Posts by Doctor Syntax

Tech’s big lie: Relations between capital and labor don't matter

Re: Where did it go wrong?

the crash in 2008 (which technically we haven't actually recovered from)

FTFY

"This can only change if workers in the tech sector face the reality of the situation, accepting that they are just workers, and need the protections of unionisation."

Not necessarily the only option for workers to get together.

There are enough stories here of contracts being shifted off-shore and failing for the sort of reasons the article outlines. The staff being dumped represent the necessary skills and have the necessary contacts to form their own company to either offer remedial services back to the company that dumped them when it runs into trouble or direct to the clients.

Wanna work for El Reg? Developers needed for headline-writing AI bots

Clearly something wrong here

Knowledge of the lyrics of Mary Poppins omitted from the requirements.

Magic Leap ships headsets at last, but you'll need a safe

Magic Leap

"the image jumped"

Maybe the clue's in the name.

Facebook exec extracts foot from mouth: We didn't really mean growth matters more than human life

"Now, none of us can turn back the clock, but we are all responsible for making sure the same kind of attack our democracy does not happen again,"

Translation 1: This kind of electoral interference didn't make us enough money. We'll charge a lot more next time.

Translation 2: We got in trouble for interfering with our elections. In future we restrict that to other peoples' elections.

Amazon warns you have 30 days before Music Storage files bloodbath

Re: Too expensive for Amazon

"and presumably the musiians end up with a few pennies too."

I fear you may be getting into fantasy land with this.

Happy 100th birthday to the Royal Air Force

"This allowed for more compact radar - particularly in submarine hunting planes."

The shorter wavelength was significant as well when looking for smaller targets such as snorkels.

"dropping our mail in the ocean rather than bother to come finds us."

If your address is incomplete what else did you expect. Is that my coat?

Autonomous vehicle claims are just a load of hot air… and here's why

Re: Tea anyone? In France not likely.

"he didn't mention you can only get UHT milk so tea will always taste akin to mild vomit despite the tea makers best efforts."

UHT milk not a problem for tea. Don't put milk in tea. It ruins both.

"What about hydrogen?"

A bit of an accident and it's also hot air but without the balloon.

"He steers by raising or lowering the balloon, so that it passes through different air currents moving in different directions."

It still needs an air current going in the direction the pilot wants to go, or at least sufficient variety of them to sum to that. If there aren't any the pilot can steer but not where he wants to go.

"That seems pretty close to me."

So long as they don't come close to me. Someone else can be their crash test dummy.

"In headlines."

I wondered if you'd slipped that one in deliberately to see if anyone noticed.

Here's one to make your toes curl: living in High Wycombe we used to get balloons floating over from a site used by a ballooning club somewhere further up the Hughenden valley. One day I looked up to see a balloonist who had dispensed with the basket. The pilot was sitting on a piece of board - essentially a swing seat. Nothing else. Just a swing seat.

"Yet another heap of well-meaning nonsense has been slid off a shovel onto my shoes this week"

What was that about insisting on active verbs?

Politicos whining about folks' data rights ought to start closer to home

"That's because the ICO has been, unsuccessfully, lobbying against a number of clauses the government has inserted into the Data Protection Bill (that's the one the government has been bragging about so much in recent days)."

With any luck the UK will be refused an adequacy finding under GDPR as a result of all this and there'll have to be some emergency legislation passed to strip out all the exceptions. If that happens let's also hope that real legislation is required, not one of these Henry VIII manoeuvres.

Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin

Re: Plenty of venom still

"Brexit is still a very sore point for some."

Not half as sore as it's going to get.

Re: Not EU? - Declare a new continent

"This is the first (and so far only) argument that I agree with and can believe for exiting."

OK, so what happens in an election following Brexit? You're presented with a ballot paper with a list of politicians' names on it. You have a choice of voting for one of them or not voting at all. Even if the general public chooses not to vote the politicians will vote for themselves and so will a few family or friends (or vote for one of the other politicians if they want to express personal animosities).

How does converting every constituency into a rotten borough vote all politicians out of office?

Re: I'm an European citizen and I hate Brexit and its perpetrators, ...

"I would have no hesitation to vote the same way again."

It hasn't actually happened yet, so at the moment you might say you'd have no hesitation.

What you might do in the future is a matter for conjecture.

