Posts by Doctor Syntax 40432 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"Imagine a senior dev has left and he was partial to using Go for servers, node.js for UI, python for some algo, ZeroMQ plus numerous 3rd party github projects, the NoSQL flavor of the day."
A few days ago there was an article being somewhat snotty about enterprise architects. One role for the EA should be to make an informed choice of the technologies in use, minimising the uncontrolled dependencies and keeping up to date with them when they change.
"Over the years Struts versions have unsupported/broke features, plugins,"
Backward compatibility. Nobody cares about it. Except the users, of course.
I'm not familiar with Struts but a good policy, whether for free or commercial products, would be:
If the major version number is the same we'll ensure it's backwards compatible. If we have to break compatibility we'll update the major version number but maintain the last major number for X months/years or as long as practical.
From the users' point of view they can then choose who has the longest maintenance period, changes least often and best lives up to the policy They can also minimise the number of external dependencies.
"It is to increase the price of advertising by claiming the adverts only go to people who might buy."
I'm not saying you're wrong but if everyone else sees adverts for stuff they've bought why don't the people who place the ads; and if they do, why don't they realise that this is happening to their ads and that they're paying for junk? Or do the people who place the ads not see them because use ad-blockers like the rest of us because ads are so annoying.
It's not only AI that fails to be self-aware.
"Of course, some flows back into the UK in CAP and project payments, but the UK government does not control that money."
I recall on the morning the result was announced a Leave-supporting MP whose constituency was receipt of EU funding was demanding that UK gov replace that funding. So, as far as that particular Leave campaigner was concerned (a) control meant only that it be spent in the same way as if the EU were still in charge and (b) that money wouldn't be going to the NHS.
"Which bit do you think is undemocratic?"
The ratification process.
A constitutional change on such a scale ought to receive a popular supermajority* (as, of course should a decision to leave). It's possible that if Maastricht and Lisbon had been properly explained they would have received that. It's possible but I suspect it wouldn't have happened and that very different treaties would have had to be negotiated.
That means that there is a democratic deficit that Leave was based on. However it doesn't justify the ensuing rhinectomy.
*Being told to vote again until you get the right answer doesn't count!
If the process is no longer serving the business, then it is the process that needs to be updated (rather than forcing the business to follow the process).
I've long thought that a process/rule/whatever you want to call it should include a rationale as to why it exists. This would serve two purposes:
Firstly it would allow everyone* to be aware of its significance so that "Legal requirement due to GDPR; failure to compy might cost 4% of global turnover in fines" might carry the implication "being CEO isn't a good reason to ignore this".
Secondly it makes it clear when the rule no longer applies: "This information is required in order to complete the the 1998/9 accounts after which new accounting procedures will apply".
*Everyone = senior management
"Not a pair of adult brothers."
I don't have any siblings but I still know that pairs of brothers of any age are family. If you can't be arsed to say what you mean you should be prepared to accept the consequences. After all, govt. contractors rely on that principle for their profits.
If the gym didn't mean that family membership didn't apply to any group of people who could trace a family relationship they shouldn't have used the term. It's not the brothers' fault that the gym's marketing department weren't capable of thinking through the implications of what they advertised. The gym should simply have admitted the consequences of their error, given them the family membership they'd offered - and then rewritten their T&Cs for future members.
The blame for that doesn't sit with Brussels, it sits with the lazy and inept arts graduates staining the seats of Westminster Whitehall.
The tax rules get written in the Treasury. You don't think MPs could write 10million words, do you?
What is required to improve this is a binding law to place a word limit on new statutes of say 2,000 words
And whilst we're about it, how about a new law specifying that no program should be no longer than 2000 LoC? Of course to do that we might have to drop things like parameter checking but even if we do what could go wrong?
For the EU to subsequently castigate and change the rules of the "single market" is wrong.
It may be wrong to castigate companies for following the rules but it's not wrong of them to change the rules if they can agree. After all, they're the EU's rules to change as they wish. However, threatening to do so and getting the necessary consensus to do so are two different things.
"Seriously. If you want to send bulk text messages or make automated phone calls you should pay a deposit before you can send them, which is returned to you in the unlikely event that the recipients actually did opt in to receive them."
Take it a step further. The recipient dials a code, say 147x where x is any digit not currently assigned, and their account is credited with £1 (or some larger fee), twice that if the number is TPS registered. The recipient's telco adds on a fee for the service and then puts the charge on the caller's bill - or, if the call arrived from another network, transfer-charges that network.
It would, of course, be up to the originating network to decide whether they require an advance payment - why dictate their credit control policies, just put them on the hook for letting their customers behave that way.
Having something like a configurable background as part of the original design is fair enough. It doesn't touch any of the code responsible for doing the actual work. Just don't make it user configurable.
In fact I've seen something similar where there were a number of production systems sharing a lot of common code and hence user interfaces but operating on different databases. The background was specified in the database so that the users would always be aware of what they were working on.
But the same gig underlined the point about making sure that the test system tests the actual code that will be live. My client was a subcontractor processing data from other subcontractors and it was one of several where the data feed was to be XML so there was a bunch of systems sharing common code for handling that. On one contract upstream wasn't ready to generate XML when testing was due to start and wanted to send fixed width files instead (the data wasn't very complex so in this instance XML was overkill).
Fair enough, we had to have some end-to-end testing in place to keep to schedule. I wrote a front end, in fact a two stage front end, which converted fixed width to CSV and CSV to XML, all parametrised and set up to generate the XML to the project's schema with both steps being trivial to implement and based on the in-house class hierarchy, etc. This enabled our test system to use the eventual live code to do the XML import and as a by-product provided modules to allow the client to import fixed width or CSV data should this be a requirement for a future contract.
My client's development manager - yup, development manager! - couldn't understand why I didn't rip out the entire XML processing code, which was a large part of the entire custom code, and implant a completely new fixed width file processing code just for testing. In fact, it was the stress of dealing with that particular manager's bad decision making that persuaded me retirement time had arrived.
"We need laws to be clear and easy to understand not so complicated."
Laws have something in common with programs. They are lists of things to do. And, therefore, they have to be able to deal with all those tricky corner cases. Remember all those problems with programs where nobody bothered to check whether a parameter passed to a function was within specification? Not checking made for clear, easy to understand, compact and unreliable code. Checking made for longer, somewhat harder to read and more reliable code.
Your clear and easy to understand laws trying to regulate unclear, hard to understand life are liable to fail to fit. Here's one instance for you to consider. It was real and goes right back to the DPA Mark 1 and to my days as a forensic scientist and setting up a casework system for my lab. As such I might receive an exhibit labelled "Clothes of John Smith". That's a label someone else wrote and so would be the accompanying documentation. I, personally, have no idea whether they are indeed the clothes of John Smith, nor who John Smith is. Someone may have given a false name of John Smith. I don't even know if they came from a single person. The defence might subsequently dispute some or all of what I've been told. Should I count the label and accompanying documentation as PII? What does the law say about it? What would you do if you were in that position?
"Would you start an action against (eg) Talk Talk, who probably have a legal budget of the order of a couple of million quid?"
Depending on the scale of the claim the small claims court might be the appropriate venue in some cases. That effectively wipes out the advantage of a large legal budget.
But what happens if
- the ICO finds there was a breach
- a victim loses their house as a consequence
- the ICO issues a flat rate £1,000 compensation?
Should the victim simply write it off to bad luck?
Should the ICO's finding assist in the victim establishing their case? Should there be a compulsory use of an independent arbitrator to assess compensation on a level playing field?
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