Posts by Doctor Syntax

HPE court witness subjected to own LinkedIn page

Re: Ooops.

"I think HPE over paid not due to any fraud but due to them just paying way to much"

Alternatively it was the CEO splashing the cash just to show what a big-shot CEO he was.

Re: Finally

"a BOFH led how to find your own arse with both hands course"

The BOFH verson is how to find your own arse with a cattle prod.

"claiming to have been the British firm’s chief architect was forced to look at his own Linkedin page and admit that he was no such thing"

Somebody's LinkedIn page admits that they're less important than they claim? This must be a world first.

UK taxman falls foul of GDPR, agrees to wipe 5 million voice recordings used to make biometric IDs

It must have come as a nasty shock to HMRC to discover that not only do other parts of the govt. make rules but that they, HMRC are not above the law and have to follow said rules.

Re: Voice ID, over the phone, for financial security?

"Given how alike family members can sound and given the quality of the average phone line"

I've recently had a few phone conversations with a cousin for the first time in years and it's amazing how like her mother she sounds. I'd be surprised if the system could tell them apart.

In passing I discovered that [e-mail] doesn't go to the same mailbox as [e-mail]. I'd assumed they would and the fact that it isn't seems to open the door to impersonation without faffing with UTF look-alike characters.

'I do not wish to surrender' Julian Assange tells court over US extradition bid

Re: The Swedes do not want him.

"The charges were always dubious, which is why they never interviewed Assange in London..... And they never actually charged Assange with anything."

And there was me supposing that it was because Assange was in the Ecuadoran embassy. Are you telling me he wasn't fleeing anything but had gone to see about a tourist visa, got lost and couldn't find his way out for 9 years?

Remember there was no extradition warrant out from the US, just Sweden.

UK is 'not a surveillance state' insists minister defending police face recog tech

Re: Homogenised Populace?

"The UK public is one homogenous blob, with a hive mind?"

Just the tabloids.

"I understand that it is distressing for genuine victims but allowing people to make false allegations just creates a new set of victims."

False allegations also make it more difficult for real victims. That was the case 40 years and more ago and no doubt still is. It looks as if we've been through a period where allegations were looked at less sceptically than previously and that resulted in a number of cases collapsing so we're now seeing a reaction to that.

"Probably nothing much. "

Maybe. But they have enough problems without taking that risk. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48145556

The shopping centre could try a very simple test. Put up a conspicuous notice at each entrance to say the police will be recording the face of everyone who enters but "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". Then see what happens to footfall.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

A day in the life of London seen through spam and weak Wi-Fi

Where a couple of spammers include real email addresses themselves you can always try sending one of them an email referring them to your colleague with the other address. After all, it'd be rude not to introduce them to each other after they've introduced themselves to you.

The other option is to have an email address just for such logins which is set to bounce. It's a variation of having a specific email address for specific companies - booking.com springs to mind for no particular reason - which is set to bounce as soon as a transaction has been acknowledged.

BTW is SEO spam still a thing? It seems to have tapered off since I started replying with my SEO self-assessment list.

"It's a station, it has trains in it, ipso facto, train station."

And to emphasise the fact, it's a place trains go to in order to be stationary.

A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'

Which is, of course, the last thing part of the email that you'll read because it's at the end.

It's just occurred to me that there might be a link to top-posting here. Do top-posters expect their emails to be read from the bottom upwards so that the reader will have got the context before reaching their pearls of wisdom?

Re: "WTF do you think you're doing?"

I started in FORTRAN with coding sheets. When it came to making changes the most convenient way was to come in in the evenings when the data-prep teams had gone home and users could use the card punches. Eventually some card punches were made available for users during the day.

"the lawyers preferred my solution of a box of DLT tapes with all data rather than 5 filing cabinets of paper."

They might have thought the tapes would be easier to edit.

He pointed out that typing and them printing them in anticipation of sending them at a later date would create "all kinds of problems" – not least that none of them would have a sent date.

I'd have thought that not having a sent date on unsent emails really would have been the least of the problems.

Microsoft slaps the Edge name on SQL, unveils the HoloLens 2 Development Edition

Re: Unfortunately

"What are you recommending we use to store data which will be further processed?"

