Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Focus on essentials first

"There isn't a worker shortage... there's a shitty job/wage environment problem."

This isn't an either/or situation. It's a long and short term situation.

Employment factors combined with Brexit might have left us short of HGV drivers but that doesn't mean that simply upping wages will suddenly materialise a sufficiency of drivers. It simply means that drivers are being shifted to whoever can pay the most. In some instances that means your rubbish won't be collected because bin lorry drivers are being poached by transport companies.

New drivers have to be trained and tested. The capacity for both is limited. Even if training suddenly stepped up there needs to be an increase in testing and that means either training more testers (which takes time and presumably means diverting some existing drivers into doing that with short-term knock-on effects) or shortening with the existing testing. HMG seems to have settled for the latter; we'll have to see what the road safety consequences of that are in the coming months.

Re: Shirley there must be an acceptable third option

"until they grow up"

Optimist!

"The threat of violence in NI is very real."

I'm afraid you're right. I spent 14 years dealing with some of the consequences back in the '70s & '80s. Unfortunately we've got a government that hasn't learned its history and is on course to repeat it.

Re: ‘Oxidizer and moisture’ eh?

You'd think they'd want bragging rights like Branson & Bezos.

"Delete your faecebook accounts"

Sorry, won't can't.

"Again, I would suggest looking for another reason to explain the disk not working."

QIC: Quarter Inch Cartridge, a tape format.

Re: It's happening

I think he might have meant "We never wanted to be found out this way."

Re: Missing the point

"Cloudflare and their fans like to use analogies like postal service, road builders, and power companies. Illegal stuff happens and it's nobody's fault."

It very obviously is somebody's fault. It's the fault of those who post the stuff to the website. However the plaintiff's lawyers will argue (to the plaintiff) that the most they can be sued for is pennies because that's all they have but here's a big corporation, Cloudflare. They have money. The fact that Cloudflare is simply, blindly passing 1s and 0s along, just like the ISPs or anyone else in the transmission chain is not made obvious to the plaintiffs until they go to court. They lose but no doubt their lawyers still get paid.

The best way of stopping it would probably be to send cease and desist letters to the hosting companies. That would give them the option of suing if the offending material isn't taken down but unless the hosting company ignores it there's no money to be made out of that.

Re: The guy's here...

Just use an easy to remember phrase like "correct battery horse staple".

Like?

Re: I'll believe it when I see it.

"Change starts with design"

Designers are now complaining they're having to ditch all the hard-won progress they've made in unrepairability.

Re: Ultimate marketing

Customer: I don't think much of this. Why do you call it the ultimate meal?

Waiter: You're eating the last customer to order an ultimate meal, sir.

Re: one who questions the orthodoxy

There is ample basis for avoiding burning fossil hydrocarbons where substitutes exist. Hydrocarbons are multi-use materials, usable as fuels and as the starting point for industrial processes. In the first role it's often open to substitution, in the second not so often. The stuff that's been burned needlessly isn't available as a substrate. In similar vein the hydrocarbon used to make one-use plastic bags can also be substituted with paper.

You don't need to believe or not believe in anthropogenic climate change, nor do you have to realise change in climate and sea-level changes are inevitable to realise that finite supplies shouldn't be exhausted where substitutes exist.

At some future date, and maybe not that far into the future, our descendants will be blaming us for the sheer waste of current usage.

Re: Logic failure

Yup. Spotted that too late.

It's also a nice endpoint when you're preparing a carbon dating sample for the scintillation counter. Char sample to carbon. Heat with lithium to form lithium carbide. Add water (oh, look, South Belfast water supply from Silent Valley has radon in it) to form acetylene. Clean up the acetylene at low pressure given acetylene's tendency to explode. Convert to benzene.

Re: What a shame

"act as if they apologised when they in fact had not"

All too often the apology is for any "inconvenience" or, in particularly egregious instances, "distress" caused.

No! That's really hidden victim blaming. It's just polite wrapping for "sorry you're such a wimp".

What the apology should be for - and explicitly for - is getting it wrong.

Re: Telephone numbers are not credentials

I think he said "If you use 2FA whoever's got hold of your phone is efectively you".