Posts by Vic

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

Re: the Unix vs. Windows battle in Linux

> A rigid config API (which is all that the Windows Registry is)

No it isn't. It's just a DB version of a config file. Bork the keys in the registry and you bork the application.

Vic.

Re: Yeah, I feel it to bro.

> I expect it won't be different at all

I expect it will be very different.

> I fully expect Ubuntu's installer will *still* require Internet access *during*the*install*

It doesn't.

Vic.

Re: funny

> I take my Lenovo laptop everywhere and for much longer holidays

All my laptops are hand-me-downs, so it's rare I have a battery worth taking anywhere.

But suspend/resume? Works fine. As does hibernate. This is all very old news...

WiFi works flawlessly. So does video - albeit my NVidia chipset is quite a bit faster with the proprietary driver. But I only needed that when I wanted to run FlightGear, and installing it was hardly difficult.

> Using OpenSUSE I can also say I never have any problems

I use Fedora, and can say exactly the same.

> what is this guy going on about

Miguel needs to raise his profile in his professional career. That's all it's ever about with him.

Vic.

Re: Linux Desktop ? Yes

> I'm glad you're an apt-get expert

The phrase "apt-get expert" should really be treated much like the phrase "shoelace-tying expert"...

Vic.

Re: Linux Desktop ? Yes

> Every other OS on the planet moved on from "recompiling the kernel"

Nonsense. Most OSes don't give you the resources to recompile the kernel.

Linux does. But very, very few people do so. And that's because it's only ever necessary when you want to do something extremely specific at kernel level.

Vic.

Re: Linux Desktop ? Yes

Your other points notwithstanding...

>>I don't know what they've done to grub

*I* don't know what they've done to grub. grub2 is not my friend.

> The last time I remember ever bothering with custom kernels was about 8 years ago

There is a time and a place for custom kernels. I do build them. But I usually replace them with the original once my experiments are over...

Vic.

Re: @another coward Huh. - Jason

> People who can't use google apparently.

s/can't/won't/

Vic.

Re: Only windows lets you upgrade...

> Centos / Redhat certainly don't support upgrades!

Upgrades work very well, though. I've been doing it for years...

Vic.

Re: @another coward Huh. - Jason

> count to three and imagine how you would like to be treated if you were say learning to fly.

Well, as I am currently learning to fly, I'm well-placed to comment on exactly that.

If I've paid good money for a flying lesson, I expect a sharp instructor who will answer my every question, and if I feel I need more attention, I shall expect to get it.

If I've just turned up at an airfield and I'm asking simple questions that I could easily have looked up, I expect to need to be interesting to those who will have to give up their own time to benefit me.

So it is with computing; if I've paid for support, I'm going to get it whatever my attitude. If I'm relying on the charity of others, I expect to give them a reason to feel charitable. Asking trivial questions (that I could have googled) is not such a reason, nor is complaining that the world doesn't spin in exactly the manner I want it to.

> Its all about learning a new OS.

Indeed it is. Now imagine you were going to learn something else - pick your topic. How are you going to go about learning that? By motivating others to help you? Or by complaining when they're too busy?

> If you welcome people with tolerance and patience they will come.

We do exactly that. What we don't welcome is people who refuse to help themselves. Effort is rewarded, regardless of expertise.

Vic.

Re: @another coward Huh. - David

> when I try I get told off or just find crappy documentation.

I doubt that.

I'll grant you that some of the documentation is not as good as it might be - but that's true for any platform at any time. It's just the way people see documentation...

If you ask a question, you do *not* get flamed. That happens when you pout and flounce. Moaning that you can do X in Windows won't get you anywhere, particularly when the people fielding your queries believe X to be a really daft thing to want to do in the first place...

So, for example, in this instance: if you double-click a tarball, you'll generally get a tar extraction tool of some sort start up and show you the contents of that tarball - on my boxes, I get file-roller. That's a good thing. You get to see the contents of your blob without doing anything crazy. *Installing* that software on a double-click would really worry me; that's not what I asked it to do.

If I want to install software, I'll grab a software package file[1] from a source I trust and install that (which I *can* do on a double-click should I choose to). I also have the tools to examine what that package is going to do to my system *before* I start the installation, should I choose to do that.

> What exactly do you want us to do if you wont help people move to your world?

I've helped hundreds of people move to my world. But when someone gets stroppy at me, I have to wonder whether they're paying me enough to deal with that sort of nonsense.

Vic.

[1] RPMs, DEBs, whatever. They're all good.

Chinese officials wring hands over Google's Android dominance

Re: Slaves to convenience ( and Intellectual Property)

> China "could" just steal all the IP for a mobile phone operating system

China doesn't need to do anything of the sort.

