Posts by Doctor Syntax

End all the 'up to' broadband speed bull. Release proper data – LGA

"As has been mentioned previously, the BT Openreach estimator that's available to wholesale suppliers is pretty accurate."

The speed I'm able to get in the middle of the afternoon here might be a good deal more than what I'd get in the evening if a lot of people down the road start streaming stuff when they get home from work and my bits have to share the infrastructure with whole lot of others. It might also be better or worse than my neighbours; all our connections come from the same point on the buried cable. Mine comes underground, theirs are overhead from a cable running up a pole, some of them distributed direct from that pole and others from a second pole linked to the first. Clearly there are various options for water penetration, different wiring choices (Al vs Cu) etc.

Can the LGA suggest a test method by which this can be determined other by having the user run a speed test from within the premises?

HP doorsteps Apple shoppers at the altar of dreams

Re: The problem is the HP label...

"cheap components that won't last 2 years"

The trouble with getting this sort of reputation is that even if you turn things round it takes years to get back to where you were. I'm currently on my 2nd HP laptop in the best part of 15 years with no troubles. I also have an all-in-one laser printer which is pretty substantial, has lasted with domestic use for many years and is still going strong. But having seen the HP printer my daughter's firm supplied her with (and looked at what's on the shelf in Staples) when I decided to get a colour laser there's no way I'd have bought it from HP.

I'd really like to see them regain their reputation but in order to do that they really need to face up to how they lost it in the first place. A puff-piece based on what seems to be a shininess comparison isn't convincing evidence that they've done this.

Re: Hey, we still innovate!

I'm no Apple fanboy - never owned any of their products but:

"The original MAC All in one Computer :vs Commodore PET"

Really! 68k :vs 6502?

You might have said Apple ][ :vs PET but even there Apple was innovative - an open architecture for plug-in boards followed up with the Woz floppy drive. Admittedly they dropped all that later but back then they were innovating. It's just that not many of us are old enough to remember.

Bad news: MySQL can dish out root access to cunning miscreants

Re: I've got a cunning plan my lord

According to TFA it can be done via injected SQL so root access might not be needed.

HP Ink buys Samsung's printer business for a BILLION dollars

Re: Can't remember the last time I printed something

"Printing is stupid and primitive"

You are making the common mistake of thinking that everyone else has the same life as yourself.

I've just been printing the handouts for my wife's sewing class. I don't think taking a laptop & showing round would be as useful. That's just one of the very many use cases that you don't happen to have.

Re: Less Innovation, more renovation!

"Interesting to see HP moving more to hardware with this and its selloff of its software division."

You missed the split. There are now two HPs. HPE sold the software division. HP inc, which is the hardware and printer ink business, is the one which made this purchase.

Re: And tomorrow...

"As HP altready share printers with Canon, where's the competition especially for workgroup (and more) printers?"

Brother?

Brexit makes life harder for an Internet of Things startup

Re: Another "oh think of the children" BS story.

"Why was it non-binding? Why was there no supermajority?"

That's easy. He was expecting a Remain majority.

Given that goods made all over the world are imported into the EU under the CE mark it doesn't seem to be a critical factor. Unless the standards change what you're making now that meets them will continue to meet them unless you change the product. If the standards change then, irrespective of whether we're in the EU or not the product might have to change to meet them. This is Brexit-neutral as far as selling into the EU is concerned.

What wouldn't be Brexit-neutral would be a UK-only standard which is incompatible with CE in some way, then you'd have to make two different products to sell into different markets. Do you think that's a likely event? Or do you think it more likely that the CE standards will continue to be accepted in the UK, either under the CE mark or some UK-only mark with equivalent standards?

Not being in the customs union would appear to be the real problem.

Microsoft thinks time crystals may be viable after all

I got as far as "Wilczek considered a group of atoms in their ground state moving in perpetual circular motion, which is considered an impossible idea because ground states do not have enough energy to spontaneously move."

If I skip everything else I didn't understand it seems to mean that Microsoft are proposing to go round in small circles.

Curiosity rover likes big buttes but it cannot lie around

Re: Shiny thing

Yes, it's the handle to open the trapdoor.

SOHOpeless Seagate NAS boxen become malware distributors

Maybe the security was designed by their HR department. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/09/seagate_faces_suit_for_getting_phished/

33 million CLEARTEXT creds for Russian IM site dumped by chap behind Last.FM mess

Re: Irrespective of the strength of passwords

"life would be a *lot* simpler if so many of the retail sites didn't decide we needed a password and login for *everything*."

My solution is to set up a temporary email address every few months for these wankers and then tear it down later. Their spam just gets bounced.

