Posts by Doctor Syntax

Scottish MP calls for drone-busting eagles

"Oz Wedge Tailed Eagles do it already...damaging the fabric of these gliders with their talons"

Nice to see the avian fauna contributing to Oz's reputation of having more varieties of wild-life that can kill you in more ways than anywhere else.

It killed Safe Harbor. Will Europe's highest court now kill off hyperlinks?

Re: An awful lot of books - or their content - are copyright

"I think it is the potential to download, keep and/or re-use that makes it certain that the Internet case is a breach."

No, it's the actual act that's the breach, not the potential. If a book is sitting on a shelf there's the potential to make a copy that breaches copyright. But if nobody does make a copy then the copyright isn't breached, even if the book stays there until it crumbles to dust.

And to be clear, if someone takes the book off the shelf, copies it & puts it back it's breach of copyright but NOT theft.

Theft

"it's still technically theft."

In the words of a previous poster, I don't think that phrase means what you think it means

"So you're saying that once a thief has stolen something it becomes legally his?"

Completely different set of circumstances.

If you put something on a web-server accessible from the net then it can be accessed by anyone. They don't need to have been provided with a direct link if they can navigate to it. That's how the web works and if someone puts something on the web and weren't aware of that it really should be their problem. That's especially the case if it's a media company that put the file there because having such knowledge should be part of their business. It might be a different matter if it was only accessible via some trickery such as SQL injection.

There is, however, a question of whether there's a copyright in the URL. But if there was this would make the whole use of the web more or less impossible.

The file wasn't stolen so comparison with theft is meaningless.

Bill for half a billion quid lands on Apple's desk in Facetime patent scrap

Maybe Apple will move to Virginia.

Autodesk vapourises ten per cent of jobs to go completely cloudy

"For me to recurrently pay you each month, you have to actually DO something for me each month, not just allow me to keep doing the same thing I did last month."

Millions of people rent accommodation by the month. However they have a choice. If they can get together the capital to purchase, or at least put down a deposit, they have the option of buying a different property. The question here is whether there is an effective choice. Adobe's users, on the whole, seem to think there isn't. Is this true of Autodesk?

Whilst the rental model may be fine for occasional users (the comparison would be with staying in an hotel for a few days) it does seem to me to be a possible abuse of monopoly for regular users if there isn't an effective non-rental alternative. I'm surprised the various competition regulators haven't looked at this. If they do, expect to see the landlords contributing to Gimp, etc.

Assange will 'accept arrest' on Friday if found guilty

Re: WTF?

What exactly is the "arbitrary detention" that the UN's ruling on?

It can scarcely be questioning in Sweden and any possible imprisonment after due process of law. There's nothing arbitrary about than.

Nor can it be arrest and possible imprisonment in the UK as there's nothing arbitrary about that.

Nor can it be about being holed up in the embassy because he's there entirely voluntarily and could have walked out through the front door on any day since he entered the place.

I don't even see that it could be extradition to the US through legal channels as that would also require due process of law in Sweden or the UK so that too wouldn't be arbitrary.

The UK, if they don't extradite him to Sweden, or Sweden, at the end of the legal process there could deport him but presumably that would be back to his place of origin, Australia. I don't see that being repatriated is arbitrary. Would Australia send him to the US without going through a legal extradition process?

So AFAICS the only thing he can appeal about is the possibility that he could be taken to the US without going through an extradition process. How does the UN rule about something which hasn't happened and seems to exist primarily if not entirely as a possibility in his own mind?

"If Assange is indeed willing to give himself up to Police he risks the fate he's long declared intolerable and unjust."

He risks a worse fate than that. Being ignored.

Universal Credit slammed by MPs: Late programme branded 'unacceptable'

Re: Not surprised

"They aren't even the sharpest spoons in the box."

My view was formed nearly 50 years ago when the company I'd joined a few months earlier went bust (I don't think there was a causal connection) and I was out of work. One of the staff in the local employment exchange tried to argue that because I was unable to sign on on the appropriate day I wasn't entitled to that week's dole as I was unavailable for work.

The reason I couldn't sign on in his office was because I had a job interview at the other end of the country.

It took a little explaining before he realised that he couldn't sustain an argument that being interviewed for a job was inconsistent with being unavailable for work.

