Posts by Doctor Syntax

Oracle doing due diligence on Accenture. Yep, you read that right

Oh bugger!

My main pension's outsourced to Accenture.

Your internet history on sale to highest bidder: US Congress votes to shred ISP privacy rules

On sale to the highest bidder?

You have a very limited view of the venality of the average corporation.

On sale to al of them!

Oxymoron alert.

"Won't make this development weaken Privacy Shield even further?"

Further weakening Privacy Shield?

Nuns left in limbo after phone line transfer hell

It sounds like the usual call centre operation. Something fails so they repeat. With the same result. And it will keep on failing until someone escalates the problem. It really is in the call centre's own interests to have an escalation procedure of its own. If the customer ends up escalating it to the regulator it can get expensive; kudos to the nuns for doing that.

ICO fines Flybe, Honda for breaking data rules. They were, um, trying to comply with GDPR

It just goes to show that some marketing muppets are unable to manage the digital equivalent of keeping their dicks in their trousers.

Manufacturers reject ‘no deal’ Brexit approach

Re: @ Hans 1

"Falling back to no special deal and going back to WTO rules will still be fine for the country and free us up."

The pixie dust view.

"My fear is a special deal where we lose what has been won, our exit from the political union the EU."

Reality seeping through. At some point you're going to cotton on to the real killer. That will happen and we won't be part of the decision-making process. The control that could be won back was an illusion.

Re: Welcome to Trump.UK

"CONTROL"

So, your shift key does work some of the time.

Re: The CTA has to end

"This would seem to be much the same as the control system at the height of the troubles."

I doubt it.

In any case the border always had a fuzziness. In some cases it was straddled by farms and, IIRC, even individual buildings.

Re: "no deal better than bad deal"

"Of course, if they don't think a good deal is achievable, they could save themselves time and resign now."

Given what they've convinced themselves of already I don't see how this could possibly apply.

Re: Fake news and hyperbole and scaremongering

To which side were you addressing that remark?

Re: Welcome to Trump.UK

We should make sure that when "tired of expert" people are injured, no experts are available to treat them.

I thought we had.

Re: Welcome to Trump.UK

"like it or not England would likely vote them off and enjoy the savings"

Something we agree on. If we'd had the vote last time round they'd have been gone. But it wouldn't have suited Salmond's ego - too much like being thrown out.

Re: Welcome to Trump.UK

"He gambled the entire country for the sake of party politics and to cement his own position."

Probably a serious mis-statement of his thinking. The right-wing eurosceptics were a menace for decades. He would have expected to win and thus not see it as a gamble. I think it was a ploy to get the eurosceptics back into their box. It didn't work with all the ominous consequences you mention. If it had you'd probably have been praising him for a brilliant out-manoeuvring of the Gove faction and UKIP.

Re: Welcome to Trump.UK

"Scotland will leave the EU, either as a part of the UK or, if independent, on it's own, and will have to apply to join and suffer the time and requirements that takes, including, creating their own currency."

They already have banks that issue their own bank notes (ignoring for the moment that the UK tax payer owns a substantial slice of that).

"but we will still be covered by the ECHR."

It would be nice to think that. One thing that's been a preventative factor there is the Good Friday Agreement. Unfortunately that's unravelling before our eyes. And May would clearly like to ditch the ECHR. She probably can't believe her luck.

Re: It'll be fine

"Again, that's fine, the EU is not a big export partner for the UK and it's not like those exports will cease to exist merely lose volume."

I regularly drive past a specialist shipping packer. Not the sort of place that shoves stuff in standard containers. They deal with the big one-off jobs, the sort you see as wide loads on the motorway (some of those wide load escort vehicles are hanging around from time to time).

No doubt the businesses that use this firm sell to a world-wide market. But at present the EU won't really be an export market for them - it's their home market. And they're going to lose 28/29ths of that. The sad fact is that a lot, maybe a majority of the employees of those specialist firms probably voted for Brexit. Will they wish they hadn't in a few years time?

Re: It'll be fine

"You need to re-read Article 50 from something that isn't the Daily Fail or The S*n."

Good luck with trying to get them as far as para 3. There were some showing up here when the court cases were on who clearly hadn't read, or maybe read and not understood, para 1.

Miss Misery on hacking Mr Robot and the Missing Sense of Fun

I've no intention of watching it. It can't possibly live up to Verity's review.

CompSci boffins propose scheme to protect privacy in database searches

Re: So SELECT * FROM *

"Sounds a huge waste of time and resources against a very unlikely real world scenario."

Unlikely? It happens all the time. It's how the likes of Google work out how to show you ads for stuff you bought last week. They've still not worked out that the information they glean from it can go stale PDQ.

The shortcoming of this whole scheme as far as I can see is the the people who'd need to make this work are the very people who wouldn't want it to work so it's not really going to happen. Anyone who wants to offer a search service where they don't know find out what the user was looking for has a much simpler solution. Don't look.

Re: But is this not security through obscurity?

"That's the point that maths turns into magic as far as I'm concerned..."

