Posts by keithpeter 2444 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jul 2007
"Perhaps there is a niche for paper only publishing for the market that want slop free reading and are as ready to part with their cash as the vinyl LP crowd."
There are small presses around, and chapbooks are still a thing.
https://www.analogsea.com/
How's that for a landing page?
https://www.asd-ste100.org/
This looks most interesting and I'm glad that I read your post mentioning Simplified Standard English. See icon.
Back vaguely on topic: it strikes me (not having yet read the standards document) that a system with defined rules and a look-up dictionary might lend itself to an 'expert system' approach (blast from the past there). I'm thinking of something like maxima or reduce in the computer algebra domain.
Now take your stock laptop and add anti-virus and login scripts of various kinds (and TBF perhaps subtract some of the adware) and you have what I will soon have to help classes of new students long into. We all log in as soon as we get into the room, then do a 5 minute brief for the session on the wb while the PCs crank up.
@intrigid
The average person does not exist (that got sorted out in the days of Quetelet and all).
Most people quite like being able to earn some money, buy food and clothes, and put a roof over their head(*). The latter desire is already challenging in many 'rich' countries for absurd reasons. Mess with those common factors of most people's lives too much and things could get lively.
Back vaguely on topic: if the kernel team thinks that they can manage the results of larger scale LLM assistance, then fine, we can see how it goes as everything is in public &c. As another poster put it, pragmatism might be best.
(*) and have the occasional party
See title
Void Linux repositories do seem to provide a number of Arcan 0.7.1 related packages (as mentioned in the 2022 cat9 shell REG article).
https://voidlinux.org/packages/?arch=x86_64&q=arcan
I've been searching for a nice blog post that will explain how to configure these packages once installed and produce something that can do desktop like things. Not finding much, Google AI assistant remixes snippets from the Arcan repository pages which relate to different contexts, a couple of posts on reddit (years old), nothing substantive.
Anyone got anything?
And closed source projects resemble those nice gentlemen with good suits and sharp hats who come to visit your little cafe or green grocers after a few years and say "nice little business you got here. Unfortunately the upgraded version of the database/VM system/Operating System you rely on going to cost 10 times more, and we won't allow you to stay on the current version .... security and all that"
@Aladdin
The sample text message included in the OA was carefully worded so as not to suggest that it was being sent by the 'enforcement agent'. I'm not sure Police/CPS would be willing to prosecute on that basis.
I think there should be higher fines for this kind of stuff, a large percentage of turnover &c.
19:08 BST in UK
https://neon.kde.org/download
I'm seeing a populated page with User Edition on the left with a green download badge linking to
https://files.kde.org/neon/images/desktop/user/20260618-0758/neon-desktop-user-20260618-0758.iso
Clicking that green badge gives a file not found. Backing up to the directory tree at
https://files.kde.org/neon/images/desktop/user/20260618-0758/
shows a list of files including the iso called
neon-user-desktop-20260618-0758.iso
Clicking on the link starts a 3Gb download (which I'm not doing at present - too much on).
Icon: for all working on KDE; the forks mentioned; and accessibility work.
" Snap's implementation is much simpler and cleaner than Flatpak's, as is the distribution model – which, as we've reported before, is entirely open source."
So in the most unlikely event that Canonical goes under, snap can be forked and worked on? Sounds sensible
"That includes MX Linux, Alpine Linux, Devuan, Slackware, and many other smaller projects. For many of these, Flatpak is a lifeline: the only way to access much of the wider Linux app market."
OK, many of these, so not all. Flatpak support can be added to Slackware current, but I'm unaware of any plan to replace slackbuilds.
In the proprietary software market for MacOS there are quite a few word-processor applications (Mellel for instance), and as many posters have already pointed out there are free office like suites for spread-sheeting and such. As at least one other poster remarked there is also piracy in terms of an unofficial activation process.
It depends on what you need the office suite for and how much MS compatibility you require. On Linux since 2010 I've managed fine with Open/LibreOffice and by chucking pdf files over the wall (by email).
The Linux Lite Web site has a searchable database of user supplied hardware reports at
https://www.linuxliteos.com/hardware.php
and a quick search on 'ThinkPad' results in at least one report from a T60 core duo laptop of some age for LL version 8.0.
That is very useful and gives people a lower bound on 'better than a potato'.
(I have had issues with distributions with newer kernel/mesa versions freezing the desktop session completely, usually in the Web browser when scrolling or dragging &c. So this looks worth a download of the live iso and a boot).
Bit off topic as not CentOS but still OA mentions other clones of EL.
I recollect reading about the events that led up to Scientific Linux / Fermi Linux after the event. Something along the line that Red Hat changed the pricing model for RHEL in high energy physics installations from an annual site licence fee to a per core subscription, without much warning, and part way through a budget cycle. These installations have rather a lot of cores, and high energy physicists are good at arithmetic, so it was obvious that it would viable to employ some people (among them Connie Sieh) to produce and support a clone from the srpms that Red Hat made available. SciLi was OK until the CentOS 8 truncation of support, then most moved over to Rocky/Alma whatever. Some are actually using Stream I gather.
