Posts by Doctor Syntax

New Relic: Turtles? No. It's cloud infrastructure all the way down

Re: "There's no such thing as 'The Cloud'..."

Dammit. Beaten me to it. Have an upvote and a

UK spying law delayed while Lords demand Leveson amendments

Re: First the Brexit vote, now this.

"I think the appeal is more of a hissy fit as they have been embarrassed"

It may be but even so I think it's the right thing to do. Imagine the situation if it was left at this stage, the MPs voted for May's bill, Article 50 was invoked and then someone was to appeal the current decision to the Supreme Court alleging that it wasn't legally invoked. Taking it to the Supreme Court rules out any further uncertainty which is simply the sensible thing to do.

As is leaving it to the MPs. After a few more % of inflation and a few big employers indicating they'll leave the UK MPs voting against invoking Article 50 could be hailed as popular saviours. A week is a long time in politics: there are quite a few weeks between now and March.

Re: First the Brexit vote, now this.

Seeing as you raised the Brexit court decision and obviously disagree with it see if you can answer this:

Article 50 starts:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own

constitutional requirements.

What is the UK's constitutional requirement for this? Please quote an authority for your answer.

Tesco Bank limits online transactions after fraud hits thousands

Re: As I understand the situation

"So why block logons to online banking? That suggests that they have been totally hacked..."

Probably a reasonable precaution until they determine what the problem actually was. Yes, it prevents customers getting on to check but if this was the route so it would stop any further fraud so they had little option.

Re: Corners cut?

"Tesco & Tesco Bank have pots of money"

Rather less these days that the stock market was hoping for. I believe they still have pots of honey.

We're going to have to start making changes or the adults will do it for us

Technological evangelism means someone thinks something they are doing is better, and a lifetime's worth of experiences say that on close examination it turns out to be the same old same old gussied up with a new name.

FTFY

Mythbuntu busted as last two devs working on media centre distro quit

Re: Kodi Problems

"All I wanted was a decent PVR."

Then try Mythbuntu while you can still download the iso.

Google makes it to third base with Home digital assistant

Re: It's evil

"This is just the next step in the subversion of the general purpose computer."

There seems to be an effort to get us back to the days of there only being a market for 6 computers (or whatever the number was) in the world. The modern twist on this is that rather than being single computers they're networks of data centres (AKA clouds). Everything else is just a programmable client (programmable by the parent company, not the "users") with which to access them. And yes, we need to put "users" in quotes because they're the entity being used.

Re: Same wake word for all devices, really?

Clearly it should be possible to set individual "words". "Oi, you" would seem to be a suitable alternative.

Re: Kitchen interface for Spotify

"I do not understand why someone downvoted you for that post."

Probably on account of the fact that someone who thinks £50 isn't too much to spend on something like that has more money than sense. It's the sort of voting that brought us Brexit.

And surely, a Jambox in a kitchen should be a place to keep your pots of jam.

Any questions? No, not you again at the back, please God no

Re: Fear of flying

"For you guys that are afraid of flying. I am an Aerospace Engineer, i design the bloody things for a living. And I continue to be happy to fly"

Many of us write or have written software for a living and are far from happy about being driven or flown about by software.

'What's worse: asking withering questions or being Cassandra and saying "I told you so" later?'

Why limit yourself to just one?

Re: Annoying questions

"Almost any tech presentation's Q&A is liable to feature an interminable question from an audience member who's only asking a question to prove that he knows much more about the subject than the presenter."

Answer to that one: "you're wrong of course but it would take too long to explain why."

Software licencing gets easier in the cloud? Not if your name is Microsoft

Re: You can keep it.

Microsoft, SugarCRM (and derivatives), etc: do they keep personal data of customers?

If so do users have the customer's permission for that and are they registered with the appropriate regulator?

If not they stand at risk from the DPA or equivalent. Things get even worse if it's hosted by a supplier. They then have to worry about - or should be worrying about - where it's hosted, whether the hoster is also registered and just how much cover the Privacy Figleaf provides. Given the standard gung-ho approach of the average salesman or marketroid I suspect that many of the users of CRM are in contravention. Maybe a visit from FAST is the least of their worries.

World-leading heart hospital 'very, very lucky' to dodge ransomware hit

Re: Prepare

Please tell me you missed out the sarcasm tag. Or that you're USian and can be excused on grounds of not knowing any better.

Re: Why

Because the users complain, especially if they're being used to transfer important information such as X-ray images or lab reports. See Spotswood's post for a more practical approach.

