Posts by Doctor Syntax

Sharing's caring? Not when you spread data across gov willy-nilly

Re: rule by decree

"In this case I almost agree that parliament should pretty much waive the leave from europe"

I agree although I suspect "waive" wasn't the word you intended.

BOFH: The Hypochondriac Boss and the non-random sample

Re: BOFH plus kids =

"She now works at a nice admin job managing real rocket scientists and sending stuff to crash on Mars."

So it's all your fault?

SQL Server on Linux: Runs well in spite of internal quirks. Why?

Re: Installing on CentOs 7 / RedHat 7

'man hier'

That gives /opt as being for statically linked files. I've also seen in used for packages that include their own -/lib, -/etc & so on. Essentially stuff which isn't too dependent on the version of system libraries in use. In other words if you were to reinstall the OS you'd leave /opt unformatted in the same way as you'd leave /home unformatted and hope to see those packages still working. The stuff that goes into /usr/local you'd expect to reinstall or recompile. As per the other discussion, however, stuff seems to happen that doesn't follow the rationale.

Re: Repositories? apt and yum integration? Really?!?!

"I do not understand, or think justified, the downvotes to this sensible post."

There are projects - QGIS comes to mind as an example - who maintain their own repositories. I can see no reason why such repositories should not be trusted as much as the distro's. There are also very well respected projects such as LibreOffice which, whilst not providing their own repositories (I do, however, wish they would) provide new versions in the distro-specific format. Not all non-distro sources are dodgy.

Apt is specifically designed to allow extension to other repositories. Why not use it as its designers intended?

The post took a rigid approach which a number of commentards clearly felt to be unreasonably so, hence the downvotes.

Re: Interesting

" If you don't need Exchange, why would you run it?

A question asked invariably by Linux bigots who hate that the concept of choice goes beyond that of which Linux distribution to use."

OK, reword that to what's implied: "Why would you choose to run it?".

Re: Interesting

"If you want the full enterprise features like clustering, replication and full performance then you need to upgrade to Windows Server."

In that event my choice wouldn't be Microsoft for either OS or database engine.

How to confuse a Euro-cop: Survey reveals the crypto they love to hate

Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

"The problem has very little to do with availability or technical matters, and a great deal to do with the observed fact that only a tiny fraction of the public, as against those who lurk on technical web sites, actually cares about it."

Sort of in between. The problem is that any form of encryption, including PGP is an add-on to email as it currently exists. On the technical side we currently have a protocol for exchanging emails and a mechanism, MX records, for mapping addresses to servers. Some clients will help encrypt and decrypt the messages. However the mail system as it stands doesn't build this in not does it make provision for distribution of keys. The encrypted message is just stuff being send.

In order for Esme's wish to come true the protocols need to evolve. It's no use having PGP-enabled clients unless her correspondents are also using them and have a mechanism to share their public keys.

There needs to be a mechanism for publishing public keys. The mail protocol needs to make cryptographic signing standard, via an transitional period where it's optional, with mis-signed messages being bounced by the recipient's server. Clients and servers would all need to be PGP-enabled and users would be nudged towards setting up keys during the transitional period.

Unless PGP is built into the browser there's an obvious problem with webmail. But in any case - webmail and security?

"the Italian response to note that it's seeing HTTPS all over the place, given the concerted push by 'net luminaries to persuade site operators to employ it and therefore offer better protection to sensitive data."

Written with a straight face?

Re: @boring coward

"I'm sure swordsmen said exactly the same thing about the bow and arrow when it was invented."

Bows and arrows pre-date swords by millennia, as do spears.

/Pedantic

San Francisco's sinking luxury Millennium Tower: Tilt spotted FROM SPACE

Re: Not the developer's fault.

"If your property has a drainage ditch that prevents flooding for your neighbors' properties, and that drainage ditch becomes obstructed somehow, are YOU responsible for fixing it, or are the people benefiting from it (ie, your neighbors)?"

That particular question was answered centuries ago as far as England was concerned. Manorial court roles are full of pains that everyone should scour their ditches (and mend hedges or whatever part of the common infrastructure needed maintenance) and individuals being amerced for failing to do so.

Debian putting everything on the /usr

Re: as their rationales have been ignored.

" I think it was more a case of the rationales were either forgotten or just simply not passed on to the next generation."

Whatever.

Re: @hplasm only thing I ask

"It hosts a nice document converter able to turn (almost) anything to structured text"

Name, please.

Re: only thing I ask

"I'm not bothered by this change of "moving /bin and /sbin to /usr" and it doesn't affect this."

What Dr Mouse said.

Re: only thing I ask

"Physical disk corruption is a rare issue now...

Today, usually, when a disk fails..."

Rare, usually...

Usually you don't read backups. The necessity for it is rare Does that mean you don't take them?

