CrowdStrike fiasco highlights growing Sino-Russian tech independence Some of the common arguments for moving away from proprietary operating systems are about increasing personal (or corporate) freedom and decreasing expenditure, but there are bigger things at stake. CrowdStrike's bad update took down Windows-based computer systems around the world and had wide-ranging impacts outside of IT. …
Does China and/or Russia actually open source the code for it's "home grown" linux variants? Who's actually performing security audits on these platforms?
Without wanting to sound too paranoid: given how authoritarian both governments are, I wouldn't be too surprised to discover that as time goes by, they become increasingly riddled with government-approved backdoors, in much the same way as the USA wanted to do with the clipper chip.
And one thing you can guarantee, is that once a back door exists, someone'll be standing there with a crowbar, ready and waiting to pry it open.
This post has been deleted by its author
From what I've seen the response to this is both yes and no, or to be to be more exact "It's us not them".
Most places in the west are boycotting / sanctioning, and preventing the "unwanted" countries from contributing. I think anyone who has run a software project will agree the hard part is getting engagement, contributions and feedback. Any minor hurdle and most people won't simply "give back" so it's relatively easy to prevent people from contributing.
You were doing so well up to this. Russia doesn't want to destroy Ukraine.
It's also where Russia & BlackRock have something in common. Destruction is temporary, and there's a lot of money to be made in reconstruction contracts. Currently Russia is doling out that pork, not Western companies. There are oddities, like the £50bn+ the UK's spending on HS2 vs a new rail line Russia's built to Crimea. Ok, that's not 'high speed' and Russia used a particularly agressive form of compulsory purchase to acquire the land. But it's boosting Russia (and partners) economy at the expense of Ukraine and the West.
It's much the same with sanctions, and the longer those go on, the more likely it'll be that Russia, China etc develop alternatives to Western products. Do BRICS members want to rely on MS+ClownsTrike, or would they prefer a lightweight OS & apps instead? Maybe with source code available if you want to check it for back-doors?
> the £50bn+ the UK's spending on HS2
Aint you 'eard? Rishi Sunak cancelled HS2 in favour of filling potholes, before Keir Starmer cancelled Rishi. People have to walk from Birmingham to Manchester now.
> check it for back-doors?
Winston: "Oh, Julia, let's get the new MINITRUTH E2EE app for the Telescreen! Then no-one will see our love notes!"
Julia: "Well Winston, I suggest we read through the source together first, to check Big Brother hasn't left in any back doors!"
[Off left: heavy knocking noise]
"Russia doesn't want to destroy Ukraine. Russia doesn't want NATO advancing up to its own borders."
Given that invading Ukraine prompted other neighbouring countries to apply for NATO membership that didn't work out well. You may well be correct in saying Russia doesn't want to detry Ukraine - it's just that its kleptocrats, having stolen as much as they can inside their own country want to steal another one and don't mind destorying it in the process.
Since when Albania and Croatia are neighbouring Russia ?
New countries are being co-opted into NATO in order for the USA to profit. In case you didn't notice, at this very moment from all countries involved in the conflict, Russia and USA are the only countries where economic growth is strong. EU's economy is for all purpose destroyed because they have to come up with the money to fuel the war and endure the effect of economic sanctions imposed by the Americans against Russia. To put this briefly, EU is providing the money, US is providing the weapons and Ukraine is providing the corpses. Feel free to believe otherwise.
Hmm. What countries might be on the borders of Russia and recently joined NATO? Starts with F. What countries aren't on the border but would be if Russia takes Ukraine? Starts with R. What country has moved closer to NATO membership and is in the latter position? Starts with M.
Maybe, if you went with countries that joined in 2023 rather than ones that joined in 2009, you might have already figured this out.
If you're really, really, old then you'd know that NATO is not, and never has been, a defensive alliance. Its a military organization that's set up to threaten the USSR and so bring it down. With the end of the USSR it should have been redundant but as we all know its really, really, difficult to dismantle a bureaucracy once its established, there's just too many jobs at stake. So NATO's always looking for new threats, in fact if you've been following it in recent months its now working on a presence in the Pacific.
