Posts by nijam

Oracle's examplar win over SAP for Birmingham City Council is 3 years late

> It's amazing that local government is able to function at all.

It would be amazing if ...

Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real

Re: Buying time

> Shutdown is also a command

... i.e. a verb, in both computer jargon and in everyday Engish.

Central UK govt awards £12M+ contract to leave Google Workspace for Microsoft 365

Re: Why are we still giving contracts

> We should not be exporting money to EU companies.

That's why they're switching from one American cloud to another (possibly worse) American cloud, obviously.

Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster scuttles into public view

Re: Desktop versus server

> 1. If you don't understand basic Git syntax, what are you doing anywhere near a server?

What? Ubuntu downloads updates from git? Surely not!

Not that I care, I switched to Debian when they were trying to make Ubuntu into a mobile phone OS.

> 2. If you don't have backups of your configs to do a merge later, what are you doing anywhere near a server?

OP clearly had the old configs to hand - presumably via a backup - and was only pointing out that they weren't compatible with the latest software. Which for some reason isn't backward compatible, and certainly doesn't automate the conversion.

Rust Foundation so sorry for scaring the C out of you with trademark crackdown talk

Re: Political?

> ...naive 1st worlders.

No, actually naive 2nd worders (previously called new worders), I think you'll find.

Re: Political?

> The comments from the Rust Foundation all sound like they came from the mouths of politicians. Lost of "sorry, not sorry" comments and "oh, we've been misunderstood" and "it was not our intention to...", blah, blah, blah.

Fungus or corrosion, neither are appealing things to have named it after. Seems the rot has spread to the management as well.

UK government scraps smart motorway plans, cites high costs and low public confidence

Re: The existing ones don't even meet the spec

> ... if we actually taught/encouraged people to use them properly.

So not at all, then.

> ... keep carbon footprint down

Actually, steady speed driving on a motorwary is more economical than stop/start (or slow-down/speed-up) driving that you find on many roads. All other things being equal, of course.

Firmware is on shaky ground – let's see what it's made of

Re: Getting it free? Surely you jest ...

> You mean free (as in obscure and undocumented)

No, I think it was free (as included in the price of the hardware).

Re: Go multiple steps further

> There never was any user-based foundation to keep firmware hidden and proprietary.

I recall reading years ago (and I don't know how well founded the claim was) that some hardware vendors kept firmware secret to conceal the fact that their hardware might have been infringing a competitor's patents. It's certainly not impossible, I suppose.

San Francisco fog defeats pack of Waymo robo-taxis

Re: Each is armed with...

> ...count the amount of car collisions caused by humans and compare it to the amount caused by robot drivers.

Per mile driven, I hope.

Re: AVs should be better in the fog than people driven cars

> ...they have stuff like radar that can see through the fog.

Despite which, they can't.

Smile! UK cops reckon they've ironed out gremlins with real-time facial recog

Re: I would prefer a higher false positive rate

> That way there is a better chance that the police will not trust the output and might verify by other means before doing anything unpleasant.

Wow, it must be wonderful to be so optimistic.

Plagiarism-sniffing Turnitin tries to find AI writing by students – with mixed grades

Re: A rather important question

> ... because for the most parts that's how a human student writes too.

In turn, because that's how they are taught, dare I suggest?

Re: pointless

> Writing school essays is nothing to do with "retaining knowledge".

Too right! As an aside, I maintain that the popularity of "Game Of Thrones" was down to it being very much like actual history [1] [2], but without the pointless drudgery of essays.

[1] Bloodthirsty, backstabbing, etc, etc.

[2] OK, very few history textbooks mention the dragons...

Feds seize $112m in cryptocurrency linked to 'pig-butchering' finance scams

> JZ lost his entire investment

Difficult to sympathize, unfortunately.

Cisco, Huawei, Ericsson on the hook for Philippine telco's $880M overspend

> ...blamed it on bad procurement processes.

The larger the organisation, the worse the procurement process, as a generalisation.

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

> ISDN was often mocked as standing for...

It still does nothing; innovation subscribers don't need; and many more besides.

Meta chops another 10,000 employees, closes 5,000 vacancies

> ... engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates ...

If they'd actually thought about it, rather just done statistics, they might have wondered if that could be paraphrased as "inexperienced engineers can't achieve much without the help of more experienced colleagues". But then statistics is a mathematical tool for dealing with ignorance, after all.

Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you

> anything from Microsoft that "Just Worked" tm

Everybody read that as meaning "only just worked" of course.

£2B in UK taxpayer cash later, and still no Emergency Services Network

Re: Purchase

> ... trouble is so many of them only speak Russian...

Except for those that only speak Chinese.

Wannabe space 'superpower' UK tosses £1.6M at eight research projects

> 'superpower'

I think you mean 'superpoor'.

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

I've reached the conclusion that the problem with AI is not the "artificial" part, it's the "intelligent" part. ChatGPT (like others of its ilk) is simply being just as awful as the other "intelligent" entities of this world.

Re: Lies

> So ChatGPT is full of statistics then? :)

Probably.

Microsoft adds features to Windows 11 monthly – managing it is your problem

Re: "Continuous innovation coming to Windows 11 in March"

> ... so MS have just enlarged the attack surface...

And they say there's no such thing as progress!

