* Posts by Doctor Syntax

32777 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014

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LibreOffice 7.2 brings improved but still imperfect Microsoft Office compatibility

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Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?

My sister-in-law found she could no longer open a couple of Office docs. She emailed them to me. I opened them in LO, saved them back in MS format, emailed them back and she can now open them again. No updates to her Office suite that she's aware of.

Buyout of British defence supplier Ultra Electronics paused by UK.gov over competition concerns

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Re: Danger of private equity takeovers

It'll probably end up like Maplin.

Microsoft slips out Windows Server 2022 with extended support for 10 years

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Re: Is TPM 2.0 Required?

And wasn't W10 supposed to be the final number of Windows with everything else just upgrades?

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Re: Subscription

OTOH you'll find beancounters deciding to cut subs without checking.

Microsoft, flush with cash, raises cloud office suite prices for businesses

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Re: My CD-ROM copy of Office 2013 still installs and works fine

So Word isn't fully compatible with LibreOffice. Not entirely unexpected as I never found to to be fully compatible between versions of itself.

Apple's bright idea for CSAM scanning could start 'persecution on a global basis' – 90+ civil rights groups

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Re: Naked babies

Many years ago a TV newsreader became part of the news because the photo-processing company - or maybe just somebody who worked there - informed the police because of such a set of photos. This is Apple trying to reproduce that situation for the digital age.

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It's inherently not secure, not because of the implementation, whatever faults it might or might not have, but because the capability itself is neutral and can be turned to any form of surveillance Apple might choose or be pressured to choose.

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Brits of a certain age will remember the Gary Glitter incident. And those with any form of legitimate but confidential information on their PC would immediately have realised where not to take it for repair should that become necessary.

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Re: Apple has learned a lot from China

The guilty will already have got the message. Don't buy Apple.

So the data centre's 'getting a little hot' – at 57°C, that's quite the understatement

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"We can but hope that whatever the eventual repair was, the engineers took the opportunity to move on from just water in the DC."

Halon? Could have been even worse for Chris & colleague if not for the servers.

Eight-year-old bug in Microsoft's 64-bit VBA prompts complaints of neglect

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Re: "[Microsoft felt] the 32-bit version a safer choice for most users"

But shouldn't they both just work properly?

UK's National Data Guardian warned about GP data grab being perceived as going 'under the radar'

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As I posted here just recently, for the title "Guardian" to be meaningful the role must have a statutory veto and must be informed of any relevant projects whilst they're still at the planning stage. For an official to ignore this should be a sackable offence.

Senators urge US trade watchdog to look into whether Tesla may just be over-egging its Autopilot, FSD pudding

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Re: I am kind of surprised...

There is, at least in theory, an existing way that needs no infrastructure on the roads themselves and that's by linking a database of speed limits to GPS. There are issues such as the GPS being sufficiently precise to distinguish between two adjacent roads with different speed limits. There are also issues such as temporary limits for road works or variable speed limits.

There are also issues of working out just what the limit is supposed to be in some areas. I'm pretty sure the road where I live is at 30mph limit. It branches, a short distance away, from a 3 mile stretch of main road with speed limit signs at each and and, like the main road it has street lighting. But it also branches somewhat further away from another stretch of main road which is clearly indicated as national speed limit and there are no speed limit signs anywhere in between those stretches of road, not even where the street lights stop (or start) depending on the direction of travel. Or stop and start again depending on the route taken through the network of lanes. If TPTB can't be bothered to sort out existing signage they're certainly not going to add more machine readable signage and, presumably, whoever drew up the database the SatNav devices use has had to guess where the exact limits are just like any other driver.

Apple didn't engage with the infosec world on CSAM scanning – so get used to a slow drip feed of revelations

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Re: Notice how quite Samsung is?

"The fact that Samsung is using a Microsoft Cloud product does not make it responsible for what Microsoft does."

But they do have responsibility for their choice to use it.

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Re: Not the problem

Yes. Apple. And probably a few others are salivating. Even now either Google have had something similar in the works for a good while or somebody has had a bollocking for not doing it. And then there are all the security agencies. And more.

You meant users? Of course not, but they don't count; they're the product.

If you haven't updated your ThroughTek DVR since 2018 do so now, warns Mandiant as critical vuln surfaces

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The better null hypothesis for IoT devices would be to assume it's vulnerable and wait for a new item that it isn't.

US boffins: We're close to fusion ignition in the lab – as seen in stars and thermonuclear weapons

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Re: Self sustaining

It seems to be being hyped in the general press as experimentation for reactors.

