Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Conclusions?

"It's worth noting that FB have shouldered the maximum possible fine under the existing legislation (£0.5M). GDPR has provision for far greater fines (4% of annual global turnover)."

Yup. Was going to say the same thing. Unlike many comments and the article FB should read this as a warning of what happens next time. We could also end up with the ICO and at least one EU regulator handing out 4% fines. A billion here, a billion there and it soon adds up to real money.

Re: Time to nationalise OverReach

"Ammend the housing act to require Fibre communications (or atleast the ducting for it)"

No need to nationalise it to achieve that, not do you need to amend any Housing Acts. Just add it to building regs. for new build.

Of course if you want to go back to the decades of under-investment that preceded privatisation you could nationalise it to do that.

Re: Germany is the workshop of the world

"Although Bittorrent is very illegal here, so I'm not sure what people will do with all the bandwidth!"

Commonly known as a solution in search of a problem.

Re: Ummm

Well but then only one phone would work, and only if you unplugged it, plugged it directly into the NTBA (which depending on the type of your line your phone may not support) and configured it to work with the "emergency power" mode which not all phones support.

I think we're at cross purposes here. The UPS at the switch (or exchange if that's what you prefer to call it) powers the entire local POTS network. True if you only have cordless the base station will die without a local UPS. But it's simple and easy to have a POTS phone plugged directly into the line as well as the cordless set-up. Provided you don't exceed the REN you can have multiple phones plugged in.

Re: Every Telephone Pole Resembled The Mess Associated With Wire Frames

On my road almost every house except mine is cabled overhead although the main distribution is underground and ducted.

But on estates built since, say the '60s like my daughter's the entire telecoms network is buried. Unless the houses have individual ducts into which the cables can be blown there's going to be a choice: dig up every drive and garden, dig a trench into the street at every house at least on one side of the street and reinstate it all properly or tkae the cheap and nasty option of installing a mess of overhead cables.

I wonder which it will be.

Re: Rolling in cash

"Money-tree policy?"

That's right, the money trees are fertilised by the unicorns cocking their legs against them.

Re: Ummm

"They cant even fit a smart meter"

Not all bad, then?

Re: Ummm

"Well just like you do with copper lines, have an UPS on your PBX."

One humongous one at the switch, regularly checked and maintained rather than a lot of little ones, probably costing n times as much to get the same capacity, fitted and forgotten and half of them dead when needed.

"labour cost are not needed to be calculated into the initial build if you go the Co-op route (pay them back with the profits)"

ITYF that if you try to do that on a national scale you'll need a labour force that needs to be paid as they go.

dispense Gin Black Bush instead of water

"The money's there - its just it is being wasted on other poorly conceived infrastructure programmes."

So switch it from one poorly conceived infrastructure programme to another. Right. It'll make us all better off or something.

Re: Brexiteers jump ship

"Not Clarkson?"

With two Jeremies in the hunt already, so to speak, we don't need another and one May is surely enough. Many would argue more than enough.

Re: Brexiteers jump ship

"My money is on a new PM before Parliament returns after the summer recess."

You could be right and my money would be on it being Hammond.

Re: Brexiteers jump ship

"Capt May has hit the iceberg but continues to order full steam ahead"

As reality sinks in I think it's slow astern to the only reasonable Brexit; one where we keep just about everything intact in trading terms to minimise damage but, not actually being in the EU, have no say over the rules. It's called taking back control.

I think it was Matthew Parris who said reality will do the heavy lifting.

BoJo was right for once. The compromise was turd polishing but I don't think he'd quite cottoned on to the fact that the turd is Brexit itself.

Re: Now, if only Git could work under Windows...

"In fact, isn't this exactly why Linux has such a hard time on desktop? Written by nerds for nerds."

You've never used a Linux GUI, have you?

Re: And this is bad?

"Anyone else think UX peaked back around 2000 or so and has degraded slowly since?"

Lots of us. Now will somebody please do the same thing for a KDE 5 decoration theme.

Re: UI elements that make it obvious what they do?

"What's wrong with coloured rectangles"

Other shapes are available for additional confusion.

And don't also forget the lack of state information to tell you that this control has been clicked or is currently inactive.

Re: "Interaction" != work

"it was based on a badly designed experiment"

I'm sure the eds and referees of Proc. Roy. Soc. B will, in future, defer to your superior wisdom in matters of experimental design.

Re: Is it just me?

"You never see the PHBs cramming themselves into these open plan offices."

In general, no. But I do recall one instance where this happened so that senior management toys out of pram shouting matches were a spectator sport for everyone else.

Re: I could do with a list of banks that actually consider IT important enough to keep in house

Here it is:

Re: Wrong Question!!

"Murphy syrikes"

Yup ;)

Re: Move on please, there's nothing to see here.

<em.We created this problem when it was decided that patenting software "methods" was a good idea.</em>

Who's this "we" of whom you write?

Re: Globular clusterfuck

"Do they just string words together and hope there is a message therein?"

Or just string words together and hope people will think there's a message therein?

And do they really believe their own words?

Re: a sort of oversized Meccano.

Or what real engineers call "Dexian".

OK, oversized Dexion.

There used to be a Dexion shop in N London, long gone, of course. It's right what they say: the variety has gone out of the High Street these days.

Re: Only cracking I have done is

"it turned out that their gates simply lifted off the hinges."

The comms team had a big cabling job to do at the warehouse over a weekend. The warehouse was near a football ground. When they got there they found some local wide boys had lifted the locked gates off the hinges and were selling car parking to match goers.

Re: Only cracking I have done is

"stone castles were reasonably impregnable to direct attack."

A bit more laborious but you could also undermine the walls. It needed some sort of shelter unless to approach. You shored up the excavation with wooden props until a enough length of wall was undermined and then light a fire to burn the props out. I think this how "mine" also came to be used for an explosive device.