Posts by Doctor Syntax

WikiLeaks is wiki-leaked. And it's still not even a proper wiki anyway

"Just a reminder: none of this is normal."

Not even in Norfolk?

Your next laptop will feature 'CMF' technology

Re: Sopmething pretty for the ladies?

"if other people, some male, undoubtedly more female, want a splash of colour, a leopard skin pattern, snakeskin cover, what exactly is your worry?"

The worry is that externals become everything and internals don't matter. The price goes up to cover the cosmetics which are wrapped round an inadequate set of internals.

Once the stylists get their hands on things it ceases to be a case of form follows function; it becomes form over function and then style over function. Even if you can buy the plain brown envelope version you'll find they haven't bothered to change what's inside.

Your attention has value, personal cryptocurrency will advertise it

Another BATty idea

But just thinking about this, how do we price the advert? So much per pixel? Animated GIFS cost more? Sound costs more? Video cost a huge amount more? Irrelevant ads cost more?

This could bring the advertisers, or at least the advertising industry, into even more disturbing (to them) contact with reality than ad-blockers. Their favourite tricks which they believe are most effective at grabbing my attention would be those I'd price most highly as they're most annoying. If the advertisers caught on that they were paying more to be disliked....

Thousand-dollar iPhone X's Face ID wrecked by '$150 3D-printed mask'

Re: Nothing to worry about

"This is actually probably quite difficult to do for your average thief. Id be comfortable with face ID if I knew this was the length someone had to go to get past the lock screen on my phone."

Your average mugger, however, just has to wave the phone in front of your face. But look on the bright side - it's a disincentive to damage your face too much.

Brit cops slammed for failing to give answers on digital device data slurpage

Re: "10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

"simply pointing out that this sort of monitoring needs to be designed in from the start, and some of the decent systems pre-date the FOI act."

Way back when HOLMES was being set up I was shown what purported to be a specification for it. It didn't include any reporting function.

Openreach fibre plan for 10m premises coming 'before Christmas'

Re: Meet the new monopoly.

@ John Smith 19

There are, of course, alternatives.

1. All you have to do is find a magic money tree. Then OpenReach doesn't have to get its shareholder to get money or permission to raise loans.

2. Separate OR as O2 was separated, watch some other telco take it over as O2 was taken over, hope they make the investment and watch the new monopoly operate.

3. Find someone with the money to set up a parallel network.

4. Nationalise OR and let HMG finance it just like they didn't for decades before privatisation.

Big investments require big money - nobody's going to work for free and whoever makes the investment is going to want a return to make it worth their while. I'm sure everyone who's got and is happy with FTTC is really going to be happy paying for FTTP instead so that those who want the latter can get it without paying full whack.

Why would BT invest in fiber optics when it can continue to milk the copper cash cow?

It's not as simple as milking the copper cash cow. Consider what's behind this quote

“we need to be able to switch off the copper network. The economics don't make any sense if we keep the copper network running at the same time as we overbuild with a fibre network.”

Why don't the economics make sense? Because customers with a satisfactory copper connection, either POTS or FTTC won't want to pay FTTP prices. All fibre would be a much fatter cash cow. Make no mistake, if OpenReach can get rid of copper everyone pays more.

CopperheadOS stops updates to thwart knock-off phone floggers

Re: Folks stealing their stuff?

"I assume they are compliant with all the various licences and their requirements?

I somehow doubt it if they're expecting payment for the product (OS) rather than for tech support."

It depends on the licence. The BSD licence simply requires that a copy of the licence and attributions be included. The GPL requires that any derived work has its source code made available if the recipient of the binary asks for it. If Copperhead follow these then they have no problem - neither licence forbids selling the S/W. Read that again if you didn't understand it: neither licence forbids selling the software.

The curious thing here is the CC-NC licence. I don't see how they can force a non-commercial term onto GPL S/W - which is almost the opposite of what you seem to think is the problem. It might, of course, be in relation to S/W which is in userland.

Computing in schools improved, but still needs major patching – report

I think there are three separate things to be taught.

One is the skills needed to move into a professional life in the IT industry, a second is the skills that will be needed in a world where using applications is just part of a normal job, be it office work, manufacturing or anything else.

The third, which has only obliquely been touched on, is simply teaching logical and critical thinking skills. That was what its proponents claimed for Latin and, when CS courses were first introduced into the curriculum, they were pushed as the "new Latin" for this reason.

