Posts by Doctor Syntax

Windows 10: Buy cheap, buy twice, right? Buy FREE ... buy FOREVER

Re: Why free?

"What Microsoft want is for everyone to take their five year old PCs and laptops, upgrade to Win10 ... and then find that the drivers are a problem, the memory needs increasing, the processor isn't up to it etc"

If so they may be disappointed. I ran the preview on an early Atom Mini-ITX board which is pretty basic H/W. The only driver issue was for an HP printer which I solved by downloading the 8.1 version from HP. As a matter of interest it would run Lotus Smartsuite (installed in backward compatibility mode) which I installed as a prerequisite for one of the old Office 97 competitive upgrade installs, also running in compatibility mode.

Will it tempt me to migrate back from Linux? No. Migration from Linux will be to BSD.

Re: Free you say?

@ bobgameon

As far as I can make out what you say about costs is correct for those taking the free upgrade. It will only cost if you delay more than a year.

But the odd thing is the two, apparently contradictory, statements coming out of MS: this is the last version of Windows & there's an EOL already set. The "last version" implies that it will be rolling updates from here on in - they were already talking about that when they were calling it Windows Blue. But if there's an EOL set what happens after that?

What will likely drive Windows>Linux migration for home users isn't 10* but XP EOL. If there'd been a free Windows upgrade path the home XP users they'd have taken it. As it is at least some of them are moving to Linux. I migrated a couple of very ancient boxes for a cousin in law. LibreOffice opens their Works files, Firefox is faster than IE. That's all they want.

I think what's changing is the public perception that PC = Windows.

*OTOH privacy concerns with 10 might be a driver as might an upgrade that borks a lot of boxes.

Re: Kudos for the 1970's music reference

"Kudos, a classic wank/bullshit bingo word."

Not in your dictionary? Get a better one. It's Greek, borrowed into English many years ago. More classical than classic.

Windows 10 marks the end of 'pay once, use forever' software

Re: Business market?

"A few folks might go for Linux/x86 as a low cost interim measure if they have a nearby geek, but as there is little or no money to be made for/from home Linux users, I don't personally expect this to be the start of a volume rollout of Linux/x86 in the home market."

You think not? What if W10 doesn't appeal to the home user & you're a H/W manufacturer? You need an OS to load on your boxes in order to sell them. There's money to be made from home Linux users by selling the HW.

UK.gov wants to stop teenagers looking at tits online. No, really

Re: In the end this is about taxation...

"fill in the forms and return them (by post!)"

No, return them via a .gov.uk site that falls over the day it goes live.

"He either reads The Daily Fail, his advisors read and believe The Daily Fail, or he is pandering to the idiots who read The Daily Fail."

Cue reminiscences of the Yes Prime Minister speech on newspaper readers remembering, of course, that the last sentence was "People who read the Sun don't mind who runs the country so long as she has big tits."

Re: 5 minutes

"I give it 5 minutes after the "blockade" is put in place before someone puts a blog post up explaining how to bypass said blockade."

I can do that now & don't need a blog.

Q: Are you over 18?

A: Yes

Contractors who used Employee Beneficiary Trusts are in HMRC's sights

I'd have regarded such an arrangement as being in the "not even with a bargepole" category.

Of course it's quite possible to get some off-shore arrangements past HMRC but it helps if you do business with them, e.g. buy their property & then lease it back to them.

Re: Pay your tax like everyone else

Can your friend prove that HMRC had full and accurate details of the arrangement which they'll probably deny.

HMRC have an unlimited supply of brass neck. IIRC iIn the LimeIT case the investigator wrote a 2 page apology to the tribunal admitting he handled the case wrongly but still insisted that he was right.

" in reality were indistinguishable from employees"

at first glance indistinguishable from employees of the engaging company but in reality had no employee rights from that engager and had to make their own equivalent arrangements

FTFY

It's really amazing how many permies thought that but somehow never took the freelance path themselves.

