Posts by Doctor Syntax

No sh*t, Sherlock! Bloke suspected of swallowing drug stash keeps colon schtum for 22 DAYS

@ BrownishMonstr

Your handle seems strangely appropriate for this thread.

The Assagne option

Self-inflicted punishment. He should realise it's going to be harder in the end.

Secret weekend office bonk came within inch of killing sysadmin

Re: I hope these were supposed to be humourous.

"I am hoping they were ALL posted with humour intended behind them because why else would one suggest a couple of $$ (or ££) of plastic and a manual water control system to protect tens of thousands of $$ (or tens of thousands ££) of delicate and mission critical electronic systems"

At the pay-grade of those who do things like that it's not delicate, mission critical electronic systems, it's just stuff. The water just needs catching and emptying it's the next shift's problem.

I've seen a delivery driver want to drop a heavy, delicate and expensive piece of electromechanical kit off the back of his van because there wasn't a tail lift and they'd not arranged for a fork-lift. To him it was just another crate. There were enough of us to insist he didn't and to slide it down a plank.

Re: Live Steam

"I'm glad someone gets it."

It helps to have worked in a carbon dating lab. Carbon 14 is also a weak beta emitter, a bit different in energy but it meant the same counting technology would see both if the material going into the counter was a hydrocarbon.

Tritium in the hydrogen supply was a concern. On the methane counting system there was a supply of "old" hydrogen as the source of the hydrogen in the methane. The later benzene counting system was a different matter. The hydrogen came from water (carbon and lithium heated to produce lithium carbide, add large excess of water to produce acetylene which is then catalytically converted to benzene). The best that could be done was distil the water to reduce the tritium content. That just left the radon problem. When your water supply comes from a granite catchment you have radon in your tap water.

Re: Live Steam

"a small gas bottle of tritium-protium mixture connected to it, along with a fairly basic standard welding type extract."

And the result - tritiated water.

"I'm just glad the Halon system where I used to work was never triggered."

Working late in the lab one evening. I'm not sure just what gas was being used but I heard a distinct bang and hiss from downstairs, probably the vehicle inspection bay.

Re: Live Steam

"Radioactive hydrogen.

PVC?"

Well, to be fair, tritium's a very weak beta emitter. PVC would stop it easily.

What's that? Leakage? Possibility of rupture?

Then there was the Great Melton Street Flood. A high pressure main in Melton St next to Euston Station ruptured, washing out a huge crater in the road and flooding the underground car park.

It didn't affect our computer rooms. It found something much bigger and electrical: the Tube system. We had an operator on his way in to start a shift. He told us the train stopped. The lights went out. And then the water started coming through the floor....

Re: And sometimes the flood is concrete

It's just as well it only leaked into the relay room. Just think how much concrete they'd have poured in if they'd tried to fill the entire Victoria line.

Corpse! of! Yahoo! drags! emails! of! the! dead! case! to! US! Supreme! Court!

"Could be fun and games at airport security!"

In the US they'd probably demand access to it.

"Because its a legal requirement in many places such as the UK that email and browsing history are kept for at least one year?"

Could you point me to the UK law on that?

Re: PW keeper

" I suppose the ideal place to keep it would be on a metallic strip hidden someplace inside your body, retrievable at your autopsy, but even that one might be a bad solution."

A very bad solution if you develop dementia.

"I'm a dinosaur, and therefore I use discrete email clients"

Thee & me alike. But getting access shouldn't be impossible for nearest & dearest providing you didn't encrypt the hard drive. Just take it out & mount it in another box. It doesn't require a trip to court. There's always a downside to "convenience". Security is one. Inconvenience when you need something out of the ordinary is another.

This assumes that the email was left on the mail provider's servers. Why? It's just open to abuse by anyone with access, legal or otherwise to the server. Download, delete from server, delete or save locally as appropriate. Backup as appropriate.

You want it on multiple devices? Copy it to multiple devices.

Due to Oracle being Oracle, Eclipse holds poll to rename Java EE (No, it won't be Java McJava Face)

Why not ask James Gosling to choose a name?

As GDPR draws close, ICANN suggests 12 conflicting ways to cure domain privacy pains

Re: Companies House, anyone?

"Is there an exemption for the functioning of government ?"

Yes, providing, as you say, it's a statutory function. HMG seem to be trying to slip in some extra exemption in the current bill. If they get it through the Commons I can see a quick trip to the ECJ while there's still time. It would be pretty daft of them to do this if it ends up by costing equivalence post-Brexit.

Re: On GDPR...

"Somewhere in those terms and conditions is a legalese set of terms to allow them to do whatever they want with your data."

If so they should have taken better legal advice because that is an infringement in itself. And would probably be looked on as a basis for a bigger fine.

Re: A job application...

"2 downvotes for being rude about ICANN."