In the first two cases there's no option but to teach using what's available at the time, either what's in use in the real world or some specially devised educational version. Whatever the option taken either pupils are going to have to relearn the details over the course of their lives (or be locked in, which is indeed a risk) but what they need to learn are the principles.

The third, however, is more difficult. Do kids need to learn computing to tell that Rudd's spouting bollocks? Perhaps a more general approach would be to embed those skills in other subjects; learn that anything a politician or other salesperson says must be treated with scepticism..

Re: kids should learn management skills

"the percentage of them that will finish up in a management role is extremely small?"

And even then all too many of them shouldn't be there.

"In my experience schools are a soft target who will buy any shit that professes to be useful"

Do schools have the budget to buy anything?

Re: Same old same old

"but your acronyms need work"

Or my memory.

Re: Same old same old

"every school child is subjected to the discomfort, misery and humiliation of PE and games, and as soon as they leave school, 95% decide never to engage in any form of sport at all."

Sorry, only one upvote available.

Re: kids should learn management skills

I think the problem with IT management is not quite what you assume.

The real problem is that, like everything else, management requires aptitude. What seems to happen, and I doubt IT is unique in this, is that all too often there is no career path in IT as such. The career path lies in moving to management. Anyone with aptitude for IT will eventually have to move into management to continue their career and yet aptitude for IT is no guarantee of aptitude for management. It doesn't matter how many management skills courses you put the good engineer through you're quite likely to end up with a crap manager and lose a good engineer in the process.

What's needed is to employ and reward aptitude and experience in engineering without sticking management labels on the job. Only divert into management those who show aptitude for it.

Re: School is useless

"Word and Paint would be relevant in the context of the 'information' part"

I notice you omitted Power Point. Quite right.

Re: The real world

"Everything else is just fact cramming and should be unnecessary once a student knows how to learn."

Not entirely. There's also the matter of "here's something you might find interesting or useful". Catching the imagination is, perhaps, the most important of all. I probably goes under a term such as "engaging with the pupil" these days; is it surprising if schools are less successful if it's looked at like that?

Re: The real world

"Everything changes so fast.... when I first went to school, the UK was not in the Common Market yet and soon they'll be leaving. Computer Science has hardly changed, however."

Neither have the basics of physics and chemistry.

Re: Same old same old

"Back when we used to teach chemistry and physics we might have had fewer people insisting on buying cleaning products and food made without chemicals."

I'm sure we just do. The problem is than ignorance has not just become acceptable but a social cachet.

Re: Same old same old

"Is computing 'programming' or is computing 'troubleshooting non-working applications in a help desk environment'?"

For me computing was a means of solving real-world problems and quite quickly took on a hardware aspect. In the days of S100 systems and the like the hardware was readily visible and directly accessible by means of PEEK and POKE (even in Microsoft FORTRAN!). Approaching this as a lab. scientist in mid-career the direct applicability to life was obvious. I'm not sure how much turning LEDs on and off from the GPIO of a Pi catches the imagination. (Hands up those who can remember GPIO as a somewhat different interface with its own IEEE standard. Now keep them up if knew the Commodore interface was a cut down version of that.)

Re: Same old same old

That division is pretty much what you can expect from mass computer science education in any subject whatsoever.

FTFY

The best you can do is try to make the subject as appealing and/or relevant to the students as possible and as widely available as possible, then hope it sticks for those with the talent and inclination.

I'm doubtful about making things compulsory; compulsion always put me off subjects. OTOH I only got into computing because of a compulsory 5 day FORTRAN course. Even then I contrived to miss the first day by being late back from helping SWMBO doing field work on the other side of the Irish Sea. The only thing that got me hooked was the discovery that for me not only was it easy but it was a good deal easier than doing a lot of manual recalculations on my data.

How did someone hijack your Gmail? Phishing, keylogger or password reuse, we're guessing

Re: Not Surprised

"Everyone I support I try hammer home the idea of using different passwords on accounts."

Go a step further: use a different email for each account. And for one-off uses, use a one-off address or at least set up a temporary address every few weeks and then discontinue the old one.

Parity calamity! Wallet code bug destroys $280m in Ethereum

"f Anthony rather asked what would happen if everyone spent what ethereum they got as they got it and accepted more of it every other week as compensation for their labour and/or goods they had to sell, I think we would all agree that it is functioning as any currency should."