Re: Yet another reason to never upgrade from win 10.

> we have systems which have evolved over many years and are quite complex.

Ever thought that might be the problem? Or are you too busy coping with the shifting sands of Microsoft's policies, updates, bug fixes, etc.? That's not the real world, it's something quite distinct.

It's official: BlackLotus malware can bypass Secure Boot on Windows machines

Re: Someone explain to a novice

> ...can someone explain to me what the word 'Secure' means in this context?

It means what it always mean when Microsoft say it.

HMD offers Nokia phone with novel concept: Designed to be repaired by its owner

Re: Lasts 3 years

> ...if someone was to empty my bank account and my pension

Maybe that stuff shouldn't be on your phone anyway.

Chinese defence boffins ponder microwaving Starlink satellites to stop surveillance

Re: How many is critical mass

> Complete Hollywood make-believe

My reading of it was that most of the duration of the film was in fact a sort "life flashing before the eyes" dream as the Sandra Bullock character actually died not very far into the film. If so, definitely make-believe, but not quite as bad as the orbital mechanics that the dream itself depicted.

Infosys founder slams working from home, side hustles, as slowing India's growth

> "The future of the country is on your shoulders."

No. "The future of the company is on your shoulders."

'Ethical hacker' among ransomware suspects cuffed by Dutch cops

> ... it's possible that in each case the data was justifiably held.

Possible, but given the world we live in, unlikely. Very.

I can't do that, Dave: AI drowns top sci-fi mag with story submissions

Re: Once again we're feeding the consumersism!

> ... they're spinning stories to ...

... investors, employees, government agencies, voters ...

Re: "...AI could turn writing from a serious craft into a cheap commodity"

> ... always will be a market for publishers that filter out dross ...

Sadly, as has been reported in this very organ, there are "publishers" who effectively filter out quality. Fake academic journals and the like...

Re: Author's guild

> "Am I really that bad?"

To judge from some (not all, of course) books that appear on Amazon's "Daily Deal", they answer is all too frequently "Yes, you are".

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

Re: Customer?

> It's a protection racket.

No, actually, it's "demanding money with menaces". Quite a serious crime.

systemd 253: You're looking at the future of enterprise Linux boot processes

Re: so...?

> just don't expect other people's machines to have the key installed out of the box

Well, no machine should have keys installed out of the box, of course. They do, but they shouldn't.

99 year old man says cryptocurrency is for idiots

> Munger once described Bitcoin as "disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization"

That is the first time I've hear a good reason for cryptocurrencies.

Four top euro carriers will use phone numbers to target ads and annoy Google & Facebook

Re: How does this work?

> ...adverts generating a strong negative reaction...

All adverts generate a strong negative reaction, I find. Two, in fact, because I tend to get a strong negative reaction to the brand being advertised, as well as to the advert itself.

Roses are red, algorithms are blue, here's a poem I made a machine write for you

> Little did I know, the poem ... was completely insincere.

Draw your own conclusions.

Microsoft switches Edge’s PDF reader to pay-to-play Adobe Acrobat

Re: I don't understand why we still use PDF

> When creating many kinds of documents it is important that they look as designed...

Mostly, it's important to the designers, not so much to anyone else.

Bank of England won't call it Britcoin but says digital pound 'likely to be needed in future'

Re: But why is this necessary?

> ...should government provide the kind of convenient functionality one gets from a Visa...

Whatever they do will lack any of Visa's convenient features.

Hi, Pakistan? You do know anyone can edit Wikipedia, right? You don't have to ask

Re: >>convince other editors<<

> ...depending on the needs of one’s country...

It was entirely dependent on what benefit he could get for himself. The country? Not so much.

helloSystem 0.8: A friendly, all-graphical FreeBSD

Re: re: "just works"

> > FreeBSD just works

>

> I was very torn whether to agree or disagree with this comment.

Presumably meant in the sense of "FreeBSD only just works"?

Re: Welcome to the Chaos

> He was used to having one, two, or possibly even three options

He was used to having zero, one, two, or possibly even three options

Smart ovens do really dumb stuff to check for Wi-Fi

Re: Why bother testing? What does it do if the test fails?

> Why doesn't the device only test to see if it can reach the services it might need to reach?

Because there aren't any that it NEEDS to reach.

Re: Frightening

> Sheldon: Penny - Everything is better with Bluetooth.

Well, I never rated Sheldon as being all that intelligent.

Live Nation CFO on Taylor Swift ticket chaos: Don't blame me, bots made me crazy

> ... industrial scalpers ...

is that a reference to Ticketmaster?

Unix is dead. Long live Unix!

Re: BSD?

> IMHO Unix is pretty well synonymous with System V

Well, IMHO Unix pretty much mean V7 Unix, System V (and System II before it) were (to be polite) not obviously improvements. Still, nowadays we have networking and other exciting innovations.

Re: From the archives:

> That's a fairly accurate summary of a "flight" on Ryanair.

No, no Ryanair passengers ever believe they have arrived.

Fat EVs may cause 'more death on our roads' – watchdog

Re: Weight is relative...

> Road damage is so overwhelmingly caused by trucks

Maybe on inter-city routes. In cities, the culprits are prmarily buses, of course. Partly because they stop and start more often than other traffic needs to, mostly because of their weight.