Posts by Tim99

Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework

Re: What Kind of Illogical Idiot ...

Yet...

Australia tells tots: No TikTok till you're 16... or X, Instagram and Facebook

So the downvote is because you think that 10 year old children should serve adult prison terms?

Assuming that the stated purpose of this (rather than the actual Federal electoral purpose of "appearing to do something") is that children under 16 aren't mature, I note that an Australian State Government wants to bring in imprisonment for those who commit "adult crimes" to "adult time" for 10 year olds.

The sad tale of the Alpha massacre

Re: don't try this at home...

Always, always do a "ls -l" before "rm -r" whatever...

Intel: Our finances are in the toilet, we're laying off 15K, but the free coffee is back!

Re: Service enshittification

It was. I took it further and emigrated.

Service enshittification

Way, way, back in the day we had "Tea Ladies". They were invariably pleasant middle-age women who knew who you were. At one public service place where I worked they would come around twice during the day; and whilst the tea or coffee was free, they would have a few sandwiches for sale. Regular punters could order their favourite snack, mine was a home made ham (off-the bone) roll/cob.

One of the ladies saved us a lot of money - She asked where our colleague was, as she had a cheese sandwich for him. We couldn't work out who she meant until she described him. He turned out to be an external service engineer for a "mission critical' piece of technical kit. The operator called him in regularly. As I recall (from the 1980s) he was charged out at £70 an hour to travel >100 miles in his Cortina, and then £120 an hour whilst on site. He was present so often the tea lady thought he worked there. We realized the kit was >8 years old and replaced it with a new model from a different supplier. Their engineer was only ever on site for one morning for the "annual check up".

The ladies were replaced by up-market "beverage machines". We sent a junior member of staff out to buy the sandwiches (What did that cost?). After a year the machines were deemed to complex and expensive by the bean counters (pun?), so they were replaced by the Klix type machines - Where the weak tea, chocolate, coffee, and chicken soup all tasted "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea". I noticed when I visited the bean counters that they had their own kettle and used it to make a decent cup with "up-market" loose leaf tea. For health and safety reason, we were not allowed a kettle.

Skyscraper-high sewage plume erupts in Moscow

Blaster Bates, Youtube: The shower of shit over Cheshire.

The open secret of open washing – why companies pretend to be open source

Re: Red Hat much?

I'm still not making it clear. My problem is not with the LPGL as such - It is that systemd uses it. The LPGL appears to allow derivative works to be licensed under any license, and dynamic and static linking with any proprietary code.

The systemd roadmap indicates that it will continue to expand within Linux. Its original aim was "apparently" to replace imperfect initialization programs like sysvinit (which BTW was licensed under GPL 2). I am probably only slightly paranoid, but think that systemd may have been (at least partially) intended as a Trojan Horse to expand the proprietization of Linux. I'm now retired but still do pro bono work - I hope that I have a basic understanding of software licencing, as my latest small project (that would have little commercial value) was released under the Boost 1.0 license.

Re: Red Hat much?

If you got that impression, I wrote my submission badly. What I meant was that systemd was *designed* to spread, such that it controlled other parts of Linux - Hence my inclusion of the statement by gnu.org "The choice of license makes a big difference: using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs".

As above, I suspect that this decision may not have been made in the best interests of users by the mythical "Really Enterprise Dependant Huge Applications Technology" organization. I believe that the LGPL can be, and is, used in open washing, as in the original article.

The Linux Kernel is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only - If you have the time, you may like to peruse the Linux Kernel COPYING file and its referred documents. I take them as indicating that the GPL is preferred. Linux is too important to be potentially damaged by incorporating systemd as a critical component when its licencing could potentially be abused.

Re: Red Hat much?

Like many complex systems systemd has been put together in a way that relies on many different components. The licencing page lists them here: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/tree/main/LICENSES. My main concerns are in the README.md file:-

"Unless otherwise noted, the systemd project sources are licensed under the terms and conditions of LGPL-2.1-or-later (GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 or later)

If we look at "Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html we find:-

The choice of license makes a big difference: using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs.

