* Posts by Doctor Syntax

32762 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014

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That awful moment when what you thought was a number 1 turned out to be a number 2

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Passwords

"Unfortunately, that's not practical for any system that's more critical, as it requires storing the password in either plaintext or decryptable fashion."

Not quite true. The alternative is to generate all the off-by-one character passwords and store the hashes of those but it's an expensive way of enlarging your attack surface. I suspect a similar approach is taken for systems which ask you to type in letters 2,5 and 8 of your password.

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Re: People still use cheques in the 21st century?

"No issues with their product, but now they spam me every few days with their discount offers wanting me to order more. The amount I purchased should last me until about 2030 at the rate I use them."

Somehow I can't get rid of the idea that marketing and HR squabble over the same set of potential recruits.

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Re: How to write directions...

Let me add

3) The person trying to follow the instructions is allowed to ask just one type of question - "Where does it tell me how to do..." and you're only allowed to point out where - or admit the absence of it. Taking over or telling them what's not in the instructions is strictly off limits.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

"Old people, i.e. those from age 70 to age 105, still use checks (cheques) and like stuff mailed to them, because, they missed the computer age, but are still alive. They don't have e-mail, don't have a computer, they don't do texting, they pay bills by check (cheque)."

Let's take that apart.

"Old people, i.e. those from age 70 to age 105,"

Yes, I fall into that category.

"missed the computer age"

I learned FORTRAN about 1969 or 70. Were you even alive then?

The first 8-bit micro appeared in 1974. I remember reading about it then but didn't actually get to use a Z80 S100 system for real production work in a lab until about 1977. Had you made it into this world by then?

By the early/mid 1980s I was into Unix and RDBMS. Do you remember those days?

Whatever you may think the computer age didn't start with my son's generation with their Spectrums and Amigos. It didn't even start with my generation. It was the generation before that that got things going.

Admittedly it's a good while since I had to write a cheque but SWMBO needs to do so about once a month because the community centre fron which she rents a room to run a course in prefers to be paid that way. And before I retired I was quite pleased to receive cheques and somewhat more reluctant to send them because that's how my business was paid and also paid its taxes. That business was a consultancy. An IT consultancy - or a computer cuonsultancy if you prefer the term. Not bad for an oldster who missed the computer age.

Kids today! Totally innumerate|

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"Check Webster's."

Quite so. "Check" is what you do with a dictionary.

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Re: The $5000 serial port cable

"Karma is a lovely bitch"

Not really. Grendle was by then probably working for another company. And then for another. And....

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"Not your fault"

Oh?

The user interface was broken and it wasn't the fault of the people who broke it?

Add the button to the end, not where something else is expected.

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Re: Problem with learning parrot fashion

"It's part of a wider problem of people not wanting to bother with the what and how of the stuff they use. It's a kind of snobbery."

There are two separate issues here. Not needing to know something beyond what you need to know to use it is one thing. Promoting not knowing and not being able to known into being some kind of virtue is the snobbery.

I know what keys to press on my TV remote to get it to do what I want. I've never needed to delve into what IR codes it transmits so I haven't done that. The fact that someone else knows those codes does not make them morally inferior.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Problem with learning parrot fashion

"the vendor of the computer completely changes the way it works"

This is a clear indication that marketing has taken over system design.

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Re: Trying to teach...

"Often it will be the fault ofa low level supervisor who is both lazy and doesn't want anyone to know enough to challenge their position."

Or doesn't know themselves. Repeat up the scale until you get to one senior enough to have a PA who actually knows stuff.

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Re: In pre-computer days people were used to memorize sequences....

"It's Friday (obviously since the article was On Call)"

Good to have these reminders. The days are all starting to look alike in these locked down times.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

"They stop people thinking about the abstractions"

The problem may well have been more basic than that. If the user has only ever been told click "this, click this, go there, type that, click here and here" then there are no abstractions to think about.

BT reopens £90m UK High Court case over 1970s VAT 'overpayments'

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"a big dollop of tax (free) cash would be very welcome at the one-time state monopoly"

It wouldn't do the pension fund any harm either.

