Posts by Doctor Syntax 42400 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
Not really, read Brook's "Mythical man-month" and see what he says about the "second-system effect"
But he also wrote "plan to throw one away". How unusual for an IT director to have not only read Brooks but also taken his advice to heart and followed it 36,000 times.
"Even making it more obvious when an app is doing this, as Apple are planning, doesn't really help, since there's still nothing you can do about it other than refusing to use the app in question, and it's clear most people aren't actually willing to do that."
If it's not previously been clear to users that an app is tracking them than it's by no means clear that people aren't willing to do without it.
"Here, the key is... the evidence has to be weak. In this case... it's not. The evidence is seemingly strong against him."
What evidence? Where did you read it? Do you mean the redacted summary that was released? If so I've got news for you: that wasn't evidence. it was a summary of what the FBI hope to prove.
"being run (down) by a Government who want to privatise the NHS and who have their snouts in the trough of private medicine?"
Go read JinC's comment above. He's already nailed this political garbage. You know as well as I do that no party dare touch the NHS in the way you suggest and this is an over-used piece of claptrap that Labour drag out at every opportunity. And as JimC says, it inhibits everybody from trying to improve the situation the NHS has got into.
"But if we patch they loose their warrenty and CE marking since we're acting against the manufacturer."
Put them on the spot and ask them* if their warranty covers not only malware damage to the unpatched systems themselves but also consequent damage to other systems for malware getting in through unpatched XP and consequent harm to patients.
*Via your legal dept. of course. Potentially being on the hook for large damages is apt to concentrate minds.
"legacy kit that can't just be upgraded"
I usually point out the the "legacy" system is the one that's earning the money and therefore can't, as you point out, be easily upgraded. But if indeed this was spread by Word attachments on email there is every reason to treat Word as legacy which can and should be replaced.
And, to forestall those who witter about "training to use this [allegedly] really difficult" LibreOffice then the training costs* for such a transition should be set against the costs of the obviously needed training for sanitary handling of email attachments.
*Really? It's not exactly difficult. It's a long time since I used Word but I don't remember it being that hard to flip between one and the other; they seemed pretty similar. Maybe the difference between the ribbon and the classic interfaces made LibreOffice a harder transition until the recent update which provided an optional ribbon. And in any case, those using the ribbonised version of MS Office must have either swallowed the training costs when that was introduced or let staff struggle untrained when they had the much less disruptive alternative of OO or LO.
"As for my Land Rover - great for me out here in the sticks, wouldn't want to drive it around the city though."
I'm not sure about the latter. When driving in central London I always thought I'd rather have been in an early Land Rover showing all the scars of 40 years use on a farm. The locals who weren't scared off would just have bounced off & what's another scratch or patch of paint?
"They would rather we all fail so they can say I told you so"
1. I don't count myself as an elite.
2. I most certainly don't want it to fail for any reason whatsoever, I simply regard it as an inevitability.
If that statement represents the quality of your thinking it explains a good deal as to why you espouse that cause.
"We want out of the EU."
Is this the royal we again? You may want that. You aren't everybody. In the advisory referendum you got a small (in percentage) majority. A great many thought then that Brexit would be a disaster, are still of that opinion and most certainly don't want out. You do not speak for us. And remember that your slim majority in that referendum (assuming it still exists in public opinion today) will have no bearing whatsoever on whether the outcome of Brexit is success or failure, that will be down to reality.
"A bloodless revolution which will return power to those who it should belong to, us the people."
One outcome is May getting our as far as possible from the ECJ. This removes a layer of protection for the people. Don't be fooled into thinking you're being empowered. You're not.
It's a good default assumption that any politician who seeks to remove a layer of legal supervision of their activities has something to hide.
" there will be a revolt by the backbenchers and presumably a leadership challenge by that toad, Jacob Rees-Mogg."
I still think the best thing that could have happened was for Cameron, instead of doing a runner, to have counted up to a hundred a few times, drawn a deep breath and then announced that because it was an advisory referendum he'd start a feasibility study. To that end appoint all the Rees-Mogg & Bill Cash element as junior ministers in a new ministry, each with the task of carrying out an impact assessment of some aspect of the economy closely affecting their own constituencies. Let them actually take some responsibility and do some work. And for those constituencies with a strong Leave vote and major EU bases of foreign corporations but no government MP, their MP could go on the corresponding Select Committee, again with the job of evaluating the impact on their constituencies.
