Posts by Doctor Syntax

RIP Peter Firmin: Clangers creator dies aged 89

Re: Oops

"a mistaken downvote from me"

You can just go back and change it to an upvote.

When Google's robots give your business the death sentence – who you gonna call?

We have to keep saying, cloud's not really anything special, it's just somebody else's computer you can't control. But if it gets sold to CxO* types as a panacea there's little chance of getting this through to them except by experience.

* In absence of evidence to the contrary assume O stands for Orifice and you won't go too far wrong.

Re: But...?

" you walk away and present the boss with a cost/benefit comparison of cloud vs self hosting, don't you?"

And probably get ignored by the beancounters. Although in this particular case if it had been a beancounter's decision getting the CFO out of bed to deal with it on his credit card would have been well justified.

Re: More info?

"But I don't get it how you can bet your house on a free service that is clearly not meant for such use."

Given that there was a demand for a credit card it doesn't seem likely that a free service was used. In fact, IIRC, the quote in the article about AWS handling billing issues better came from the complainant and not a commenter, again pointing to the fact that it was a paid-for service.

Micro Focus offloads Linux-wrangler SUSE for a cool $2.5bn

"Not bad price for free software"

And written by amateurs as so many shills commentards seem to have been told to say think.

Namecheap users rage at domain transfer pain, but their supplier Enom blames... er, GDPR?

"it isn't clear how the General Data Protection Regulation is at fault for this specific issue"

Whilst GDPR has dealt with a few weasel holes from previous data protection legislation it's missed adding a penalty for blaming every miss-step on data protection. If they ever have a v2.0...

Sysadmin shut down server, it went ‘Clunk!’ but the app kept running

Re: Random USB

"Didn't think of that. Good point."

However, an LCD panel built into the back and front of each server that displays the name.

Re: Random USB

"a roll of carpet with your name on it"

Or, given the present context, somebody's name on it.

Re: BBC2's transmission mixer...

"I think it was only Wimbledon so not many people watching"

As the Beeb often contrived to have Wimbledon on both channels (even in the days when it had the test match coverage) you might only have lost half of it.

Re: type 'reboot' in the local console instead of the remote one

"How do you know when you're a real sysadmin? When, rather than a spurious pride that the machines have been up for a very long time"

If you're an old enough sysadmin you can remember when patches arrived at very infrequent intervals. Personally I can remember a machine which we really didn't ever want to reboot as we weren't convinced its disks would restart. That had an uptime of years.

Re: type 'reboot' in the local console instead of the remote one

"When your uptime is longer than you've had a girlfriend"

Stay off the Viagra.

Foot lose: Idiot perv's shoe-mounted upskirt vid camera explodes

Re: The real question is: did he want to get arrested?

"Why else would he confess his attempted crime to the police? He could just as well have gone to an E.R. and make something up about his injuries."

Maybe he hadn't the wit to invent a good story (having his foot explode might have rattled what wits he had), reckoned ER would call the police anyway and found the cop shop was closer so he might as well settle for a short hobble and a longer ride.

CIMON says: Say hello to your new AI pal-bot, space station 'nauts

I know IBM's getting a bit short-staffed these days but it does look as if it was designed by some youngsters visiting from a local school. A primary school.

Re: AI all over again

"Welcome in space son of Clippy!"

The Beeb's article made it sound more like an animated Clippy than Alexa. Maybe they're breeding. We're doomed, I tell ye, dooooomed.

Google weeps as its home state of California passes its own GDPR

Re: many chop up their corporate distribution for legal reasons

"This law gets California into that club."

It's a thought but is it strong enough to match GDPR?

"trying to reverse this will always, always look incredibly slimy."

What's more the ballot proposition is already written and ready to go. They can threaten to reintroduce it if there's any weaselling.

Re: Legitimate business interests

"User privacy needs to be thoughtfully balanced against legitimate business needs."

Turn it round: legitimate business needs need to be thoughtfully balanced against user privacy.

Adidas US breach may have exposed millions of customers' personal info

Re: News?

"At this rate it will be news when we go an entire month without a breach being reported."