I didn't get that job which was just as well; I ended up with a research assistantship in the field I'd always wanted which in turn lead to meeting the research student who became SWMBO and also learning about these big boxes which ate punched cards.

Not surprised

A colleague at one of my clients who did a fair amount of work for the DWP described their staff quite succinctly: "Not the sharpest knives in the box".

When customers try to be programmers: 'I want this CHANGED TO A ZERO ASAP'

Re: Three glasses of whisky

"Many times in my career I have given up on a problem and left the office. Then 100 metres down the road had to turn back as the answer had just occurred to me."

I think the explanation is that we have a fairly full mental model of whatever it is we're working on but what's on the screen focuses us on a tiny part of it. Leaving the screen removes that focus but the model only decays slowly so that the brain is able to keep working on it unconsciously for some time.

I found the solution might pop up as I walked across the car park. Or just having joined the motorway - concentrating on driving must have been particularly effective at removing the last elements of the screen focus.

Re: The comment about the one and zero sounds apocryphal

"The comment is just too perfect and makes no explanation at all as to the mechanism or what the minor glitch is."

It sounds to me like the result of some PHB dictating a kludge RIGHT NOW instead of re-writing a section of code to do a proper job.

Re: customized codebases

"But I've seen too many project start as a custom project for customer X and its peculiar needs, then trying to sell it to Y and Z, of course trying to customize for their peculiar needs also."

I nearly got sucked into one of those. It was also a case of "If that's where you want to go I wouldn't start from here", largely in consequence of the peculiar needs of X. It was monolithic so every user had access to every function in the system. It needed a re-write just to remove the spaghetti tying the multiple functions together.

Then the salesman persuaded Z that it would be a drop-in replacement for their existing system despite a misfit of data architectures...

I managed to escape PDQ.

"So that's why my boss keeps an inflatable Mandy doll in his stationary cupboard."

What does he keep in his mobile cupboard?

"Throughout my long career it was a good technique for helping people to solve their own problems."

And, of course, for solving your own. I found that out ... Good Lord! Was it really so long ago?

Re: Customer always right?

Why edit it? Just quote it in full.

Lights out for Space Vehicle Number 23: UK smacked when US sat threw GPS out of whack

Re: Dependency exposed

"The 'precision clock' that can be derived from GPS (and similar sources) is as precise as its system controllers want it to be"

s/as precise as/no more precise than/

NOTHING trumps extra pizza on IT projects. Not even more people

"Oh look, another DevOps article."

And camouflaged. The editors are realising that if they make it too obvious in the title we'll just ignore it.

Re: The Mythical Man Month - legit free download

"Or go direct to an apparently legitimate free download"

That's the 1st edition. There was a second edition that celebrated the 20th anniversary of publication. THAT was published in 1995. The original is over 40 years old and we're lumbered with manglements who still don't get it.

Re: Odd source

Agreed. And what's more, why say that Dilbert was mocking Brookes? Just the opposite.

Re: DevOps

"The stamp people?"

Cold Comfort Farm?

Little warning: Deleting the wrong files may brick your Linux PC

Re: So, exactly...

"This really is a case of stupid users doing stupid things..."

Or a curious user being curious. Didn't Chernobyl happen in a similar way?

Re: Sounds Really Clever?

@Roland6

My point was that these different approaches have different strengths an weaknesses. Windows, as you say, has been trapped in an ancient past and is, in consequence, somewhat inflexible.

The Unix approach creates a unified file hierarchy out of as many disk partitions as the installer deems necessary or has available. My example was an instance of that - you can do a clean reinstall or upgrade of a Unix system and still preserve the users' home directories in /home, locally installed S/W in /opt etc provided you gave the matter a little thought when you did the initial install. OK, your can back up C:\Users and restore it later if you try to do the same thing in Windows but at best it's an extra step and at worst a real pain if your OS is so hosed you can't boot.

On the other hand rm -rf * when you're in / or rm -rf / is indeed dangerous IF you're working with root privileges. But it's a consequence of the flexibility that the single hierarchy brings. And there's always rmdir which by default will only let you delete a single, empty directory or rm -i which interrogates you before deleting anything or even rm -r without the -f flag.

By the way a mistyped mv when you're at or near / can also be drastic. rm -rf is the one thing you're warned about from pretty well the first day you learn anything about administering Unix-like systems but mv not so much. It's the one thing to have caught me out with a typo in >30 years.

