Posts by Doctor Syntax

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

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.

Re: Simple is best

"http://smallurl.co/fXjiV"

That reminded me of the aftermath of an election many years ago. As usual nobody could be bothered to take down election posters. There were a fair number of DUP posters along my normal commuting route. As ever the pigments faded at different rates. Paisley senior ended up with a green face.

Re: Challenge to the commentariat

"This has to work (for some value of work) and it is the administrative detail - layers of it - that will determine the extent to which it works."

And it's down to those who thought it could work to make it work. Why should everyone who's said it couldn't - and still say it can't - be expected to waste their time (which is how they'll see it) trying to do what they consider impossible.

So there's no getting rid of Johnny Foreigner. The Leave voters are going to be really chuffed about that. And, as they're the ones tasked with doing the work, the Leave campaigners are going to be the ones who have to tell them.

Systemd adds filesystem mount tool

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.

Re: I've forgotten...

"the ability to respawn processes on failure."

Let's start from the assumption that a process should not fail.

If it has failed what should an admin do about it? It might have failed, for instance, because the process had lost one of its disks.

Investigating would be a good idea. In fact it's such a good idea that the correct sequence is investigate, fix, restart. In that circumstance is it a good idea to have some automated process restart it before the admin has chance to look at the problem? Apart from the impediment to investigating the cause of failure there's a chance that the automated restart might corrupt data. If the process fails on restart we have the prospect of systemd running round like an ADHD child repeatedly crashing the system.

Oh, yes, I could set up systemd to not restart that process. So why would I want to have it in the first place?

"I fully expect systemd to soon require it."

I fully expect systemd to fork it and incorporate it.

Re: Amok

When you move to a BSD?

Re: I am stupid

Sorry, bazza, I can only update once.

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

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.

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?

UK.gov depts in post-Mad Frankie Maude landgrab over IT spending controls

"The Department for Work and Pensions alone was given the green light for £200m in IT spending in the last quarter of 2015, twice the amount it was granted in the same period in 2014."

I'm sure they'll manage to spend it. Whether we see anything in return is a different matter.

Beauty site lets anyone read customers' personal information

Maybe they should get a different QA

FTFY

Microsoft promises free terrible coffee every month you use Edge

Re: Fuck off MS (Marketing Sluts)

"so if one supermarket offers me green stamps"

I didn't know they were still a thing. Haven't seen them since the 70s or was it the late '60s? I had a couple of full books when they pulled out :(

Re: Edge?

"I'm amazed that techy people waste so much time worrying about whether they can remove software that isn't doing their machine any harm and that they can simply choose not to use."

Well, that outs you as a non-techy. Not that we had any illusions.

Re: Edge?

"They won't even let you remove Edge from the add/remove programs utility, like it is essential to the OS being able to run or something."

I wonder what EU competition regulators will make of that. They didn't like it when MS pulled that trick with IE.

Re: Wrong data

Interesting posting history you have there, jr. Registered 2 days, 39 posts and every single one in support of Microsoft. We notice that sort of thing here.

Re: outlook.com is fine

"There is no other email system in the world where you can do things like find an email from 8 years ago with only a vague remembrance of the subject in 4 seconds."

No problem. Email saved locally in email client. Local search finds it, even without being online.

My headset is reading my mind and talking behind my back

Re: Yellow 'sunglasses'

"I had a pair in the 90's that prompted occasional ridicule (probably to hide jealousy)"

No, just plain ridicule.

Re: Yellow 'sunglasses'

"t's also why we have yellow streetlights"

I thought that we mostly used to have yellow street lights because sodium lights were more energy efficient than incandescents.

Re: sunnies after dark ?

"a rear-view mirror with a photo sensor that automagically dimmed an LCD layer over the mirror when lights behind me were too bright."

I have one. It only works so-so. I'd rather have a dipping lever as on all the other car's I've had.

Re: sunnies after dark ?

I'm in favour of covering the front and rear windows surrounds with corner-cube reflectors so that the offenders get a little of their own back.

Re: sunnies after dark ?

"AR coating is good to have anyway for a whole lot of reasons."

The only AR coated pair I had a soft focus effect. On close examination the coating was finely granulated. I've gone back to uncoated.

UK's mass-surveillance draft law grants spies incredible powers for no real reason – review

OK, who expected anything different?

Re: Oh really

"Maybe, just maybe, there are several thousand ordinary human beings much like ourselves in there"

Are you telling us they're imprisoned?

Re: Hiding messages is easy....

"Good encryption is hard."

That's why we have libraries.

Re: Poor sods.

"Only if something is spotted does a person start looking, and sooner or later they have to get a warrant."

Sooner or later? What's wrong with sooner? And from whom do they get the warrant; a senior officer or a politician? We should have due process of law. The fact that it's a principle that's over 8 centuries old (remember the hypocritical celebration of that last year) doesn't mean it should be out of date.

"believe me, They are not interested in Us. I went to a privileged university with some of Them."

If You went to a privileged university with some of Them it makes us (with a lower case u) less inclined to believe You.

Re: Business as usual

'As for what to do about a person "known" to the security services, that's is indeed a matter of resources, etc. '

If they're failing through lack of resources does it improve matters to spend more time trawling through the communications of innocent people?