Posts by Doctor Syntax

Man cuffed for testing fruit with bum cheek pre-purchase

"Brings new meaning to try before you buy"

Makes you wonder what he was trying them for.

Michael Dell serves up stump speech to settle sceptical investors

"the company still has a relatively low proportion of subscription revenue."

What is it that makes people think that making stuff and just selling it is a problem? Yes, I know as a CFO you'd like people to pay you money in perpetuity but from a punter's perspective would you prefer a one-off cost or a millstone?

Who ate all the PII? Not the blockchain, thankfully

These attestations: are they something like third party signatures on a PGP key? Only this time with blockchain, of course. Everything old is new again.

London tipped to lead European data market. Yes, despite Brexit!

"it's probably worth taking this report under advisement."

The advisement will be found under a large pinch of salt. I take it Equinix has an interest in this prediction coming true.

Oz government rushes its anti-crypto legislation into parliament

Re: They know not what they do

"I seriously believe that they know exactly what they are doing."

It depends on who "they" is. Intelligence agencies do but do you seriously think the average politician knows the implications?

"We have to take away people's rights before they have time to vote us out for trying to take away their rights!"

You can always vote them out for having done it.

Microsoft: Like the Borg, we want to absorb all the world's biz computers

"The admin can quickly get a job somewhere else"

Preferably running his own business and abstracting copious quantities of beans from the counter every time something goes wrong.

Re: No.

"They already have all the keys, with updates that can't be inspected or stopped."

Not here, they haven't.

"I really hope that's tongue in cheek. F'rinstance I make my living now from my own bespoke applications none of which remotely resemble anything that MS offers."

You don't have to read many of my posts to rest assured about that. Writing and administering bespoke stuff was also the way I made my living for a large part of my working life. Even when the main application was a bought-in ERP system there was always something bespoke to do round the edges.

"I wish now that at the time, when the whole process started, that Linux were as it is today."

There was SCO inter alia. Linux didn't appear out of thin air.

"What happens if one has legacy code which won't run on the latest version of Windows due to incompatibility issues with the compatibility mode?"

It's one's own fault for using something Microsoft didn't provide. Just ditch it and use something from them that more or less fits and adapt to it.

Re: Testing

"How would this fit into the broader change management plans that companies have for their important stuff ?"

Management fit their important stuff around what Microsoft plans. Problem solved.

US State Department confirms: Unclassified staff email boxes hacked

"no classified data had been accessed – those documents are transmitted through a separate email system."

Always? Really? Sure?

The Reg chats with Voyager Imaging Team member Dr Garry E Hunt

Re: El Reg delivers.

"You know the drill."

Is that the one that made the hole in the Soyuz?

"Lucky we didn't have politicians at our neanderthal stage"

Neanderthals were a different species with only a small genetic contribution to modern humans via interbreeding. Otherwise they're extinct. Perhaps they did have politicians.

"We had already realised that you could do Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune, and we knew that if you filled up to brimming point the spacecraft with all the fuel it ever needed, it'd be OK. We did. But we never told anybody."

Fait accompli. Always the best way.

Fascinating article. Thanks.

Now here's an idea: Break up Amazon to get more shareholder cash

As a customer on the retail side it's becoming clear that they're losing the plot in terms of getting the goods to the customer. I wonder if the whole business has got too big and diverse to manage properly. Splitting it up might help.

What wouldn't help would be someone taking advantage of the fact that it's largely debt free, borrowing heavily to buy the bits, loading it up with debt from that and then gradually running it into the ground before calling in the administrators. Not that that sort of thing ever happens, of course.

No wonder Oracle exec Kurian legged it – sky darkens as cloudy tech does not make it rain

Re: The world has changed and Oracle hasn't.

"Ask any business beancounter and they will tell you IT has always been a dirty blackhole"

That's the problem with a lot of businesses - their beancounters who treat one of the most significant engines of the business as a cost to be minimised.

