Posts by Doctor Syntax 42414 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"The way java is structured any sufficiently large project needs to have API contracts and APIs and SPIs portion."
Should Oracle win, however, they have the tricky task of doing so in a way that ensures that anyone writing a Java application (which they presumably still want people to do) can do so legitimately whilst preventing Google from legitimately implementing the run-time. If they fail in that they must surely kill Java stone dead.
"One of Big Red's arguments is that Android destroyed the market opportunity for Sun to license a decent mobile Java."
I thought the reason Google went for a roll-your-own approach was their view that Sun had a decent* Java and a mobile Java and they weren't the same thing.
*Argue amongst yourselves about about "decent" if you want to.
Peter,
It seems you're dealing with a particular use case. But I'd have thought that in that particular use case where you're dealing with digital assets of some value the initial approach should be to start with a database which not only provides the asset management but also stores the files themselves as blobs. A general purpose file system is just that - general purpose: it stores executable, configuration data, whole databases as one file (unless you take the approach of having the database access disk partitions), text documents, spreadsheets....etc. It is never going to be optimised for specific use cases and is never going to deal with the situation of "we've not touched this file for 2 years but it's still part of the final build of $VERY_VALUABLE_PRODUCT so even if we delete stuff unaccessed over a year we still keep this".
As I started to read the article I found myself thinking "these guys need a proper database" and then - whadya know - they invent a database for the job, B-trees and all.
I always reckoned that the Unix file system design reflected the database technology of its day and, although the implementation has changed somewhat to allow larger discs, journalling, remote storage etc, the design of the interface has been more or less frozen since then. Perhaps it's time to move forward and at the same time build in some protection against malware and its effects.
"If YT paid creators based a viewers ability to buy the products being advertised then none of these guys would get a look in as their viewers are 3-9 year olds."
3-9 yos don't need to handle the money themselves. The advertisers will rely on pester power, just as they always have with products aimed at that age group.
"Sod clickbait gamers appealing to the masses, what I really hate is all the people who now view it as a legitimate way to make money."
To restore karma take a look at the series restoring a Xerox Alto. It's still hand-held camera and sometimes dubious sound but it involves people who know what they're doing. In some cases seriously what they're doing; big clue, remember where Ethernet was invented.
Back in the 80s a small group of us handled development and system management. We had to do it all because at that time we were the only people in the business who knew this strange Unix and RDBMS stuff. The tools needed were part of the OS and RDBMS packages. Because we handled it as a whole we knew not to write something we couldn't support and providing support kept us in touch with what the business needed written.
We didn't have a special name for it. It was just what we did.
Now, not only is everything old new again, it also has to have a special name, lots of tools and courses and all the rest of it.
" The other two are problematic for any legacy system because people will eventually retire and vendors will stop providing support"
The cheaper option will probably be to train new people to take over. And, who knows, those people will eventually know enough to direct the re-write. When a piece of software is at the core of your business it's false economy not to take care of it and that includes spending on people.
"Which is why on anything to do with dates I always start from the base date of 1/1/1970 (either format, of course) and then do anything with dates as Integers based on this. A pain but, oddly enough, everything that I have touched never got that wrong."
Just choose an RDBMS engine that has date and date-time formats based on this principle, then it's not a pain and it still doesn't get it wrong.
"However, UK politicians (of all colours) have for many years believed in the magic efficacy of competitive tendering"
It's a mechanism for ensuring that the companies of the other halves of politicians or senior civil servants get the contracts they so obviously deserve. When all the preparatory work has been done the said politician or civil servant recuses them-self from the final decision so it's all above board.
"Did the armed forces forget to hand Capita the spec sheet? Did the spec sheet get lost?"
A few more questions. Did whoever drew up the spec sheet actually go to the potential users and ask what they wanted? Did Capita hand the spec sheet to the developers? Was the developers' native language that in which the spec was written (and that includes any military jargon used in it)? Did anyone actually think to let the developers show potential users early prototypes and get feedback? If anyone drew up a list of potential users as per above were they actual potential users or PHBs further up the food chain who'd never go near the actual S/W?