One of the requirements of system administration is to take precautions* against rare, unusual but potentially devastating events. Laying out the disk partitions to give you maximum chance of recovering from such events is a sensible precaution. This rearrangement isn't being proposed to aid that, it's being proposed to make what Debian calls "busy work" for developers. Sadly developers seem to be gradually losing touch with what they're developing is being used for. Is it surprising that Devuan was set up?

*Look carefully at that word. It tells you a lot.

Re: Probably won't make too much difference

"Granted this is an unusual case, and not one that would typically be used in a production system."

I remember one fairly grim morning caused by a SCO system having an overnight process that wrote into the root partition. Overnight it had gone wrong and the partition was at 100%. Response to any command was slow and the box was a couple of hundred miles away so a reboot into single user was very much the last resort & might not have helped. I can't remember now how I managed to get it under control but it took a long time. Moral: be very careful how you partition systems and keep the partitions which you'll need in emergencies clear of everyday use.

Whilst smaller disks were one of the reasons for partitioning the actual allocation of files to partitions in the various partitioning schemes had a rationale part of which was the ability to recover via single user boot when one of the more active file systems got corrupted. Quite a few old Unix design decisions seem to have been allowed to go by the board as their rationales have been ignored.

I suppose it all works well as long as it works. After all, you can even run without backups - right up to the point where you need them.

Re: only thing I ask

"simply boot in to single user mode (no rescue disk/cd/USB needed) and fix."

That depends on what single user mode needs. If it needs executables moved from /sbin to /usr...

Re: I don't like change

"I've been working with UNIX for 38 years (Bell Labs V6 onwards), and while I don't disagree with you, /usr has never been used for user files in my experience"

Where did you keep them, then? AFAICR V7 had them in /usr and I think System III did.

You want SaaS? Don't bother, darling, your kind can't afford it

Re: Wrong way round

"their US-supplied system still had the factory default locale."

I think they'd notice if they couldn't enter dates later than the 12th of any month.

Wrong way round

"Curiously, the offenders are always insurance companies"

Some insurance company phone erk agent insisted to me that my wife's birthday was 5th of June not 6th of May. It seemed beyond his comprehension that a married man could survive one year's getting his wife's birthday wrong or that someone in his company could have entered a 6 and a 5 the wrong way round.

Small ISPs 'probably' won't receive data retention order following IP Bill

"Unless it's written down, it's an empty promise."

I doubt writing it down makes much difference.

Integrator fired chap for hiding drugs conviction, told to pay compo for violating his rights

If the employer was concerned about convictions then the question about disclosure should have been a warning for the interviewer to follow up. Maybe there was a clash of opinion between the interviewer and someone else in HR.

There's gold in them thar hills! Rackspace latest firm to join Frankfurt data centre rush

Brexit or no Brexit why don't we have this sort of business coming our way? I wonder if Mrs May might have something to do with it.

Stay out of my server room!

"the finger of blame would point at the right place."

Whatever the right place might be it always points to IT.

Combination lock on the door. And after Facilities have installed it, change the combination. They'll probably have left it at the manufacturer's default.

Visa cries foul over Euro regulator's stronger authentication demands

The politician's syllogism

Something must be done. This is something therefore it must be done.

Surprise, surprise. BT the only Universal Service Obligation provider in town

Re: Calling our bluff, are you?

I should also have mentioned that Deutsche Telekom now owns 12% of BT.

Re: Calling our bluff, are you?

"BT is a government agency"

Looking back on your posting history you seem to have convinced yourself that this is a fact. I can't think why. The nearest thing, post-privatisation, was the so called "Golden Share" which allowed HMG to veto changes to BT's Articles of Association. The Articles make it difficult to mount a takeover unless they're changed. The Golden Share was got rid of nearly 20 years ago.

If you actually look at history you'll find instances where HMG's decisions were hostile to BT. One of these was the block placed on BT during the cable era in order to give other carriers an opportunity. Another was the amount of govt. business given to Mercury.

If you have evidence to support your belief in spite of the above please share it but remember that, as always on el Reg, there will be people here who've been there, done that. In this case that means work or worked for BT and/or hold actual BT shares.

Re: Calling our bluff, are you?

"insist, without changing anything else, on a forced and immediate demerger of BT and Openreach."

So which foreign telecoms operator do you want to see buying a demerged Openreach?

Veeam kicks Symantec's ass over unpatentable patents

Re: Swish! Nothin' but net!

"I see no reason why I should subsidize corporate stupidity."

Would you settle for out of the patent examiners' own pockets?

Gov's industrial strategy: 'Look, we've changed the words above our door'

"Shall we rename the Institute of Economic Affairs to 'I want to eat your cake and have mine too'?"

Isn't that BoJo's motto?

"it renamed the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy."

Having got two of the tricky bits out of the title does it mean they're going to do something about them?

"Unlike Cadbury, which closed its UK factory, he said the business would retain and grow its HQ and operations in Blighty."

The latter part being substantially the same as was said at the time of the Cadbury takeover. Only time will tell.

