Posts by Doctor Syntax

Agile consultant behind UK's disastrous Common Platform Programme steps down

Re: So, £270M for a diary!?

"why in 2017 are people still able to run a viable business developing diaries?"

It sounds more like an unviable business failing to develop diaries.

But in answer to your question, from extensive experience around the courts in the past, looking at it as a diary is probably the wrong approach. Think in terms more of a production planning system where some stages are unpredictable in duration and where the resources needed are being shared with other production processes, some of them quite some distance away.

Re: Agile doesn't work

"The whole point of Agile is to deliver small amounts of work on a very regular basis"

My experience is that there's a fairly substantial minimum of work that must be delivered to be of any use at all. If your first delivery is, say, a simple order entry screen and a database behind it there's no use anyone entering any data because there's no way of using it because the warehouse needs to be able to get its instructions from the system.

And if the next delivery is to print a despatch note it's still no use. Maybe the third delivery will be a picking list print so it's usable.

Then when the invoicing is added someone realises that the data collected is inadequate. Then go back to the beginning, revise the database and order entry.

A few iterations of this nonsense and you get confronted with an angry DBA who wants to know why you have to keep buggering about with database reorgs and can't you get a simple thing like designing a database right the first time.

"The projects I have been a part of that did use Agile were all about delivering working software first and foremost."

At which the users gaze in desperation because there's no documentation on how to use it.

And the developers successor s throw it away and write something that they hope does the same thing because there's no documentation for them either.

Re: Agile doesn't work

"trickle from the meltwater that is management"

That trickle from management - I don't think it's meltwater.

Opposable thumbs make tablets more useful says Microsoft Research

Re: It's been done a lot before the dark cloud

I don't know about the others but I had a Nokia 9110. As far as I was concerned I wouldn't have found it easy to operate the keyboard with a thumb nor did it have a stylus.

"Don't Apple have the patent on this?"

I was worried MS were going to patent opposable thumbs. Now you've got me worried that Apple might have patented it already. We're all going to have to pay royalties on our thumbs.

Icon: we're doomed, I tell you, dooomed.

systemd-free Devuan Linux hits RC2

Some of the best examples of "good, modern design" occurred in the UK after I left in the mid-60s. Towering concrete edifices to house the workers

OK, here's another variation on the same theme: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

The 60s town blocks failed on the "no simpler" criterion, especially those that shared Ronan Point's construction.

"modern software requires modern solutions"

The difficulty I have about accepting this argument as favouring systemd is that I don't see systemd as modern.

I take this as a good principle of modern design: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

On this basis systemd fails to qualify as a piece of modern design. It may, by definition, be newer than that which it sets out to displace but new does not equal modern. In fact I see it as a throwback to the sort of messy complexities that the modernism of Unix set out to replace.

Re: Most of the complaints about it...

"... are because those sysadmin need to learn something new and they really hate it, and fear it."

Sysadmins are paid to keep things working. They know through experience that changes break things. Therefore they realise that the only changes that should be made to something that works are those that are absolutely essential. This means that changes should be evolutionary not revolutionary. I've yet to hear about one essential thing that systemd's supposed to have fixed.

I think the resistance to learning something new is on the part of those coming from the Windows side being reluctant to learn how Unix works.

"They like a fossilized Unix that must not change since it was written on stones in 1970."

I can't claim to have used Unix back in 1970. However I have used it since the early '80s so when I tell you, as I do, that Unix has evolved greatly over that time and has not become fossilized I do so from long experience.

"My Linux sysadmin is a perfect example of them...."

Your Linux sysadmin appears to know what he's doing. You should learn from him.

Re: Easy answer.

"Death through impact"

People have been known to die in horse-related accidents. An ancestor of mine died falling from his horse. Unfortunately re-engineering the horse to make it intrinsically safer is a bit trickier than re-engineering a car.

Re: Easy answer.

"I seem to recall reading that motor cars would never replace horses."

And look at the mess they have caused.

If you watch some period drama from the days of the horse look at the nice clean streets and ask yourself if the historical reconstruction was accurate.

"Wait until systemd comes with a word processor."

You mean it doesn't?

Re: Easy answer.

"I seem to recall reading that motor cars would never replace horses."

News must have been delayed where you were brought up. I'm a good bit older than you and cars had already replaced horses here.

Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

"If you wish to see logging in free text as well as binary, install rsyslog and the binary logging will be duplicated into /var/log/messages"

Why not do things the other way round, default text, binary an option for those who want it?

Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

"Binary log files ... detect corruption"

by becoming unreadable and therefore useless.

"and tampering through signing."

If you're concerned about tampering log to a remote host. That's a problem that was solved years ago.

"If you want text files in addition to or instead of binary it is a simple matter of reading the man page to enable them"

Not quite so simple. One of the times you really need logs is in diagnosing a system that's not booting properly. In such circumstances an original text log is readable by booting from another medium and your binary log probably isn't; how far behind current was the translation to text and how do you know?

Systemd: bringing you problems you don't need to solve problems you don't have.

Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

"English is just a form of cultural imperialism"

So should programming languages be translated from English - "if", "else", "break" etc translated into your local language?

It's been two and a half years of decline – tablets aren't coming back

"I have both unnecessary and totally necessary tablets. Guess which brand/OS?"

Guess? No, can't be bothered.

Re: Sales and Marketing reality distortion field

they will charge me 5£ extra a month for two years for a 320£ phone.

They might think "hey, we are retaining him", but they are just throwing good money away.

How much do you think they're paying for the phone from the manufacturer?

How much does that phone enable them to charge you for all the data the smartness consumes?

Re: No improvement is specs

"My nexus 7 (2013) model is slowly dying. It has only one use case, I use it to read news in the morning while on the crapper."

Note to self. Avoid used Nexus 7s on eBay.

"Netbooks vanished from the market, and I loved that form factor."

They didn't spontaneously vanish. They presented a big threat because they were released with a non-MS OS. So an MS variant was devised and made available providing the OEMs kept the spec down to something as barely usable as possible. Ironically, of course, Linux was and is a much better fit on that spec but it was enough to keep people from realising that there were other options than Windows (and Apple at the higher end) and at the same time to keep the netbook out of the mainstream as an inadequate toy.

Facebook is abusive. It's time to divorce it

Re: Tantrum

"The pictures on there of your cousin's wedding will be genuine though, it's safe to use it for that."

And may well be accompanied by all sorts of personal data to be hoovered up by FB. Not my definition of safe.

If a cousin wants to share pictures of their wedding email will do the job nicely.

Re: Tantrum

Following the (impeccable) logic of your last paragraph, don't bother with Facebook at all.

Re: It's funny in a way...

"we are all participating in what is arguably social media."

No, we come here to be anti-social.

Re: Facebook has its uses ...

"Maybe we could put together some kind of P2P distributed Facebook "

https://diasporafoundation.org/

Not that I use it but it's there.

Re: There is a compromise

"But look on the bright side - who remembers MySpace and Friends Reunited? Hopefully in ten years we can say the same about FB."

Unfortunately the reason nobody remembers those is that FB & Twatter displaced them. It's a grim thought that if your hope is fulfilled it's likely to be because something even worse comes along.

Re: Pintrest

"Certainly for a school / business/ charity /broadcaster it's less than $100 a year to have a domain and hosting and setup up your own wordpress copy."

In the UK one free option is http://www.btck.co.uk/ for those who qualify.

Re: Such a true reflection of a sad world

"At present especially the Google thing is kept quiet to prevent a trade war, but I suspect that won't be the case come September when the EU Art 29 working party revisits the Privacy Shield excuse."

And just wait until next May when GDPR comes into play.

Debianistas get Jessie mass package update

Re: OwnCloud

OwnCloud is "unsupportable". What's that about?

At a guess, whoever was packaging it has moved over to NextCloud along with many of the developers.

Sorry, Dave, I can't code that: AI's prejudice problem

Getting good metrics is hard.

Garbage in, garbage out.

One of the stories linked makes interesting reading: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/creative--motivating-and-fired/2012/02/04/gIQAwzZpvR_story.html

Basically the value-added "measurements" conflicted with other assessments but were allowed to dominate the assessment. Digging in a little deeper it turns out that the start of year measurements weren't the school's own, they were someone else's. Right there is a prerequisite for using numerical approaches - you've got to be sure you can rely on the data.

The article ends “Teaching is an art,” she said. “There are so many things to improve on.”

Measuring is also an art.

IBM: Remote working is great! ... For everyone except us

If the conference allowed questions from the rest of the attendees it should have been quite ...interesting.

We are 'heroes,' says police chief whose force frisked a photographer

Re: Pepper spray is a delicious example!

"If he's carrying them packed in a bag and doesn't try to grab and unpack them when challenged (i.e., acts normally), then I'd expect very little effect on his life expectancy anywhere."

Not affecting his life expectancy but this one is ridiculous: http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/man-caught-knife-said-needed-12992281

Re: @albaleo

In this case, the staff member's boss really should have taken them aside and said "don't be an idiot, he's clearly a f**king photographer"

Not really. This would imply that the staff member was generally empowered to throw her weight about and act like a constable and that her only problem was her poor choice of occasion on which to do this. As far as I can tell from the various reports this was not the case. If she was a purely civilian staff member then what she was doing should have resulted in a caution from a police officer about impersonating a police officer; it should really go beyond line management.

It should be a nice opportunity for the local press to set up an interview with crime prevention about this sort of thing: http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/NEWS/14634633.SCAM_ALERT__Fraudsters_impersonate_police_officers_to_con_people_out_of_cash/ and then drop this incident on them, asking if it helps having their own civvies teaching people to accept dodgy identification.

I should add that I do understand the police about being targeted. Not only did I know a couple of police officers in N Ireland who were murdered, I could easily have been collateral damage when a booby-trapped item was brought in for examination. However it really does not help the police by their setting up "us and them" situations with the law-abiding public in this way.

