Posts by gerryg

De-duplicating the desktops: Let's come together, right now

Way to miss the point

All these developers are scratching an itch. I have no insight why they are doing it and they have no obligation to meet my needs or demands.

To call it wasted effort is to attribute motive without evidence and I would suggest denigration. I consider myself lucky to be able to use what others have developed.

Case study Timothy Pearson (TDE) decided that KDE3 was where it was at and forked the code base. His time, his decision.

I quite liked Konqueror being a local file manager (everything is a file, after all) but despite the loss not enough to choose TDE over current KDE. I took a look, it was nostalgic but I'm tagging along as a mostly free rider with the KDE project. (I've also looked at a couple of the other desktops that openSUSE provides but KDE does it for me. My dislike of GNOME is entirely unevidence based.)

Of course all this was under my control (and responsibility) with no-one nagging me to do this or that. That's one of the plus points.

It's just how it is. I don't think diversity of desktop is a problem. The paid for edifice of commercial software might get so unwieldy that even their obscene marketing budgets might fail to stop the collapse (slight evidence that windows 11 might be in the space) leading to a significant search for an alternative but until then just be grateful for what you have got and stop worrying about the year of LOTD.

BTW on datelines KDE was a free evolution of Sun's CDE unfortunately although reassurances were in place at that time Qt was free as in beer not as in speech (now both) So the GNU project started GNOME.

Lloyds Banking Group claims Microsoft Copilot saves staff 46 minutes a day

Since 1983

I've had my main account with Lloyds for 42 years. Nothing has stirred me enough to look around. This morning was only annoying. That they are using copilot is a reason to find an alternative. Anyone got any non AI based suggestions?

Capita fined £14M after 58-hour delay exposed 6.6M records

"drive by download"

I confess to having to look that one up.

So some moron, somewhere, was looking at something they shouldn't have been looking at and clicked on a malicious link.

Do crapita have any explanation regarding how it happened and why it isn't going to happen again?

I don't use Windows and while I might choose to bring the usual axe, I am curious as I thought executables required admin rights.

A Linux alternative? Debian/Hurd shows microkernel Unix dream is alive

something I have never quite understood

Is there a material difference in systemic risk between a usable system based on a macro kernel and a micro kernel?

Everything I read and think I understand suggests micro kernels throw risk over the fence for others to deal with, whereas macro kernels plough on trying to handle everything. But I don't get any idea that a system based on one or the other is less risky.

All explanations gratefully received.

.

Microsoft kills volume rebates in name of 'transparency'

Transparency

As in "I saw you coming?"

Faced with £40B budget hole, UK public sector commits £9B to Microsoft

Re: UK public sector commits £9B to Microsoft

It the rich that pay most of the taxes. Please don't attempt to conflate tax avoidance (which anyone with an ISA is doing) with tax evasion which is illegal.

The Laffer curve has got nothing to do with trickle down economics. It is a model that proposes that beyond a certain point the total tax take goes down as tax rates rise.

Network scans find Linux is growing on business desktops, laptops

Munich

Nothing to do with the software everything to do with the politics.

Wanted: IT manager for UK government agency – £60k

Apples and oranges

Did you discount the risk premium of not being made redundant, add in the employers pension contribution, the insurance cost of six months sick pay at 100%, then six months at 50%, six weeks leave? What about the stress of real accountability and delivering customer driven requirements?

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Over the 20 years I have been here...

...the warmth towards the Linux ecosystem has increased considerably. I have no idea if/when the year of LOTD will arrive but the hostility has declined.

A lot of the reasons for not using Linux are essentially that Microsoft inadvertently or intentionally makes playing nice a bit difficult.

It's got a lot better (though my shiny new laptop has a WiFi dongle because ..) So while someone rants about why Windows and why not Linux just sit quietly and recall that Steve Balmer was on the money when he described Linux as a cancer.

EU OS drafts a locked-down Linux blueprint for Eurocrats

Source code

Has everyone forgotten Red Hat's attitude to source code. If you want access to it (and updates, not sure) you need a subscription.

Not only is SuSE European, it doesn't play fast and loose

It there is any age difference between SuSE and Red hat, the first SuSE distro emerged in 1993, I'm not sure but happy to be corrected, I think Red Hat is younger.

Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament

Re: I hope this happens

The problem was never interoperability and always political. There's a documentary vid knocking about which is painful viewing . FSFE will probably have a link somewhere.

With a change of administration, Microsoft flew in their top sales gurus and made a few promises, local research centre, jobs, etc. Suddenly their Munich centred distro (it had a snappy name Munix?) was heaved out and Windows was back.

Increasingly local administrations are finding that Libre Office is not so awful after all. The German government funded the hardening of some KDE component or other back in the day associated with kmail, kontact etc.

If politicians could only stop accepting the equivalent of Taylor Swift concert tickets and actually focus on the wider needs of the polity... Both CCTA and MoD (GCHQ too IIRC) have long since indicated that Linux based systems are no worse than any other option.

It's all there, we just have to get the CMA (El Reg passim) to do its job on cloud computing, interoperability, open standards (cont p 94)

Microsoft tells abandoned Publisher fans to just use Word and hope for the best

Re: Moral of the tale

You can still read the Magna Carta. I'm not sure if it is still true but Acts of Parliament used to be written with similar ink on vellum, specifically because of the problem you parody. Laser discs fell by the wayside not long after the BBC Micro project terminated, so until some geek or other worked out how to access those their longevity was about 1600 years less than the OP.

LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab

Re: LibreOffice was nothing to do with Sun?

OpenOffice was at least open source I can't remember if if was free software too. If Oracle hadn't tried to take future releases proprietary there would have been no need for a fork of the project.

So in strict vocabulary terms you are correct but Sun were not the problem.

The part of the story no-one seems to be mentioning is that Sun bought the company (Victor Kiam eat your heart out) because the relicensing deal for Microsoft Office would have been more expensive. Sun initially made Star Office free as in beer and subsequently as in speech.

Re: All you need

When something is free as in beer there's not much room for "soft" "marketing". That has always been the dirty little secret of proprietary anything and the millstone attached to Free Software.

No-one seems to get sacked for not choosing the option with the minimum cost function

This plague of proprietary form over function was sort of highlighted by Taylor Swift of all people. When invited to give Apple her music for free she is said to have responded by pointing out she doesn't ask for free iPhones.

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

Re: Anyone who has a blanket rule banning GO TOs...

If I recall correctly even ADA had a goto. Long time though

But

IIRC there was a small glitch, (it was the 1980s) HP Basic on the 9000 series didn't like returning number.zero results from functions.

Otherwise they were great with a novel user interface, the knob. The IEEE-488 interface super useful in the lab.

Wubuntu: The lovechild of Windows and Linux nobody asked for

Lindows...

What happened to that?

The National Museum of Computing reboots Bletchley Park's H Block

Enigma Enulator

But have you all got the Franklin Heath developed Android app which raises money for Bletchey?

Microsoft hosts a security summit but no press, public allowed

Don't worry. It's Microsoft, the data about the event will leak out because of a security breach soon enough.

Linux Deepin 23: A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from

Redux

Each to their own n'all but the author of the article has previous regarding KDE.

KDE seems to have a relatively happy constituency of users and its got a 30 year pedigree. I was a bit cheesed off with KDE 4 but otherwise I remain happy.

I might be happier with another DE but all that paint that needed to be watched drying prevents me bothering to find out, c f., distro hopping. I started with S.u.S.E 6.0 and I'm now on Tumbleweed. I neither know nor care what I'm missing

But if you really care: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Deepin/Installation

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday borks dual-boot Linux-Windows PCs

Re: Or, the better fix

Up there with (for old people)

It Still Does Nothing

Any Lousy Venture Except Yours

CentOS 7 holdouts thrown a support lifeline by SUSE

Re: Wondering about licensing?

SUSE are on the record as has been reported here as offering the source code to anyone that wants it.

https://www.suse.com/source-code/

I don't know what the deal is with Centos but if you don't want it there's no compulsion.

UK govt office admits ability to negotiate billions in cloud spending curbed by vendor lock-in

Those who fail to learn from history

This is nothing more than open standards redux.

The problem regarding proprietary standards and lock-in is hardly news, Cabinet Office was busy avoiding the problem 15 years ago, not for the first time. Is there any reader who remembers the CCTA writing about all this in about 1995. Cloud is the walled garden problem on steroids. Apparently the Competition and Markets Authority is investigating. That shouldn't take less than 10 years by which time the suppliers will have nimbly skipped on.

