Posts by Doctor Syntax

BT dismisses MPs' calls to snap off Openreach as 'wrong-headed'

Re: Publicly owned business

"Utilities should be publicly owned"

They were. Government was perennially reluctant to put in the required investment so they were years or decades behind where they should have been. Eventually they were privatised so the government could get its (under)investment back and the utilities could borrow at commercial rates although some (hello Railtrack) never quite got weaned.

Next we have to remember cable. HMG let various telecoms companies have cable franchises. This, as a matter of policy, excluded BT because the competitors had to have a chance/had vacant directorships (delete as appropriate). Now, years and years later, BT is expected to step in and cable up all the parts of the country that the original franchises found too difficult/expensive (delete as appropriate and did somebody mention cherry picking?) in short order. And people are amazed that the task that the original franchises borked takes a lot of time and money.

Universal Credit: The IT project that will outlive us all

Re: ...the department does "not have a detailed point-in-time breakdown."

I'm surprised the OBR didn't send them away and tell them to come back with one by next week. That would have puzzled them as obviously they don't have a concept of such a brief period of time. The OBR needs teeth. It needs to be able to put a department on 3 months warning that such projects will have their budget withheld and released a month at a time subject to satisfactory progress reports until such time as they're satisfied that proper project management is in place.

Sainsbury's Bank web pages stuck on crappy 20th century crypto

I wish journos looking for a comment would start off along the lines of "We'll take it as read that you'll say customers' security is important to you. Given $cockup can you prove that?" and then follow up the next anodyne waffle with "That's a no, then.". And report that as "$wankers were unable to give us any meaningful reassurances.".

In the meantime it's long overdue that banking licences were dependant on maintaining security to top standards. The regulators should run tests for against each new vulnerability disclosure that might affect the web site. Any bank found with its site not up to date with its patches would be given no more than 3 days* to fix it or the web site would have to be taken off line until remedied. This would mean that maintaining security would become an essential part of doing business, as it should be, instead of an expensive option, which it all too often seems to be.

And while the regulators are about it, financial institutions should not be allowed to let 3rd party marketing companies to send out emails purporting to be from the institution but actually from some other domain, with out of domain links, reply-to etc, again to be policed by the regulator on pain of fines that would wipe out the marketing department's salary budget for a couple of years.

*Possibly over generous, especially if a patch has been made available prior to disclosure.

How to help a user who can't find the Start button or the keyboard?

Re: The strangest call I ever had

"He never rang me back and to this day I am mystified as to what he was calling about."

Co-ax connectors?

Re: The joys of answering the phone

'They then call back and reply, 'No one's answering there. And BTW, the toilet's now flooding out of the washroom!"'

Is the server room underneath the washroom?

No.

SEP.

"who was extremely embarrassed by the sheer incompetence of her staff"

She should have been embarrassed by the lack of an effective escalation procedure in her operation. At the very minimum, even if the front line staff aren't capable of realising they're out of their depth, a problem that keeps coming back should be automatically escalated so that (a) the immediate problem gets fixed, (b) the front line staff are trained to handle it in future and (c) if there's a systemic problem that gets fixed. You were luck, there was someone higher to deal with it. I suspect that in most cases there isn't anyone behind the front line and that's why they can't escalate.

Re: Once

"I got asked by a client if their site could have a lighter shade of black please...."

Maybe you've never worked in textiles and encountered the numerous shades of black yarn.

Re: Lack of knowledge may be reasonable

"There will be funnies everywhere from the Police, to teachers (about parents I expect),"

a long time ago I was a member of the Institute of Biology which was supposed to be the biologists professional body but turned out to be largely populated by teachers, or at least it was largely biology teachers who contributed to the journal. Their funnies were mostly about exam answers.

Re: Clearly an early-day AI prank

"the number of people that call support who would fail a Turing test"

What gets me is the number of email-based support desk agents who would fail a Turing test.

Re: Do organisations not use 360 feedback for support services?

"I wonder how you dealt with illiterates in high places."

I doubt something like this could have been put in place except at the behest of top management so I'd guess they were already literate.

Re: Observed many times ...

"The moment someone on the helpdesk answers the phone, many people's brain will basically go limp and they go into a kind of malleable blank state."

