Posts by Bebu 2068 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2022
《A lot of us admired him being decisive and just deciding to cut the crap out of his life. It did him good and evidently did his career no harm.》
DEC could have done worse (and indeed did) than to appoint this chap as their CEO and board chairman.
Clearly highly developed ability for making effective decisions and excising crap which is what every enterprise desperately needs and of which is almost always utterly deficient.
Human Resources nothing to do with Croatia :)
《If your role is expected to work from the office 3+ days a week and you are not in compliance, your manager will be made aware and VP approval will be required,》
These nongs are incapable of expressing a straightforward active idea in plain English.
For a bloody start - "roles" don't do any actual work - roles are abstract slot which a person might fill - then that person does the work (if you are lucky) not the role. As for "are not in compliance" oblique bullshit for "do not comply."
My first draft might be: "If you are required, in your current role, to work from the office for three or more days per week and do not comply with this requirement we will notify your manager. Any exemption will require you and your manager seeking the approval of the vice president of your division."
As the original stands its not entirely clear what it is the VP is to approve.
《If Oracle had bought Apple they would have killed it stone dead.》
No iphones. No apple stores. No apple fan<zombie-thingies>. The list is endless....
You could almost love oracle if they had whacked all things apple. But I wrote *almost* but even then that is still a bridge too far.
From IBM/RH's point of view Alma and fellow travellers would be taking a diabolical liberty viz HELLatives so with Redhat's offering R+HELLatives.
RHubastards - I thought this was an obscure reference to E.Ron but probably not. Although the (lack of) business ethics are likely comparable.
RHELibre?
Looking at contemporary UK (from a afar) one has to wonder whether the subcontinent is getting even for the couple centuries of the Raj. :)
Horses and automobiles? A rather obvious non sequitur. The introduction of mechanical looms and spinning machine with the violent opposition from those affected (Luddites) might be a more appropriate comparison.
Recent politcal deparures and this gem make one wonder in which queue they were standing when brains and common sense were being handed out.
《I do believe people have the right to say what they think with just the one caveat that they have to own what they say》
There is a lot to commend this point of view.
Also require that where another dissents from a published opinion then reasonable access to the same platform for the dissenting arguments to be published alongside the original.
Where clearly conterfactual claims are made the publisher should be obliged to clearly mark them so (with external references.) Such as much covid nonsense - link to NIH & CDCs.
In the case of Xitter I don't think it matters much. Reasonably sane normal people would have abandoned the platform ages ago leaving the extremists and other nutters to shout at each other, albeit mostly in agreement. I don't really understand why these organisations waste their time patrolling these marches of insanity just to be offended. May well be here that the difference between the dog and the wolf is not that great.
《Lit entirely by tiki torches…and roused with loud renditions of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.》
They must have reached Götterdämmerung by now. Despite Musk's pretensions to divinity its only "Trottelsdämmerung" lit by his burning bridges and boats of lost opportunity.
《EV's are absolutely the worst option for the apocalypse》
Any tech isn't going fare too well. Personally I would stick with a donkey (indestructible and long lived if a bit gloomy.) You can not eat a cybertruck but donkey should be edible - I think donkey sausages were a specially of Arles pre WWI.
I think a decent collection of manual hand tools hammers, saws, wood planes, chisels etc an anvil, vice, files etc, rope, twine and steel wire would be more useful than any C20th tech. A wheelbarrow is of far greater use today than any of Musk's wares and much more in PostApocalypsia.
No mention of firearms. I would guess that lying low early on while the gun loonies eradicate each other and exhaust any remaining ammunition might be a better strategy. Thereafter a halberd or assegai is pretty low tech weapon. Even a compound bow isn't going to last forever.
The real secret to surviving the Apocalypse is to be part of cohesive, self sufficient community with sustainable environmental practices and employing appropriate technology. Of course if we were already then the Apocalypse would not eventuate.
mandatory client side certificates. If you wanted to access anything on the internet you would need to register and verify your identity in order to be issued with one or more certificates which would permit you to access your isp, google/bing etc, web sites and almost any other resource.
Unlawfully obtaining, possessing, supplying or using such a certificate would be a serious offence and might get you sent Rwanda or someother ghastly place - not that contemporary England isn't a serious contender in the godawful places' league table.
Fortunately I am pretty sure it would a) achieve anything or b) actually work but recent legislative history suggests neither failing would be a serious obstacle.