"Isn't there a human rights law that states that new laws cannot be applied to events that predate those laws? Possibly that's only criminal law - not sure."

ISTR that at some point the Labour government introduced legislation which allowed HMRC to move the goalposts on taxation retrospectively.

'Fix these Windows 10 Horrors': Readers turn their guns on Redmond

Re: MIcrosoft manichaeism

"Forcing updates onto them is the stupid idea I have ever seen - especially drivers updates, but not only. It's not only IT professional but many others who may work self-employed or in very small companies with a few devices and no domains."

No, they're not forcing updates onto them. They're forcing repurchase of the Pro or enterprise versions.

Re: No Control of Updating

"So I'm staying with Windows 7 for the foreseeable future, and at least until MS comes back to its senses and allows us as users/power users/admins control of exactly what updates get onto a PC."

What MS is saying is that you can have a free-update from your W7 Pro but only to something you don't really want. If you want W10 Pro you've got to buy it again. This is MS. Did you really think they'd changed their spots?

Google turns cookie monster on AdSense, DoubleClick clients

Re: Google should stop passing the buck, and support Do Not Track

Just this.

The thought that was running through my mind when reading the article is that this is what DNT is for. Insist that sites respect DNT and you really shouldn't need to bother with working out suitable texts.

SPUD – The IETF's anti-snooping protocol that will never be used

"the absolute intent is that we throw this protocol away"

There speaks a man who's read TMMM.

Bloke cuffed for blowing low-flying camera drone to bits with shotgun

Re: 40mm Glock

"So, if the drone fell on somebody after being shot down, would the bloke with the gun be liable?"

s/drone/bits of drone/

Re: I sort of agree

"On the other hand the guy sounds like a bit of a dick."

Dicks all round AFAICS.

Tired tablets don't tickle the imagination, so sales fall again

" bad news for fondleslab fans: sales are down and the market is fragmenting."

No, it's not bad news for fans, just for vendors. Or do you mean the only fans are the vendors?

US to rethink hacker tool export rules after mass freakout in security land

At least there's one gummint dept on the planet that's capable of hearing when being told they're wrong. Now let's hope they go back to whoever cooked up the original, gives them a good kicking and asks them WTF they were thinking of in the first place.

Hurrah! Uber does work (in the broadest sense of the word) after all

Re: Again?

"We are all being returned to a pre-industrial status, where people are merely factors of production, and the (very) few capital owners are not encumbered by government 'interference'"

By pre-industrial I suppose you mean before the introduction of the factory system. What do you mean by "factors of production". In pre-industrial society craftsmen generally enjoyed a much higher status than they did under the factory system. It was the loss of that status that provoked the Luddite riots.

Re: Bandits

It's the stationery bandits you have to worry about. They smother you with paperwork.

Mine's the one with the triplicate invoice book in the pocket.

@ J.G.Harston

Thanks for a knowledgeable comment. But although the requirements for driver & vehicle licensing are well spelled out & sensible it's difficult to see why the requirement exists for a dispatcher to be licensed. This appears to be an area where technology could improve - for instance the suggestion of an app displaying current locations of taxis to ensure service. The dispatcher licensing appears to be an impediment to such improvement.

Windows 10: A sysadmin speaks his brains – and says MEH

Re: No longer my PC

"Thank the man in the sky that I have five years before the move to Linux Mint."

Why wait? Or move to BSD.

A third of workers admit they'd leak sensitive biz data for peanuts

Re: Opinion poll

"There's a world of difference between what people tell pollsters and that they would actually do."

And part of this is due to the prior questions asked. We're not told what these were in this case.

W3C's failed Do Not Track crusade tumbles to ad-blockers' Vietnam

Re: if they dont understand DNT

'Or simply

"I have no money and don't buy things"'

Or a flag that says "I have money and I buy things but if you shove an advert in my face I'll go out of my way to buy from someone else."

My preference is still for an add-in that, subject to a maximum bandwidth allowance, will accept some ads & send them straight to /dev/null. Everyone wins: the user doesn't see the ads, site and advertising network get paid because they don't know the ad wasn't seen and the advertiser doesn't lose potential sales by pissing off the users.