Obama awards honours to Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton for computing contributions

Re: Congratulations

We need more public recognition of such success and leadership to prove to all aspiring female coders and software engineers it's well worth it.

FTFY

'IIRC, she brought some "nanoseconds" (6" lengths of wire)'

That would be more like half a nanosecond.

Fibre pushers get UK budget tax reprieve

Re: "Pure fibre"

"Sure, but how does that work when it's run in a duct that also provides (legacy) copper services?"

I think the term used by Hammond was "full fibre" but either way the question remains: what was meant by that? The statement is pretty well detail free.

If you followed the link in the article you'll realise it was the VOA that wanted more. Hammond has effectively nixed that for 5 years. Unless the Chancellor of 5 years hence continues the relief the VOA can do whatever they wish on valuations to claw back what they've been deprived of today.

"Businesses rolling out pure fibre are to be exempt from paying land rates over the next five years"

And then it'll be clawed back over the next 5 years and clawed back again over the 5 years after that...

AWS to launch Aurora service for PostgreSQL at re:Invent – report

'Citing several sources "familiar with the plan" who weren't authorised to speak about it'

Sign language?

Telegram API ransomware wrecked three weeks after launch

The file needs to be at least as long as the key. There's an added twist in that if this is how it works all you need is to leave a long file of nulls lying around and the contents after encryption will be the key.

FYI: The FBI is being awfully evasive about its fresh cyber-spy powers

"Cracking someone in a different jurisdiction would still be a crime in that jurisdiction"

Unless, of course, you accept the argument that jurisdiction lies with the country where the cracker was located at the time of the act. Remind me why people are being extradited to the US.

Re: As opposed to...

"to permit determination of ... the unknown subject "

You, you and you, all of you, will be suspects with no presumption of innocence.

"The amendments would apply in two narrow circumstances:

First, where a suspect has hidden the location of his or her computer using technological means"

I.e. connected it to the internet. I'd like to see his definition of wide.

Twitter bans own CEO Jack Dorsey from Twitter

Re: Captain Obvious To the Rescue!

"We all know that, like so many sites, they rely on algorithms to deal with abuse and harassment. But as we've seen many times -- a concerted effort by threat actors can manipulate the system to nuke accounts"

And this is only an example of using big data and "AI" to run businesses. What could possssssibly go wrong?

MP Kees Verhoeven wants EU to regulate the Internet of S**t

"What I'm saying is that you can't count on regulation in a market that basically lives on working AROUND regulations."

The market is about making money. If there's more money to be made in following regulations than getting around them they'll follow regulations.

There are a shedload of ways to make that happen.

Did you read this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/22/eir_customers_modems_vulnerable/ ? They can enumerate the defective modems in Ireland and the ISP networks they're on. If the regulations oblige the ISPs to ensure that any non-compliant devices are not exposed how easy is it going to be sell them? It becomes more profitable to sell compliant stuff than non-compliant stuff.

Maybe there are individuals who want to trade illegally because it's illegal rather than because it's profitable. OTOH in 14 years in forensic science I encountered one case where it seemed possible that that was the situation but I'm not wholly convinced. Most people just want the money.

" eBay may be in Luxembourg NOW, but they have PLENTY of other locations."

Yes, to trade in the EU they have plenty of other locations in the EU.

Companies wanting to do a lot of business in the EU need to have a legal presence in the EU. So upping sticks from Luxembourg isn't going to help them get round EU legislation.

If they have a choice between the problems of trying to do without that base and ensuring their traders are trading legally it'll be no contest.

Donald Trump confirms TPP to be dumped, visa program probed

Re: A mission statement is NOT a plan

"Until one day AI eliminates all humans, there will always be holes in large software systems."

Who's going to write the code for this AI?

Re: YES!

Well, I have a sneaking suspicion Trump chose him as the good old survival strategy of, "you may think you hate my politics, but consider who'll become President if I'm dead!")

The old Spiro Agnew ploy if I'm not mistaken.

"To add insult to injury the Disney employees being terminated were forced to train their replacements under threat of not receiving a specified termination package."

There's training and then there's training. "At the end of the day you can tidy up your work space by typing rm -rf *"

I think you'll find that almost all countries have such visa programs precisely because local talent is hard to find or overly expensive expects to be paid a rate commensurate with knowledge and experience.

FTFY although there may be a few other factors at work.

All too often the only reward mechanism is promotion to management as the technical pay scale doesn't extend that far. Up to a point the "management" post could be a facade to enable the business to retain someone who might otherwise be lost but that can't be worked very often and there's always a risk that higher management insist that the "manager" actually manage.

The consequence is that the work can end up being done by people who are either too inexperienced or too inept to be promoted and managed by people who would be good at the work but whose managerial abilities weren't known at the time of promotion and in many cases don't exist. I think most of us have experience of such managers.

Another factor is management's fondness for gimmicks such as motivational presentations. For a competent technical person the maximum number of such experiences is one. Companies can find themselves motivating experienced local talent right out of the door.