Posts by FIA

UK immigration rules hit science just as it rejoins €100B Horizon program

It is mainly driven by high energy costs and taxes

Surely it's mainly driven by high energy costs (as a result of the Ukraine war) and high food cost (as a result of the perfect storm between the war in Ukraine and the increased costs and reduced access to cheap labour due to us leaving the EU) that are driving the current round of inflation?

How do 'high taxes' contribute to this?

We have a below OECD average tax burden, although it is split with an above average on personal income and a below average on corporate income and gains. Surely this should reduce personal income relatively, acting as a deflationary pressure?

Which taxes would you reduce?

Reducing the personal tax burden would act to increase inflation (greater spending power). Your other option is corporation tax, and as trickle down economics has been shown to be a fallacy before now, reducing that will only enrich the shareholders, many of whom invest for the long term, so would have little net short term inflationary effect.

You would then either have worse public services, or have to increase personal taxation to pay for it. (which would help inflation, but would also be considered 'higher taxes').

Or have I misunderstood, and you just mean 'taxes in general' contribute to inflation? But then I'm really confused??

17% of Spotify employees face the music in latest cost-cutting shuffle

Au contraire. It's fascinating that some people can live without it.

I don't understand? Spotify not paying what you consider 'fair' won't make musicians stop writing music, or artists stop, erm... arting?? It never has, and it never will, as generally artistic people express themselves regardless.

You could say it about any profession.

Yes, in general that's how it works isn't it?

Surgeons should be able to support themselves until they fix the patient big time.

That's how it works... yes... Often higher skilled professions will incur a much greater 'no decent income' time at the start too. That's why students work in bars or restaurants.

Warehouse workers should keep themselves afloat until they put their 1000th OLED TV on the shelf without breaking.

That doesn't make sense, but warehouse workers should be paid for their work, yes. That pay will keep them afloat.

It's not anybody's fault bricklayers don't have viable business model (if there was such a thing as Spotify for Bricklayers).

Most bricklayers lay bricks. That's been a fairly viable business model for a good while now.

Appeal to tradition. Remember that at some point one could have said that to someone saying slavery is wrong. "We always had slaves".

???? And people are being forced into writing music? I'm not sure comparing a badly paid (in general) profession someone enters by choice to human trafficking and enslavement is helpful, or accurate.

Workers are entitled to a minimum wage for their time, at very least if they work at a for profit business.

And any musician can go and work for a 'for profit' business and get paid that minimum wage. However if you work for yourself you need to convince enough people as to the merits of your output, be that a lovely tune or a fine oak table, to pay for it.

The problem isn't really Spotify, it's people.

Throughout history artistic people have been exploited by business people. It's a weird symbiotic relationship that I'm not sure you can ever really fix. How many now famous painters were poor in their lifetime? There'll always be someone with a mythical pot of gold, and there'll always be someone talented but naive to fall for that.

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

Re: Except all that gets ignored

So they've improved then?

They used to have a hard coded admin username and password in them.

Hard coded.

Unchangeable.

...but definitely not listed in any forums on the internet or given out by any of their support staff.

Re: Pardon?

Criminal is still going to check if it is not a bluff and they can keep employee hostage until someone who can disable CCTV do it.

Which criminals? People aren't either criminals or 100% law abiding, with no middle ground. Violent crime is a whole different ball game to non violent crime.

This isn't TV... if you're taking hostages you're in a whole different world not just when it comes to sentencing but to mental attitude... most criminals want a quick in and out, if the staff can't shut off the CCTV they'll run, not re-enact a scene from 24. They aren't generally highly trained martial artists or ex soldiers with a cool backstory, they're just as likely not to want to get into confrontation as the next person.

There seems to have been around 7400 kidnapping offences in the UK for 2022/23 (The nearest I could find to hostage taking), and 250,690 reports of burglary. I would guess you're much more likely to not bother reporting a burglary over a kidnapping too. (Also bear in mind that kidnapping includes things like divorced parents taking their kids from their ex without permission, not just bungling someone into a van).

The world is a lot safer than it appears through the lens of the media, even now.

For example, I chuckled at a recent story, regarding the recent rise in crime in the UK, the figures were alarming, then it got pointed out they were about the level they'd been in the 1990s. A time when we used to bang on about how much safer it was since the 60s and 70s.

Re: Pardon?

How do you explain that almost always it seems to be the case when CCTV is needed, it is scrambled or missing?

It often isn't. You don't hear about the routine cases of a grey blob on a shit camera feed not being recognisable. You hear about the extreme instances where someone has fucked up more, like in this case.