I believe that, whilst agreeing with a definition of Open Source, this may indicate a level of control that may not always be in the best interest of the commons for something that is designed to be ubiquitous. I have been around this stuff for a long time and have learned cynicism - Here is a "modest proposal" I posted about what I thought about systemd on El Reg over 6 years ago: How can we make money? I have seen nothing since then that has changed my mind.

Before that (about 15 years ago) I replied to a question by Pamela Jones on her Groklaw site, here are the relevent sections:-

... The LGPL generally deals with software library packages. The library is copyrighted and requires a distributer to give a user all of the normal GPL rights for that library. The normal GPL requires that any software that is distributed should follow the normal GPL freedoms. However the LGPL allows for proprietary code to be linked to the library. One of the justifications for this approach is that the widest possible use of a LGPL library could encourage a LGPL project to become a de-facto standard. Only changes made to the LGPL library must be made available to other users under the LGPL. If identifiable sections of the distributed work are not derived from the Library, and can reasonably considered independent separate works, then the licence does not apply to this sections - i.e. Changes made to proprietary code that uses the library do not have to be made available to end users. Aggregation of another work not based on the Library does not bring the other work under the scope of the LGPL. I can see scenarios where a commercial producer aggregates a number of different FOSS libraries with a reasonable amount of their proprietary code. This could give a terrific hand-up in being the first to market a new product - This product could then be extended until it has market dominance, during which time the FLOSS libraries are depreciated and replace with proprietary “work alike” modules (Remember that the GPL is a copyright licence and not a patent, so that the ideas and methods in it are not protected). The LGPL prohibits the distribution of software that incorporates patents, but it does not prohibit you from gaining a dominant market share. In any case if you do not distribute the work, you do not have to distribute changes. A few years down the track you could have a dominant work that may (in the US) be patentable...

... Before I can explain my attitude to "Lesser" FLOSS licences, you probably should know my background: I am not a lawyer, any opinion that I express should not be used as advice in any software project. I am a (retired) scientist and software developer. My company has produced commercial software and a couple of successful small products used mainly by the public and community sector...

...I have been a volunteer technical assessor to a national accreditation and standards body for 15 years. During this time I have come to believe that open data and document formats are essential to all public organizations. Infrared and mass-spectral data are generated in standard formats. Raw instrument and sample data is transferred as CSV files of known formats. Whilst it is important to use FLOSS wherever you can to avoid proprietary lock-in - It is more important to mandate that a copy of all important data is held in a standard format. All of this data should be accompanied by its relevant metadata. Metadata is “data about data” and describes how data is assembled. Examples include size, colour depth, resolution, creator and date of an image; “Markup and Content” for XML; raw data from databases and the relevant schema (ASCII delimited/CSV data and Data Definition Language statements for SQL?); HTML structured documents and OS PDF. Currently we keep most of our data in proprietary formats and structures.We could all use FLOSS solutions for this, but this does not address the problem of when we don’t have access to the original developer or when a programme goes out of fashion. Perhaps the data is contained within an application that uses Java, C/C++, PHP, CSS/HTML and SQL - They are all standards - Can we find someone who can duplicate this if we have to move platforms?

Linux is claimed by many (most?) to be a Unix - Systemd definitely does not conform to the Unix philosophy that emphasizes building simple, compact, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design (Wikipedia).

Re: Red Hat much?

Systemd... >>========>

Entitled CEOs,

and Sociopaths; but I repeat myself. (Apologies to Mark Twain)

AlmaLinux shows off its new Kitten

I'm old, but before it all got too hard (I switched to an iMac and Raspberry Pi's/OS Lite) I found Devuan worked OK for me.

Boeing's new captain promises U-turn after Q3 nosedive

Re: Call me

Only if you want bits that shouldn't move to stay fixed. If they need to move, use WD40.

The horror that is VHS revived for horror movie release

Intermediate technology

Mrs Tim99 had an extensive collection of VHS tapes. I borrowed a VHS/DVD recorder to transfer them to disk. Some time later I transcribed them with an iMac and Handbrake. She can now appreciate them on a 4K screen or an iPad. I like old movies from the 1930s many of which are available as digital files - The 50+ years older movies (often in B/W) are almost invariably better.

