Posts by Doctor Syntax

Waymo: We've got a hot smoking gun in Uber 'tech theft' brouhaha

Re: How cute...

Did nobody ever tell them: "when you're in a hole, stop digging."?

Canadian sniper makes kill shot at distance of 3.5 KILOMETRES

"t's gonna be going very slowly at the end."

IIRC someone was killed in S Belfast by a stray from N Belfast which must be a comparable distance.

However I did for a while, have some sort of handgun round* on my desk with a nice fibre impression on it; it was said to have been stopped by an ordinary nylon jacket.

*Don't ask. I wasn't a ballistics expert. Someone just passed it to me do a fabric comparison.

Lordy! Trump admits there are no tapes of his chats with Comey

Why do I see that and read "I just played back the tapes and discovered Comey was right."?

Cheeky IT rival parks 'we're hiring' van outside 'vote Tory' firm Storm Technologies

Re: How would Storm know?

"the hung parliament doesn't look like it's going to get much done any time soon"

Given the alternatives I find this the best I could have hoped for it it weren't for having the DUP along for the ride - and anything they can get out of it.

Re: How would Storm know?

"Neither the Tories or labour (or any other party for that matter) have a monopoly on dickheads in their ranks"

Unfortunately none of them seem to have an absence of dickheads either.

Re: How would Storm know?

"We have a secret ballot"

Exactly. From this distance it looks rather like an attempt at humour. Either that or the bloke has never voted so didn't know how it works.

Lenovo re-launches data centre range with two new ThinkThing lines

Are these intended for the Internet of Thinks?

I'll just hang my coat up, it's too warm here.

Gov digitisation plans happening too slowly, say IfG policy wonks. Hear that, GDS?

"GDS has done more good for them than anything previously."

You forgot the joke icon.

Microsoft admits to disabling third-party antivirus code if Win 10 doesn't like it

Re: Nothing new under the sun

" I know the feedback will be ignored. "

Not necessarily. Next time round it'll be looking for renamed CCleaner.

IBM's contractor crackdown continues: Survivors refusing pay cut have hours reduced

Re: team leaders are offered a new tool

"I'm sure they and their subordinates already know where to find the tools."

Don't be too sure. They may be unable to find their arses with both hands and a map.

Re: $100+/hour Multi-Client Contracting + Continuity Income Guide

"2) Network big time - Attend Meetups. Speak at Meetups/Conferences. Participate in forums."

Let me add another to that. Work on jobs for one client that involve collaboration with other businesses future clients.

Re: The 'Hours Plan'

"Or the Process Management Process."

Or the Process Management Report Process Report.

Re: It is a compensation problem, not a capitalism problem

"If senior management is being compensated in a way that encourages short term thinking - quarterly results"

This is an area where governments could actually make a difference: ban reporting at less than annual intervals. Yup, I know the arguments. But consider the possibility that the benefits might outweigh the disadvantages.

Re: Abuse, plain and simple.

"my contract has always included language preventing me from working, directly or indirectly, for that customer for a couple years or so"

It sounds like you have a badly written an IR35 caught contract, at least in UK terms.

The contract should be between ClientCo or AgencyCo and YourCo not you. As someone said in a previous comment, start YourCo2 which never had such a contract.

Re: This is just another proof...

that unbridled Capitalism has MBAs have managed to create an environment in which the company's own management is also the company's worst enemy

"It's also another proof that our governments are either criminal or criminally stupid."

Governments appoint MBAs to run companies? Some businesses have been run well, some run badly since businesses existed. Good businesses have fallen prey to bad management. What's it to do with government?

"You might recall a recent story about Lloyds outsourcing to IBM.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/06/lloyds_confirms_ibm_cloudy_outsourcing/"

However, there's also https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/20/ibm_xeon_only_discount/

How does IBM keep winning outsourcing contracts if things are that bad?

FTFY

Re: Abuse, plain and simple.

"End result? Contractor still looking for a new contract"

End result, if they've any wit, contractor still supporting ex-IBM customer and divvying up IBM's slice between them. Sort of having your cake and eating it.

Re: “be forced to reduce their CLAIMED hours by 15 per cent.”

