Posts by Graham

@Nev

Yeah, Air France are great (am flying with them this afternoon) except when things go wrong...

... I used to wonder what a "Gallic shrug" was, after 6 months of flying with Air France Cityjet I have a MUCH better idea!

Has it been ten years already?

Blimey ... like others I was sure I've been reading you for longer than that!

Mind you, it could all have passed in a drunken blur, which might explain why I can understand wha' you shay comple--hic--tly.

Noever mind my coat, pass me another pint.

Thanks all, keep it up!

I have to disagree...

"great operational experience"

I'm sure it did provide great experience, of what not to do; the spokesbunny never said "a great operational experience", that would have been indefensible!

I smell the unhealthy stench of a crusade.

I'm sure there are some occasions when comments aren't needed... and I'm sure there are occasions when comments aren't helpful.

And I'm sure that trying to write better code is a laudable aim.

But.

In the world of Enterprise Software, where multiple groups of consultants and teams of contractors come and go, comments are essential.

Why? Well it comes down to the premise that "if you need comments then your code isn't good enough". Not sure I agree with that but let's keep with it for a moment. If you've had 5 different groups of consultants or contractors working on some code are you going to be the one that stands up in front of the board of directors and says "I'm sorry but we're screwed. We told all our consultants and contractors that they should rewrite their code until they didn't need comments and because they all have their own writing style it's now a convoluted pile of cack that no one can understand"?

Thought not.

Comments aid communication; over use of comments doesn't but overuse of code doesn't either. The goal of good code and good comments to be able to understand the functional target of the code. If it needs comments put it in, if it might possibly need comments in the future put them in.

But don't ever leave commented out code in place; some muppet will invariably uncomment it and cause havoc (either Gonzo or Fozzie Bear, not sure which).

@All those miserable buggers who think he's being cynical

Who cares?

Did you know how much money goes to Alzheimer's research before? Do you now? Wonder why?

Ok £500k isn't a huge amount in itself... but to misquote the Mastercard advert

Donation to Alzheimer's Charity £500,000

Publicity for Alzheimer's Research Priceless

Before whinging about others being or not being altruistic, go and give money to charity yourself. Whether you shout about it or not is another matter.

\Mine's the tattered one with sequins spelling Wizzzard across the back

So how come Andrew Orlowski wrote this story?

Previously his byline has always been "Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco". Is El Reg offshoring its journalism to struggling ex-colonies? Has Andrew seen sense and come back to the UK? Or did he just have a really, really long holiday in the states and is now back?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Personally I love DAB. Local radio, whether commercial or public is really very, very bad anywhere except a large city, DAB means I get the stations I want to listen to at a decent quality (although as one of them is one of the ones GCAP is attempting to unload from its Xfm franchise I'll be interested to see what happens). Bring on the big stick and make people convert.

If you're going to pick up someone's spelling....

"lose" not "loose", but if you're a regular Grauniad reader then it's understandable.

Paris, because if anyone would be appropriate to be "loose" it'd be her.

You learn something new every day!

Today I learnt: the correct historical meaning of the word "decimate", the general meaning of the word "decimate", various interpretations of the word "Cretanism" and that some people really should get out more and loosen up a little.

@b166er

Awe inspiring, and completely demonstrated in your comment. I salute you (or should that be "I sulate you")?

Oh yes, I also learned that most people agree about "nuculuear"!

Absolute genius

That was quite the scariest BOFH I've read ... and the "happy" ending was great! Nice one Simon.

Well I did provide "feedback" to Becta

saying that I found their attitude to a story that's been told to Britons over the centuries "culturally offensive".

Unsurprisingly the response I got was the canned one that both the Beeb and El Reg seem to have received which simply confirms my view that a. it's run by a bunch of morons and b. they don't care what anyone else thinks, they have their view and you will all subscribe to it (weirdly typing that conjures up an image of a Becta press officer taking on the form and mannerisms of Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove).

It's a good book... you should read it :)

Perhaps they should too!

Incomplete quote...

The president of the local residents' association described the children as "very sad as they had expected Santa to arrive by helicopter" ... " and had to put away the SAMs they'd borrowed from their elder brothers for the occasion".

select count(idiot) from HMRC

I'd suggest that the reason that NAO was being sent the data in this format was that it was a format that HMRC already had and was already using internally in some integration or other. Given that the extract contained *all* the data, I'd suspect that this was a copy of the feed to an HMRC data warehouse.

The most likely formats therefore might be an XML file, a CSV file (either of which really isn't going to trouble a black-hat much to figure out the format, given they've probably saved it with a file extension of .xml or .csv) or a database extract. You have to remember the thinking of the numpties might be, "well here's the data, no we don't know how to get it onto your machine, but it is on the disk; oh you'll incur an expense getting it? Sorry, not our problem". But as you say, let's notr discuss it... pointless anyway seeing as I'm sure we can all guess where the "password" protection comes in.

And the Id cards argument from Darling is just hilarious, in a very black way... yes, it would have made it less likely that the NAO would have had to request the data in the first place (bearing in mind that they didn't actually request the data at all) but on the flip side once the idiot with unrestricted access to the dataset sent the whole caboodle through an insecure channel we'd be in an even worse position than we are now. And it doesn't matter how many technical safeguards you try to put into your system, at some level there will be some idiot with too much access who doesn't understand why what they are about to do should qualify them for a red hot poker up the jacksie.

I'm still trying to figure out who are the bigger set of morons here, the HMRC clowns or the policitcal muppets, it's a difficult choice.

@Peter

...but not in the IT department... unless you were the boss, a consultant, an external technician (unless equally evil), a salesman (unless in the pub) or anyone except the heroes.

Hmm, see your point!