The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD

Both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

I *actually* am old

I've been retired from paid work for a long time, but create pro bono Excel statistical spreadsheets for a niche area within one of the hard sciences. Since these spreadsheets are downloadable from the internet, they can't include macros or VBA. Everything must be accomplished using cell formulae. As my faculties diminish, I've found that prototyping with Apple's Numbers is much more straightforward (and visually appealing).

There are a few challenges, such as not being able to lock individual cells in Numbers - I've found a workaround by overlaying a locked transparent text box. Additionally, multiple tables can be placed on the same sheet and individually locked. Another issue is that conditional formatting colours can vary, and sequences of rules don't have a "stop" feature. Despite these quirks, using Numbers as a development platform has proved much quicker. I can check the spreadsheets on an iPad or iPhone and then export them as xlsx files, followed by simple testing with Excel. Plus, I mostly avoid dealing with the ribbon interface, which I (still) dislike.

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Re: Had a cowboy project manager from an auto-manufacturer

Was his name "Boris", or maybe "Al" (to his friends) by any chance?

Re: Finance dept. are at the root of this issue

My puerile aide de memoir before we had computers auto "correcting" was: Yogi Bear's burden. Naked bare bits...

Re: Sometimes there's a hidden benefit with irritating clients

I had a job where I had a "feeling" about the customer's MD, so I negotiated staged progress payments. We had to chase all of them, and the final payment was not forthcoming. He tried to get additional work done that was way outside the original spec, before he would authorize payment. I sent him a final demand that was ignored. I ”Dun and Bradstreet"ed them, and was told that he had form for this; and that he would probably pay a portion "without prejudice" if threatened with a legal letter. I did, and he did. I cashed the cheque immediately, and sent an invoice for the missing monies. He then phoned me and said that he would pay that if I did the additional work. I said that I would, but would send a quote for it which needed payment up front. He refused. Some months later I got a request from him to expand the system. I told him that it required settlement of the balance, and payment up front for the new work. He wanted to pay half up front and seemed surprised when I refused. I heard later that he had employed a different company for a rewrite. He stiffed them too.

Sysadmins rage over Apple’s ‘nightmarish’ SSL/TLS cert lifespan cuts plot

Re: The solution...

Have a cautious upvote. My static site also has no login, no cookies, and no tracking (Possibly because I'm old). It doesn't use JavaScript, python, etc., either. I did force myself to use one CSS style file. If a user does try to use an http URL, it is converted to https.

Smart TVs are spying on everyone

Re: IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM .... USE THEM :)

I have two. The standard HDHomeRun software is adequate, but a bit basic and fiddly. You can set up VLC to use the hardware, but without a programming guide. I went against my cheapskate principles and downloaded the Channels DVR recorder software from getchannels.com - It costs US$80 a year and I find it well worth it because of their version of comskip. Most adverts are skipped. I usually run it on a Raspberry Pi, but occasionally on an Apple iMac. The main TV has an AppleTV as the Channels client, but another (or even the same) Raspberry Pi can be connected to the TV's HDMI. If I could be bothered, it looks feasible to pay SiliconDust US$35/year for their recorder software, set up HDHomerun with ffmpeg and comskip - Probably easy if you use a Windows PC as the recorder (I'm retired and don't use Windows anymore), it looks as though comskip probably has to be downloaded and compiled from source for Linux.

Ubuntu turns 20: 'Oracular Oriole' shows this old bird's still got plenty of flight

Re: "the formidably hard-to-install Debian"

"Ubuntu: Swahili for "I failed to install Debian Devuan" - FTFY (I'm old, but I hope that I might still be helpful).

Mine's the one with K&R in the pocket >>============>

BBC weather glitch shows 13k mph winds in London, 404℃ in Nottingham

Re: Neptune is jealous

But hours are in a Standard (ISO 8601), and can be useful as UTC with a local offset... >>===>

Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

Re: No security updates

You certainly is possible, just don't connect it to anything else...