Also, like with anything in life, people are shit at assessing risk versus reward.

"I would like a CCTV system, my insurance company says it's needed"

"Okay, we can do this hi-def 5K system, with night vision for about 80 quid a camera, and you'll need a DVR too"

".... got anything cheaper...?"

"Well, a full HD system with 4 cameras and a DVR is about 170 quid?"

It's nothing to do with some fanciful imagined scenario from late night TV, it's to do with cash.

Plus, in the above scenario, the insurance would still pay out, the cheaper cameras won't help them catch the criminals, but the net effect to the person who's been robbed/vandalised or whatever is still pretty much the same.

Logitech's Wave Keys tries to bend ergonomics without breaking tradition

Re: exchange rate

...and a teensy bit of gouging....

At current exchange rates $59.99 + VAT works out at around £57.

I can't imagine compliance with the consumer rights act costs another 20%?!

Re: Tat

For instance, every mouse I buy, gets its outer coating disintegrate within a year or two. It becomes sticky and unpleasant to work with.

What are you using to clean it with? Do they sit in strong sunlight?

Re: Tat

I have an MX Master 3 that's 3 and a half years old, it's had water spilled over it (...and been disassembled and cleaned), the rubberised coating where my thumb rests is worn smooth and the buttons are nice and shiny, but other than that it's going strong.

The battery isn't as good as it initially was, but still holds a charge for a few weeks of heavy daily use.

I'm expecting that'll be the thing that eventually needs replacing, but don't plan on changing the mouse any time in the next few years.

Bought to replace an MX-700 of some 20 years vintage, that was on it's 3rd set of rechargeables, but no longer actually charged them, even when placed in the charging dock 'just so' like it'd needed for the last few years.

Unfortunately, it does not – a membrane operates behind the scenes, and while that might not bode well for longevity, it does mean that less effort is required to press the keys.

What are you doing with your keyboards people??

I'm not sure I've ever had a membrane keyboard fail. I replaced my last one simply because it had become far too disgusting after 10+ years.

Sure, I replaced it with a very nice gaskety mechanical one, and now typing on a membrane is a much worse experience, but lifetime wise, they should pretty much last.

(I'm a coder, tend to type many hours a day...)

Microsoft opens sources ThreadX under MIT license

I mean, I'm sure Borkzilla will bury it,

They've just put the code on github, and according to the Eclipse foundation will subsequently be re-licencing it under the MIT licence.

The current licence forbids you from creating a competing product, which you will be allowed to do once it's re-licenced.

That doesn't seem like burying it?

Brits turn off Twitter, although teens and tweens keen on generative AI

So... X missed the spot?

AWS plays with Fire TV Cube, turns it into a thin client for cloudy desktops

Thin clients seem to be like the waterfall approach to software development.

We know people don't want them, and they don't really work that well, but yet people are still convinced they're a good idea.

Do we really need another non-open source available license?

Re: "proprietary gatekeeping wrapped in open washed clothing"

You remember Microsoft's Monkey Boy ? Ballmer. The one who said Open Source was a cancer.

To be fair to fester, he said the GPL was cancer, due to it's requirement to licence code it touches under the GPL.

It was a pejorative term, but the point is valid.

Today, code that's not open source is the rare exception.

IS there any actual evidence for that?

I'd be very surprised if that was true. Most of the software people use isn't running computers, it's running 'things' or 'companies'. Most of that isn't open unless I've really missed something.

I've also worked as a developer for 25+ years now, have never worked on open source software as part of my work. I've worked with open source software, sure, and a large portion of the work I do is built using it, but the code I write isn't, and at work, never has been.

Revival of Medley/Interlisp: Elegant weapon for a more civilized age sharpened up again

Re: Try a modern Lisp

Modern Lisp?

Seems as good a time as any to bring crypto into the mix. :D

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

Always be polite to PAs ...

Always be polite... especially to 'prickly' people.

I've worked with a few 'difficult' people over the years, more often than not simply being a little more polite and a little less dismissive makes one hell of a difference. One day, you'll need something they control and then your patience will be rewarded.

At a previous job we had a software repository, controlled in another country. A dev needed something adding, I suggested they email and ask for it. They complained as that particular department never responded and always took ages.

I fired off an email and had the software in the repo in about an hour.

My colleague was genuinely shocked; the only thing I can put it down to is whenever I had to email this dept and they did something I would always take 10 seconds to hit 'Reply' and say thank you.

