Posts by Doctor Syntax

First-day-on-the-job dev: I accidentally nuked production database, was instantly fired

Re: "and thought it was ok to include the production password?"

@LDS

I think you've just described DevOPs.

Re: So....restore from backup

"i'm assuming that there's nothing in prod that would lead to regulatory/privacy/other issues"

Given everything else about this it's possible your assumption might not be valid.

The open source community is nasty and that's just the docs

Re: "may therefore not find documentation written by native English speakers easy."

"I'm not a native English speaker"

Wow Based on your writing here I'd never have given it a second thought, just assumed you were.

UK PM May's response to London terror attack: Time to 'regulate' internet companies

Re: Theresa May says 'enough is enough'

"But what did they achieve?"

Legislation permitting/legalising mass surveillance.

Re: Theresa May says 'enough is enough'

"'Enough is enough' is about as helpful as 'Brexit means brexit'."

Yes, "X is X" seems to be her idiom. At least she's made a start on understanding logic. She should drop out of politics for a while and make a further study of it.

"So Mrs Prime Minister how do you implement it?"

That's easy. Tell someone else to do it; don't bring me your problems.

Re: +1

"For cryptogoblin!"

That's not what he wrote.

Re: Theresa May says 'enough is enough'

"Are we going to give the police authority to deport anyone they suspect of activity planning terrorists attacks"

Please explain how this could work bearing in mind that these are generally UK-born. To where do they deport them? And then if the police had these powers absolutely, which is what you seem to suggest, and they decided they suspected you then wouldn't you want to be able to argue your innocence somewhere, such as before a court?

Why, when we're faced with a movement determined to overthrow the rule of law which we've built up over centuries do we seem to have all these blethering, hard of thinking numpties who think that the best way to combat it is to throw away the rule of law which we've built up over the centuries?

"Rant time with naughty words and opinion, so look away now kids."

If you feel the need to emphasise your argument with obscenity then you obviously realise you have a weak argument. Specifically your weakness is that by and large you're dealing with British-born individuals and you can't go about banning your own nationals from re-entering your own country.

We're dealing with people who want the West to abandon its own laws and here you are wanting the West to abandon its own laws. The terrorists have won a little victory over you.

Re: "since she must have advisors who actually understand this stuff,"

They understand that it will give them the government of the day the ability to find out and monitor exactly what anyone is probably thinking

FTFY

Re: "Does the idiot woman realize how bloody stupid she sounds?"

"If you're willing to credit her with failures in our security when they happen should you not also credit her with successes too?"

The thing that makes the failures so egregious is that they seem inevitably to involve people known to the police or security services or who have been reported by alarmed acquaintances or family.

But the real problem with her, right from her Home Sec. days, is her concern with the internet and particularly with her obsession of treating everyone who uses it as suspect. This abandoning of the presumption of innocence is a more drastic blow against British values than anything terrorist organisations could manage on their own. It's a major indirect victory for them. And what could she gain by all this? Terrorists are already breaking the law; is providing another law for them to break going to be effective? Those who would be affected by her attacks on the net will be lawful users. This Home Office-sponsored action is something akin to an internet auto-immune disease.

Re: Book stores.

"How much more funding would have prevented this one."

Hard to say but inevitably we're told after the event that the offenders were either known to the police/security or that concerned acquaintances or even family had made reports which seem to have been ignored. So a combination of more funding and a redirection of funds away from mass surveillance might have borne some results.

Re: Book stores.

"I hope Labour use this line of attack (defence) instead of standing there and taking it because it's too soon after the attack"

If they do and then win the election they'll change their tune PDQ. We might find ourselves with a new ID card scheme.

Re: Book stores.

"I still find it surprising that she came down on the side of Remain."

Not surprising at all. Remain was expected to win and she wanted to keep her job. It wasn't so much coming down on the side of Remain. How much effective campaigning did she actually do?

Re: Book stores.

"campaigning for Remain for 2 years."

AFAICS she only paid the minimum lip service to the campaign consistent with keeping her job after the anticipated Remain victory.

Who's going to dig you out of a security hole when the time comes?

Re: IT isn't Information Security

"IT's job is to connect and enable.

Security's job is to prevent unnecessary connections and disable dangerous capabilities."

I tend to think of security of the ratio of the ease with which the intended users can connect and be able to use the facilities to the ease of the bad guys to do the same. In other words it's not useful to lock the bad guys out by locking everyone out.

I can't see how this idea can be applied without making security, or at least IT security, part of IT. The security guard in reception is SEP, of course.

Boffins find evidence of strange uranium-producing bacteria lurking underground

Re: "Now if the bacteria absorbs U235 preferentially things could get interesting....."