After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?

In our small business, it happened so frequently that we called it an ”OBTW" happening.

Back in the day, 1st line support was the person who answered the help-line phone and read through choices on a menu. If they got to the end of the choices without resolving the problem they transferred you to a 2nd line support person - They had some knowledge of the system, and usually had access to the manuals and the "known problems" database. If they couldn't fix it, you were told that they were escalating your problem, and that somebody would phone you back. The "somebody" was the 3rd line support person - This could well be one of the people who had actually designed or written the system... In our small business I was often all of them. My calls ranged from "My computer thingy's disappeared" to obscure interaction problems (usually caused by Microsoft).

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

I can remember the number plates of my father's first 2 cars from the 1950s "NLU 372" and "368 BTO". I'm now on my 15th car and remember none of their numbers except the last one, which is "easy to remember" and was transferred from the previous vehicle...

Re: In the days before t’interweb…

Digital had a line of cut down PDP-11 type workstations called DEC Professional. I was issued with a PRO-350. As I recall, the OS was a version of RSX-11 called "Professional Operating System" or P/OS - Most of us thought that it was. They lasted less than 2 years before they were replaced by genuine IBM ATs.

Now Dell salespeople must be onsite five days a week

An unfortunate hybrid

Perhaps many/most middle management jobs are a fusion of David Graeber's "Bullshit jobs" and Sturgeon's Revelation "ninety percent of everything is crud"?

Back in the day there was an apocryphal revelation from a BOFH to a luser "Go away or I will replace you with a small shell script".

Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?

Re: RDP is still RDP

Confusing and ill-defined branding is a hallmark of MS's marketing department - In their efforts to cause confusion, they also tended give their products a name that could be confused with a 'real standard". MAPI for IMAP comes to mind, after an "accountant" company director told me that they were the same...

The future of software? Imagine a bot, stamping on a human face – forever

Re: Yes, but...

I'm retired now, but when I worked, If I was lucky "Oh by the way..." happened before what I had written went into production.

To patch this server, we need to get someone drunk

When I worked for MoD, PSO was thought to be between Lt Colonel and Colonel. The bits that I worked in always were run by a PSO, the main difference was the level and difficulty of the workload. Interestingly as I was responsible for ordering materials, I had two 'industrial" reports as an SO, the HSOs and two SSOs didn't have any direct reports. In the HO "forensic expert witness" eligibility was based on academic qualification; for science stuff "a good honours degree" was normally needed. For less academic work, experience was probably more important. When I left the public service at 41, I had just been offered SPSO.

Way back in the day, in an annual review, my PSO boss told me that the "career grade" (the one that you would spend much of your time in near the end of your career) was PSO. If you were considered to be a "high flyer" you would make PSO by the age of 32 and SPSO by 40. The longest scale was SO, and some poor unfortunates took 20 years to get to the top; as I recall the increment was ~3-4%, which wasn't particularly impressive when inflation was running at several times that. SSO was bit weird because that was the entry grade for some bright young PhDs, whilst many others were in their 50s, and were probably going to retire at that grade. To put this in perspective, there was a Military Rank equivalent where an SSO/SEO would be considered to be similar to a Wing Commander.

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

Re: There is a proper way to do most things

Er, because it is black tea that you add to milk? Not, say, white tea (China or Fujian White); or green tea, with milk (yuk).

Re: There is a proper way to do most things

Alternatively, the Royal Society of Chemistry may well have the definitive method for black tea with milk: archive.org, 2003.

It appears that adding the milk *first* allows the tea's bitter polyphenols to combine with the milk's proteins and fats; adding the milk last denatures it and prevents this reaction. You may prefer a more bitter brew, but the milk first method can avoid the need to add sucrose.

Hangover from messy Walmart tech divorce ongoing at Asda

Re: 2,500 systems?

"... 2,500 servers seems like far too many." Unless the senior IT staff like Windows?