Might as well just say "Anybody who can get a job elsewhere, please do so."

Or this:

“In the last seven months I've pretty much worked constantly with five of my former clients, who have hired me directly to do the same work they can no longer find anybody at IBM to do.”

Non-compete clauses? IBM is repudiating its own contracts so it might have a hard time enforcing them.

Oxford profs tell Twitter, Facebook to take action against political bots

Re: Nope, the truth is not relative

"Did anyone claim a statement of fact? All he said is that they are true statements."

That's the point. They were statements but meaningless because they were incomplete. You have to be prepared to examine statements critically in order to understand what they actually mean - which might not be the same as what they appear to say.

Let's just call them Anti-social Media and have done with it. As they deteriorate to white noise maybe we should ask if their time has passed.

Re: Nope, the truth is not relative

"Water contains 66.6% hydrogen

Water contains 11.8% hydrogen"

Neither is a statement of fact. A statement of fact would include whether by weight or by number of atoms.

Stack Clash flaws blow local root holes in loads of top Linux programs

Re: Security 101: If they're sitting at the computer...

"But at least you can be reasonably assured that this particular hole will be patched when all the libraries go over their code with a fine toothed comb."

That's already been done.

Email from my email provider yesterday to say they were going to reboot last night because of that. Laptop has just been updated this morning. I'll reboot as soon as I've posted this.

Done and dusted.

'OK, everyone. Stop typing, this software is DONE,' said no one ever

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

NSA had NFI about opsec: 2016 audit found laughably bad security

And yet one of its jobs, as with GCHQ here, is to help secure national IT infrastructure. Is this a case of the cobbler's children or is it equally poor at its assigned task? And if NSA is that bad what of GCHQ?

I suppose they're both too busy spying on us.

Re: Can't wait till ISIS recruits infiltrate the NSA....

They haven't?

Microsoft's new Surface laptop defeats teardown – with glue

Re: Nonsense

"What are you going to replace?"

The battery.

Re: Does Microsoft offer an exchange program too?

"The only time a user has to repair a laptop is if it fails after the 3 year warranty period but before it so outdated as to be no longer useful"

Never mind repair - what about replacing a battery?

Re: Recycling also difficult

"I do not see how this can get a CE label"

No problem so long as you don't mind it being a China Export label.

2 kool 4 komputing: Teens' interest in GCSE course totally bombs

Re: Lets be realistic

"When I was at school we all had to do woodwork and metalwork - subjects for working class kids that were supposed to start working with our hands to make stuff."

I have a certain degree of sympathy with this point of view. Yes we had that sort of class and school and I discovered that basically I wasn't much good at it.

And yet an attitude that if you want stuff you can make it is important. I acquired it not so much from school as from my dad. Right now I'm sitting in the house that he built; not had built but built himself (OK, over the years I mixed a fair bit of mortar, concrete and Thistle by hand). Because he'd grown up with that attitude and also had the aptitude to go with it. Roll forward to post-grad times and, after a week's introductory FORTRAN (the first day of it missed because SWMBO and self hadn't got back from a week's field work) I discovered that if I wanted a program I could and did write it myself; I'd finally discovered an aptitude to go with the attitude. I eventually built a second career out of that.

"Schools should focus on teaching pupils a good grounding in Maths, the 3 Primary Sciences & English."

Actually the computing could be woven into those.

Back in the blimey-is-it-nearly-60-years-ago days at school the physics lab had a couple of spectroscopes with diffraction gratings. Working out how to get the 2nd order image of the sodium doublet and at least the first order of the neon that was present in the sodium lamb was a grounding for serious experimental work in later life. Now imagine if such kit (assuming schools still have such things) were combined with a stepper motor, a sensor and an RPi to automatically acquire spectra. That's how computing skills could be acquired along with ordinary lessons.

"Someone thinks that page description markup has to do with CS"

Of course it does. Rory Cellan-Jones says it's "coding" so it must be right.

"I know that I can get a team of 4 brilliant developers from the Philippines for the cost of 1 contractor from the UK. I also know that I dont need to be in the same room, building or country as they are for them to work well."