BT providing free meals to coax its healthy customer support staff back into office as calls rocket amid pandemic

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Escalate? There's escalation? The only escalation I've come across was me walking to the village to find a couple of guys the operator didn't know about in manholes* redoing all the connections to the cabinets. The alternative escalation offered was an engineer visit for which I'd have been charge if no fault had been found - which there wouldn't have been as the maintenance would have been finished by then.

But only "not particularly surprised"? I doubt BT management has changed much in the last qusrter century or so** so not in the least surprised.

* Personholes if you prefer.

** Is it really that long? Nearly. Wow!

Astroboffin gets magnets stuck up his schnozz trying and failing to invent anti-face-touching coronavirus gizmo

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Re: What a hoot(er)!

My take on it was that he has a nose for interesting, new problems.

Delivery drones: Where are they when we really need them?

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Finally - a good use case. And as it can only carry one you don't even have to fork out for a round.

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The despatch points for most carriers seem to be at least 20 miles from where I live, the exception being Royal Mail at 2 miles.

The despatch depot can fill an entire van with parcels and set it trundling round the route - one round trip delivers many parcels. If the current drone problem is getting the payload up to one decent-sized parcel it sounds as if they haven't got near their real problem - a drone with the carrying capacity of a van to replace the multiple 40 mile return journeys per parcel.

Then, when we've got drones that size we have a whole new problem...

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Re: "Futurist predict"

"I live in an area with buried utilities."

All the utilities may be buried but I'd guess any street lights are still overhead.

'Social distancing champ' Linus Torvalds releases Linux 5.6, tells devs to put health before next release

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Re: Whatever for?

Calling them smart speakers is classic getting rid of the difficult bit in the title. They are, of course, smart listeners (for some value of smart).

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Re: "the pandemic has wiped out pension funds and investments"

Technically a good many pension funds were already wiped out* in that their assets didn't meet their predicted future liabilities.

Their managers may still be hoping the pandemic wipes out some of their liabilities**. However, as a member of one of those schemes I'm doing my best to frustrate that.

* Thanks largely to governments that enforced "payment holidays" based on over-optimistic projections and then became addicted to low interest rates than ensured the projections were even more over-optimistic than ever. It's in the nature of pensions that making up those missed payments is a good deal more onerous than making them at the time would have been.

** Realistically what they're probably most hoping for is a big increase in interest rates so that the payouts from their assets are restored to expected levels.

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Echo chamber aside

"The is an almost perfect inverse correlation between Malaria and Corona virus incidence apparently."

On your own criteria - data?

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

"According to some, we should wait for peer reviewed well designed studies - in other words, until after it's too late - to try anything."

It's the peer reviewed well designed studies that tell you what to use in clinical practice. The substances tried in those studies aren't "anything", they're those that existing knowledge suggests might be useful and not likely to be harmful. Your "anything" ranges from water diluted with water diluted with more water to cyanide.

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Re: I call fake.

Possibly but then if they lose count they wouldn't know when to stop adding a few more.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Whilst We’re On the Topic...

"And what a lot of academics are interested in is topics that might attract fame or fortune. Topics like cancer. There’s a lot of money and fame at stake for whoever solves that one."

Let's try to unpack that a bit. What a scientist researches is the consequence of two things.

One is the particular field in which they find themselves. A virologist, cancer specialist or whatever is likely to have started down that line early in their career because something they encountered grabbed their attention and/or because the subject suits the way they think. Just think of your own situation here: why is it you do whatever it is you do and not something else?

The other is the financing for that field. It's society as a whole that determines what that is. If society were prepared to put a lot of money into cancer research and none at all into virology than the only work the virologist could do would be on those cancers caused by viruses such as HPV.

Of course some research institute could take the money it's been given for cancer research and, on the basis of its own unilateral decision that not enough money for virology, divert wome of it in that direction. A few moment's thought should be enough to realise the likely outcomes of that are going to range somewhere between loss of future funding and prosecution for fraudulent diversion. It wouldn't lead to more virology.