Troll hat off for a moment. When I came back from extended leave from a not-for-profit, their preferred contractor had installed a PDC, SQL Server, Exchange Server, File Server, and a Backup Server for <10 staff. The excuse was to allow for growth - Unfortunately, to bung up their margins, they had cut down on disk space to be within the (extortionate) budget so nothing worked properly. At the time a single MS Small Business Server would have been more that adequate.

Sweet 16 and making mistakes: More of the computing industry's biggest fails

PART 1: 8 bits; Part 2: Sweet 16 and making mistakes; etc?

Assuming this is about PCs - Maybe seeing an anthropomorphic trend here?

• 32 BIT: Getting more done, in partnership, useful developments, spawning child processes?
• 64 BIT: Everything you thought would ever be needed; but bloated, resulting in many layers of management, and still slow?
• 128 BIT PCs: I wrote FORTRAN science stuff in 1970, ready for recycling?...

Tech support chap solved knotty disk failure problem by staring at the floor

Re: Trivector

Yes, I did some Dataflex stuff too. Our networked integration was initially Nelson data concentrators on a LAN loading into a PC. Nelson also did our first LIMS. Eventually, I wrote a new LIMS using the same R:Base database as Nelson, then I added Business Management Systems. Eventually we moved on from the Nelson to VG...

Trivector

Trivector used their computer with several of their chemical/physical analyzers, particularly for used oil analysis. I spent a fair bit of time getting data in and out and connecting them to PC LANS in the 1980s. A link to some more current kit is here.

Raspberry Pi 5 slims down for cut-price 2 GB RAM version

Re: Vision

Talking of 80s standards, I did SQL database stuff on a VAX 11-750 for a public utility. I'm retired now, and use Pi Zero 2Ws as LAN Web/SQL test beds for some pro bono stuff that I develop. Generally they are good for 10+ concurrent web users, each running up to 10+ SQL inserts/reads/updates per second, which would be generally similar to the VAX SQL performance that I needed. I think the VAX cost ~£150,000 - The 2W board is about 1/10,000 the price and works out ~~4,000 times the power in VAX MIPS

Apple is coming to take 30% cut of new Patreon subs on iOS

Re: It Just Works

As a volunteer, I taught "computing" to retirees, on average 1-2 afternoons a week. Our rough rule for Windows was that people needed about 12 weeks to be safe enough to do the basics without continuous support. When the iPad 2 came out, we realized that it was suitable for much of what seniors needed to do. The 12 week course was modified to 6 weeks, just covering the internet, Apple Mail and the App Store. Anyone who wanted to edit photographs could add on another 2 weeks. Android tablets were mostly Samsung, which a number of people found harder to learn (Samsungs own Apps in particular) and less 'intuitive". Typically they would spend 2-3 weeks longer.

When I helped workshop "computing for seniors" for our national government, they seemed to agree - Their basic "suggested recommendation" was for iPads. At the time smart phones where usually too small for people with impaired eyesight and limited dexterity; particularly as older people wanted the POTS that they were used to...

Re: nothing's changed in 30 years

"that the 30% cut might well have been acceptable when Apple first started their App store"

Why? Why is this shit acceptable?

Perhaps because back then; when I used to write and ship specialist shrink-wrap software; my cost of marketing, distribution, and sales were a lot more than 30%? OK you're talking about Patreon which is generally not the same thing, but I agree that these days 30% is too high, maybe 15%?

Microsoft whiz dishes the dirt on the Blue Screen Of Death's colorful past

White on Blue

My unreliable memory suggests that white on blue was a default colour scheme used by IBM in the 1980s after user screen optimizaton workshop experiments. The PC version of DisplayWrite with colour screens used it; bold, etc., was highlighted in yellow.

The secret to better weather forecasts may be a dash of AI

I'm not sure that we need "temperature" either...

CrowdStrike meets Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will

Re: MBA culture replaced engineering culture

Global capital may be deciding that sourcing from India is now too expensive, and that South/East Asia or some African countries can come in at about 2/3rds of that...

