Posts by Doctor Syntax

You can’t sit there, my IoT desk tells me

Re: @AN I know that feeling well...

Who's Alasdair Dobbs? Anybody heard of him?

Re: I know that feeling well...

'I've tried the "kneeling chairs"'

I remember being interviewed by someone squatting on one of those contraptions. Not content with that, as he wasn't behind a desk, he just kept scooting it all over the room. Some jobs, you're just glad you didn't get.

Farewell to Microsoft's Sun Tzu: Thanks for all the cheese, Kevin Turner

Re: The firm wants to be liked.

And "Neither is this the world of big-product bets, staking everything and moving the industry with a big-new relase of Windows or Office." What? More bullshit or was this written a few years ago?

ICO smacks lying spammers

Re: CHANGE AND SAVE LTD Company number 08995065

73120 - Media representation services

Maybe there should be a requirement for current directors of companies with this and similar SICs to list their home phone numbers. And email addresses.

Blighty will have a whopping 24 F-35B jets by 2023 – MoD minister

Re: Questions for a select comittee...

"if they keep Port Talbot open"

Why would they? It would require a large enough home market which means a manufacturing industry and a large enough manufacturing industry probably requires a home market bigger then just the UK.

1 in 20 Wendy's burger joints hacked? No, make that 1 in 3 – 1,025 in total

"If this happens again no more card transactions at all at any of your premises until you cover all our losses+costs+extra random charges as punishment)"

Just remove the "If this happens again" bit. Then they don't need to deal with the card-holders one by one. It'd be a lot easier - costs recouped and merchant hit with large clue-bat, all in one.

Gartner: Brexit cluster-fsck has ballsed up our spending forecast

Re: Can you please stop using fsck as an expletive

"ends up stopping support emails from being delivered"

It must make getting email support for Unix systems a tad problematic.

Re: Are these the same guys

"I called the PC as an obsolete concept 6 years ago - and am typing this on an 8 year old Win7 box that is still more than enough."

Why are you typing on an obsolete concept?

Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated – just like movies

Re: She scares me

"Good as 'elder statesman' type - in fact many politicians seem much better after they've done their bit in the actual fray"

Maybe you're too young to remember his turn at the Treasury - back when things were going well for the economy.

Re: Hmm

"I cant see any good choice of leader in the Tory party."

David Davis would have been a good choice but the party turned him down in favour of the Blairalike Dave.

Re: What a choice

According to the rules of the advisory referendum, they are a majority.

FTFY

Re: What a choice

'"And yet one of them will apparently have the "mandate" to tear the UK out of the EU that a majority of the country voted for."'

No, the original statement was correct. They may have been a majority (albeit too small to justify so large and permanent a change) of those who voted. They were still a minority of the country.

Idiot brings gun-shaped iPhone to airport

"The idiot probably didn't even think"

Stop there, that's enough.

Ad agency swipes 'unnamed bloggers' for calling out its cynically fake 'save a refugee' app

Re: A new "thing" ? Or was it always thus ?

"So maybe it's nothing new ?"

Nothing new under the sun. Whatever the opportunity there's a low-life to scam it.

The Great Brain Scan Scandal: It isn’t just boffins who should be ashamed

Re: More evidence

"we can predict what people are thinking about or what they will do"

Definitely one for the muppets. If you were able to identify thoughts from MRI scans that would mean that you'd have a map of brain function versus all possible thoughts. That means that all possible thoughts constitute a set small enough not only to be mapped but to be catalogued. It also means that any problem can be solved by consulting the catalogue for the thought that contains the answer.

Re: There's a flaw with this article

'Oh my god, it's everywhere. "Mindfulness". Positivism. Yoga-related bullshit. Homeopathy. SJW-type people grasping for biological explanations/justifications for autism, ADHD, gender confusion, and antisocial fucktard behavior in general (except for criticism of these people, that is not tolerated)'

Not specific enough. Most of this crap was around before MRI was invented. The flakiness comes first, attaching itself to concepts they don't understand is secondary.

Re: There's a flaw with this article

"It assumes we knew and cared what this fad was in the first place. Having read the article I'm not sure I'm any clearer on that point."

Nor am I. Maybe we've been reading the wrongright papers.

£8 BILLION is locked into UK.gov's failing IT schemes, El Reg analysis reveals

Re: Kerching!

