Posts by Doctor Syntax

Until now, if Canadian Uber drivers wanted to battle the tech giant, they had to do it in the Netherlands – for real

Re: Judgement of Justice Feldman.

"I don't see why a statutory test replacing a well-used body of law that's been built up over time would be an improvement."

Well-used in the sense of extensively used. "Well" in the sense of "good" is arguable.

Consider for example that civil law decisions are supposed to be taken on the basis of balance of probabilities. In an IR35 case the alternatives being argued are a contract of employment vs a contract for provision of services. Shouldn't that mean that a court should look at each factor and ask "does it fit a commercial contract for services?" as well as "does it fit a contract of service?". One of the crucial tests has been "personal service" of a named person. At one time the IR website had a sample contract for provision of services to the IR Commissioners. I may still have a copy somewhere; I took the precaution of downloading it. In the middle of that was a key man clause to the effect that someone who the Commissioners (i.e. the client) considered important to the delivery of the services couldn't be substituted without their agreement. Put that in a contract as a term the IR wanted to protect itself and it was a normal commercial clause. Put it in a contract the IR wanted to challenge and it was an indication of employment because the possibility of a commercial contract doesn't get weighed in the balance.

Then there's the back-to-back contract problem. The freelancer has a contract with the agency saying one thing, the client has a contract saying something else. HMRC got a decision saying that the provider is bound by the client side contract which he hasn't seen with terms he wouldn't have agreed to. How did they get that one through? They didn't take on a contractor able to defend himself, they took on one who was so ill that that the tribunal had to conduct the hearing in his home. What's the underlying commercial equivalent? The agent is a broker who sells something he doesn't have (the employment-like contract the client wants) in the hope he'll be able to get it. I've twice had a car dealer sell me something he couldn't get - in one case the entire model was discontinued* and in another it was just the colour. In the case of a freelancer the agent is hoping that the circumstance won't arise when the difference in contracts becomes significant in the course of business; if it does they risk being sued by one party or even both just like any other commercial transaction gone wrong where a settlement can't be achieved - it's a normal broker's commercial risk and it's not the outcome that the HMRC got a precedent on.

*Strictly speaking it wasn't me to whom they were('nt) selling it. It was picked from my employer's company car list so it was some leasing company so I had no real say and got stitched up with a lump of ghastly diesel rubbish - no I didn't want to pay to buy it when I took early retirement a little later.

"in the UK I would expect IR35 to be the nail in the coffin for Uber’s argument. Fighting a bunch of drivers in court is one thing. Fighting HMRC is quite another."

I'd look on it from a slightly different angle. HMRC will be hoping for a decision against Uber because it would allow them to tilt decisions even further in their favour. It would be another nail in the coffin of those trying to keep out of IR35.

Re: Judgement of Justice Feldman.

"I happen to like the gig economy as a self-employed engineer. I don't want inequities in the Uber model paraded out as an excuse to force myself (and man other people) into involuntary employee/employer relationships."

Being retired I no longer have a direct interest but as an ex-freelancer I share your concern.

The precedents relied on by taxation tribunals always seemed to have been made to determine employment status in such abusive situations. What's now making it worse is that a previous indicator of being in business on one's own account - provision of equipment - is being ignored.

ISTM that the entire body of precedent needs to be dumped and replaced by a set of statutory definitions which take into account not only protection of employees but also the right of individuals to be in business.

Detailed: How Russian government's Fancy Bear UEFI rootkit sneaks onto Windows PCs

"Security professional and beancounters will probably come to different conclusions."

Until it goes wrong.

Re: Physical write-enable switches

"someone's going to mandate its use"

Do a proper risk analysis first.

Re: Physical write-enable switches

"You simply set the 'write-protect switch' on remote machines to 'write-enable' and leave it there, leaving you in exactly the situation you are now."

Not simply. Do a proper risk analysis first.

Re: Linux and out of date Windows machines

"It's nice when you hate Windows enough to only use it for what you absolutely have to."

Even nicer when you absolutely don't have to.

Re: Once again this proves

"What happens when (not if) your OS doesn't support your hardware?"

You switch on your computer. Your OS is sitting on your disk. Only your OS has drivers to read from disk. How do you get any of it into memory so it can run to read the disk to load itself into memory so it can run?