Sometimes people forget, especially software people, that work is as much about programming the people as it is the machines.

Nice person ?

Its arseholes like that who tax society for millions that make everyone waste even more time working to pay for them.

(irony aside) I don't think I'd want to live in your version of society. It sounds bleak and uninviting.

The puns are becoming a cellebrated formula round here. Either that or they're just spreading.

Even the sheet ones.

FFmpeg 6.1 drops a Heaviside dose of codec magic

erm?

Or do you mean his personal stuff? Maybe he doesn't want to?

Re: Version numbers are not what you think

I would also question the author's assertion tht FFMPEG is used by the streaming services. They may well use it in some areas but only when they can't use hardware compression, which depending on OS and hardware isn't always available.

Isn't that how they use it?

It seems to decode/encode pretty much anything, and has good hardware support, so chuck it at FFMPEG and let that decide to use hardware if it's available? It may not be doing the actual lift and shift in many cases but I bet it's the 'director'. :)

How to give Windows Hello the finger and login as someone on their stolen laptop

Re: fingerprint works <25% of time

Sorry, I was replying to the comment 'fingerprint works <25% of time', not the article in general, just pointing out that the leading fingerprint sensor became vendor specific, and that is why the Apple stuff tends to be better. :)

Lets be fair, realistically, fingerprints aren't that secure if you're an 'important target'.

If I've nicked your device I've more than likely nicked a device covered in the fingerprints I need to unlock it.

Also, as this thread illustrates, consumer grade FP readers tend towards convenience rather than overall accuracy. I've worked with industrial applications of the technology for building access (slightly different as you're trying to identify someone from a fingerprint against a database of hundreds or thousands of people rather than trying to determine if a fingerprint is one person), and in order to be good enough to not have a shocking rate of false positives you often take a few goes to get a successful read.

Re: fingerprint works <25% of time

To be fair, Apple did also buy the leading fingerprint sensor manufacturer. The TouchID stuff was at the time streets ahead of the competition.

Canonical intros Microcloud: Simple, free, on-prem Linux clustering

Re: ZFS includes block deduplication...

But if you're on ZFS you might as well just use snapshots.

Then zfs send the fs elsewhere periodically for redundancy.

This is what I do at home, rotating hourly/daily/monthly snapshots, then some heith-robinson esq scripts to send it elsewhere every hour.

The remote stuff is a bit fragile but I assume there's pay for tooling for that stuff that is a bit better than my shonky shell scripts, but it does mean I can basically restore my home server's root FS from an off site backup if needed.

SpaceX's Starship on the roster for Texas takeoff

Re: True but somewhat illrelevant

The Boeing 737 MAX flew thousands of times without crashing due to flawed sensor data and a recalcitrant MCAS system. . . until it did. . . so a "success rate" is somewhat irrelevant.

...

I certainly hope that there's nothing overlooked and that the SpaceX human flights continue safely but given the safety track record of some of Mr Musk's enterprises well documented in this very journal. . . well, I'll just have continue to hope, I guess.

So 'success rate' doesn't matter, but 'safety track record' does?

How does one measure the second without the first?

What other metrics do you suggest, as it seems like 'not liking musk' is the one you're using?

Put it another way, if I was going to put myself or something else into space, would I chose the rocket company that has more successful launches than all other rocket companies (state or private) combined, or does that not matter because... Elon?

My side comment wrt Mr Musk still stands. That's a fact. Whether it's salient, well, I suppose that depends on where you're sitting. . . on the business end of a rocket or on the sidelines.

It is a fact, and so long as you take it in context that Blue Origin and Virgin both offer low altitude space tourism flights, and Space X can take you into orbit and dock with the ISS then that's fine, but to imply that all 3 crew vehicles are in the same ballpark is disingenuous.

Also, I might point out that New Shepard is currently grounded due to a booster failure in it's last flight, but that doesn't seem to matter because it's not Elon?? Or was it not the 'businesss end' that failed? ;) Personally, I'll trust a rocket that's flown well over 200 times without issue over one that has flown 30 times, the last of which ended in failure.

Re: Is it just me

Looking at the history of, for instance, the Boeing 737 MAX, I suspect that the "losing government control to private entities" ship sailed quite a while ago.

Per Wikipedia "During the certification process, the FAA delegated many evaluations to Boeing, allowing the manufacturer to review their own product. It was widely reported that Boeing pushed to expedite approval of the 737 MAX to compete with the Airbus A320neo, which hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing's model."