That's because the helpdesk caught them unaware. They weren't expecting an answer.

Re: Start Button

"For bonus points, download their javascript, analyse it, and tell them what buggy crap it is, pointing out where they should be using try/catch."

I've started a similar thing with spam offers to improve my website. I correct the English in their email and ask them why I'd trust somebody who writes such crap to work on my (non-existent) website.

Re: Clue-less

"Turns out the ipad has 3G and they canceled there phone line."

You have to remember that some of the commentards here think it unreasonable to have to rent a local loop connection to use broadband when they make all their calls on mobile or Skype.

Google UK coughs up £130m back taxes. Is it enough?

"Tax laws should be written on one piece of paper with no get out clauses. Make it so IP can't be charged between the same company or limit it to a small % of revenue."

As soon as you start adding a few "make it so that..." clauses you end up needing a bigger piece of paper.

In international terms tax laws are in a competitive environment. Various governments have found the consequences of this on excise duties - the margin over French duties hit a level at which the booze cruise was invented. The end result is that it becomes a race to the bottom.

Re: Where's Worstall?

"The benefit of Cadbury's is Cadbury's"

Not sure about that since the take-over.

Re: The article author is part of the problem.

"this is quibbling over semantics."

Have a word with your accountants on this.

Re: The article author is part of the problem.

'They do pay their employees though, and their employees pay income tax. In fact in most cases the employers pay the income tax on their employees salaries "as they earn".'

First sentence correct, second sentence incorrect. It's much the same as VAT; they're tax collectors, at their own expense, on behalf of HMG. They're also tax collectors on behalf of HMG in respect of employees' NI contributions. But they do pay employer's NI.

However it's fair to say that they are responsible for generating income tax and VAT by providing employment and selling stuff. They will also be spending money on goods and services which will also result in income and corporation taxes (they'll also be charged VAT but this will be offset against the VAT they collect).

Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

Re: Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

"the one that the salesman talks them into getting"

the one that gives the salesman the biggest bonus

FTFY

Re: Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

"So the Linux zealots on here reckon that the best Linux LotD solution is something that's pretty much as close as they can possibly get to a cosmetic and ease-of-use rip-off of Windows..?"

Let's look at that one on two levels.

Firstly, the actual suggestion was that in order to ease the transition from the familiar to the unfamiliar use a familiar interface. Applying an unfamiliar interface upsets users. Microsoft have discovered that - it would have been better for their users if they'd worked it out from first principles.

Secondly, if you go back & look what was about at the time Windows 95 came out you'd realise that it didn't spring ready-made from the forehead of Bill Gates. There were a lot of GUIs about back then. There was a good deal of cross-fertilisation.

The main application menu system until ribbons came along was based on CUA (Common User Access), mostly, IIRC, from IBM, a set of design principles intended to make things easier for users by providing consistency between applications.

A screen bottom bar with pop-up menus was already in use in interfaces such as CDE.

Some of the interface aspects came from HP's New Wave, an overlay on Win 3.

Yes, W95 put all these together very well and hit a sweet spot (apart from the error of putting the close button next to the maximise where it was too easy to hit it by mistake) but on the whole it was a synthesis of stuff a lot of other people had developed. So it's not surprising that for the desktop a lot of other designers have followed similar approaches, improving on it here & there with the like of multiple workspaces. But don't think you're looking at slavish imitation of a single original idea because you're not; you're looking at a convergence on what works best.

Re: Most recently a couple in their 60' s who installed Linux Mint without assistance

"Many over-60s went through the hell of fighting with DOS config files and Windows 3/3.1."

Come to that, just who were those who were the first to take up those 8-bit jobbies and put them to real use back in the '70s and how old are we now? Big clue - it wasn't our kids with the Beebs and Spectra; they came along later.

Re: Re:Updates

Yesterday I was the local University where someone was about to demonstrate QGIS. He had a W10 laptop. Switched on to wake it up & it started the spinning thing. So he rebooted & again went into the spinning bit, eventually rebooted & started properly. Presumably it had latched onto the local wireless network and found some updates. What's the point of trying to do something like run a demo on a platform like that. As it happens I run QGIS on this Debian laptop which, if I wanted to do so, would be able to run updates in the background without interfering with the foreground, would certainly not tie it up unasked at startup time and wouldn't force a reboot as part of the process.