"including a yellow/green wire carrying 220 V AC" (240V hereabouts)
Not too keen on the the non-contact mains A/C detectors - seen too many false negatives. I've kept my very old inherited neon indicator screwdriver. What's the NRA's unofficial motto? - I suppose if I tried testing 110KV might be more apt than I would like (certainly missing a thumb :) Double check with a cat iv meter - (on ac volts range :)
Two switches for one light appears to be the logical limit of average sparky (at least of yore.) They appear to have found more possible arrangements than logic alone would allow :(. One nasty one seen in old houses, (really nasty with ES) has the bulb off but both connections to the bulb are active - half the time.
I am not entirely sure colour (red-green) blind electricians are purely apochryphal as I have lived in two separate regions each with its own notorious representative of this urban legend. And have experienced the work of one.
Warren Buffet's Rule 8: Invest in What You Understand.
Get someone to quiz you so as to distinguish between what you actually understand as against think you understand. Just about everyone involved in the crypto mania believed they belong in the former but recent history rather suggests the latter.
This pair apprear to have used Bernie Madoff's "Dummy's Guide to Your Ponzi Scheme" as their playbook without reading the final act.
"We're constantly evolving our teams to meet shifty business priorities"
Customer, user and employee all more shafted than Vlad III's house guests.
I suppose one day none of these firms will attract anyone other than green card aspirants.
Actually I think that must have been "shitty."
Quite a calm write up even if Canonical paid the airfare to Latvia - I imagine a really nice place especially at this time of year.
All been down hill from Autotools' configure, make, make install :)
One tip if you really really must extract executables and libraries from snaps, flatpaks etc and have to put them under /opt or /usr/local or whatever your peculiar poison -- patchelf can really be your friend - LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LD_PRELOAD will always eventually disappoint :)
With this nifty utility you can modify the interpreter (run time loader ld.so), the search path rpath/runpath, needed libraries and more besides in elf executables and shared libraries. ($ORIGIN is a godsend.) Always script the modifications so updates or repackaging can be automated.
If the application uses the dlopen() with absolute paths that might scuttle your efforts unless you descend into even more skulduggery. :)
I once had to do this with a binary only flatpak(?) app and repackage it as an rpm. :(
Feels a bit like Thomas de Qincey "Confessions of..."
"The trial evidence cited by the government includes a secretly-made recording of a minor (a cousin) undressing and showering, and other videos of children participating in sex acts."
In this case the AI generated material was incidental and arguably could have been omitted with the court still bringing in the same verdict and applying the same sentence.
The question of how far does a liberal society wish to go in censoring and criminalizing purely privately generated images is a reasonable one. What general principles and rationales should apply?
When you move away from this obviously extremely sensitive context to asking apparently stupid questions like "should privately generated animations of Max Headroom 'doing' Shrek's donkey", leaving aside copyright issues, be a criminal act? (AFAIK bestiality is generally illegal.)
Obviously ridiculous and I imagine most would see this portrayal Max's activities as a relatively harmless, if tasteless, waste of time. This poses the question of why this situation is apparently trivial and others would draw the ire of the full force of the state. Hypotheses non fingo.
As an example I would not use the Simpsons as the internet has apparently generated everything the depraved mind might have conceived.
Just about everything that could potentially contribute so much to our world has been perverted and befouling our lives. Someone has apparently coined a very apt word for this process of degradation viz "enshitification"
Alfred E Neuman is one 'N' short of being more than just a metaphorical progenitor.
WeeWork might have been more accurate as in LittleWork, or given the beer, wine and tequila involved... PissWork.
I don't imagine the world has ever seen so much sillyness as it has in the last 30 years at least any not involving tulips or railroads.
《Flag_Protection_Act_of_2005》
I you were so arsed to defile the US flag you probably would want to use one of the old ones with 48 stars which I suspect wouldn't be covered :)
I find it amusing that the 50th state still has the union flag embedded in its state flag.
Given the recent leadership of South Caledonia (nice one - or is that North Sark or Rockall* West?) and the trans MX-CA desert nothing however foolish from either would now surprise me.
*"There can be no place more desolate, despairing and awful." - Lord Kennet 1971 ... Surprise! he wasn't speaking of England 2023.
《there are plenty of alternatives for enterprises eager to automate IT processes》
An enterprise grade automatic, AI enhanced, robotic defenestrator would be top of many lists from the trenches.
Given enough welly such a robot wouldn't actually require an existing window as it could "improvise" one in a convenient exterior wall using what it currently had in hand - usually a candidate defenestree.
