Posts by Doctor Syntax

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

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?

Re: Poor article

You're not really new here so what's your excuse? This is a Dabsey article.

Re: I scream

"after a few months"

Ice cream kept in packaging for a few months? Does not compute.

Re: Been there

I got mine to c 180,000 (at least - the almost exact 60,000 on the clock when I got it was a bit suspicious). In my case it was the petrol replacements that got to me. Not the petrol lost through the engine, the petrol lost through the tank.

"the admittedly hackneyed example of certain Apple iOS products"

Hackneyed. Nice one.

"You could just pop your obsolete laptop in your compost bin alongside the grass cuttings, egg shells and potato peel."

They'd need to do a better job than the so-called compostable plastic bags. A few years ago there were allegedly compostable bags for collecting kitchen waste. The waste composted, the bags didn't. Similarly the so-called bio-degradeable plastic bags the Co-op sold vegetables in. There seems to be a new generation in that in the last few days National Trust, English Heritage and Gardening Which magazines have all arrived in bags which claim to be compostable. We shall see - although I might pose it as a question to GW.

I discovered, however, that Morrisons' paper bags are bio-degradeable. More than three carrots weight and they fall to pieces.

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.

Clearly the IT department was at fault if they didn't have an audit trail of emails to Facilities whose job it clearly was to secure the room.

Re: First step, tell them to fire security

"We did ponder if it could be any more secure, but it was pointed out that if we did that it was easier to take a sledgehammer to the adjoining wall."

For some value of locked no door is locked.

In particular the "Yale" lock* is just a latch that needs a key on the outside but can be opened without from the inside. Given an adjacent glass panel no break-in expert wouldn't be delayed for a moment as my daughter discovered during her student days.

*Yale do, of course, make regular lever locks as well. I have one in my own door.

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.

"Even in my simple world, where I use things like Windows, if I used a different technical system from my children... we would not be able to communicate with each other... people would get wrong versions of documents."

So she's had problems with different versions of Word.

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!

Was th artcl tped on a Mc or an Asus? Frm exprenc cld b th latr.

Activist shareholders to target Zuck with giant angry emoji inflatable at Facebook AGM

"SumOfUs has had some success in embarrassing companies to change their governance or approach in the past."

I doubt Zuk can be embarrassed and he can't be outvoted so what's all this about activism? If they don't like it about all they can do is sell their shares.

"Therefore, our board of directors believes that the process contemplated by this proposal is unnecessary and recommends that our stockholders vote against this proposal."

I'm sure he will.

Gee, SEC, how did that get out?! 'Leaked' Tesla email claims big boost in Model 3 production

Re: "he agreed to clear future Tesla-related tweets with the regulator before posting"

"A PR department has the advantage of having a clear view of communications and of the communication strategy"

By producing a lot of meaningless verbiage such as "only a few customers", "your security is our first concern" etc.

Rough quarter? Just blame falling sales on China and US trade tensions – right, HPE?

"HPE has bet the farm on the Intelligent Edge, or edge computing ...Revenues generated by the Intelligent Edge division were down 6 per cent "

An idea whose time has gone?

Facebook removes about as many fake accounts as it has actual monthly users (yes, billions) in effort to clean up online

Re: Proactive bot detection

"they have blocked or shut down every attempt I have made to open an account"

That doesn't sound like a cause for complaint.

Re: EPA

Don't you mean bovine?

Microsoft? Oh it's just another partnership, insists GitHub CEO

Re: "We treat Microsoft as a partnership"

"No idea why Microsoft are the only ones to get bashed on here"

What do you mean by "here". If you mean on this thread it's because the article is about a Microsoft owned business. If you mean on el Reg in general your argument is based on a false premise.

Programmers' Question Time: Tiptoe through the tuples

Re: Fab

"if anyone knows a cure for the North American Lupin Aphid"

Harlequin ladybirds. Then you've got two problems.

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/invertebrates/beetles/harlequin-ladybird

WikiLeaks boss Assange acted as a foreign spy, Uncle Sam exclaims in fresh rap sheet

"It turns out that the US most certainly, definitely and decidedly want Assange in their mucky paws."

It might have escaped your notice but the US changes its government from time to time. Past US governments might have decided not to stroke his ego by making a fuss about him. We now have a US president who will stroke his own ego by making a fuss about anything at all.

Assagne's best option might have been to indicate his preparedness to leave for Sweden of his own accord as soon as Trump was elected and hope that he wouldn't be delayed in the UK long enough for Trump to get into power and get round to his case.

Re: I think he got an Ecuador passport

"He should have run to Sweden as soon as he got that."

Via HMP for bail jumping which would have given the US chance to set up extradition proceedings assuming they wanted to at that time. His best plan of action if he wanted to avoid extradition to the US would have been to have stayed in Sweden, even at the risk of spending time in a Swedish prison although where he'd have gone subsequently would have been a matter of some doubt - would the Swedes have deported him?

Re: I was fine with the first indictment

"Democracy absolutely requires that the losers acknowledge their defeat and that they accept it."

No it does not. Democracy allows the argument to be advanced again and again. Just about every advance to what we now accept as right and proper has been defeated democratically, possibly many times, and then, democratically, accepted.

Losers resorting to violence after losing democratically is, of course, another matter.

Phisher folk reel in Computacenter security vetting mailbox packed with sensitive staff data

"externally hosed"

I guess you meant "housed" but somehow "hosed" seems just right.

Re: How can that comment even be even considered let alone made?

"Because such weasel words are balm to the ears of those that speak them,"

And because nobody follows them up with searching questions such as "Why are you talking bollocks?".