Obviously the politicians and arms supplies like it because the whole thing is underwritten by the US taxpayer. European countries lack the 'total spectrum dominance' resources.so we get stuck with the tab. Some of us Americans are getting pretty fed up with this whole "guns before butter" mindset. If you know your history then the way to stop Russia from threatening you is to stop annoying them. It really is that simple. We're broke, anyway.
Being anti-Russia might be a reflex, though. Dating back to the Holy Roman Empire. The UK has always been obsessed with the place, it honestly thought that Tsar Nicholas, II, the "Bad Boy of Europe" (Putin for the 19th century?), was going to invade or something, its always been Russia except for the brief periods in the 20th century when Germany got out of hand. There was also this "Crimea War" thing, celebrated in verse, clothing and the old five pound note although I doubt if many British people know who/what/when or even why (they all know about the Charge of the Light Brigade but haven't a clue what they were charging against or where they were geographically).
I know more history than that.
I'm not so old as to remember the Great Game.
Russia's rulers do not want adjacent countries doing better and having fun, it sets expectations domestically.
Nor, I think, do they want a large reservoir of people able to accomplish the next revolution. The cull continues.
Ukraine was definitely spinning out of Russian orbit and latterly had ambitions to join both the EU and NATO, both of whom were fairly lukewarm in their response. Russia already had borders with NATO countries - and it has now doubled their length with the accession, principally, of Finland - as well as losing most of its European market for its most lucrative commodities. Even if that's what Russia wanted, its planning seems to have gone a little awry.
The idea that Russia invaded first Crimea and then eastern Ukraine "because NATO" is fairly idiotic. As you note, NATO was already there. Ukraine shifting from pro-Russian to pro-Western was a problem for Russia for one major, obvious reason: Sevastopol. That's the only good deep-water port on the Black Sea, which means it's Russia's only good close port to the Mediterranean, the Suez canal and Red Sea (and thence the Arabian Sea, East African coast, and Indian Ocean), the South Atlantic and West African coast.
Without Sevastopol, the Russian navy has to largely operate from the Baltic, Arctic, and North Atlantic in the west, and even in the east, they're pretty far from the Indian Ocean. Russia's ability to project naval power for a large portion of the world would be delayed and reduced. Losing Sevastopol means Russia's status as a superpower, or even a world military power, is very much in doubt. As far as Putin is concerned, that's existential.
(Remember Putin's background; a major defining moment for him was when the USSR collapsed and effectively abandoned him in Dresden. He's an authoritarian strongman who needs to believe he's in charge of an intact superpower.)
When Crimea was controlled by Ukraine and Ukraine was Russian-friendly, Sevastopol was reasonably secure. When Ukraine pivoted, Putin likely felt he had no choice but to invade Crimea to take Sevastopol and preserve the Black Sea fleet. But Crimea is a nightmare to supply, with only a tiny land bridge — well inside Ukraine — connecting a large peninsula to the mainland, poor water supply and poor arable land. Russia built a bridge, but it was obviously vulnerable (and indeed was damaged not long after). Russian sympathies in the eastern Ukrainian provinces provided an excuse to try to annex those and secure the land route to Crimea.
Of course, the invasion proved popular in Russia, at least to some extent, and backing down now would be a political failure for Putin, so he has a second, personal reason to keep fighting. But it was initially all about Sevastopol and Russian naval power.
When Ukraine pivoted, Putin likely felt he had no choice but to invade Crimea to take Sevastopol and preserve the Black Sea fleet. But Crimea is a nightmare to supply, with only a tiny land bridge — well inside Ukraine — connecting a large peninsula to the mainland, poor water supply and poor arable land. Russia built a bridge, but it was obviously vulnerable (and indeed was damaged not long after). Russian sympathies in the eastern Ukrainian provinces provided an excuse to try to annex those and secure the land route to Crimea.
