Posts by Doctor Syntax

Elon Musk makes another cut – to his time at DOGE

Re: The "waste and fraud" he claims to have stopped

I thought the usual criticism of Biden was that he was the opposite of shouty. However I suppose it's standard practice - label your opponent with your principal's worst failings.

Re: Oligarchs

I think we need a system where A/C postings cannot exceed the number of postings under handle as I suspect some of the A/Cs never post any other way.

Fujitsu promised to sit out UK deals ... then Northern Ireland called with £125M

"One assumes not"

One assumes incorrectly.

"these hurdles should be cleared and processes aligned so there is not."

Tenure of land can go back a long way. What if the alignment you seek were to affect your legal tenure and it were to cost you a few k in legal fees to sort out? Would you be so keen then? You think it wouldn't affect you? How would you know that? Or should everything just be aligned with the way it is where you live?

"promising not to bid for UK public sector "

But as we all know public statements for PR purposes are simply strings of words with no intrinsic meaning.

America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

"someone has lost the plot" - or has an alterative of their own.

When Microsoft made the Windows as a Service pivot

"Sure, Microsoft wasn't charging for Windows 10."

This is somewhat misleading. As a preloaded OS the customer paid for it. The free upgrade from the W8 fiasco it was a PR necessity. The free upgrade from W10 to 11 for recent purchases was probably a legal necessity to avoid class actions but the H/W limitation avoided making that free for all. It's simply become a purchase plus milk-the user-entity, not one or the other.

European biz calls for Euro tech for local people

Re: Euro tech

Which European flavour of Linux?

What's needed is for the various EU vendors to stop issuing statements and get down to producing and promoting an EU-based stack from server to desktop. All the bits are there but as long as their vendors are each doing their individual thing Microsoft can pick them off one at a time.

"Microsoft has met the letter of the law"

Which law? Where EU & US laws contradict each other it cannot meet both.

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

If you want to keep the tamper-proofing and other stuff it sounds as if you need to stick with what you have. If you want a clean slate then you lose the tamper-proofing and other stuff. You need to decide on your priorities and work from there.

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

You do not surprise me.

Re: Fantasy Linux

"if its harder to keep running, the problem is possibly you."

Same applies to Linux. If you want to go systemd free (and why not) why install a version that installs it rather than one that doesn't?

Re: No Office 365 or Adobe subscriptions

It sounds interesting but what browser do you intend visitors to use to your site? It looks different in different browsers and I'm not sure all of them are what you intend.

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?

Trump blinks: 'Substantially' lower China tariffs promised

Re: Dementia

OTOH he wasn't making large scale, erratic economic decisions affecting the world economy.

Re: Dementia

But what about Vance?

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

Railways take you where the railway wants you to go. Your car takes you where you want to go - maybe not so much these days but more or less.

For those who never venture outside the M25 it's the best service station on the network so if I'm heading further north it's the first stop. It's also a village apparently high up in the fells in the Lake District. (It's actually not that high up but it's exposed and the M6 climbs up to it from little more than sea level via the Lune gorge.) For those who never venture outside the Cotswolds, sorry, Gloucester is only the second best; it's Tebay's younger brother.

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.

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.