Posts by Doctor Syntax

Music publisher BMG vs US cable giant Cox: Here's why it matters

The whole system seems remarkably ill-thought out. The plaintiffs may well have good cause but if anything spawns notifications at that rate is completely automatic and Cox's point that they're simply allegations is a reasonable point. Far better to have taken a sample and been able to show that they've been carefully checked and are verifiable. If Cox then refuses, take those to court and ask for the remainder to be taken into consideration.

Mozilla: Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Thunderbirds are – gone

"S/MIME and PGP don't exist in your universe?"

And you're telling me the mail protocols make provision for a PKI? And do it all invisibly so that Joe Soap would be sending & receiving encrypted & signed emails without even being aware of the fact? Until then encrypted email is more of a monoverse than a universe.

If you've got PGP & nobody you know doesn't & doesn't know how to set it up then it's no use to you. It has to be the built-in default to be anything more than a fringe interest.

Re: It focuses on one thing - mail

I use it for email, newsgroups & RSS. Useful integration. Actually I use Seamonkey so I have even more integration but I suppose this move would put paid to that.

Re: Barbie says: Leadership is hard!

"Perhaps Google is doing some strong-arming, who knows. Google just doesn't play well with TB, which sharper tongues find unsurprising."

AIUI Google isn't the sugar-daddy any more. Could TB be competing with someone else's product?

" With the right tweaks over time and encryption baked in... there is an opportunity to alter the basics of email with a user base that has the potential to make things stick."

It would need a new RFC to extend the protocol if you want end-to-end encryption. You'd also need to bring servers or some other means of providing a PK framework and other clients into the fold. I don't see how a new T-bird could achieve that on its own. I'm not saying it's a bad idea; far from it because it's something we need.

Re: telnet pop3.superfrog.com 110

"I prefer this newfangled "mutt" email program I found..."

Don't forget elm.

Re: Escape from Lemming Mode

"LibreMail?"

Let's hope so.

Google to end updates, security bug fixes for Chrome on 32-bit Linux

Re: It's not 32-bit that's the issue

"I've been running 64-bit Linux desktops for 10 years now, so the death of 32-bit can't come soon enough."

Non sequitur.

Re: Don't people ever write portable code?

"Compiling for 32 bit isn't a problem. Doubling the amount of time they have to devote to testing is."

To quote the post you were replying to:

"We can have entire operating systems (NetBSD) that can be compiled on any architecture, for any architecture, with every single piece of the OS compiling and running just fine on a plethora of CPUs"

NetBSD can do this and, I'm sure, test. Maybe they use these new-fangles computers to automate testing.

"Does anyone outside of the control space use 32 bit x86 Linux for serious computing *in the past decade?"

Yes. I have some non-free 32-bit S/W I use frequently, maybe not quite daily but often enough. Ay a pinch I could convert.

There's a fundamental problem with the human mind, an overwhelming tendency to generalise:

I don't use 32-bit Linux therefore nobody does.

I don't use the desktop to store WIP therefore nobody does (UX-designers I'm looking at you).

I can't make Linux or Libreoffice work for me therefore nobody does (more likely they couldn't 15 years ago & haven't tried since).

And on it goes.

Entropy drought hits Raspberry Pi harvests, weakens SSH security

Re: Another Debian fail?

"This is exactly the same problem that Debian had almost eight years ago"

No it isn't. It may have the same effect but the events that lie behind it are different.

European Patent Office fires up lawyers over claims of cosy love-in with Microsoft

Re: Disgusting

"however it does sound as though the PACE mechanism is available to all at no extra charge"

I don't think they've worked out what would happen if everyone wanted to use it. Queue jumping only works if a few people do it and even then it only works for the jumpers.

Same old same old

"As a European public organisation the EPO fully respects freedom of the press as a core value of an open society"

Or "your privacy".

Or "your phone call is important to us"

Don't they realise we all cottoned on to that years ago? Now it's a flag drawing attention to what they're trying to hide.

Bringing discipline to development, without causing pain

Re: meaningless buzzword soup

"Okay, so it's not just me that found this article pretty much meaningless?"

No. I bailed out at "There’s no I in ‘team’". No but there is in intelligence, ingenuity, genius, innovation...

What a bollocks-fest.

Sysadmin's former boss claims five years FREE support or off to court

Re: That subpeona is a double edged sword.

"Testimony can be compelled for civil cases but then you end up with a hostile witness."

It also helps to look at the testimony before deciding to call the witness. IFAICR my evidence went against the party that decided they needed me.

@Gumby

You do realise, don't you, that there are different jurisdictions and they have different rules?

If some aspect of your job makes you a witness to something that ends up in court you could end up being summoned. For most people this is an unlikely event does affect forensic scientists. After I quit that job the summonses went on for a year or so including one for a civil case stemming from a fatal accident I investigated years before I quit. And then a year or too ago an old colleague emailed me to tell me of an arrest in a case which would have been over 20 years old at that time; fortunately nothing came of that one.