Nice theory, but glosses over a few important issues. Like Russia never invaded Crimea, because it was already there as part of the basing agreement between Russia and Ukraine, and the 'special status' of Sevastopol under the Friendship agreement. That friendship ended with the 2014 coup, the start of the Ukrainian civil war, incidents like the Odessa Trade Union building massacre and Kiev starting it's de-Russification program. Oh, and cutting off Crimea's water supply wasn't very friendly either. But Russia had been managing to supply Crimea quite happily following it's declaration of independence and incorporation into Russia. Ukraine still seems determined to destroy the Kerch bridge, despite the lack of any military significance, especially now there's a land bridge.
This stuff is perhaps more significant for Ukraine's future-
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3888411-poland-may-block-ukraines-integration-into-eu-due-to-unresolved-historical-issues-vice-pm.html
Ukraine will not join the EU until the problem of the Volyn tragedy is resolved...
The Polish side insists that the Ukrainian side bears the sole responsibility for the crimes committed in Volyn in 1943-1945, while the Ukrainian side, on the other hand, insists that both sides are responsible, and that the apology should be mutual.
This is the typically novel approach to diplomacy as expected from a real-life 'Wag the Dog' moment. Not entirely sure why Poland should apologise or accept responsibility for the Ukrainian nationalists massacring Poles and Jews. But it isn't the first time Ukraine's antics have antagonised the Poles-
https://www.polsatnews.pl/wiadomosc/2023-01-03/piotr-zgorzelski-i-prof-blazej-kmieciak-w-gosciu-wydarzen-transmisja-od-godz-1920/
A smiling Zaluzhny in front of a portrait of Banderas published (then deleted) by Ukraine's government to celebrate Banderas' 114th birthday. Or-
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/15/ckti-o15.html
Where Zaluzhny's standing in front of another photo of Banderas and Roman Shukhevych, commander of the Nazi's Nachtigall battalion, and probably responsible for the Lviv pogrom and other attrocities. A strange choice for ambassador to the UK though.
If Russia gets away with destroying Ukraine – allegedly in order to save it, of course – then China might prove willing to destroy Taiwan in much the same way.
Oh dear, Liam, was that necessary .... and I agree with the AC comment above ....... "You were doing so well up to this.”
And how disappointing there’s no inclusion and similar comment on the Western complicity and criminal support for the genocidal shenanigans of wannabe high tech Israelis in Gaza against third world infrastructure Palestinian citizens ...... as they exercise the Great Cleansing and quite despicable Shoah Root Reboot.
What a quite mad and getting madder and badder world such useless idiots are building to catastrophically fail. I suppose shit for brains is responsible for that. It is the only logical excuse one cannot disagree with.
[Author here]
> Oh dear, Liam, was that necessary
Yes, I think it was.
These are standard Russian tactics. If you can't win on the ground, pound the whole area to rubble from a distance.
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/03/02/putin-grozny-chechen-ukraine-russia-military-past
The resemblance of the methods is being noted:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/20/russias-atrocities-in-ukraine-rehearsed-in-chechnya
And if you, and the Anonymous Coward above, have not noticed, the claimed motivation inside Russia in Russian media to the Russian people is that this war is to "save" Ukraine and their Ukrainian brothers from the "fascists" and "Nazis" they claim control the country.
They have been claiming this since Viktor Yanukovych got ousted.
...is that this war is to "save" Ukraine and their Ukrainian brothers from the "fascists" and "Nazis" they claim control the country.
So.. who does control the country? As long as you're not in Ukraine, you can ask this question. If you're inside, you'll probably be thrown in jail..
The Jewish Nazi Stand-up comedian ?
He's the fascist's front man. But you neatly demonstrate you know nothing about the history. So the Nazis were equal opportunties scumbags. Hitler hated Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, diabetics and of course Jews. Russians were given their own concentration camp badge, an SU, which stood for 'Sowjetischer Untermensch' or 'Soviet Subhuman' and were either executed or sent to the Arbeitslager like Dora where they'd be worked to death.