And El Reg can report on that

The DMA hasn't changed Big Tech's anticompetitive DNA, says Free Software Foundation Europe

Still there after all these years

Got to admire FSFE still plugging away

The task for government is quite easy. Open standards and interoperability.

One can only assume all those highly paid economists and lawyers working in the competition authorities don't want to vote for Christmas

Year of Linux on the desktop creeps closer as market share rises a little

Re: Familiarity and compatibility

"A long time ago someone at Microsoft demoed Open Office against Microsoft's standard internal expenses spreadsheet. As it opened, the existing data was corrupted"

Of course it did. Why else would someone from Microsoft run the demonstration?

c.f. MS-DOS/WordPerfect

c.f. ISO 29500 "transitional"

Infosys co-founder doubles down on call for 70-hour work weeks

Re: Only 168 hours in a week

The topic was workaholism. I wasn't disrespecting people life choices.

Only 168 hours in a week

If they both work the same 35 hours, say 40 after commute, then there is a large hole in the day requiring childcare and other stuff. So a third salary is required, neither of them are cleaning the bathroom and one of them is working for almost no money.

If they don't work the same 35 hours and do not have childcare they will barely see each other.

So no paradigm shift but nice try.

Workaholic espouses workaholism

However, I did wonder if the author has a side-hustle with the Grauniad, thus undermining the thrust of their argument.

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Re: ""the system and licenses are not readily interchangeable or interoperable"

Others have been saying this for years. See the file format wars of the early 2010s. Cabinet Office produced some half decent guidelines which were mysteriously withdrawn and nothing has happend since. At the time someone said "it would be nice not to be here in 10 years time" and now the CMA has opened an inquiry into the problems of lock-in with cloud.

It's always been about interoperability and for some reason (I think we can guess) government of any persuasion has always listened to those with a vested interest in avoiding it.

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

Obsession with colour printing is the problem

May I just put a word in for the Brother HL 1110? B&W laser printer for about £80 with good enough graphics for QR etc. Mine is about 8 years old. It has to think a bit before it prints the first page but with crisp type. A new no chip toner cartridge costs about £20. No dried ink no half empty problems and has never let me down.

On the rare occasions I need a colour photo I get one in the high street for a couple of quid

What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it

No crisis, nothing to see

There are alternatives to Redhat.

This reminds of Bruce Perkins circa 1998, no #chickenlittle but *if* a solution is needed than parasites such as me need to work out whether they are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Too many of the "community" spend hours screaming by forum but perhaps rather than demanding they could find other ways of contributing.

I fund some projects that are of particular importance to me, nothing that would cause them to gasp, but a few quid every now and again.

Linux, the kernel, is too important to too many people, that is safe. Other projects needs to be cared about more.

LibreOffice complains fairly regularly that too many corporate users don't support the project. But according to Wikipedia only a few percent of all users see enough value to support it.

I look at the list of corporate sponsors for openSUSE, that looks fairly healthy but for reasons that escape me, it continues to be treated as the runt while others spend their time respinning Debian derivatives, freedom of choice n'all but if they think there is a problem possibly respins are not the answer.

Linux Kernel of the Beast 6.6.6 exorcised by angelic 6.6.7 update

It's all about class

As Nancy Mitford put it "u and non-u"

Trinity desktop's latest release snaps into action on Q4OS 5.3

Re: The main point is being missed

> My choice is: can I please not have so many choices?

Then don't look. If whatever you are happy with is what you are happy with, then lucky you.

It's not always necessary to have an opinion

For example I have no idea how many distros there are - I don't look and I don't care - 25 years ago I picked what is now Tumbleweed.

> but it's not OK to say "you should like this because it's so customisable" when it's not customisation that I want.

Who was saying that?

just installed it

Frighteningly it takes over the log-in from SDDM but it plays very nicely on Tumbleweed. Wave of nostalgia and props to the team but I'm not sure I'll be using it much.

The main point is being missed

It doesn't really matter if "this vulture" doesn't get on with the KDE philosophy. This is all about the power of choice.

Back in the day Timothy Pearson thought KDE 3 was where it was at (and given the travails with KDE 4 it was possible to see his point).

I recall he had certain complaints about the changes to the underlying infrastructure too.

So is plugging away at TDE and here we are. Yours for the using. Or not. That's the point.

