* Posts by Doctor Syntax

32762 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014

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Single-line software bug causes fledgling YAM cryptocurrency to implode just two days after launch

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Re: Investment?

"a huge implied "Beta" tag on its front door"

That's an insult to Beta.

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Mr Barnum can explain it to you.

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Re: I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Or was it money in, garbage out?

Of course that's been going on a long time as well.

US govt proposes elephant showers for every American after Prez Trump says trickles dampen his haircare routine

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Re: "followed closely by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson"

"Can I join your fringe?"

Sorry, no. I need to keep what's left to myself these days. Have to avoid the PHB look.

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Re: "followed closely by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson"

If you seriously think that look at the picture the Beeb used to illustrate this story. it's ill-hair-ious.

How do you solve a problem like Privacy Shield? US and EU policymakers kick off discussions

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Pint

'different wallpaper, same cracks'

A gem. Give the man a

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"Or perhaps those in the EU could be given rights to challenge US surveillance programmes before US courts?"

Give them rights to challenge them in EU courts would be better. What a pity that for us in the UK it's all academic now.

Trump administration reportedly offers Oracle cheap end to $400m wage discrimination case

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Re: Wish us luck. We'll need it.

"Which shows that the open ended language in the Constitution should be tightened up"

That's the problem with a written constitution. It's harder to change to adapt to new circumstances.

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Re: Wish us luck. We'll need it.

"It's now 244 years since the people of the United States freed themselves from the rule of George the Third. "

And yet they didn't separate the head of govt. and head of state roles.

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"all the folks who didn't toe the line have been forcibly removed."

And in some cases sent to the HoL to make sure they don't get re-elected to challenge the clique later.

Ink tanks park themselves all over the lawns of Western Europe as orders flood in

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There isn't a complete division between colour documents and colour photographs. If I want a good quality print of a photograph then a special photo-quality printer is needed but for occasional use it's far cheaper to take it to a print shop. OTOH it's perfectly satisfactory to produce written material with colour photographs included as illustrations.

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"if you are not careful, colour lasers can be very expensive to run"

My experience with a Brother is that it has a separate black cartridge and that by default when printing black text it only uses the black cartridge so this is no more expensive to run than a monochrome laser give or take the price per page of the respective models.

Since I got it I've printed quite a bit of colour work. I run off handouts for my wife's patchwork class with a colour photo of the current week's project on the front page.

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"If you absolutely must have colour, then an inkjet coupled with a cheap monochrome laser makes the most sense, unless you are printing a *lot* of colour stuff that needs to look professional."

Your way is also expensive if you're printing colour rarely because inevitably the ink has dried up since the last run. So you then have the situation where an ink cartridge only lasts a few sheets and your have the inconvenience of having to go out and find somewhere to sell you a cartridge or wait a few days for an on-line purchase to be delivered when a colour laser would print it out right now.

Just get the colour laser - which includes a black cartridge - and set the driver to only use the black cartridge for black text. You might have to replace the black cartridge more than the coloured ones but so what?

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How's that cheap-printer,-ransom-via-cartridges business model looking now?

NHS tests COVID-19 contact-tracing app that may actually work properly – EU neighbors lent a helping hand

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"and anyone else who was passing"

Providing they passed under social distancing rules.

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Re: As far as I can tell, Northern Ireland is part of the UK....

The principle involved is called "Not Invented Here". The purpose is reducing the visibility of egg on face. It's got a long tradition in government circles but particularly desired by the current one at present.

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Re: More useful

"I would like to keep my distance from them."

You should be doing that anyway because you should be keeping your distance from people in general. The whole purpose of the app is to tell when you've failed.

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Re: Like to have an expert check the privacy statement & app

I agree it now has proper privacy terms. However it's not surprising that people will treat it with a degree of distrust.

Firstly the original world-beating plan was going to harvest personal details and keep them (strictly for limited purposes of course) for a few decades.

Secondly successive governments have shown themselves to be data fetishists and the current government's reliance on more of the same only makes things worse.

Thirdly the whole shebang has been put under the charge of a serial failer when it comes to protecting customers' PII.

There should be a lesson for governments here. There will come a time when you really need peoples' trust about handling personal data. Trust is a fragile thing. Once you lose it it's not very readily rebuilt. Best not to lose it in the first place.

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Re: How will they know it's a false alarm?

No it is not better. for reasons given in the post to which you replied.

Look at it on a personal level. If, having emerged a day or so ago from your 3rd groundless period of self-isolation - unpaid if you can't work from home - what are you going to do when you're told yet again you're a contact?

If you lack the imagination to see how it plays out in that way ,let's try reductio ad absurbam. If false positives are good let's just declare the entire population as contacts and have everyone self isolate. A bit rough on those depending on carers to live but once everyone's emerged again and cleared away the bodies we're free from the virus. Was it a good idea?

The requirement of any sort of test is its ability to discriminate with a minimum of false positives and false negatives. The problem with this sort of test is that it hasn't really got a good discriminating power. The appropriate response isn't to bias it towards false positives toavoid false negatives and leave it at that. False positives are just too expensive at both the individual personal level and at the collective economic model; we can't afford them.

What should be done with a test like that is to refine it as much as possible but then treat it as an indicator that a more definitive test is needed. The number of tests currently being processed is well below capacity. Instead of telling the positive contacts to self isolate use that spare capacity and test them. I suppose in another month or two the idea might dawn on Cummings or somebody.

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced techie is indistinguishable from magic

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I remember a chemical balance that changed its reading as you leaned over it. It was one of these https://oertling.com/balances/top-pan/tp-series.php used to weigh out small amounts of expensive reagents. The reading would change as you leaned over it which made using it a tad tricky.