Once that task was complete run a further, binding referendum requiring a supermajority which, of course should be the right way for any substantial constitutional change - and should have been a requirement for all those EC/EU treaty changes in the past.
"refusing to support democracy"
Bearing in mind that this was only an advisory referendum with a very small percentage majority and taking into account the roaring success the current government achieved in the recent election how sure are you that a referendum now would confirm the original?
"That's at least something you can't blame on Johnny the Foreigner."
With a handle like that he must be a Scot. So to any little Englander he's still Johnny Foreigner.
And, of course, we see an attempt to drag out another pre-emptive excuse so that it won't be the Leavers' fault when it goes pear-shaped.
"Obviously, as it won't be a member of the EU, the UK has no role or influence in drafting those regulations. If there is a dispute about whether the UK has done the job correctly, the ECJ (without any UK judge) will rule."
And, of course, we'll have "taken back control" as now we're just doing it voluntarily out of the goodness of our hearts. The obvious solution all along.
Warning: this most might contain traces of sarcasm and irony. Best avoid if you have an allergy.
"if I was the Lawyer firm I'd be asking why 'Diannes' time was so utterly wasted by the clown on site playing stupid games when he knew how to resolve the situation in the first place."
For one thing I'd guess Dianne was Craig's lawyer appointed minder. Craig would be handling client confidential information. In those circumstances the lawyer would expect to have someone keep and eye on things and, if he'd any sense, Craig would also want want that too.
"From the OED:" etc
Yup, but AFAIK the historical thinking is that the title doesn't apply as no such ruler is known but there may have been a military commander of that name. Or maybe there wasn't. All the references are considerably later, and have a strong whiff of myth about them. The only battle attributed to him in these sources which can be matched in earlier sources is Mons Badonis and that earlier source, Gildas, doesn't attach any participant's names at all. In fact, although he says it was a siege it doesn't even say who besieged whom.
"The Egyptians beat Pythagoras to it; they used 3:4:5 for land surveying. Heck, I used it a lot when building my home 14 years ago."
When we moved into our home some years ago after my parents had dies I wondered what became of the 3:4:5 wooden triangle my dad made to set out the walls when he built the house. A year or so ago I found it propped up against a boundary wall when I was cutting back a holly. The joints attaching the hypotenuse had rotted but I still have the right angle.
"Thought that was why there was 60 seconds / minutes in a hour."
I think that's also derived from the Babylonians as do the divisions of a circle. But, of course, it was they who had the wit to use a number base that was convenient for integer division rather than an inconvenient one based simply on counting their fingers.
"why has the modern world moved so far towards pure binary (and powers of 2 in specific contexts)?"
Imperial measurement made considerable use of binary. Weights from pounds down to drachms were binary as were volumes from gallons down to gills. In general they seem to have been based on measures which were a convenient size for some purpose with a strong inclination to subdivide on a binary basis. It's a natural thing to do. If you have a standard of weight, for instance, you can weigh out that amount of sand, flour or whatever on scales and then, using the same scales, divide that into two equal portions and subdivide further.
The problem arises when two different scales of measurement overlap and we end up with a stone of 14 pounds. Other stones were available - I've seen reference to a stone of 15lbs in the C18th - but I suppose a atone of 16lbs would have required too much adjustment to reconcile with the larger scales in use for other purposes.
"What I'd like is some reliable, long-term (archival) storage for home users. Something with a vast amount of capacity that I can write, lose in the back of a desk drawer for 20-30 years and reliably read afterwards, without (like a tape drive) needing a rather expensive bit of kit to read and write it."
The problem with this is that not only do you have to provide the equipment for 20-30 years but you also have to be able to understand it. So even if you resort to writing QR codes to microfilm you then have to hope that whatever OS you're using in 20-30 years has a library for decoding QR codes, even if the data is just plain old ASCII text that you could have streamed off a tape providing you had a tape drive.
There are no easy solutions for long term data storage except active curation: copying from the old medium and format to the latest one whilst the old is still physically and logically accessible.
"Lots of storage will be freed up as people die."
There's a very long term storage format available: ink on parchment. A lot of that must have been freed up when people died. If you're an historian that's one of the central problems of your professional life.
OTOH I think present day rates of data accumulation will also be a problem for future historians.
"Then what happens when you're told you just lost a big deal because of your paranoia"
And what happens to you when your lack of paranoia has let in malware that's closed down your IT network for a few days or allowed access that's enabled a few million of your favoured currency units to be looted?