It would appear from these reports that a woman was impersonating a police officer. Has she been arrested for this offence?

Re: @albaleo

"The article says Mitchell refused to answer an unsworn constable's questions."

What's an unsworn constable? A constable becomes that by swearing an oath of office - go back & read the bootnote.

There's no indication from anything I've read that this woman was even a PCSO - had she been and been on duty she'd have been uniformed. She just tried to throw her weight about with an ID card which could have been knocked up with a printer and a laminating holder that can be bought off eBay for pennies. It's no evidence of anything except to her employer's staff. Outside police property it means nothing. In fact such things are regular props of scammers.

Re: @albaleo

I think that's proof of twattery. getting close to misfeasance in public office. If they'd actually arrested him it would have got really interesting.

The Chief Constable deserves an Oscar. That's the Oscar Munoz award for supporting his staff beyond all reason.

Hackers emit 9GB of stolen Macron 'emails' two days before French presidential election

Re: Seems presumptuous to blame Le Pen personally

"I doubt French voters will blame her"

Maybe not, but they may well take umbrage at such shenanigans and vote against her as a protest against such interference. That would be their only options given that there can be few French voters also entitled to vote against Putin.

Debenhams Flowers shoppers stung by bank card-stealing tech pest

"Many organisations assume that their business partners are secure, but don't actually take steps to validate this."

But surely they're secure already. Because Cloud.

Next May GDPR comes into force. How many of these businesses will be ready for it? How many have even heard of it? There are going to be some nasty shocks when the fines start to build up.

Curiosity Rover's drill is ill. But chill: we can dig Martian sand instead of rocking hard

Re: Ingenuity at work

"That looks suspiciously like a shed to me."

That's a shed!

Greater Manchester cops fined after victim interview vids lost in post

"Or the computer illiterate copper?"

Computer literacy doesn't come into it - we've no information on that one way or the other - but what's relevant is that we appear to have someone who doesn't know about a proper chain of custody of evidence. If they hadn't got lost and had been presented in court could he have produced a set of signatures for everyone who handled it in the Royal Mail?

Apart from the privacy issues anyone handling what are potentially court exhibits should really be taking personal responsibility for their actions. They could be called into court to give evidence to prove that what was examined and exhibited in court was what it was claimed to be. I think it would be entirely reasonable that those responsible for posting the items should be held responsible by the ICO. I'd also expect any defence barristers in cases handled by the GMP to give chain of custody a close examination and probably get a number of cases thrown out if this is the GMP's standard of exhibit handling.

"but for a copy DVD with an interview on it... I doubt it."

Also not a police officer but formerly a court-going forensic scientist. If the copy was being sent for investigation by someone who'd then give evidence on it then I'd have thought chain of custody would be necessary.

OTOH I think DiC samples for independent analysis are sent by post. I know one was. An unexpected item arrived by post and the X-ray couldn't identify it. It was put round the back of the lab until the Army sent round an ATO team. They "opened" it with their shotgun robot. It turned out to be someone's urine sample that he'd sent without making prior arrangements. He didn't get his independent analysis done.

"I know someone who does forensic examination of hard disks. One force sent them a hard disk in an envelope. No box, no padding, no bubble wrap, no Jiffy bag"

And no chain of custody either.

The Co-Op Bank's online banking has gone TITSUP*

Re: Multiple bank accounts?

"I believe the Co-op ethos is a good one"

I think you mean was a good one. As someone has pointed out after the Crystal Methodists manglement it ended up being sold to whoever would put up the money to rescue it. The Co-op kicked out the in-store branches and replaced the in-store ATMs with someone else's.

First cardboard goggles, now this: Google's cardboard 'DIY AI' box powered by an RPi 3

"the AIY Projects website"

And a very odd site it is too. With NoScript it displays nothing at all. Nowt. Zilch. Nada. So I didn't trouble them any further. Any business that treats potential customers with such disrespect soesn't deserve actual customers.

Capita's huge role in UK government should go under the spotlight

Re: TV Licenses

"How about just take it from tax in the first place"

Do you really want the Beeb completely under HMG's thumb? Because that's just what you're suggesting.

UK.gov job ads entice IT bods with promise they will be OUTSIDE IR35

Re: What?

"the trivially simple task of managing software licences."

It probably involves wrangling with the notorious Oracle licensing and also Microsoft. The MoJ needs to be able to withstand a FAST onslaught. It sounds like they may need a legal bod rather than a techie.

That rattling sound you hear...

... it's the sound of the penny dropping.

Re: I just...

"This strikes me that they're exploiting loopholes in their own legislation to get the staff in place."

Why? All they have to do is write the contracts correctly and ensure that their working practices abide by them. It might mean ignoring what HMRC want them to do but they're realised it's what they need to do.

Windows 10 S forces Bing, Edge on your kids. If you don't like it, get Win10 Pro – Microsoft

Re: Meh, I give it a few months

"MS could just say that Windows S doesn't have a dominant market position"

But planning on being able to argue that means they'd be planning to fail.