What further processing do you envisage? The requirement determines the solution. If you're not sure how about a collection of Post-It notes.

Re: SQL technology is obsolete

"SQL is an ideological bankrupt and will die soon"

There's a lot of opinion to support this. People have been saying it for years and years. Surely it must happen soon.

"There seems to be some sort edict carved into the stone at the base of Redmond Towers stating that all tech must involve Artificial Intelligence these days."

Just Redmond Towers? The fly-posters have been out all over the IT industry.

Mellanox investor proposes class action to kill Nvidia's $6.9bn mega buy

If it does scupper the purchase and the share price then drops will the other shareholders sue him?

Hey, those warrantless smartphone searches at the US border? Unconstitutional, yeah? Civil-rights warriors ask court to settle this

Re: The US had a huge revelation in 2001

"some USians have adopted the, equally faulty, idea that the whole world hates them."

To be fair to them, they are working hard to make that so.

Re: Taking bets now...

"Human Rights? The US has heard of the concept."

Are you sure about that?

We dunno what's worse: Hackers ransacked Citrix for FIVE months, or that Equifax was picked to help mop up the mess

"We identified password spraying, a technique that exploits weak passwords, as the likely method by which the threat actors entered our network."

This from a company that specialises in ...remind me ... Citrix? .... isn't it networking?

We regret to inform you the massive asteroid NASA's all excited about probably won't hit Earth

Re: What's in a name?

Thanks for that. I was wondering if it was a near miss for apotheosis.

Sinister secret backdoor found in networking gear perfect for government espionage: The Chinese are – oh no, wait, it's Cisco again

Re: Buy American because it's better, right?

"Did I mention that it was all an accident?"

It's the US. They have bigger accidents. YUUUGE accidents. The best.

NordVPN rapped by ad watchdog over insecure public Wi-Fi claims

"organisations supposed to be protecting the public"

The ASA is the advertising industry's self-policing (stop laughing at the back) body. Who do you think their paymasters suppose them to be protecting.

Apple, Samsung feel the pain as smartphone market slumps to lowest shipments in 5 YEARS

Re: Just one question

Any new technology will eventually mature and when that happens the market will slow down to replacement plus younglings who've got their first pay-packet.

The one thing of which there's an inexhaustible supply is MBA/marketroid types who fail to appreciate this basic fact of life.

A2 Hosting finds 'restore' the hardest word as Windows outage slips into May

Re: The Cloud...

"Unless it is written into the contract, treat the case as if no backups exists"

If you make your own backups you should at least occasionally check that these are what you need to restore (it might be on the backup medium but it doesn't help if your restore process has problems). If you haven't successfully tested them don't assume you have backups.

How do you get to test your supplier's backups?

Re: i've said it before .....

"pay for SLA backed managed hosting or run your own server and backup yourself"

But read the SLA carefully.

Julian Assange jailed for 50 weeks over Ecuador embassy bail-jumping

Re: @Len After 50 weeks

"if Sweden wants him, they take him. At the end... they return him back to the UK"

I'm not sure about the last bit. The extradition proceedings from which he was originally bailed were to return him to Sweden to face charges. After that process ended, including any sentence which might have been imposed either Sweden would have let him go free, dealt with any extradition proceedings which might have started in the interim or deported him as appropriate. I don't see why this would have changed; the bail charges here have been dealt with so, on completion of his sentence here, then there's no reason to demand his return.

"That said... how he behaves in prison is going to determine how well he survives."

Presumably you meant in a US prison. He could, of course, misbehave in a UK prison to extend his stay as a guest of HM hoping that a subsequent US government will simply ignore him.

Re: "like a girl"

Dr Who and Ken Hagen have made the argument.

"Assange, Snowden and Manning have shown you only one thing:

If you discover your country doing something illegal, never reveal it "

The US isn't Assange's country.

A judge wouldn't simply pick a sum like that out of the air. They don't work that way. It would have been a figure presented to court one way or another.

Calculated? Miscalculated more like. All he's achieved is to put off immediate woes whilst making things worse in the longer term.

"Your continued residency [in Ecuador's London embassy] has cost £16m of taxpayers' money."