You could also look at the history of SpaceX, the Falcon-9 currently has a 99.3% success rate over it's 281 missions.

The current 'Block 5' variant makes up 221 of those, with a 100% success rate.

How much such "self-certification" is going on at SpaceX is at this point probably anyone's guess.

One would hope the FAA has learnt from the Boeing fiasco?

There may be a point to ponder that while Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have both flown in their rocket contraptions, Elon Musk hasn't flown in any of his.

Other people have though, to orbit.

Just sayin'.

SpaceX is, statistically, by far the most experienced and successful rocket company out there.

Elon Musk is a narcissistic dick.

Both these things can be true. :)

Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's like 16GB in a PC

Re: @Binraider

Of course, if you remember the ZX81, you also remember systems with just 1K.

I do, although as I got a second hand ZX81 in the Spectrum/C64/Amiga era it also came with a memotech memopak 64K. This meant wobbly ram upgrades were just a thing of legend.

It also came with a good stack of old Sinclair Users too, I used to covet the various keyboard expansion options available.

Re: @Binraider

Wow.... I grew up in the 8 bit era (ZX-81 -> Commodore +4 -> Acorn Electron), and I never registered that the VIC-20 only had 5K....

It's rare you learn something new about old stuff at this age.

Thank you.

Re: 8GB is plenty if your walled garden is small enough

... It sometimes consumes up to 40GB for just the filesystem cache.

But that's because you have 40G of free memory. Any decent OS should use all available spare memory (and possibly more) for it's filesystem caches, however it doesn't mean they're needed.

(My personal server has gone from 96GB to 32GB, and uses much less memory for a FS cache as a consequence... I've not noticed the difference...)

Re: The quantity is fine, but the price is not

Why does every purchasing decision have to be made solely on price and perceived value?

Why isn't it okay to buy something simply because you like it?

Why are people making different choices to you 'idiots'?

I'm not badly paid, and I can't afford a lot of the high priced apple stuff, so the idiots must be doing something right.

How have we got to the point where 8GB is "usable for basic browsing / word-processing etc."?

The boring answer... media.

That's the one thing that was, is and always will be 'large'.

I can word process a nice colourful document in as much memory as I could in the 90s, but once I start to add media to it, then the memory usage rises.

Pretty pixels cost memory. (As pointed out above somewhere, a 4K frame is around 30 MB... back in the 90s I had 2MB of video memory...)

Re: *Placed*

Hmm how do you *place* that memory? Hmm blue-tac? tape? superglue?

No! It's soldered.

Is it? Is that how multi core SOCs are assembled? I always assumed they were just bonded?

Canonical shows how to use Snaps without the Snap Store

There's a lot to be said for fat binaries, especially in the Linux world.

A few years ago I had a (Windows) Qt app I wanted to distribute cross platform. This was in the days before Snap et. al.

Windows and Mac were fine, NSIS and macdeployqt respectively. However, for Linux (which I didn't really use) I concluded that a 'fat' binary was the way to go.

I didn't wish to spend time learning the various package managers for OSs I didn't actually use, so just ended up statically compiling the binary and shipping that, along with the object files and instructions needed to re-compile against a modified Qt for LGPL compliance.

(This was a hobby freeware app just to be clear, not a commercial or work thing).

Mac daddy Woz hospitalized in Mexico over mystery malady

Re: Not Mac daddy

That would probably be one Burrell Smith, another Woz level Apple genius.

GhostBSD makes FreeBSD a little less frightening for the Linux loyal

FreeBSD is quite different from Linux, and even experienced Linux users will find themselves lost sometimes.

I'd say that was the other way round. FreeBSD is still very much a traditional unix descendant, whereas GNU/Linux/SystemD does seem to be forging it's own path. i.e. it's Linux that's becoming increasingly different.

I'm not sure that this is a bad or good thing, it's just a thing. Although as a BSD user I do find my odd forays into Linux land increasingly unfamiliar. (and I still find man pages telling me to go read something in a browser... Grrrrr... )

I also may be old, but I'm still not 100% sure why ifconfig isn't fit for purpose any more, in BSD land it works as good as it ever did. (Or I suppose more generally, I sometimes find Linux feels like it changes things because someone feels the need to change it, rather than the new thing being materially better).

FreeBSD 14's RC2 dances to the tune of OpenZFS 2.2

Re: OpenZFS is working fine on Linux

"Because OpenZFS is covered by a GPL-incompatible license, most Linux distros still don't include it"?

Most distro's don't include it.

Ubuntu makes it easy to install however.

