Posts by Doctor Syntax

Jeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership election

Re: Congratulations!

@ GitMeMyShootinIrons

Maybe a tad unfair to Heath given the fact that Wilson/unionism cronying had pushed a lot of power out of reach of government already. But otherwise spot on.

As we all know, snark always comes before a fall. Mea culpa

"nowhere in the nervous system are the objective value of consumable rewards encoded"

Clearly the man has never been sent out by a SWMBO with a shopping list. In connection with which, and to pick up the point of Aldi & Lidl having fewer SKUs my interpretation of "Lidl surprises" is going there & finding what was on the list.

Re: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

"Was that a cynic or an economist?"

No. An accountant.

You want to DISRUPT my TECH? How about I DISRUPT your FACE?

Sanity check

Disrupting your business will cost money to buy new stuff, waste everybody's time whilst you get the new stuff in place and pay the TNT. Do you have that money?

Yes: You're doing fine & don't need to be disrupted.

No: You can't afford to be disrupted.

Don't want to upgrade to Windows 10? You'll download it WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

Re: Sea change

"Not many MS shill type comments in here, what's up?"

Fear?

Re: All praise the glorious prophet Eadon!

Maybe it's time to reinstate him here.

Re: Metered Connections

One of the weaknesses of human mentality is to believe everyone is in the same situation as themselves. It comes in many forms.

One is that people who find foreign languages/maths/games/IT/music/whatever easy and interesting imagine everyone else must be the same and that those who don't are being wilfully obtuse. (My misfortune as a youngster was the number of such folk in the teaching profession.)

Another is to assume that the facilities available to them in their situation - geographical, financial or whatever - are available to all.

You, A/C seem to fall into the second categor - maybe the first as well but you haven't given us any evidence on that point.

Re: FSF recommended distros

@cornz 1

I am and it works.

Re: "Personal" computer no more

"least privilege is something *I* impose upon my user base"

There's a difference between you doing that & $vendor doing it. In your case the computers are owned by and operated on behalf of your company who's paying you to do this. It's like Dave123's PC situation writ large - the owner is making the decisions according to their needs and remaining, via you, in control. The problem with vendor-made decisions is the vendor taking control of kit they don't own.

Re: "Personal" computer no more

"My biggest problem so far has been getting my copy of $application to run in it under WINE."

Assuming $application doesn't need you to go online then one solution is to set up a VM running an older version than W7 and run it under that. Alternatively a VM with W7 with updates off. Just keep it in its own little world.

Handing over emails in an Irish server to the FBI will spark a global free-for-all, warns Microsoft

Re: DAT EXCEPTIONALISM!

"Microsoft EU is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft (mumble), based outside the USA, but with Microsoft USA being the only shareholder."

That's not the same as having a wholly separately owned franchise operation. If they really want a clear legal air-gap then they need a company with wholly non-US shareholders running a franchise under Irish law (or whatever the country of residence is) with the terms of the contract excluding any ability of any part of US to demand customer information.

"The fact the authorities felt the need to hide the case from the public automatically screams that it was subversive and against the public interest."

Maybe but maybe they didn't want to alert their target. If so it didn't work out for them.

Re: DAT EXCEPTIONALISM!

" this is an attempted end run around existing agreements coz some entitled bureaucrats think they shouldn't apply to Uncle Sam"

It could indeed be ignorance, arrogance or indolence that caused them not to choose the proper procedure. However, having thought about it some more I wonder if it's a fishing expedition and they don't have an adequate a priori case to present to the Irish. Or maybe they're a lot of secretive sods who can't bring themselves to present the case that they do have because somebody else.

Re: What I don't understand is .....

"from a legal perspective, MS cannot be allowed to win as it creates a dangerous precedent,"

The precedent it would set would be that law enforcement would have to follow the due process which exists for this very purpose. There is an existing method for requesting this information & the authorities chose to ignore it.

Exactly what is wrong with a precedent that obliges the authorities to follow due process? This year we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the introduction of that concept into English and hence into US law. The US claims that Magna Carta is a valued part of its heritage. The prosecution in this case should be ashamed of themselves.

Re: One word

Maybe there's a reasonable time limit to hold backups. If the data is stale so is the backup.

Re: DAT EXCEPTIONALISM!

"US law governs companies in US jurisdiction, If Microsoft et al do not want to be subject to US law, they should move out of the US"

Sigh. I've said this here a couple of times. Looks like I'll have to say it again.

All they have to do is arrange for a franchisee to operate the business outside the US. They can then go to the US court & truthfully say they have no access, it has to be done through the franchisee which operates under the law of the country where the franchisee is located.

