Posts by Doctor Syntax 42402 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
“Enterprises tolerate $NEXT_TRICK because switching operating systems is expensive and inconvenient, but smaller organizations are affected more severely since each minute counts,”
The very definition of frog-boiling. There's never a really convenient time to make the break but the overall experience just gets worse.
They know they've got you and can do whatever they want.
"long term, the only hope is Hurd"
Ah yes, long term. When will it be production ready?
I have to say I do like the micro-kernel idea. I don't know if that's what's being planned but it offers the option of different admin user IDs so that, for example, storage-admin might allocate raw storage but not have the right to decide what file system, if any, gets written on it nor the right to read what's written on it.
For everyday use, however, we need something that's production ready.
"Proprietary software being included in the only official available installer"
Unnamed propitiatory S/W.
A driver perhaps? A driver that will only be used on systems with one particular H/W feature.
That does not make the who distro propitiatory but it does make all the other components of the distros available to those with that H/W.
Those components will be able to meet the requirements of those users, To channel a former PM: Requirements, dear boy, requirements.
You only have to wear the hair shirt if you want to.
Perhaps we need to remind ourselves why we use computers.
Most computer use is to meet requirements.
My initial requirements, long ago, were tools for science. The computers were initially ICL 1900 series mainframe and later a Z80 running a CP/M close and then UCSD pSystem.
That moved on, in the early 1980s to developing and running, a system whose requirements were managing lab. casework. That was on Unix (7th ed) and Informix (actually I started when Informix was still called Marathon & our serial number was 33).
That was just an adjunct to lab. work but from it I ended up moving into an IT career with various Unix/Informix systems as a career including as a freelance. Most of the requirements there were logistics and sales order processing, etc.
Now in retirement a prime requirement is to have a working environment which matches the familiar Unix of the 2nd half of my working life. For a while that was met by SCO OpenServer* but since then Linux** when it became good enough. SysV init is more Unix like than SystemD.
The secondary requirements, fully met by my particular choice on Linux distro, are a whole lot of functions including WYSIWYG text editing, some image manipulation including annotating maps, drawing diagrams and web browsing including, as I write, tracking my daughter's progress on the Fellsman 2026 (sheer madness!).
A tertiary requirement is meeting the other requirements at a price acceptable to a retired Yorkshireman.
My requirements do not include worshipping at some shrine of philosophical purity. YMMV.
* Yes, I know. Open. Back in the day we talked about Open Standards which tended to mean something like Posix. A different but legitimate meaning of "open" in describing software.
** SCO installation required booting from a floppy and floppy drives have long been on the red list of endangered species so it ceased to become an option, hence the move.
"You won't have much ongoing luck with Devuan"
I find this comes into the same category aerodynamics proving that the bee cannot fly but the bee, not knowing aerodynamic, flies successfully.
The reason it falls into the same category is the fact that I've been using it successfully for years. It's currently running my laptop, my second laptop, my wife's laptop, my ancient nettop and my NextCloud server on Pi5.
Practice beats theory.
Curiosity compels me to ask what events made you decide the Devuan and Debian became proprietary?
Where foes 1st form start?
Daughter passed 11 plus in N Ireland & started grammar school there. Then we moved to High Wycombe where they have (or had) 13 plus and was miffed to have to go back to junior school again. Fortunately the timing of the move back to God's Own County was timed for the start of 6th form college.
"Nadella, who rarely misses an opportunity to talk up AI's potential, saw his own compensation grow to $96.5 million for Microsoft's fiscal 2025."
When I see "compensation" mentioned in this sort of context I usually wonder what he's being compensated for, what harm might have befallen him.
"Best not look at the company's stock price, which has fallen by more than 20 percent during the last six months."
Ah, that's what he's been compensated for. The value of his share pot has fallen.
"On the same basis would we be burning certain pages out of Hansard just because the policy or law being debated at the time has been changed since?"
No, because they record what was said even if the policy or law has changed since.
But consider this. You have a web page with a banner saying some of the rest of the content on the page may be untrue - or out of date if you prefer the verbose form. Now go through each piece of information on the page, testing it against the banner and delete it if cannot be relied on. Because the banner tells you it can't be relied on you'll delete every piece of information and be left with an empty page. At that point you might reasonably decide to go for the current page.
A page which purports to tell you something current needs to be current. Stale pages have been the curse of the web almost singe TBL invented it.
"may contain out of date information"
If there's no way of telling that information on the page may be true or false - which is what "outdated" means then the page contains no information at all and ought to be removed because there's no point in keeping it.
Archive it off-line for historical purposes if that's required.
AFAICS it is you who is wrong. From TFA "Passkeys work by creating a cryptographic key pair between a user's device and the protected account." After that just about any quickly found explanation on the web seems to resort to hand waving, the more detailed mentioning "challenge" but if it requires a cryptographic pair on the two ends it suggests that it involves exchanging some encrypted text.
This is not the same as having KeePass generate passwords that look like line noise and store them encrypted. Having said that the KeyPass option would be my choice. The ability to share copies across devices avoids the reliance on a single device.
"I can store passkeys in my browser or 1Password which are stored locally on my machine."
I can store my passwords locally on my machine in Keepass. I can sync to my local NextCloud and from that to my spare machine.
Keepass is encrypted and protected by its own password which is the only one I need to remember.
"despite repeated attempts by both Donald Trump's first and second administrations to cut funding"
Nevertheless, when it's in orbit it will be claimed as a Trump success.
Then he'll insist it's renamed after himself. Of course DDTT has a certain structure to it : Despite Donald Trump Telescope.
The data is supposed to be collected from volunteers. It sounds very much like the outfit I corresponded with some time ago as a possible volunteer. I tried to get some sensible answers about control and access. I failed - in fact they stopped responding - and left it there. I am not surprised by this report.
