Posts by Doctor Syntax

'MongoDB ate my containers!'

Non-ACID databases aren't ACID. There's a surprise.

Do you have a 'co-working mindset' and 'ephemerally involve others' in work?

“spontaneously and ephemerally involve others in your work.”

I thought they were building that into the OS now.

Post-Safe Harbor: Adobe fined for shipping personal info to the US 'without any legal basis'

Commons passes snoopers' charter

By the time most readers get round to reading this article the article reporting the fact that the HoC has passed the snooper's charter will have slid off the end of News Bytes where it was posted. I don't know why this stupid appendage was added to el Reg. I suppose it might be a useful means of keeping PR companies happy by posting their press releases without interfering with the main work of the site but better judgement is needed to ensure real news doesn't go down this fast track to oblivion.

Even if the Privacy Figleaf is approved it won't cover the embarrassing bits of data transfer once one of its users gets hauled up in front of the ECJ.

MPs pass new UK spy law

Why...

....is this hidden in these stupid fast-disappearing news bytes?

Do any of the readership actually think this innovation is worth having?

"it's off to the House of Lords next"

Then, assuming it gets Royal Assent, it'll be off the ECHR which also can't be scheduled yet. After that, in the absence of an unlikely outbreak of sanity in Whitehall, we go for another iteration of the loop.

Or, in event of a Brexit, the City will start screaming and lobbying as they realise that they can't meet EU requirements about personal data transfer.

Re: Time for ....

Could you argue your case with a little more detail?

England just not windy enough for wind farms, admits renewables boss

Re: Fundimental Lack of Understanding

"The amount of ignorance regarding solar and wind here, by technology people no less! is astounding."

Yes, there are still people believing that solar generates power at night and wind generates power on still days.

Re: Errata

"it has the potential to be a bit of a local envoriomental disaster area"

You didn't bother to quote what you were referring to but your "it" seems to be the Severn barrage. You're wrong, it wouldn't be just a local environmental disaster. The role of the Severn estuary in feeding migrating birds would make it a disaster on a continental scale..

Re: Errata

"the birds would need to move on the other"

Translation: it would be an environmental disaster on a continental scale. But never, mind, it's green power.

"Why just downpipes?"

I wonder if you could extract power from all those whooshes.

Re: Epic FAIL

"But you could charge your batteries from them during the day then run a 12v lighting system when needed"

OK, that's the lights sorted. How do you power the washing machine in the middle of a cycle or the oven partway through cooking a meal when the smart meter disconnects you?

Re: Knuckling under

'The correct response to these statistics is, "we have to use less energy" or "we have to make wind power more effective", not "burn, baby, burn".'

Or "we have to bottle up the wind so as to have some when it's not blowing"?

Re: Silly Article

"changing subsidy rules"

Subsidies: pretending someone doesn't have to pay for things, therefore hiding the real costs.

Re: Nuclear

Build nuclear now years ago.

The reason why we've been unnecessarily shoving valuable fossil hydrocarbons up power station chimneys for most of my adult life has been down to self-styled environmentalists objecting to nuclear power. We've missed out on decades of the investment needed to develop a mature technology with maximal safety and minimal environmental impact. When all else fails we'll end up with a desperate dash in which cost and any other concerns are disregarded because it's all been left too late.

Re: Tidal?

"environmental impacts on wildlife"

ISTR reading about tests at Strangford quite some time ago which concluded that this wasn't really a problem. It's a good test site given that there's the QUB marine station immediately adjacent, that the turbines occupied a reasonable percentage of the opening and that the tidal flows are very strong with the entire tidal volume of the Lough rushing in and out through a very narrow opening.

Re: Tidal?

"Just wondered why it's not even mentioned in the piece."

I think it's much less developed. It's a more hostile environment to place free-standing turbines. If you've got a bit of land in an exposed situation you could plant readily available wind turbines there and collect a nice subsidy for delivering an erratic supply of power. Submerged turbines in tidal races are only just getting towards production. The alternative of building tidal reservoirs is apt to cause real environmental problems because promising sites tend to be wild-life friendly places, something the pseudo-environmentalists are apt to overlook.