The whole Android stack is available at zero cost under very reasonable conditions. A Chinese company could just do a repo download of the whole shebang perfectly legally...

Vic.

Don't believe the IT hype: Ye cannae change the laws of physics

Re: Sometimes SQL-servers are not the right solution

A few years ago I was involved in some project where large series of measurements had to be displayed in a web app. We are talking about 30 million data points here.

A few years ago, I was involved in something similar (albeit with rather fewer points).

My first go at improving the code was to remove the Javascript XML parser he had running on the client machines. It really wasn't very quick when you didn't have a super-dooper computer...

Vic.

Re: Its all about support and disaster recovery

> ultimately the business needs to accept the risk of not having anyone to batphone

No it doesn't.

You want someone to phone? Support contracts are readily available. 4-hour response with 24-hour coverage? Not a problem.

What you won't get is guaranteed SLAs for zero cash. So you run the numbers - with FOSS products, I can undercut the big commercial players all the time. I just had to ramp up one of my quotes because I was two full orders of magnitude cheaper than HP, and I figured they wouldn't take me seriously if I quoted what would make me just a healthy profit.

Vic.

> Open Source can be cheaper - but never view it as free.

"free" is irrelevant outside a quick lash-up to see if the product suits your needs.

"Free" is *far* more important, and is the reason we promote FOSS...

Vic.

IT'S HERE: Seagate ships 'affordable' desktop hybrid drive

Re: Good for Apple!

> I like Apple's solution with two separate drives, one filesystem.

Well, the idea somewhat predates Apple :-)

I keep meaning to try LVMTS - a mix of SSD / HDD, with the allocation being driven by stats gathered from LVM. So it'll work much like this hybrid, but across as many separate devices as you like.

Vic.

Re: "affordable"

> Are Seagates no longer the 'expensive but reliable and fast' brand?

No.

Seagate used to be pretty good. Then they borged the devastatingly bad Maxtor brand.

From that point on, anything with a "Seagate" label on it cost what a Maxtor used to, and performed just as badly :-(

I switched to Samsung at that time - and had marvelous success with them. And then Seagate bought Samsung's HDD business...

Vic.

US lawmaker blames bicycle breath for global warming gas

Re: Facepalm...

> There is this little thing called "Stop-Start"

And what percentage of vehicles can stop and start in a fuel-efficient manner?

Vic.

SpaceX Dragon eventually snared by ISS

Re: I wonder

> You mean doing a root cause analysis

No, I mean getting shouty and litigious.

It doesn't matter whether there is a problem with the Tesla or not - his approach to a perceived problem has diminished the brand.

With the Dragon, he took the opposite tack, and had the opposite effect.

Vic.

Re: ... am I missing something?

> Wales has always been linked to dragons since the dark ages

Still is.

Just take a shufty round Swansea on a Saturday nighjt...

Vic.

Re: I wonder

> They had a problem. It was fixed. That actually establishes more credibility to my mind.

Mine too. Problems *will* happen, but this was handled *almost*[1] perfectly. It doesn't matter all that much what the problem was - the fact that they were up-front about it is far more important.

Compare and contrast with what Mr. Musk did in the Tesla situation :-(

Vic.

[1] I wasn't watching the broadcast, but apparently they pulled the video as the failure was discovered. That's a shame...

Prepare for 'post-crypto world', warns godfather of encryption

Re: What to do next

> So encryption is a bad thing?

No. Dressing up a 1KB file as a 1TB file is a bad thing, because the bulk of it will be stripped away without difficulty, leaving only the illusion of any security.

Vic.

Re: Sense and sensibility

> Anybody can Skype, anybody can email and Yahoo

I used to have a customer with *severe* malware infestation problems.

The issue turned out to be one of the directors spending far too much time on one-handed websites on his company machine.

The successful solution in the end was to buy a new machine with a decent monitor on it, then install Fedora on it. This became known as "The Porn Machine", and that was its sole purpose.

Worked a treat...

Vic.

Re: What to do next

> Also I don't understand his coke example

I hope I don't, either. Because he apperas to be advocating security by obscurity...

Vic.

Re: I mentioned before

> it's just pointless willy waving to base your faith in code on the fact you compiled it yourself

No it isn't.

It may not be 100% proof positive that the code cannot be compromised - but it goes a long way down that road. It is *dramatically* better than just accepting that some piece of closed-source code is all it purports to be.

Imagine the actual series of events that needs to be put in place to compromise the compiler in a meaningful way: that compiler needs to detect and attack its target source even though that source is readily changing. Attacking the wrong source will likely pollute the data set and also get you caught. Not attacking the source means you don't get any data. Attacking in the wrong manner will likely fail and possibly get you caught - and you have to deal with the fact that the source in question is likely different from the one you wrote your attack against in the first place.