(Thinking HHGTTU - a psychopath Marvin on methamphetamines :)
Failing that a retrenched Dalek or Cyberperson with retraining might serve.
《space dietitians discovered that increasing fruits, vegetables, and fish in the diets of astronauts can provide multiple health and performance outcomes.》
How many billions did that cost I wonder?
What constitutes the preferred direction for an astronaut in free fall in a particular context is a good question.
For an untethered spacewalk the direction of the parent spacecraft is favourite (the way home:)
《stupid people are well distributed on Earth》
Probably a bit lower in arctic regions. The polar bears (and climate) see to that :)
I recommend an enhanced breeding program for these animal and urbanize them so that every large city has several dozen roaming the streets. The prospect of being devoured by a feral urban polar bear should rapidly smarten up the polloi. :)
《it always helps if you make sure that the meter is set to measure voltage, not current.》
With very few exceptions I wouldn't let anyone "detained" within a University near a screwdriver let alone a multimeter.
There are those that don't know the difference between EMF(Voltage) and current, those that think they do and a very few that do. I am not sure that it ultimately makes much difference :)
There are individuals in those institutions whose very proximity to any piece of equipment more sophisticated than a slide projector can rapidly cause said device's mysterious failure.
Elsewhere never let a developer anywhere near critical equipment - lock up your gear if you cannot lock them up.
My long deceased but probably sectionable granny didn't often make much sense but "the devil finds work for idle hands" was one the few.
《I have learnt over many years to leave things well enough alone. Merely the act of checking on something can cause a system that had been working perfectly to break.》
Not peeking inside the box lets Schroedinger's cat have a happy or at least longer half life ;) ie don't go about recklessly collapsing wave functions.
The use of look alike actors in advertising has a long history. I remember some years ago there was a french woman who resembled the late queen and who appeared in some advertisement which at the time caused some consternation one one side of la Manche and shrugs on the other side. ;)
I would think the use of AI or human double or any image which is clearly and recklessly defamatory of a living person can be dealt with by existing law. Where such use is claimed to deprive that person of some benefit that can be attributed to their identity then the lawyers start raking it in.
I suspect in the long term people will accept the images purveyed to them are unreliable in all respects.
An advert with Trump vehemently advocating stringent gun control is not going to fool anyone other than the terminally deluded.
For a prize winning can of worms "a small matter of the ethics of bringing dead people back to life" has to be a contender.
"Mr C., Ethics Squad, we would like to talk to you concerning a Mr Lazarus."
Probably the same applies to any software. Unless you can, and have the ability to, audit the source code and build the application in a known secure environment you are pretty left to assign some level trust to any particular application.
Even if you were happy with the source and the build environment there are no guarantees and you haven't yet considered the run time environment. Also with VPN software there is trustworthyness of the peer network to consider and that of any intermediate systems.
About the best I might be able to achieve is when I have UDP connectivity between two systems I control and run wireguard between those two. Pretty much anything else for me is a compromise. These days I don't think I would bother with anything other than wireguard based services - I quite liked OpenVPN but it is a very much larger chunk of code.
As I understand both the Tailscale and Cloudflare VPN offerings are Wireguard based and from my limited experience appear to work reliably (Cloudflare doesn't do ping (icmp echo request/reply) which is initially a bit confusing.)
The overall impression I have is that none of the culprits were the sharpest tools.
3.75 years less remission/probabation doesn't seem like a lot but for a 25 year old woman its probably harsher than it first appears especially for what seems to be acts of idiocy.
Don't the NCA etc do continual background checks of staff in sensitive roles? I would imagine her association with the other two idiots would have raised the alarm earlier. Trust but check.
As already commented there is possibly a lot more to this story?
AL 9.2 aarch64 image installs on RPI4/8G and seems to run fine. There isn't (now?) an arm version of RHEL9.
SUSE were referring to an add-on to OpenSuSE that provided compatibility with RHEL - I guess a bit like the lsb packages in RHEL.
I imagine OpenELA will ultimately specify what constitutes an "EL" system ie for version N of EL specifying the required linux kernel version and required kmods, glibc version, base software and libraries, services etc.
Just by reading /etc/openela-release (say) your software (installer) would be able to rapidly determine what EL features are available.
Turning EL into an open specification might be too rich for Larry. :) RH/IBM probably wouldn't care as I think they see the dollars in selling support and might even encourage an openspec initiative.
To paraphrase the late Robert Morely in his Heinz Tomato "Big Red" soup advert - "World plus dog" ... Really! Señor Reg?