Zelensky, other Ukrainians and useful idiots refer to Russians as 'orcs'. So an intentional dehumanisation of their enemy, playing right back into the Nazi SU characterisation.
Then there's the whole OUN thing. Spawned in 1929 with the aim of creating an ethnically pure and totalitarian Ukraine. During WW2, the OUN sided with the Nazis and took part in the Lviv pogrom, the Volhyn massacre and other attrocities. These are the Banderites and the OUN created the 'Slava Ukraini' slogan as their version of 'Heil Hitler' along with the red & black flag that Ukraine still flies. with Banderas being regarded as a hero in parts of Ukraine.
Then during WW2, and the last time Russians rolled through Ukraine, there were attrocities committed by the advancing Soviet forces in retaliation to the brutality by the OUN. Then post-war, the OUN continued to fight both Soviet and Polish forces, leading to Poland and Soviet's forced deportation and ethnic cleansing of OUN members and sympathisers. Ukrainians obviously remember this, and post-war, the West supported the OUN because they were obviously anti-Soviet.
But the OUN and their philosophy continues to exist in Ukraine, hence statues of Banderas, the 'Slava Ukraini' slogan and the red & black flag. And events like this-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp387p1zrgpo
The hardline nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) political party Ms Farion was a member of blamed Russia directly for the killing.
"Moscow shoots in the temple for the Ukrainian language," it said in a statement.
Ukraine, of course has been attempting to de-Russify Ukraine. But Svoboda is one of Ukraine's far-right, ultra-nationalist parties that shares a lot of Nazi ideology, or-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svoboda_(political_party)#Statements_by_Jewish_organizations
In 2012, international human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center placed Svoboda party leader Oleg Tyahnybok fifth in its list of the top 10 antisemites and haters of Israel, based on his previous comments regarding Jews in Ukraine
But just as the OUN had it's own armed forces during WW2, so it has today with 'battalions' like Sich, Aidar, and of course Azov.. Which is of course Zelensky's problem. Ukraine could have solved their Nazi and neo-Nazi problem by banning the display of Nazi symbols, or OUN symbols and slogans. But even though they'd have to as part of the EU accession, they haven't. Mainly because they're now very heavily armed combat veterans that we're arming and supplying. And they've said they'd kill Zelensky if he tries for a peace deal, and some of the far-right groups also don't want Ukraine joining the EU either.
So it's all a bit of a clusterfunk.
And of course there's still the IT angle. Sanctioning Russia, China, Iran etc has just forced those nations closer together and they're busily de-Westernising their economies. DPRK is ahead of this game and has been using it's own OS for years, which has often intrigued me. The minimum system requirements for that are probably a lot lighter than they are for Windows and is immune to ClownStrike. Collectively, they're more than capable of developing their own OS and applications, which means they won't be dependent on the West, and will probably become competitors.
And of course there's still the IT angle
yes, I think that part was lost in the discussion
DPRK is ahead of this game and has been using it's own OS for years
I'd be curious to know more about that, do you have some info ? What I find really intriguing is that that country is portrayed to be retrograde in about everything, and yet they are able to build and launch nuclear bombs and long range missiles. How is that possible : do they disassemble South-Korean washing machines to get to their chips ? I have the feeling that even though my computers get more powerful at each iteration, the user experience concerning latency doesn't improve. Opening an average application takes several seconds, not less than on the HP-UX workstation with 10 x-terms and 64Mb of RAM – no typo – from 30 years ago. Where do all those CPU cycles go wasted ?
I'd be curious to know more about that, do you have some info ?
Nope, but luckily wiki does! -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS
Little information is available on version 4.0.
Some South Korean friends have talked about it but slight snag for most of us is everything is in Korean. Which is one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn. Most excellent food, TV and cinema though. I also guess that if a copy could be obtained, it may need caution to run given it's hooked into DPRK's network.