UK will pay EU £180m in fines due to botched CAP IT system – NAO

Re: It sickens me

"They will spend £1000`s"

Amateurs. The professionals do it on a grand scale hosting cycle races & then find they can't afford grass cutting, libraries or road gritting.

Re: The same old sh1t eh?

"otherwise your simply coding"

I take it you mean "you're" otherwise it doesn't make sense. Do you write specifications?

IT pros are a bunch of wedding and funeral-dodging sickos

Re: Curious answers

I think all except the last were how the respondents saw themselves.

Report: VW execs 'knew' about fuel economy issues last year

"Former CEO Martin Winterkorn reluctantly quit as chief exec"

Nothing like as reluctantly as some.

Microsoft whips out PowerApps – now your Pointy Haired Boss can write software, too!

Re: Back in the day we called it 4GLs

Actually both the examples I gave in another post were coded in 4GL. But that wasn't the problem - exactly the same mistakes could have been made in C. The problem was failing to understand how to use the database engine (which was, of course, written in C). An efficient language is no obstacle to writing inefficient code.

"The problem is that when the PHBs start churning out a few of these easily they will start to question why it takes you so long to get an application delivered."

That's easy to deal with. Ask for a demo & then feed it some input it wasn't designed for to see how it copes.

Re: Non-optimal solutions

"Mind you developers can be very inefficient too."

Mmmm. I remember the program that was going to take over 24 hours to load a day's data into the replenishment system. And that was the second effort of that vendor's I had to debug for them. The first just asked the database engine to spawn more & more objects without freeing any or re-using them until it burst.

Re: Done before, failed before

"Access is (was) supposed to be a straightforward way to build apps for data without needing to know code"

But as it was built on an RDBMS unless its users needed to know how to design a database. If they couldn't get that right no amount of code knowledge avoidance was going to help.

LHC records biggest bang ever with 1 Peta-electron-volt jolt

Re: Lead nuclear mass - @tirk

"the Wikipedia article seems to suggest only protons are involved"

It's only the protons that are charged so it's those on which the accelerator works. The neutrons are just along for the ride.

A car analogy - it's only the tyre contact patch that touches the road so it's that that gets accelerated and the rest of the car is just along for the ride.

Google cloud outage caused by failure that saw admins run it manually ... and fail

Re: Oops!

"See: the design of pretty much every internet protocol since the beforetime."

And they used to say "the internet routes round damage".

Court: Swedish ISPs can't be forced to block Sweden's Pirate Bay

Those TPP type rules that allow businesses to sue govts: I wonder if they'd allow a site such as Pirate Bay to sue a govt. that imposed blocking.

Research: Microsoft the fastest growing maker of tablet OSs ... by 2019

Re: 2019.... bye bye Microsoft! LOL

"99% of the computers used at home are just for tasks that an iPad or Android tablet can do."

Citation? Or was this one of the 80% of statistics on the internet that are made up on the spot.

Re: 5 years is a long time

"http://www.pcworld.com/article/230151/idc_windows_phones_to_overtake_iphone_ios_by_2015.html"

I wonder why they didn't remind us of their previous predictions.

When these firms trot out their press releases I wish the media would ask them for their previous predictions for now. And if they don't provide them, just dig out a few from the archives.

Re: the joy of significant digits

"Have these people ever heard of error bars?"

Of course they have. They think they're the ones with lots of mirrors so after a few drinks people make the error of arguing with their own reflection.

Re: Analysts strike again...

"2019 will be warmer etc"

A down vote? Maybe someone can't read properly.

An alternative forecast for 2019: 2019 will have weather.

Re: 5 years is a long time

"I wonder who will remember this prediction five years from now."

What predictions for 2015 were this soothsayers making 5 years ago?

Sneaky Microsoft renamed its data slurper before sticking it back in Windows 10

Re: Anyone got a VM config guide for isolating Windows?

There is, of course, something more effective than any PIM, calendar or diary. SWMBO.

Re: Tinfoil hats

"And whats more, is that the data the OS collects is because it requires it for services to work as has been stated my many others and not just in this forum."

Sigh.

Some people simply don't seem to realise that what's documented by omission is as important as what's documented explicitly. Consequently quite amazing stuff can be hidden in plain view.

Go back and read those T&Cs again.

It looks friendly and reasonable. It adopts the tone of voice that the nice policeman uses when he's trying to talk the loony off the bridge. It seems persuasive. When it talks about collecting login IDs and details of transactions that seems reasonable. And so it is if you start off assuming that they're talking about login IDs for Microsoft services and transactions with Microsoft. But nowhere does it say that such a limitation applies. Do you really believe that there isn't as much as a space, let alone a comma or full stop in those documents that hasn't been carefully considered for its legal implications. Learning to read specs & contracts & notice what's missing really should be a skill everyone in IT learns.

And, of course, once they've got you persuaded then they drop in all the other stuff they've absolutely no business in finding out. What is essential to providing Microsoft services about their knowing your gender, the sports you follow or all the other crap that gets listed there?

