Posts by JimC

Re: not happy when I said it looked like a great place to get legless in.

Well, I can't imagine they've heard that crack more than about fifty thousand times...

Re: so only highlighted text could be seen.

I once had a call from a very aggrieved user because I'd messed up her PC so only a few random letters were scattered round the screen. DOS Wordperfect highlighted certain letters, I forget details, but I think it may have been the beginning of sentences. You know the rest.

new password ... PC client apparently couldn't authenticate with.

Its remarkable easy when you have a whole lot of linked systems, all with their own rules. You have to try and work out a set of rules for the web system that make every password viable for *every* downstream system. Unless you can get permission to really relax the rules on the downstream systems it can be suprisingly difficult to do. Ideally you also need something in the ID management that will alert the user if any of the cascading changes fail.

Point missed

No, it needs to be secure and keep working. If its secure but doesn't work its at least as useless as if its insecure and working.

Re: F-ck Digital

I've always worked on the assumption that there is no privacy on the net, and no secrecy. As long as you operate on that basis there isn't really a problem. There's no privacy or secrecy in a busy restaurant or crowded pub either, and it doesn't stop us using them.

Re: The current state of US politics is chaotic. I don't recall in my lifetime more rancor here.

Yes, same this side of the pond. I think its a major problem for our political system. Whereas the other party were once "people with some strange ideas who I suppose probably mean well" now they are "evil monsters who want to destroy civilisation as we know it".

And the result of having two sides who gallop for the extremes can only be bad for the rest of us.

Re: Here's a thought

If you think train travel is any less vulnerable to malign interference... Coincidentally there was a feature on Railway signalling on BBC this am... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-41970331/signal-failure-the-train-traveller-s-nightmare-explained Talk about a target rich environment...

Re: declared a success before the election

Oh how naive we are. Of course it was declared a success by the people responsible for introducing it. Every major project is. The reason you'll often see a strategy change with a changing of the guard is that when no-one who came up with the idea is still there then the ballsups can happily be ditched. If you propose that while the proponents are still there you just label yourself as not having a can-do attitude. Of course that presupposes the alternative will be any better.

But, having worked in local government IT, much as I loathe Microsoft and their deeds, I really don't know how one could avoid them. The hundreds - and there are hundreds - of specialist applications just don't exist on other platforms. The result is that you are condemning your users to half ass lashups and second rate apps. And the IT is supposed to be there to help the users deliver services to the public.

Re: It is all a fraud and illegal cryptocurrency...

Rather than a fraud by bankers I thought crypto currencies were more of a money grab by those who kick the things off and generate large quantities of pseudo money which then inflates in value... Certainly seems to me that those who get in the ground floor of a crypto currency end up with a lot of "dosh" for moderate effort.

Re: Good on ya, PFY

If you really want to feel old, calculate how old the PF"Y" must be now...

> time to start using text only e-mail clients

IMHO there was never a time to stop using them. It was obvious from day 1 that html capable email and clicky links would be a delight for the malign.

> exclude all the fake servers

The end users' front ends simply won't access the fake servers, so no problem there.

You probably don't want them excluded from backup since in the event of requiring DR fake and live will both need to be restored.

And of course you do want to monitor them - that's the whole point!

Re: I'd like to see more

Dunno, Biomass is almost more important. I'm quite happy with the concept that species A is abundant this year and species B is abundant next year, but if the total biomass is down that means there's something that affects all insects. The car front/bike helmet spatter empirical observation also suggests a big fall in populations.

> Leeching

Surely the leeching parasites are the companies who are using GPL code without complying with the GPL? Unless I've understood this very badly the only people who are getting sued are people who have breached the GPL.

> Why quote times in EST on a British website?

There are sound arguments for quoting the original content rather than converting it. Would have been nice to list the GMT offset though.

For those who haven't clicked through, the closest approach is going to be over antarctica, so presumably no point in Brits looking out.

> hear about ... problem ... didn't affect anyone

To be fair, I don't think we'd hear about those at all. I imagine most cloud hosting sites would rather not let the customers know there had been a problem.

My experience has been that most PHBs I've been involved with would rather pretend there are no problems rather than tell the customer ever time there's been a problem which hasn't impacted the customer. Its the same mindset, I guess, that thinks those 9s come from writing the SLA, not good design and careful planning.

saving lives, expanding mobility and reducing congestion

Saving lives, obvious

Expanding mobility - for those who are too young, too old, too ill, too physically disabled or even too mentally disabled, for sure. Consider, for example, an epileptic who isn't allowed to drive.