What I find really intriguing is that that country is portrayed to be retrograde in about everything, and yet they are able to build and launch nuclear bombs and long range missiles. How is that possible : do they disassemble South-Korean washing machines to get to their chips ?
I think it's a combination of having been under sanction for decades and developed their own ways to evade sanctions, and the computing requirements for a lot of those applications not being that great. Look at the compute power on the Space Shuttle, or going back even further, Germany's V2 rockets. Downside to nuclear missiles is unless they're bunker busters, they don't have to be that accurate to be devastating.
Opening an average application takes several seconds, not less than on the HP-UX workstation with 10 x-terms and 64Mb of RAM – no typo – from 30 years ago. Where do all those CPU cycles go wasted ?
I guess all the search, (in)security and telemetry processes take time to get a response before you're allowed to do whatever it was you wanted. And yep, I remember those days, although was more a DEC-head revelling in the powah of the Alpha! Meanwhile, the room full of Amdahl 5990 ran most of a very large IT business. As for where the CPU cycles go, firing up Task Mangler on a Windows box provides some hints. Then fire up Wireshark and wonder WTF all the traffic is when your PC has all apps closed and other than Wireshark, is supposed to be idle..
>"And they've said they'd kill Zelensky if he tries for a peace deal, and some of the far-right groups also don't want Ukraine joining the EU either."
When these were first aired, it was obvious what they were referring to and given the circumstances reasonable positions to take.
*cough* Liam, *cough* amanfromMars 1 is a bot. *cough* And not even an LLM *cough*
[Author here]
> *cough* Liam, *cough* amanfromMars 1 is a bot. *cough* And not even an LLM *cough*
TBH I hadn't noticed to whom I was replying. But the point was raised by others, too.
I have no personal skin in this game. I've never even been there; I just have Ukrainian friends. (In fact last month I conducted a wedding in Poland -- yes, I am a priest, too -- and I put a line of Ukrainian into the speech, which I got a friend to proofread for me.
But I love Slavic Europe -- in general, but especially my very secular corner of it, which prefers beer to rakija -- and I plan to return as soon as I can. I do not want to see it subsumed into a Greater Rus'.
P.S. as for the "bot" thing... I don't like this terminology of "bots" for humans, even if they are logorrheic or obsessive. People are not bots and bots are not people. AMfM may be obsessive but hey, they're a long-term Commentard and those are welcome. ;-)
"P.S. as for the "bot" thing... I don't like this terminology of "bots" for humans, even if they are logorrheic or obsessive. People are not bots and bots are not people."
They didn't mean "bot" for "human acting oddly". While it's supposition, I believe, and most others who have expressed a belief also believe, that AMfM in almost all cases is actually a bot, as in a computer program which uses chunks of the article, others' comments, or random pages and does something Markov chain-like to them. When I have posted this in the past, AMfM has helpfully replied agreeing that it is exactly that, but since it is repeating most of my words to do so, I don't think that was done intentionally. Of course, there's a human behind this and sometimes they post something logical, whether it's something the human wrote or something that got copied in its entirety from elsewhere, but most of the comments are not.
In this topic alone, you've received, from the same source, condemnation and effusive praise, each with large collections of meaningless prepositional phrases. Such comments litter other threads all over the place. They rarely make any more sense than these, and often they are even less understandable.
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NATO has been on russias border from the start...
Ermm.. No. Interesting the way you manage to correctly capitalise NATO, but not Russia. That's Urkraine's bad influence I guess.
But NATO was founded in 1949 as a means to flog weapons post-WW2. I mean counter the 'threat' of the USSR. The USSR is long gone, but the arms industry needs money, and staff officers need pensions. You aren't the only one confused by history though. A NATO General (US, natch) recently announced that Russia will be on NATO's borders. OhNoes! Of course this is only because NATO has expanded to encircle Russia.
And then there's Trump, who in his typical blunt fashion points out it's basically a protection racket. NATO members must pay 2% of GDP, or they won't get protection. Russia, of course provides a convenient boogeyman to make the extortion work. NATO is, of course happy to go along with this because it gets billions and continues to grow.