I'm reminded of my days back in forensic science. Some of the detectives who brought in cases would share a lot of detail with us because they felt they got better results that way. Others didn't think it worth while because they didn't expect to get anything useful. Would it surprise anyone that both groups usually got the results they expected?

NHS smacks down hundreds of staffers for dodgy use of social media, messaging apps

Re: … FFS

So 'I'm really going to annoy myself by, like, imagining the article being read, like, by someone frying their vowels, like, a lot.

FTFY

So whether doctor, nurse or "other", you can be a briliant manager, or you can be an appalling one.

One of the underlying causes of good whatevers becoming appalling managers is that only management is considered worth the higher pay grades. The result is that competent whatevers get promoted to management irrespective of whether they have any talent for it. As a result the work is given to those too inexperienced or incompetent to be promoted to management and managed by those who weren't appointed for managerial ability but could have done the work well.

Re: deeper than that

"so the practice is nothing new, even if there's more ways of sharing."

There was and no doubt still is a certain amount of sharing such info in the formal medical literature - or at least in the medico-legal literature where the results ended up in the coroner's court.

Re: [twitface discussion] under threat of expulsion from their register

"Obviously they'd rather any slightly disgruntled patient makes a formal complaint every single time about every single thing, rather than have them just grumbling ineffectually to their friends."

Or they'd rather have ineffectual complaints than be roasted on social media which seems to be about the only thing that has an effect these days.

Re: Meanwhile

"It's quite damning when a free service like Whatsapp or FB Messenger does a better job at getting information from A to B than a system that cost tax payers millions of pounds"

Maybe they had their fax machines taken away.

Microsoft reveals train of mistakes that killed Azure in the South Central US 'incident'

Re: RE: asynchronous nature of geo-replication could have led to data loss

"Databases are particularly vulnerable to this kind of data loss. In the case of an on-premises outage a skillful systems person could stitch things back together again, having direct access to the actual underlying files: Not easy, but arguably doable."

Some customers might have wanted to prioritise fail over to integrity (management, of course, would want both but pay for neither, that's a different argument). On-premises gives them the power to decide.

UK.gov isn't ready for no-deal Brexit – and 'secrecy' means businesses won't be either

Re: Y2K all over again

"I am totally opposed to leaving the EU for several reasons, but that doesn't mean that I think that leaving will cause immediate disaster."

More like a slow motion car crash.

Re: Hmm

Which in hindforesight would have been the best choice

FTFY

Re: Hmm

"With a competent government, this could all have worked out fine."

Sir, I admire your optimism on both counts.

Re: @codejunky

"Because I don't otherwise see how you can possibly blame remainers for the EU's refusal to negotiate!"

I've said several times he'd eventually come out with the "No true Scotsman" excuse. What I didn't realise was he'd push it to such limits.

Re: Hmm

"Why instead are the brexiters forced out"

They weren't. They had a chance to get their shit together when Cameron resigned. Instead they stabbed each other in the back and left it to May. Leave had their chance. They blew it. But if your version of Leave was "Out! Right now!" then this report tells you what the consequences would have been.

Re: Hmm

"Funny how Cameron didnt negotiate anything (and would be staying to negotiate) about leaving"

Why did you expect him to? It wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't what he campaigned for. It wasn't something he believed in. Why should he be expected to implement something to which he was opposed?

"Even though we are the ones not getting what was voted for."

Just what did you vote for?

Re: No shit, Sherlock?

"After all, they were only following orders."

More likely trying to guess what the orders might be when they finally get them, probably about the end of the second week of March.

Re: No shit, Sherlock?

"Why do we need a report on this? We can all see it for ourselves, whichever way we voted."

I doubt it. There are plenty in denial. They believe it's the best of all options. If they get their way they'll blame the consequences of the Remainers.

"For us that means paychecks!"

For many that means lack of paycheques.

Linux kernel's Torvalds: 'I am truly sorry' for my 'unprofessional' rants, I need a break to get help

Re: He's Not Sorry...

"Is your defense of Linus based on extensive observation of him, or just your angry emotions reacting to his detractors?"