When there are so few left intact that it's not worth the effort of going after them.

"Why did they store email addresses/passwords in one place and useful info like credit cards in (presumably) another database?"

Because they're keeping the most sensitive stuff separate. Normalisation is one thing, security is another.

Europe's scheme to build exascale capability on homegrown hardware is ludicrous fantasy

Re: Europeans are dreaming

"As far as dick waving, it is not how big it is, it is how you use it."

For dick-waving purposes it's usually how much you spend. Measuring inputs always gives much more impressive numbers than outputs.

Drug cops stopped techie's upgrade to question him for hours. About everything

Re: Collective of IT managers?

My then boss, having a rant about one of the accountants (he was also an accountant) included the phrase "this place has a surplus of accountants". That's been my collective noun for them ever since. Nobody ever seems to have a deficit of them.

Re: Arresting times past

I was subcontracting to a subcontractor to a large consultancy, well-known but not so well-regarded. I was included in a meeting to be held at their office. When we got there the receptionist demanded to know if our phones had cameras (this being back when it wouldn't be assumed they had); all camera phones had to be left in reception. What she didn't ask was if we had any cameras so my client's manager didn't tell her about the camera in his pocket.

Re: Arresting times past

"Not just the Old Bailey - it applies to any Crown or Magistrates' Court"

I'm not sure if it applies to the entire building but certainly to the trials within them. It doesn't apply to making drawings, however (after all, the artist can come into court, observe and sketch from memory), which is why you see sketches of witnesses or accused in the media.

Re: Many moons ago, maybe 1983 ...

"Seems the security detail wasn't all that versed in the power output of a 5mW HeNe laser, in their tiny little brains we were conspiring to roast the brass."

I remember someone's description of the laser in Goldfinger: "Wouldn't even tickle Pussy Galore".

Re: Arresting times past

Nobody told me I couldn't take photos - I was carrying out an inspection as part of my work.

"I'm sorry, but without proper photographs to document my inspection the complex will have to be closed until a fuller inspection can be carried out. It'll take about 3 weeks on a building of this size and I won't be able to schedule that long an inspection until next October at the earliest. Be more than my job's worth to let you continue otherwise."

Re: re: cops taking a moment to think

"stopping the police from marking their own homework when prosecutions were moved to the CPS"

The CPS don't seem to be that good at marking anybody's homework, including their own.

Git365. Git for Teams. Quatermass and the Git Pit. GitHub simply won't do now Microsoft has it

Re: Doesn't matter what they call it ...

"Has anyone managed to figure out how to stop cats from posting for you when your back is turned?"

Non-destructively?

How about HubCap for the inevitable "unlimited" free version with caps on file size, numbers and branches?

The cybercriminal's cash cow and the marketer's machine: Inside the mad sad bad web ad world

There seems to be an unaddressed assumption in this, namely that ads directed at the advertiser's intended audience provide positive value and that ads directed at some other audience don't. And yet we all seem to regard ads as annoying nuisances. Perhaps these "fraudulent" ads might be better for the advertiser in that their negative value is less damaging when directed to pester the "wrong" audience.

Registry to ban Cyrillic .eu addresses even if you've paid for them

Re: Here's a thought...

"Well, Firefox translates your fully Cyrillic 'аррӏе.com' to the quite different 'https://xn--80ak6aa92e.com/' URL when you click on the link"

It doesn't do that here.

Re: Here's a thought...

"Perhaps a temporary fix might be a browser plugin that does the bells, whistles, and flashing lights thing if it finds something potentially suspicious: a url with two different scripts, or indeed a url not in a language that the browser is currently set to?"

I was thinking along the same lines except to make it core browser functionality to highlight any mixed scripts in URLs.

"Does anyone run any serious sites on these extended character domains, though?"

Having read the article I'd expect there would be Bulgarian sites or sites aimed at Bulgarian speakers who do. Expansion of the acronym WWW should be a clue as to why there are sites aimed at countries, languages and scripts other.

