Posts by nijam

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

Re: I have been on about this since I was a teenager

> You think Greenpeace might actually admit they could be wrong?

They don't even understand what they're saying, how could they?

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Re: Living in a bubble?

> Is it possible that others want different features beyopnd your use cases ?

Possible - of course - but probably not very many others.

Re: Living in a bubble?

> LibreOffice is not as good as MS Office

Years ago, OpenOffice (the precursor of LibreOffice) was already better that MSOffice in several important respects.

> Gimp GUI appears to be designed by a greybeard Perl programmer.

No UI is perfeact, AFAICT, but the Gimp GUI was designed by a UI consultant.

Re: preaching the gospel

> Not so very long ago, it was normal to choose a computer based on exactly that criteria

That's hasn't been the case for several decades. The people who choose computers might use that method in a tiny proportion of cases. But mostly they get what's pushed at them by PC World or by the purchasing dept. (who knows what behid the scenes benefits they get, but that's a seperate issue). End result, they usually get a computer that does'nt do what they need, but what Microsoft needs.

Re: "Red Hat and others have been doing okay for decades"

> "No one got fired for buying Microsoft!"

But they should have been.

Re: preaching the gospel

> they are just harder to use.

I find Photoshop harder to use.

GitHub courts controversy by suspending Tornado Cash developers and reneging on cookie commitments

Re: Sanction ?

> Sanction ? it's an odd word.

One of several in the English language is (almost) its own antonym.

Re: free expression, assembly, and association

> Doesn't include free speech.

Do you think "free expression" just means pulling funny faces?

> ... open source code "is illegal now?"

Always has been, in Microsoft's world.

Critical flaws found in four Cisco SMB router ranges – for the second time this year

Re: Reminds me of when I was at uni...

> "Why did you enter a letter when it asked for a number?"

Hexadecimal. Or whatever.

> They got roasted for rubbish software, but not any real "back doors".

Alllow me to simplify that for you:

They got roasted for having no real "back doors".

HPE says $30m Solaris verdict against it didn't provide 'evidence' of copyright

> ... some of them will not be able to connect to secure web sites

Well, most mobile users avoid secure websites (or secure anything at all), apparently.

Ex-T-Mobile US store owner phished staff, raked in $25m from unlocking phones

> ...people have a right to buy subsidized phones...

They aren't subsidized. People just get a high-priced finance deal on them, disguised as a phone service contract.

Why the end of Optane is bad news for all IT

Re: "How do we formulate something other than Newton's Laws?"

> Relativity?

Except under extreme (i.e. rarely encountered in everyday human perception), it gives essentially the same answer as Newton's laws. In otherwords, relativity offers backwards compatibility (at least within the domain of applicability of Newton's laws).

Re: No current mainstream OS that only has primary storage, no secondary storage

> Basically everything that is created is an object, and persists until it is explicitly removed.

So, a file then, in exactly the same sense that Unix says "everything is a file". By which they mean "there is a uniform, consistent way of accessing it, whatever it is."

Re: as cheap?

There was another problem, also rather serious. Namely, that the speed of Optane dropped significantly as it neared production qunatities. It seemed to turn from a wonderful new invention full of promise to a new thing full only of wonderful promises.

Maybe not an emperor without clothes, but perhaps one with only a posing pouch.

Re: One thing may be data files...

> ... so most people wanted that and are still stuck in the 1970s ...

Having used both VMS and Unix in the 1980s, my overriding recollection is that most VMS features that distinguished it from Unix were arbitrary and quite complex restrictions, imposed only because DEC software designers were stuck in the 1970s.

Re: Amazing... But also a bit stupid

> 1. If you have, say, a terabyte of non-volatile RAM, why do you need disks or paging at all?

You don't, but you still have to organise non-volatile memory somehow.

Just saying "I don't need files, because ... RAM!" doesn't achieve that.

The disk management model works. Optane didn't bring an alternative, better or worse.

> No current OS organizes its RAM as a filesystem.

ZFS kind of does (or perhaps, vice versa).

> Why do you want to bring over one of the clunkiest bits of 1960s tech to this hypothetical new system?

Unfortunately, your example. of systems without filesystems aren't a particular good adverisement for the benefits of doing away with them.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Now 100,000kg smaller

Re: hype

> Biologists are on the case.

There was a Doomwatch story about that. Didn't end well, really.

Re: hype

> I'll end up as trash in the environment again.

Surely not.

Misspellings aside, though, at least some plastic that goes to recycling is really recycled. And that amounts to less new i.e. additional, plastic.

> Yeah we really should stop using plastic...

The problem is not that plastic is dreadful, but that it is wonderful. And stays wonderful even after we've stopped using it.

Boffins release tool to decrypt Intel microcode. Have at it, x86 giant says

> It's just code that the processor runs to do complex actions.

In other words, it really is part of how the CPU operates.

Disentangling the Debian derivatives: Which should you use?

> Debian has remained famously hard to install.

Well, "famously" perhaps, not actually in fact. Not for the last 10+ years, ISTR.

That emoji may not mean what you think it means

Re: Too bloody many

> I like the thumbs up.