If you think some aspect of science doesn't get the attention it should don't blame the people working in some other field, blame the way society chooses to allocate its money.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Echo chamber aside

"It's more impressive if you come hold a hand of a current COVID patient. Or come and have a cuppa with those who are pulling the double/ triple shifts right now."

I always found the visits from the big cheeses were simply obstructions to BAU and hence couner-productive.

Yeah, that Zoom app you're trusting with work chatter? It lives with 'vampires feeding on the blood of human data'

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

"Well, maybe the corporate legal team actually did due diligence and checked out the Ts &Cs. Who knows?"

You could ask them and find out.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Hmm

"We sincerely apologize for this oversight, and remain firmly committed to the protection of our users' data,"

I doubt my reading of statements like that is ever the same as that hoped for by those who make them. What was the oversight? What use are they protecting it for and by whom?

There should be a very clear test here: can collection and retention of user data (other than that needed to make the serice work) be turned off and if it can does the provision of the service depend on its not being turned off? A "no" to either must surely be a GDPR failure.

Drones intone 'you must stay home,' eliciting moans from those in the zone: Flying gizmos corral Brits amid coronavirus lockdown

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BoJo is supposedly an admirer of Churchill. Odd that he seems to have missed the latter's emphasis on keeping up morale.

Interested in Busting a Move? Mmmm? IBM UK: We couldn't get to GTS redundo numbers we need by voluntary means

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Re: In an email to staff on 25 March, Brian Farr, IBM UK veep....

"an outstanding Delivery Executive"

Maybe he should join the programme himself. The supermarkets are a bit short of van drivers at present.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, health secretary Matt Hancock both test positive for COVID-19 coronavirus

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Working from/at home isn't quite as thorough means of isolation as you'd hope when your home is also the office from which the country's being run.

Borky shark: A deserted airport and a Raspberry Pi feeling poorly at baggage claim. Welcome to 2020

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Re: Surprised the byline didn't say

Byline reminded me of a display in The Deep in Hull years ago. That was a borked WinNT or maybe W2K.

Short of tech talent to deal with novel coronavirus surge? Let us help – with free job ads on The Register

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Good move.

Nice one. Give the vulture a big hand!

IT services sector faces armageddon as COVID-19 lockdown forces project cancellations – analysts

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Re: Big outsourced contracts will fail but the right startups won't

There might be quite a few startups in the pipe-line. People stuck at home who had that idea they've had for ages and never got round to dealing with.

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Re: Real Effect?

Manufacturers might also start paying attention to avoiding single-sourcing of components and easing up on the JIT approach.

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Re: IR35

Postponed, not yet cancelled. This might be a good time for freelancers to write to their MPs pointing out what should now be the obvious flaws between the official tests of employment an the reality of being engaged off pay-roll.

Brit housing association blabs 3,500 folks' sexual orientation, ethnicity in email blunder

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A long time ago I took over a Housing Association application and discovered that the forms for every single aspect of the database were in a single program and thus anyone who need access to, say, property maintenance schedules could see anything else, such as rent arrears for any tenant. I made a start on unpicking it before I left. Back in the day neither the original client nor the developers seemed to have noticed nothing wrong with the original version of that. It sounds as if someone at WHA might not have either.

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Re: You have to wonder...

"No, it was Gilbert Harding."

The version I heard was Oscar Wilde. However there are probably quite a few people who would have done it.

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Re: re: why

"prove they're not [insert phobe de joir] in their housing policy"

I can't help feeling that the best way not to discriminate is to not hold the data which would enable discrimination.

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Re: Gay kids

"why they sent me a copy."

I'd guess it might have been more a matter of not being able to not send it.

UK enters almost-lockdown: Brits urged to keep calm and carry on – as long as it doesn't involve leaving the house

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Delivery services? What delivery services?

The entire plan for this seems to have been to simply dump the whole thing on the supermarkets without so much as a heads up.

