Posts by John Brown (no body) 27855 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
Why does even exist in the first place? Are people really so disorganised that they want this? I can't for the life of me think of a single good reason for this to exist that outweighs the likely-hood of it being a security nightmare. And no matter how "optional" this may be at the moment, it WILL be opt-out eventually. And even your opt-out choice will almost certainly
default back to "on" whenever an update is applied, as we already see with many user "choices" already.
"quite likely a limit of 9,999.99 due to display issues."
The BCD limit is entirely plausible, but I'd put my money on the cash register display. 30 years ago, they were still mostly vacuum fluorescent or LED digits and a 6 digit display is sounds entirely reasonable for most places where the maximum expected purchase would likely not exceed anything close to $10,000 and such items are built to a price. We had a similar issue here in the UK a few years ago with petrol pumps and the large price display adverts when the fuel prices went up to more than the display could handle (ie it went above £2 per litre and most displays were 199.99p capable only, ie the first digit only had a the 2 segments for a "1", not the full 7 segments - I saw places with a "2" pasted over the first digit)
I well remember the days of yore when s/w was written almost entirely for the US market and database managers often had special field entries for phone nos. and "zip" codes, formatted and error checked for the US systems and therefore useless everywhere else in the world :-) Easily worked around of course by simply creating the relevant localised fields, but more irritating than the still current default of highlighting "United States" or "English (US)" as the default or at the top of an otherwise alphabetical list. But less irritating than s/w programmes/drivers defaulting o US Letter size when there is only a single country in the entire world that thinks that's a good idea (and IIRC, didn't US.gov standardise on A4 too some years ago? Or has Trump signed an EO forcing a switch back to the clearly more patriotic "US Letter" and not that commie/socialist A4 size?)
Mainly because few people were on line then and had to be shipped the patches on physical media. Nowadays, with almost everyone online, they can just ship any old crap and then send out updates every month until it either works or is sun-setted for the new version, the latter being the more likely outcome.
Even better and easier on one of the places I frequent. You tap you badge on the lift panel in the foyer and it then displays only the floors you are allowed[*] to access on the, in my case only floor 7. It'd be quite simple to "adjust" the lift control computer to show 7 and drop me of at 6 or 8. Not sure it would be all that obvious if the floor was laid out identically :-)
* "allowed" as in that's where the lift goes. The stairs have no "security" other than you can only get to the floor foyers before needing to badge in again.
"And that stock could be worth billions, not the paltry millions zuck is offering.""
"Do ya feel lucky, punk!" Most startups fail, Zucks $millions are real. Do you want have fun and ride the rollercoaster, hoping it won't jump the track? Or do you want to work for MetaZuckFarcebook? Choose and go to page 21. Choose 2 and go to page 666. :-)
True. The article did mention 50-100, but I'd expect only the very top few got offers that high.
On the other hand, it's on offer, so no NDA can apply at that point, and if they are prepared to offer that much, they sound desperate enough to overlook the "indiscretion" if s/he does accept :-)
"*Doing their homework on the bed coverings, blocking the vents."
Interestingly, not long after the first Covid lockdowns and WFH was exceedingly popular, one of the OEMs sent out a tech Bulletin asking techs to check with the user that they weren't using their laptops/tablets on "soft or fluffy surfaces" when the symptom was "overheating".
"Similar problems with the little shutter on the camera for video calls. Needs to be VERY bright orange!"
User: My sound isn't working.
Me: [shows them were the physical volume control is on the side/front of laptop is]*
* Yes, I remember when they had proper analogue volume controls with endstops. And the later ones that were "digital" replacements and would keep winding in the same direction for ever, so had to show some users which way was up and which was down :-(
It may depend on the software in use, and I too leave the shutter closed by default, whether that be a keyboard FN-key or a physical slide shutter, but generally if I forget, the software is "clever" enough to detect the camera is now on but it's only "seeing" blackness and suggests I check the shutter setting. Of course, that's just my works laptops running Windows. My own, running FreeBSD doesn't do that because the OS assumes there's someone with a certain level of intelligence in the driving seat :-)
We deal with a number of customers who for legal or security reasons (their own and/or State level) don't allow disks to be taken off site. Mostly, the warranty is still honoured for the site visit + labour, but they pay for the part being replaced if it's something not allowed back off site. These days, that's often all of the parts other than display panel[*], keyboard and the case itself :-) Everything else has some form of usable storage such as an EEPROM where credentials or other sensitive data might be hidden if taken off site. Mostly it's only that extreme with military kit. Most other secure places only worry about the HDDs/SSDs, which they retain for physical destruction.
* display panels probably do have updatable firmware these days, but I've not yet been asked to leave the faulty one on site for "security reasons" :-)
You don't even need to be able to read the hard drive filesystem if you really want to test it. Mostly, with SSDs, they work or they don't anyway, but booting an external OS or diags tool is enough to read the SMART or equivalent data which 99.9% of the time tells you all you need to know, and if you REALLY want to prove a point, there are tools to run non-destructive read/write tests at the sector level, irrespective of the drives content or filesystem. But that is mostly only useful with spinning disks.
If the drive isn't the obvious cause of the problem, it can be temporarily replaced with a stock one for testing if that is required (rare). Mostly, I just boot a USB drive with the relevant OEM and/or other diags or even a full Windows or Linux image. Almost every user device I see is bitlockered anyway, so booting the internal HDD and it's OS is a non-starter almost every time. I can still run disk diags on the internal disk. If it passes the basic ones, odds are it's not the cause. Since it's mostly corporate I deal with, they already gave the user a replacement and are going to wipe/rebuild it after the repair, but I still always ask if I can install a plain vanilla Windows if I need to test it more in depth with the original hardware config in case of more esoteric hardware and/or driver related/combo issues where the specific faulty part isn't obvious. Even the built-in diags can be useful, eg Dell, Lenovo, but HP...less so.