Another staffer at mega-hacked Equifax slapped with insider trading rap

"eight US states’ banking departments have opted to make a deal with the credit reporting biz – and stops short of imposing a fine on the firm."

The figleaf shrivels up a little more.

NHS systems fell offline for 1,300+ hours over 36 months, cyber-nasties fingered – FoI study

It's difficult to make any sense* of these figures unless we know how many PCs were in use in those trusts. Not the number of PC affected although that would also be interesting, but the total number in use.

* As demonstrated up-thread.

No more slurping of kids' nationalities, Brit schools told

Re: Fair enough, but as a matter of balance

"No offence to your niece, but no, she's not reliable.

I hear an AWFUL lot of bad stuff about refugees in the Netherlands. "

I'm not sure how your facts about refugees in the Netherlands make the Nazz's niece unreliable wrt teaching in what I take to be a UK school.

"The department intends to use this for research purposes, but has pointed to periodic reviews it will carry out to demonstrate that it won't be retained for longer than necessary."

Thank you for attending the annual review. Conclusion: still needed. That OK with everyone? Thanks. Please serve the tea and biscuits.

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

"This means you should wear what you always wear – jeans, sport coat, polo, whatever floats your boat."

If there weren't any T-shirts with ...interesting...slogans it must have been an opportunity wasted: IBM Meant Business or How Have The Mighty Fallen would have been suitable examples.

Re: Banned from using the fifth floor?

Back when BT occupied half of that tower block at the corner of Euston Rd and Hampstead Rd (assuming it's still there, haven't been to London for a few years now) it was rumoured that there was one more floor than accounted for by the number of buttons in the lift.

"We had the queen visit the little town I stayed in a few years ago. She would only have driven up the road I live on not even got out the car. Even so we still got new lamp posts ahead of schedule, all the road markings repainted and the verges manicured."

We found that having the Tour de France come through had a similar effect on road surfacing a few years ago. It's all going to pot(holes) again now.

Re: Desks should be clear anyway,...

"A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind"

An empty desk is the sign of an empty head.

Two different definitions of Edge Computing arrive in one week

"Isn't Fog what happens when a cloud rolls in over you, leaving everything unclear and a bit spooky?"

And you quickly get lost in it.

"The other definition came from a new group of vendors who hope to do business on the edge, but feel it’s hard to have a cogent conversation about edge computing because nobody uses the same definition."

This has been standard practice with any aspect of computing ever since vendors started to employ PR and marketing.

Amazon’s Snowball snowballs as Google's clone gets real and IBM's comes to Europe

Re: Why?

You've more or less answered your own question. It's to move data to the cloud someone else's computer en masse.

"I don't know too many companies doing that kind of work."

I think PT Barnum had something to say about that.

UK taxman warned it's running out of time to deliver working customs IT system by Brexit

"Actually I think she is a closet remainer"

I always thought she was a closet leaver and her remain credentials pre-referendum were just enough to keep her job on the assumption that remain would win. She's been brainwashed by the Home Office into fear of the ECJ. Right now I think she's still a closet Home Sec.

" didn't someone somewhere in government not say we've voted leave but the timetable needs to be extended because we won't be ready therefore don't submit the leave letter to the EU just yet"

I wouldn't be surprised. There's enough difference of opinion to cover all possibilities.

"bambi"

I don't think he counts any longer even if he does seem sound on Brexit.

Re: Don't be cretinous

"Is it that I am a bear of very little brain"

I doubt it. You've never seemed that way here.

Re: Don't be cretinous

"Luckily we are all (in my family) dual British/Irish citizenship."

SWMBO, children and grandchildren are entitled to claim Irish citizenship. Even my cockney BiL is. I'm not.

Not OK Google: Massive outage turns smart home kit utterly dumb

Re: Hahahaha

"IoT simply means that you might not even be able to lock your front door on the way out to work in the morning."

Or unlock it.

Uncle Sam is shocked, SHOCKED to find dark-web bazaars trading drugs, weapons, etc

Re: Refund please...

"using CBD at an unknown cost margin"

After all clinical trials don't cost much to do.

"#rootandbranch"

A hashtag. Is that you, Amber?