Watchdog 'disappointed' it took NHS England over a year to release details of access to Palantir COVID-19 data store

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Re: Watchdog 'disappointed'

In order for the title of "Guardian" to be meaningful there needs to be a statutory power of veto and for the guardian to be in a position to exercise it before the proposed event.

Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland

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Re: Magna Carta there ...

Also regularly top of the tournaments when there wasn't any real fighting until his 60s - and there was no Seniors' circuit then (actually, with warfare being what it was there probably weren't many Seniors anyway).

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Re: Sumption is wrong

"it has periodically waxed and waned in importance"

Not least because John immediately tried to get it revoked so his disputes continued.

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So not quite as effective as a Rag Day occupation of the Tower of London when someone had noticed that the guard hut door opened outwards. Visit the Tower with a long enough rope wound round the waist...

Wow, was that nearly 60 years ago?

China orders annual security reviews for all critical information infrastructure operators

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Re: Mandatory Security Teams

None of that would happen because capitalism is "shareholder interest" and that interest is money, not the environment.

For large corporations the shareholdings are usually spread wide in pension funds and the like. The actual beneficiaries of the shares are very often unaware of their interest and have no direct means of exerting any influence even when they are.

The effective interest is that of senior management and their bonuses - and that, as we've seen, can be the case for non-profits as well. That's what needs to be reigned in.

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Re: Mandatory Security Teams

You're confusing long term and short term. As far as corporations are concerned anything that produces a benefit outside the current, or possibly the next quarter is of no consequence.

IETF rates itself 'minimally acceptable' on key measures of community, efficacy

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Re: Asia home to just ten per cent of respondents

"If you're a group of predominantly Chinese firms wanting to come up with a uniform approach to a technical problem what value does the IETF provide?"

That your approach is not only uniform between yourselves but uniform with the way the rest of the internet works?

The whole system depends on standards. What body works those out? AFAICS if it didn't exist it would have to be invented, if only to prevent ISO or the ITU taking over.

Apple says its CSAM scan code can be verified by researchers. Corellium starts throwing out dollar bills

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How do you audit a precedent?

British defence supplier Ultra Electronics to be sold for £2.6bn to US-controlled firm

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"albeit one headquartered in an allied country"

The Afghan government probably thought they were an ally.

The US doesn't have allies. It has interests.

Zoom incompatible with GDPR, claims data protection watchdog for the German city of Hamburg

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Re: Great Data Purging Revolution

"Problem is that nobody dares to prosecute them."

I wouldn't call Max Schrems a nobody. He's succeeded twice. That's why this particular notice has been issued.

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Re: Well, duh!

Want to use it for "AI", then spell out exactly what you want and why you want it.

And then get specific permission from each data subject based on that spelling out.

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Re: The fundamental problem

If the EU contrives a way to fast track the legal challenges then the not upsetting the sponsors bit might lead to changes.

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Re: "appropriate additional measures [...] to ensure [...] equivalent protection"

it may keep on moving data to US ensuring the "equivalent protection"

And how does it do that while US law overrides contract provisions? Encrypt it? Only viable if it doesn't have access to the key. Whatever it comes up with is only going to last as long as the next Schrems-style challenge.

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Not so much the software as the way the entire system works so that no entity with exposure to US legislation can get its hands on the data. Licensing the IP to an EU franchisee with a strictly hands-off clause for the franchisor might do the trick.

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"And that came as a shock to a lot of people, since it rather suggested that the model clauses were not fit for purpose."

That would be those people who'd been engaging in wishful thinking. Anyone engaging in just straightforward thinking would have seen that any business exposed to US legislation couldn't cover themselves that easily.

In Search of Lost Time: GNU Grep 3.7 released with fix for 'extreme performance degradation'

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Re: You'd think

You might think the versions in distros based on Debian are a bit dusty. That's because Debian likes to let the dust settle on tweaked versions - for reasons such as the events in the article.

Internet Explorer 3.0 turns 25. One of its devs recalls how it ended marriages – and launched amazing careers

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Isn't the spec evolution a consequence of chasing the devs' non-spec additions?

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Re: Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things

It's all explained at the end of the article. He's now a CEO.

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Good advice in that link but I remember one project where we didn't throw away enough of the old code.

Google Groups kills RSS support without notice

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" If Google mentioned its plan to drop RSS from Groups at the time, it did so very quietly."

It must have been one of those water-cooler conversations people keep going on about.

Pi calculated to '62.8 trillion digits' with a pair of 32-core AMD Epyc chips, 1TB RAM, 510TB disk space

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Re: Engineering approximation

Did you ever wonder why your tyres didn't fit properly?