The other explanation might be that wind turbines and solar are easy to see so the p-es are reminded what they're getting for their our money.

Digital ad biz is fraudulent by design, complain big brands

Meanwhile the rest of us are shunning the mess that is online advertising while the WFA continues rearranging the deckchairs...

Our CompSci exam was full of 'typos', admits Scottish exam board

Re: Brilliant...

"most Indians I've dealt with have a much better grasp of English."

You clearly haven't dealt with all the "UK companies" specialising in digital marketing who send spam from addresses registered on APNIC.

Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick... Hang on. They're back

Re: Waterfall is not the only alternate method

"Waterfall is always put up as a strawman."

For a very good reason: that's what it was invented for. http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf

PHBs looked at it and thought it was a good idea.

Re: cambam boards [sic]

Isn't that the stuff you nail to a wooden framework and then skim over with finishing plaster?

Bloke flogs $40 B&W printer on Craigslist, gets $12,000 legal bill

"claiming he had conspired with the presiding judge"

And he's not inside for contempt of court?

HPE 'rewrites' ALM to target agile and open source folks

ALM, DevOps - it all smacks of consultancies who seem to have had no previous experience of real life in IT.

Assuming the project isn't a death march and doesn't get canned after go-live initial development takes a reasonably short period compared with the time spent in production. During production it gets maintained as requirements change and get added to, and maybe well-hidden bugs become apparent. Hence my contention that development is the process of launching a software system into the maintenance cycle.

Periodically this normality is apparently rediscovered by people who appear to think they've made an astounding discovery and it's given a new name. The cynical*, of course, might think that they secretly knew about it all the time but just want to hang a few new tools, courses, consultancy jobs etc. round it. They're not really as deeply ignorant as they appear, they're just selling to PHBs who don't know any better.

*Cynical - moi?

Computerised stock management? Nah, let’s use walkie-talkies

"Can I move in next door to you?"

Yes, but it's a field so you'd have to share with the other inhabitants - cattle ATM.

The shop I had in mind was https://www.facebook.com/Wagstaff-Shoes-629427010428517/info?tab=page_info

Re: Shoes

"many shops start at UK 7 for men"

And many also seem to stop there.

Re: the retailer

"I go there etc."

Why?

Re: Missing the point...

"In reality, these stores will have just enough stock to satisfy the majority of customers"

That's the majority of self-selected customers. All those at the extremes of the distribution will go elsewhere. Unless you're a good match for the store buyer, just don't waste your time going to such places. Go somewhere that understands customers.

Re: Do you have any tea?

"I hate it when I ask for a coffee but they read out a list of Italian nouns"

I'm glad I don't drink coffee. It's just too complicated.

Re: 9 1/2 shoes

"probably something to do with going barefoot a lot as a child."

Warning - four Yorkshiremen quotes incoming.

"this massive retailer"

That's your problem, right there. Look for a small, family-owned shop. If it's anything like those near where I live they'll even have 9 1/2s.

Even in remotest Africa, Windows 10 nagware ruins your day: Update burns satellite link cash

Re: Disclaimer

"They won't have the money to sue anyway"

If we're just talking about comms costs, bill them, 30 days to pay, then go to the small claims court. However much money MS's lawyers charge is of no relevance. Get a judgement & if they don't pay send the bailiffs into the local office to seize goods to the value.

Re: Microsoft's crimes against humanity... Part 1

"http://gojblog.net"

The blog starts by claiming Microsoft started this a couple of years ago. As it's less then one year that's a bad start. Having a glaring factual error just devalues the rest of it, especially when it's the first thing you read.

Re: Disclaimer

"So no sue-ball."

