Posts by Doctor Syntax

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

Re: NLite

Because we can.

Re: don't include the Windows Store or any "modern" apps

Perhaps Windows users should be given the same advice as Linux users: keep a separate disk partition for Users. Or would the Windows installer just see that and trash it along with the system partition?

UK-based self-driving car startup Wayve heads to Japan for more driving data

It would need to be automated to a degree of safety that the driver is never required to take over at short notice because the driver will be doing something distracting of very probably asleep.

The usual condition that the system may require the human driver to take over in an emergency is a clear indication that at present, at least, the human driver is regarded as the better driver in a difficult situation.

For a long journey it is asking too much of the driver not to have to be in control but still maintain full alertness. Unless distracting themselves with something else the likeliest outcome is that most drivers would fall asleep on a long journey. That's why I suggested above that "wake me up when we're nearly there" would be a requirement.

If I could take a car to the motorway and tell it to go to Tebay, Tiverton or Towcester and wake me up when we're nearly there, even if I had to do the non-motorway driving, I might be interested but I do not expect to see that, ever.

Re: Why Japan?

Well, obviously not the US these days.

Downward DOGE: Elon Musk keeps revising cost-trimming goals in a familiar pattern

QED

Re: Intersting mix of AC's today

Ending the war in Ukraine (in "Twenty four hours") is too difficult.

Re: Have you listened

Still at it? How much do you get per post?

Re: Not all about cost

I doubt "want" comes into it. Posting this crap is a job and his dictator isn't even hidden.

Re: Impeach him, imprison the other

Trump probably looked at Nixon to see where he went wrong with the second term.

Re: Impeach him, imprison the other

I'm wondering if the US actually invented the idea of a codified constitution a such. If so it's odd that they came up with something that was so far from state of the art even in its own time and so hard to fix. They seem to have got themselves all Trussed up.

Re: whole system needs change

"Trump and Musk are both thoroughly in favour of corruption and covering it up."

I'mnot sure they're bothered about covering it up. Their followers won't see it however blatant and the rest of us expected it anyway.

"smallpox has disappeared from nature"

Due, of course, to vaccination - and the origin of the word. I wouldn't be surprised to find our current nutcase troll coming along to deny that.

"There is a lot you can do to reduce the risk."

Not having certain gene variants is a start but not something Gary and his family could readily act upon.

Re: Just another Trump lie

Experts are so-o-o 1950s.

Re: Just another Trump lie

You are in no position to comment on the cognitive processes of others.

Eating electricity is not recommended.

Re: Just another Trump lie

"One difference is that given Donald's health and age I can't really see how he'd complete a third term."

He's not entitled to one. Start worrying about him not completing this one before someone manages to shuffle Vance out of office.

Re: Just another Trump lie

not sure what "abuse" is supposed to be

Contradicting Trump and the Trumpistas.

No doubt those Tesla drivers starting to doubt what their choice says about them will be reassured by the childishness of their critic.

"Not until we work out a better way to manufacture hydrogen at scale"

OTOH there's a very effective means of abstracting the hydrogen from water and combining it with carbon from CO2.* It's called photosynthesis. We need more of it. It's a pity there's a fashion for shading out the photosynthesis sites with panels of solar cells.

* Yes, I know it ends up back there, but it's a closed cycle.

Re: "Not too bright, huh?"

"Being gullible"

That often translates to "being greedy" when the apparent value of the dangled carrot exceeds the obviousness of it being too good to be true.

When all the repair bills are it DOGE will have cost money.

"It only makes sense to me if there is a large source of green energy without the transmission capacity to send it where it's needed."

Even then there's a storage and handling problem.

"You are still a believer?"

A/C shills don't have to be.

"the one programmed into you by the media"

Says an A/C. Again.

Microsoft rated this bug as low exploitability. Miscreants weaponized it in just 8 days

Of course. Financial institutions in the UK regularly train their users to click on things in unsolicited emails. It's reasonable to believe that the marketroids who send out this stuff will fall for it themselves.

Developer scored huge own goal by deleting almost every football fan in Europe

Re: "WHERE ID=xxx"

Write the WHERE clause and use it to run a COUNT. Does that give the number you expect? Write the UPDATE statement, start a transaction and urn it. Does it give the correct number of rows updated? If so, COMMIT, otherwise ROLLBACk and try again.

The first requirement of a DBA isn't knowing SQL, it's not understanding schemas. It's paranoia.

Re: XMLT

Correct - XSLT. Now why does XMLT stick in my mind? Must have been something from somewhere a long time ago.

