Posts by Doctor Syntax

Google broke its own cloud by doing two updates at once

Re: re: I have plenty of horror stories which I cannot share here.

"I have plenty of horror stories which I cannot share here."

Go on, you're anon...

Re: Interesting

"If you are an affected customer and running stuff critical to your business then I would hope you already had a resiliant plan in place to mitigate something like this, if you haven't then more fool you."

The reality is that such customers will be using cloud because it's supposed to provide that resilience.

Re: Still planning to have these clown in your infrastructure? @Adam

"The cloud can facilitate this in an amazing way which having multiple redundant DCs can't - you don't need to worry about invoking DR plans, failing over storage replication, and restarting things, they just keep running."

You read the article? Scale brings its own set of problems.

Re: Still planning to have these clown in your infrastructure?

"Simple answer to both of your questions [who to sue & who to call] - Google [or other cloud provider]."

What do your contract terms say?

They'll limit the compensation to whatever the cloud provider can afford which isn't necessarily within sight of your actual losses.

It doesn't matter how well the provider's staff compare with your own the financial incentives for their management are such that if they can make more by favouring some other customer, by cutting a corner somewhere or by scaling up beyond their ability to manage reliably than it will cost in compensation for failing an SLA then failing an SLA here or there won't be an issue for them.

It's something to watch out for. It may seem a risk dealing with a supplier much smaller than your company - how can they afford to provide the service you need. But the converse also applies; there's a risk of dealing with a supplier much bigger than you are because you're too small to matter very much.

Tesla touts battery that turns a Model S into 'third fastest ever' car

Re: Think of the pedestrians?

That's the great thing about idiots, you can find them in all income groups. Think about BMWs.

Re: I'll wait until...

"accommodates probably 99% of trips"

And, of course, you can afford to buy a second car for that other 1%.

EU ministers look to tighten up privacy – JUST KIDDING – surveillance laws

"And no, you can't educate them to bow to the inevitable because otherwise what's the whole bloody point of civilization?"

The whole bloody point of civilisation is to allow people to live with the greatest possible amount of freedom within society, respecting each other. To this end we have developed certain principles such as the rule of law, proof beyond reasonable doubt and the presumption of innocence.

The whole bloody point of terrorism, and it can be very bloody indeed, is to prevent this.

All we have to do is ask whether or not our governments are promoting those civilising principles or not.

Corbyn lied, Virgin Trains lied, Harambe died

Re: The 'two wrongs make a right' argument.

"Well if it was anything like the nationalised trains I used to have to try and commute on he wouldn't have been sitting on the floor, he'd have been sitting on the platform like everyone else"

You had seats on the platforms?

Yes, I well remember the evening "rush" hours spend on Marylebone station wondering if they'd ever find enough working units to make up a 4-unit train.

Paper mountain, hidden Brexit: How'd you say immigration control would work?

"She's just waiting for the right moment to announce the obvious conclusion (no Article 50, not in 2017, not ever)."

I think she's been craftier than that. She's waiting for Boris et al to report back that it can't work and in effect announce it themselves. The Brexiteers have to do it themselves. It's the only way to put an end to it.

Re: "... it must surely be possible to shorten the form"

"Just accept anybody, problem solved!"

But Leave promised their supporters to clear out all the foreigners.

"It's not as if anyone forced her to apply…"

And anyway, she's passing the chalice to those who deserve it. My rejection of her stems from other matters.

Re: Irish angle

"Then I remember that my kids are going to have to face it all."

So are mine, and my grandchildren. But they, like SWMBO, can also claim Irish citizenship if they want.

"They'll blame the EU for making it hard. They'll blame the Bank of England for devaluing the pound to try to prop up the economy. They'll blame everyone else"

It won't wash. The EU, BoE and everything else were all their when they conducted their campaign. They assured us there'd be no problem. It was their case that won the referendum. They have nowhere to hide.

Re: 20-23 pages for EU citizens

"Part Saxon, Norman, German, Celt etc. a 'bastard' nation the English."

Oi, some of up here are part Viking as well.

"I'm just curious how this controlling our borders sits with leaving the RoI/NI border as it is."

I'm sure Leave had a plan and as they're now in charge of working everything out all they have to do is apply it. BoJo and his colleagues can make it work because with Brexit in place magic will happen.