What was wrong with the stock "every man and his dog" or indeed "Tom, Dick and Harry?"
I cannot see that half the population jostling to be included with these undistinguished, uncritical polloi.
Would be interesting to know what the thread reaper was checking just so you could provoke the error on an NT4 kernel and watch the fireworks. :)
I have a NT4 SP6 CD somewhere - for many years I had to run a NT4 system with a hardware dongle on a centronics port to support(license) some some irreplaceable software for some equally irreplaceable hardware (instrument) from a long gone vendor. I remember the NT4 CD also had a MIPS version (and Alpha?)
My experience in similar environments is that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
The easiest to support were the totally clueless (about computers, IT etc) and usually used a (classic) mac so macwrite and eudora were about the limit. The really clever you either never encountered, or when you did, the trick was to extract what the problem actually was, rather what they thought was causing the problem (signs and symptoms not diagnoses.)
Those with just enough knowledge were forged in IT hell - inveterate fiddlers every one. Where the two former classes of user would leave things well enough alone the fiddlers would change things like BIOS settings (and forget to mention this or just plain forgot), edit boot configuration files, remove large files (/vmunix), change network configuration - setting their workstation address to the default router or local (recursive) DNS server were favourites - the diabolical ingenuity of these self inflicted breakages were breathtaking. [Unfortunately there were never any unsealed exterior windows :( ]
《Because we have a bunch of dickhead devs who insist that they know what they're doing, that they have to be allowed to manage their own machines or it's impossible for them to work, and a bunch of spineles managers who equally insist that we let them. 》
I would guess these same devs aren't actually coding for an OSX target - Windows if there is any justice. ;)
I suspect a decent DELL laptop with Ubuntu installed would probably be more appropriate and a lot cheaper.
Nice animated gif showing the continents overlaying these structures https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/LLSVP.gif (apparently mostly under africa and the mid pacific.)
Embedded in this wikiP page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_low-shear-velocity_provinces/
I have always found this stuff (geosciences) fascinating.
《I they logged credit card information. Enough that when I had to redo a transaction, I pulled everything from the logs.》
Isn't logging the CC number, card holder's name, expiry date and CVE a complete breach of the card provider's merchant terms of service? In some jurisdictions seriously illegal, I suspect.
Glad I use a prepaid debit card with sod all on it, if this is typical of the shenanigans in which online merchants engage.
《To China.》
But the PRC in all its repression is arguably better run than the than the UK (although where isn't.)
Must be a market for bionic stick-on faces than can dynamically mimic different skin tones (a la chamelion), hair colour and underlying skeletal structures such jaw lines, cheek bones and brow ridge?
If everyone dialed up the Boris J. face before going about their nefarious purposes it would be a bit like the Thomas Crown Affair (1999.) [I preferred the '68 version ;)]
In line with the "meta" (re)branding perhaps Z&co could go for something latinate.
Threads could give you "Fila" but the you might invite such witicisms as "Fila shite."
Hope the UK firm gets a decent pot of lucre if they end up parting with their trademark but quite happy if they stick it to Z&co.
The meta Threads icon still looks like (twisted) bowels to me (and obviously fila...)
《people beating their bloody heads against the wall till the wall breaks.》
Perversely this reminded me of the prequel to "Hell Bent" namely "Heaven Sent" where the Capaldi Doctor spent something like three quarters of the age of the Universe escaping a demented clockwork castle by chipping away at a wall of Azbantium with his bare fist.
I imagine working in the Castle X engine room is pretty much the same but with no hope of escape.
Sounds like "Classic Shell" :) - if its still a thing.
《My suggestion would be: Under Control Panel -> Themes -> Desktop UI -> a list that comprises of:
Windows 2000 (Classic)
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8*
Windows 8.1*
*Requires reboot and touchscreen》
《How many holes in a crumpet? 》
Actually not a bad question for humans. If you can visualize or draw a crumpet you can guestimate its diameter and roughly the size of the holes and roughly what fraction of the crumpet is take up by the holes. I would suspect a numerate school leaver could get an answer within 20% of the median value for actual crumpet.
When you used a slide rule and log tables for calculation you had to master the noble art of estimation. And then there's vernier scales...
I do prefer scones :) an order of magnitude easier to prepare too.
"Estimate the mass of a soap bubble"
How accurately? Its obviously greater than 0.0 ug and less than the mass of the atmosphere. For that matter does one include the mass of air and water vapour inside the bubble or indeed the loss of mass with time as water evaporates from the bubble's surface and gas moves out of the bubble across the surface (the pressure inside will be slightly higher inside due to the surface tension.) The question is a PhD level headache.