I know. Rows of switches on the front panel so we can toggle a first stage boot loader into memory, just like the old days.

Re: Wait, what?

"But then a) it wouldn't be Microsoft,"

It wouldn't work here if it was.

" b) it wouldn't be pretty."

Aesthetics are a matter of personal opinion. In my view my email client looks a good deal better than the fuggly stuff MS has been shipping for the last many years.

Re: Wait, what?

"There's no excuse in this day an age for anyone in IT in a business to be in the position to be able to run executables or see URLs in emails!"

There's no excuse in this day and age to have to go to the lengths you describe but marketing departments the world over employ numpties than make it necessary.

Re: Well...

"Yes, the only thing that I find more baffling ... is that Microsoft still hasn't changed that default"

Not baffling at all. They don't care. The JJ Carters of this world will happily impose this mess on 4000 users and brag about it so with a plentiful supply of administrators like that why should they care?

"System administrators should be held to a substantially higher standard for safe behavior than even their bosses"

Sadly admin privileges aren't necessarily restricted to system administrators. Not if the boss demands he be given the admin password.

Re: The real solution

As Updraft says those who want to balance convenience against security can install it with the update enabled. At least it would be a conscious trade-off for them to make. I suspect there is an economic incentive - the ability to make updates without having to have staff at a higher pay-grade than click and go. Put something on the motherboard and you have to pay people able to open the box, find the switch and eventually put the whole thing back together again without disturbing anything and without leaving the switch enabled.

Re: The real solution - amended

"all system code"

What does that mean? Firmware? OS kernel? Userland portions of the OS? RDBS engine? Services such as web server?

Re: The real solution

there's no real fix except as the article mentioned what Will Godfrey said; a physical switch.

Forget 2019's tech biz takeovers, here's the mega-merger everyone's talking about: Milky Way and LMC, coming soon

"With any galactic collision, there is a chance that solar systems like ours could be severely perturbed and may be hurled out of the galaxy. But the chances are slim, thank goodness."

Why thank goodness? With the galactic centre warming up wouldn't that be the safest place to be? And anyway, who needs a galaxy?

Marriott: Good news. Hackers only took 383 million booking records ... and 5.3m unencrypted passport numbers

Re: Huh?

"it is a little touch the customer appreciates."

Until the downside is revealed.

Re: Huh?

"Because storage is cheap, and no one wanted the responsibility for making the call to purge old data in case there was a use for it down the road."

Gradually privacy regulation should change this round to nobody wanting to take the responsibility of keeping it. It'll take a while.

Stormy times ahead for IBM-owned Weather Channel app: LA sues over location data slurp

Re: "To the contrary, the app misleadingly suggests . . ."

"A lie is a lie, whoever says it"

The lie misleading suggestion was probably written by a lawyer. If one of m'learned friends accused another of lying the accuser would probably end up getting disbarred.

I'm just not sure the computer works here – the energy is all wrong

Re: Memories

"even on current kit, full auto-landing is only used in conditions of zero visibility"

Back when BA used Tridents and the like on the Heathrow/Aldergrove shuttle one of the captains could be fairly chatty over the PA. On one flight there was a party of school kids on board who had been given a tour of the cockpit before take-off. Immediately after landing in poor visibility is voice came over the PA, more or less continuing the earlier tour commentary "And you've just had an automated landing too".

BTW I always preferred travelling in the rear-engined planes, 1-11s rather than Tridents. They were so much quieter.

"A UPS is a must for computer equipment wherever you are."

I mentioned Zilogs (incidentally the only kit I've ever come across running Sys III Unix) in another comment. There was a UPS somewhere in the depths of the building which supplied a set of outlets in the computer room. A big thunderstorm took out the UPS (computers not damaged). The non-UPS circuits were undamaged and we had to run off those for months waiting for the interrupted uninterruptible power supply to be repaired.

Re: Similar story

"didn't have magnetic screening in the base to allow it to sit on top fo floppy drives without causing problems."

I've seen the opposite effect - disk drive (presumabl) affecting the monitor. We had two models of Zilogs, each with the console monitor sitting on top of the box. One model was OK but the display on a monitor atop the other would always have a slight shimmy.

Re: Ah, the carefree days of yore

"Trust me, not a smart present :O"

Tell us more.

