Posts by Doctor Syntax

SAP Anywhere is gonna be absolutely nowhere: We're 'sunsetting' this service, biz tells punters

"SAP Anywhere is giving its subscribers 30 days from when they receive their letters to move off the platform before their accounts are decommissioned."

So SMBs without any regular IT staff are being given a month - over a holiday period - to migrate back onto in-house systems they don't have?

They're obviously hoping that the customers will take the generous offer of return of the balance of their subscriptions (will SAP pay interest on those loans?) because they'll neither have time nor money to sue.

First there were notebooks. Then tablets. And now ‘book tablets’

Re: Bootloader locked?

"are there any methods in place to prevent you from changing the OS?"

Do you mean the sort of things you find if you search for Linux on Chromebooks"

Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, off you go: Snout of UK space forcibly removed from EU satellite trough

Re: WE HAVE CONTROL OF OUR BORDERS!

"One of them looks to be drifting off into the Irish Sea."

This is one of the more hopeful aspects because of the DUP's likely reaction and May's need to avoid that. It could be the issue that politically* derails the whole thing. To think that I'm actually looking forward to the DUP doing something useful!

* AFAICS it would need to be derailed politically. Logic and reality aren't going to have any effect on these clowns.

Re: Train has not left the station

"I think the UK Government will try and stay in the ESA"

I don't have much confidence that they will and less that they'll succeed.

The best outcome of stuff like this is that enough Brexit shit hits the fan over the next few months that enough MPs realise they have to demand another referendum and that a sufficient number of previously non-voting remainers vote whilst a few disillusioned leavers decide to stay at home.

Re: Vermin

"I heard that the UK used to produce its passports itself through a taxpayer owned company which the Govt of the day sold off."

And continued to do so for some time after the sale. Try looking up the circumstances of the re-letting of the contract. It's ....interesting.

Re: The Swiss are in it

"Good luck over there."

Thanks, we'll need it.

Re: The Swiss are in it

"This isn't the old days of empire and the British Army/British Navy can't come in to enforce Pax Brittania"

In the absence of any gunboats in the RN I suppose we could send a rowing boat. Preferably a leaky one with Farage and his mates doing the rowing.

'ventriloquist's dummy'

And where does the ventriloquist's hand go?

"Remind me again why is anyone surprised at this news?"

Because we were only getting rid of the bad bits of the EU. Bits like the ECJ which provided a modicum of restraint on some of the more swivel-eyed ideas of various govts. But we were then supposed to get an agreement which allowed us to keep all the good bits. It's absolutely unbelievable that the EU should take on like this.

Re: The Swiss are in it

"Just more petty politics."

That's what Brexit's about.

What did they expect to happen? It's taking back control. It applies to the EU as well as the UK.

Never mind. We'll have all that spare cash so we can build our own space programme. A very big catapult should do it...

Software gremlin robs Formula 1 world champ of season's first win

Re: Follows old adage...

"I long for the days when cars didn't have such things (like the 60's)."

I'd settle for the days when the teams had a good deal more freedom.

- Swept volume is x litres and configuration is what you want (remember BRM trying out an H16?).

- Use whatever tyres you want on whatever wheels you want and work out what you think is the best strategy (whe was it who built the 6-wheeler?).

Nowadays it seems that if the (bar) stewards found an engine ingested a stray fly during practice they'd give a 3 place grid penalty.

Fleeing Facebook app users realise what they agreed to in apps years ago – total slurpage

Re: Loved the article on the BBC

"Put yourself in the average journo shoes. Facebook, for them, was a gifts from the gods. As soon as a crime or disaster happens, they raid the Facebook account of murderers and/or victims"

OTOH someone working RCJ's beat should have had the technical nous to keep a device for that task and no other. I wonder if the average journo's if their friends and families have woken up to the fact FB now have them linked to said murderers and victims.

Re: Not an FB user. Can I delete my personal data?

It's his photo and his right to say "that's my nephew".

That's a debatable proposition. It becomes less debatable if he says "that's my nephew Pickled Aardvark" because it turns you into a data subject. What should become a real problem for FB, assuming you're in the EU, is for them not to say "I don't wish to know that, I'll pretend you never said it." unless you gave them permission to hang on to such information about you.

Re: Sorry, I've got to say it...

"My data? They're welcome to it. It's worth nothing to me."

But what about all your friends and family whose data you're giving to FB? Did you ask their permission?

Re: Most people do not care

"I may speak only for myself, but to me Facebook provides services that are irreplaceable. Fundamentally, it's a near-monopoly on users that makes it impossible not to have a Facebook account and still be able to - for example - be efficiently invited to a friend's party, or see your family's holiday photos, or keep up loose contact with distant friends."