Microsoft CEO Nadella's compensation drops... to $48M

How effective is any CEO?

I'd be curious to know how long a company could tick along without a CEO. Are the divisions unable to walk talk or chew gum without the CEO telling them to breathe in and breathe out?

What size of decision reaches the CEO.and how many?

Similarly whether breaking up large company into smaller units would give better or worse shareholder value.

And why $50 million and not $100 million or $25 million.

Is he going to leave?

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

Re: PC is good enough for now.

On the specific issue of power efficiency, with a decent graphics card, say 300W for a desktop, 12 hours day.

3.6kWh about 70p/day

How efficient would the new PC have to be to justify the expenditure?

What about all the energy used to make the existing PC?

Or the cost of disposal?

City council Oracle megaproject got a code red – and they went live anyway

Theory of the firm, bear with me

In the private sector eventually the internal transaction costs exceed the external transaction costs, limiting the size of the organisation, (Ronald Coase). That's one reason why there's more than one supermarket.

Enterprise software is a sales pitch designed to convince large organisations they can lower internal transaction costs. In the private sector a firm has to cope with the decision or die. In the public sector they just keep spending and put it on the tax bill.

Re: Product not suitable

Here's a quantum of advice "If you can't explain to a five yr old you don't understand it" Richard Feynman

If the Linux Foundation was a software company, it'd be the biggest in the world

Re: Wrong

I'm curious as to your definition of obsolete. As I suppose would be the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, CERN, the London Stock exchange and anyone with a supercomputer

Mozilla's midlife crisis has taken it from web pioneer to Google's weird neighbor

Re: Self-reinforcing

I have never not used Firefox except when I used to use Konqueror and to date have not experienced any problems.

Save me posting twice, WebKit is derived from and reintegrated into KHTML.

So Konqueror is the other browser.

Teardown reveals iPhone 15 to be series of questionable design decisions

Re: They want how much for one?

Bought mainly by oxymorons?

Long-term support for Linux kernels is about to get a lot shorter

Enterprise vendors

Back in the day SUSE kernels used to have specific patches applied.

But AFAIK SUSE just use the stable versions. (I think there was some sort of announcement about 15 years ago) So really it's the usual suspect.

Randomly I've just watched a doc about Gary Kildall and as a result wonder if the usual suspects had played nicer if there would ever have been a demand for Linux.

Electoral Commission had internet-facing server with unpatched vuln

Don't blame Microsoft

They are just selling what they have always sold. The real problem is the over promoted tossers trapped in the headlights vaguely recalling that "no-one ever got sacked for buying IBM" and making a false read across.

There is no doubt that a Linux based is less convenient but as Obama said about something else, that's the point.

On the record: Apple bags patent for iDevice to play LPs

Ceramic cartridges only

I don't recall if the Garrard SP25 was ever available with a ceramic cartridges (and flippable styii) but the upmarket 86 and 100 ("SB"?) were only MC/MM. However the distortion from a ceramic cartridge was around 10% IIRC somewhat limiting other benefits.

Re: Had to have been filed 2021-04-01?

The RIAA playback curve has got nothing to do with "distortion intrinsic in the mechanical pickup" but is an attempt to flatten the RIAA encoding curve without which the bass would require more room (wider grooves) so reducing playback time.

While I broadly agree with your view of CDs versus mechanical recoding and rejoice at the ability to listen to Electric Ladyland in its entirety without a stacking mechanism and the LPs being sides 1-4 and 2-3, I do occasionally muse whether the loss of ritual and artifact associated with a 12" disc has contributed to the demise in the perceived value of "the album".

Twitter rate-limits itself into a weekend of chaos

Re: AI training must be stopped from scraping Twitter - pretty please?

Unfortunately the OED now equates "literally" to "actually" undermining https://xkcd.com/725/

Mars helicopter phones home after 63 days of silence

obligatory

xkcd

Rocky Linux claims to have found 'path forward' from CentOS source purge

Re: If RH can't do this...

https://www.suse.com/c/navigating-changes-in-the-open-source-landscape/

You might find this interesting

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https://www.suse.com/download/sles/

Free support for 60 days

https://www.suse.com/source-code/

Typically, the source code is distributed along with the binaries. You can also send us a written request to provide the source code for a SUSE product by addressing your written request to:

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