Dark matter's such a pushover: Baby stars can shove weird stuff around dwarf galaxies

Re: Sums over matter do matter

"Dark matter: 27%. Ordinary matter: 5%. Other: 68%. (Postulated to be dark energy.)"

As an onlooker who once worked in other branches of science this simply provokes feelings of deep unease. ASAICS the term "dark" means that we can't detect dark matter and energy by any other means that the sort of observations on which their hypothetical existence is based. We can't sample it to weigh it, measure its charge or whatever. This seems to me deeply anti-scientific.

Re: Kinda?

"perhaps it looks like matter now but with more observation will be something else"

Observe how? "Observing" by observing something else and putting in some numbers to make it fit established physics isn't really observing at all. All that gives you is a hypothesis as to what might explain that observation. You need to be able to make that hypothesis falsifiable. A hypothesis that's predicated on something that only interacts by gravity to explain a gravitational effect on "ordinary" matter and is otherwise inherently undetectable seems to me inherently unfalsifiable.

Fake 'U's! Phishing creeps use homebrew fonts as message ciphers to evade filters

Re: BOFH solution

"Outlook was deliberately crippled"

I thought this was normal.

Re: Tesco F***ing marketing bank

"he 'abuse@' e-mail address had a spam filter on it, and if I attached the spam I was complaining about, it would bounce"

I can assure you it was far from unique.

Re: People stil falling for the fake email.

my late grandfather opened my house door to a nice young woman who said she was from the "gas company"

I occasionally get people presenting themselves at the door who think they can authenticate themselves by waving a phot-ID card from whoever they claim to be representing. It baffles them I fail to believe them and point out that I could produce the same with my camera, colour printer and a laminating kit bought from eBay.

Hmmm. Idea. Get one of those laminating kits and make my own badge claiming to be from some suitably official- and threatening-sounding body to wave back at them. Yesss...the more I think about it the more I like it.

My 2019 resolution? Not to buy any of THIS rubbish

Re: #7 - "AI"

"AI" has become a new marketing soundbite for anything that might contain an 'if...else' code

FTFY

"spend time decluttering"

Life is too short.

Re: You missed one...

"Sinclair_C5"

Were there actually enough of them to provide one for each canal in the country?

Re: "Hospitality"

"Gentleman of the Bedchamber."

A good and sought after role. It brought influence. The modern equivalent would be lobbyist. Which would be the dirtier job?

Encryption? This time it'll be usable, Thunderbird promises

"When the Mozilla Foundation decided to turn the email client loose in May 2017, its future looked doubtful, but it's still here"

There was strong support for the Document Foundation taking it over. I wonder if a serious rival was what made Mozilla change its mind.

Re: Evolution EWS

"Are you sure that isn't Microsoft's fault for not properly using an open standard ?"

That's not a fault, it's a feature.

Re: The only reason "everyone" runs Outlook is because "everyone" uses Exchange.

"Especially as Exchange is hardly Microsofts poster child for quality software"

When you've achieved lock-in why would you need quality?

Re: The trouble with PGP is that

...it isn't a required part of the protocol that Thunderbird supports.

Very few people use PGP because very few if any of the people they correspond with us it. That's because those of the people who they correspond with who don't use PGP don't use it because very few if any of the people they correspond with don't use it. That's because... (Recusion: see recursion.)

What's needed is a Simple Encrypted Mail Transfer Protocol with SMTP being deprecated.

"Thunderbird's look ... will be supported by a dedicated UX staffer."

There goes the neighbourhood.

Germany hacked: Angela Merkel's colleagues among mass data dump victims

Date being sucked up?

It makes a change from it being Zucked up.

But..but..but..

Isn't having their private data hacked something that should only happen to the little people?

Oregon can't stop people from calling themselves engineers, judge rules in Traffic-Light-Math-Gate

Re: What an engineer does in the US

I was amused by a sign stating, "Bob Smith, Signtist."

I've seen a sign on a chimney sweep's van describing himself as a Flueologist. His slogan is "Up Yours".

Re: Technician Vs Engineer

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. needs to be emptied. The normal term for engineering students in my college was "beers".

Re: Great for this Engineer

the term "engineer" has been bastardised and mis-used until it's almost become a meaningless term.