Never mind. Have an upvote despite your expressed tolerance of over-priced fizzy drinks. Just stick to the 50-year old hard stuff.

"There is a complete absence of thorough worked examples for many scenarios."

What makes you think that there should be? The ICO don't know your business or your systems. The legislation is there. You need to look at how your business is affected by it, just like any other piece of legislation. Would you, for instance, expect a thorough worked example of how to fit fire doors to your premises so you could comply with legislation on fire protection?

Digital version of Universal Credit still pricey, wobbly, failing to deliver – MPs

Re: UBI

"n seems to me that the Universal Credit cock-ups all serve to add weight to the argument in favour of Universal Basic Income."

Really? Who'd be responsible for it? The same people who are responsible for UC. That alone should guarantee it would never get off the ground.

TalkTalk to splash £1.5bn laying full fibre on 3 million doorsteps

"Would it not be better to force providers to upgrade or install in areas where the others are not operating first?"

Then it wouldn't happen. If they can't pick the areas where they reckon they have best RoI they won't do it.

Austrian privacy chief handed leash to EU's data protection beast

Re: It's a regulation

"However that does not stop states creating legislation that goes further than an EU regulation"

There was an article here a week or so ago about the EU getting at upset that countries hadn't adopted it yet: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/25/eu_gdpr_infringement_procedure/

"if after brexit we are no longer under the ECJ then who is going to issue fines in the UK under the GDPR and if it's an EU related issue how will they collect from a UK company without any legal options?"

The GDPR has to be implemented in local legislation in each country. That's why there's a new Data Protection Bill going through Parliament now. When it received Royal Assent it will become the new Data Protection Act. Like the others, the ICO will be the body in day-to-day charge. The ECJ doesn't come into it. This will be the situation from this May and unless a subsequent govt. tinkers with it it'll remain. Any govt would be mad to tinker with it except in one specific circumstance because it would greatly harm all manner of trade with the EU, or at least such as survives Brexit.

The one circumstance is that the EU changes or replaces GDPR in which case we'll have to make parallel changes without having had any input into the EU process. It's called "taking back control".

MPs: Lack of technical skills for Brexit could create 'damaging, unmanageable muddle'

Re: Hmm

@kdh007

You need to add two more:

C The Irish border will not be moved to the middle of the Irish sea.

D The DUP will continue to prop up HMG.

Re: Hmm

"Them spineless bastards wouldnt dare build one themselves and it is better for the Irish not to have a border."

So how is this issue going to be handled? Any hint that the border moves to the Irish Sea and the Home Sec of Downing St will be visiting HM to ask for a dissolution of Parliament.

Re: Hmm

"So the EU's opening- you will pay X Euro (X being a moving number often calculated by laughter), EU courts over EU citizens remaining in the UK (more laughter) and the EU want a wall and the UK will pay for it (think of trump as you say it and so even more laughter). And that is before they are willing to negotiate."

Beggars can't be choosers. Did you think any different. That doesn't just apply to negotiating with the EU, BTW. It applies to negotiating all these supposedly wonderful trade deals with the rest of the world.

Re: Hmm

"it doesn't matter how small and agile government is if you don't have a clear driection on where to go you won't get there."

Nor does it help if where you want to go isn't accessible.

Re: Hmm

"We voted out"

Slightly more than half of those who voted did. That means less than half didn't. In an advisory referendum. So instead of doing the sensible thing and starting a feasibility study the govt rushed head first (a few months is a head first rush in govt terms) into triggering Article 50 without even thinking about what the due process was until their arm was twisted. Then they discovered that as supplicants negotiating is a lot harder than they thought even though that should have been obvious.

In a couple of years time your going to be hard pressed to find anyone who'll claim admit to having voted Leave.

Re: Well Duh!

"Not changing the spec every week/day/hour."

For anything Brexit related the real spec isn't going to exist until well into next year. What, if anything, is presented as a spec is going to vary wildly depending on which wing of the party (and anyone else) ministers are trying to placate this week - or just today.

Re: Anti-competitive?

"Well, anything we can source more cheaply elsewhere, we will - there's mostly no chance of us simply producing it ourselves - we'll simply change where in the world our money goes."

"Simply" is probably an exaggeration. If the only existing component is for some product is sourced in the EU then going elsewhere might involve a redesign. And that's not including the more convoluted supply chains where stuff goes backward & forward.

Re: Clueless on everything

"Yep can negotiate, they just cant come into force until we leave the EU."

You're probably right on this one. Negotiate, yes. Succeed when everyone knows we're over a barrel?* It depends on the definition of succeed.

*The same applies to negotiating leave terms. Apparently nobody told HMG that beggars can't be choosers.

Re: Clueless on everything

"Same as always. Staying in power."

And, same as always, failing.