This is a very tiny likelihood of success. It's not *impossible* for a sufficiently-funded organisation, but it's damned difficult. Add in the fact that gcc compiles itself 3 times during a standard build run, and it's a tiny target. Compare and contrast to threatening a US company with all sorts of nasties if they don't build this backdoor into their code.

Vic.

Health pros: Alcohol is EVIL – raise its price, ban its ads

Re: Prohibition Warm-ups

> The British govt is not quite that stupid.

[Citation needed]

Vic.

Re: In other news...

> Until personal vapourisers arrived - e-cigs, if you like.

A mate of mine has started using one of those.

With the savings he's achieved, he's bought himself a fairly tidy Range Rover.

I expect some government or other to start taxing them heavily in the near future :-(

Vic.

Re: I prefer collateral damage tax to Nanny state tax

> if you drink sensibly you pay a bit, if you drink like someone is going to take it away - you pay a lot.

...Except that this isn't what's being proposed at all.

Minimum unit-pricing *only* affects the price of cheap units. I had a bottle of beer last night - it claimed to hold 2.6 units. At 50p per unit, that gives me a minimum price of £1.30 for that bottle. If anyone will sell me such beer for £1.30 a pop, I'll take several dozen.

I've been known to drink wine from time to time. A 70cl bottle of 14% (chosen to present the worst-case pricing) still has less than 10 units, so that's a minimum of a fiver. This does not increase the cost to me in the slightest.

There have been times in my life when I have drunk very heavily. As evidenced above, this minimum pricing won't affect that one jot. It just doesn't feature. It's too poorly-targetted. It will only affect those who buy *very* cheap alcohol - and such people are much less likely to be the problem drinkers.

> a progressive tax

If this were a progressive tax, I might support it. But it isn't - it's about as regressive as you can get.

Vic.

Re: @Rocket888

> This price differential will still exist even if the bottom stuff is £4.50,

Why?

If a bottle of wine currently costs, say £7, why would a supermarket put up that price just because the crap stuff is coming up to meet it? Wine is a very competitive market.

What will more likely happen is that the cheap crap will just disappear. So the pricing increase will only affect those people who buy the really cheap stuff - and IME those are not the problem drinkers anyway, since they tend to be quite hard-up most of the time.

> The exact same thing will happen to all other forms of alcohol. It's clear.

Only very briefly, if at all.

Just the other week, we had some numbers come out that show that people are massively under-reporting their drinking - everyone is claiming to drink 3/4 of the maximum recommended amount, but that only accounts for half the actual sales. So if all alcohol is hit with price increases, a lot of people will be worse off financially. Once people realise that *they* are the targets of such legislation, rather than those evil "binge drinkers" they keep hearing about, there will be a political backlash against whichever government introduced the legislation.

Vic.

Raspberry Pi-powered Tardis blasts off from 'Blighty's Baikonur'

Re: Just wondering -

> are there any laws/regulations/limitation on 'hobbyist' release of payload carrying balloons?

Yes. Lots of them. And for balloons that aren't carrying payloads.

Let's not go into it, huh?

Vic.

[Currently studying for the Air Law exam :-( ]

Mind-melded rats could herald organic BRAIN-COMPUTERS

> Alan Moore got there first.

Exactly. I weas wondering what the big deal was, because Anybody Could Have Done It.

Vic.

Chinese Army: US hacks us so much, I'm amazed you can read this

Re: video

> oh noes - the secret formula for coke!

Aw, c'mon - that bit was funny :-)

Vic.

Re: Probably evolutionarily beneficial

they're on isolated networks that are inaccessible to other networks. Hence, they can't be hacked unless one is sitting at a terminal on that network.

Didn't someone tell me that about the Iranian centrifuges?

Vic.

Take that, freetards: First music sales uptick in over a decade

Re: Music Industry

> Demand free products and you get what you deserve.

Perhaps - but "free products" isn't what this is about.

What we want to be rid of is the offensive side of the music/film industries. If I've bought a DVD, I want to play the film, not watch propaganda and trailers. Given the choice, I respect the law, but there comes a point where the unlawfully-copied option is much more appealing and would be so even if it cost exactly the same as the genuine article.

So yes - I would[1] pay for all the Dire Straits albums. Likewise anything by Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, or any number of bands of that era. But if all the industry is going to offer me is Eminem and N-Dubz, they really shouldn't be surprised when I don't part with a single beer token...

Vic.

[1] Indeed, I did.

Re: Music Industry

> Professional: "one who does X for a living"

Actually, that's not true.

The word "professional" derives from the Latin deponent verb "profiteor", which means "to hold forth".

So when someone describes himself as a professional, all he's actually saying is that he's a gobshite...

Vic.