Are they collecting this stuff now? Maybe, maybe not, but if the don't collect it now they've given themselves carte blanche in their T&Cs to turn on such collection any time they wish and through the unavaiodable updates have provided themselves the means to do so.

Re: Ditch your Windows or shut up

"Delphi"

Lazarus.

Re: Anyone got a VM config guide for isolating Windows?

"appointments"

That's the problem right there. As far as possible you turn up when you feel like it and don't turn up at all when you don't want to. As for the rest there's either a mechanism (e.g. 2nd Tuesday in the month) or a scribbled note on the kitchen calendar.

Re: Anyone got a VM config guide for isolating Windows?

"One day I will retire,"

Welcome to the club.

"and I acknowledge that I may need a Windows system occasionally. In fact, I acknowledge the unfortunate fact that Outlook is a great PIM"

If you need a PIM after you've retired you're doing it wrong ;)

Re: I'm off to Change.org

@Mark 85

Most of the distros these days come up in a usable manner with little or no custom config. Some such as Zorin set out specifically to be as Windows-like as possible. I installed that on a couple of PCs for a cousin but it's some time ago & I can't remember off the top of my head whether it included Wine so Windows stuff would run automagically. [Quick Google - yes it does but best to check your programs' compatibilities at https://appdb.winehq.org/ ]. Mint is also a good bet.

If you install a Linux distro alongside Windows you should be able to open the Windows partitions to see your existing files. LibreOffice will be installed with practically any distro & will open your MS Office files. There'll be some gui-based text editor, probably such as gedit, kwrite or mousepad which will open your notepad files and a PDF viewer.

Hmmm...Maybe a bad case of the Stockholm syndrome.

"Everything else in that list is collected so that apps can be written to make use of the data, and so that the data can be synchronised across devices."

And that would be pretty reasonable. But as you say "Microsoft have published what they do and don't collect at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.aspx and http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-privacy-faq"

I have to wonder if you've actually read that or, if you have read it, whether you understand that. Yes, the tone seems reasonable & gentle but you have to work out what they actually say.

First of all the categories of information listed there go a lot, lot further than enabling you to log in or synchronise data. Categories such as "We collect data about your interests and favorites, such as the teams you follow in a sports app, the stocks you track in a finance app, or the favorite cities you add to a weather app. In addition to those you explicitly provide, your interests and favorites may also be inferred or derived from other data we collect." That alone should worry you - it should be nothing to do with them.

But go back to what looks like innocuous stuff. All that data which is quite reasonable for logging in and so on. Go back and read it carefully. Did you notice something a little strange about it? Did you notice that they don't limit themselves to collecting information which refers to themselves? Go back again and find out where they exclude themselves from collecting your online banking credentials, your credentials for any AWS services you may use, your eBay, PayPal or Amazon credentials or purchases, your logins to your ISP, non-Microsoft email, your remote login to your work.

Maybe you can excuse this on the basis that they don't really intend to do that but they were a bit sloppy writing their T&Cs. Do you really think they lack the legal resource to make their T&Cs say something they didn't intend?

About the most benign interpretation that could be put on this is that they really don't intend to collect any of this but they're just covering their backsides if some sloppy coding accidentally does that. And that really may be the intention. But wouldn't it be better and more honest, to limit their T&Cs to what they intend to collect and be prepared to take the consequences for not living up to it? As things stand the best that a victim could hope for in the event of something going wrong is that a court would throw the T&Cs out as being unenforceable.

As things stand ISTM that any business that uses Microsoft should get those T&Cs reviewed by their legal advisors.

Australian cops rush to stop 2AM murder of … a spider

Re: Sharks

"coconuts kill more people than sharks"

It's just as well that sharks don't throw coconuts.

Re: Yeah but

"they are very skittish and their small size makes them difficult to corral."

I like it. A replacement for the usual analogy of herding cats.

Outsourcer didn't press ON switch, so Reg reader flew 15 hours to do the job

"it was a cleaner that had unplugged a computer"

Ah, cleaners!

Bomb alert persistently triggering (this was in Belfast). Eventually traced to cleaner vigorously polishing the panic buttons.

Re: what colour are the lights?

"Eventually management gave up"

This is usually when things start to improve.

Kids charity hit by server theft

Re: Thats novel

"Oops, wrong trousers."

Not necessarily. Wearable tech seems to be popular these days. Or maybe just a few USB drives in the pockets.

Protection at last: Operation Emergency UPS succeeds for Telecity

Re: Engineer..

I take your point but I'm still wondering how an engineer or an electrician could accidentally introduce a transformer.

Millions of families hit in toymaker VTech hack – including 200,000+ kids

Re: Naff

"Some would say I have trust issues"

No you don't but plenty of companies do, so it seems.

So why exactly are IT investors so utterly clueless?

Re: "The publicity it craves"

"they dont know how to dry their hands"

Don't use the towel!!! It'll have more bacteria on it than your hands had before you washed them.

BOFH: How long does it take to complete Friday's lager-related tasks?

"Does Simon have a mole working with me somewhere??"

Maybe it's just one of the PFY's pimples.