Re: Bleedin' obvious

" There's a small management overhead, yes, but it's a damn side better than dealing with an outbreak, which has not happened yet."

And how long before some bozo says "Why are you doing all this? There haven't been any problems so it's just a waste of time."?

Re: Luck?

AIUI the luck bit comes with the fact that the backup completed just before the attack struck so was pretty well up to date.

"using mixed media including tape, given that some attacks target digital backups."

So that's analogue tape. Are they using cassette recorders?

James Dyson's new startup: A university for engineers that doesn't suck

"Have you noticed that all the Wrexiteers commenting on the High Court judgement clearly have absolutely no understanding of the legal issues involved?"

Generalising much?

Adblock overlord to Zuckerberg: Lay down your weapons and surrender

Re: Wall Street is looking for a Facebook blocker

If a load of bankers(sp?) are stupid enough to believe growth can go on for ever what do you expect?

Re: The ultimate ad-blocker

"So yeah, the visible viewport would not show ads to you; but this concept fails to address the bandwidth, performance, and security issues that the current generation of ads has foisted on us."

Security issues wouldn't be a factor unless you have an exploitable /dev/null. Bandwidth, set a maximum size - accept the first K or so and then break the connection. If the advertising agency has any wit they'll count that as the full advert sent and bill the client accordingly.

Re: How ads work

"It's dangerous to believe that ads don't work on you because you choose to ignore them."

I didn't say they don't. They piss me off so I buy from someone who's adverts I didn't get. Businesses have definitely lost my custom by getting in my face. My home insurers are going to be the next to experience this when the renewal comes up shortly.

Re: Simple solution...

'No, because they can use bandwidth usage as a Turing Test to see if their ads are really being "seen".'

A few moments' thought - OK, these are advertising people, a few days' thought - should show them that that really isn't information they want to have. If they don't have it they could, with as clear a conscience any advertising company could have, bill the client for an advert shown.

Re: yeah, about that

"What if I were to tell you .. they possibly make more than a smidge more than that off a person (who doesn't block ads)...?"

A) I'd want to see evidence

B) Any advertiser selling something I might possibly buy stands a better chance of selling to me if I've blocked their ad. and hence helped them to not piss me off.

Re: Eyeo says it [..] wants "user empowerment"

"I've got adblock and have used it for years just fine in conjunction with NoScript. Don't see any ads when I'm surfing"

Snap. And what's more UO seems to interfere with the Beeb weather site. No doubt it can be tuned no to but AB+ and NS do what I want with no problems.

" for the sort of one-to-many communication that a brand-promoter needs, FB, etc. is very very valuable."

Sort of like running your own website?

Anti-ultrasound tech aims to foil the dog-whistle marketeers

"track the user's visited content across different devices to then push relevant, more targeted ads."

I think you misspelled irrelevant.

Is password security at just $1/month too expensive for most?

'I would still be locked out of every account I have on any ad-hoc "alien" device.'

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Ubuntu Core Snaps door shut on Linux's new Dirty COWs

"the Lancastrians use it"

It's more widely used than that place over t'tops.

Brexit judgment could be hit for six by those crazy Supreme Court judges, says barrister

Re: Media and entertainment

"Quite possibly, even Ms May herself would be in that category."

I see her as in the category of closet Leaver but unwilling to declare on the assumption that they'd lose the referendum and she didn't want to be out of a job. Previously she didn't seem enamoured of anything from the EU that impinged on her old job in the Home Office.

Re: Thursday's explosive anti-Brexit judgment

"There should have been a clause saying that the result was binding on the Government"

Why? Because Smooth Newt thinks so?

A British phone you're not embarrassed to carry? You heard that right

Re: Looks decent

"I'd be quite interested in one for my eldest lad who burns almost all of his saved pocket money for screens for his current one"

Let him burn all of it. But point out that the screen he buys with the last of it has to be taken care of, otherwise he's phoneless until he's saved up for a new phone.

New MH370 handshake and wing debris analysis suggests rapid descent

Re: Conspiracy ..

"I didn't know planes had retractable flags."

Let alone detractable ones.

Dark matter? More like diet matter: Super-light axions may solve universe's mass riddle

"Right now around 65 billion neutrinos per cubic CM per second flow through you."

The trouble with all these billions of neutrinos and trillions of axions it's difficult to find room for anything else.

Mine's the one with not much in the pockets.

Re: Is it not possible?