People keep saying stuff like this but it's only got that way because you collectively let it happen to you. You can equally collectively change to one or several of the alternatives which you probably also considered irreplaceable in the past and that still remain as viable as they ever were and which those of us who didn't get suck[er]ed in still use. It's up to you to take back control (far more effectively than voting for Brexit did).

Re: Most people do not care

"The fact is the majority of people do not care."

And the majority of people aren't taking to the streets to protest about govt. slurp. There's going to be a strong correlation between the people who care about corporate slurp and those who care about govt slurp.

Re: This is what could really do Zuckwit and his company serious harm

Or hilarious harm depending on your point of view.

Re: I'm (not) sorry

"1. Someone asks for your number

2. You give it to them"

AFAICT from the OP it's more like:

1. Someone asks for his number

2. He asks them about the security of their phone

3. Depending on the answer he gives them the number

else he doesn't.

Re: well

"Sorry left pondians but your regime, that treats all personal data as the sole property of whatever corporate entity happens to have a copy of it, is going to have a rough time shortly."

Please don't apologise.

How do you make those darn code monkeys do what you want? Just give 'em a little nudge

Re: Nudge + Dev Ops = The Bleedin' Obvious + Buzzword Bullshit (apparently)

"principal engineer and platform tech lead"

It's the "engineer" and "tech lead" bit that's puzzling. People without any tech background coming into IT in management roles and spouting this stuff is nothing new but the titles suggest someone who actually does have that background. Or is it just how they label managers over there?

Re: Problem is...

"True leaders are like eagles... Beautiful, powerful, majestic"

And apt to carry off livestock.

The view from local government:

"Ensuring litter bins are available accompanied by adequate signs..."

Costs money. Bad.

"...rather than imposing on-the-spot fines."

Brings in money. Good.

"It was seized upon by politicians"

Guess which was the 'it' the politicians seized on.

We need to go deeper: Meltdown and Spectre flaws will force security further down the stack

Re: "we will see more technologies that sit between the hardware and the software."

"security agencies hoarding vulnerabilities"

But not hoarding them well enough to keep them out of the hands of the malware authors.

Sysadmin wiped two servers, left the country to escape the shame

Re: Biggest point - glossed over.

"and let them sweat it for, say, an hour"

And make sure the beancounters' stuff is the last to get restored.

Re: No shame in cocking up!

"Let's hope none leek out"

Then we'd be in the soup. Cock-a-leekie.

Re: Incremental backups?

"ISO 9001 only specifies that you have a process and follow that process in a documented fashion. It doesn't specify that the process has to be any good or have any value."

That was one of the objections I had about ISO 9001. It was supposed to be a quality management standard but providing the "quality" was repeatable it didn't matter how bad it was. I kept calling the mediocrity management system.

We introduced it after TQM. It was supposed to bea step up from that. As TQM had a mantra of Get it right First Time Every Time I wanted to know how, if we were already doing that, it could be a step up.

Re: Don’t need human error for that

"mirrored the drive - the new drive that is, over the remaining good drive"

It seems to be a standard feature of mirroring judging by the number of times I've heard of that.

Facebook's inflection point: Now everyone knows this greedy mass surveillance operation for what it is

Re: Copyright

"Why should not all this aggregation of my life be massive copyright violation for commercial gain, a criminal offense?"

1. It'll be buried in the T&Cs that you're granting them a licence if not the actual copyright. It will be explicit.

2. Even it wasn't it's usually a matter of civil rather than criminal law.

3. If it's people you know entering data about you without your permission it could be if you were living in the right jurisdiction.

Re: Our experience is varied

"but organising things with other parents just don't happen without it"

Right now is your opportunity. Dropping FB is suddenly becoming trendy. They may just need the push to join the trend.

Organising stuff for our grandchildren, as far as we're concerned, has to happen and does happen without it.

Re: What do Hitler, Nix and Zuckerberg have in common?

"One ball?"

Which of them has it?

Re: What it will take for people to change

"Why should 'Data-oil' be different?"

Data and oil are very different.

Oil is a source of energy. Energy is useful. You can do actual work with it.

"Data" in the sense it's being used here is of very dubious intrinsic value. The most intrinsically valuable piece of data about me as far as advertisers are concerned is that I react very negatively to being advertised at and that's the one piece of data that the advertising industry would want to keep away from their suckers advertiser clients.