"There's sufficient difference between C13 and C14 chemical activity in biological systems that you need to take this into account when sampling for carbon dating."

You're partly right. Most carbon is C12. Back in '60s we started measuring C12/13* ratios by mass spec to get a measure of fractionation which was then used to correct the C14 measurements from radiation counting. AFAIK thse days C14 is directly measured by mass spec but I suppose there's still a correction applied from the C12/13 ratio.

*These are both stable isotopes so any change in the expected ration is presumed to have been present at the time the material was deposited.

Re: The usual baloney

"humans had been using organic farming methods for many hundreds of years."

Personally, I've always preferred organic food to inorganic. Salt and water are a very limiting diet.

Re: The usual baloney

"edit: it appears the article was literally edited as I posted this, 'create' being replaced with 'produce' and thereof. Not bad, but I still think 'concentrate' is better."

I'd settle for "illiterately edited for the reason you state. The result, as it stands on Sunday, is still scientifically illiterate.

Retirement age must move as life expectancy grows, says WEF

Re: Obviously manual labor doesn't count!

"Welcome to the Thatcher/Reagan New World Order."

I've got news for you. You're about a generation out of date. If you need to look to the past to find out where the problems are from you need look no further back than Gordon Brown and his cohort of economic managers.

Re: Pensions

"That means that that same 40 years keeps me alive for 13 years - much longer when the magic of things like compound interest kick in."

That magic if compound interest also applies to the 5% level. The real difference between the time you selected to pay a few % and now is that current interest rates are lower so that the returns your savings would pay in retirement are now much less. This is why so many pension schemes are in deficit. If interest rates kick up again your pension fund will start to offer higher returns.

Re: It's insane

"Of course the real story here is that it should be fewer children."

No, less would be fine. Eating less, needing smaller clothes, smaller homes, smaller cars.

Re: It's insane

"I wish anyone in charge was engaged in any kind of long-term thinking."

Any kind of thinking would be a start.

Re: Wow

"One factor in the demise of D/B schemes that is rarely mentioned is Gordon Bown's tax raid on the dividend income"

True. It was a tax on the future and that future is now.

I felt at the time - and still do - that pension schemes should have started issuing double projections: this is what your pension plan is actually likely to bring you and this is what it would have been likely to bring you without the tax. The consequences would have become widely understood very quickly and he'd have been forced to think again.

@ Dr Dan Holdsworth

Hastening the collapse of the Ponzi scheme might actually be what's needed in the long run. That or the next, overdue, 'flu pandemic. Neither will be much fun.

"And your solution is?"

Dunno, but properly defining the problem is a prerequisite to solving it.

Re: @ Pen-y-gors .....by letting people have several careers during those years...."

"The reality is that we have to take the employers warmly by the throat and make it clear that they do not have a choice."

One part of this may well be a demographic change. With smaller family sizes employers are going to find there are fewer young recruits and will have to look at recruiting and/or retaining older staff.

Another will be that as the average age of the population increases so will the age of those making such decisions; things will look different from an older viewpoint. Experience will come to be something to be valued.

It would help if management skills were increased. Less experienced workers may be impressed by managements "motivational" attempts. After a few times round the block it becomes seen as an insult to the intelligence, the victims react accordingly and management wants to replace them with someone who'll be seen as a better team player or whatever when in fact it's they, the management, who need to learn to do better.

Re: Portfolio careers?

"Many people will have working lives of 60+ years, and we need to handle that by letting people have several careers during those years."

I'm not sure about 60+ but in the course of 40+ I changed career midway through. I doubt I could have stood the first one much longer than I did. I'm also not sure how much longer I'd have been able to stand the second one. In my case stuff I learned in a peripheral way helped start the second career but I don't see how I could have moved on to a third anything like as easily.

"Letting" people have several careers would actually involve being prepared, as a society, to retrain them. In practical terms we've somehow got ourselves into a situation where we're not even financing training for a first career.

Re: Earth to the WEF ...

"Property taxes are covered by the mortgage since it's still the bank that owns the house, not you."

Where you live, maybe.

Certainly not in the UK. Property taxes are local taxation and part of the funding for local services such as emptying the bins on reduced cycles, closing the libraries and building big shiny sports centres and paying for the Tour de France so that the council leaders can get there photos in the local paper.

Re: scrapping mandatory retirement would help

"Unless there are jobs being created you would be 'bed blocking' in the workplace; stopping people moving up the ladder and preventing new people coming in."

On the one hand we're worried about there not being enough youngsters in jobs to finance support for the oldsters and on the other about the oldsters stopping the youngsters getting jobs. There's a contradiction here.