...and where the load goes through the roof as the DBA is concerned.

FYI Docs.com users: You may have leaked passwords, personal info – thousands have

The cloud..

..the gift that keeps giving.

UK Home Sec: Give us a snoop-around for WhatApp encryption. Don't worry, we won't go into the cloud

Re: Oh, Oh. Another Home Secretary Gets the GCHQ Power Point Session

"The Human Rights Act is a UK law passed in 1998....Pity the Home Secretary doesn't do some reading before opening her mouth."

Yes, but the current PM has been wanting to repeal that ever since she was Home Sec. She's not going to want a Home Sec going against that. Don't pity Amber Rudd; she was doing exactly what was required of her.

The main thing that was stopping May was being in the EU.

Re: Amber Rudd, a mouthpiece of utter conjecture.

"I'd take the mention of WhatsApp by a 52 year, at best, a statistical rarity."

Do not spoil your arguments by throwing in casual, uninformed and irrelevant ageism.

It would help of the political interviewers had some technical nous.

Rudd should have been asked if she was prepared to lead from the front and publish all her credentials for online banking, eBay, Amazon or whatever. As she'd have been bewildered she (and the audience) could have then had it gently explained that this was, in effect, what she was demanding of the rest of the population.

As it is any politician can walk into any radio or TV studio, spout whatever nonsense their department has fed them and walk out unchallenged about any of it.

Re: Halcyon visions of yesteryear

"Masood wasn't on anyone's watch list. He just a small town thug that came completely out of nowhere."

The reports I saw said that he was known from being on the fringes of some previous case but wasn't considered important. If this is the case we have yet another instance of the intelligence services being able to follow up on someone they did know about whilst trying to keep an eye on everyone in the country. Maybe a more focussed approach would be more practical.

Re: Here we go again. The 'Claire Perry Test'

"Not just tech stuff : one has to wonder what this person is doing as home secretary."

Don't you realise that this is the Home Office's main requirement of a Home Sec? They have to be so devoid of any relevant knowledge that they can parrot whatever they're told without showing any signs of cognitive dissonance and remain totally brainwashed even on being promoted to PM.

UK digital minister Matt Hancock praises 'crucial role' of encryption

"The pool of political talent available to Theresa May when she had to choose a Home Secretary must have been very small."

Well, given her record as Home Sec she wasn't going to appoint someone like David Davis to the job. She'd want someone to follow in her own footsteps.

Dishwasher has directory traversal bug

"The worst case is that it effectively becomes a denial of service on a lab until it's fixed"

Until the malware starts connecting to the lab centrifuges. Or intercepting LAN traffic and reporting back.

"By the looks of it, the 8528 is a very high end labatory glassware cleaner and disinfector with many programmes and reporting facilities"

Which means it has even more reason to be properly secured.

Re: A software bug in a dishwasher?

"use a cast iron ballast instead of concrete."

Ballast of any sort must be more or less unique these days. Just replaced the washing machine and the guys who took the old one away were a bit taken aback by the weight.

Re: Bewildered. (That's grown-up speak for "wtf")

"With the MobileControl function you can keep an eye on your Miele appliance, even when you're not at home - via smart-phone or tablet PC. Not only can you access the programme status, you can also conveniently select and start programmes regardless of location using your mobile terminal device. Simply download the Miele@mobile app and connect the device to Miele@home. When you return home, your Miele appliance has already finished its work. "

It's a pity I'm not in the market for a new dishwasher. I'd have let a salesdroid give that spiel just so I could have asked "Why would I want to?". And then show them my ancient non-Apple, non-Android phone.

"It's unclear which libraries Miele used to craft the Web server, which means without a fix from the vendor – for a dishwasher – the best option is to make sure the appliance isn't exposed to the Internet."

No. That's the second best option. The best option is not to buy anything that's given a facility to connect to the internet that it doesn't need. A dishwasher doesn't need a facility to connect to the internet.

UK.gov departments accused of blanket approach to IR35

Hypocrasy.

""As the worker (contractor), would you accept as substitute a suitably qualified worker instead of the worker?" "NO" --->> instant IR35 fail."

Once upon a time the IR as it then was had a boiler-plate contract on their site. It was for companies supplying services to them. Let me emphasis that, it was a contract for services, not a contract of service*. It included a term allowing them, the IR, to name specific individuals of the contractor's staff who could not be substituted without their, the IR's agreement. In other words the IR, when they were the client, were quite cool with the idea of a key man clause. I'm sure I still have a copy somewhere.

*Permies might not understand the significance of this but believe me, it is very important.

Re: Ffs...

"My understanding is that companies won't contract a self-employed person because the rules change in the 1990s meant that two consecutive contracts would be equated with permanent employment, leaving the employer open to claims for employee rights."

My understanding is that it was HMRC's predecessor IR to blame. In the event of a self-employed person defaulting the Ltd Co engaging them became liable. The Ltd Co form of engagement protected the engager against this.

It seems to be an attitude to risk on the engager's part as I discovered a client who also had freelance graphic designers taken on as SE. I could probably have contracted with them on that basis. However I already had my Ltd Co set up so continued with that.