Re: Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

"Here, I'm in my 60's... Young people today"

So you're a youngster.

Re: Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

"At best they'd end up running everything as root"

Ubuntu and its derivatives require a certain amount of config fiddling (?confiddling) to run as root. I don't thing your postulated IT-illiterates would get there unaided.

"smell of unwashed sleeping bags make them sexier than, say, a racing driver"

Wouldn't the unwashed sleeping bag would smell less than a driver after a 2 hour GP?

"people who spend time in meetings and spends ages on the phone. Quickly and more discreetly reading whatsapp, sms, short emails and being able to hangup quickly makes all the difference."

I wonder if you can get 4G on the B-Ark.

Re: I Liked Their Earlier Albums, Before They Became Really Commercial

"the folks who, disgusted with Linux's share of the desktop market topping a dizzying 1%, have fled to one of the BSDs"

No, there's another reason for doing that.

Re: Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

@ Naselus

I don't think it's Linux that's the root of your users' problems.

Android on the desktop

I've just read a review suggesting that 2016 could be the year of Android on the desktop. The fact that the installer hadn't been translated from Chinese didn't seem to count as an impediment.

"Wearable tech alread has purposes, and has for many years, for instance I've had a Garmin GPS running watch for a good 10 years. GPS/mapping, downloadable to a PC."

What was your point?

Re: Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

"Users left to secure Linux and keep it up to date on their own would make an even worse job than they did with Windows"

You may have seen somebody running Linux updates and thought that because they didn't have to wait half an hour for downloads and reboot three time that it had failed. You were wrong.

'No safe level' booze guidelines? Nonsense, thunder stats profs

Re: What about the healthy mediterranean diet?

'It's perfectly safe and valid to say "Hell" when naming the "place".'

Heck is in Yorkshire http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=459500&y=421500&z=120&sv=great+heck&st=3&tl=Map+of+Great+Heck,+North+Yorkshire+[City/Town/Village]&searchp=ids.srf&mapp=map.srf as is Hades http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=413762&y=404930&z=115&sv=413762,404930&st=4&ar=y&mapp=map.srf&searchp=ids.srf&dn=841&ax=413762&ay=404930&lm=0

Data centers dig in as monster storm strikes America's East Coast

Re: Checklist

"Mars bars"

Don't these need a deep fat fryer?

Criminal records checks 'unlawful' and 'arbitrary' rules High Court

Re: CRB never included "spent" convictions

"The ECRB is the problem. It probably shouldn't exist at all, and if May really wants to keep it then it needs to be strictly limited to particular posts."

It's not really a question of whether May really wants to keep it, it's whether there's good reason to keep it. And for some jobs there may be a case. But it should only be available for those jobs.

And in general it should not be the job applicant who pays, it should be the prospective employer.

Apple's Tim Cook rocks up at Vatican - one week after Schmidt

"If Larry Ellison turns up, it’s a cert."

Surely Larry'll expect the Pope to visit him.

Boeing just about gives up on the 747

Re: A bit OT

"Talk about a walk of shame as I went down the aisle!"

You should have muttered something about getting off while you still had chance. Just loud enough to be heard in the aisle seats.

That one weird trick fails: Google binned 780 million ads last year

Re: Cleaning up gmail

"Ok companies should not spew spam" [egregious use of possessive instead of plural corrected]

The shouldn't but they do although they'll describe it as valuable marketing information or customer engagement or some such tripe. My household insurance will change at the next renewal because my current insurers clearly forgot they'd been warned a couple of years ago. And no, opt-out is not an acceptable substitute for opt-in.

RSA asks for plaintext Twitter passwords on conference reg page

"it represents a blatant failure to observe best practice"...for even the most lax definition of "best practice".

Gov must hire 'thousands' of techies to rescue failing projects

"Then the government changes the tax rules so that only the first £5k of dividends is tax free.."

Before the permies leap on this it should be noted that the "tax free" dividends are paid out of company profits that have already been subject to corporation tax. So really they were tax paid all along.

Re: don't forget the mythical job specs

"Just need a handful of years more and 'early retirement' beckons"

No!!! Someone graduated as recently as 1990 already looking at retirement. You're making me realise just how old I am. Stop it!