" it might be cheaper to just let the criminals geton with it and pay compensation."

Don't be silly. That'd need a new system.

Debian founder Ian Murdock killed himself – SF medical examiner

Re: With friends like that ...

"Not the cops, for sure.

I worked for them. The stories I could tell you."

Maybe you didn't work for them long enough to discover just how self-destructive a drunk can be. There's the purely passive - fall asleep and choke on their own vomit - I've investigated a few of those. There's the active - I investigated one case where he found a piece of broken glass in the cell, a broken spectacle lens from a previous occupant (yup, the cell should have been checked more thoroughly) and cut himself. And finally there's the complete apeshit. I remember being called by the local police because they wanted an independent witness to that one - he'd already damaged the door of one cell and they're tough structures.

The fact is that the severely drunk are a danger to themselves and practically impossible to look after as they ought to be under medical supervision but hospitals can't take them and the cells, which are all the police have, aren't safe environments for them.

In the Linux world we all owed a great deal to Ian Murdock. It's very sad that he reached such an end and my sympathy goes out to everyone concerned, family, friends and, yes, police.

Sociology student gets a First for dissertation on Kardashians

"not doing much to help women. Or anyone really"

Not entirely true. Clearly did something for a sociology student, for what that's worth.

UK patients should have greater data slurp opt-out powers – report

Re: Still faffing about on patient control of data ?

"Yes Minister ; so actual that, apparently, it is still ahead of its time."

As I always say, it should be part of the National Curriculum.

Ofcom is to get powers to fine mobe providers for crap service

Re: Fine?

"Its about time @ofcom"

Downvoted for not realising this isn't Twatter and the missing apostrophe.

TP-Link abandons 'forgotten' router config domains

Re: It's foreshadowing

"The quote represents the value the dollar will be at when Trump gets elected."

Looking forward to the pound's recovery. Maybe two wrongs do make a right after all.

Re: Internet Rip-Off

"If individual members of the public were being blackmailed in this kind of way there'd be a public outcry, riots, laws enacted, etc."

It would be nice to think that, but somehow I doubt it.

Chap fails to quash 'shared password' 'hacking' conviction

Re: The ever-increasing rigidity of The Law scares me...

As the saying is, circumstances alter cases. If the sharing was contrary to the business's explicit rules then that's one circumstance. In the case of the overbearing boss that would be another - it would be quite reasonable to convict the boss and not the employee.

"it was willingly shared"

AFAICS it was not willingly shared by anyone authorised to share. Those who shared were also charged.

Celebrated eye hospital Moorfields lets Google eyeball 1 million scans

Re: This is OK

"If Royal Free were a company then the Board would have to resign and there would be an eye-watering fine."

Established practice seems to be that neither would happen.

@ Uberseehandel

Medical research is not incompatible with following proper data protection procedure. Has this been done here? If it has, all well and good but questions about successful anonymisation have been around for a good while, even when the likes of Google weren't involved. It isn't unreasonable that such a project should receive careful scrutiny along these lines.

Re: A little perspective

"Yes, precautions need to be taken"

This is the crux of the matter. Have adequate precautions been taken? Was patient consent asked for, let alone given? Is there sufficient information to prevent Google de-anonymising the data? What legal steps and real checks exist to ensure they don't try?

The fact that it might benefit some patients is not at issue but it's not a valid excuse for not strictly adhering to the requirements of the DPA. "It's for your own good" is exactly the justification used by the Mays of this world. Legitimising it by means of benign medical research is not a good idea.

Dell confirms price rise post Brexit vote as UK pound stumbles

Re: No Problem...

"If you remove the cost of pre-installed Windows 10 you can save approximately 10%"...and also lose the money that comes from paying for all the pre-installed free trial crap which invariably depends on Windows. I don't know if it's still the case but that used to be worth more to the manufacturer than the cost of Windows so the cheapest route to a Linux PC was to buy a Windows PC and blow away Windows.

London Stock Exchange's German mega-merger: It's a go, despite Brexit

Re: Tobin Taxes are Stupid but useful

"the rump EU"

Fog in the channel, continent isolated.

Re: Globalists?

"We have a queue of countries wanting trade deals."

Really? Where?

All I see is a queue of companies planning to leave so they can stay in the EU.

Re: evenly ? what for ?

"Mrs May was and is a remainer."