And that wouldn't be something the judge judge said off her own bat, it would have been said to her. It could have been in prosecuting counsel's statement to the court, in which case Assange's lawyer could have objected, or given as evidence by a witness in which case it could have been cross-examined. In the absence of a full court report it would appear that the £16m wasn't challenged by the defence. Not that that appears to have been a consideration of Menasco who, presumably, is posting from outside the jurisdiction or hasn't heard of contempt of court.

"I did what I thought at the time was best" without thinking more than a day or so ahead.

Cool story, brew: Utah karaoke crooners receive cold, refreshing shock as alcohol authority refuses beer licence

Most recreational amenities involve "physical activity of some sort or another,"

Doesn't elbow lifting count?

Microsoft promises to boil down its lengthy and confusing privacy controls… in 1,500-word announcement

"Required" is a weasel word when it's MS that get to define what they require. A more trustworthy term would be "the minimum required to perform the user's operation".

Definition by example is another problem as it can only be a partial list. Even if the definition is an apparently clear list of what's gathered you need to look at what's not excluded. For instance the last time I looked at the wordy MS privacy statement it included "transactions". At a casual glance it looks fair enough, if you buy something from Microsoft obviously they need to record the transaction. But it didn't say "your transactions with us", just "transactions" which covers any sort of transaction MS decide to snaffle; transactions with your bank, for instance, are equally covered.

Taking into account the last point we need to restrict that apparently trustworthy term a bit further: "the minimum required to perform the user's operation on a Microsoft provided service" and the place to define that isn't in relation to the OS, it's in relation to the services where it can be precisely defined for each service. Everything else should not be just "optional", it shouldn't be collected at all.

That's a long-winded way to work. What a pity it's the only sensible way.

Re: Microsoft said it would split data gathered into "required" and "optional."

It's obvious they have listened to users, realised they have an image problem and, in typical marketing fashion, tried to solve it by coming out with an anodyne statement to try to justify business as usual.

"Zuckerberg declares with a straight face"

From the pics I've seen that's the only face he's got with always the same expression on it.

Extortionist hacks IT provider used by the stars of tech and big biz, leaks customer info after ransom goes unpaid

"Pay me $5,000 to not sell the data. Trust me, I'm a criminal."

Not the most persuasive pitch.

Eggheads confirm it's not a bug – the universe really is expanding 9% faster than expected

Re: Evolution of the Hubble Constant

The other day I saw a report that said that an EV in Germany would have and 11% or more greater lifetime CO2 footprint due to their switching back to coal from nuclear.

For the whole of my adult lifetime we've been shoving unnecessary amounts of coal up power-station chimneys due to "Greens" objecting to nuclear power. Will they take responsibility for that? No chance.

Come friendly bit barns and fall on Slough: Equinix opens £90m data centre in London rust belt

Re: Back Hoe?

Fair enough but it wouldn't improve the DCs.

I haven't been near Slough for decades. Do they still have the stuffed dog at the station?

"Slough – the unofficial bit barn capital of the UK, hosting more data centres than any other place in the country"

Just think of what you could do with one well badly placed back-hoe.

Oh dear. Secret Huawei enterprise router snoop 'backdoor' was Telnet service, sighs Vodafone

If they'd said it should have had ssh instead of telnet they might have had a point.

America's anti-hacking laws are so loose, even Donald Trump Jr broke them. So, what do we do about it?

It's going to add some piquancy to prosecuting Assange for a similar offence if it ever gets that far.

Out-of-office email ping-pong fills server after server over festive break

Not quite sexing up the CV but when I made the transition from science to IT I came from using a system that had the Rand editor and not vi. I was given some minor stuff to look at on the first day and got by with some half-remembered ed commands - or maybe just catting into files. A quick trip to Dillons (RIP) at the end of the afternoon to get a vi book (still living a quiet life in my bookshelves and problem solved.

"Even today sending a space-hungry PDF, often containing a scanned image of a text announcement, will routinely appear when a simple text e-mail would have been enough."

It didn't involve a PDF but I did get an email from some marketing type which consisted of a brightly coloured image of the few words he wanted to send. As the sender worked for the Co-op I took great pleasure in pointing that it wouldn't have worked for a blind recipient depending on a screen reader and that it therefore conflicted with his employer's sense of social responsibility, inclusion or whatever.