Smartphone is already many folks' only computer – say hi to optional desktop mode in Android 15 beta

I'm not sure why you couldn't do what you needed with an iPhone. Since about iPhone 8 I had been successful using the Apple multimedia dongle with a

(small) bt keyboard. I could use the phone as a trackpad, but found that a bt mouse worked well for me. Software used included the standard Apple apps and Excel, Word, and a couple of ssh clients. When travelling light I would use the above with a longish HDMI cable to connect to hotel TVs, or a projector for demos (often Keynote with a VGA adapter instead of the HDMI). On one occasion another presenter had to borrow the setup as they couldn't get their Windows 7 laptop to connect to the projector.

Innocent techie jailed for taking hours to fix storage

Re: I Had Forgotten

In a UK police canteen, about 40+ years ago, it could have included chips - Or at least, fried potato.

Despite OS shields up, half of America opts for third-party antivirus – just in case

Re: Another layer, another source of trouble

A friend had a Dell all-in-one which had been upgraded to Windows 10. He also had one of the first large refillable ink tank Epson printers. We live in Australia so we get Patch Tuesday before many and, almost every month, it borked the printer. It would work with his iPhone 8, so definitely an MS problem. Sometimes removing and re-installing McAfee fixed it, generally it required reinstalling and setting up the printer drivers. After removing McAfee and using the MS native AV, he was "only" getting problems with paper sizes etc. He is in his late 80s and one of his hobbies is photography. I'm retired and have just spent an interesting couple of days looking through his large collection of JPG files (exiftools, etc.), then after writing a few shell scrips and using a couple of FOSS tools, removed the obvious duplicates - Followed by a bit of visual inspection based on dates and file sizes. We got it down to a manageable 20+ thousand images. He bought a new printer, and now has a new iPad 10. So far it has been much easier to help him become confident with the iPad than to work out and remind him which of the 5 ways he used to print and edit his photos. It probably helps that he has had the iPhone for a few years, but yesterday the Dell was consigned to the garage on its way to the local computer charity.

Windows: Insecure by design

Finally - Goodbye Microsoft?

I have an MS Hotmail account that I have had from the late 90s when my company was a MS "partner" and later for a (short) while had a customer MS reference site. Since I retired, my involvement with MS has reduced - A lot. Before Christmas I turned of my last VMs running Windows 2000, 7, and 10. My day-to-day running is on an iMac, iPad Pro, an iPhone 13, and a couple of Raspberry Pi's. I have noticed that over the last months that I have been regularly asked to input my MS credentials into my mail programs.

Yesterday I received an email from MS "Update your sign-in technology before September 16th, 2024 to maintain email access." Its contents include: "To help keep your account secure, Microsoft will no longer support the use of third-party email and calendar apps which ask you to sign in with only your Microsoft Account username and password. To keep you safe you will need to use a mail or calendar app which supports Microsoft’s modern authentication methods.

If you do not act, your third-party email apps will no longer be able to access your Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.com email address on September 16th. To help keep your account secure, Microsoft will no longer support the use of third-party email and calendar apps which ask you to sign in with only your Microsoft Account username and password. To keep you safe you will need to use a mail or calendar app which supports Microsoft’s modern authentication methods. If you do not act, your third-party email apps will no longer be able to access your Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.com email address on September 16th... ...Microsoft provides free versions of Outlook for your PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices which can be easily downloaded and connect to your email account. How can you set up your Gmail, Apple Mail, or other third-party mail application?

Various non-Microsoft applications will have their own steps for connecting to your Outlook.com email account using modern authentication methods. See our help article - Modern Authentication Methods now needed to continue syncing Outlook Email in non-Microsoft email apps."

After an extended period of my mail programs generating two copies of outgoing messages from the MS account, and the persistent requests to input my credentials, I am finally considering removing MS from my life completely. At the moment if I use a Hotmail address if someone has an MS email address, or they are relatively low on my level of trust (e.g. large retailer, or an acquaintance). Gmail is for people on an even lower trust level. Various other addresses, including my own domain, are for more trusted or "work related" contacts. Inertia means that I will probably keep an eye on this for a month or two; but if it goes as badly as I suspect, it will finally be "Goodbye Microsoft".