Apple patents situational awareness for oblivious fanbois

> It doesn't sound specific enough to qualify for patent status.

Indeed. Expect the USPTO to issue it forthwith... :-(

Vic.

Linus Torvalds in NSFW Red Hat rant

Re: Linus tells it how it is.

If you want to tell someone to fuck off, tell them to fuck off. Obfuscating your communication results in far worse bullying than just telling someone the honest truth as you perceive it

*Applause*

Vic.

Razzie voters drive stake through Twilight

Re: Adam Sandler was robbed

> Well Vic, you could have read my post, which should indicate to you that they don't make a loss

Well, Tom, you could have read up on "Hollywood Accounting", whereby *every* film makes a loss...

Vic.

Re: Adam Sandler was robbed

> Adam Sandler films make a fuckload of money though.

I betcha they make a loss...

Vic.

Re: Why revel in things someone else has decided are waste of time?

> I think the Razzies are somewhat pointless

Hi Kristen. Didn't know you frequent these fora...

Vic.

Apple to cough up $100m after kids rinse parents' credit cards on apps

Re: Not one to defend Apple but....

> "sudo" works exactly the same

sudo has a -k option...

Vic.

Ubuntu? Fedora? Mint? Debian? We'll find you the right Linux to swallow

Re: If ALL machines....

> not a hassle. Insert DVD, start box, accept defaults and enter serial key. Done

...And then look for all the devices it's failed to install drivers for. Particularly troublesome if one of them is the network interface (thank you, Sony, you bastards).

Boot into F14 from my USB drive, connect to the network, download drivers. Reboot into Windows and install :-)

Vic.

DHS bigwig 'adamantly opposed' to degree fetishism

Turns out, degrees are pretty much essential...

IME, it's comparatively rare for a degree to have any positive effect[1] whatsoever on how a software engineer does his job. Those that can do it would do so with or without a degree.

The trouble is, if you haven't got that degree, you're unlikely to get through the recruitment agency. And if you do, you're unlikely to get past the HR droids.

So typically, you need a degree to get yourself in front of the people who know what they're looking for. Without the paperwork, they may never hear of you...

Some of the best guys I've ever employed have not had degrees. But you find out about them through other people.

Vic.

[1] I've seen degrees have negative effects as well. During a technical interview, I've had graduates refuse to answer questions because they've got first-class degrees, and thought the questions were beneath them. My questions were carefully tailored to test a skill I was looking for; these lads didn't get the job.

Re: On the other hand...

> would you want somebody who may have only adequately self-taught themselves

No. But that's why they get a technical interview - to work out what they really *do* know.

Vic.

Nokia opens Maps to rivals, flogs uber-budget €15 phone

> I doubt if you can introduce me to a statistically significant sample,

Of course I can.

I cannot introduce you to anything like a majority of users, but it's not too hard to provide a satistically significant refutation to the statement that "Nobody wants Android. Nobody buys Android."

Vic.

> there is no Android market either. Nobody wants Android. Nobody buys Android.

I can introduce you to quite a few people who do (including myself).

Vic.

£13 for a phone with a monthly charge?

I'm getting one. I spent almost as much on a single bottle of beer a few months back.

Dosen't really matter what it's like - as long as it makes moderately acceptable calls.

It'll live in the glove box and get charged every few weeks as necessary...

Vic.

Elon Musk: 'Fudged' NYT article cost Tesla $100m

Re: Publicity

> There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Ratner would disagree. As would Chris Huhne and Lord Rennard...

Vic.

> I haven' been put off buying any car because of that

I wasn't put off buying a Tesla either by this NYT report, or the Top Gear article.

But I won't buy one - predominantly because of Elon Musk's approach to the problem. Getting shouty and litigious just doesn't appeal to me...

If you want to see how to handle the situation, look at Lotus - Clarkson slagged off one of their cars (Elise? Exige? I forget). Lotus didn't sue - they sent down an engineer to show him how to drive. The car came out looking superb, Lotus came out looking like someone who gives a shit, and Clarkson came out looking like a knob. Everyone wins.

Vic.

Re: Who cares?

> a distance of a 440 miles (708 km), taking two days. TWO DAYS?! WTF!? Really.

I know a substantial number of people who wouldn't even consider driving 400 miles in a day.

Frankly, I like to keep it under 300 miles. And I don't care if that means you think I'm a wimp - that's my preference, and it will significantly affect my choice of vehicle if said vehicle doesn't support my preference.

Vic.

LG acquires webOS from HP – but not for mobile kit

Re: The best mobile OS in my view...

> It is sad that people didn't want WebOS

I don't think you can say they didn't want it - people just didn't want to buy the devices available at the price they were initially offered.

Once HP dropped their tablet price to £99, you couldn't find any unsold...

Vic.