Re: Do not eat

'"There is no benefit whatsoever to websites to pay attention to it."

Did you read the article? The benefit to advertisers is that users won't disappear behind their own privacy tools.'

That assumes that the advertising industry indulges in intelligent thought.

Malvertising campaign hits 10 MEELLION users in 10 days

Liability?

Presumably malvertising is going to result in legal action sooner or later. Who will be held liable? The site? The ad-network? Will anyone along the chain start taking action before the writ arrives?

Chat about Safe Harbour all you like, the NSA's still the stumbling block

"the European Parliament called for it to be suspended. The commission has stopped short of doing that and instead is re-negotiating the deal."

Re-negotiating would have been much quicker (i.e. less then infinite time) if they'd suspended it in the interim.

As the saying goes, when you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.

Ballmer's billion-dollar blunders: When he gambled Microsoft's money and lost

Re: Repeat after me...

"XP came *after* ME!"

But it never caught me.

Re: Hmmm @Mage

"we've got all this legacy code"

Often translates as: "It's paying the bills".

That's a powerful argument.

Note: I am not & never will be a VB6 coder.

That doesn't matter. You can find legacy code in all sorts of languages paying the bills, including the wage bill of its deriders as they work on all that new shiny - which, if it's good enough, will become legacy code in due course.

Today's smart home devices are too dumb to succeed

"I purchased a Beurer connected scale, which dutifully records my weight, BMI and percentage body fat to my iPhone and HealthKit."

Some people are beyond help.

So what the BLINKING BONKERS has gone wrong in the eurozone?

Re: Sorry for the rant, but...

"Most of us have heard about the CPI and the RPI (with RPI including housing and energy if I remember correctly and is therefore higher than the CPI, which is why G.Brown got rid of it to hide his real inflation)."

I find it difficult to believe that he was consciously using it to hide inflation; I can only assume he thought it was a real measure. Although this may seem an irrational thought it would have been nothing like as irrational as believing RPI was a better measure of inflation and still letting the housing bubble grow.

Happy birthday Alf Garnett, you daft, reactionary old git

Re: Tony Booth...

"Till Death was very un PC"

No it wasn't. It couldn't have been. The entire PC concept hadn't been thought of so there was no un PC for it to have been.

Dandy Nichols' comic timing deserves a mention. Else would occasionally puncture Alf's rhetoric with a beautifully delivered withering one-liner.

It’s DEJA VU: Customer forgets to tell us about essential feature AGAIN

Re: You can probaly blame

"And they know exactly where to get those blue carpet squares and everything else for a knock down price..."

Probably the ones they lifted in the previous refurbishment.

How British spies really spy: Information that didn't come from Snowden

Re: David Anderson

"Personally I have nothing to hide"

No online banking? No Ebay, Paypal, Amazon etc. accounts that you have to log onto?

Re: OK, let me get this straight..

"It's not illegal to use the services of a US-based provider to store EU customer data as long as that company is certified under the EU-US Safe Harbour agreement."

Nor is it illegal to brew your tea in a chocolate teapot.

Re: OK, let me get this straight..

"For anyone that thinks having your own BOFH will lead to better security of your company just remember this:

Snowden was a BOFH and that didn't work out so well for his employer's data security."

Nevertheless, better the BOFH you know....

Crazy Chrysler security hole: USB stick fix incoming for 1.4 million cars

Re: supply and demand

"There's a concern of a cornered market."

I don;t know about the US but in Europe there's a good deal of regulatory stuff that new vehicle designs need to pass. Regulations about the isolation of safety-critical systems need to be added to this. That would avoid problems with future designs but getting it made retrospective might be difficult. With such regulation in place there'd be no issues about cornered markets; non-compliant vehicles wouldn't get into the market and manufacturers would have to start paying attention to introducing security at the design stage.