You've missed an important point. You think they don't need to be in the same room etc. In fact there's a lot to be said for developers - we used to call them analyst/programmers - being able to talk to the people who were doing the work your S/W would be helping them with. That way you would find out what was actually needed. You could maybe fast-prototype something and get feedback.

Your 1 contractor in the UK, if carefully selected, working with the end user will be worth the money. The actual cost might work out closer than you thought and you'd likely get better value for money via a better product.

"or work for the government"

Oi. I did that in science for some years and I can tell you pay and prospects were crap. You did not get to "skim off the top" in science in the Civils Service.

HTTPS is where it's at.

FTFY

"My son did GCSE computing and scored A, but then promptly dumped it for science at A Levels."

The way pay has always been in science, and the way it seems to be going in IT, both seems to be mugs' games these days.

"Woohoo! Skills shortage == more pay for us oldies."

You think so? Just do as you're told & train your Indian replacement.

Report estimates cost of disruption to GPS in UK would be £1bn per day

Re: Past!

"Might be for the best if yer driving..."

So stop driving.

Re: Alternatively...

"which was the right road for Weymouth town centre"

I had the same trouble with Weymouth town centre. I quickly decided it probably wasn't worth the effort.

Re: That said ..

"Audi drivers are driving using the Force."

Audi drivers think they are the Force.

Brit uni blabs students' confidential information to 298 undergrads

Re: Spreadsheet != Database

"Talking about saving money, my senior managers have lots of cash for constant moving around of departments and the associated building works that come with it, 4 years in a row I've had to move offices."

Just moving around? Real managers would have had at least 3 reorganisations in that time?

So often I get asked, "How quickly can you get a breakdown of historic research income by quarter separated by the gender ratio within the lab and gender of the lead investigator?" that when I reply "Two days, including testing, once I've finished this epic piece of coding I'll get straight onto it for you." I get "I could do that in Excel in, like, an hour".

It depends on how well you know your way round the schema. If all they want is a one-off you should be able to do it from a good SQL database in less time than Excel. It depends on your priorities and those you work with. They need to realise that if you're doing application coding and one-off queries.then the application coding is going to be delayed by a lot longer than the time you actually spend on the on-offs. However they might be OK with that.

Re: 3. Someone - with access - exports data, and emails it to 2

"Even if people are aware of what they're doing is wrong or against protocol, they will still do it, because they don't want (short term) hassle - usually from the recipient(s)."

It's a matter of attitude. My last client before retiring took security very seriously because they provided secure services to clients. Irrespective of the inconvenience staff would observe secure protocols. As yet most businesses can get away without that. Gradually, as consequences get more serious and more widely realised things will improve. It'll just take bigger fines and more class actions before it happens.

Re: Spreadsheet != Database

"We have a student DB, but it's unwieldy, slow and crap. To get any changes made to it, you have to get the developer in to do a analysis, then the design, then the development, etc before it can be finally added and used."

I wonder why anybody does analysis and design. Could it be to try to prevent this sort of thing?

By letting - yes, there's an element of permission there, even if only be default - short-cuts to be taken your student DB is prevented from being improved. And so your management paints itself further into a corner so that, assuming you're in Europe, one day you find that you didn't really save money, all you did was postpone it until it was drained away in a big fine.

"This sounds like a process design fault"

It sounds even more like lack of process.

Jaguar Land Rover ropes in Gorillaz to help it lure 5,000 'electronic wizards'

From the Beeb's version:

"Jaguar Land Rover has indicated half of all new models will be available in an electric version by the end of the decade, necessitating new skills among its staff."

Sounds OK for a lot of those 4x4. School run and supermarket should fit in the range of a daily charge.

Hotheaded Brussels civil servants issued with cool warning: Leak

Re: Start of 2 year exit negotiations?

"2 and a half months ago, most of which has been wasted by Theresa Mayhems ill-advised and ill-fated snap GE."

From her PoV certainly ill-advised. If it hastens her departure I certainly wouldn't call it wasted.

@A/C

I was with you until you got to the scotch egg.

"You are not advised to drink alcohol, and to eat light meals"

So you're not actually advised not to drink alcohol.

And if you don't eat light meals do you go without or do you eat heavy meals?