The word "engineer" existed long before there were university courses and professional institutes dealing with engineering and it had a wide variety of meanings beyond the original which, I think, was military (cf civil engineering). The real issue here is a long-standing campaign to hijack the term for a restricted meaning rather than create a new one by those who want such exclusivity.

Re: Great for this Engineer

"Sanitation Engineers arrived shortly after that, and it's been politically correct downhill ever since."

I remember somewhere about 1970 someone at a British Ecological Society* conference complaining to me and SWMO that the term "environmental science" had become so devalued that you couldn't tell whether someone claiming to be that was an academic or a man who'd come to tell you where to fit the radiators.

What lent this a certain piquancy was that he was a geographer and it was my view that ecology had been invaded by geographers who persisted in talking about well established aspects of the science but inventing their own terms for it. I suppose it was a primer for later life in IT where too much innovation is old ideas with new words.

* This was back when ecology was predominantly a branch of science rather than a branch of politics.

Re: Great for this Engineer

"Of course, there are reasons to insist on high-quality software where safety depends on it. In most cases, it does not. Users prefer the present world of bug-ridden software, filtered by their experience and by the reviews of others. The alternative is a return to the relatively software-free 1970s."

What about security as well as safety? If there's sufficient demand there'll be enough money in providing software even if a requirement for higher standards were to be enforced.

It might, of course, result in the absence of software where the "bugs" are deliberate features to allow the vendors to extract data on the QT. Good.

The glorious Brexit uncertainty: The only dead cert on data rules for tech biz in 2019

Re: My prediction is...

"We can infer from the noise coming from the MSM and politicians that in fact it is politicians who will be most affected, with lots of MEPS and other parasites losing their jobs."

So you're categorising as parasites those who work in businesses which were located in the UK to give their foreign workers a UK base. They might not lose their jobs immediately but further investment in those facilities will dry up until they reach EoL and close.

Wouldn't it be better to classify as parasites those who support Brexit but have moved their own businesses into the remainder of the EU ahead of it? Or are they just hypocrites?

Millennium Buggery: When things that shouldn't be shut down, shut down

"As usual, all this is down to the failure of management to actually manage."

In fact, a failure to manage at two levels. Good management should create a cohesive workforce that doesn't get into the turf warfare which seems to be the essence of this particular incident. So not only is the management not planning on the task by task level, it's also not showing proper leadership.

The screen flashed up its usual "Press F11 for recovery" screen

This is, of course, bad UI design. It tells the user nothing about this being an option for which there is an alternative, nothing about it not being the normal option and nothing about the circumstances in which you should use this option. Don't assume knowledge the user might not have.

It should say something along the lines of "If and only if you need to recover after a serious error press F11. This option should only be used by technically knowledgeable support personnel. If in doubt do NOT do this; just do nothing and the computer should start up normally and ask for help if it doesn't."

Making and enforcing decisions like this is what top management is paid to do, not the likes of you and I.

Where the updates are to enable new functionality that department X needs and Y is objecting then get X & Y to agree a schedule between themselves. If they can't agree then it goes to the top team to tell them when it's going to happen.

Where the updates are initiated by IT because they're needed to patch some risk or move off some component that's reached maintenance EOL if you can't get agreement then go to the top team yourself and point out the risk and that you can't accept responsibility for any consequences of postponement.

I've seen the latter happen once when the server was due to reach EOL at the year end and IT proposed to cut over between Christmas and New Year when the business was closed. Management deferred for some weeks without giving reasons but accepted the risk of it costing arm and leg rates if there had to be a call-out after that. The reasons emerged early in the new year; it justified the risks for them.

Re: God Bless written instructions

"And the blame gets shifted to the guy/team who wrote the instructions, and to the manager(s) who approved the instructions."

Given the context in Jim's case it sounds as if the entire thing came from a manager who thought that any bit if kit still running would burst into flames or self-destruct in some other way at midnight.

In those circumstances there's no reason to think that the writer knew there were routers or, if they did know, would be aware they shouldn't be shut down. It's what happens then authority outruns competence.

Bored IT manager automates Millennium Eve checks to ditch snoozing for boozing

Re: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

"the USPTO won't let you patent a perpetual motion machine"

I think they'd be OK if you provided a working example. It would be a useful condition to apply to all other patents.