NHS England backs down over another data extraction scheme

Meanwhile the e-referrals service is going from strength to ???

Back in June I had a letter from the GP to make an appointment giving one of three possibilities

Went onto the site & put in the credentials. Not recognised.

Phoned the 0345 number instead. Amazing! They could get onto the system. Made an appointment & a few days later an appointment letter came followed by a cancellation in the next post saying another appointment would be made.

Last week, having heard nothing I phoned the hospital.

They explained the appointment had been made with the wrong clinic but couldn't log on to make another.

Rung back today & told there were no appointments available as yet.

As another hospital had been included in the original list I went back online to see if I could rebook with that. Amazing! I could get online!

System then told me that a completely different clinic had been notified & they should have been in contact by several days ago. Name and address of clinic given but only the choose & book general phone number.

Went back to the GPs secretary. She finds that the clinic is on answerphone...

NHS should really concentrate on getting its essential IT services running properly instead of playing with trendy Big Data.

After all the fuss they've walked into by now you'd have expected them to have learned some lessons. But no.

Experience is a dear teacher but there are those who will learn by no other. It's time to start making things dear for CEOs & the like. For their own good, of course. It will help them learn.

AI finally understands primitive sketches – aka marketing presentations

This makes a big assumption...

...namely that there's actually any meaning in marketing and other creatives' presentations in the first place.

Jeep drivers can be HACKED to DEATH: All you need is the car's IP address

Re: Security should be baked in at the start.

"Aren't these simple questions to ask at design time?"

Probably. And the questioner gets branded as a trouble maker & told he's being negative.

At the local filling station the other day:

One slot was occupied by a big, unattended SUV - I think it may have said Jeep on the back but not being interested in mobile bricks I didn't take too much notice. The slot continued to be occupied by it; nobody came out of the shop to drive it away. When I went in to pay I asked the attendant what was happening. It turned out that the driver had put in the wrong fuel and consequently (maybe because the engine wouldn't run) the handbrake couldn't be released.

Software fix?

It sounds more like a hardware fix is needed so there's no connection other than the power line.

IT as a profit centre: Could we? Should we?

Re: Not a bad idea on the surface but reality stinks.

"Then we started acquiring "related companies" and things spiraled out of control. They merged our systems and ended up with us hosting them and fielding all service calls. The problem was that our systems and programs were many and varied and dealing with support was a struggle."

It looks as if the costs of integration should have been considered before the acquisition and allowed for in the price paid.

"Not if what you get for your money turns out to make it harder to run the business. Bean counters sometimes appear to want caviar for fish-finger prices."

I've always thought that the best response to this attitude is 'OK, we'll turn it all off for a week to see how much money you can save.'

Robot surgeons kill 144 patients, hurt 1,391, malfunction 8,061 times

Re: How does it compare to human-only surgery?

"we're still trying to get a number, it's non-trivial"

I'd have thought more or less impossible. How do you put together a set of control events with which to compare? That's a problem which is plaguing surgeon league tables.

What's really concerning is the fact that they seem to have had problems in getting adequate accounts, a problem clearly exacerbated by liability questions: it's going to impede improvement. Where life is clearly at risk - something which would apply to medical devices more generally - there needs to be a mandatory report/analyse/modify feedback loop.

Are you a Tory-voting IT contractor? Congrats! Osborne is hiking your taxes

Re: Annoys me sooo much

"or at least make your life hell whilst trying to find one if rumours from people subjected to an IR35 audit are true"

It's 11 or more years old but worth looking back at the story of LimeIT to see just what can happen in such a case.

Driverless cars banished to fake Michigan 'town' until they learn to read

Re: Sheep, Cyclists, Pedestrians, Townies, Bridges, buses

"Are deer a reasonable proxy for (libertarian) sheep?"

I don't know. Do they balance on the tops of wall & then suddenly jump down in front of you?

This was one of my first encounters after passing my driving test. Fortunately the suddenness was relative; I realised it was preparing to jump & acted accordingly, but would an autonomous car?