Re: Oh well, better send this article to my girlfriend

"let all EEA & EU citizens without a criminal record pass."

And just to cut down the workload further, ignore the criminal records.

Re: @Charlie: Simple is best

"When you come looking to the London Liberal/loony lefties to replace the EU handouts you've been getting, don't be surprised if you are told to fuck off."

IIRC one Welsh Leave supporting MP, the day the result was announced, was demanding that HMG replace all the EU funding his constituency had been receiving.

Re: @Loyal Commenter: Parliamentary negligence

"Mr Gove can't really have much involvement with 'making it happen', due to being not quite as clever as he thought he was"

So you're telling us that we've been manoeuvred into this position partly on account of the arguments of someone who's not as good as he thought he was. I'd rather we'd followed the advice of someone who was better than he thought he was.

"plus he's no longer a Minister of State"

This, I think, is a mistake. He should be set to work trying to make what he argued for work. If he isn't he'll try to blame failures on not being involved.

Re: Parliamentary negligence

"The fact that those who were busy loudly denying there would be any such negative results have now quietly slunk away ... I'm looking at you Gove"

He should have been given one of the jobs in the galleys alongside BoJo & co.

Re: Parliamentary negligence

"If your favourite team loses a football match 2-1 do you petition FIFA to *retrospectively* change the rules of football so that you need to be two goals clear to win the match?"

This isn't a game. The vote can't change reality and reality is now what sort of a deal do we get and how adversely will it affect us, our children and our grandchildren. If you took and won a vote on abolishing gravity apples would still fall and planes would still need to keep moving above stalling speed to avoid flying out of the sky.

The reason why a referendum to change the status quo should have a substantial majority is to ensure that the country as a whole is sufficiently behind such a commitment and is prepared to accept the consequences if the reality isn't what they expected. The vote shows it isn't.

Re: Let's hope

"with possible exception for key workers with sponsors. (Health staff being the obvious case.)"

I'd have thought those would be self supporting in any case.

Re: Let's hope

"But a brake on unskilled immigration ... is pretty feasible."

That depends on whether you think the UK should be able to continue selling cars from Nissan etc. into the EU. Because it's been made clear all along that single market access means labour as well as goods. All the Brexit voters in Sunderland etc. won't be happy if their workplaces start to run down once their current models reach end of life and all new investment stays in the EU.

It's a package, you don't get to pick and choose. I'd guess that's what May meant when she said "Brexit is Brexit".

Re: Simple is best

"the 12 NI counties"

When I lived there it was only 6.

Re: @Charlie @AC 20-23 pages for EU citizens

"Not really, since that was the thrust of the Leave campaign."

That and "take back control". Of what I'm not quite sure, not that it matters because that's going to be another chimera.

Re: Irish angle

'especially when they ran away after they "won".'

Boris, in case you haven't noticed, is now Foreign Sec so having to do his best(!) to make it work(!) despite the fact that his response to the referendum result seems to have been "no hurry". Nigel, well, he wasn't ever in danger of that. He's wasn't going to have been in the governing party whoever won in 2015. His objective was to get the referendum; I doubt lifting a finger to make Brexit work was ever part of his reckoning.

However, I think Gove and minor lights such as Bill Cash should have been included in the Brexit chain gang.

"scrutinise applications for work in NI with a microscope."

Back in the late '60s when I went to work in N. Ireland there were employment restrictions for non-NI UK citizens. I wasn't aware of the details as my employer handled that.

Your wget is broken and should DIE, dev tells Microsoft

Re: Recycling this comment from the earlier article

"Or do everything poorly"

Or do everyone over.

Re: They are quick to shutter services

"After a while the RFC will be forgotten and people will accept the MS versions of wget and curl as the defacto ones."

OTOH someone might just fork it and replace broken aliases with the real thing.

Beardy Ed Vaizey: 'I can't let go. I like the tech sector'

Re: "I like the tech sector"

"How else could you explain the likes of Boris Johnson getting as far as being appointed Foreign Secretary?"

Very easily. Having made his Brexit bed he's been told to go and lie in it.

Yes I know there's ambiguity there.