Depending on your jurisdiction over-wide terms might make the entire EULA unenforceable. A EULA which is only displayed after you've bought the product might have the same effect. But if suing is out - and even if it isn't - a charge of corporate manslaughter might still be possible,

Air-gapping SCADA systems won't help you, says man who knows

Re: Excellent

"So, infect the software developer's laptop via a simple phishing attack."

Developer doing development for secure systems on the same laptop he uses to connect to the net for email? That's a fail right there. If you're setting out to be secure you don't do things like that.

Re: Lakhani is a salesman, so what do you expect him to say?

" how do you handle THAT kind of opponent without losing yourself in paranoia?"

The first requirement is to realise that you have that kind of opponent.

Then you design the system to be secure rather than designing the system and trying to bolt security on afterwards.

Re: Remote overview

"Not to mention he probably writes the checks"

That's fine. Just so he's also the one responsible for mandatory security with criminal sanctions for breaches. It might take one or two specimens of the genus to be banged up but the message will get through.

Re: Excellent

"a big cost-saving"

You can have secure or you can have cheap. The problem is that left to themselves businesses will go for cheap. Where national infrastructure is involved secure needs to be a legal requirement.

“good luck building a network with anything other than TCP/IP now”

FTFY

Software snafu let EU citizens get referendum vote, says Electoral Commission

Re: damn

"the Dutch people alone were given the vote in a referendum on future EU membership of the Eukraine"

I think this is the problem with the EU. There have been several updates to the treaty arrangements. Presentation for popular voting on these has been sporadic. When the Irish voted against the Lisbon treaty they were told to vote again until they came up with the right answer.

Each of the treaties should have required approval by an EU-side vote. That would have limited the politicians and officials to options which could command majorities, it would have encouraged them to keep in touch with the populus to determine what would and wouldn't fly and to explain what and why they were presenting for approval. For the officials requiring informed consent might have been a useful discipline.

Re: damn

"I do wonder that if EU nations were given a referendum on whether or not to kick UK out."

Why should they? We weren't given that chance in the Scottish referendum?

Re: damn

"It's purely custom that says she will usually ask the leader of the largest party, there's no need for the PM to even be an elected representative."

These are, however, the most practical options. Even if the PM were directly elected you'd still get a politician.

TalkTalk scam-scammers still scam-scamming

Re: I think you should have a warning here.

"Never give unexpected callers the time of day."

No, I give them as much time as they're willing to take. Whilst they're hanging on "a moment" they're not scamming anyone else. I don't get too many; I'm convinced there are "don't bother calling" lists in circulation.

Windows 10 market share jumps two per cent

Re: Microsoft aren't helping matters

"The PC market is slowing, so what's needed is a cool, compelling new version of Windows that makes people say "wow!" and enables really exciting new usages"

If W7 has been doing pretty well what its users need then I can't see most users regarding anything as cool or compelling (unless you're thinking of enticing Apple users to move over ;). New uses, yes, if they need something that wasn't in W7 or, even better in their existing PC hardware(because it's sales of PC that the industry needs to stimulate.

However I don't think anyone has invented anything in that category for a good while now. Innovation seems to have moved over to what can be done online. If that needs a PC then the existing PCs are capable enough but the indications are that most such innovations can be done with a tablet, phone or chromebook.

Why Oracle will win its Java copyright case – and why you'll be glad when it does

"It would have been better for everyone but the lawyers if Google had struck a licensing deal with Sun or Oracle"

IIRC they tried to but Sun/Oracle wouldn't licence the particular subset. They'd licence something that was too small or too big to fit in the memory that Google wanted. So Google implemented their own chosen subset. In hindsight maybe they should have changed a lot of the identifiers* to produce an incompatible library. The resulting split in the Java development library might not have been to Oracle's liking, but then, why should Google care?

* There's a limit as to how much you can do that. If everyone else uses max(), for instance, and has done long before the Java API used it, then why use something different.

Re: That's not what free software is about

"Not all of Oracle's claims are supportable, particularly the claim made at Arse that last week's trial sets a legal precedent. It doesn't at all."

