Posts by Doctor Syntax

Consultant misreads advice, ends up on a 200km journey to the Exchange expert

Re: "click" with the sound the mouse makes...

"I just noticed as I was curious."

There's a limit to my curiosity and trying WIndows 10 to find out is beyond it.

Re: Spoilers in Tech Docs!

"You select YES, you don't click on YES."

Drop-down list, Run the pointer down the list. As it traverses the list it selects each item in turn. Leave it on the item you want. Many (?most) people would reckon you'd selected the item but nothing will actually happen until you take a further action which, at least on this laptop makes a loud, and AFAICS, purely mechanical clicking noise. But don't call it a mouse pointer 'cause it's a trackpad.

Facebook spooked after MPs seize documents for privacy breach probe

Re: It's got me wondering...

"I recently got a Facebook page."

Why? Research purposes only?

Re: Why?

"You disable all javascripts so they can't spy on you from their Facebook Like buttons plastered on other sites?"

That's what NoScript's for.

Re: An early Christmas?

"It seems odd to me that this app developer with a grudge would be in London carrying around said documents"

Not to mention that the Committee got to know about it. Or maybe they just heard he was in town, decided to call him as a witness and got lucky. Or maybe he didn't have the documents on him but was made an offer he couldn't refuse to produce them even if he had to download them to do so.

As Aladdin Sane said - popcorn.

Re: Its about time

"There is a good reason that its key EU offices are in two of the biggest native English speaking countries."

It's not going to have any EU offices in the UK for much longer. It's a big incentive to the UK Parliament to take their own line on this one and not depend on an EU investigation. There's a certain irony in the extent to which FB might have brought this on themselves.

That sphincter-flexing moment for devs when it's time to go live

Re: Experience is a harsh teacher

"'quiet period', Christmas, end of life date on previous product"

Situation: current H/W due to be EoL (at least for support purposes) at end of 31 Dec.

The quiet period between Christmas & New Year would have been the ideal time to migrate over to new H/W. Minimal risk, just unload the data and reload it onto a version of the same engine on current H/W*. Client's manglement absolutely forbade it even when warned that any H/W failure would cost an arm and a leg and possibly CEO's first-born.. It turned out that they'd arranged for bean-counters to come in to value the company for a sale.

* When it eventually was moved it went just as smoothly as anticipated.

"include go/no-go meetings"

I've seen one circumstance where it should have been no-go right from inception. However the project owner was the senior IT manager so it was go all the way in moving an application to a completely new OS as far as the RDBMS & tools vendor was concerned (I was later told their porting procedure was something along the lines of "we made the changes necessary to get it to compile"; I suspect we were the only site that went live).

In practice as soon as we got to go-live we started to get database index corruption; I suspect there was a race condition that only manifested itself under real load. Oddly enough, migration back to the sort of OS it should have been on had weeks of testing mandated with no issues found then or on go-lie. I could have done without those weeks of testing as they were weeks of fire-fighting on the live system as far as I was concerned.

Office 365 Exchange enjoys a less than manic Monday. Users? Not so much

"what SWMBO has purchased on my behalf, or at more accurately on my income"

When you ask her you'll discover it's the same thing.

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

Re: Home security problem

"I guess you don't get parcels delivered by Amazon then, or any other courier."

It'd take a hell of a lot of lot of such deliveries by relatively few couriers to work that out.

Blighty: We spent £1bn on Galileo and all we got was this lousy T-shirt

Re: FFS

"you voted for this (or didn't vote at all) and now it's time to pay the piper."

Who's this "you" you had in mind? Wasn't me and I rather think it wasn't most UK voters on here.

'Cuddly' German chat app slacking on hashing given a good whacking under GDPR: €20k fine

Sure, but what if the site owners are non-techies who hired "specialists" to do the work?

They can sue the specialists for €20k. After all, in such circumstances the specialists would have deserved to be fined.

"I think the fine is reasonable as Knuddels apparently copped a mea culpa and fixed the problem"

Those are factors to take into account. But at some point the message needs to get across that you can't just wander into setting up a site with no knowledge that you need to secure it, or maybe no knowledge of whether the people you entrusted to do that actually did so. If people can get away with saying sorry and fixing it after the event they will, and that doesn't undo the damage that might have been caused. From this event it's probably 800k people who need to change their email addresses with all the inconvenience that causes to get off spam lists and maybe a few of those will lose money getting scammed along the way. Repeat for every business that hasn't got the message yet.

having a "vision" is only part of C-level duties

But who's going to explain that to them?

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

Re: Today IS payday...

"I ended up making sure all the bills were timed for the first fortnight of the month for that very reason."

As a variation I used to get bank statements in the middle of the month so I could work out how bad the remainder was going to be and prioritise things accordingly.

(Current bank adopted the practice of sending statements whenever there was a full page to print. It's now abandoned that practice and apparently sends out a statement after some random fraction of a full page has been generated. What they never seem to have worked out is what every other bank I've used over several decades has accomplished: print monthly and shove as many pages as that requires into a single envelope. The wonders of modern banking IT.)

