Posts by Doctor Syntax

Trump’s 145% tariffs could KO tabletop game makers, other small biz, lawsuit claims

Re: Sue him directly.

To sue is to make a civil claim. That doesn't lead to imprisonment.

Amid CVE funding fumble, 'we were mushrooms, kept in the dark,' says board member

Re: Move it to Europe

Risc-V would be a suitable example. The RISC-V Foundation moved to Europe (Switzerland in their case) because of fears of being subject to US regulations.

New Intel boss is all about ‘deleveraging’ the x86 giant

Re: De-laborating

I he doesn't who does?

Especially given that if there hadn't been a de-laborating of the wrong person a few months ago he wouldn't be where he is now.

Re: De-laborating.

When defenestrating opening windows are optional but it helps to have a glazier on speed-dial.

Re: Support Staff & False Cost-Savings

"The unfortunate thing is that companies don't ever know who their most valuable employees are. "

It's easy to find out. Stir up shit like this, offer voluntary redundancies and see who the first volunteers are.

Re: De-laborating.

"What is wrong with de-laborizing?"

It's not as impressive as de-laborizating.

Re: 108K+ employees?

Would like to have been able to give a second upvote for the last paragraph.

Re: Just fuck off.

Didn't you read OP's handle?

Build your own antisocial writing rig with DOS and a $2 USB key

If you can provide something that pretends to be a serial link Kernit can handle external communication including file transfer.

Signalgate lessons learned: If creating a culture of security is the goal, America is screwed

Re: "an insecure internet connection set up in his office"

If Trump were capable of it - which I'm sure he's not - he would be feeling at least a little embarrassed.

Re: Who is to blame?

He missed https://xkcd.com/538/

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

"... and here we have the living room. It comes complete with a 20 foot robot which walled itself into the room when it put the door lintel in place."

Hydrotreated vegetable oil is not an emission-free swap for diesel in datacenters

"Buss advised operators to consider other types of redundant power generation, such as smaller gas turbines, hydrogen fuel cells or large-scale chemical batteries."

How do these compare in overall fossil carbon footprint?

M&S stops online orders as 'cyber incident' issues worsen

I wonder if there was someone in M&S IT last weekend trying to get manglement to let him shut down everything there and then to stop the problem spreading...

I wonder how many of their customer still carry cash.

BOFH: The Prints of Darkness pays a visit

I'm surprised the BOFH would let the cartridges go - after all there must be a market for them.

Re: A simple question.

When are you scheduling the next refresh? A couple of years' time?

Re: Familiar!

"Or am I missing something?"

Either the small print or (unlike the leasing company's salesweasel) a not very bright manager in the company.

Re: Loved that lift.

What I want to know is were the chairs occupied when they were disposed of?

Re: Sheer genius!!

More likely to have a saltwater croc.

Re: Sheer genius!!

More likely in the printer contracts that can't be are hard to cancel.

Microsoft mystery folder fix might need a fix of its own

Re: Quality control - yes we’ve heard of it

If the cost of extending support is cheaper than replacing, expect them to sign up, especially if they're inthe US & are now going to be caned over tariffs.

"This one weird trick"

Just one? The whole of Windows is weird.

Re: Patching the Dumbai way...

Maybe it's what ChatGPT advised.

Re: Quality control - yes we’ve heard of it

"perhaps they could invest some money in quality control at Microsoft"

Why would they? They've got users and people like Kevin Beaumont to do it for them. QC costs money if you do it in house.

Hubble Space Telescope is still producing science at 35

That may be possible but there will be a limit on the resolving power of the optics. If the current CCDs meet that criterion then there wouldn't be any point.

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Re: Extensions to extensions to extensions

Long, long ago my University hall of residence had a large dance hall (it had originally been built as an hotel) and our 3-weekly hops (that dates it) were part of the social life of a good chunk of the south London student population. We had a home made lighting control panel that was powered from wall sockets; we weren't daft - sections of it were powered from different sockets. It had a number of switched circuits with a 2-pin socket across each switch. We had a few dimmers which could be plugged ino the sockets - switch on, light, switch off, no dimmer, no light, switch off and dimmer, light controlled by dimmer. One day a friend looking out of his window say a roll of cable fall off the back of a passing lorry (yes, really, the A23 was a busy road) and ran down to grab it. That gave us extra scope for our arrangements....

Back then musicians were all a bit low key but I heard that after I left one of the new lot with lots of flashing lights & what not were booked and blew the whole thing. The College electrician condemned the lot and had a professional lighting setiup installed, something that would never have happened otherwise.

It was a much better place than the dreary newer halls but now it's been flogged off and replaced by a block of flats on the same footprint, Bloody philistines in the College management.

Re: Never heard of Romex cables?

"In the UK it is rare for a domestic property to have 3-phase"

Unfortunately there's one just down the road. Back in late 2020 we had one of our regular power failures. Two phases of the main cable (buried no more than a foot or so below the surface because nobody wanted to trench into solid rock) started arcing - the vibrations could be felt standing on the spot.

They also damaged the gas main in the same shallow trench. I discovered that because I could smell gas coming up through the drain about 100 metres further up.

The electricity team wouldn't start work unto the gas was made safe and the gas wouldn't start without temporary traffic lights (the spakies weren't fussed about that). The transport bringing the TTLs broke down and by the time replacements arrived it was starting to get dark, 6 hours after the initial 10.am fault.