Some here might know more, I would be grateful for corrections.
PS RIP Springdale Linux aka PUIAS Linux. I enjoyed versions 5 and 6.
"unions tend to support all members without reference to their capability"
Not sure if AC is UK based but 'capability' is a word used in employment contracts and law here in the UK. If an employer is trying to remove an employee under capability clauses, the bar is quite high, and yes a union will work through the process with an employee. The enthusiasm with which such support is provided will depend on the level of 'complaints from colleagues' (see ACAS page below). Unions support members through a process, this isn't some kind of protection racket.
https://www.acas.org.uk/performance-management/dismissals-for-capability-or-conduct
Ah just noticed that link NOT to openbsd.org but to a .com address.
whois reports domain registered by namecheap and address given in Iceland and all personal details redacted for privacy reasons (which I think means a personal site?), no about page that I can see. So no guarantees on information found within it.
Nice write up. I think I detect that the good Dr Proven is beginning to warm to OpenBSD.
There is a bit more detail on delayed hibernation in the Undeadly article at
https://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260312185620
So you use the sysctl interface to set machdep.hibernatedelay=3600 and after 1 hour of suspended to RAM your laptop will power up and then hibernate fully and then power down. I'm going to see if this actually works on this museum quality BIOS Thinkpad T60.
(xfce4 desktop, runs LibreOffice and Firefox OK, as always read the pkg-readmes. e.g. the one for dbus has a command that can be added to .xsession before starting xfce4).
>> Can the pdf editor crop pages?
> Don't know. Never wanted to do that. Why do you?
Back when I had the iBook (aka the "IKEA laptop") I used preview/textedit quite a lot to scavenge diagrams and charts from pdfs of papers to make worksheets and handouts for students. Sources attributed. No pixelation. Very handy.
Niche use case I admit.
Pity there isn't a cross-desktop rich text and vector image format for FOSS operating systems. But that would require the 'cathedral' kind of software development and that isn't happening.
I would imagine that an ordinary person-in-the-street is going to start using a Linux install because it came with a computer (something like Endless OS on a line of low cost laptops) or because someone else (family member or friend) put it on a machine for them or possibly because school/employer gave them a device already set up.
Which ever way, the desktop environment will have been provided (perhaps tried out first).
Something funny going on with the screenshots in the article: some pixels being cropped top and bottom?
E.G. Gnome flashback has lost its top and bottom panels.
If I open the image in a new tap and cut the url back to the webp? bit I can see a small thumbnail that has top/bottom panels.
(This is on a poor man's 1366x768 museum thinkpad)
"I guess we could talk about making it more obvious somehow, because a lot of people do miss it."
A section in the installation instructions might be an idea. And one hopes for inclusion of the option for choice of file system in the 'standard' installer workflow for Fedora 45, even if it is labelled 'advanced' or something.
Below is the comment string next to the (fairly obscure) firmware header for a radio device at one of your locations...
"more firmwares for atu. not hooked up to the builds till they are needed."
So almost certainly not a code path that is actually used in many applications of OpenBSD. I think we will need to agree to disagree about the 'chockiness' here (a header file with a few kb of hex values).
"(aside from the chock load of proprietary software you can't easily check the security of)"
Standard install of OpenBSD on an amd64 intel laptop with legacy boot. The firmware packages at
http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/7.9/
are about it I think. The OpenBSD base has to be licenced and source code is on CVS. The packages have various licences but all have source code as you can (if you wish) compile using the ports tree.
I suspect that the OpenBSD devs keep a close eye on firmware behaviour. Where can I find this 'chock load'?
I read previous post by ecofeco as saying that there could be many thousands of small organisations in a similar position to the one describedby Kurgan in the post above that. Not one org with 10K endpoints.
The small public sector organisation I do a bit of (non IT) work in has a few hundred screens, and yes, people log into a domain and there are policies. Not fully sorted but most of the gunge is hidden. The browser setup shenanigans gets students every time though.
I think the current engine can be made to work better rather than a complete re-write. For the stuff I do it is mainly about spacing between variables and coefficients and such - always looks wrong.
I find that eqn (groff) is fine for the kind of maths I do (basic GCSE/A level/1st year degree type things) and the [Libre|Open]Office Math component syntax appears to be based on eqn. Piles need sorting as well (no jokes please, I've heard them all).
