Posts by Doctor Syntax

Microsoft wouldn't look at a bug report without a video. Researcher maliciously complied

Re: Not just MS

Tell the salesman why they've lost the sale. It's the only way things will ever get through to manglement that quality of support matters.

"But yes, ultimately, Microsoft is to blame for outsourcing all this and not hiring good people themselves."

This may seem like victim blaming but the ultimate blame should rest with those who not only continue putting up with it but continue buying from Microsoft and other enshittified suppliers. As long as it's a profitable way of doing business it will continue to happen.

Re: Microsoft?

And the reason so many people give for not doing is that manglement insists on having support. You do realise, don't you, that there are a number of people who will sell Linux and other FOSS support services. The reason they continue to trade is that they give customer satisfaction. If they didn't they'd be out of business because they don't have a monopoly to prop them up.

You think that the suggestion was funny? Then why is this thread full of people pointing to Microsoft support and not quite managing to laugh?

Re: May I recommend...

Upvoted but the last line doesn't scan. Go back & listen to the song again.

This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer

I've run a local history website for some time. Originally we used the BT community obligation service and since that ended a friend of the group who has budget has hosted it for us on WordPress along with his own huge site. We don't need advertising and probably wouldn't if that help discontinued.

The other day I got a message through the contact page offering some service to use adsense. I was most upset when my snottygram reply bounced because his email address didn't exist - either that or Gmail closed it for spamming. Interestingly he gave one name as contact name on the website and another as a sig, neither Indian which I suspect is his real name. It looks as if the leads generation lark has extended as far as selling ads these days.

FCC stands up Council on National Security to fight China in ways that CISA used to

"Reduce the American technology and telecommunications sectors’ trade and supply chain dependencies on foreign adversaries;"

I think other countries with the US in their supply chains will now start to think of them as foreign adversaries.

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

Re: Brain drain

"And I'm pretty sure Canada folded on the electricity threat "

Ford did enogh to get Trump's attention. Leaving it there for the present is undoubtedly the sensible approach. It would have been a big mistake to have left the tariff in place for Trump to shift the blame to when the inflationary effects of his own tariffs become impossible to deny. Meanwhile I'm sure there are people responsible for overseeing the grid working like mad to work out how to avoid a widespread collapse if the Canadian supply were actually turned off - at least they will be doing if Mush hasn't already fired them.

Re: Yes but ...

Poe's law folks?

Re: Trump's Tomás de Torquemada

It was very much appreciated here.

Re: Wow...

"You do remember a few years back when you were likely calling for the unvaccinated to be locked in their houses or dragged off to camps and forced to take the shot?"

Spot the weasel word.

Re: Brain drain

All of which demonstrates that supply chains are international and that disrupting them with trade wars is idiocy of the highest order, idiocy that will inevitably come back and bite the idiot in the arse.

Re: The UK should be paying attention

I see your research into exactly what disciplines hasn't progressed very far. Unless you consider the sort of epidemics vaccination helps control, environment and even astrophysics* as "gender studies".

* Maybe you're thinking about on-binary stars?

Re: les queer studies?

And the US would certainly not be put out be losing experts in epidemiology, infectious diseases and immunology, not even with a measles epidemic at large. Not when cod-ler oil is such an effective treatment.

Re: les queer studies?

The interests of those interested in moving are elaborated in another place as “health (LGBT+ medicine, epidemiology, infectious diseases, inequalities, immunology, etc.), environment and climate change (natural disaster management, greenhouse gases, social impact, artificial intelligence), humanities and social sciences (communication, psychology, history, cultural heritage), astrophysics.”

Possibly one of those might fit in with your epithet but a good deal of it is straightforward science. However given the fact that the US govt's health secretary is suggesting cod-liver oil as the way to deal with a serious measles outbreak in Texas maybe it stretches to cover epidemiology, infectious diseases and immunology out of that list.

Re: les queer studies?

Obv. Russian troll.

Re: The UK should be paying attention

UK universities are already cutting posts and in some cases entire departments.

BOFH: HR's AI hiring tool is perfectly unbiased – as long as you're us

Re: New Employees....