It's not like US business don't have lawyers capable of setting up franchises( for tax purposes).

You're also missing the point that it's not Microsoft et al who want to be not subject to US law. It's their non-US customers. Why should we be so subject?

When the IT department is 'just another supplier'

Re: Fix the real issues

"Someone read it then..."

Certainly. A first class rant.

You're doing it wrong

If IT is just another supplier someone, somewhere is doing it wrong. And it might be IT.

If you're working in IT within a business you should be taking advantage of that to learn about how the business works and what it needs. You should have better knowledge of those needs which should let you meet them better and even be proactive in suggesting better uses of IT to the rest of the business. These are advantages which no external supplier should have. You are part of the business and the rest of the business should be aware that you have common interests with them.

'Major' outage at Plusnet borks Brits' browsing, irate folk finger DNS

Seems to be OK for me & has been for at least the last half hour or so.

Tech, telcos, and digital crusties gang up against the EU's Digital Single Market

Re: Lies, Lies and Politicians

OTOH I don't want to see anybody's football anywhere.

Does not compute

"Ashworth pointed out that according to 2012 research by the EU, only 3.5 per cent of consumers wanted to access AV material across borders and only one per cent want to buy it across national borders."

If the demand is so low why go to the trouble of geoblocking? It must cost money to put in place. Is that a rat I can smell?

Windows 10 to grow up, turn extra enterprise-y beginning this month

Re: Just working would be fine .....

ISTR reading somewhere, probably here, that Lenovo wouldn't be pre-loading W10 yet because of driver issues or something like that.

And the moral is: never be the first to jump.

End mass snooping and protect whistleblowers, MEPs yell at EU

Re: Reality theater

For some negative value of damage.

Good news but...

...there's still 293 who haven't got the message.

Roll up, roll up: Microsoft, those Irish emails and angry Feds

"I'm just surprised no one form the US Gov has stepped in to quietly talk in the ear of the court"

The ear of the court should be inappropriate. A word in the ear of the prosecution would be a different matter.

'This is the "Justice" Department, how ironic.'

Not necessarily ironic. It's just an example of the Yes Minister theory of govt. departments as tombstones.

Well, what d'you know: Raising e-book prices doesn't raise sales

Re: Sample of 1

"Personally I prefer the ebook as it takes much less physical space which means I can take a couple of hundred books with me on holiday"

I've never been on a holiday which prompted me to take even one hundred books.

Right, opt out everybody! Hated Care.data paused again

Re: Is it time to put down this terminally ill scheme?

"All staff with access need to attend privacy training and be aware it's a sackable offense to breach data protection."

There are a couple of prerequisites for this. One is that it has to be a sackable offence and the other is that the employers need the balls to do the sacking.

Laminate this: Inside Argos' ongoing online (r)evolution

"last time I was looking for something I could pick up *that day* and was checking the stores in reasonable travel distance they had really obfuscated whether they were actually carrying what I needed or not."

Same problem the other day with Screwfix - surely they can't all be on collect next day for a Dremel disk.

" We want to get to a point where we are adding to that range of products and making it more specific to customers.”

And we know what that means. Buy a camera, for instance, and every time you visit the site the muppets offer you more and more cameras ignoring the fact that that's the item you're least likely to be looking for this time.

US gov to Apple: COUGH UP iMessages or FEEL our FEDERAL FROWN

The strong encryption genie has been out of the bottle this last couple of decades.

Assuming we can be confident of at least some of the cipher schemes in the libraries (and there are a good many non-government eyeballs looking at them nowadays) it's not beyond the capabilities of any organised group whom TPTB consider bad actors to roll their own applications. It would have no effect making that illegal: you don't stop people who are already breaking laws by furnishing them with more laws to break. The only effect would be to piss off those people who wish to use encryption for legitimate purposes - the name for those people is spelled V O T E R S.

Microsoft

It's a pity their "telemetry" is eroding the kudos they've been getting from their stance on server sovereignty.

"And with a bit of clever redirection of lava floes they could probably get the island to resemble a giant Apple logo."

Oi!

British killer robot takes out two Britons in Syria strike

Re: OK, mixed feelings about this...

"Clearly, the simple reason for this operation is to show other half-wits with British passports that going to that dusty shithole and making a video about yourself killing infidels will eventually get you killed too."

It tends not to work that way. They see that fate as glorious martyrdom, as glamorous. Yes, we may view that attitude as irrational but that doesn't stop people thinking irrationally.

Re: Victims?

"And we made a formal declaration of war on ISIS when exactly?"