Re: I'm an European citizen and I hate Brexit and its perpetrators, ...

"Our only hope is that this error will teach... a few important lessons regarding ... politicians giving easy solutions to complicated issues"

If that lesson wasn't learned generations ago - and it obviously wasn't - it never will be.

Re: Oh dear

"I suspect its not any where near as valuable as you think."

I suspect it's not the OP who thinks it's valuable, it's his bosses.

Re: Where are the Brexit fans?

"I didn't have a vote in the referendum, because I've lived outside the UK (in an EU country) for too long. I would have supported the leave vote if I could because one thing living outside the UK, in the EU, teaches you is that the EU is broken....Certainly Brexit is going to be a huge challenge, and the first few years after it are likely to be difficult for the UK."

Please tell us, are you going to stay living outside the UK in this broken EU or are you going to come back to face this huge challenge that those who think like you dumped on us?

"Stiil, I truly believe that it is an opportunity for the UK."

Surely, if you think it's that great an opportunity you'd have been on the first plane back.

Re: Where are the Brexit fans?

"The brexit fans are all here, but just dont want to engage in the remoaners petty bickering"

The Brexit fans are indeed here. They're here complaining about the consequences of what they voted for.

As these details - ESA a few days ago and now the .eu domain - come to light they complain. It wasn't logical to think that the UK would continue to fit into these entities after Brexit. It isn't even logical that one would wish to remain in them if one wishes to be out of the EU. It isn't even logical to want to have been in them in the first place if they didn't want to be in the EU. But nevertheless here they are, doing the one thing they know how: complaining about the EU even as the consequences of their previous complaints unfold before their eyes.

It was your idea. You voted for it. Stop complaining about getting what you voted for.

Re: Where are the Brexit fans?

"It's clear the EU is in the wrong here"

On what basis? Because they're not doing what you want?

Farage, Gove, BoJO etc. may have told you you could vote leave and still hold onto any bits of EU membership you still fancied. Everyone else told you it wasn't so. Well, it wasn't so. It's becoming demonstrably clear that it wasn't so and yet you still believe Farage, Gove, BoJo etc. Why?

Re: No surprise

"The act of an organisation you'd want to be beholden to? Maybe not."

It's all about taking back control. But we don't retain any control over what we're no longer a member of. Didn't you realise that that's how it would work out? And we put British businesses out of scope of the .eu domain unless they establish an EU presence or just move over there.

Just because consequences weren't intended doesn't mean they don't happen.

Brit Lords start peer-to-peer wrangling over regulating the internet

"In an ideal world we would have an elected upper house or one that was selected of people who have contributed to society in general or are specialist in various fields."

I'll settle for the latter.

In the past I've argued that whoever you vote for you still get a politician. Trump has shown us that not only is that not necessarily true but that when it isn't the result can be even worse.

Donald Trump jumps on anti-tech bandwagon, gets everything wrong

"You criticize KM on the basis of unspecified past articles without reference to anything we can use to check your own accusations accuracy."

And,of course, we can't check on consistency or accuracy sources of the A/C's previous posts.

User fired IT support company for a 'typo' that was actually a real word

Re: Validation Vs verification

"I don't think my wife would thank me"

That's a pretty strong argument. In fact, what you'd get would be a pretty strong argument.

Re: Dangers of OCR and spellcheckers

"They have done. They call them serifs"

What really puzzles me about OCR failings is the ability to read variable-pitch fonts just fine (or at least as fine as OCR can manage) and then fail completely on what I'd expect to be the easier option, monospaced typescript.

Re: If I wrote spill chuckers...

With all due respect -> I you suffer from acute Dunning-Kruger syndrome

Re: "Mangers feature prominently in the Christmas story"

"I thought it would might help to clarify that the same isn't as true on this side of the pond."

For extra clarity, the pond will be the one with the Isle of Man in it.

Re: Validation Vs verification

"McLinux, which would be a cool name, but wrong."

Have you considered changing your name by deed poll?

Cambridge Analytica's daddy biz had 'routine access' to UK secrets

SCL has continued to support the group "without additional charge to the MoD"

Translation: The MoD became part of the product and nobody told them.

Shaking up the Nad Men: Microsoft splits up into 'cloud' and 'edge'

"Conway's Law, a 1960's adage that holds a company's software will be structured in much the same way as the company itself."