I'm not convinced about that. The EU was liable to get in the way of her ambition of a surveillance state. I think she just assumed Remain would win and she wanted to stay in Cabinet.

Prominent Brit law firm instructed to block Brexit Article 50 trigger

Re: What would happen if...

"What would happen if someone ran for PM on a platform of NOT invoking article 50?"

Not quite the same thing but I can see us having an autumn general election on this question by which time the voters of Sunderland etc will have been clearly informed that after the immigrants return to eastern Europe your jobs will follow them and you won't be allowed to but if you move to Lincolnshire you can have some seasonal outdoor work picking potatoes and cabbages.

Re: "... in spite of the popular vote to leave the block."

"But, this is a referendum, not a neverendum..."

It doesn't need to be a neverendum. Set a sensible required majority for a change of this magnitude. Look at the existing referendum results. Do they match this majority? No. Job done.

@ H in The Hague

One thing you didn't explicitly mention is that a good number of businesses represent foreign investments made in the UK specifically to provide an EU manufacturing facility. These include a number of car plants which are in areas which seem to have supported Leave. We once had a largely native motor industry. Its employees pretty well destroyed that. Foreign investment gave us another. It now looks as if that's also being destroyed by its employees. Does anybody think anyone will give us a third?

Re: This is why you write down your constitution

"Instead of relying on oral history or tradition or whatever the heck it is you lot are relying upon here."

As has been said in other comments the British constitution is very largely written in a variety of documents from Magna Carta onwards, through the Bill of RIghts, various Reform Acts and Common Law.

What we have here is an unprecedented situation and when that happens there needs to be an evaluation of what is the best constitutional way forward. One way of doing that is via the court system. Doesn't the US also rely on its Supremes to interpret the constitution when the necessity arises?

Re: Reg readership

"Something which the population of the capital seem to have trouble comprehending"

Something you seem to have trouble in comprehending is that some of us making comments against Brexit don't live in London.

I'm not sure what some of those who voted in favour are going to think when not only do the immigrants go back to eastern Europe but their foreign owned car factories follow them.

Re: 52 to 48 gives them the authority...

"There are three ways this can end."

4. Parliament is dissolved, a general election is fought on the issue and the returned MPs vote against it.

Re: And the house of lords?

"the government was elected with the referendum as part of their manifesto."

The referendum as held wasn't binding. If the government treats it as it was I don't see that it would be outside the HoL's role to send it back to the house, especially given the small majority for change. This ability to impose a cooling-off period is an important one.

Re: And the house of lords?

"Seems like you want Brexit to mean it's OK to deny people their human rights; disappointed eh?"

I'm sure Theresa May's working on it.

Vuln drains energy sector control kit

"only with pre-existing local access"

With pre-existing local access it's surprising how much kit is vulnerable to damage by a large hammer; chisel optional.

Theft of twenty-somethings' IDs surges

Re: For context, how much has the rate increased for those over 30?

"data on the CIFAS website"

It would be a good start if they were to encourage basic security: "This page requires Javascript".

Linux letting go: 32-bit builds on the way out

"in the enterprise"

Your very own qualification of "in the enterprise" makes you aware that there are those using Linux in other environments and you're still perplexed?

Re: Goodbye Skype?

"Are there other binary-only proprietary things that folks might want to keep using in the Linux world?"

Yes.

Re: Not surprising

"you could pick a 64bit pos laptop up for peanuts!"

Unfortunately you might need a huge store of peanuts to replace the 32-bit versions of S/W.

Re: Not surprising

"And yes, commercially 32bit x86 is quite dead already."

What an odd comment. I have commercial 32bit x86 S/W which is still running and frequently used.

"Usually you don't have to worry about this on Linux, as 32 bit-only software is rather rare."

That depends. If you have and use legacy 32-bit S/W it's not at all rare.

Re: Netbooks

Upvote for pre-compiled propitiatory software. It might cause GPL purists to choke on their hair shirts but any realistic definition of freedom should include freedom to run such software if it's your choice.

Re: Netbooks

"Cheap lightweight Netbooks still have a place as computers to take on holidays"

They're also handy to take into libraries and archives if you're a researcher. Then there are the Atom mini-ITX boards that make quite nice quiet MythTV etc. boxes.

However, given that this is open source there'll be people prepared to continue building 32-bit versions.