But then there's the EU. Once upon a time, the EU economy was larger than the US. This, of course could not be allowed. So a coup and a proxy war, and the EU's in tatters, not Russia. And it's getting into true clownworld territory. The EU President.. well, one of them, Orban decided to give peace a chance. Of course this is unacceptable to the other two EU Presidents, who want to keep the war going because there's billions being thrown around with virtually no accountability. So then Urkraine decided to do it's own spot of sanctioning and cut off oil supplies to Hungary. This.. makes sense because 1) Urkraine earns transit fees from oil & gas flowing through it's territory and 2) Hungary refines the oil into POL products Urkraine needs. Oh, and of course there's electricity that also flows through Hungary.. Which Hungary hasn't cut off in retaliation, yet.
But pretty awesome diplomacy from the EU. They hate Orban and seem to be doing everything they can to encourage Hungary to leave the EU. And then maybe Hungary decides to join BRICS, resume the trade with Russia that it lost after the EU sanctioned itself, and the collapse of the EU accelerates.
Or maybe they'll try a Fico instead..
Great stuff. It brought to mind a photo of some Ukrainian military personnel working at a wall of screens with windows desktops that accompanied an article in a New York newspaper near the start of the war. I had been wondering whether or not they would be using Linux. Seeing the desktops, I then wondered about the windows licenses.
[Author here]
> China's Kylin and OpenKylin are based on Ubuntu (which I believe is based on Debian)
In theory, but only if the underlying base OS is updated. I have looked at various versions:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/30/kylin_the_multiple_semiofficial_chinese/
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/07/openkylin_is_ubuntu/
The "new" openKylin 1.0 released a year ago this month was actually Ubuntu 20.04 underneath. Although the announcements say it's all new, all domestic, all Chinese written, it isn't really: it's propaganda, and not actually true -- which is TBH what I'd expect from the PRC.
So, if they have a Chinese GUI on top of Ubuntu, which is legally based about half a mile from where I write in Douglas on the Isle of Man*, then it doesn't matter much what Ubuntu's done in the last 4 years if they are still using a stable release from April 2020. ;-)
*
Canonical Ltd
2nd Floor
Clarendon House
Victoria Street
Douglas IM1 2LN
Isle of Man
https://ubuntu.com/legal/companies
A bit like minor surgery = surgery on someone else.
A consequence of Open Source is that if someone wants to add a function, one they want to use, then they cannot be prevented from doing the necessary work to produce it.
I see that as benign.
(It doesn't ensure anyone is capable of the work, or that anyone else incorporates it)
Commercial director of an SME here, we've had several goes at implementing 'friendly' versions of Linux to replace Windows for our office workers over the years and they have all ended in expensive failures. Trying to switch to LibreOffice was a costly fiasco with format compatibility clearly meaning something different to its lay meaning. Also our costs went up very significantly as we needed a Linux wrangler to manage the boxes - where in the past Windows 'group knowledge' kept most things going when things went funny, Linux dropped us into arcane dialogues and was forever expecting 'command line' interaction. We wanted to use the applications, not play with them. It is hard to get away from the impression that many applications are scarcely beyond hobby projects where people have become bored and then wandered off.
It always seems 90% of the way there, but not quite ready for prime time. But as project management teaches: you get 90% to completion in 10% of the time and the last 10% takes 90% of the time (and all of the profit).
It would be interesting to experience the Russian or Chinese distros. Maybe with a (totalitarian state) coordinator pushing things along it would be better, or just as bad but without the option to jump.
I still live in hope.
It would be interesting to experience the Russian or Chinese distros. Maybe with a (totalitarian state) coordinator pushing things along it would be better, or just as bad but without the option to jump.I still live in hope.