The electricity people had a temporary generator but it was only single phase. They were going to strap all the phases together on our side of the fault but couldn't because of the house with the 3-phse supply; the owners were away so they couldn't get in to turn it off. It was finally fixed about 3 am.

Re: dirty power

Yes. Back when there were political strikes in N Ireland the lab was close to a hospital & the power stayed on. Home was reasonably close to the major army base in Lisburn - also no power cuts.

Re: Also power-supply related

Been there, back in the 1980s. It was the same device it was a stabilised PSU but produced a huge spike to strike the arc. Same solution,

AFAICR the non-stabilised ones on the routine comparison microscopes were much more well behaved.

Claims assistance firm fined for cold-calling people who put themselves on opt-out list

It really shouldn't have needed much investigation - claims assistance firm therefore guilty as charged.

Re: What a surprise... oh wait... it's not

More likely ban directors from holding directorships in the future.

SSNs and more on 5.5M+ patients feared stolen from Yale Health

You'd have thought Yale would have been properly locked down.

M&S takes systems offline as 'cyber incident' lingers

Re: Ground floor: Perfumery, Stationery and Leather Goods, Wigs and Haberdashery. Going up...

The only one reasonably near to me is just another out of town grocery store and as there are a good many alternatives considerably closer I don't buy anything there at all. Did diversifying away from their core business really do them any good in the long run?

Re: British Library - comms good, actions bad

"could be seen as nearly heresy in the commercial world"

Until it bites them in the arse.

Re: British Library - comms good, actions bad

The main resource needed for good communication is honesty. AFAICR the BL decided to bring forward a planned rebuild to be able to start with a known clean slate and not to pay any ransom..

IBM dragged down by DOGE contract cancellation roulette

They're still big enough and, no doubt lawyered up enough to give Musk a hiding. Let's hope.

Re: "thousands of US jobs have been cut"

"They asphyxiated all their hardware divisions"

Wasn't there a new Z-series announced a few weeks ago? They may have pivoted to becoming a largely crappy services company by ducking out of the PC-architecture market (they couldn't control it so didn't want to play) and I suppose the mainframe market isn't as vibrant as it was but certainly they still are in H/W.

India’s services giants brace for impact as US tariffs bite their customers

I suppose they're not going to need the 90 hour weeks in the foreseeable future.

"a large SAP program, which was very critical for the client"

So very critical that they paused it.

Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

An alternative use might be to set up one of those stripped down W10s in a VM for that one application which won't run in Wine and for which there's no FOSS alternative.

European biz calls for Euro tech for local people

Re: Commercial IT Airbus

LibreOffice and NextCloud, both based in Germany. Ditto KDE. Also Suse and Devuan top to bottom EU based distros, Mint and Zorin desktop distros. The bits are there. What's needed is for them to get together and start promoting them as a whole.

I'm not persuaded about user groups as a major source of support. I don't know what things are like in the EU these days but I know it used to be a good freelance market which would be a professional alternative.

Re: UEFI

It's something that ought to have been addressed long ago with proper governance in place.

The capricious Muppet isn't a very good argument for rapid decision making. A measured response would be better than flip-flopping to follow his latest brain-farts. Let him wreck the US economy without giving him excuses to blame someone else then take a look at how things stand and make long term plans that don't rely on doing much trade with a failed state across the Atlantic.

Re: Personal IT Airbus Self Made, GDPR Compliant

Along the same lines laptop from PC Spcialist with Devuan, private cloud using WebDav (including CalDav) for file transfer - on a Pi next to the DSL, obviously, again using Devuan. Mail via personal domain hosted by Mythic Beasts - POP3 so nothing left on the server.

How about he who holds the territory? Want to do business in the EU, the UK, Canada, India, China, anywhere? Follow the local laws.

Re: > Soviet Union, many workers faced very long commutes

A lot of high rise housing built in London and other UK cities was so awful a lot of it has been knocked down to build the sorte of houses people want to live in. The survivors of what were at that time called slums are much sought after for refurbishment.

Re: Taxes and housing

"kill housing/mortgage "business" once and forever, so that workforce can easily find a place to live near business centers."

What are they going to live in? Tents? Or are the builders going to come and build houses free of charge from donated materials?

Mortgages enable people to buy houses to live in. Without money to pay builders there would be no houses. The houses are built by businesses who are prepared to invest money which they want to get back - with a profit - when the house is complete.

This system of investment of capital in return for a profit goes back to Sumerian times but we had to reinvent it in Europe in the Renaissance - it was an essential development that enabled us to move forward from the Middle Ages but every so often some numpty who hasn't realised that - not even able to see what's actually happening - wants to take us back there.

The organisation of what I believe the US calls the Savings and Loans, the Building Societies, owes its origins to progressive movements in the UK.

The mortgage pyramid was largely a US & UK phenomenon. That eejit Brown was telling other countries that didn't join in that they should be more like us.

"China is indebted for decades from now."

Didn't you get the memo? The reason for all Trump's tariffs is that the US in indebted for decades to come, mostly to China.

Did you get the Brexit you wanted?

Unfortunately the UK economy isn't doing that well these days. It would be handy to have friction-free trade to give us a huge home market spanning most of a continent.

Blue Shield says it shared health info on up to 4.7M patients with Google Ads

Re: This is why California needs a GDPR type law

The UK DPA 1.0, back in the 80s had a provision that the Information Commissioner could order a company to stop processing data as the ultimate sanction. In effect that meant it could close down a company that depended on processing data. I'm not aware of it being used but as breaches become more and more egregious having and occasionally using such a provision would be better than fines at any level.