"What is known is that the dynamics of galaxies does not match our understanding of gravity. Missing or dark matter is an hypothesis as to the cause."

An alternative hypothesis could be that our misunderstanding of gravity is the cause.

Lenovo hires tech 'big brains' to turn around crappy sales

Some good advice would be don't get yourselves a bad reputation for shipping spyware in your PCs. But I suppose it's a bit late for that.

Survey finds 75% of security execs believe they are INVINCIBLE

Re: What's the problem

See my link to the wonkypedia article on GDPR.

"The reporting of a data breach is not subject to any de minimis standard"

Re: Reasons

"So let's call their bluff, this is this opportunity we have been waiting for to get stronger enforcement - the government should now say - "

Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation especially the Sanctions section. Not necessarily 10% of turnover but it should concentrate the mind. I look forward to the results of the first few prosecutions.

Re: Reasons

"Compare to the minor wobble and bounce back on share prices, and ambivalence by most of their customers, and the tiny cost of fines, then they can continue to ignore it"

GDPR is coming. I suppose there'll still be some execs who'll have to learn the hard way.

Microsoft's chaps slap Slack chat brats with yackety-yak app

Re: "since before the great y2k hoax"

Three downvotes. Millennials!

Re: Why oh why?

"since before the great y2k hoax"

That's a bit of a give-away about the state of your commercial knowledge. I had a client who insisted on using a non-Y2K updated accounting package for a couple of weeks into Jan 2000 (they didn't want to risk switching whilst they closed down their financial year). It was no hoax. For those two weeks the thing fell over on a more or less daily basis. We had the vendors dialling into a modem on the server to fix it on an equally frequent basis to sort out the database. Fortunately most businesses weren't so daft.

The Rosetta Stone of chatbot APIs: Upstart touts software bridge

"Bots also offer an alternative way to interact with enterprise applications, which (in the desktop world at least) have a reputation for clumsy interfaces and burdensome workflows."

Why is the interface clumsy? If it's because it requires accurate inputs the process isn't going to be improved by bolting on an interface based on guessing what the user meant. Alternatively it might be clumsy because some UX-"expert" was let loose on it.

And if the workflow is burdensome it's the workflow that needs improving, not the interface.

I think this whole article is a piece of puffery about a solution looking for a problem.

Brexit may not mean Brexit at all: UK.gov loses Article 50 lawsuit

Re: Very Interesting . .

"but my reading prior to the judgement seemed to suggest that the balance of probabilities was with the government so it's at least a surprise."

The legal issue was the supremacy of Parliament vs Crown (the govt may be the creature of a Parliamentary majority but nevertheless it's Her Majesty's Goverment, not Parliament's). Any other decision would have been contrary to the trend of the last third of a millennium or so of constitutional history so I'm not in the least surprised.

"Also, Tories have commons majority and I am quite sure that, if MP vote is after all required ... Brexit vote be pushed through no matter what."

I'm not. It's a matter on which the big parties are split and have been for a long time. The whole referendum thing was an attempt to glue the Tory party together. It hasn't worked. I think it's an issue where whips will be defied by MPs who believe that the national interest is at stake.

Facebook chokes off car insurance slurp because – get this – it has privacy concerns

Re: Just read Twitter then ...

"4 crashes to date"

I'd guess the insurers have a note of her record anyway without reading Twitter. That's assuming she's insured.

Re: Dreadful idea anyway...

'The logical endpoint of Admiral's idea is that if anyone doesn't have a "social media" profile then they don't get car insurance'

It depends on how you look at it. I'd regard not having a profile as in indicator of a sober, well-balanced personality and set the premium accordingly.

Amazon guarantees bitterly contested Ohio wind farm project

Re: Utterly unreliable nuclear power !

"That could happen in any industry, so it's dishonest to impute the Nuke industry for this issue."

And has, indeed, happened to some wind turbines. Too much wind. Or maybe the wrong sort of wind.

Re: Green PR BS

'The fossil fuel industry is massively subsidized, with trillions in defense spending over the years to "secure" oil supplies in the middle east'

Wind and solar are subsidised by the costs of having fossil fuel plants on standby to make up the gaps. So if the fossil fuel industry is itself subsidised then wind and solar are doubly so.

Teen UK hacker pleads guilty after earning $385k from DDoS tool

"We want to make clear it is not our wish to unnecessarily criminalise young people, but want to harness those skills before they accelerate into crime."

The police didn't criminalise him. He did that himself.