Remote code execution flaws lurk in countless routers, IoT gear, cameras using Realtek Wi-Fi module SDKs

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Re: Prediction

And that's the purchase by the distributor.

Scalpel! Superglue! This mouse won't fix its own ball

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Re: The sweet smell...

Back in the days of valves a transmitter unit came back from loan (they were used in silent alarms) with a dead mouse inside.

Dallas cops lost 8TB of criminal case data during bungled migration, says the DA... four months later

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Re: This is why we still use tape libraries.

"guarded by <insert superheroes of choice>"

Dallas's finest.

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Re: This is why we still use tape libraries.

" I wouldn't expect a DB migration (eg. MySQL -> Postgress) to impose a deletion of source data."

Are you sure? Always best to scrub a disk before putting it on eBay.

India makes a play to source rare earths – systematic scrapping of its old cars

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This is a non-announcement.

Yes. Look at the relevant sentence: "Now when there is scientific and technology-based scrapping, we will be able to recover even rare earth metals."

"Now" is a bit of verbal fluff. The relevant word is "when".

And "we will be able to recover" is (a) in the future tense and (b) it falls way short of saying "we wll recover".

Debian 11 formally debuts and hits the Bullseye

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New versions of Debian & derivatives such as Devuan are usually quite usable long before the official release. I'll be switching my main laptop over as soon as I find time. I installed it on another recently & it seems OK. I had Beowulf running on a Pi for my NextCloud server many months before release.

BOFH: 'What's an NFT?' the Boss asks. In this case, 'not financially thoughtful'

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Re: I expect Simon the PFY to split the proceeds

"had a degree of polish that modern Linux distros can only dream of"

I wouldn't go as far as that but if SCO had cut prices back in the '90s it's quite likely that Linux would never have become more widespread than, say, Reactos. At the time is was a well established server running on affordable hardware and capable of running a small business, especially when combined with Informix. A lot of small businesses did indeed run on it and, in turn, provided at least part of the income of freelancers such as myself. Fond memories indeed.

Tired: What3Words. Wired: A clone location-tracking service based on FOUR words – and they are all extremely rude

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Re: Not my kind of humor, but

One of the problems - explained in a Wikipedia article references somewhere in this thread - is that truncating the coordinates doesn't just affect precision, i.e. imply a bigger area, it affects accuracy because it points to a different location.

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Re: Not my kind of humor, but

The homophones wouldn't matter so much if they were located together. For instance if some enchanted evening was next to sum enchanted evening it would only be a few metres astray. But even if that were fixed the proprietary nature and single point of failure would remain a problem.

Before I agree to let your app track me everywhere, I want something 'special' in return (winks)…

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You have to realise that the likes of Google don't sell you anything. They sell advertising to advertisers. They have collaborators in their customer firms: those in the advertising departments who wouldn't have a job if they weren't buying advertising. The advertising industry as a whole is, therefore, very good at selling advertising. They can produce some rather one-sided figures to allow their collaborators to "prove" what a good job they're doing because one or two adverts sell something to those who were actually searching for whatever it was that was being sold.

The figures are one-sided because they have no way of counting (and no intention of trying to) those who are so annoyed by having ads this or that product shoved in their faces that they'll go to enormous lengths to seek out an alternative should they want something in that category.

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Re: Location data is useless...

Routing algorithms can be strange. Almost all route-finding sites want to take me through a notorious bottleneck for any destination to the SW. Almost anyone local will take an alternative route. I'd turn right out of my gate for either their route or the right one but that variation of their route goes over a weight-limited stretch of road. Their version would have me turn left. Taking that option I'd have to turn right at the end of the road. That's a sharp reflex angle. They have me turn left and then do a reverse turn at a side road a few hundred yards further on.

Clearly they're coming up with an HGV route which I suppose is better than coming up with a car route for an HGV driver.

None of that, however, explains the situation some years ago where at least one site came up with a route which turned off their preferred route, headed of to a rad with a dead end a few miles further along and a few hundred yards later turned in what is, in fact, a private yard to head back to pick up their route again.

A few days ago we went to the Black Country Museum in Dudley. All the sites recommended a route for the last few miles leaving the dual carriageway and going through what looked like some sort of rat-run. It worked as a route but it's difficult to say why. Can anyone who knows the area explain why they would recommend turning off the A463 onto Vulvan Street etc rather than carrying on to the end and then taking the A4123?

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Re: Inspiration from the Secret Policeman's Ball

Use KeePass (other camel case options are available) to hold the questions and answers.

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