Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: The Terrible IT Manager

"No great loss when he didn't come back into work one day."

Carpet and quicklime or the foundation pour at the building site down the road?

Re: Mice

"You could barely see the logo image and and couldn't read the login box text but the customer didn't mention that"

Customer might have been used to a CRT with an anti-reflection screen over it. Remember those?

Re: Even easier to get wrong with Sun optical mice

"network cable that was coiled up under the desk, vampire taps and all."

I didn't realiseyou could coil up cable that took vampire taps in anything less than full room height.

Re: Even easier to get wrong with Sun optical mice

"I think I've still got one of those mouse mats in the bottom of the drawer at work."

/\/\j17's Uni wants it back.

Re: problems getting started

"The logo is to show everyone else - not for the user"

I've had at least one laptop where the logo faced the user when the lid was closed. In fact I still find it mildly annoying that things changed. After all, it was me who paid for it, not someody across the room.

Re: Why bother?

Carrying a chair leg to repair is also acceptable for target designation.

Re: Plague Doctors?

Meanwhil SWMBO is busy making some masks. Yes, theatre of dubious value but it might become socially necessary theatre over the next few weeks..

Re: Popcorn !

I was hoping the article would go on to say the UK court had found the US judges in contempt.

"they could always add security afterwards"

Conventional wisdom is that it's very difficult to add in security afterwards. Design it to be secure from the start.

If the VPN is run by a 3rd party company what does the P stand for?

By at least 2 hours 59 minutes

Easier still; start to put your T-shirt on - and stop.

Re: Wear the mask

I think what was confusing the A/C is that the graphs of total positive results is remaining flat. What the A/C fails to take into account is the increasing number of tests and that there's going to be a correlation with number of tests as well as with the number of actual infections. Tricky things, sampling effects.

Re: Wear the mask

"Fact is, they are are extremely useful and successful at both reducing the the potential for person to transmit it, and for somebody to actually breath it in."

Two different things with two different requirements. Preventing breathing it in requires an expensive mask with a proper filter system to trap aerosols and HMG quite rightly doesn't want people stacking these up alongside their mountain of toilet rolls, paste, flour etc. when the front-line needs all they've got.

Preventing transmission of a disease people have needs something to catch larger droplets. It's a lower spec providing you don't take it off to cough but if you're coughing best to stay at home and do a proper job of avoiding transmitting the disease.

Re: Decentralised

"They are really good at it."

It depends what you mean by good.

The report on the Beeb web site says they've picked up 4,000 who then tested positive, about 25% of the known cases. But they sent out 79,000 alerts so that looks like 95% false positives. What would the hit rate have been if they'd sent out 79,000 alerts to random people?

Re: my proudest moment

"My proudest moment has been finding a position that makes me happy to do what I do every day."

Just like the OP.

Re: So, Covid 19,..

"on prem compute is looking like it doesn't have much of a future"

It'll be back. Everything goes in, out and back in fashion in IT.

Re: Am I missing one huge thing.

" This also allows for the possibility of it telling you that you had received a false alarm and can go back to life as normal."

False positives are likely to be feature. Being told - maybe - that it was a false alarm might come as a relief at first. After a few false alarms, maybe discovered false by being told or more likely by the non-appearance of symptoms, leading to days of unnecessary isolation, will likely lead to the app being removed or at least disregarded.

What's needed is the ability to follow up all these alerts with a test with a quick turn-round.

Re: And the BCS position?

I got through most of the paper before going into skim-mode. In fact it doesn't quite seem to say what you think it says. That's just a summary of a large number of statements about how the system should work without pointing out that the govts. offering fails at a number of them. I wonder if it was written, at least in draft, before HMG confirmed what they were going to do. Alternatively it may have been craftily written so that at some future time they can point out that they were actually critical but without saying anything that will enable HMG to beat up on them right now.

I do like their phrase in support of mass-testing: “you cannot ‘big data’ your way out of a ‘no data’ situation”.

Re: I am reminded of the wonderful Joan Sanderson...

Haven't seen the film but thanks for the reminder of Joan Sanderson.

Re: My theory

And watch out for the Saturnian Murder Hornets.