Posts by Doctor Syntax

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

"Which is why I keep refering people to this."

Nice. But needs a trackpad adding to it.

"Adults have the intelligence and experience to think this out of course"

Sometimes. Not always.

"Slowly showing them how to do stuff"

The key word is "slowly". Far too often people demonstrate stuff too fast. The watcher needs to be able to watch what's being done, what the consequences are and also take in the explanations of what and why. That's a lot of information to assimilate and it takes time.

"Then let the person play a little bit to get accustomed to the mouse and pointer concept."

Wasn't that the rationale for including a number of games in Windows?

Re: "Some parts of the unmarked pad result in scrolling, some selecting."

"Or the user disables it and then demands IT come down and fix it"

Laptops are portable. Perhaps a rule that for all laptop issues the laptop should be brought ti IT, not the other way around. It might have a substantial effect on the effectiveness of telephone support.

Re: and also Ahh sub folders Ahh, parents

"There was little to no real estate available on her desktop."

Conveyancing is a different department.

I know the feeling. When the files get half-way across it's time for a tidy/clear-out. I'm just about there now.

"No its C:\'s evil brother"

No, C:\ is /'s evil brother.

UK health service boss in the guts of WannaCry outbreak warns of more nasty code infections

Sigh. You don't put in disaster recovery measures because something bad happened. You put them in because something bad might happen.

Whois is dead as Europe hands DNS overlord ICANN its arse

Re: All bow to the data protection Gods

"The European data protection bods couldn't care less if they managed to wreck the entire internet"

How would it do that? If the data concerned were essential to the operation of the internet it wouldn't be affected. All that's affected is the publication of certain data fields and, if you bother to read the article you'll notice that some TLD authorities manage this perfectly well. Could it be that ICANN has had its head up its arse for the last several years whilst it gets on with its own governance issues which have been amply reported here?

"Hopefully this won't encourage other governments to pass local laws to demand world wide changes."

What other governments did you have in mind? The US for instance?

Re: Unstable operation coming soon...

"Don't they need to get all registrants to sign a waiver?"

The authors of GDPR saw that one coming. One aspect of the regulations is that you can't tie provision of a service to a waiver on data that GDPR covers. Breaking that one would just bring bigger fines.

Facebook scandal: EU politicians should aim for straight answers, not star witnesses

"This is possibly true – but only to an extent. Congressmen and women did push him on whether GDPR rights – such as the right to data portability or to object – would apply to everyone, but he slipped out of those questions just as he did the ones on shadow profiles or tracking logged-out users."

From a purely European PoV that's something FB will have to work out for themselves. A better question will be what they plan to do to satisfy GDPR rights in Europe, including those of non-account holders.

If - and it's a big if - they can achieve that then they need to work out whether it's easier to simply apply them system-wide. That must be a question a lot of corporations will have to decide once they've taken on board the fact that the EU means business over this. And, if EU politicians didn't mean business before, FB and CA between them have definitely raised the profile of privacy.

HMRC delays digi tax plans amid Brexit customs woes

Re: I hope that HMRC...

"have a 'Plan B'"

Plan B? A plan A would be a good start.

That's a plan A for the whole sorry mess.

Plan A should involve a feasibility study, a list of requirements and a project plan to have the whole thing in place with "Trigger Article 50" set well down the list so that everything else would be sufficiently advanced to be ready for the go-live date.

Did they do that? Of course not. The Leavers were handed the job and as they were convinced it would be no problem at all they charged straight ahead.

Fail to plan means plan to fail.

Schrems' Facebook case edges closer to ruling over EU-US data flows

Re: I'm prepared for a whimper

"I frankly doubt that the EU courts will have the balls to force Facebook to balkanize its data into independent units."

I don't think they have the power to do that. It would be a legislative requirement.

What the courts do have is the power to do is to react to specific claims that might arise from that and issue fines against the companies concerned or even take action against senior officers of the companies and I can't see why the courts would have any compunction in doing that. It's ip to the companies to decide whether they can accept those sanctions on a regular basis or whether they need to find a means to avoid them. If they choose the latter course, and it seems likely, then they have option of setting up some arm's length operation which may be what you mean. They also have options of quitting the European market altogether or of ceasing to be US corporations.

Whilst I can't see the courts being reluctant to take such action where cases are put before them the willingness of the regulators to play their part is a different matter.

Re: They forgot an obvious question

It may be an obvious question but it's not a question at issue in Schrems' case against Facebook. If you want that question to be asked you need to find some body against whom you have a specific claim relating to that and raise that claim with the regulator in whose jurisdiction it falls. Then it will become not only an obvious question but also a relevant one and it's relevance to the case in hand that determines whether it can be raised at the ECJ.

By the time the ruling comes along the legislation applying at the time will be obsolete and the whole thing will presumably have to start up again under GDPR although it probably would have done anyway.

In the meantime recent events should have concentrated the ECJ's minds. Perhaps Zuck & Co will be wishing they'd got it settled earlier. Sometimes dragging cases out doesn't pay.