I made the point in an earlier posts that business as usual doesn't make headlines. We thus get a reaction based not on business as usual but from the exceptions.

Having spent a good many years dealing with some members of the human race at the worst I've learned not to judge the general by the worst exceptions.

Re: He's Not Sorry...

"The star-struck sycophancy is there for all to see in the Q&A parts of the various lectures."

That would be coming from others not him wouldn't it? Clearly there are a good number who don't agree with you.

Re: He's Not Sorry...

"The guy's a dick."

Is this an observation based on extensive observation of him or just of headlines?

Re: Rainbow haired

Some of us are very grateful for whatever hair we have left.

Re: Best of luck to him

"The only thing he should have done imo is to have a named 'understudy' in place a couple of years ago."

You think he didn't?

Re: Nice One, Linus ..... Onwards and Upwards to Further Leading Areas of Virtual Expertise

Careful there. I managed to parse of it.

"Give them a new forum, and make it clear that's where Really Important Things happen."

The B ark solution. I like it.

Re: Linus moving the Linux Kernel Maintainers' Summit

"see a bunch of castles and some scenery in Scotland"

Don't be mean. Allow him a few distilleries as well.

Re: I must say that sometimes he seems to have a point

"Although describing even minor mistakes with crackling vituperation does seem a bit on the er, emotional side."

As has been pointed out here a number of times the vituperation only comes in the most egregious situations where the developer hasn't responded to more gentle persuasion. Oddly enough neither el Reg nor anyone else posts regular articles on the lines of "Linus politely rejects a patch". Or maybe not oddly because it would quickly get boring.

Re: Good for him.

"Unfortunately the organisers deciding to move that to Edinburgh may have thwarted his plans for getting the break away from it all he desired and deserved."

That's the way it looked to me. I wonder that Mrs. T made of it all.

Re: Don't let the namby-pambys run the Kernel, Linus!

"I can't think of any environment where being so abusive to your subordinates is allowed."

But can you also think of any other product on such a scale developed in that way? From TFA "10,000 developers from more than 1,200 organizations worldwide" all of whom are self-selected and over whom Linus has none of the conventional managerial options: he doesn't hire or fire (although he does have the option of refusing patches which isn't quite the same thing). He doesn't write annual reviews, recommend or withhold raises or promotions or award bonuses.

One has to conclude that having held that process together over so many years to produce a successful product he might be doing something right.

Re: Congratulations

"I hope this is a success for Linus Torvalds and linux."

I also hope normal service is resumed as soon as someone tries to slip some nonsense into the kernel and won't take a polite "no" for an answer. The Code of Conduct referenced includes something about accepting constructive criticism. AFAICS the outbursts have followed failures of that..

Boffins ask for £338m to fund quantum research. UK.gov: Here's £80m

They probably think it's enough. As the location of the funds will be subject to uncertainty all the recipients will think they might have got what they needed. Until they open the box, of course.

Equifax IT staff had to rerun hackers' database queries to work out what was nicked – audit

Re: No-one at the Exec level gives a shit

"told to shut up or find themselves another job."

I'm not suggesting that whoever committed the breach was such a person but that sort of managerial response, which I'm sure most of us won't find improbable, just piles one risk on top of another.

"could someone tell me what they actually do?"

Get ignored?

Re: Impressive consequences

"Feels like a monitoring tool should notice that it can no longer monitor something and complain."

That depends on there being somebody monitoring the complaint and deciding it's their job to respond.

How an augmented reality tourist guide tried to break my balls

Re: Who'd invest in such crap?

"I found myself asking that question when I went to view Stephenson's Rocket at the Almost-imperceptible Exhibition of the North."

Not quite the Rocket but for a real reality trip behind an early engine try Beamish.

Redis does a Python, crushes 'offensive' master, slave code terms

Re: "Hurtful"

Likewise the complaint that "parent/child" terminology with respect to processes had to be renamed, because it was hurtful to orphans.

I'm not familiar with that one. How do they deal with orphan processes? And is anyone offended when they become zombies?