Re: It never gets old

"perl, hardly an example of doing things right"

That would certainly be the case for XML which has its own mechanism, XMLT, for converting the data into whatever format you need - tab separated, SQL INSERT statements, whatever.

What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

Re: its not at the end of life.

With the original co-ax ethernet you remove the building and leave the network standing.

Re: Green

Given that one spect of security is simply keeping the thing working, if it can be bricked by the manufacturer it's insecure.

Use it as a big picture frame.

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Re: Qualifications

I knew someone who did better than that. I first met him in London when he was visiting from his own Uni; his girlfriend was a flatmate of my then girlfriend. I hae vague memories of a mob of us round a table with several packs of cards playing Cheat.

Some years when I arrived in Belfast he was an archaeologist & I was a palaeoecologist. Subsequently he called me to look at a site that was later to become one of the more troublesome housing estates of West Belfast & whilst we were examining it confided that he was going to leave and study for the Church, later turning up in a CofI parish just across the border from Strabane. Later I'd heard he'd become a Bishop. Much later I read that he'd ended up as Archbishop of Armagh. So I've played Cheat with a successor of St Patrick.

He was also, of course, a successor of Archbishop Ussher. As a sometime archaeologist it's a pity he never issued an ex-cathedra statement contradicting him.

Re: Cos Open Source

Especially if he's in Nebraska.

Re: What do you mean he is quiet?

Didn't recognise the name of his minister? Marked for "No further promotion".

This is said to originate with an actual advertiser. He'd have loved ad-blockers - letting those on whom it would be wasted self-declare would be a great saver. It's no wonder the advertising industry doesn't like them.

Re: If you screw up, say so and say how

You should have got your wondering loudly in ahead of your colleague's. I suppose now you're more experienced you wouldn't make that mistake again.

Oops. Causeways.

Cursor AI's own support bot hallucinated its usage policy

Re: Two possibilities

My money's on 1. First, a change made it happen and than the bot said it was policy. William of Occam would suggest that they were two consequences of a single decision rather than two separate happenings.

Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers

Re: Prep for AI and Segmentation

Bingo!!!

Don't you just hate crap sites that display nothing but a list of URLs without javascript being enabled. If they're not capable of saying what they need to say without that I doubt they have anything worth saying.

Re: big cultural diff across the pond

"The lexicon mostly"

Give or take a few orthographic problems.

Re: The USA... Well specifically Trump

"look at real outcomes from real data."

I've been looking at real life for a lot of decades now. I've seen a lot of politicians come and go, some from closer quarters than others.

About the most reassuring thing is that the current government is looking towards the EU again because, frankly, it feels even more stupid to be outside it than it did one of those decades ago.

I also remember the Brownomics years - perhaps you don't. I also remember the Winter of Discontent - perhaps you didn't. And Harold Wilson's "pound in your pocket" speech, exchange controls and the "gnomes of Zurich" - again, perhaps you don't. The thing is, the long term is usually muddling through in the UK.

I think the US has problems of an entirely different kind which is essentially the topic everyone else is addressing. Is that outside your brief?

Re: Some of us have been saying this for years

"Now it's a contract issue, that's much easier to manage."

That's what the salesman said.

"For managers who've been dealing with wannabe BOFHs for the past 30 years, you can see how that would appeal."

Now they need those BOFHs but the other side has them. Other side? Yes, didn't you know a contract is between two sides?

Re: "I think this is a realistic fear nowadays"

"they do have a Nazi problem"

Yup. It is, or was, called Wagner.

"People like you who go around like programmed bots"

Says an A/C. ROFLMAO.

Re: "I think this is a realistic fear nowadays"

I wouldn't be putting my money in a US bank and if I weren't retired, I wouldn't be looking for a US company to hold my company's data.

Re: "the Trump effect"...

"The CLOUD Act pre-dated Trump and was a few years in the making, so boards and governments had plenty of time to consider the implications."

Absolutely. It's not the time that matters, it's the inclination as the Leaning Tower of Pisa said to Big Ben.

A smart move for Microsoft might be to turn over the Irish DCs to an Irish or EU company owned and managed by EU nationals run as a franchise with a contract under Irish or other EU state law that prevents any access by Microsoft but with Microsoft branding licenced to them. Ditto AWS. I wonder if there are any corporate lawyers in their homee state who have experience of international franchising of brands and other IP.

It exists because there was a good chance TPTB in the US tried to take a shortcut instead of going the legal route of getting an Irish warrant and looked like they might lose in the US court.