Don't give pimps agencies the benefit of the doubt. Advertise for CVs to be submitted direct from the applicants. As an extra safeguard specify what you want in terms of a CV with specific subheadings. The pimps are unlikely to be prepared to redo a stack of CVs from their prepared format (into which they will already have disorganised the candidates own carefully prepared CVs and may stand a good chance of defeating generative AI. Applicants who are really interested in the job will self-select by being prepared to rewrite to the specification and also demonstrate that they can follow a spec. It will be rough on those who don't get the job to have put in the extra work for nothing but at least they'll know they were considered and not buried in the blizzard of agency submissions.

"OK. So ... I'll be in my office if you need me," the Boss says, wandering off quickly.

I think he's starting to realise the explanations aren't always kosher. His days must be numbered.

Judge orders Feds rehire workers falsely fired for lousy performance

That seems to be the Supreme Court. Even so they need to have some legal knowledge. Political appointments are certainly a weakness but at least they're not directly elected which obviously requires no knowledge or competence beyond fooling most enough of the people for some of the time.

Re: Hmm

"What's the judge going to do? Arrest him?"

Assuming you mean Charles Ezell then possibly, or maybe someone else lower in the food chain. Failure to rehire them would be contempt of court and the judge has means to deal with that. I can see why Ezell didn't want to appear - he has to either take the blame or drop DOGE in it. It's a tough position but then it's what he's paid for.

Re: Hmm

"No chance, they won’t rehire them until the Supreme Court confirms the decision."

Unless and until a higher court reverses it Alsup's ruling is the one that stands. Failing to follow it would be contempt of court so he could indeed order the arrest of whoever he feels is responsible.

Re: Hmm

"then I expect more will need to be done. For those fired inappropriately."

And what should be done to those firing inappropriately? Should they be fired themselves for incompetence?

I wonder to what extent those coming up for re-election might be starting to wonder what state the economy will be in by then and starting to think that blind support might not make them re-electable.

It raises the question of whether an act carried out by him, allegedly as President, which isn't actually within presidential power is really carried out carried out as President in which case the immunity couldn't apply.

"In addition, SCOTUS gave the president almost infinite leverage to break the law, which he may well interpret as allowing him to ignore court judgements."

In fact, it appears that the US has a constitutional crisis.

Just as well he's not elected because AFAICS having all officials elected is a weakness of the US situation. Judges are appointed on their basis of knowledge of the law and competence, not mass appeal. There need to be a few competent people around.

If you like you could wander into his court and tell him what you think of him. You'd discover something else about a judge's powers.

It goes a step further. In effect Trump is admitting his henchmen told the OPM to fire them which is very likely a further constitutional breach.

User complained his mouse wasn’t working. But he wasn’t using a mouse

Re: Pies aren't mice either

That puts the lid on it.

Re: Bright and warm days

This always puzzles me. Given that hands are opaque how are they not shielding the mice from stray sunlight? I suppose they're holding them wrong.

Re: A case of mistaken identity

Are you sure that's your coat?

Apple's alleged UK encryption battle sparks political and privacy backlash

"a behind-closed-doors High Court hearing"

You know what they keep saying: "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear."

SUSE doubles down on AI and Multi-Linux Support to prove it's still in the game

Doubling down on AI makes me wonder whether it still is in the game.

AI running out of juice despite Microsoft's hard squeezing

"Yes, it can be helpful when used carefully as a tool"

Exactly what is that use for which it could be a helpful tool?

Dems ask federal agencies for reassurance DOGE isn't feeding data into AI willy-nilly

"Willy-nilly" suggests they're doing it accidentally and I'm sure they wouldn't do that.

OpenAI asks Uncle Sam to let it scrape everything, stop other countries complaining

Re: Hi ! We want to steal everything...

"USA can't make laws abroad."

Yes, but who's going to tell them?

Re: Hi ! We want to steal everything...

My running an adblocker is to the benefit of the advertisers (not the advertising industry) because if I don't get their ads pushed in my face I won't get pissed off by them and if they're selling something I want I won't actively avoid them.

UK must pay cyber pros more than its Prime Minister, top civil servant says

Re: A Problem of Their Own Making?