"if they use Gmail, you can generally assume they're actually not that hot on security"

Not necessarily. A Gmail address might simply mean that they don't consider that particular site is deserving of security. Stuff that matters can be given a unique email address and password.

Cisco's head of enterprise networking bails

"it has always been the same seven years"

Really? I'd have thought it'd have been a different seven years each time. Or did he have more than one job at a time?

Chinese rivals: ZTE to take on Huawei... in the UK

Smart cities?

These days I find even dumb cities bad enough. Smart ones?------>

Petulant Facebook claims it can't tell the difference between child abuse and war photography

Re: Why is this surprising?

" the best they can do is allow for escalation to someone who is authorised to deviate from the procedure."

Not entirely. The best they can do is allow for escalation and learn from their mistakes.

Re: The problem is libel

"They can see, just as well as anyone else, that this is an important historical image and that the nudity is unimportant compared to that. "

Evidence?

"And it annoys me that if something like this were to happen today (the taking of a horrifying photo of a child that represents everything wrong with a nations behaviour) everyone would complain that it was too gruesome and they would have to draw a picture."

That would have been the expected result at the time. I'm sure it took a lot of courage to print the picture first time out. And, of course, the result was that public opinion was directed, rightly, at what lead up to the picture and not at the picture itself. It was that ability of the picture to change public opinion that made it iconic.

What we're now seeing is a generation, or at least a sub-set of a generation, who lack the cultural education to recognise what they're looking at and to respond accordingly. It's deeply worrying - those who don't know their history are condemned to repeat it.

Re: "How are facebook supposed to tell the difference?"

"with sub average intelligence."

Maybe FB's problem here is that they're trying to do this not with sub average human intelligence but with AI which is well sub sub sub intelligence in practice so now they have to put exceptions in. Because of the scale at which they operate that's what they have to do.

But they do need to get a handle on the fact that when the AI gets it wrong they have to move quickly, intelligently and with good cultural knowledge. The AI isn't going to get things right first time every time but the humans backing it up need to, either by taking appropriate action where they're authorised or in escalating PDQ to someone who can make decisions. If they don't have suitable escalation procedures they're not alone - it seems to be SOP these days for almost any business.

Is there paper in the printer? Yes and it's so neatly wrapped!

Re: No lazy stereotyping?

"Did I leave anything out?"

Yes. Every mistake PHB can make that you couldn't even think of and wouldn't have believed if you did.

Re: Locked in? BTDT.

"Pointy Haired Boss. See Dilbert, then look at Dilbert's boss."

It's worrying when you have to explain this.

Sony wins case over pre-installed Windows software

Re: Economic Behavior Of Consumers

"Is it really MS's fault that there are no suitable Linux alternatives for essential production software?"

What part of "distortion of the market" did you not understand?

Re: Simple

"Only Microsoft would lose because they pay out for an unused OS and no metrics."

It's the crapware vendors that lose out because they paid to have their advertising put on there.

Re: The free market

"The most returned PCW product in one year, some time ago, was the Eee PC"

Since then the growth of mobile devices has shown people that there are alternatives to Windows. So much so that the one thing people don't want on their phones is Windows.

Re: Why not just grow up?

"there is only a very small minority of consumers ... who don't expect a PC to just work out of the box."

Work for whom?. Some of us want the PC we just bought to work for us.

Greed?

AFAICS from the article he wasn't content with getting the cost of the Windows licence, he went for damages, maybe from greed, maybe just to make a point. Assuming there was the equivalent of the small claims court in his jurisdiction he should have gone for that. Now he's created a precedent which is probably the very opposite of what he intended.

Re: OS Refund

"I think you'll find that the range of models/suppliers this is available on is very limited and it is actually quite difficult to but a laptop now that is compatible with linux."

How many people go round butting laptops?

Buying laptops compatible with Linux doesn't seem to be a problem, however.

Re: "Which will prove what, exactly?"

"Does he for example go into car showrooms and try it on the sales staff there?"

I have gone into a car showroom and after waiting an unreasonable time for attention, left. And I was seriously looking to buy a new car - which I did from the showroom across the road.

Re: Three heads and bare machines

"There is a very cosy (and profitable) relationship between PC vendors and the OS manufacturers."

Only as long as the OS is seen as promoting the sale of the machine. If it becomes seen as a toxic brand then the vendors have a problem.

"And I for one would buy a laptop based on a Raspberry Pi 3 compatible motherboard"

Seek and ye shall find: https://www.pi-top.com/

"Sure, you can easily buy a barebones laptop and mod it."

There's a bit of a giveaway in the article linked to. The OS was Vista. That article was written a long while ago. Things have become tighter since then but there are still the sort of options available at vendors such as https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

The main difference of desktop vs laptop is that the former has a range of cases to take standard components whilst the latter has to have a good proportion of the components, especially the mother board, designed around the case which itself is styled as much as designed. When you don't have a choice of motherboard there's a limited amount of options available to you.