'Well intentioned lawmakers could stifle IoT innovation', warns bug bounty pioneer

Member of the bug bounty industry opposed to regulation to discourage release of buggy products. Wow!

A developer always pays their technical debts – oh, every penny... but never a groat more

Re: If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand!

"Nice idea but who's going to pay for all that documentation?"

As ever, the correct question is "who's going to pay for not having it?".

Re: If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand!

"And as well as describing the method that works it would be kinda handy to know what other approaches were tried and rejected."

Probably from Dr Dobbs or the like, the rubric went something like this:

Apprentices' comments say what the code does.

Journeymens' comments say why it does it this way.

Masters' comments say why it doesn't do it some other way.

'Dear Mr F*ckingjoking': UK PM Theresa May's mass marketing missive misses mark

"They have an office in town, I sometimes wonder what nastiness I could post through their door and stay on the right side of the law."

We used to get mailings for a former tenant from a college he attended. As he was studying for the church it should have been fairly straightforward for them to check the relevant directories for an up-to-date address. When I got fed up with returning them I rang them up and told them that in future I'd keep returning them but there would be a £10 handling charge each time and I'd go to the small claims court if it wasn't paid. They stopped.

"I wouldn't mind, but I've never voted"

So don't complain about what those who got voted in do or don't do.

Rudd-y hell, dark web! Amber alert! UK Home Sec is on the war path for stealthy cyber-crims

"history isn't about regurgitating a sequence of events and dates, but the reasoning as to why event A led to event B (or the circumstances and events that led to something happening) - it's primarily critical reasoning."

I agree. So how do you explain Amber Rudd?

Re: Kingpin or strike.

Lack of education for those that fall out of the "easy to teach" category.

Lack of career prospects for those that have fallen out of the above.

There seem to be career prospects in such fields as politics. The last few Home Secretaries provide examples.

Re: Kingpin or strike.

"My only and last word on the matter. We either tackle the cause of wealth and opportunity disparity or we attempt to remedy the symptoms."

I can see why you say it's your only word on the matter. You want to leave the hard bit to somebody else.

Boffins pull off quantum leap in true random number generation

Re: Just a random idea

"That is because they are all arts graduates."

Worse. They're PPE graduates.

Mark Duckerberg: Second Congressional grilling sees boss dodge questions like a pro

Re: Liar

"And if data are truly physically deleted is something that should require an independent audit. EU laws requires it - but is FB compliant?"

I'm not sure of the exact EU laws on this but what's needed, and needed to be used, is legislation that allows regulators to be able to pro-actively audit businesses. They need teams entitled to and capable of turning up at reception with not prior appointment able to go through systems to account for all the storage in use, reconcile it with schemas, samples of data and not leave until either they've satisfied themselves that there's nothing underhand or that they're in a position to bring charges.

A code injection to stop code injection could solve serverless security

"apart from the cloud service provider's bill"

Remind me again - who's pushing this?

Google's not-Linux OS documentation cracks box open at last

"Surely anything that replaces Android would have to be able to run the millions of Android Apps or else it will become another Windows mobile, Firefox OS, Blackberry etc."

That's an instantiation of a generic class of comment. You could replace the names with CP/M, MS-DOS and any other formerly popular OS you care to think of.

Right now we need a mobile OS that doesn't allow apps to poach each others' data. Will Google deliver that?

PCs were more and less expensive in Q1 as shipments stalled

" Slipping shipments therefore indicate slower replacement cycles and the fact that buyers now have a choice of smartphones, phablets, tablets and detachables for their computing needs."

And all the losses at the margins through refusal to produce what some purchasers are looking for because "there's no demand".

Hey, so Europe's GDPR privacy deadline for Whois? We're going to miss it ... by a year or so

"I for one would like to see ICANN themselves being used as an example by the EU."

It's a nice thought but I doubt it would fly. The data subject's arrangements are with the registrar. It would take a court case to determine how the law applied.

Re: private registation

"Seems there has been a solution available for a long time already called private registration... But of course registrars like to charge a premium for that service."

With my registrar it's just a tick box. My name is shown on whois but address is withheld. No charge - or if there is I've never noticed it in my payments.

Re: Not sure I see the problem

"Registrars can no longer pass on the data until ICANN has Model Data Clauses in place"

Model clauses are an artefact of the Privacy Figleaf which is looking pretty shrivelled in these days of CLOUD and GDPR. It's only a matter of time before everyone realises it's meaningless.

Re: If roles were reversed, would USA give EU more time?

"the Irish government needs to be involved in the process if the data doesn’t clearly belong to a US citizen."

GDPR protects EU residents so a US citizen resident in the EU would still come under its protection. Presumably US corporations who are potentially vulnerable will be making plans for arm's length operations for EU data.

A year or more? It depends on how quickly the cases work through the regulators' systems. Once the fines start rolling in it will take a lot less than a year after that.