After those >30 years of dealing with Unix and Unix-like systems I have a distinct preference for their flexibility and elegance; those drive letters just seem so clunky in comparison.

Re: This is like BIOS flashing by Unix commands

'Nobody has yet said whether the hardware in question has a "CMOS reset" jumper'

Or if it has a glued-up case so you can't get at it!

Re: Sounds Really Clever?

"Well I suggest one of the advantages of the drive letter paradigm, if used correctly, is that it can set a scope limit on commands. Which when you are dealing with non-IT expert users can be useful..."

You have C:\USERS. Now reformat the C: drive to reinstall the operating system.

You have user directories in a separate file system mounted on /home. Now reformat the root file system to reinstall the operating system.

Which works for you?

Re: Sounds Really Clever?

"drive letter paradigm for certain operations which first saw the light of day in CP/M"

AFAICR A good deal of CP/M's user interface was borrowed from the PDP8's operating system. Or did that borrow from something earlier still?

Re: Sounds Really Clever?

"Any that do deserve to brick their machine."

No, they deserve a better machine for their money.

Re: Old Linux Steam Client ...

"Is there a way to make "rm" command safer?"

The -i flag.

"Who thought this is a good idea, anyway?"

See Dazed & Confused's post for a valid use case.

Re: This is like BIOS flashing by Unix commands

"The "rm -rf /" is an issue since Unix was conceived over forty years ago, so why is anyone surprised?"

It's not an issue. It's a fact of Unix life. If you want to rm -rf / why shouldn't you? You simply should be aware of the consequences in exactly the same way as you should be aware of the consequences of formatting your C: drive.

OTOH firmware designers who make variables accessible to the OS should make their firmware sufficiently robust as to default to sensible options if the user, via the OS, does something nasty to them. And being bricked is not a sensible option. In this case it seems that the OS will have to be modified to protect mobos with less than sufficiently UEFI firmware.

Re: So, exactly...

"Are we talking about a situation where the files are actually in the mobo bios, and Linux is making pointers to them"

No. The kernel has access to the mobo hardware and presents them to applications (including rm) through the same mechanism (the same semantics if you want to get technical) as files. Unix lookalikes do this for any hardware resource.

The other thing to realise here is the Unix concept of mounting file systems. The root file system is a disk partition mounted on virtual mount point /. If you have any another disk partitions containing another file system such as your home directories you will need to provide a mount point for it. In the case of your home directory collection you will normally create a directory called home under the top level of your root file system. This is /home. You will then mount your home file system there so it appears as /home. The overall file system thus appears as a set of directories and their files nested within each other and a command such as rf -r will navigate it as a whole. Nevertheless it is still a number of individual disk partitions, each formatted as a separate file system mounted one on another.

The file system-aware tools such as rm are not aware of the underlying partitions. Conversely formatting software is aware of the partitions but not of the mounting arrangements. If you were to re-format your root partition it would not touch your home partition which would simply loose its mount point until you made a new /home directory on the new root partition. This, by the way, is why it's a good idea to set up a Unix-like system with a separate /home file system - you can reinstall the operating system without losing user's data.

Remember that I said hardware resources are made available by the kernel through file system semantics. We need a "file system" where they can be placed. Traditionally this is done through /dev. A virtual file system is mounted on the /dev mount point. Disks, disk partitions, keyboard etc will be "files" here. But such virtual file systems are the manifestation of specific kernel functions and not physical formattable disks they can't be reformatted. More recently kernel resources have also made available through file semantics via another virtual file system under the /sys mount point.

Just as real file systems are not touched by formatting the partition with these mount points neither are the physical items, including the mobo resources, if the root file system is reformatted although, of course, they won't reappear on the reformatted partition until there's a running kernel in place. But just as real files are accessible by file-aware commands, so are the virtual files. And in this particular case the file system semantics offered by the kernel included deletion of what shouldn't have been deleted.

HTH

Re: Sounds Really Clever?

"It's everything to do with systemd"

Much as I share your general opinion of systemd it appears not to be the culprit this time. Read to the end of the article.

Safe Harbor ripped and replaced with Privacy Shield in last-minute US-Europe deal

"It's not worth the paper on which it is written."

Paper? It's not even worth the ink used to sign it, let alone write it.