I think sanctions + ClownsTrike may accelerate this possibility. Plus think India. Not currently sanctioned, but I wonder how many MS licences are currently in use in India? And how much this is costing, especially as everything moves to SaaS and it bloats with more 'features' like Copilot that most users probably don't really want. There have been previous attempts to create 'friendly' *nix distros, but usually they face an uphill battle fighting against the big 3 of MS, Apple and AlphaGoo.
Once upon a time you could fire up a command line on a Mac and treat it as the *nix box it was, but now.. you can't. It's much the same with file formats and application compatibility that went back to the dark days of MS's Halloween Memo and it's plans to decommoditise Internet protocols. The incompatibility is strictly intentional, because that keeps you locked into the ecosystem and revenue generation.
[Author here]
> fire up a command line on a Mac and treat it as the *nix box it was, but now.. you can't
Yeah you can. I do it regularly. Thanks to Homebrew it's easier and more useful than ever. Including on Arm64 Macs.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/27/homebrew_version_4_is_here/
"China is busily working on its own processors as well."
Are we at all surprised by that? The west imposes sanctions, with a view to keeping our toys to ourselves; did we expect China and Russia to say "Oh fie, better do as we're told then" and become instant model members of the international community, whatever that may be?
I certainly hope we didn't, because it was never going to happen. Rather, they were guaranteed to start beavering away at their own kit (assuming they weren't already), which may not be great to start with but which was bound to get better and better until it becomes at least good enough. At which point the west has lost leverage, an export market and access to any backdoors we may have happened to leave in exported kit. From there, it won't be too long before they're exporting that (very cheap) kit to other markets, potentially pushing out Western exports.
Not that I'm saying the west is wrong to prevent access to the latest fancy kit - we have to do something, after all. But the outcome shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
[Author here]
> That's why we were going to relax sanctions to allow them to use SAP - but it was against the Geneva Convention
Thanks for the chuckle. :-D
I interviewed for SAP once. It's the only job I/V I've ever had where not one but two of the interviewers warned me about how unspeakably awful and antiquated the internal systems and tools were, how every new hire was profoundly shocked by it... and that there was no way to change it and the only course was to relax, use your first 6 months to get used to them, and just deal with it. If you couldn't, you wouldn't last.
..... "Thank you" to Liam Proven, Author, and of the El Reg hack parish, for his/her/its/their [well, nowadays in these virtual spaces, can one ever really know exactly with whom and/or with what one is really communicating with] further selfless and informative engagement with additional commentary on responses to his Register article.
It is a really pleasant change, but sadly a very unusual and rarely executed exercise and opportunity seized, to have a divergence of opinion or a dislike of a post more fully explained for the sharing of a greater understanding of what may very well be fundamental problems to be necessarily, radically addressed with solutions delivering mutually beneficial positively reinforcing agreement or a non-toxic alternative dual parallel path revealed and thought capable of leading followers to similar destinations..... which would then be much more like something quite completely different and akin to a novel virgin future starting position.
> Thank you" to Liam Proven, Author, and of the El Reg hack parish, for his/her/its/their… further selfless and informative engagement with additional commentary on responses to his Register article.
Oh, it's "his". Big beard and all. Greying fast.
You are very welcome. I really do try to engage, and it's lovely to hear that it's appreciated.
For all the things you do with Microsoft products there is software which is more to the point of the task, costs less and is just the better option. But most people in the office operate a suite of office software which has been designed to appeal their fashion instincts and not usefulness. In essence the whole CrowdStrike episode will be forgotten, soon and everybody will stay calm and move on.
>It's also about time the EU spun up It's own distro.
Oh that would be fun.
The 27 versions of systemd that take it in turns to act as an executive supervisor for the week but all decisions of systemd must be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
--but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
And the whole distribution moves from systemd to init.d twice a year
I have the greatest sympathy for CloudStrike since they weren't responsible for taking anything down.
"Here, have this plank and smack yourself in the face with it" errr no, no, I don't think so. "Why not?" Well, that would be a bit silly of me..."
There are a few actors involved who are thicker than two short planks, but CrowdStrike aren't any of them - they only asked people to smack themselves in the face, and they all obliged.
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