A laptop case designed to take the latest thin mini-itx boards would be a good start.

Seagate sued by its own staff for leaking personal info to identity thieves

Re: The data wasn't stolen

"Workplace safety was really driven by them way back when."

Maybe in the US. In other places there is legislation which was driven, at least in part, by media reporting of disasters. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huskar_Colliery

Self-stocking internet fridge faces a delivery come down

Re: Remind me not to have dinner at your place

"In Gloucestershire, if it doesn't contain some part of a pig, it isn't food."

In that case it can be converted into food via a pig. Old Spot?

Re: drones

"I will expect my drone to fly to the nearest field and milk the cow itself"

See the earlier comment about cats. That's nothing compared to what a good kick from a cow can do.

Re: Remind me not to have dinner at your place

"None of this is food."

It's considered such in parts of London. I'm not sure about Gloucestershire.

Double-negative tweet could be Microsoft Surface Phone hint

"Only four Microsoft Windows 10 Lumias were ever announced"

I understand they did manage to sell all four.

IBM's AI guru leaps over to Brit biz benevolent.ai

One of the problems with san serif fons is that a capital i looks just like a lower case L.

I was left wondering if Alguru was Algorithm's older brother.

You should install smart meters even if they're dumb, says flack

"Our role in terms of consumer engagement, people are still getting the benefit of the smart meter. It will still be the right decision for a consumer to take a smart meter"

I'm not sure what this bit of verbal compost was supposed to mean but it gives me a sneaking suspicion that his terms of engagement are that he keep the numbers up so that for him its the right decision. Am I being over cynical?

Plusnet broadband outage: Customers fume as TITSUP* continues

Re: Fortuneately (sic)

"If you can understand the Northern accent that is"

I find one of the advantages of PlusNet is the absence of strange accents.

Excel abuse hits new heights as dev uses VBA to code spreadsheet messaging app

'This sounds like another example of "wrong tool for the task"'

Doesn't that describe so much of management?

Re: @Gene Cash

"Pah - Easy stuff. I did mine in Pascal."

UCSD?

The development manager at one of my clients wrote a sudoku solver in VBA in Outlook. If only he'd stuck to that and not tried to manage....

BT needs to ditch its legacy to be competitive, says chief architect

Re: Fibre to the premises not copper?

"Do you remember when the UK decided to change mains gas from coal gas to natural gas?

It wasn't a big bang all at once operation, it was done regionally and street by street. Same as you might with copper=>fibre. Thereby avoiding the need for a near-infinite number of workers to do the job in a finite time."

---------

"One difference between mains and coal gas is that gas is fungible. If I was still being piped coal gas it probably wouldn't matter (I don't know - I'm assuming that my boiler would burn either without any difference)."

The burners had to be changed to cope with a different gas/air mix. But the supply to premises was delivered through the old pipes. There was a need for a natural gas backbone.

In fact it mirrored the FTTC arrangement pretty well. That's why it didn't take a near-infinite number of workers finite time.

Printers now the least-secure things on the internet

Re: I wouldn't connect it to the Internet

"What if it come sufficiently enabled so as to connect by itself, using an open wifi network, or a mobile data networks?"

I wouldn't buy it. Next question please.

"Not that it's even remotely likely, but if somebody sold me a 'fridge that had a capability to connect to the Internet, I wouldn't connect it to the Internet. Nor to any network."

The problem starts when the fridge won't work unless it's connected to the net.

HPE crams unloved software down Brits' throats – then charges them $9bn to swallow it

Re: MicroFocus an "IT COnsultancy"

"Either they got $10Bn of assets for just over a quarter of that or they paid close to 3x revenue for this software pick-n-mix deal."

Did you notice that HPE now own 50.1% of them. So their shareholders just got a diluted share of the enlarged business. Given that their new majority shareholders are HPE should they feel comfortable with that?

"They then do nothing as far as future development and charge people a mint in support."

It's not necessarily bad, of course. If, say, MS had gone this route with W7, there'd have been continuing licensing income, no W8, no W10. Continued development of mature software is apt to add misfeatures as much as features. And doing it right requires expensive facilities such as QA departments.

St Jude sues short-selling MedSec over pacemaker 'hack' report

Re: Why not give a little time before judgement?

"No question this is sleazy, but maybe that industry (and a few others) need a real kick in the pants to design security in, and listen to those who tell them about problems?"

If they'd told MedSec and been ignored the kick in the pants would have been fair enough. I haven't seen anything which indicates that this happened.

The best that can be said for this line of argument is that it might prod other device makers into taking security more seriously. Might.