Re: Stop taking the p***

"No, the employer pays it once and the worker pays it once, same as everyone else. It ain't your money cos you're not a limited company."

I sort of take your point. The worker isn't the limited company and this really should be emphasised.

But the likes of the first post fail to make the distinction and ISTM that the previous A/C was replying in terms that they might understand. The amount invoiced isn't the amount that's available to be paid as salary and/or dividends. There is a world of difference between the nature of the payments the engager makes out to a permie and a freelancer's Ltd Co.

'Windows 10 destroyed our data!' Microsoft hauled into US court

Re: W10

"If only you're computer literate, you must know all this."

A lot of people buy computers to do stuff. They're not necessarily computer literate. They paid good money for what they bought. They don't deserve to become victimised.

Re: Uh what?

"...a class action that includes every person in the US who upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and suffered data loss or damage to software or hardware within 30 days of installation"

I can understand if the upgrade procedure somehow caused data loss or 'damage to software' but I haven't heard of Windows 10 either damaging hardware or causing data loss.

It's the sort of thing any lawyer would put in without even having to set the brain in motion for two reasons: firstly it saves having to investigate whether any hardware failures did happen so if someone does turn up with such a corner case they've already got it in there and secondly it cuts Microsoft off at the pass if they try "it was a hardware issue" as a defence.

"Where do we join ?"

Small claims court.

"I'm just so glad I'm retired."

That's the prime requirement for being expected to support friends and family.

Re: Why not include automatic updates in the class action?

"It genuinely made itself too big to sue into the ground."

No excuse. If for no other reason it would discourage others from using the same tactic.

In any case, if it did get sued into the ground there'd be good money to be made supporting the victims so someone would be ready to buy up the assets at fire sale prices.

Re: Place your bets

"Seriously, when did you last hear of a software company being successfully sued on the grounds that its product failed to perform as advertised?"

The article quoted some examples relating to W10.

Re: About time

"Nice ignoring of context by the spokesdroid"

The standard journalistic response to these sorts of statement should be "how did you manage to say that and keep a straight face?".

Bloke whose drone was blasted out of sky by angry dad loses another court battle for compo

Re: Guns...

@ bombastic bob

Upvoted for Bathsheba reference and absence of superfluous upper case. But pointing lasers into the sky? There are too many idiots doing that already as has been pointed out in these pages

Re: What a colostomy bag...

"chainsaw to cut down the pole, a cricket bat to beat the shit out of the camera, & then offer to smash in your skull if you do it again?"

I say, old chap, do the colonials actually have cricket bats to hand?

I've Been Moved: IBMers in same division slapped with 2nd redundo scheme in 2 months

Re: Infrastructure

"Cloud based services are so clearly the future"

And as the outages become more frequent their vendors will be able to say they were the future once upon a time. Anybody who can't see that coming needs to read the news and to have been around long enough to realise that IT is a fashion industry.

Astroboffins stunned by biggest brown dwarf ever seen – just a hop and a skip away (750 ly)

Re: It's quite a small object

"Dark matter is the luminiferous aether of our age."

Or even Phlogiston.

"I assume you mean more than 99.9% hydrogen and helium "

The paper doesn't mention helium.

Why do GUIs jump around like a demented terrier while starting up? Am I on my own?

Some other gems

Way back in the days of plain old character terminals (the ones which were efficient for data entry - just use the keyboard and don't fumble with pointing devices) the function and arrow keys sent control strings. These were usually initiated by an ESC and the OS used the delay between that and the next character to work out whether it was just an ESC or a control string initiator. Cue a bit of delay on the network and the OS got it wrong so that the rest of the control string got sent into the program as data. That was rapidly followed by the accountant demanding to know why his staff were mis-entering data. ISTR there was some tuning available to lengthen the allowed interval so that got sorted.

Ubuntu favouring what looks for a moment like a progress bar but actually just whisks a short bar backwards and forwards until it's done.

KDE. The task bar can be set to autohide and restored by taking the mouse pointer to a user-chosen location. Make it the bottom edge and any attempt to take the mouse to the bottom of a window at the bottom of the screen brings up the task bar. Similarly going for the scroll bar on a window at the right hand edge. The bottom left corner seemed the most convenient but least likely place that you'd take the cursor by accident, the likeliest target there would be the menu button on the task bar itself. KDE 3 included corners as well as edges in its choices so that worked out well. KDE 4 restricted the choice to edges. WHY????

Re: You hit it Dabbsy

"Even better would be if they made the damn things easier to open after tearing them off the roll."

That was my point. The idiots who inflict these things on others will continue to be idiots until they're made to experience the consequences long enough for the problem to penetrate whatever they're using for brains.

Blinking cursor devours CPU cycles in Visual Studio Code editor

Re: bring back vi and assembler on command lines

"FORTRAN 77 on a Control Data Cyber-whatsisname. Using punchcards. In the early 1980ies."

Johnny-come-lately.

FORTRAN IV on ICL 1900 series, punch cards, 1970.