The paving slab laptop doesn't sound too bad. Build quality and serviceablity we'll never see again in the name of shaving a few more microns off the thickness.

On other fronts - I was looking for a box to build a new MythTV system. Oh, look here's one in $PopularVendor's list on Black Friday offer. It's the one that takes a full height* optical drive. The options for slim-line and slot-loading are full price. Are they trying to shift old stock.

*For pedants - yes I too remember when that size was called half height. If I put my mind to it I can probably find an original full height, i.e. the same as and 8" drive, 5 3/4" floppy drive in the garage.

Re: With perfect timing

"It's like Booking.com and its belief that because I once stayed in Harrogate I want to stay there every time an hotel there has a vacancy."

The only sensible way to deal with booking.com is to have the email server control open on another tab ready to click to set the email address you gave then to bounce the moment the confirmation email hits your inbox.

Re: Today IS payday...

"4 weekly = 28th."

There are only 3 occasions every 4 years when the 28th of one month is followed 4 weeks later by the 28th of the next.

Re: Today IS payday...

I generally dealt with the variability using two techniques that I called "budgeting" and "saving" that meant that I didn't run out of money at the end of the month.

That has a pre-requisite. Being adequately paid.

Re: @ Dabbsy

"I don't actually see what the UK has gotten out of this"

It's Taken Back Control.

Yes, I know it's meaningless. It always was. But it was what a fraction of the nation voted for.

Now some of them have realised they won't actually done that come Brexit day.

What they haven't realised yet is that if they get a hard Brexit they still won't have taken back control. Half the world's map isn't coloured pink any more. The sun set on the empire long ago. There is no control to take back.

Groundhog Day comes early as Intel Display Drivers give Windows 10 the silent treatment

Not with *THIS* group of "developers"

It depends on what you mean by "start from scratch". Scratch might be a new team of developers.

"Is it still the case that consumer versions of W10 still can't turn windows updates off?"

Why would they let their beta testers not test?

Analogue radio is the tech that just won't die

Re: "Broadcasting" in general is becoming obsolete.

The problem though is marketing and finance wonks making decisions about content and infrastructure

FTFY

"It may be that if cash is tight people find it easier to budget for a constant monthly payment"

In one sense you're right. But it's constantly paying out rent that prevents you getting the required lump sum together.

Talk in Trump's tweets tells whether tale is true: Code can mostly spot Prez lies from wording

Re: Why no comparison?

"Why not?"

Did Trumps predecessor spew tweets at the same rate or try to use them as a mechanism of government? Not doing so makes a comparison impossible.

Re: I'm interested in the 'success' rate.

"Trump's tweets can be inaccurate but he may believe it to be true."

Isn't this even more worrying than outright lies?

Re: exporting gas

If there was no alternative to fossil fuels carbon for the chemical industry and metal smelting<

Well, is there? That's why continuing to use it and export it as a fuel is short-sighted.

Re: Nice word

Downvoted for the "occasionally he does get something right", remark

It simply reflects that the 100 monkeys algorithm has an easier time composing tweets. They're shorter than the complete works of Shakespeare.

Re: Basically Depends Who Wrote It

"a marginally cogent and stable PR drone"

These are too easy to identify. They have standard texts such as "only a few users" deployed irrespective of whatever it is they're trying to minimise.

Microsoft sysadmin hired for fake NetWare skills keeps job despite twitchy trigger finger

I used to live not far from Marlow and left my company car in to be serviced in a garage there. There was an agency in the High St that specialised in the sort of systems I looked after and as we were looking for a contractor I simply walked in off the street to talk to them about it. They were tickled pink - they'd never had a client walk in like that before. And yes, they were some of the good guys. They did very well for us.

A few years later I was relocated about 200 miles north. About 2 weeks after settling in at my new desk I got a call from an agent offering me a good job in Marlow. Realistically, I suppose it wasn't two weeks too late; it would have had to have been several months earlier to dodge the relocation.

Later in my new job we were again looking for a contractor. A selection of CVs dropped out of an envelope including one for a guy who'd worked form me a few years ago in London. I think he actually started in the business as a YTS but I knew he'd do. Sometimes the agencies do get thinks right. Sometimes.

"Bloody amateurs"

In terms of recruiters they sound like typical professionals.

Re: Apologies to those who've heard this one before

http://bofh.bjash.com/newbofh/bofh12jun.html

Very suspicious. He walks out without finishing his drink.

Re: Who writes the damn matching algorithms???

"as a professional software developer I feel I have a duty to point out how their crap algorithm is costing them time and money, and they should have an audit immediately with a view to fixing it."

If you did contract work you could offer, as a professional software developer, to fix it for them.

More likely, however, you'll find their algorithm is nothing more than a word search being run by people for whom the words are nothing more than squiggles on a screen, devoid of any meaning.

When selling security awareness training by email, probably a good shout not to hit 'reply all'

Re: Cold calls from security companies are always the best.