Maybe not legally a war but they were certainly in a battle-zone. As far as one can tell they were there of their own volition and it was a battle-zone created by themselves and their fellows. And in a battle-zone people get killed.

But why the announcement? Maybe it was intended as a deterrent for others but it doesn't work that way. Will politicians never learn?

ICANN descends into farce as bigwigs try to cling to power

Re: Shurely ...

'Pitching to who? The US Govt's claim that it owned control was weak enough in 1998 and is even weaker now. That's the wrong model. The correct model is "setting up their own nonprofit and DOING THE JOB themselves."'

From the sidebar of TFA: 'The US government contracts non-profit ICANN to run the so-called IANA functions' Whatever you may argue about the US government's claim the de facto situation is that it's the USG/ICANN contract that's the basis for the existing administration of IANA and it would need to be a USG/ANOther contract to replace that. What mechanism do you suggest for ANOther to simply shoulder ICANN out of the way (desirable though that may be) and take over?

Re: I am reminded of the words attributed to Cromwell dismissing the Rump Parliament

Maybe what prevents this is that at present lack of an alternative. But what's to stop ICANN's critics setting up their own non-profit and pitching for the contract themselves?

Broadband powered by home gateways? Whose bright idea was THIS?

Re: FttDP

I had the same problem with the terminology.

If distribution point is equivalent to cabinet, as in FTTC, then the amount of ventilation in the existing cabinets indicates a good deal more power is required than could reasonably be sucked down a few hundred yards of telephone copper and on the whole cabinets do seem to be located where power is readily available.

On that basis I assume they're thinking of something else. There's a BT manhole in the road opposite the end of my garden. My own phone line comes underground from that and the adjacent pole feeds about half a dozen neighbouring houses by overhead wires. Maybe that's what they mean by distribution point.

If the idea is to pull a single fibre to that they'll be pulling it through a duct which already contains a multi-pair cable which will be being made redundant so they could take as many pairs as necessary from that to feed power. Alternatively the fibre itself can be bundled with power lines.

And if they plan to run a bundle of fibres to that distribution point, one for each house then powering each house's box individually then power down the existing copper is probably feasible.

Grinning BBC boss blows raspberry at UK.gov, eyes up buffet

Re: The BBC threatening to help Osborne, sounds implausible

"Don't forget the Tories hate the BBC with a passion"

Actually any incumbent government hates the BBC with a passion.

"just heard him"

I assume you have a specific "him" in mind. Is this a "guess who?" competition?

Re: Replacement, not collaboration

"cutting staff, regionalising production, so that little things like knowledge of correctly spelled local place names is lost, as papers are subbed hundreds of miles away from where they are notionally based."

And in the case of my local paper not bothering to send a photographer out to the scene of the story - they just print screen-scrapes from Streetview.

Ofcom issues stern warning over fake caller number ID scam

"Needless to say, I spoke to MANY people at their customer services department that day"

Why didn't you mention the words "small claims court"?

Re: RBS simply use Unknown number

"Let them prove that they have the right information on YOU Not the other way round. Oh wait that won't work."

Of course it will work but only if they're obliged to do it which at the moment they're not.

One test, of course, is to offer them incorrect information. If the call is genuine they'll know it's wrong.

I never was a Barclays customer but when I was an HSBC business customer I used to get calls purporting to be from them wanting identification information. I always asked them to prove who they were. They never offered any proof. If a cold caller can't prove who they are before asking for any information always assume they're faking it.

SPACE WHISKY: Astro malt pongs of 'rubber and smoked fish'

Surprised

It didn't come back tasting of pee?

Files on Seagate wireless disks can be poisoned, purloined – thanks to hidden login

Re: That's it!

"There's no possible way in 2015 for someone with a fully functional brain to code this."

For development purposes there is. But there's no way for someone with a fully functional brain to release it to production with the development snapshot still in place. Blame marketing.

So Quantitative Easing in the eurozone is working, then?

"I saw IT providing great gains in productivity"

There is, of course, the argument that a lot of IT has reduced productivity, Powerpoint addiction being one such example.

BOFH: Power corrupts, uninterrupted power corrupts absolutely

"The generator for this place is on the roof and it came with the building. About the only thing that could get that off the roof is an earthquake – and then it would only travel vertically."

This is obviously untrue. It was sold for scrap months ago.

You tried to hide your extramarital affair … by putting it on the web?

"otherwise my email would have ended up in some hacker’s exposure list"

Surely you know to use either a Hot/G/Livemail address kept for no other purpose or a one-off address, preferably one that you can eventually redirect to that of the CEO of the company concerned.