There's some dispute as to whether or not Roman-era gladiators would agree.

A picture is worth a thousand words. 999 of them wrong.

Smart thermostat swarms are straining the US grid

Smart meters aren't actually smart, just smart compared with people who fell for the sales schrick.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

> No matter what MS does, there will be some people saying it hasn't changed.

Sure that should be:

No matter what MS does, there will be some people noticing it hasn't changed.

Meta asks line managers to identify poorly performing staff for firing

> isn't it pretty standard practice to lay off rubbish staff?

No, in large organisations they're made line managers.

Systemd supremo Lennart Poettering leaves Red Hat for Microsoft

Re: Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.

> ...limitations with init were bad enough ...

Often repeated, seldom demonstrated. For some reason.

Re: Motive found.

> but dropping an elephant on a peanut is not the way to do it...

...not least because it wouldn't work.

Re: one step forward

> No need of silly scripts to run services...

because the registry works so well.

Meta's AI translation breaks 200 language barrier

Re: Get the basics right first

> It should translate everything as 'they'.

No, "they" is a plural.

I self-identify as a single individual and would take offence at the suggestion that I am a multiplicity. Unlike the biblical case, I am NOT legion.

Central bank: Crypto 'derives value based on make believe', threatens financial stability

Re: I agree

Since the gold standard was abandoned, all national currencies are fiat currencies, of course.

Linus Torvalds says Rust is coming to the Linux kernel 'real soon now'

Re: Seriously, are programmers that bad?

> The interesting thing to ask is, with a strict disciplinarian compiler like Rust that won't let you make any mistakes of certain sorts, will that do the trick?

Absolutely not. Of course.

And apropos Perl, the worst "line noise" I encounter is comments from people who criticise it for using a notation thy're unfamiliar with. At least it's not as bad as the abomination that is Python: "Yea! Let's make white space semantically significant! That worked so well in Makefiles!"

Indian government issues confidential infosec guidance to staff – who leak it

...confidential information security guidelines...

How on earth is any of the advice in this dcoucument confidential? It seems to be mostly well-known and widely-used good practice.

OTOH, mustn't give the proles advice about security, they might use it to secure themselves against the govt., I suppose.

Always read the comments: Beijing requires oversight of all reader-generated chat

Re: That would be a huge change

> ...sites that went to moderated content have their forums completely die.

That's the point, I think.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

Re: Digital transmission?

> There are ways to, you know, /clean/ records.

Not particulkalry reliably, though.

> With proper handling and storage, pops and ticks can be quite rare.

In fact, they're often in the original pressing.

EU lawmakers vote to ban sales of combustion engine cars from 2035

Re: In other words...

> battery tech is going to be in a completely different universe compared to now

Primieses, promises.

Next major update of Windows 11 prepares for launch

Re: The update is also available to "Seekers" in the Windows Insider program

> The language used for their "get some users to do our testing for free" scam is reaching scientology levels of cult-like creepiness.

Bit like the New Seekers, if you recall them.

Re: Give it a few more years

> How long did it take Win 10 to become stable? 2-3 years?

>

> I can wait. I will never forget the Great Brickage of Win 10 before it finally became...

> usable.

Ah, now I see! MS are unable to distinguish between "usable" and "unstable"!

Murena and /e/ Foundation launch privacy-centric smartphones

Re: Illusion

> ...that don't think they need to answer to us, ... laws, democracy...

Sounds like the UK government at the moment, just as much any technology company.

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

An esteemed academic colleague of mine - who had lived in France for many years - maintained that the mere existence of the organisation, and its predecessor(s), was clear evidence that French is a dead language.

Supermicro CEO would like it if you could all build new, greener datacenters

> ...holy grail of datacenter cooling...

I've been doing it for years - my on-prem systems (in my study) contribute to warming the house.

(And no, I don't have, or need, aircon in this climate.)

Salesforce staff back an end to its relationship with NRA

Re: How do we protect our 2nd amendment & our kids at the same time?

> "well regulated militia" effectively means what has since come to be know as the United States' army*. What it doesn't mean is random individuals with indeterminate grudges.

* Whether that is a well-regulated organisation is a completely separate question.

Google Russia goes broke after bank account snatched

Re: Very bad idea

> Correction, the German *government* were required to pay compensation/reparations.

Correction. German taxpayers were required to pay their goverment so that the government couuld pay... Oh, never mind.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

Re: Not that unreasonable

> it is more efficient to allow the transmission to decide when to shift.

Maybe nowadays it just about is, but for decades automatic transmission added tens of percent to the vehicle's fuel consumption. Or soaked up the equvalent in the engine's power output. Not a problem in the land of 7 Litre V8s, I suppose.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

> Autonomous cars may be further away than believed.

Not according to the headline, which points out that they're often at zero distance.

(Our) hardware is still key in a multicloud world, Dell ISG chief insists

> All the big clod providers ...

Couldn't have put it better myself!

LIDAR in iPhones is not about better photos – it's about the future of low-cost augmented reality

> ... fancy portrait shots blurring the background ...

I can think of some photos where I wish the foreground had been blurred.

Isn't reality bad enough without augmenting it?

Be careful what you wish for...