Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Anti-Jam

What they can do, as a body, is to refuse to fly in or out of any country found to be responsible for the blocking. Once a few countries find themselves without any air service for a few days the message will get through - act like a pillock and you become a pariah.

Re: Meetings

Seems a reasonable assumption.

Re: Learns?

I suppose a medical system does have some objective feedback - patient lives vs patient dies. It's the training that's too expensive.

"Have none of them ever heard of GDPR?"

Yes. This is what it's all about.

Simple solution is for the clients to take the attitude You want the gig? Here's the terms. If you can't meet them don't apply. Come back when you can.

If US suppliers can't or won't meet the terms it opens up an opportunity for European suppliers. If there are no alternative suppliers keep it in house until there are.

Maybe you should gently suggest that back when you were that unemployed 18 year old that money meant so much to you that now you're really doing it out of gratitude for the help they gave you then and not now for the money.

Re: One thing people tend to forget about FOSS.

"IBM is doomed to die, eventually."

The amazing thing is that it's still going.

Re: Old kit

More memory & maybe less S/W cruft might help.

Re: So why isn't IT kit like Jet Engines ........

The answer to that would be along the lines of:

How much did you charge for a jet engine N years ago and how much to you charge for one of the same power now?

How much did you pay for a computer N years ago and how much would you pay for one of the same power now?

Re: "But I hardly use it."

"but nothing jumped out at me"

Probably just as well.

I've got several towers. Sentiment forbids getting rid of them even though one of then is my only SCO box & won't run because it needs a new AT PSU.

Re: When you say "pants",

"My oldest machine still in regular use (ok, as a radio / media player, mpdroid is a wonderful thing!) is a netbook bought ca. 2010."

I still have a netbook of that vintage. I'm not sure of the age but it was in the days of W7. It used to get used a fair bit to take on holiday to check email or as a compact work machine when on Grandad's Taxi duty but the latter service has been suspended for a year or so. It still runs Linux just fine, of course but I did fire it up yesterday to see how the Signal download page looked when viewed in Windows.

Come the holiday season again (if it ever does) it'll probably get used again as the current laptop is a bit bigger than the previous one.

Re: Rules Testing

If somebody makes an offer like that it's up to them to make sure it says what they mean and if it doesn't to stand over it because it would be their fault.

Re: this guy is a STORAGE EXEC

As EULAs go it's quite short. Only 9 pages.

Re: Such bad planning!

It still means he'd been paying for something he didn't get.

Re: Amazon S3 Glacier?

Come to that, why didn't he use his own company's service? Probably because this was cheaper. Now he knows why.

Re: this guy is a STORAGE EXEC

Including knowing to read the EULA. And to put on the least favourable construction when clauses clash.

Re: Too late

Yup. That battle is well lost.

My current annoyance is "gift" as a verb. No, the verb is "give". "Gift" refers to that which is given. I think it must be something to do with lack of confidence in using an irregular verb.

Re: How did we get here?

I think it's called "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine".

Re: -Update Manager

"I've had to remove Pulseaudio in Kubuntu in order to get sound - perhaps I should rant at the devs? No, a bug has been reported"

Knowing Pulseaudio's provenance it'll probably get marked WONTFIX.

Re: "In a few of them it might even insist."

I didn't think you used Mint, Jake. Aren't you on Slackware?

Re: Wonder which part of Portland he's in...

"Managed to get by with an open log fire and my generator."

Lucky you. If HMG gets its way both of those will become illegal in the UK. Sitting and freezing to death in the event of a power cut will be allowed.

Re: Nope, COVID-19 is not a catch-all excuse for backdoor deals

"make them legally accountable for the promises they make"

Or to quote a previous PM: "Events, dear boy, events". Exactly what promises do you think the present government or opposition would have made in relation to dealing with a novel coronovirus before the last election? Or should the first reaction of a government to any unexpected event be to resign and call an election so that each party can make its promises as to how they'd deal with it?

Re: Nope, COVID-19 is not a catch-all excuse for backdoor deals

"And to eliminate the problem of MPs not bothering because they're in a Safe Seat."

Take a look at the N Ireland situation. Most seats held on the basis of the constituency religious demographic.

"Require all government ministers to be elected MPs"

And who is then to be govt. spokesman in the HoL? They need to be represented in both places. Personally I'd give the HoL more powers but insist that a substantial proportion of them are ex officio as presidents or the like of various chartered bodies such as the various Royal Colleges of $MedicalSpeciality, Royal Society, Institute of $ScientificOr EngineeringSpeciality.

"Just because some people have corrupted the English language, doesn't mean we should all fall to their level!"

Absolutely. There's more than a suggestion of Doctor Johnson's "So you looked for them." about all this.

"How is grandfather racist? Sexist/gender biased I can accept, but racist?"

It's also ageist which I thought was not only allowed but compulsory amongst these types.

"placeholder data" instead of "dummy data" - Again, no issue with this, though "test data" is shorter

Not a good substitute. A placeholder could simply be an empty field. It doesn't even have to look like data which dummy data has to. Test data may be a substitute but again it depends what you're testing for. If you're testing for data validation or sanitisation* the test data will include out of spec data. Dummy data probably wouldn't.

* Are we allowed to say sanitisation? We probably can't say sanity checks. Can we even say validation or is that being too judgemental?

"After all you don't get a new line every time you switch electricity provider so why should you depend on a particular mobile provider having THEIR mast near you so you can use the damn thing."

The physical electricity network is run by a single provider in each area. Ditto for gas.

If the same vendor independence were to apply to provision of mobile service then it's likely that the same thing would have to be done with the masts. I suppose it's possible that the threat of that would lead then to offer a roaming arrangement instead but without at least moves to force a combination the present situation will remain.