But if you fall for it it gives them something to follow up on.

Re: They let him loose on customers BEFORE his own training?

"There was never going to be any security training for new sales droids."

It wouldn't have made a difference - in one ear, out the other. As I've said before, having been on a training course doesn't mean trained.

Re: Holland was clearly making a point..

No, just asking all the others to remove him from their recently acquired mailing list.

New era for Japan, familiar problems: Microsoft withdraws crash-tastic patches

An abdication announced some time in advance can be planned for. An epoch change occasioned by sudden death, which isn't impossible, should also have been planned for. A sensible approach would have been to have used code for which a small data change was that needed to switch era.

Big data at sea: How the Royal Navy charts the world's oceans

Re: Lucky sod!

"boldly going"

Also coldly going I suppose.

What the #!/%* is that rogue Raspberry Pi doing plugged into my company's server room, sysadmin despairs

Re: easy pickings

"I left a small IT company about ten years ago, and went back about three years ago for a short term contract.

My email (username) and password still worked."

Been in a similar situation with old client. Some development tools bought by my company and installed on the PC I used still installed....

This was only after a few months so it might have got cleaned off later.

"but before you can raise the CR to remove it, you first would have to get it added to the CMDB before you can raise the change"

If it's not on the CMDB it doesn't exist so it was never removed when you unplugged it. Just following CR logic.

Following BOFH* logic, just unplug it to see who screams.

Remove the SD, plug it into a Unix/Linux box, edit the shadow password file to ensure you can log in, replace SD, add monitor and keyboard and find out what it's trying to do.

*I'm worried. BOFH not been seen for some time. Did a boss finally get him?

Re: Burn it, Burn it with fire!

No. It's a Pi. You can always think of something useful for it to do.

Merry Christmas, you filthy directors: ICO granted powers to fine bosses for spam calls

Re: Brilliant

"It would have been better if the ICO also was given the powers to fill some cupboards with porridge for these directors to eat for a few months."

That happens if the fines don't get paid.

If the actual owners stuff someone's aunt into the directorship to try to avoid fines on themselves that's also a porridge earner.

Proceeds to go to charity recipient of call* (less a small substantial admin charge determined by ofcom)

FTFY

One of the advantages of this scheme is that the caller's telecoms provider will be left holding the charges if the caller absconds. Their credit control will, in practice, crack down on the whole business.

* If they expect people to take their calls they should be prepared to pay them for their time. Just credit it to the recipient's telephone account.

Re: Could I get charged with assult ...

"blow a whistle very loudly down the phone at them?"

That was the advice that used to be handed out to victims of what were referred to as "heavy breathing" calls. Probably a bit of googling would bring up an old reference to that so your defence, if needed, would be that you were following official advice.

"if the ICO could also go after the companies whose products and services were being promoted."

Maybe they can. A fine can be levied on the officer of a company if the offence "took place with the consent or connivance of the officer". Without delving back into the original regulations it seems reasonable that the calls must have been made with the connivance of the client company and its officer(s).

Capita, Serco, Sopra Steria to write cheat-sheets for UK.gov in case they collapse

This might be a strange idea but how about the clients just keep keeping an eye on what's going on? That way they have the knowledge all along and might even be aware that there could be a problem developing. Even stranger idea - if they become aware of a problem developing they may actually be able to take suitable action, either to ward it off or mitigate the consequences for HMG, before things go too far.

Re: Proforma living will:

"Agents for UK Gov may take any reasonable steps to recover the source code"

Easier - just require it to be kept in escrow.

Health secretary Matt Hancock assembles brains trust: OK, guys. Let's cure NHS IT

"Nicola Blackwood, chair of the Human Tissue Authority"

According to wonkypaedia she has a degree in music. Somehow that sounds familiar.

Congrats to Debbie Crosbie: New CEO at IT meltdown bank TSB has unenviable task ahead

"the PR team's irony filters"

The what?

An irony filter would get in the way of PR's ability [sic] to do its job [also sic].

RIP Bill Godbout: Cali wildfire claims the life of master maverick of microcomputers

The name rang a bell in the headlines - back then it was familiar from the ads in Byte.

S-100 was transformative. Although our 48K box was only about 1/6th of the number of bits on the 1907 at QUB a few years back it was still a table-top box compared to the 6' or thereabouts cabinet holding just the memory of the mainframe. Add in things like an ADC card and there was the capability to build instrumentation that would have cost a fortune to buy from HP or Perkin Elmer even if it had been in their catalogues, which it wasn't.

Not only did the table-top box amount to a sufficient fraction of a mainframe it also had a compiler for the same language, FORTRAN but without the restrictions of punched cards, 100K disk allocations and 3 runs a day. In less than 10 years computing had made a leap forward in accessibility which really hasn't been matched since. The advances in miniaturisation and computing power have all too often been matched by losses in flexibility by way of productisation.

Put me down as another whose life was altered for ever by Bill Godbout and his peers.