"Do they think they can finish doing that the week before B-Day and then flick a switch to put the new programs in place?"

Yes.

"we just don't follow them"

We can't. We don't have the IT in place.

Re: But it will be worth it

"The MPs don't need to worry about the local elections."

Although not necessarily reliable they're pointers to what the electorate is thinking. MPs must already be looking a few years a head, even without the prospect of the DUP throwing a wobbly and there being another general election shortly afterwards. They'll be worrying.

Re: But it will be worth it

"And we'll be getting blue passports."

We'll need them to escape.

CLOUD Act hits Senate to lube up US access to data stored abroad

These include a motion to quash or modify the legal process if it believes the customer isn't a US citizen and that disclosure "creates a material risk" that the firm would violate the laws of another government.

Who's going to be responsible for this? If it's the data subject they're not going to be told until after the event if at all. Even then it means having to defend themselves in the US when they live elsewhere.

I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word

Assuming this is running on the corporate Office 365 it can also email your manager/HR drone or whoever that you're looking for a job.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Sending it Mars?

The real trick would have been to have brought it back and parked it on his drive.

Assange fails to make skipped bail arrest warrant vanish

Re: A Flagrant Rotten Denial of Justice and a Blot in the UKGBNI Landscape

"Surely the fact that he is still being persecuted/prosecuted long after removal of disputed facts, is grounds enough for reasonable cause that justice has not and is not being served and servered by judges?"

Skipping bail is an offence in its own right. The magistrate lays out the law quite clearly in the judgement.

Ghost in the DCL shell: OpenVMS, touted as ultra reliable, had a local root hole for 30 years

Re: Wasn't VMS...

"Interesting to note the parallels with the downfall of Sun"

There seem to be parallels with HP and IBM as well. It seems to be a management anti-pattern.

UK Home Office grilled over biometrics, being clingy with folks' mugshots

"Home Office bods have denied that retaining millions of custody images of people who were never charged falls foul of case law, while asserting that automatic deletion is not technically possible."

No problem. Just delete the lot. If they can't do it whilst keeping within the law they shouldn't do it at all.

Insurance companies now telling you what tech to buy with um-missable price signals

Re: Definition of an actuary

" Love Actuary."

You should be ashamed of yourself. Have an upvote.

South Wales cops crow about facial recognition arrests on social media

"luckily these types all dress in the same uniform."

And wear DMs on their feet.

Re: @Lee D

"however you look at it this stuff is cheap!"

And worth what you paid for it - ~10p a go in the example you gave.

"Nobody much complains about human Police spotters identifying trouble makers at football matches. So is this just luddite objections?"

I have no experience of Police spotters at football matches as I've assiduously avoided football for my entire adult life. So I'm open to contradiction in this. But as I understand the comment spotters would be looking for known individuals who shouldn't be there. If that's the case then their visual identifications would be subject to more robust checks on identification. If automatic facial recognition is being applied to the lousy images from typical CCTV as the only evidence then it's far from being a Luddite objection. The initial ID, human or AI, needs to be tested and distrusted until it's tested. A violent arrest as in the Denver case linked above really shouldn't be conducted on the basis of such ID.

It's really like the blood test kits we used to give to SOCO - and used in the lab as well. The technical term was a presumptive test (it worked by detecting peroxidase activity which haemoglobin shares with several other substances such as fruit juice). The presumptive test highlights something to be followed up to decide not only is it's blood but also what species.

Facial ID seems to be at the presumptive level - useful to tell you what's worth looking at but too liable to give false positives to be used solo.

I see from the linked article that the FBI have ditched hair evidence. I never could understand why they were keen on it. It always seems hopeless. In 14 years I only ever used it once and that was to give an ID of a body where there were 3 alternatives; fortunately I could exclude 2 as couldn't be and that left one that could have been.

No, Windows 10 hasn’t beaten Windows 7’s market share. Not for sure, anyway

"the headline percentage of UK exports to the EU has gone down"

The main nonsense in this is that the UK doesn't export to the EU. The EU is part of the home market. It's a hell of a chunk of the home market to be losing and the Home Sec of Downing St has just said that that's what's going to happen. Of course as soon as she needs to placate the other wing of her party or Ireland she'll say something else.

Re: MS is not the one to worry here

"For business, you can also buy a PC without an OS license."

And not just for business. In the UK PC Specialist will sell PCs without OS to anyone.

Re: StatCounter = irrelevant, amateurish

"This would skew the stats."

It will also skew the stats against people who don't download and run random bits of Javascript. In fact use the things which will skew the stats about users showing up on Statcounter will be expected to show some correlation with use of blocking the enforced W7 > W10 downgrade.

Re: And they were so close...

"And you cant make sites that require IE automatically select it like you can in Edge."

Are you seriously suggesting that even considering using sites that require IE shouldn't be a sacking offence?