"you can say these companies have created a new working environment which perhaps sits between self-employed and being fully employed by a company. Therefore, there is an opportunity for government to say: is there a third way?"

Of course there is. It's working via one's own limited company and being treated by HMRC as a real business.

"But I said to her when she was letting me go that I would be very glad to support her from the back benches."

Any "Yes Minister" fan will read that as a threat.

Mozilla's trying on seven hot new spring/summer logo looks

Anyone in any organisation proposing a change of logo or some such nonsense should be immediately escorted to the pavement outside by security. A small cardboard box containing any personal possessions from their desk can be sent on later.

Re: Mozilla doesn't need a new logo

"Mozilla seems to be lacking direction (the big danger for open source volunteer organisations it seems)"

Maybe the real problem is that Mozilla seems to be an amalgam of several different things, community, foundation, corporation and goodness knows what else. If it was just one thing perhaps it would have a direction.

Microsoft's maps lost Melbourne because it used bad Wikipedia data

Re: Absolute proof

"Indeed, I wonder how the data gets from Wikipedia to Bing. Is it a one time grab, so if the location is wrong at the time they get it Bing will have it wrong until it is fixed manually, or is it refreshed periodically?"

Or even on the fly?

Microsoft's kinder, gentler collaboration war: Evernote, you're first

Re: Google is eventually going to take down Microsoft

'Yeah but they can play on the "big brother Google knows all about you, complete lack of respect for privacy" angle what with its relentless collection of information about browsing and emailing habits.'

In order to do that they'd have to be positioned well away from doing the same thing themselves.

Re: $10 here, $5 there

"Imagine the difference if Wordperfect and Lotus 123 had become part of a product suite."

They did become parts of a suite. Different suites.

"a – seemingly – kindler, gentler Microsoft"

I'll have what one of whatever you're drinking.

Das ist empörend: Microsoft slams umlaut for email depth charge

Re: English is wonderful

"Simply because all our characters fit nicely into 7 bit ASCII"

I think you'll find that 7 bit ASCII was fitted around the US character set. US, not English. That little problem with currency symbols other than $.

Systemd adds filesystem mount tool

Re: I've forgotten...

"because I try to set-up things to not break in the first place"

And if you do and they break then something serious is wrong. If it's running in a state you didn't intend it's not doing what you intended nor running in a way you anticipated and may well be corrupting stuff. Maybe the safest thing for the corporate website would actually be to be offline until morning. The alternative might be to be offline for a good while longer whilst you sort out the mess and restore from backup. I've always believed that a strong sense of paranoia is the first requirement for a good DBA.

Re: it's already bad enough with dbus...

"I really really do not want systems trying to be clever and doing stuff behind my back thinking they know better."

This. As soon as you try to double-guess what the user wants to do you're apt to close off a lot of alternatives that the user might actually have wanted. Less is more.

"1970 thinking"

Ken Thompson thinking.

Re: And thus..

"If all you have to work with is a single bit (1 or 0), how do you correctly inform when a coin flip lands edge?"

?

I'm running a non-systemd Debian here. USB drives etc mount just fine. Is this to fix an existing bug in systemd? If not I can't see a problem it fixes.

Re: I am spartacus

"enhancements"

I take it you're using the word in its widest possible sense.

Re: Can I just add

"A key one is security."

Remote logging.

Five-storey Blue Screen Of Death spotted in Thailand

Re: It sucks when it's your bank's ATM...

"Gold sovereigns hidden in the chamber pot under the bed is the way to go."

Under the bed, yes; chamber pot, no. Variation on throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Re: Fail unsafe...

"the lift is controlled by a windows based system, and has a reputation for crashing, leaving anyone in the lift stuck"

There are worse ways for a lift to crash.

Re: It sucks when it's your bank's ATM...

"Use Tupperware!"

Isn't that an app for sheep farmers?

Re: It sucks when it's your bank's ATM...

"Only to find out your country's undergoing hyperinflation and all the cash you buried isn't worth the paper on which it was printed."

Alternatively you might find that interest rates have gone negative so your buried money's worth more than it might have been in the bank.

German minister seeks facial recognition at airports, train stations

Re: Minority Report is coming true before our very eyes

What are these internet advertisements, Facebook and Microsoft accounts of which you write?