Posts by Doctor Syntax

How fast is a piece of string? Boffin shoots ADSL signal down twine

"And then the wind might be a factor, too."

That'll be the Brussels sprouts.

"string (which The Register can reveal was bought on eBay)"

So this ISP stuff is just money for old rope?

I was expecting mechanical transfer of data with a couple of tin cans to add voice transmission.

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

Re: Bring me a cheese from every town!

"I've only got 4 bottles at home."

Thanks for the reminder. Must go and do a stock-take.

"Yorkshires are mandatory. As are peas."

Not peas. Too difficult to chase round your plate after a few glasses of wine. At a pinch you could coat them with honey, I suppose but that would really be overdoing the calories.

Re: Goose

"never tasted goose"

Never tasted turkey. I've eaten it a few times but tasted it? No.

What about cooking disasters?

Some years ago:

Goose in oven. Switch on. Bang! & shower of sparks. Oven element blown.

SWMBO took goose round to her sister to supervise start of cooking there whilst I got online to place an order there and then for two replacement elements, instituting an N+1 redundancy plan. Sister and husband brought cooked goose with them later.

N+1 plan vindicated on more than one occasion since then, once again about Christmas but not AFAICR on Christmas morning. I think if we ever bought a new oven I'd order a replacement element at the same time.

But a few years ago the fan motor also went TITSUP* shortly before Christmas, fortunately in time to get a replacement. BiL roped in to help get the oven out if its housing on the basis that his dinner depended on it.

*Total Inability To Spin Up

Re: Duck

"rabbit in vinegar"

Double shudder (one for the vinegar). Once a term the hall of residence menu was rabbit. It consisted mostly of bony shrapnel, ribs and vertebrae. In the succeeding half century I've never considered it to be an edible foodstuff. The other once a term horror was macaroni cheese which somehow had achieved a density approximating to that of osmium.

Re: Yorkshire puddings

Should only be consumed with gravy*. The meat comes in the next course. It doesn't matter what sort of meat it is. I don't know where this strange idea that it should be beef came from. Probably some southern idea.

* This is not strictly true. It can also be sprinkled with sugar as a desert but not at Christmas.

Re: Starter for Ten...

@ Alister

Wot, no red cabbage?

Re: Follow that star (trek)

"I think sprouts are best thrown at the person who suggests that we don't bother with Yorkshires this Christmas."

Waste of sprouts. Throw a turkey at them instead, then go and buy a goose.

"deep frying turkey. Not just bits of the bird, the whole thing at one go."

Mars bar stuffing?

Re: Goose

"Yorkshire puds with Xmas dinner. Yes or no?"

1. Agree on goose - no cardboard turkey.

2. Yorkshire pudding is essential.

3. Yorkshire pudding is, by definition, a starter. Ignorance of this is no excuse.

UK.gov told: Your frantic farming of pupils' data is getting a little creepy

government minister Lord Ashton of Hyde* countered that the sharing of individual-level pupil data is "already highly regulated" and runs according to a "rigorous process".

That's fine providing the regulations are fit for purpose. It doesn't excuse lack of consideration as to their fitness.

*Does he have a neighbour, Lord Hyde of Ashton to make things symmetrical?

Hello, Dixons Carphone? Yep, we're ringing from a 2015 handset. Profits down 60%, eh?

Re: Are people still blaming Brexit for management stupidity

"Surely a bit difficult to argue against two facts which are each 100% demonstrably true."

Brexiteers find no difficulty at all arguing against anything that can be laid at their door. It's very simple: Brexit is good for everything so your problem must be due to something else.

Put down the eggnog, it's Patch Tuesday: Fix Windows boxes ASAP

Re: Top Xmas tip

Never do percussive maintenance after boozing.

Intel to slap hardware lock on Management Engine code to thwart downgrade attacks

"the customer (machine maker)"

And therein lies the problem. Intel's customers are machine makers, not us. We, as the ultimate customers, are just at the end of the chain and there are, as yet, insufficient of us who actual care about security. Once a large scale malware campaign worms its way into the ME, possibly resulting in a class action, then we'll finally see Intel frantically scrabbling to try and roll back what they've done and launch ME-free chips.

Re: ME free computing

No laptops, then? And why on earth do they need to list a hex screwdriver as an accessory? Does it use screws with non-standard dimensions such as millicubits?

Tenable's response to folks upset at AWOL features: A 150-emails-a-minute spam storm

You know somebody had to: it sounds untenable to me.

Signing up for the RAF? Don't bother – you've been Capita'd

Re: Have Capita ever done anything well?

"No, seriously. Have they ever?"

I've been sub-contractor to a sub-contractor on a couple that actually worked. However, since then I've retired and Capita subsequently lost the contracts - to IBM I think. Could correlation actually be causation?

The MoD told El Reg that “a short term drop in numbers was expected as the new system is bedding in” and that the Armed Forces “continue to manage and support an active pipeline of candidates.”

Another head in the sand statement from the MoD.

"Bedding in" means "lying down on the job".

Re: Did the 23 000 strong MoD Procurement Force have anything to do with this?