Congestion - a factor in congestion is often poor driver behaviour, so there really is some potential there.

> every pension should be self funding

No, its pretty dumb for government pensions to be self funding. The government isn't going to go away, and isn't going to be spending much less money. If the government puts say 5 billion a year aside for self funding pensions, all that happens is the government puts another 5 billion on public sector debt, and the finance industry has another 5 billion to gamble with whilst paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses for"looking after the investment". If they don't borrow the 5 billion then they still pay out the same money in pensions, but they don't pay the interest on borrowing the 5 billion in the meantime.

Always follow the money. If government pensions are made self funding we tax payers are no better off, but the finance industry executives are. The reason for private sector pensions to be self funding is simply to guarantee the money is still there when the company is gone (Maxwell's permitting). It has no advantage for government pensions.

Re: Mr Fusion - Atomic Powered Aircraft.

If we have cheap enough fusion energy presumably we can synthesise hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 and carry on using jet engines.

> Security by obscurity is never a good idea

But it beats the hell out of security by sitting in the middle of the road, crossing your fingers and hoping no-one runs you over.

...for rich people.

Personally I am quite happy with the concept that I can't afford to take cabs very often because cab drivers make a decent living. I'm not comfortable with billionaires in silicon valley turning every group of employees into sub minimum wage temps, because I might be next.

It does occur to me that the petition signers have got the wrong target. If they feel its unfair that Uber have to comply with all the regulations they find so irksome then there should be a campaign to have all those regulations rescinded. Then Uber could keep their licence and all Uber's competitors would be able to operate more cheaply too and everyone would benefit. (Well apart from the people those regulations were intended to protect, but who cares about them?)

Re: something from his past that wasn't common knowledge

When desperate I used to suggest "OK, look out of the window, what can you see".

I don't *think* anyone ever typed in "RedFordFocus"...

Re: ridiculous demands

I think the prime minister would counter that the Internet firms have a huge history of crying wolf and claiming that things are impossible until they see a business advantage or are forced, at which point it suddenly becomes possible after all.

Re: Recipients could then trivially check for authenticity.

But if banks and signatures on cheques is any guide at all, most wouldn't bother...

Re: All nukes are ground-zero nukes when they detonate.

*Where* they detonate surely?

Re: Now, is this not effectively finding it guilty ... punishment.

I submit not.

More like a combination of selective breeding and removing a specific dangerous individual. Punishment also has an element of deterrence which does not apply.

Re: seem to be breeding a special kind of 'dumb'

Unfortunately the dumb is on the design side. The industry needs to design for people as they are, not as they'd like them to be, and it needs to design for a larger chunk of the bell curve. What was acceptable when IT users were a selected and trained cadre doesn't cut the mustard for a universal utility.

Re: insular prejudices

forums.theregister.co.UK

Re: Spanner in the works?

I for one refuse to use self service tills for exactly that reason.

Re: Because the law doesn't yet recognise it as a legal form of tender?

Does the US recognise any currency other than the dollar as legal tender?

> If anyone wants to do an academic study of his work

He's on record as despising the academic study thing, and as ensuring that all works in progress were destroyed once the final edit was complete.

He had a point I think, there are a good number of authors (CS Lewis, Isaac Asimov for two) on record as stating that all the analyses of their work that they had seen were utterly wide of the mark. So its unlikely post mortem ones were any better. I particularly liked Asimov's comment to one story which includes a distinctly Freudian image on the lines that he could imagine future critics getting very excited about the hidden subtext of this, but actually he'd done it quite deliberately...

Re:Like empathy and "doing good" are bad things.

Well they are if they are counter productive. If the ends can't justify the means, for sure the means can't justify the ends. If I am empathetic about the fears and frights of children being forced to have needles and drugs stuck in them, and ban vaccination, a conspiracy of the evil pharmaceutical companies, am I doing a good thing?

Re: Didn't some one wiser than me,,,,

Kinda the point of his "all the stories were boring". In general I think its not so much the plot as the writing around it that makes the thing work.

Although I can think of one author who I've given up reading because every book seemed to have so similar a plot it was getting to me. I shan't name, because if other people haven't found it irritating, but might if it were pointed out, then I'd be guilty of taking away their enjoyment .

A win by default?

Its surely not that unusual for an appointment to be made after all but one of the short list has been crossed off is it?

Re: In the near future

Oh dear, a tad naive are we today? The real name will have to link back identifiably to your ISP account, and your ISP account will have to link back identifiably to a real person, and we'll be in a whole world of PITA bureaucracy.