Can you see why it isn't a real currency?

Re: How many DevOps are we talking about here

"I suspect the name refers to this Doctor Syntax, a comic character created by William Coombe and cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson in the early 19th Century."

Well done that man.

I always thought it would have been a good company name to use for IT contracting but in the end I went along with the more prosaic alternative of an off-the-shelf company.

Re: How many DevOps are we talking about here

"It's just that the singular and plural forms are spelt and pronounced identically."

The singular form is thee/thou and is nowadays regarded as archaic.

Re: why is the 2nd person always plural in modern English?

"Not in N.I. or Scotland. Perhaps not in Northumberland and Yorkshire. Maybe for youse lot in London."

I'm in Yorkshire. And, sadly, what was in use (thee and thou) when I wor a lad has died out, nor did I hear it in NI when I lived there. AFAICS "youse" is a variant of "you". cf the French: "tu" versus "vous"

Re: devops199 said they were a newbie

"the target of criticism since the late 19th century"

That's the consequence of grammarians trying to force-fit the grammar of another language, Latin, onto English.

I suspect that underlying all these issues is a sense not of number but of the personal vs the impersonal. The "singular" is more personal than the "plural". Where a less personal form is needed we instinctively use the "plural", hence not only the singular they but also the royal we.

I wonder what the use of the impersonal "you" ways about us. Have we simply become too impersonal in our dealings with others or is the etiquette too complicated: I can thou thee but don't thee thou me was how to express it to a junior.

Re: How many DevOps are we talking about here

But if I may point out an exception: in some places in the US, 2nd person "youse" is singular, "youse guys" is plural.

Youse as in Scouse.

Parity's $280m Ethereum wallet freeze was no accident: It was a hack, claims angry upstart

Re: ...thus setting back blockchain development by years ...

I'm surprised no one has asked "cui bono ?" and suggested the 5-eyes might have had a hand ?

Someone just has. You.

Re: Hmm I thought 'smart' contracts meant no laywers

"It was my impression that a smart contract was code that defined what was supposed to happen. Since the code is the contract, it is always the 'law', thus eliminating messy lawyer paper shuffling and court disputes."

Code can shuffle electrons about. The electrons can represent Bitcoin, dollars, pounds, euros or any other currency and, providing it's bug-free it might well be 'law'. As soon as you want to swap those electrons for something else, such as food, it ceases to have any real effect.

Yes, you can have the code operate a vending machine but you still require someone to have filled the machine with what it's supposed to contain. As soon as someone didn't you've stepped outside the realm of code into real law to get it resolved.

In this case we're told it wasn't even bug-free so it wasn't even effective 'law'.

Greenhouse gas-sniffing satellite to be built and tested in Britain

Re: The results will be meaningless

Carbonaceous fossils have a good many uses for which there are no alternatives, for instance as reducing agents in smelting metals, as substrates for chemical synthesis and as portable energy supplies. Using them up in applications where there are alternatives, such as shoving them up the chimneys of fixed power plants, is just being greedy. The real problem with that certain inhabitant of Washington DC is that he doesn't see greed as a problem.

Re: The results will be meaningless

"The oceanic oxygen levels are far less known, except that they are dropping, and don't appear to be particularly well monitored at present. The effect of this on fish/algae/plankton, which is potentially very harmful, seems to be very little understood."

Algae will produce molecular oxygen.

Equifax Q3 results: Not as bad as you might have hoped – hack only cost biz about $87m

"Expenses include costs to investigate and remediate the cybersecurity incident and legal and other professional services related thereto, all of which were expensed as incurred,"

Does that include the legal and professional services to clear management of dumping their shares?

UK Home Sec thinks a Minority Report-style AI will prevent people posting bad things

"Who let her near a computer again?"

Nobody. Her HO minders gave her another script to mouth.

If anyone let her near a computer there's a faint chance (admittedly on the levels of monkeys and Shakespeare) that she'd Google something that would explain stuff to her. HO thinking can't allow even the faintest chance of that. They depend on her deepest ignorance so that she can read out what she's given with complete sincerity.

Re: Count me unimpressed

"I've never, ever bought anything that Amazon has recommended to me"

I have. Before it was even recommended. How's that for precognition?

Re: British Home Secretary x Comment on AI x comments on terrorism/whateve-du-jour -->

"The British Home Office.