The Gordian knot answer is to use a pre-weighed piece of extremely fine blotting paper and absorb (blot) the bubble and weigh the wet paper. The difference is the bubble's weight (from which we determine its mass) less the enclosed gases..
《I'm thinking that the answer is 400ml for a scientist and 600ml for an engineer?》
I don't think the least imaginative engineer is going to fill a 600ml beaker with conc. sulphuric acid if she intended to pour it out in the next step.
The graduations on a measuring cylinder are pretty accurate but not to the top - the variation in the pouring spouts alone would see to that.
As previously commented you could measure any amount of liquid in quanta of 100ml eg 900ml = 400+400+100 mls (or 300+300+300) but with ever decreasing precision and accuracy. If each measurement with the 600ml beaker had a +/-1% error the 900mls would already be +/- 3%
I would be impressed if AI could provide the answer to the four equilateral triangles from six matchsticks problem from its "knowledge" of geometry and logic alone - no peeking at old Brymay's "Redheads" matchboxes ;) not to be confused with these these produced by AU's answer to UK's Clive Sinclair (Dick Smith.)
《Who remembers Mrs Marsh and Colgate Flurigard - it's WHY I won't buy their products and the "see, it does get in!"》
That is a long time ago. Apart from wondering at the time why Rod Marsh's mum was hawking this stuff :) I imagined that it would had to have been a pretty terminal case of osteoporosis for ink to penetrate teeth.
Fastforward a few decades and it does appear toothpastes containing much higher concentrations of fluoride than Mrs Marsh's offering are actually beneficial. See https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessional
So she was possibly not as daft as she appeared.
《 "This optical module is described as being the size of a microwave"
So somewhere between 1mm and 30cm? Not very precise.》
I was thinking the oven so a bit bigger than a cubesat.
I was wondering whether there is any restriction on deploying serious military lasers on orbiting platforms apart from getting enough power(energy) to operate them? While not likely to be of any use against terrestrial targets the absence of air could make such lasers quite effective against assets that spend at least some time above stratosphere. Reagan's star wars project (SDI) might not have been quite as brain dead as he appeared.
《There was a Crew Rescue Vehicle - Experimental for the Shuttle which allegedly got cancelled because it's acronym was too close to a lady-part for NASA's bosses》
These NASA bosses had more vivid imaginations than mine. Alas, I simply cannot get any specifically female anatomical feature from CRV or CRVES (surely not "curves.") If there were an X involved I might think cervix.
The canned emergency crew return vehicle project's code: X-38 when rotated anticlockwise 90 degrees appears to have a more feasible reference to the more interesting lady parts.
Critical updates for NASA telecommunication services hopefully would suffer an anacronym miscarriage at conception.
Still during the '80s there were legions of IT man(age|gle)ment that proudly proclaimed themselves as management information science managers and were quite happy with the title MISmanager which I suppose had the merit of veracity. When I think of "management information science" it would have to be an oxymoron but cannot see where "oxy" could come into it - bugger all management, even less information and science only if think astrology is.
I remember many, many years ago in a pharmacology course ketamine was discussed as a dissociative anaesthetic used in veterinary practice but not generally used medically because of the unacceptable risk of fatal seizures.
The lecturer described ketamine anaesthesia as the patient being fully conscious while having his arm sawn off with the attendant pain but just not caring. :) I would hope not remembering but including a decent dose of valium could see to that.
Came as a real surprise years later that ketamine had become a drug of abuse. That Musk admitted to using ketamine did not come as a surprise.
"a target audience of the aged and/or mentally feeble."
Given this boss was hooked by said catalog and assuming the boss is not yet in OAP territory taking the disjunction as the weaker constraint we can logically conclude the boss must be mentally feeble.
I suppose the C-suite had an inkling that with a more intellectually challenged appointment the attrition rate of BOFH's bosses would be lower and not having WH&S *not insisting* on bricking up all the external windows would be a major cost saving.
More seriously the idea of having sneaky autonomous mobile devices that are networked with significant computational capabilty skulking about the workplace potentially capturing audio-visual and wifi/bluetooth traffic (or plugging themselves into a RJ45 socket) is a security nightmare well past BOFH's amber alert - even without considering where these things are generally made. If you lose sleep over Huawei kit or HIKvision cameras...
I wonder did these robovacs pre-date Red Dwarf's skutters?
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