There must be a corollary about the stability of S/W from companies that keep restructuring themselves.

'experiences and devices'

The E word. Always bad news for user interfaces. But I suppose it's applied to MS ever since Win 8.

Brit cloud slinger iomart goes TITSUP, knackers Virgin Trains, Parentpay

Re: Erm...

"It's Easter holidays. The schools are shut for 2 weeks."

From Friday. At least, that's the situation with the grandkids' schools.

"Seriously don't envy the guys having to repair those fibre cables whilst having CEO of whichever shit company screaming down the phone to hurry up."

Step one of procedure. Take out all manglement phones if they're not already out.

Details of 600,000 foreign visitors to UK go up in smoke thanks to shonky border database

Re: Problems

"When you travel as a holiday maker the chances of you needing to renew your passport are pretty small."

But not zero. Accidents can happen. However if the system is being developed by Agile coping with it can be left to a later sprint and it's just tough luck if your passport gets stolen before then.

Re: Problems

"This is what got Boris Johnson to be denied entry to the US a couple of years ago as he tried to enter on a British passport which clearly stated that he was born in New York."

His real problem was probably talking to the immigration officer who promptly decided he couldn't possibly be a native English speaker.

Re: Problems

"That's a sweeping statement, do you have any proof?"

It has the Home Office. How much more proof do you need?

Re: Problems

"flaunt the laws and rules"

Is this similar to waving them?

Re: Problems

"Good luck tracking me."

Presumably your name and date of birth are unchanged?

Name is a variable, not a constant. Date of birth is a constant but (a) although you were present at the time you have no recollection of it and are dependent on what someone else told you* and (b) what you inform someone as to your date of birth is also a variable. Those are the realities of those who don't want to be tracked.

* There are exceptions around adoption etc. where not even the person doing the telling has no direct knowledge of the DoB.

Re: Problems

"Physical stamps on paper passport pages are a very outdated mechanism now, I suspect they're only there as a backup to the electronic controls."

As far as I can make out from TFA that suspicion seems to be founded on undue optimism - and likely to remain so until the Home Office get a clue.

The best outsourcers fire themselves

"My rule of thumb, then, with outsourcing software development, is to ask the outsourcer what their plan to fire themselves is. How long will they need to be around, exactly? If they don’t have one, then they’re likely planning on sticking around for a long time."

More likely is that they've got the measure of your scope creep.

It's baaack – WannaCry nasty soars through Boeing's computers

"We are on a call with just about every VP in Boeing."

My first reaction was about the naivety of thinking that the VPs would be those with the skills to fix it. Then I realised that tying them up with conference calls keeps them off the backs of those who actually do have the skills. So it really is the right thing to do.

Yes, Emergency Service Network will be late and cost more - UK perm sec

"When asked again if she was concerned about the programme, Rudd deferred to Rutnam."

So she doesn't even know whether she's concerned.

Are you able to read this headline? Then you're not Julian Assange. His broadband is unplugged

Re: Rather predictable

"He should though be conforming to common decency regarding his hosts."

He didn't conform to common decency regarding his bail guarantors so although you're right in saying he should the only surprising thing is that it's taken him this long to really upset them.

Take the dashboard too literally and your brains might end up all over it

Re: Sigh... Why the gauge?

"care to guess why the fuel quantity indication in your old vehicle varied significantly as a function of road grade and your new one is rock steady?"

One reflects a physical reality, the other some abstraction. Care to guess which one would I prefer to see based on the fact that my car runs on physical real fuel, not on an abstraction?

Re: Chart based encryption

Bar charts with axis not starting at zero are great for biasing human insight a useful warning that something's being fiddled.

Boffins stalk house-hunting bees, find colony behaves kind of like a human brain

"Ok, I am being unfair, not like there are any bees left to do proper research around Sheffield nowdays."

You are. There's a fair amount of Peak District not that far away. Sheffield used to pride itself on being one of the greenest cities in the UK until the council decided to start felling so many trees.

10Mbps for world+dog, hoots UK.gov, and here is how we're doing it

Re: We put a man into space/landed on the moon? between 1961 and 1969.

"When are we truly going to have 'just' a Broadband service with one charge Ofcom, where I don't have to take BT's phone service to get Broadband?"

It would probably cost you about £60 per quarter more if you did.