Should be a designated Centre for Evil"

Or a home for the deluded.

In 1972, Dick explained that he used "androids or robots or simulacra" as a literary device in much of his fiction to explore ideas of what makes a human.

There you are, then. Not only can it be done, it can be done on an Android phone.

Why is everyone sneering again?

WikiLeaks drama alert: CIA forged digital certs imitating Kaspersky Lab

Re: down the rabbit hole stuff

I'm old enough to remember when governments had could convincingly pretend to have scruples.

FTFY

UK.gov: IT contracts should be no more than 7 years. (Not 18, Fujitsu)

Re: Surely the "no more than 7 years" applies to cloud providers?

If the same logic is being applied it should but almost certainly won't. Eventually - but no doubt well over 7 years into the future - exactly the same rules will be talked about in relation to cloud suppliers.

You mean a human not a "resource" surely?

Your guess is as good as mine. This is a commentard who doesn't even understand the difference between goods and services, corporate and personal taxation or even understand averages.

"The supplier of good under a government contract that does the job previously done in a government department should pay tax like an employee."

Oh dear. Goods are things. Let's say the good is a banana. How does a banana do a job previously done in a government department? Or, let's parse it differently, the supplier does a job previously done in a government department in which case what sort of a job in a government department supplies bananas? Substitute any other good for "banana" and it still doesn't make sense. You clearly don't understand the difference between goods and services. It's primarily services which this is all about.

Next, the services are being provided by companies. Taxation on companies is totally different to taxation on employees. Here's a big hint. Never go into business. You'd end up in all sorts of trouble with HMRC.

What else have we got?

Oh, look at this: "Goods supplied under the contract must be supplied at average market value/price"

Another big hint: if some offerings are above average price others are below it because that's how averages work. Under this arrangement average market price would be as good as the government could buy. Anyone able to offer at below average price is excluded or given the chance of a bigger profit margin by marking up to average.

"In reality integrating even 3 or 4 providers of services into one seamless, integrated service is impossible."

The converse can apply. A project can involve so many specialities that no single supplier can provide them all. It might still be handed to a single lead contractor who then arranges - and integrates - sub-contractors. It can work. I've even been a sub-sub-contractor on a few, even when the main contractor was the big C.

The day I almost pinned my tushie as a Google Maps landmark

"No doubt some naughty peeps would then hash various news photos to prevent their dissemination, but perhaps some mechanisms could be used to minimise this."

In what way is this functionally different to uploading the photo to Farcebook and letting them hash it?

User asked help desk to debug a Post-it Note that survived a reboot

Re: This kind of idiocy is not confined to matters IT

"I recall an undergraduate experiment that required refluxing from boiling petrol."

Arrived in the lab one morning to find a post-grad already in (he seemed to run on a 25-hour clock so this wasn't surprising). For some time previously he'd been doing benzene extractions and was now trying to recover his dirty benzene by distilling it. A couple of litres or so were boiling vigorously in a large round-bottom flask heated by a couple of bunsens.

Re: "saying less words"

" I experience more or less the same thing "

Or more or fewer.

Re: "saying less words"

"Fewer."

Fewer is bigger, less is less.

Re: CONTEXT PLEASE!

My cousin and his wife sometimes hold conversations like that and finish off each other's sentences. It freaks their daughter out.

Re: PBKAC

"Once I call it the helpdesk, only for the lazy git to inform me that a helpdesk only logs calls. A service desk resolves them - yeah right"

Easy one to deal with - for you. Raise a ticket about sod all details on helpdesk ticket.

Re: PBKAC

"Screen is on, but not the box or vice versa"

Once upon a time the monitor was usually powered from a take-off point on the back of the box. Couple that with an out-of-the-way placement of the monitor switch and a real mains switch conspicuously placed on the front of the box and either both were on or both were off.

Then we got ATX so that the box could be sort-of-but-not-really shut down from S/W. Another improvement that wasn't.

Samsung shows off Linux desktops on Galaxy smartmobes

“use classic IDE desktop IDE for native ARM development.”

There are plenty of ARM boards that enable that. Let's get down to the real use case: bypassing Android apps that demand access to everything, all the better to slurp you with.

Online outrage makes Logitech drop a brick: Now it will replace slain Harmony Link gizmos

"We understand that services are important to you,"

Was this understanding gained recently?