Mission Statements? We all know Mission Statements are just places where good intentions go to die. They have no relationship to anything that actually happens.

Re: Another resounding Crapita success

"we can't all live on a civil service pension"

I certainly couldn't on mine. Contrary to what's commonly believed it's not that great, at least not for the other ranks. I've certainly been in better.

The Crap of Death.

New battery boffinry could 'triple range' of electric vehicles

Re: How many battery "breakthroughs" is that this year?

"Unless you mean that you do carry half a tonne of TNT with you."

Does the term "energy density" mean anything to you?

In vivo? They're a bunch of live wires aren't they?

Kaspersky dragged into US govt's trashcan as weaponized blockchain agile devops mulled

The international trade lawyers are already planning how to spend this windfall.

Brrr! It's a snow day and someone has pwned the chuffin' school heating

Presumably all these installations are specified by a consulting engineer, architect or whoever.

Is it not their responsibility to specify that they be installed securely and to inspect them before signing them off for final payment of the contract? The finger should be pointing there, not at manufacturers or installers. If they find manufacturers incompetent they stop specifying their products, if they find installers incompetent they remove them from future short lists.

Re: lax installers who have disregarded installation advice

they then tell them how to set it up appropriately.

Wouldn't this version have been better?

Pickaxe chops cable, KOs UKFast data centre

Re: What a joke

"Which means their big clients are being ignored so that they can get the bulk of the smaller clients working."

It might be the other way around and you're not as big in their terms as you thought. It might also be that they're working alphabetically or even randomly.

Re: Would you?

"I really hope that the people who supplied and fitted the UPS do not get involved in commercial air travel"

You mean something like, say, a BA data centre?

"Gas mains are no more impervious to pickaxes than power cables are."

In both cases the results are - err - illuminating but gas illuminates for longer.

either no DR plan, or one which we never test just tested

Walk with me... through a billion files. Slow down – admire the subset

"Whether you wish them to or not, many people have users that create file systems with billions of files, and then struggle with the management of said data."

Database Management System. The clue's in the name.

If you're going to create data on that scale you should work out the management scheme from the start or, at worst, as soon as you realise that you're creating more than you intended. When you do that you'll find that there's a choice of engines available off the shelf, commercial and FOSS. The database can hold the metadata that your application needs, which is probably going to be more than the file system provides and the data itself. If your data is in file system files anyone with the right (or wrong!) permissions can just delete some of them irrespective of the metadata saying, via business rules, that it should be kept.

Example: upstream provides files containing up to 1,000 documents in XML format* to be printed on an industrial scale. Any XML file can contain different sorts of documents than require different base stock or printing hardware, some running to 10s of pages. S/W splits them up into the individual documents, transforms each into a form ready for the print formatter and stores it as a database blob. The batching engine gathers up documents of common properties (base stock and printer) ready for the print room operators. Only when a batch is selected for printing is a file system file generated and it contains 1,000 documents or whatever the batch parameters call for. Spoiled documents have their database record sent back for re-batching. Once despatched documents can be purged from the database. The system might have thousands of documents going through it at any one time but there are few actual bulk files involved and only at the input and output. Multiply that a few times for different contracts being handled.

* Yes, technically the file is a document in XML terminology. As each file contains multiple documents in the application domain technology it's easier to stick with the latter and call the file an XML file.

Berners-Lee, Woz, Cerf: Cancel flawed net neutrality vote

Re: Entirely the wrong model?

"In the UK we have seen frankly appalling things happen since the privatisation of energy, public transport and communications."

It varies across the board but public investment has a very poor record overall.

A large part of the privatisation of BT was to enable the private sector to make the levels of investment that governments of all colour had been unable or unwilling to make. What would the mobile or internet provision be like in the UK if left to government investment?

The privatisation model of the railways was stupid. The infrastructure and the operators were separate and, therefore, had separate, likely conflicting interests and relatively short franchises weren't going to lead to long-term investments whilst also avoiding any competition between destinations. I can't see how it could have been expected to work out well and I can't see any government making investments except in high profile vanity projects.

On roads we have the cheapskate addition of lanes by taking out the safety measure of the hard shoulder and such gimmicks. New roads such as M6 Brum bypass? - revert to the C18th turnpike financing despite having collected huge sums from road taxes in the form of VED, fuel duty, insurance premium taxes and VAT.

Big tech wants the ICO on EU data protection board in Brexit fallout

They're up to something - but what?

I can only imagine that they hope that the ICO will be HMG's poodle when it comes to voting on the "adequacy" of the "oversight" of the universal surveillance. In turn that would enable them to keep the Privacy Figleaf in place because if it's allowed for the UK it has to be allowed for the US.

Millions of moaners vindicated: Man flu is 'a thing', says researcher, and big TVs are cure

Re: Expect better than this from the reg

"Being really PC and right-on"

I'm so glad you're PC and right-on and wouldn't do a thing like that.

Developers, developers, developers: How 'serverless' crowd dropped ops like it's hot

"Consider a facial recognition function for a security system."