BTW add being told what to do for your offspring to the SWMBO override.

Re: IT degree?

"I am happy that Alan Kay's DynaBook from 1972 is now finally embodied in a smartphone/tablet on a 4g 'world wide web'."

But was the Dynabook supposed to be watching you?

Re: IT degree?

"The best people I ever worked with were a quantum chemist, a biologist, an archaeologist, a couple of classics (Oxford) graduates, some arty type and some telecomms engineers who had converted."

I once worked in an IT team which consisted of a botanist, a geologist, a zoologist and a CS graduate. The CS graduate actually wanted to be an astronomer.

Microsoft legal eagle explains why the Irish Warrant Fight covers your back

'It's essentially about the distinction between "mail" and a "database record"'

Not quite. It's about the distinction between a company's records and something the company is holding on someone else's behalf.

It seems to be a very dangerous path to follow. If it's upheld in law that a record that's held on someone else's behalf is part of the companies records then it effectively destroys the business of any trustee business and a good deal of the business of any safe deposit business because both of them are holding other people's records which they should not be treating as their own.

Consider how this could go wrong. A trustee is holding records, say share certificates, on behalf of clients. The trustee company goes into administration or liquidation. What should happen is that the certificates are returned to the clients as they're the owners. If they can be treated as records of the trustee the administrator or liquidator could then take charge of them in the same way as they could take any other records and deal with them as they please and either use them as collateral to borrow against or sell them.

I see no objection in the US demanding any of Microsoft's records wherever they might be held. It's simply that email or any other data of Microsoft's customers shouldn't be included in that.

One has to wonder why the US doesn't use the MLAT. Didn't the official concerned know it existed, was too lazy to use it or just decided to throw his weight around? Or wasn't there sufficient prima facie evidence to ask for a warrant in an Irish court? Or did they have sufficient evidence but were just being too secretive to present it?

Re: I'm confused

Why be confused. It's not news, it's been going on since before the W10 data grab and there's no conflict in Microsoft's position.

They want to build a cloud business because they see value in it and if this succeeds it will be an obstacle to that so they're fighting it.

They see a value in having W10 slurp data so they're doing that. This does run a similar risk of putting off customers but they probably reckon that by making it increasingly hard for users to avoid W10 they'll get away with it.

In each case they're doing what they think will profit them. You didn't think one case involved altruism did you?

Brit boffins brew nanotech self-cleaning glass

Re: George Formby hangs up his bucket and sponge

'I daren't look at the actual lyrics of a George Formby song - I fear what i found to be lighthearted nonsense when as a youngster I listened to old 33s is likely somewhat offensive "old fashioned values" now.'

In that case you'd better avoid Blackpool rock.

Turned out nice again!

Blighty's Parliament prescribed tablets to cope with future votes

Re: Hang on...

What do they use now? I'd have thought a simple mechanical counter could have been introduced years ago.

Why does herbal cough syrup work so well? It may be full of morphine

Re: They may wish to reword and correct the notice...

"So, if you aware that you're taking morphine, it's perfectly safe, eh?"

No, but you'll be aware why you're dead.

GCHQ spies quashed this phone encryption because it was too good against snoopers

"The third myth is that we encourage vulnerabilities and leave them there."

Weasel words. He said "encourage", not "build".

IRA’s former political wing takes aim at Apple over back tax

Re: I'm a Shit Stirrer begorra!

"To date have there been any IRA detonations on US soil?"

Was that a typing error for "donations"?

New open-source ad-blocking web browser emerges from brain of ex-Mozilla boss Eich

Re: Brought it on themselves

"You obviously have no clue how advertising works."

No, it's you who obviously have no clue how I work.

I know very well how advertising works in my case. It pisses me off. Specifically it pisses me off about the businesses who think they're entitled to my time and attention.

I've spent far too many decades on this Earth being pestered by idiots who think I should suck it up.

Companies who thought they knew how advertising works but didn't get the message have lost my business. They thought that as I was their customer they were entitled to pester. My solution was simple. I'm no longer a customer.

Companies I haven't dealt with who think they know how advertising works but haven't got the message try to pester. I'll never be their customer.

Re: Brought it on themselves

"a late thirties marketing man"

Are you sure? The more he writes the more he seems like a teenager on a gap year in advertising.