Posts by Doctor Syntax

Big shock: $700 Internet-of-Things door lock not a success

Re: What if ...

"The thing probably runs on easily-replaceable batteries."

So there you are, standing on your doorstep with a large economy pack of batteries in your hand swearing at your door that's locked and the battery box is on the inside.

Re: I'm disappointed

the concept isn’t nearly as outrageous or useless as a Bluetooth-enabled toaster

Re: Bah!

"nuanced access"

Maybe your problem is that this is an oxymoron.

Re: Question and (hypothetical) answer:

"If you're not generating saleable personal information, you're not using IoT devices correctly, and therefore don't deserve be using them at all!"

Nice one. I like the implicit point that the real user is the vendor.

Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

"It depends on what's going on in a system."

Firing up top in Linux shows several processes, mostly daemons, actively using CPU with nothing actually being done with the system so even in the absence of IO there's context changes taking place even if it's just a matter of waking up daemons to find that there's nothing to do. I'd guess that much the same situation applies with Windows.

"Suggestions? Sincerely."

He's been pushing Talos. Providing they have a product in the format you need supported by the S/W you need...

Re: Phew!

"So you think the security problems in the world don't matter other than the influence of which processor you buy"

Focus. Tackle each issue in its own place. We've discussed other security issues in other contexts. Actually, in this context, the issue isn't so much the security issue, because like many others, it can be fixed, but the cost of fixing it.

Re: Genetic Diversity?

"So Gates would have still made a DOS for IBM."

Not "still made". Just "made" instead of "bought".

Re: Genetic Diversity?

"What would Intel be if IBM had picked a different processor for its PC back in 1981 (Motorola 68000?)?"

Z8000?

" If there was a CPU socket, the repair is simplified"

Never mind the quality feel the (lack of) width.

Re: How convenient

"When exactly did good sensible engineering go out the window in favour of marketing ideas"

Probably about the time model numbers were replaced by names.

Re: Can you hear it?

"Well, that just about wraps it up for blockchain mining!"

I'd have thought that something computationally intensive would be least affected as it would make fewer syscalls.

Re: Hmmm...

There are already plenty of non x86 derivatives out there that don't have this bug, all that's required is for vendors to make them as readily available so as to enable folks to make the move. :)

Re: Intel Inside...

" I bought a new PC just before Christmas and decided to go AMD after about a decade of Intel"

Just starting to think about a laptop replacement. Looked at PC Specialist. Not an AMD in sight.

Apart from the hit on performance what's the likely effect on power consumption and hence battery life and heat generation? Clearly the CPU is going to have to do more work to achieve the same result.

Re: How convenient

"Trust is only regained over time"

And a lot, lot more slowly than it gets lost.

Brazil says it has bagged Royal Navy flagship HMS Ocean for £84m

"While this refit cycle could potentially continue for more years to come ... ever more machinery on the hard-worked old ship needs deep maintenance or replacing."

If we followed the F-35 sales model we could get to specify where this work gets done. I don't suppose we will.

"valued at £84m sterling."

That doesn't actually say that that's what's being paid.

Re: Few corrections Gareth

"the three Bay class landing ships can also carry 1 LCU each."

And a slight spelling change to the class name will make them easier to flog off when the time comes.

Was this the thinking behind the Amazon class?

SuperFish cram scandal: Lenovo must now ask nicely before stuffing new PCs with crapware

Re: 'I'm on my second Lenovo laptop at present and see no reason for using anything else'

"Install Linux ................................ BORING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

get a life"

Installing Linux is a step to getting a life unless you consider waiting for all those painfully slow Windows updates/reboots to be a life.

Re: before stuffing new PCs with crapware

"does that include Win-10-nic (as 'crapware')?"

And Intel ME?

Open-source civil war: Olive branch offered in trademark spat... with live grenade attached

Re: The most disturbing thing...

"How many identical twins both named John do you know?"

I came across a record of a pair of twins called Richard. It didn't specify whether they were identical.

Shopped in Forever 21? There was bank-card-slurping malware in it for, like, forever

Re: There's one born every minute ...

"Big business simply don't learn, eh?"

We're important. We don't need to learn.

UK security chief: How 'bout a tax for tech firms that are 'uncooperative' on terror content?

Re: Tax

"shipping our crap abroad is doing wonders for our plastic recycling industry, it's not like one day they will get fed up with it."

They already have. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42455378

Re: Tax Laws

"If you have a small indigenous economy ....

But we don't."

Exactly. If you're managing the Irish economy, say, you can gain more by bringing in large multinationals at low tax which is why Ireland do that. If the UK were to cut tax rates to tempt multinationals away from existing low tax areas they'd be unlikely to bring in more than they'd forego from existing UK businesses.

It's an international market place in taxation. The pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap approach only works if you don't have too much to lose from your existing domestic tax base.

Re: Tax Laws

"If governments want these businesses to pay more tax, they have to change the tax rules."

It's not that easy.

If you have a small indigenous economy you don't have that much to lose by inviting in multinationals by offering low taxation. What's more those indigenous businesses gain off the back of it by being lightly taxed. If you have a large economy the tax lost by taxing those lightly offsets the gains obtained by binging in those large multinationals. It's a trade-off. What you see happening is complaints about not being able to compete in what's in effect a free market in taxation of multinationals. Governments, as usual, wanting their cake and eating it.

We've heard of data gravity – we're just not sure how to defy it yet

Re: General Relativity Theory for data?

"And just as infotmation slowly seeps out of a real black hole in the form of Hawking radiation"

And occasionally explodes in the form of a data breach. Oops.