The problem is with it not being GPL compatible it can never be mainlined into the kernel, and depending on your reading of the GPL including it as part of a distribution is a legal grey area. (What do you define as the software product).

For example, if you have the ability to boot off ZFS is it an integral part of the kernel at that point (even if modularised) as your 'software' would be unusable without it.

Are we to take it that they leave the user to bolt it on, but will then support that effort?

Yes.

GPL is concerned with the rights around distribution of software, so separate out the distribution of ZFS from the GPL licenced stuff and that problem largely goes away.

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Re: No corruption here.

Before a smart meter was installed here, the meter reader came by twice a year and it was mandatory that he physically laid eyes on the meter at least once a year (or you'd have to reschedule a visit at a time that suits you at your own expense).

Not sure about that. A friend works for BG, he reckons every 2 to 3 years is mandatory. What do you mean by 'your own expense'? They can't charge you for gaining access, although you are legally obliged to give them access, but they have to work around you.

I had a meter at an old flat that they kept trying to come round and read, but I was at work so they never did. (I kept leaving messages telling them I was available on a Saturday). It took them about 6 years to finally get round when I was in.

My current house has never had the gas meter read as far as I know (the elec is available to them so may have been). I just send them readings every so often, it's all good.

What I don't get, and something that shows things are still very corrupt in the industry, is why the companies insist on continuing with fantasy debits (if paying by direct debit) when there's a meter telling them in exact detail how much you're consuming day by day. Why is this not illegal?

It's a difficult one this. You have every right to pay exactly what you use, and if you can be arsed, you can do what a friend used to do. Set the DD at 5 pounds a month so you get the discount and then just pay the balance every month as needed. They'll pester you to death if you do though, so it's probably not worth it.

However, most people prefer a constant monthly payment (hence building up credit in the summer) and in the before times when things didn't change every 5 minutes the utility companies basically got this right (or at least mine did). Now if you object to them making money of your interest you do need to chase them up more.

I'm not sure it should be illegal to have this as an option though. I'd personally rather subsidise my winter bills with summer as I have xmas to pay for in winter. :)

Re: No corruption here.

The goal of these things is plain and simple mass surveillance.

This is very cunning... I mean there's already widespread ANPR cameras that can pinpoint most vehicles within a 10-15 mile radius, then there's your mobile phone cell records, and records of things like all your financial transactions, all a warrants access away.

But no... that dusty box in the corner of a distant cupboard or garage.... that's how they're doing it!

Take Windows 11... please. Leaks confirm low numbers for Microsoft's latest OS

Re: W12 will be arriving soon.

Vista - Was a very important release. Mac OS X was eating Windows' lunch at the time, and without Vista laying a lot of very important groundwork, Windows and Office was in significant danger. Vista rewrote the GUI as a DirectX app, allowing for full hardware acceleration, there was significant work done on improving security, the process scheduler learned the difference between dual-core and dual-CPU (a subtle, but oh-so-important difference), and big chunks of the under the hood components of the OS were ripped out and replaced with modern replacements

..unfortunately, they left a global lock in the compositing window manager, which meant window re-draws were done in a round-robbin fashion and a single rogue app could lead to the desktop appearing to hang. Also, the more windows you opened, the slower it got.

So if you had a nice GPU vista appeared really slow.

I'll also add another voice of support for the MiniNT efforts around the Windows 8 time too. The reality is you could install Windows 7 and 10 on very similar hardware.

Win 11 - Using the incomplete 10X UI was certainly an... interesting choice, and I'm not sure what they were smoking when they came up with the supported hardware list

That's a future decision, from Win 11 onwards you can assume a base level of hardware, it's just a pain point to give them a newer baseline hardware level. I expect we'll see the implications of this a couple of releases down the line.

So the story here is an OS that would run on (pretty much) anything that would run Windows 7 has better uptake than the OS that requires much more modern hardware?

This is surprising?

Raspberry Pi 5: Hot takes and cooler mistakes

Re: Thermodynamics

If only you'd changed your handle to 'JoulieM' that comment would be just about perfect. Have an upvote.

GNOME developer proposes removing the X11 session

Re: Ugh!

Having a single place to do everything (like a server) sounds good until people start to come with ideas of how they want to do things differently. And there are tons of different GUI toolkits that all want to draw in different ways.

You say that like it's a good thing?

;)

Tweaked Space Shuttle Main Engine gets ready for final testing

Isn’t it 1.8%?

Red Hat bins Bugzilla for RHEL issue tracking, jumps on Jira

Re: No suprise.