It was on a bench on the first floor of a building put together by some 'orrible '60s steel-framed pre-fab technique. The concrete floor slabs were supported on a triangulated mesh of steel tubes sufficiently flexible to move very slightly in response to the movements of whoever was standing on them.

We didn't have any problems with the replacement. It was replaced after the building was destroyed in a fire and the replacement building was a nice solid reinforced concrete job.

Splunk sales ace wins sex discrimination case after new boss handed her key accounts to blokes deemed 'flight risks'

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Now will she really rub salt in the wound by joining a competitor, calling on all her old contacts and nicking the accounts?

Bratty Uber throws tantrum, threatens to cut off California unless judge does what it says in driver labor rights row

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Don't argue with judges and certainly don't bluff them. They'll call your bluff and raise you contempt of court.

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Re: I am conflicted on this

It's not at all a simple issue. The right to be in business - and sub-contracting is one way of running a business - is something that I think should be protected against the predations of the likes of HMRC. OTOH, back in the days when I was on the PCG's consultative committee we were concerned about forced incorporation of low paid workers.

It's something that needs to be properly addressed by legislators.

You weren't hacked because you lacked space-age network defenses. Nor because cyber-gurus picked on you. It's far simpler than that

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Re: Too hard, too frequent, too unreliable

" We were sold this package on the basis of 99.999% uptime."

And there's the flaw in the thinking. Start thinking in terms of useful availability and downtime. You're trying to manage for minimum loss of useful availability due to downtime. If downtime isn't planned - you had a hardware failure, you got hacked, whatever - then there's no guarantee of it falling into a time of minimum usage. Planned downtime can be arranged fro when it will have minimum impact and its purpose is to minimise the risk of unplanned downtime. But risk is harder to measure than uptime.

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

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I think my Latin teacher was teaching from personal recollection in the '50s.

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Re: maybe there is hope

There's a school of thought that says no sane person would want to get into politics. With the advent of Social Media I'm sure that must have become incontestable.

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I wondered whether he was teaching history from personal recollection but Wellyboot's post set me right. He was just spending too much time in the pub.

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Re: Naming astronomical objects

The original "George"was disallowed.

Irony, thy name is SANS: 28k records nicked from infosec training org after staffer's email account phished

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Re: Eh, what?

It's not very reassuring that they don't know the difference.

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I think they meant spam lists.

UK.gov to propose new rules for online political campaigns after last election marred by an avalanche of fake news

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Re: Proposal

Poacher turned gamekeeper or, more likely, putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

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Re: The real problem with the BBC

"do the right thing and resign"

When did that last happen in the UK? Resign in a fit of pique, maybe. Take responsibility for a cock-up? Maybe the occasional minister might have jumped before he was pushed but otherwise, no.

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"Did you see Boris Johnson on your ballot paper? Or Michael Gove? Or Dominic Cummings?"

Depending on where you lived you might have seen BoJo or Gove. Cummings, no.

Firefox maker Mozilla axes a quarter of its workforce, blames coronavirus, vows to 'develop new revenue streams'

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Re: You know,

Your Netscape Communicator lives on. It's called Seamonkey.

What are you gonna do? Give me detention? Illinois schools ban pyjamas in online classes

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"everyone is on mute (enforced)"

You could set up backgrounds with pictures of yourselves in them and do something useful (or otherwise) whilst manglements mangle.

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Re: It would be good to see him back.

No sign of BOFH for some time either. Bring 'em all back!

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"And it's nearly lunchtime."

So time to get up?

Transport for London asks Capita to fling Congestion Charge system into the cloud

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Re: Get used to it

A non-hybrid EV might get you from Durham to Barnard Castle without stopping to recharge. London to Durham's a different matter.

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Re: £355m for 5 years!!!!

If current conditions continue to apply the problem will be solved. Cities of present scale will become redundant.

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In this case you've got to wait for them to make the mistake and have the inevitable result. Originally in CC security actually mattered;. Communications were point-to-point and none of your internet nonsense. Even internally subcontractors had to have secure production networks to handle the data. Now it's cloud.

We've reached the endgame: Bezos 'in talks' to turn shuttered department stores into Amazon warehouses

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Re: Coming soon

The Argos order-at-the-counter is only the way-stage to making attractive displays of goods round the warehouse and letting customers wander around, pick up what they like and just pay at the counter.

Pen Test Partners: Boeing 747s receive critical software updates over 3.5" floppy disks

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"You can't just clip into a pair of wires into the back of the aircraft and gain access to all of these."

Wait till he discovers them....

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Re: King's Quest

Or "Insert next tape" and you'd already inserted the last tape you had. And it was a database restore. Took me most of a weekend to find the tape someone kindly hadn't labelled.

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"the manufacturer advises the airline if they believe any work should be done on any particular part"

The trick bit is when they tell them it needs to be done right now.

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Re: Cloud

S'OK. Some of us got it.

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Re: Cloud

"a fly-by download"

Or fly-through.

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Re: Honestly..

Almost.

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Re: Honestly..

And many, many more of us thought along the same lines!

Super Cali COVID count is somewhat out of focus, server crash and expired cert makes numbers quite atrocious

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Re: Certificates are becoming the new DNS?

"nothing more permanent than a temporary solution."

And nothing more temporary than a permanent temporary solution.

Peer-to-peer takes on a whole new meaning when used to spy on 3.7 million or more cameras, other IoT gear

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Mushroom

"we imagine those updates haven't made their way to all installations just yet"

Are the devices able to re-flash their firmware? If not then the only suitable update is (see above).

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