Then we have concerns about automation taking all the jobs but if it did that why are we worried about the oldsters needing to work to keep the economy going?

Re: Fair Enough

"Firefighters often don't have to go into incomplete buildings, working on incomplete structures where one needs to step carefully to avoid falling, with potentially loose and heavy stuff over one's head."

Are you sure about that?

Re: This is all very well, but........

"If we sell the properties, we have to spend all the capital before we get any pension at all. The income from the properties is barely enough to pay down the loans."

Sell em, blow the lot (if there's anything left after paying off the loans), draw the pension.

Re: This is all very well, but........

"Tell that to the recruitment robots."

They really should be on less than the minimum wage.

Re: This is all very well, but........

"punch-room girl"

"Girl" might have been a bit of an over-optimistic description in some cases.

Re: This is all very well, but........

"Then there is the expectation that we earn more the older we get, irrespective of productivity, which also makes it less attractive to employ older people."

I'm not sure that applies in all cases. Skills tend to depend on experience but for many traces that will top out after a few years. Where experience brings responsibility then you will find an increase. It might be difficult to measure the justification in terms of productivity because the nature of the product changes.

Re: So... we should do the opposite...

"My pension is being paid from my taxes"

Maybe in OZ. Back in the UK state pension and many public sector pensions are essentially Ponzi schemes. It would have been a good idea if, when NI was introduced, a portion of it had been put into investments so that eventually the proceeds of this would gradually have superseded paying the pension out of current payments. Presumably this would have been regarded as putting too much power (i.e. choice of investment) in the hands of Civil Servants.

Crapness of WannaCrypt coding offers hope for ransomware victims

Re: Filepaths

"Don't forget the souls who save everything to desktop."

It's called work in progress. Periodically it gets sorted out when I work out a suitable structure for it all. In the meantime it's Right There Where I Can See IT.

'My PC needs to lose weight' says user with FAT filesystem

Re: Scuh-zee IS the official pronunciation in some circles

"I leave you with the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America"

No, please take it away with you.

BA IT systems failure: Uninterruptible Power Supply was interrupted

"BA like to pass the buck to insurance companies"

Who'll pass it rght back come renewal time.

"A contractor isn't the same as outsourcing."

CBRE are a little vague as to what they do. It seems to come down to "advising" but it certainly doesn't sound like electrical contracting. Maybe they were overseeing electrical contractors. See their site at http://www.cbre.co.uk/uk-en/services/global_corporate_services/data_centre_solutions where they claim "With Data Centres, knowledge is power".

Re: Thanks BA

"They understood in a flash."

It won't take them long to forget.

BT considers scrapping 'gold-plated' pensions in bid to plug £14bn deficit

Re: The scheme it states closed in 2009

"As per the article, if BT had been more prudent on who they trusted with regards to finances"

Yup, it was a mistake to trust HMG - letting them define the criteria for over-funding, changin the taxation on pension schemes and cutting interest rates so the predicted rates of return on bonds suddenly became wildly over-optimistic.

Re: Much like my pension, which I'll likely never get.

"Surely it's up to the trustees, not HMRC."

Not in the real world. HMRC lays down the rules.

WannaCrypt: Pwnage is a fact of life but cleanup could and should be way easier

Re: Time Machine

"windows has VSS and previous versions... wannacry turned them off and deleted the previous versions as part of its payload."

Don't keep them where malware on the client can see them.

Casual ageism is an indication of poor thinking

"old men from a generation that just doesn't get it."

That'll be old men from the generation that invented most of what you use. And you think they don't get it?

"if you don't want to use an SMB share"

SMB or anything that extends the server's file system into the clients' is part of the problem. It allows an infection in the client to wander over as much of the server's file system as it can see.

"One possible solution might be a DC on a different operating system entirely"

A good start would be having the servers run on a different platform to the clients. Of course that means having the two work together and that means using open standards and not just "our" version of the open standard or even "our" open standard.

Re: An entire article blaming Microsoft...

"but they DID put a patch out there for a long-obsolete OS..."

AFAICS this was a belated recognition that they had no excuse for leaving an error like that unatched for so long.

Re: At least with linux

"Still not happy? Roll your own, or persuade somebody to roll it for you."

They did. It's called KDE.

Re: This will happen again.

@LittleTyke

Nothing's perfect. You're going to have to work on constructing the best system to fit your requirements. But why start with the least secure platform you can find? That's just plain daft.

And why set up a monoculture? Make different parts run on different platforms. It makes it harder to support? Well it also makes it a damn sight harder to attack and if you get attacked then you might find that your supposed ease of support was illusory.

Big Tyke.