"all those procurements for the NHS, MoD, police, councils, the lot; they all go wrong because someone other than an engineer is in charge"

Depending on what's being procured I'd have thought that in the case of the NHS a medic might be more appropriate.

Another version:

The legacy system is the one that enables the business to run itself to make the money to pay you to write some flashy graphical system that will generate reports to go into a spreadsheet to go into powerpoints for all the senior manglement to show each other how good a job they're doing. The senior manglement are also being paid by the money the legacy system makes.

Re: Typical of the Mentality

"US investing is all about hoarding manpower so that nobody else can have it."

That seems to go in cycles. The current phase, with all the DtO stuff, etc. seems to be "we don't want to pay them".

Re: Typical of the Mentality

"Speaking as a civil servant, this was the case in decades long gone, yes."

But is the primacy of the general service grades also long gone? The assumption that a chap with no particular qualifications for any particular job, being equally (un)suited to all of them could do any of them while someone with specific knowledge is in flexible in terms of what they could do and therefore deserves less. And the assumption that "responsibility" lies only in the number of direct reports and not on the significance of what one does personally.

iRobot may be iDead in iYear

"If it was a viable business"

Maybe last year it was but, from TFA: "...macroeconomic conditions, and tariff policies." Trumponomics might have rendered it less so.

Printers start speaking in tongues after Windows 11 update

Re: Throw in HP

But if the H/W is simply a loss-leader to sell the consumables then there's no mileage at all in killing it unless, of course, it's very old kit that isn't tied to vendor's ink.

The IT world moves fast, so why are admins slow to upgrade?

Re: "Technical Evangelist"

"A bit like an Early Adopter?"

More like somebody who pushes the Early Adopters out into no-man's-land.

Re: Bucket, Paint, Brush, Corner?

What's the total down-time due to migrations over that 15 year period?

Microsoft quantum breakthrough claims labeled 'unreliable' and 'essentially fraudulent'

"has even more impressive results to share soon"

As soon as it opens the box to find out what they are.

This is the FBI, open up. China's Volt Typhoon is on your network

"We don't have any access to large critical infrastructure."

From their customers PoV they were probably exactly that themselves.

Choose your own Patch Tuesday adventure: Start with six zero-day fixes, or six critical flaws

Re: And Windows Update is still slow

That depends on whether RPM's delta package is similar to a ,deb.

A Deb package is basically a file and a set of instructions as to how to install it. It might be a single library, it might be an application. The instructions might be simply to copy it into place and remove the old one, they might include telling XDC about it so that it appears on menus and is associated with file types.

No doubt RPM is similar but if one library file replaces another the original, if in use, will only be unlinked and have its disk space returned to the free list when the process using it dies but new invocations will use the version. If it's a service the service may be restarted, possibly with user veto, to pick up the new version*. For a new kernel the user will be advised to restart but that's just so the new kernel can be used, there is no work to be done in the course of the reboot other than what's normally done. I'm sure that the RPM world, like the Deb, leaves at least the previous version in place with the option to reboot that if there was a problem. Occasionally the update removes a dependency on an existing file in which case, if there are no other dependencies, the user will be adviced to use an automatic removal run to do that.

* Over the course of many years I've only seen one instance where the service was at such a low level that other services depended on it, would also need to be restarted and that a reboot was used to do that.

"but the attack requires the target to download and open a malicious file through social engineering."

That's so often the case. And yet we have banks and other businesses that should know better training their customers to be phished when they should be doing the opposite.

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

That he already had the tablet for its own use case.

Actually, as a premise for an article on the differences between the two it was fine.

Re: Raspberry Pi and iPad

Casts mind back to the days of the 1907 that occupied a large building, punched cards, a fixed disk so big and heavy that i needed its own, additional and its bearings had to be aligned with the Earth's axis to avoid precession destroying them and from which we had a 100k-word allowance. AND FOR A FEW OF US UPPER_CASE ONLY TELETYPE ACCESS.

|Rotten old capitalism seems to have given us these advances, iPad, Pi and cellular all, despite Ztec's ravings below.