"ask is it solving a problem"

Of course it's solving a problem. It's just the vendor's problem (what can we sell?) and not one of the user.

Re: It's not gravity - it's bulimia.

"It does only because the maker believes it can magically create value from them."

Nothing magic. Just collecting a ransom subscription from the punters.

"Isn't this just a long winded way of saying that you should get your testing right?"

When it gets to testing you're too late. It's about getting your design right.

Re: Hey listen everybody! I've just come up with some meaningless buzzwordy bullshit!

"As Khosla put it: "Most of these [data gravity causes] are not critical issues for 'once a year data anti-gravity' threat that CIOs need to hold over cloud vendors' head. "

That one's easy to decode. It's just someone ringing up the vendor every now and again and saying "About your prices...".

From the original linked blog post:

"Data is the most massive and dense, therefore it has the most gravity. Data if large enough can be virtually impossible to move."

The second sentence sounds more like inertia than gravity.

"newbies stating the bleeding obvious"

Or the experienced with something to sell telling MBAs the bleeding obvious?

Hyperledger 3 years later: That's the sound of the devs... working on the chain ga-a-ang

Re: no real use case ?

Or at least a real use case that can't be solved by existing, simpler means.

How's this for a stocking filler next year? El Reg catches up with Gemini

"It's not clear how this will make calls in anything like the same convenient fashion."

The answer is probably the voice control button. Press that and tell it who to call. I wonder if it will speak the ID of incoming calls.

Re: No double-quote or period keys?

"Am I just overlooking them, or are the double-quote and period keys actually missing from the keyboard layout?"

Presumably double-quote is where it normally is, shift-2. Is that the period on the / key? Confusing if it is. But for something intended to run Linux where have \ and | gone?

Re: delivery and customs to the UK?

"How much would delivery to the UK cost and what would customs charge?"

From Companies House:

Name & Registered Office:

PLANET COMPUTERS LIMITED

228A HIGH STREET

BROMLEY

ENGLAND

BR1 1PQ

Company No. 10468629

I don't know of any customs barriers between Bromley and the rest of the UK but with things going the way they are anything could happen.

" It's like a Nokia Communicator, but modern."

The key difference between this and a Communicator is that the latter had phone keys and display on the outside. It's not clear how this will make calls in anything like the same convenient fashion.

Re: Ordered

"The discussions so far relating to the Linux port indicate that those who really need a unix in the pocket will get everything they need."

BSD?

'Twas the night before Y2K and a grinch stole the IT department's overtime payout

Re: Overtime payments

"This will cause a serious syntax error situation to develop between three parties, the people who was promised a raise, the people who made the promise, and manglement."

To which the answer is "see you in court" which, in this case, would be an employment tribunal. The company can sort it out internally.

Re: Overtime payments

"Always get the offer in writing signed by someone outside the immediate project."

This, above all.

"They are then signed back to JPMorgan on a minimum 3 year contract, at contractor rates of around £1,000 per day, i.e. more than 4 times their existing salary."

And I trust their clout is sufficient to enable them to negotiate IR35-resistant contracts.

"Everyone else thinks IT is a cushy job and we are paid a fortune for little. We all know that's not true, we also know we are the first to be screwed over financially or with our jobs as opposed to everyone else in the company."

Having previously been in the scientific side of the Civil Service I can tell you that that's not confined to IT. There seems to be a strange dichotomy in the managerial mind: if they can't understand what's being done it must be very little and yet they realise they couldn't do it themselves.

Beyond code PEBCAK lies KMACYOYO, PENCIL and PAFO

"TFL - Too Flipping Late"

Completely interchangeable with "Transport for London"

Re: PEBKAC is over-reported

"Manglement that puts people in front of a computer who are barely capable of working out what 2+2 equals (yes, those people are stupid, but manglement who give people tasks they are incapable of performing are even more stupid and the root cause of the problem)."

Yes!

Seen a couple of days ago. Must have been the world's slowest checkout operator. An infinite supply of unhurried patience in an overcrowded supermarket. Had to look carefully at each product to find the bar code.

Then someone paid with saving stamps. I can only imaging that the book of stamps totalled more than the purchase and it was beyond the wit of the supervisor (that's two dummies manglement put in place) to detach correct number and give the rest back. So she issued new stamps.

From several feet back I can see that the stamps are in sheets of 10 - 5x2 and all very clearly alike. So she counts the stamps, prodding at each pair with her finger. She counts each identical sheet to make sure they're the same.

Merry Christmas, UK prosecutors: Here's a special gift... a slap from the privacy watchdog

Re: Haa Haa Haa

"Ok what happens if we have a hard brexit?"

The voters who thought taking control was a good idea will find that (a) in the modern world nobody has as much control as they thought they'd have because external factors such as world markets determine so much and (b) such control as they have is over a cratering economy.

When there's nobody about who'll admit to having voted Leave there'll be a clamour to get back in at any terms possible, one of which will be saying goodbye to the pound.

Taking back control, indeed!

Would personal penalties help?

How much will Britain's next F-35s cost? Not telling, says MoD

Re: how many troops the US put into Afghanistan

"Did Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great bother?"

Not sure about Genghis but Alexander certainly did.

Bigmouth ex-coppers who fed media MP pr0nz story face privacy probe

Re: Disappointed

Bob, Cressida Dick has a serious enough back story for elReg not to make puns about her name however unlikely it may seem. In the view of many even her continued presence, let alone the position she holds, is a bad reflection on the Met.

Re: Just an ICO probe?!

"And that's just with my commercial-grade network security in place; I can only imagine what MI6 have set up for parliament."

There is one thing. It's police property.