find out what find out just what they've had dumped on them on the basis of small majority in an advisory vote.

Re: != Brexit dodging

" especially when you're a low paid PAYE employee who cant get out of paying any taxes"

A good many of them will find that they can get out of paying any taxes be ceasing to be employees. Those overseas investors who've located plants in the EU so as to have and EU base will be looking to move on.

Re: != Brexit dodging

"But so long as we can protect the fishing industry"

It depends on which bit of the fishing industry. Some catches have a better market in some EU countries than in the UK.

A Christmas classic: Cloudera founder asks staff to stay another day

I've seen a business get rid of staff one or two at a time and realised that if those got rid of had got together they had the collective knowledge to start quite a good business for themselves. WHen the writing's on the wall so publicly I'd have thought that would be a reasonable approach to take.

Today's employment costs can become tomorrow's competitors.

"We're actively looking at ways to preserve jobs where it makes business sense to do so"

Mutters under breath "that'll be my job taken care of". Smiles entirely unconvincingly at the rest.

Seriously, who'd work for someone as blatant as that. Does he not care what he's saying? Does he even realise what he's saying.

Careful with this latest Microsoft release – tug too hard on the threads and it tends to unravel

"Proper Linux fans will simply get given the sheep"

We already have the sheep here. Strictly speaking they're the farmer's next door but the gates are sometime subject to quantum tunnelling or something similar.

The eulogising of The Mother Of All Demos at 50 is Silicon Valley going goo-goo for gurus again

Re: Icon

"impersonally made 'errors' that you could not get corrected (like your bank statement)"

I tended to find they weren't actually errors.

Time for a cracker joke: What's got one ball and buttons in the wrong place?

Re: Not IT related, but still funny.

"But if she *does* see this, I'm in trouble"

I wonder about those posts that say something like "Anon ' cause I still work there". If the relevant person reads it they're not going to have a problem working out who said it.

Re: Embarrasing

"My assumption being that the academics who teach management ( and do fancy research) don't actually know anything about the work of the companies, if any , that they've managed"

There are actually two assumptions in there.

Spending watchdog points finger at Capita for 1,300 shortfall in British Army rookies

Re: How?

@Laura Kerr

The alternative is that something basic gets put together and then the real requirements dribble in after go-live. Quite likely at least some of these prove to be incompatible with the way the now live system works.

ZipRecruiter has been flying low: User email addresses exposed to unauthorised accounts

Re: ZipRecruiter

"One more name to put on my Never Deal With list."

A "Deal With" list is easier to maintain and takes less space.

Re: Small issue

"Employees of companies who have paid access to the data usually vacuum everything and sell them outside, so the data is going to end up in a lot of creepy DBs anyway."

And they will find themselves on the wrong end of GDPR.

Stop us if you've heard this one: Facebook apologizes for bug leaking private photos

Re: I wonder how much they were paid

"Yeah, this is how low my opinion of them has sunk."

It started higher?

Windows 10 can carry on slurping even when you're sure you yelled STOP!

Re: Easy Instructions

"3. Open CMD window (as Admin) and type: Format C: /fs:FAT32

4. Download any decent Linux distro."

But not in that order. And burn Linux distro to a CD/DVD or USB stick before formatting.