Tech won't save you from lockdown disaster: How to manage family and free time while working from home

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Re: Even if you are not mandated to stay at home, think twice before getting out

"And if something bad happens not virus related, hospitals may be too overloaded to treat you in time and/or properly."

Try to avoid that happening, to you or others. I happen to live in a country area with narrowish lanes (fortunately not Devon/Cornwall narrow) with a fair number of bends many of which are blind because of retaining walls and a popular walking destination. With the rapidly improving weather it would have brought a good number out to visit anyway and there's plenty of room to leave a few metres from other people.

But....The usual.

Pairs of cyclists riding side-by-side using the whole width of the road.

Cyclists ignoring the stop lines on the blind junction/corner.

Cars driving along too fast.

Lots of walkers about who need to keep on the visible side of any corner.

Yes, come and walk by all means. It will do you good. But stay safe. Country lanes are busier than you might think. Oh, and by the way, it's lambing time (thank goodness, it really cheers the place up) so keep control of the dog and keep clear of the sheep yourself; ewes can be very protective and even hornless breeds have a lot of hard bits.

Bad news: Coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the world. Good news: Nitrogen dioxide levels are decreasing and the air on Earth is cleaner

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

"It will also result in a significant population increase."

After the Black Death (which itself followed on from a famine earlier in the C14th) the population in England and Wales seems to have remained at the reduced level for some centuries.

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Re: "according to Worldometer's stats"

This virus will spread exponentially sigmoidally without the drastic measure being taken.

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"All we actually got were the 1970s"

Mathematics had something to do with that.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Short answer - we don't know how whether she's silent or not; media attention is elsewhere and it might never go back to her.

Somewhat longer medium-term answer: The world is getting a hard lesson on what happens when you disrupt the status quo. When the dust settles some of the "must do this RIGHT NOW" policies might start getting looked at more closely. There may be a realisation that change needs to be paced. Disruption gets looked at askance.

Somewhat longer long-term answer: Societies start looking more carefully at how they work. Is it really a good idea to concentrate work places into ever larger cities with ever-increasing commutes? Can work be returned to being closer to where people live? Should production be diversified and with shorter supply lines? The past few decades haven't been sustainable. Stand by for the new watchword: deglobalization.

Surge in home working highlights Microsoft licensing issue: If you are not on subscription, working remotely is a premium feature

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Re: Issue

"The issue is many organizations are not set up to have a large portion of their staff work remotely."

So this will be an interesting learning experience for them.

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They'd better be careful with those audits. I feel sure that those businesses that survive will be looking very carefully at how they do business in the future. Becoming seen as part of the problem and not the solution will be a good way to lose business.

Captain Caveman rides to the rescue, solves a prickly PowerPoint problem with a magical solution

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Re: Understated..

Too hard and shiny? Just like the bog rolls of old.

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My cousin-in-law is much better behaved.

Usually it's a matter of being asked to call in when I have time. A few weeks ago he rung up in a panic and said he was bringing his laptop round for me to look at right now. Unfortunately just as we were about to eat so SWMBO was finishing making dinner so that had to be put on hold. It turned out he was updating his anti-virus on his W10 <spit> laptop and it had just hung and wouldn't respond to anything, not even attempts to switch off.

A few minutes later - he only lives a mile away - he arrived. The screen was dark but the power LED was on. Fair enough it wouldn't respond to anything, not even a prod at the power switch. Best described as lights on but nobody at home. So while he was busy explaining his woe to SWMBO I gave the power switch a press and hold and watched it power off. Fortunately* it recovered itself to a stable state.

Unlike some folks' friends and rellies he was prepared to accept the difference between an long and short press on the power button as yet another thing to be grateful to learn. I wonder if that's because he himself had spent his working life in a skilled occupation and takes a fundamentally different attitude to practical knowledge.

* It's Windows: I wouldn't want to have to start debugging a mess and as he insists it's for his grandchildren to use play games on he wouldn't want me to install Zorin on that one; that being my usual approach to debugging Windows.

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Understated..

If you can manage with narrow loo roll a finely set plane and a steady hand might do the trick.

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