Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: So they removed the impossible?

I think a lot of this nonsense originates from ISO9000 and its relatives. It starts with an innocuous statement that all jobs must be done by someone with relevant qualifications and/or experience. (NB this more or less knocks on the head any idea of recruiting the inexperienced and training them up). Then the next draft of the quality manual specifies a period of years. The next one says it must apply to all products in use. The next one says that departments must specify exact versions of products when recruiting.

If the penny ever drops that the quality manual is a millstone, in this and many other respect, it gradually starts being whittled down. Eventually it arrives at a statement that all jobs must be done by someone with relevant qualifications and/or experience. The ISO9000 certification simply becomes a badge saying the organisation wasted a lot of time, effort and money developing what is quite possibly a mediocrity management system - providing they're consistently mediocre everything's OK.

Re: No service update

Welcome to 21st century customer service.

Re: So now the UK is out of the EU...

I think your & the OP's downvotes were a reaction tone of the posts being found offensive by those who voted remain* but are now stuck with the result, those too young to vote but who are now stuck with the result, those who voted leave but now realise they were victims of a con, those who thought it wouldn't have any consequences & wanted to make a protest vote and, with less justification, those who didn't vote because they thought they didn't need to bother voting against something so self-evidently stupid would never get anywhere near a majority.

I'd guess that now amount to more than half of the UK's population.

* In case you've forgotten, that was a whisker under half the votes cast.

Re: Legal stuff

Thanks - adds context.

It still leaves the issues of just how much they had - that weasel word "included" - and whether they needed it all. And whether the drivers knew it had been passed on. We're still not at the stage where data is regarded as toxic: you may need to have some but it's safest to hold as little as possible. And insufficiently guarded is doubly toxic.

Re: Free secure data backups! Now!

I take it you're only suggesting it be free with Windows because Windows users are most in need of backups?

Re: A money saver!

It's probably also produced material for a PhD thesis. Maybe a bit too specialised to write it.

"He (and the rest of the legacy notable blue ticks) were the product"

Musk is probably running the site on that basis. Nobody told him that the product are the rank and file users who are sold to advertisers.

Re: Futile

"It might be a good idea to find out before widely deploying this stuff."

More likely the usual three step procedure will be followed:

Use it blindly, find out the hard way what doesn't work, "it's sooo last year".

"I guess you have what you deserve"

Those whose email addresses were inadvertently negligently shared didn't deserve it.

Re: Ask the dictionary

Growing up in the post-WWII years the typical usage seems to have been anyone involved in the sort of R&D that won the war (excepting, of course BP & the like which we were never told about). As such is was a term of respect. The IoPs problem seems to be that it's neglected to polish its own image.

" If you want to message someone on telegram, use telegram. If you want to message someone on WhatsApp, use that."

And what if you just want to have one ID on one system instead of buying into every service every would-be tech bro sets up

I don't have to have a mobile on every network and a landline from every landline operator because they all inter-operate.

I don't have to have email addresses with multiple MSPs because email inter-operates.

What's proposed here is to try to make messaging work the same way.

Re: It beggers belief...

The problem here is not with what's done and why. It's with the term "crop". If that's what's offered to the user then it's reasonable to expect the user to think that that's what will happen. What's actually happening would be better described as "frame".

LibreOffice Writer acts in the same way and the compress option only affects the image's resolution, not its boundaries.

Re: But I followed the rules...

They can wave it at the press, possibly successfully. Waving it in court is apt to be subject to more rigorous cross-examination.

Re: 35 years and Greed is still Goooood!

That comes later when they discover what the laid-off workers had been doing all these years.

Re: Intel

The logical extension of this is that they get down to 0nm & then have nowhere to go but negative numbers. Although, as you point out, the existing numbers are already imaginary.

Re: Tigers vs Zebra (fish)

It raises the question of how they behaved when they thought the hide wasn't empty.

"that was the good SCO"

Good it was but it still managed to price itself out of the market that could have been its own. It was doing well in the small server market but was too dear for the desktop. They did throw developers the sop of a distribution with full developer tools (which were an extra for the the normal server product) but with only a 6 month licence (although there was nothing in the software to enforce that).

By supporting them Microsoft not only spread FUD against Linux, the effort and cost of the litigation weakened SCO. Without that it might not have been as easy for MS to take over the server market.

generative "AI" systems

I think you misspelled "cryptocurrencies"

Re: That's just what we want you to think Earthlings

"the chances of life in the universe is 100%"

As someone with degrees in biological sciences I already knew that to be the case.

Having made that mid-life transfer - although that was into IT - I can endorse the idea of a mid-career change. However, in my case the trick was to have built up the skills for the second career as a side-line in the first. If you've worked in IT in some particular industry review your experience of that industry. Have you picked up sufficient knowledge of that to transfer out of IT into a wider business role?

Re: "This seems backward to us"?

You think pull requests aren't reviewed before they're accepted?

Re: For those neigh saying..

"I am under no obligation to publish more if I choose not to, just because someone wants a copy"

OTOH you should not have a problem if someone else makes a copy for the person who wants one. No skin of your nose etc.

In fact, my local history group has published a number of books in small print runs. This introduces the problem of what to do when they go out of print. Given the economics and likely sales of a second print run we have decided to put them on line as PDFs. Other historians, schools or whoever can still obtain copies & we don't have to deal with on-demand publication which can't be achieved at our typical prices.

Re: make a hasty move to another region

"one of the selling points"

You know what they say about being able to tell when a salesman's lying. His lips move.

Re: Ah, the good'ol days..

"It Still Does Nothing"

But obviously not true. It racks up charges, that's what it does.

Re: Shakespearian question?

You had me puzzled for a moment but, yes, it is that time of year. "The old sheep of the Lake District" to quote Rumpole.

Re: Meanwhile over at Microsoft

I find it not at all difficult to not use their browser because a find it not at all difficult not to use their OS.

It's best to fix problems at source.