What's a US explicit promise worth? Very little, I suspect. What effective verification can be put in place if US legislation obliges companies to lie about demands from the NSA?

This will be going to the ECJ sooner rather than later and will be struck down again.

For sale: One 236-bed nuclear bunker

Re: how much extra

It's in Co Antrim so there's plenty of real lava (basalt) about, it's just rather cold and old.

Visiting the link and scrolling down reveals a list of "similar properties". They're not that similar; they're all much better disguised as ordinary buildings.

TalkTalk admits losing £60m and 101,000 customers after THAT hack

"The biz said the costs of restoring its online capability and enhancing security are expected to total £40m-£45m."

Really?

"You need the patented Harding eight step plan!"

Far too elaborate. You need two steps:

1. Have a supine board.

2. Have supine media.

Re: The amazing thing

"You're forgetting that Call-Me-Dave is one of her best mates."

Irrelevant. The problem is that nobody in the media is prepared to go for the jugular. She shouldn't have been able to get through that first morning's media interviews without every single one challenging her on the point that she was CEO yesterday and is still CEO this morning. Especially with the recent precedent of the CEO of VW having quit: "Baroness Harding, Herr Winterkorn did the honourable thing. Why haven't you?"

It's at times like this that Robin Day is so sorely missed.

UK govt right to outsource everything 15 years ago – civil service boss

"Manzoni said the Cabinet Office had 32 consultants on its books paid more than £1,000 per day."

It also has a Manzoni on the books. It might be one too many.

Re: Do they think we're daft?

"a final/average salary pension"

Don't be fooled by this. There are two factors. One is the rate at which the pension accumulates (1/180ths Civil Service vs 1/60ths industry) and salary. Consequently my Civil Service pension is a good deal smaller than my industry pension even though it covers slightly more years worth of service.

Firing a water rocket to 1km? Piece of cake

Re: Zippy

How long to cross Wales?

Microsoft vs US.gov, Internet of Stuff, etc: What's up with 2015's legal cloudy issues?

Irish amicus brief in the Microsoft case

As Ireland has raised this as a matter of recognition of sovereignty I wonder if, should MS lose, they'd raise it at the UN.

Windows 10 overtakes Windows 8.1's market share

Re: Let's face facts

"And other large chunks of the world (cough China cough), where nobody wants to pay for new software when the previous pirated version still works just fine."

Maybe that's what he meant. After all, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

Re: I upgraded back in November, and Windows 10 is working great.

"Second biggest change is even fewer system problems."

You keep saying things like this. Have you taken note of even one of the posts here where an upgrade has failed or applications have broken?

Nor have you addressed the spyware aspects.

Nor the "I want to update and I want to update NOW" syndrome (I recently saw someone trying to give a demo of some S/W on his laptop. He switched on & the thing promptly started to install upgrades and then insisted, in typical Windows fashion, on a reboot).

As a consequence your posts lack credibility.

Lincolnshire council IT ransomware flingers asked for ... £350

Re: Zero day?

"Also, quite a few of the newer copycat variants of cryptowall have had serious flaws."

The authors of TeslaCrypt 3, which hit my cousin, has learned from the security analysts' work on 1 & 2 and it's new so maybe this is the zero day. So far there isn't a key recovery mechanism AFAICS but I think I've got back most if not all of my cousin's files.

Ofcom's head is dead against Three and O2's merger

Re: Easy fix

"Not only are they already everywhere"

They're not. They're in areas where there are houses needing a connection. Even if there was a femtocell on every post (and can you imagine anything bigger being allowed?) where there are no houses there'd still be no coverage.

"Imagine not having to actually pay for all that backhaul anymore across the country."

Unless times have changed that wouldn't be allowed.

Chef reviews internal update plans after 'degradation incident'

Re: Errm...?

I think it's one of these DevOps/Continuous whatnot/cloud things that out beloved vultures are always going on about. How embarrassing.

Safe Harbor crunch time: Today's the day to hammer out privacy deal

"EC officials are obliged to make sure the ECJ's concerns are dealt with adequately. Diplomatic fudges and creative ambiguity are in limited supply. In addition, a failure to reach agreement would disproportionately impact US businesses such as Facebook and Google, putting US negotiators in a tough spot."

As one of Nixon's henchmen said, when you have them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.

It's all getting very interesting.