"Not sure why you feel that formula editing is "rubbish""
I think post above yours was referring to the typesetting of mathematical equations with proper symbols and e.g. brackets that expand when you have double deck fractions inside and stuff. The LibreOffice 'math' component isn't textbook quality. It can get the job done for basic inline equations and fractions and stuff. There is a plug-in that will use LaTeX if installed, but that plug-in, while excellent, has a 'developer in Nebraska' quality to it (unofficial, not part of base install &c).
http://roland65.free.fr/texmaths/
I'd add in Slackware for casual desktop use. Version 15 just chugs away, but admittedly has library versions that are getting long in the tooth now.
However OA and most comments here are about server type systems and the abstractions that run on them to manage farms of other servers. That is a different world and by the sound of it a pretty dilbertesque one.
It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time is responsible for quite a few things in the modern world. People don't always carefully consider the future implications of a small action (e.g. signing up to something with a given email address) taken today.
I agree though teaching people the benefits of disposable email addresses and such is good.
Taking a longer term view, if this trend of increased integration, and given the very fast interconnections that appear to exist now and in the future, and the ever increasing speed of WiFi connections, perhaps the market will come up with a self-contained storage extension pod that you switch on and either plug in or connect to *local* network (not cloud) and can use for slightly 'colder' storage of older material? Or does cloud storage crowd that niche out?
All these menus...
In about 5 years, someone will think of using various keywords that relate to the group of functions the menu leads to instead of icons for these menus. Then someone else will suggest having a list of the things in each functional group activated when you click on the keyword. Finally, another bright spark will suggest using a key chord related to a letter in each of the menus, say something like Alt-F-N for a new window.
And we will be back where we started.
The nice thing about Linux based operating systems is that you get choices, so just do your thing especially as you have the skills to modify the default set-ups.
The Fedora 44 ISO boots into a live session on my ancient BIOS based Thinkpad T60 test machine, that's a 20 year old laptop with 3Gb RAM (max the processor will recognise for some inscruitable reason) and 'senior' intel graphics. I think that level of support for landfill hardware is something of an achievement.
Gnome is always as it is (I could live with it if it came on a commodity device which I think is the direction the project is moving in).
Alternative view to the AC post a few branches up:
The news is mostly short term noise. The trick is to filter out the fluctuations and try to see the long term trajectory. Science fiction authors can help with that to an extent as we meat bags tend to make new thoughts and connect disparate concepts by analogies and half formed intuitions, and we need some input to feed those intuitions.
Icon: nearest I can find for Ross Ashby.
https://spec.commonmark.org/0.31.2/#html-blocks
The thing about markdown (in all its manifestations) is that it can include HTML blocks. In the original use-case for this simple markup format, those HTML blocks were simply passed through to the HTML output. I'm going to have to have a play with this version of LO to see what it does with arbitrary HTML (remember that (in)famous StackOverflow answer?). At least CommonMark seems to specify and list the HTML tags it will process.
Icon: nearest I can get
I imagine the family members you describe are exactly the market segment this laptop was aimed at. Offspring will qualify for the student price of course. I think that they will sell very well (I've just spent the morning fighting a classroom full of Windows 11 desktop PCs so students can actually log into a Web site and interact with it).
The A18 and its locked bootloader means no Linux after-life once MacOS support ends. It will be interesting to see how system updates go on these low end machines, perhaps MacOS will get snappier with a large installed base of basic devices like this?
"I had an old discarded nVidia card from a mate driving two 21" CRTs so a honking great desktop"
That's basically a dual beam particle accelerator lol.
Seriously add in the actual desktop and thats about 4 to 6 KWh of electricity each working day. The heat would keep the Irish Sea damp at bay though I imagine.
Icon: I'll close the door as I leave. I enjoyed my G4 iBook (aka IKEA computer) for a couple of years just after the millennium.
@Nyle
The post above yours was on about OnlyOffice not OpenOffice (aka parrot, deceased*).
(*) I still use Apache OpenOffice 4.1.x under Linux on an ancient core duo Thinkpad with a nice keyboard and a relatively bright if low resolution screen. Needs less resources, especially graphics card related stuff, than LibreOffice local install. I also know where the bugs are.
The article mentioned a $200 million contract I think. Plus history suggests that new technologies benefit from government investment in early development until commercial applications become apparent (ARPANET, BBN and all that stuff). So if this banning of a company actually happens (TACO) then it might have consequences.
"The open community needs to stand behind Firefox"
[ I'm going to do my broken record thing again. I'll keep it down to once every 6 months or so. ]
Where is this open community and how does it make policies and enforce them?
What we have is thousands of independent projects with different structures and internal processes working how they can with the resources they can find and making decisions each day/week/month/year based on the environment as they understand it.
Kind of amazing really. But not very tidy.
"Sometimes MS does things that are good for MS and good for its specific products, even if those things are harmful to others."
Well of course. It is a company that is owned by shareholders and exists to make profits. Why would you expect it to do anything else?
The usual way of dealing with external effects is regulation, but that is hard to do with multinationals.
Icon: the rest of this discussion is interesting but way over my head.
"The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code."
The Ken Thompson who won the Turing Award and made a speech?