JIRA's a good tool.... when configured correctly.

JIRA is never configured correctly. :(

Samsung, the Angel of Death: Exploding Note 7 phones will be bricked

Re: Is this even legal in the EU?

Where is the laws to stop this happening when say they decide to brick it to make you buy the new one, or because they don't like you (hell - since for Sloopy - you don't pay your bill on your unrelated but by same company 'evilcorp' credit card).

In the UK that would most likely be sections 9, 10 and 11 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

To be fair to Samsung here they're trying to prevent faulty devices from bursting into flames, which is slightly different from planned obsolescence. Manufacturers will continue to do as much planned obsolescence as they can get away with until it hurts their market; same as it always has been. For modern devices you don't need to brick them to make people upgrade, you make your OS support cadence the minimum legally required and tie in any online API changes to that. Old stuff will just stop working to a level enough of your customers find annoying, who will then upgrade (hopefully to your stuff.. that's the balancing act...).

Raspberry Pi 5 revealed, and it should satisfy your need for speed

Re: Pi on the moon

Berwick's getting older, they need to make 'em smaller so he can still reach the gods.

The iPhone 15 has a Goldilocks issue: Too big or too small. Maybe a case will make it just right

Re: Phones are lovely but they'd be much better without cameras

Indeed. If they insist on sticking a camera in the thing that sticks out from the back then [...] Everyone who buys one is going to stick the thing in a case anyway so you’re not going to see it anyway.

That's why.

The camera bump gives the case some depth without having a shroud around the camera (ie, the case+phone tend to lie flat).

If the phone was flat the case would need an opening, which would need to be big enough to not encroach on the wide angle lens so many phones have these days.

GNU turns 40: Stallman's baby still not ready for prime time, but hey, there's cake

Re: A Complicated Man

Isn't the point more the irony of enforcing 'Freedom' with a licence, which by definition is controlling. That's what's meant by a narrow definition of freedom.

If you put your source code in the public domain then it's free.

By definition any licence doesn't do that, it adds restrictions. That's the point. I won't release software without one as I want people to use the output of my time as I choose.

i.e. if you believe in the ideals of the GPL you'll choose the GPL licence to restrict what can be done with your source code, such as someone taking it as the basis for software that you don't release the source code to.

It may be what you want, but it is still a narrow definition of 'Free'.

Ubuntu's 'Mantic Minotaur' peeks out of the labyrinth

Isn't this fairly common in Linux-land, as opposed to on Windows, for everything from error recovery, hardware upgrades (just lift and shift the drive), to installing a new O/S version from a LiveCD ?

It's common in Windows land too. (Boot the Windows install CD, Shift-F10 for a command prompt...)

How is this impacted ?

This prevents you doing that.

There has to be a fallback, right ? Right ?

On Windows you can create a backup of the key, which is a text file containing a code you type in to unlock the drive. If you don't have this or equivalent then you can't access the drive.

Full disk encryption is for people who don't want their data to be lost in the event of the machine being stolen or cloned, the idea is that you explicitly can't just boot of a recovery CD to access the data.

If that's an issue, don't encrypt your drive.

This is the reason my home PC drives aren't encrypted, but my works laptop is. My home stuff it's more important for me to be able to access the data on my hard disc, whereas with the laptop it's far far more important that the data on there isn't accessible by a third party. If the laptop is stolen I'll just get a new one with the standard image, download stuff I need to work and carry on. All the important data is sorted elsewhere.

Having read the room, Unity goes back to drawing board on runtime fee policy

Re: Too little, too late

It's not really an open vs closed source issue I don't think.

If you build a business around something like this the support is the important thing.

Even if Unity was open sourced many devs impacted by this would be unable to fork it and just carry on, it's a complex piece of software.

Redhat have proved you can do the same thing in the open source world.

Here's a tip... Companies.... stop treating customers like commodities.

These days you can teach old tech a bunch of new tricks

Not once... but twice.... ;)

and a tool that emulates Nvidia's ancient Glide drivers.

...

itself a port of Nvidia's Glide 3D graphics API, on which The Reg reported when it went FOSS back in the 20th century.

NVidia's?? I mean the link even has 3dfx in the URL... ;)

I get Nvidia bought their assets but to call it Nvidia's API when it was open sourced before then is just a kick in the teeth¹ to a memory of a once great 3D company.

I will never forget the day I saw GL quake for the first time, it was one of those 'woah' moments in computing for me.

_{1 memories have teeth... who knew!}