Quite right, it doesn't. The existing precedent is that of the appeal against the decision of the existing jury. That flew in the face of the development world's custom and practice in regard to APIs. That was a dangerous precedent which why just about everyone else in that world outside the Oracle camp is concerned about this.

What happens to this appeal - does it go to the same court as the previous appeal? If not is there a chance that the appeal might take another look at the whole case and reinstate the original jury's verdict?

Re: This article conflates two important issues

"Either way, Oracle wins."

No. If they win they have to GPL any currently proprietary code that calls GPLed library. They're not going to like that.

Google, meanwhile have to change the APIs to their implementation of the Java/Dalvic library and then carry on as before. It creates a big disconnect between versions. The two implementations of the language then start to drift apart. Maybe new developers might look at the Android market and just stick with that so Oracle loses mind-share.

It could be a Pyrrhic victory.

Re: This article conflates two important issues

"If Google wins I can pinch 11,000 lines of someone else's copyrighted OSS code and disregard the license terms entirely. And if 11,000, why not 12,000. And if it's widely distributed already, why not the whole lot?"

If Google wins you can use an API of any length. That doesn't mean you can use the code that implements the API and disregard the license terms.

If Google lose it means you can't code against some library without having permission from the copyright holder(s) of that library. What's that you say? I already have a licence for the library so I have a licence for the APL? Not necessarily. You might be a third party developer; your customer has the licence, you don't - now how do you do your job?

Be careful what you wish for - you might just get it.

The original case, AFAICR had a number of amicus briefs on behalf of the argument that an API should not be regarded as copyright. That is because any piece of software using a library needs to incorporate at least some of the declarations contained in the API so that the constants, variables and methods used in the API can be referred to in the code.* If the API is copyright then nobody can write code against it without being granted a licence to do so. It would be a major impediment to software development. Software development custom has been to regard the API as being outside the scope of the copyright on the implementing code.

The original instruction to the jury by the judge - who appears to be not in the least confused - was to this effect and the jury so found. The problem arose because the appeal overturned this and, IIRC, SCOTUS refused to hear an appeal against that. This left a very serious situation for software developers - they would routinely have to infringe copyright simply to do their jobs.

The present decision is nothing more than damage limitation by making use of the API fair use. It's not ideal. If this is overturned then everyone's in trouble. The best that can then come out of it is that Oracle will find themselves in as much trouble as anyone else. If APIs are covered by copyright and use is subject to licence than that extends to the APIs on all GPLed code Oracle use. Oracle would then need to abide by the GPL and provide, under GPL, the source to any currently proprietory code which calls GPLed code. The penalty for not doing so would be revocation of the licence to use that GPLed code.

This is in danger of turning into an intractable mess if Oracle do win at appeal and SCOTUS don't overturn it. The best that can be said about it is that it would be restricted to the US (unless some other court accepts the US court decision as a precedent). It means software development there would become very difficult. It would also mean that it would become difficult to supply software developed outside the danger zone into the US; restricting the software market to the rest of the world. At some point the US would have to introduce legislation to overturn it. Ideally the Berne convention needs an addendum to clarify the situation.

There is, of course, the possibility that an appeal would review the entire case, overturn the previous appeal and reinstate the original jury's finding of fact. That would be by far the best outcome.

*Not universally true. Languages which allow identifiers to be used without prior declaration don't need it. Anyone who's made much use of such languages will almost certainly recall the bugs they created by simply mistyping a variable name.

Winston Churchill glowers from Blighty's plastic fiver

Re: Will offer "enhanced resilience" against counterfeiting, the Bank of England assures!!!

"the new Pound notes"

If someone offers you one of those be very suspicious.

Kraftwerk versus a cheesy copycat: How did the copycat win?

Re: ARE

'No. it's agreeable.

...

"Are" goes with "the people"'

That's what's meant by a verb agreeing with its subject. The original, "is", didn't.