And how does it handle loss of internet connection?

Trump to NASA: Fly me (or some other guys) to the Moon

Re: Mars one way?

Is it important that the occupant arrives alive?

It's better to travel hopefully than arrive.

Archive of 1.4 billion credentials in clear text found in dark web archive

Re: 12345? That's amazing, I've got the same combination on my luggage!

"123 here for me."

No problem. If you have a two lock case you can go one better - the other can be 456.

Re: Has an analysis of the types of accounts been done?

"pretty well impossible for a human to remember so it gets written down somewhere"

No, it gets generated and stored in Keepass. The only password phrase to remember is that for Keepass.

US authorities issue strongly worded warnings about crypto-investments

As a social experiment, it's almost unbelievable.

I think I missed out a strike-through.

UK lacks engineering and tech skills to make government's industrial strategy work – report

Re: The liberal myth

"appreciation of all arts"

Literature and music were, of course, written to be enjoyed, not studied (I'm not sure if that applies universally to what's written today) so it's not surprising that those who didn't study them can still appreciate them. It's odd that those who did study them never seem to widen their experience into science and technology out of general interest.

Re: "concrete over the greenbelt"

"planning police"

Planning policy, dammit. But police doesn't seem entirely wrong.

Re: Universities and schools

An interesting couple of A/C posts. We had streaming (into 4 forms) but after the first term. There was also a facility for sec. mod. to grammar transfer, I'm not sure if it was at a specific year and can't actually remember anyone who did but there must have been some.

We had the same "skip a year" idea. It wasn't a good one. It involved not sitting the subjects you were going to take at A level so you ended up with a rather diminished crop of Os and, in the real world, nobody noticed the A level coverage complemented them; they just counted the number.

Eventually, as with the account above, the school lost its 6th form to a specialised college, it became a comprehensive and is now viewed as considerably weaker than the former sec. mod. turned comp. which my granddaughter attends.

There were a considerably number of primaries feeding the school & have no idea how their pass rates compared but there were 4 of us from my small school who passed in my year - I should think it must have been getting on for a third of the year but, of course, the statistics of such small numbers don't mean very much. Nevertheless AFAICS it was a mechanism of social mobility - I don't know what modern sociologists would make of a 3 generation household, including two unmarried aunts, with no electricity, no mains drainage (handy river) and, initially, no mains water (even when we got it we preferred our spring water for drinking, these days we could have bottled it and made a fortune).

"Your lip service is all very well"

Interestingly ambiguous subtitle. To whom does "your" refer. employers or government? Probably both.

Re: "concrete over the greenbelt"

"Furthermore that "empty space" would need water, sewers, electricity, roads, rail, hospitals and so on and so on."

Well, some of them. Enough roads to get the building materials in. Commuter transport? Hospitals? Schools? Someone else's problem, different department and all that. Jobs? no chance, planning police dictates that we can't have industry anywhere near housing. Jobs belong in the big conurbations and we have to stop people travelling there because they cause congestion? Joined up planning? We started an inter-departmental enquiry 30 years ago; it hasn't reported yet.

Re: Seems to me..Parliament is dominated by the fruits of our "rounded and rewarding society".

"certain 80s comedies (Yes Minister, New Statesman) turned out to be documentaries."

Turned out to be? We knew it at the time.

Re: Universities and schools

"There is a weird politically-correct idea in schools nowadays that all kids are equally bright."

Political correctness might not be the only factor. Subjects are (one hopes) taught by people who are good at them end enjoy them. Too many then assume that being good at and enjoying their particular subject is normal throughout the population. They fail to grasp that some pupils find it difficult and believe that those who don't conform to expectations are being lazy or deliberately obtuse. Even if they do grasp that they then fail to realise where the difficulties lie for those not so gifted (after all, it's all equally easy isn't it?), what parts of a lesson need to be taken more slowly and better explained.

Re: "concrete over the greenbelt"

"I hear a lot of people telling me the UK is overcrowded: mostly people who live in overcrowded places."

The trouble is that the PPEs in government think it can all be solved by telling local councils how many houses they have to build. This is done in isolation from any other consideration such as where the people who are to live in them are to work and how they're to get there. And similar daftnesses.

So my area at the head of a valley is supposed to have X number new homes.

Fair enough, we sit in the middle of a number of conurbations. Any shouts of joy from such conurbations about how many new jobs they're attracted are mixed with howls of complaint about congestion. Councillors and officials haven;t worked out that if people are going to work in those jobs they're going to have to travel there.

Several of the routes out of here are high level routes. It won't take much more snow than we've just had to close those completely because they might, if we're lucky, get them gritted but will a heavier fall be cleared? Not usually; they'll be blocked for several days.

Then there's the hair-raising junction between here and the motorway. Years ago it was slightly modified to make it, in my view, more dangerous. It needs some creative remodelling with roundabouts to make it safe and provide a better throughput. It's needed that for years.

Why don't they encourage development of more employment in the area? Because to sites where that could happen were called brown-field and released for housing - the extra job-needers were imported by removing jobs.