Posts by Doctor Syntax 40485 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"thyristor was bart. this was computer error."
From TFA:
The Examiner notes that faulty circuitry components – thyristors linking the brake and accelerator pedals to the motor – were also replaced on 100 BART... trains last year.
It seems clear enough that thyristors were at fault in both cases.
Thyristors are electronic and computers are electronic so obviously it's a computer error; any newspaper would say the same thing.
"Just buy a domain name and use a domain hosting service to support it, configuring its e-mail and http redirection services to point to whatever ISP provides your e-mail"
It's one way but for whatever time you're with them you're still stuck with whatever quality of hosting service your ISP de jour provides. Given that they almost certainly see their prime business as shuffling bits between yourself and their up-stream that aspect of their business isn't given much attention and may well have been outsourced - which is the entire point of TFA and this thread.
The better alternative IMV is to select a service that sees mail and web hosting as its primary business with the domain registration as a part of that.
"My folks are old, I know better But they won't Listen."
I feel sorry for them having such off-spring. But maybe it is their fault - they should have brought you up better.
I am old and know better. It's my daughter who won't listen. Actually she does know she shouldn't be on TalkTalk mail but just doesn't do anything about it.
"Also, businesses which wish to keep their PC's with a supported Windows OS, have until 14th Jan 2020 to replace all their Win7 devices."
Given than many businesses have been reluctant to move from XP what makes you think they'll be enthusiastic about moving to 10?
"Well... I believe it's M$ intention to keep the Win10 name/brand for a long time, well past the point where we'd have gotten a Brand New Version in the past."
Intentions are all very well but reality has a nasty habit of creeping in. When a brand becomes toxic it has to be ditched. If you're doing it right you also fix the underlying problems, of course, otherwise the new brand also becomes toxic.
"If you struggled then you aren't worth your salt."
You do realise, don't you, that the majority of Microsoft users out there don't know anything about the precautions you know about? Maybe you don't in which case I've got new for you: that's the way it is. They simply bought their PC with Windows on it and are wide open to anything Microsoft chooses to do to them. That's because they just bought the PC to use, not to exercise specialist IT knowledge on.
"...you're never going to go mainstream."
Even if you have it working turnkey that won't be enough to go mainstream because it's still an add-on. Few people know anyone who uses encrypted email because the people they know don't know anybody who uses encrypted email because...so it's not worth using encrypted email. It needs to be incorporated in email standards as the default mode of operation. As it also makes provision for signing it should have a major part to play in preventing phishing and other email scams.
"Not defending MS. Just pointing out that attacking them as if they were qualitatively any different from all the others is just rather pointless."
I'm struggling to follow this line of thinking. A MS service let's users down. Are you saying El Reg should write it up as if it was Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon? Maybe they should ask Salesforce what went wrong with Outlook? Or ask Twitter when they're going to fix it? OK, they could take a swipe at Oracle in passing, I don't mind that because Oracle, but really this is an MS issue so it's MS that gets written about.
As we've seen recently when the yobs break into a server the operator can get fined if they'd not taken adequate steps to secure it. Why doesn't the same thing apply when they're able to run a long fraud against HMRC? Maybe a few bad annual reports, no increments, no bonuses, that sort of thing.
"Number of users probably doesn't reveal very much but the fact that large, publicly traded (and therefore open to scrutiny, required to conduct due diligence, etc ) companies, who employ professional network security teams use it does tell us something."
What does the number of large publicly traded companies who've paid up for ransomware scams tell you about the ability of their professional network security teams to protect against users?
"BTW, anyone else think that Google's search is pretty crummy these days?"
Yes.
Google a place name: estate agent ads.
Google a surname in conjunction with a place where someone or family of that name was associated: estate agent ads for all the housing estates named after said person.
"The fail fast fix fast mentality of software development is insane."
That's one issue. The other is the converse, taking something that's fine as it is and them applying fix fast fail fast to it. Nobody seems to be immune to that and I don't think marketing is solely to blame.
"I think the government may quickly find that in a global economy there is far less freedom than they would like to think. The main difference will be the loss of any influence on many of those rules"
I think the government by and large knows that. But now they have to pander to that slim majority of June voters who didn't, probably still don't and will eventually find out the hard way.
"She was running false colors in the Remain campaign throughout as she is in favor of exiting everything - including the Human Rights convention."
Whilst I agree with the first statement the ECHR is a separate entity and whatever she may be in favour of it's not as easily disposed of as you seem to think.
"hexpads on the front panel."
Hexpads on the front panel. Luxury! In my day there were just rows of switches. Except when we had to take the switches out to boil them up for soup. Then we had to twist bits of wire together.
"nigh on 60!"
ah, that explains it. A youngster. Don't know they're born these days...
"right up until the point you are no longer needed and replace (sic) by someone doing a better job delivering IT as a service."
Which they do right up until the time they break something by which time there's nobody left in house to fix it.
If you work in an in-house operation which is critical to the business you're aware of its impact. If it goes down it's the business that provides your pay and your colleagues' pay that's at risk. In that case getting it up and running becomes your one and only priority.
If you work in any form of out-sourced operation that operation might be critical to lots of businesses. But your priorities for getting it up and running will be concentrated on your biggest/loudest/most litigious customers. The rest can wait.
From the perspective of a business which has outsourced but isn't in the biggest/loudest/most litigious group they've gone from "one and only" to "the rest". They won't, of course, discover this until they're too late.
"So who's the naughty boy here? Yahoo says: we had to comply with the law. Google says: we wouldn't comply with the law. Facebook say: we would fight the law."
And it's a matter of record that MS are fighting the law, at least in Europe and are making more efforts in protecting European data with their new data centre legal architecture. On the whole I'd trust MS on this - but not sufficiently to install W10.
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