Re: Limited resources

"That's why they add value"

The only value FB has is in suckering the advertising industry to advertise on it. The only value the advertising industry has is in suckering advertisers to take money from their customers and give it to them. It's all a big con.

Re: don't worry, our ads aren't as effective as we told you

"If I had a share in Google for every time I've seen apparently intelligent people claiming that ads don't work, I could have retired a decade ago."

No doubt you could. But what bearing does that have on the validity of the claim?

I keep saying this: the one thing the advertising industry sells is advertising. Not soap. Not over-acidified flavoured fizzy sugar solutions. Not cars. Advertising.

The real scandal of this is that the vendors of those products not sold by the advertising industry take good money from the rest of us as part of the price and give it to the advertising industry because they've been suckered into buying advertising. That's why your shares in Google would have prospered.

Re: Regulators to the Rescue (of Zuck)!

"His lobbyists will write the regulations, the cheaply whored-out congresscritters will pass them, and then all of the stuff people are squirming about today will suddenly be just fine because it's Officially The Law now."

Ah. The view from the US. The laws Congress pass apply to the whole world.

Digital advertising was already in trouble – failing to offer brands a great advantage over traditional, "wasteful" advertising

That's because they don't appreciate digital advertising's greatest benefit: adblockers. Remember "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted and I don't know which half"? Adblockers should give advertisers a big hint.

Just when you thought it was safe to go ahead with microservices... along comes serverless

Surely after "serverless" we'll get "codeless" where you just wish for something to happen and it magically happens.

Then "wishless" where stuff magically happens without even having to wish. It all hits the buffers when it gets to "magicless" and people have to start doing actual work and thinking about things.

Re: Is it just me

"However, those costs are less than the savings made from not having hardware sitting doing nothing."

That depends on how much hardware is sitting waiting for stuff to be spun up. There would need to be some slack in there and it's going to be an overhead that gets charged on to the customers somehow. If the service is there but idle it should get swapped out, minimising the hardware it uses; how does the work of swapping it back in compare with spinning up a new instance?

Re: Is it just me

"You get charged for the processing required for those 100 requests."

Give that servicing each of those requests now seems to have the overhead of spinning up the service that allegedly doesn't exist and closing it down afterwards it seems likely that the charge ought to be more.

UK's data watchdog seizes suspected Scottish nuisance caller's kit

"Although an old news report"

Of course it's an old news report. It's an actual news report. Current Beeb news site pages tend to be restricted to a video and a selection of tweets but mostly links to other pages restricted to video and a selection of tweets.

Re: Can’t they just look?

"Google shows no phone number for checking level crossings that I can find."

There are more ways to get information than Google. A big sign beside the crossing would be one.

"I bet the MD of the company is already putting plans in motion for another company to be setup."

I'm sure there are be criminal charges available in relation to endangering rail safety. They might keep him from setting up any more companies for a good while. I'd like to think the ICO will be liaising with British Transport Police on this one.

City of Atlanta's IT gear thoroughly pwned by ransomware nasty

"The recent ElReg article on the state of IT security in Michigan highlights what a challenge it is."

Especially when the overall conclusion of that assessment was on the lines of "could be worse".

Your code is RUBBISH, says GitHub. Good thing we're here to save you

Re: The code-sharing site

"Why?"

Maybe you didn't actually read the article's headline. It's the context for what follows.

User asked why CTRL-ALT-DEL restarted PC instead of opening apps

Re: Ah. The BSD old dsys....

"Back in those times, the people actually using computers at least had a clue."

Not necessarily but they'd probably got one by November.

Cambridge Analytica seeks data protection assistant

Re: Sure you can

"it's going to be a very short-term position."

Sole duty: being the last one out to turn off the lights.

Corking story: Idiotic smart wine bottle idea falls over, passes out

"That's right, the corked company didn't even have the sense to use the code LASTORDERS."

Maybe one LASTORDER was all they had stock for.

Icon - closest available option.

BOFH: Give me a lever long enough and a fool, I mean a fulcrum and ....

Re: bossplains is my favorite new term

"bossplaining is not the same as bofhsplaining"

Of course they're different. Only one of them involves cattle-prods, rolls of carpet and quicklime.

UK Court of Appeal settles reseller's question: Is software a good?

Re: Surely it is the spirit of the act...

No, it's the letter of the law that matters. You and I may have different ideas about what the spirit might be but what the Act actually says is beyond dispute - it's the text that emerges from the Westminster Gas Works and that's what the courts have to work with, even if they're not happy with it, as here. All the court can do is drop a big hint.

"I other words"

I really have to get this key - err, the key between b & m sorted out.