Gemini: Vulture gives PDA some Linux lovin'

"Making a call is a tedious process, requiring opening the clamshell to dial the number."

I think the solution to making a clamshell smartphone is to emulate the old Nokia Communicators and put a basic keypad/display on the outside of the lid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nokia-9210i-9500-e90.jpg

Gmail is secure. Netflix is secure. Together they're a phishing threat

Re: We'll be using Ivp6 as name s next

"phone number as their unique user identifier, since they are pretty much universal and unique now."

Something must have gone wrong with with the allocation. My phone number and SWMBO's are identical.

"Nobody will EVER take an email address as a unique ID"

Maybe I've missed the irony in your post but if not what's the ID you use to sign in on el Reg?

I've got a login at IBM which uses an email address based on an ISP I left probably a decade ago.

Re: Don't click links in email....

"only for banks to 'modernise' by delivering their instructions by email."

Banks really should know better. Training their customers to be phished is just stupid beyond belief but is there one that doesn't do it?

“It's an example of two systems without a security vulnerability coming together to create a security vulnerability.”

Disregarding valid characters in an address looks like a security vulnerability to me if it allows scams like this.

Facebook: Look at our latest bug bounty that proves we're serious!

"The biz went on to say that it had deleted the raw data from its file server"

That doesn't account for any data in a processed form or any raw data on someone else's server.

"I interpret that as, they are willing to interfere in any election for anyone."

I'm sure they're more selective than that. You've got to be able to afford to pay them.

Azure needs extra security controls before it's fit for government use, says Australia

Re: "additional configuration and security controls"

and with the regular, can-changeread-at-MUS's-whim EULACLOUD Act

FTFY

Company insiders behind 1 in 4 data breaches – study

Re: Well of course...

"Um, like having the company details of my customers so that I can send them an invoice?"

Or like collecting and keeping your customers credit card details so they don't have to enter them again? Unencrypted?

IBM swings shrink ray from workforce to mainframes

"Yet if the machines are as advanced and secure and generally wonderful as IBM insists, surely more buyers would already find them compelling?"

Price? Worry that as the vendor keeps shrinking there may be nobody left to support the kit?

They're back! 'Feds only' encryption backdoors prepped in US by Dems

It's perfectly simple. All they have to do is put it out to tender with the proviso that any proposed solution be critically examined for cryptographic flaws and flaws which would allow the system to be hacked. The project tender should be in two stages. The first would be given to a number of contractors, each to perform a feasibility study and proposal, the second would be awarded to the best proposal.

They can be seen to be doing something which will keep them happy. As the rest of us know the tender will be on a hiding to nothing the rest of us can be happy. The latter includes the contractors because they know they can be paid for doing a lot of work on the feasibility study and still get paid for saying it can't be done. One bright spark, of course, will probably come up with an idea which will eventually fail on critical assessment but they'll still be paid.

This is not, unlike many government IT projects, a waste of public money. It will be an excellent investment on keeping the idiots off everyone's backs, possibly for years with the additional advantage that as it will fail in their own terms they can still eventually be vilified for wasting public money.

Re: As I've said before...

"I'm suggesting every legislator should be forcibly memorialized on their eventual tombstone by reference to their stupidest act of public legislation."

Maybe you've just explained Stonehenge.

Modern life is rubbish – so why not take a trip down memory lane with Windows File Manager?

Re: File Manager supports MDI, Win10 theme doesn't

"Win10 lacks any polishment at all"

The problem is that the designers of all this modern stuff think it's more polished.

Re: Ribbonless

"I dream of days without a ribbon in my interface."

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/

https://www.kde.org/applications/system/dolphin/

Re: Bring back DOSEDIT

"I have no idea if vi can be set up to do that. "

Neither have I but seeing as I've been using it since the days before keyboards had such fripperies there's no need for me to even check. The dreadful vim might well have that. My first encounter with that load was with a setup that had been configured to hide the ^Ms from then end of lines and as I wanted to use it to delete those I wasn't impressed. I was left wondering what else it might be set up to hide. So as far as possible vi and its relatives are links to /usr/bin/nvi.

Re: OMG can I say SQUEE?

"What is the impulse to break established UI conventions?"

Tinkering. Somebody wants to "do something" but the functionality is either (a) what's needed or (b)hard work but the interface can always be made more "modern".

Re: OMG can I say SQUEE?

"I must be the only one who hates win 10 flat everything and prefers 3D widgets."

Oh no you're not. And that doesn't only go for W10 flatness. It applies everywhere although in other places there are options for fighting back.

Re: Surprising Comeback on Windows 10

"No one ever sat down at the computer with the express intent of playing with Word or Excel itself."

Well, that pair, never. The LibreOffice equivalents are a different matter. If the program icons are sitting on the panel waiting to be clicked it can be the quicker way to bring up a recent document. On the whole I agree with your sentiment, however; the idiocy of UX designers who seem to think forbidding data icons on the desktop is beyond belief.