There are lots of ways for something like this to fail, to get it right you have to avoid them all.
"Under Section 20 of the Architects Act 1997, the title ‘architect’ is protected. It can only be used in business or practice by someone who has had the education, training and experience needed to become an architect, and who is registered with us."
Even then it would be a good idea for architects to listen to others. Some years ago Zara Hadid was in the running for the Stirling prize with a design for a fire-station. In the TV programme about the prize the building was reviewed by a fire-fighter who pointed out various features making it unsatisfactory for use as a fire-station. One I recall was that handrails had unprotected ends making them dangerous for anyone running through the building - which is something that happens in fire-stations. From wikipedia: "When completed, it never served as a fire station, as the government requirements for industrial firefighting were changed."
If all else fails, we have a special "procurement" number which we put them through to - a particularly painful "your call is important to us" message with stretched tape effects, big volume jumps etc.
That should be reserved for really persistent offenders. They're likely to realise they've been had fairly quickly. The first pass should be something which just possibly could be really genuine on-hold and a real slow burn. The worst example I heard - it really was on-hold - was Greensleeves, synthesised with excruciating precision at a hypnotic moderato.
BTW, your message should eventually change to "your call is unimportant to us".
"Our staff time is valuable. You have the following choices, please listen carefully before choosing:
If you are cold calling and want to leave a sales message on the answering machine please press 1. If we choose to listen to your message you will be charged X currency units per minute.
If you are cold calling and wish to speak to a member of our staff press 1. You will be charged 10X currency units per minute with a minimum charge of 1 hour.
If you are not cold calling press 3. If you are a cold caller and abuse this option you will be charged 100X currency units per minute with a minimum charge of 1 hour.
Your company will be invoiced. Our terms are payment within 2 days. Our debt collection colleague hopes your company will not pay as he has not eaten for a couple of days."
"Why did the Tories do this? Why did they turn an internal party squabble on Europe into a catastrophe for the UK and its 65 million people?"
Because they genuinely thought that a majority of people would vote rationally and the problem, which was far more than an internal party problem, would be dealt with for ever. It turned out that 2016 was not a good year for voting rationally.
No, you're wrong. Leave had all the details figured out before the vote. It was all worked out in advance so it would work smoothly, just as it is doing. Nobody was asked to vote for something that wasn't real. Don't believe all this fake news about difficult negotiations. We're building the stables for the unicorns right now.
"Does this include a limited physical presence and facilitation of regime change?"
It involves existing treaties which exist for this purpose and which require TPTB to get a warrant from an Irish court. In order to do that they have to put together a convincing case as to why they think they should get the data.
You may wonder why they haven't done this. They don't have a case? They don't want to disclose their case? Warrants are for little people? Due process of law is for little people?
"Get the right mindset, and then maybe you can create secure code. (For those security professionals who know how to create maintainable code.)"
You then have the problem that your spotless, impeccably secure code has to work surrounded by code other people have written. Do you trust that external code? Do you have enough years in your life to rewrite everyone else's code so that you can trust it?
You might have to work out how you can cope with running code from multiple sources and not trusting it. When you've done that you could even give a talk at Black Hat about it. Or you could re-read the article & try to understand what it was about.
"Why exactly are the authorities asking for more surveillance powers again?"
It's a rinse/repeat cycle. Every time they try the Act eventually gets taken to court and found to be illegal. When that happens they replace it with another variation on the same theme. The Home Office probably has a stack of them already written so they're instantly ready to drop another before Parliament when the current iteration bites the dust.
"Perhaps throwing personal criminal liability on company executives is long overdue and should be extended to other aspects of company conduct."
Let me qualify that: liability to company executives when specific individuals can be identified as culpable in a specific case.
If legislation seeks to make individuals liable as opposed to the corporation that that would almost certainly need to be the directors as no other job titles are defined in law. The alternative would be if the legislation defines a specific role such as a data protection officer who could be held responsible whatever the job title - with a fall-back to the directors if they fail to appoint and empower one.