Not to mention their utter confusion when you try to explain that the mobile signal from the Telco is not Wifi and Wifi is not the signal from the Telco. And lets not go anywhere NEAR the confusion of 5g, 6g and their relationships to both WiFi and mobile/cell standards.
See icon. I need one just thinking about it!!
"The main impact will not be the applications, but the desktop. LibreOffice will work fine. But things like onscreen calendars and the like that integrate with the desktop will have to be cleaned up, and some won't be compatible at all."
This all sorta sounds like the letter I recently got from Virgin media about my landline being switch from copper to an adaptor plugged into the back of the cable modem. It was basically a list of things it can't do after the switch over, the only thing positive (I'm being charitable here!) is that it won't cost any more for a "digital" instead of "analogue" phone line :-) Wayland does some bits a bit better under the hood, but the bits people see don't really improve that much and other stuff will no longer work. There's not a real incentive for the average user to want to switch over without it being done either by "force" or surreptitiously ;-)
"If you don't like what a distro is doing, simply stop using it. There are plenty of others out there."
The potential problems down the line are major projects choosing sides because they don't have the resources to follow both paths. If the "big boys" push Wayland, especially into the commercial world, it might well lead to more following them and pushing X into a smaller niche, at which point more projects will jump to Wayland too. On a brighter note, it could go the other way, X11 moves forward with new impetus and Wayland falls by the "way"side. Or both survive on equal terms.
"stored in a large dry cave 1000 ft above sea level"
define "sea level" over the next 5000 years. Or million years. And don't forget to take plate tectonics and subduction into account for REALLY long term storage solutions. Maybe you need to be a LOT more than a 1000' above sea level. Such as a stellar body that is a bit less active than Earth :-)
Not only that, but "uninterested" just sounds wrong compared to disinterested. Uninterested somehow feels like a dumbed down version of disinterested for those who don't understand the language and/or have a small vocabulary, especially in the context for which disinterested was used in the article :-)
It also makes one wonder if there is a team tasked with updating them all, and therefore at a certain identifiable cost, or if they are simply updated in a minute or two of spare time by the relevant mission or department teams and therefore at effectively no cost to NASA.
You're right, and in most of the Western world that would be reasonable. But in the US specifically, segregation and related local legislation is far, far more recent, still in living memory and a direct result of and effective continuation of the culture of slavery, so I can see why it's still such a raw nerve in the US, especially some of the more southern States.
"Saying "Look at us, we're ignoring DEI" is the opposite of ignoring it. It's purposefully drawing attention to your stance. That's the opposite of inclusive, it's clearly designed to alienate some people in order to appeal to others."
But, he does go on to say "everybody is welcome", which IS a DEI policy in it's ideal form. What it ISN'T is the form that seems popular in the USA where people, in some circumstances, appear to have been employed based on their grouping being under-represented and may not be the best candidate. DEI is supposed to be about encouraging under-represented groups to apply and/or work towards a career goal they otherwise may not because of perceptions. It really IS NOT supposed to be about making sure you have the right mix of groupings by whatever means.
In corporate-land, stuff like that is usually not allowed. Best I can do for my users is show them how to put the start menu back on the left where it;s been for the last 30 years and it's all most of them have even known. Putting it in the middle was the single most cause of anguish amongst them because all they want to do is their jobs and most never use the start menu since all their apps are either desktop shortcuts or pinned to the task bar. Even the settings.control panel debacle has barely affected them because they don't go where dragons be as part of doing their jobs.
"Maybe Biden in his last couple months should have put in executive orders to do all the stuff Trump was going to do just to confuse the orange moron."
IIRC, that was suggested at the time in these very pages. I might even have been one of them, or I at least upvoted whoever did post it :-)
I'd not be surprised if it's weighted in favour of so-called "authoritative sources" and volume of similar mentions, so it's highly likely to find many references to out of date information that was correct at the time, and far fewer references to current information, even when from the same sources.
Imagine coding raw HTML while only visualising what the output would be."
Like most of us here probably did when creating our first web page in Notepad or similar text editor. Or adding some of the limited HTLM markup allowed on these here forums :-)
Some people still use TeX from the command line :-)
SmartEveryDay on Made In America and the lack of toolmakers. It makes for an interesting watch and analysis of the supply chain.
From what I saw on the WAI Youtube channel, it may be that SpaceX revenue (don't think he said profits) is on trajectory to exceed NASAs budget and is currently mostly from Starlink. I doubt the figures are accurate or detailed since SpaceX is private, but they suggested that SpaceX profits are well in excess of what's needed to fund Starship. It'd be interesting to see just how accurate that is and whether grants from US.gov are really needed other than as diversions or assistance in the direction of Musks real goals[*]. Of course, a lot of SpaceX profit comes from US.gov contracts, but it's also shown in the video that those are contracts delivering services cheaper than anyone else and still raking in profits. Cancelling all of SpaceX Gov contracts as Trump mooted, would mean abandoning ISS as SpaceX is the only US manned transport (and the cheapest by far) as well as the cheapest supply truck, also by far. Without SpaceX, the US would have to spend more or abandon ship.
* Government money spent developing in-orbit refuelling and a Ship with landing capability on the Moon is obviously also supporting his Mars plans although I don't know how much NASA is giving for that, or if, like Dragon/Crew Dragon, they have been given a price and need to meet it and if that price is low in relation to if Boeing or the other "usual suspects" had been contracted to do it.
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