Posts by Doctor Syntax

Microsoft claims it didn't mean to inject Copilot into Windows Server 2022 this week

Without local oversight? Without any oversight at all it seems.

An 8k script can pull in a lot of other stuff once you run it..

Re: Misnomer

It doesn't execute any code or process? What does it run on? Pixie dust?

Re: The last place anyone needs this shit

"is a server"

But only just in the last place, following closely on "everywhere else".

It also raises the question of what other, even less desirable, functionality has been added unintentionally? It's not as if server OSes are something you'd want to trust so that their builds would be very carefully managed.

Re: Not a good look

That's the thing about AI. Once it gets clever enough it just ... erm ... edges it's way in of its own volition when nobody's looking.

185K people's sensitive data in the pits after ransomware raid on Cherry Health

Someone down at the bottom of the heap was probably saying "Look what happened to them. If we don't do something about it it could happen to us." and it got propagated through the reality distortion field as "It couldn't happen to us.".

Prolific phishing-made-easy emporium LabHost knocked offline in cyber-cop op

Phisher's had their chips?

It's the one with the greasy newspaper in the pocket.

Debian spices up APT package manager with a dash of color, squishes ancient bug

"it's not the best choice for those who suffer from daltonism, or red/green color blindness"

Coloured command line is all too often a case of "works for me" and if you have the developer's choice of terminal background (and their colour vision!) it's readable but half of it disappears against some other background.

NetBSD 10 proves old tech can still kick apps and take names three decades later

Thanks, folks. Maybe I should put a vintage box together to run up some of the ancient stuff for old-times sake. If only I didn't have a big queue of stuff that needs to be done first...

Sorry. Think fat finger: SCO!

What, if any, options do BSDs offer for bringing in such blasts from the past as SOC executables?

Whistleblower cries foul over alleged fuselage gaps in Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Re: Possibly saying the wrong thing

I think it's even got through to the board that they have a bit of s reputation problem about safety. They even said a little while ago that they were going to concentrate on safety. In those circumstances you'd expect then to be showing great enthusiasm to look into it, even while expressing doubt there would be any problems to find otherwise, all the fine statements look as if they are purely lip service.

Re: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics!

However, the travel is measured in distance rather than time.

Your flight might also be cheaper than parking your car at the airport.

Re: different diameters

If the lowest bidder was good enough to get man to the Moon...

I think it was.

Are you sure you didn't mean "overlooking"?

Re: Glad I'm retired

What's that buzzing noise? It sounds like a mosquito.

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

Re: The 3 assistants with fantastic people skills who effing hate computers

Really hating UI changes as I do is one reason why I prefer Linux. In fact I'm pretty miffed about a recent change in KDE applications - it shows a welcome screen on severa applications and one of them doesn't have an option to turn it off.

Re: I predict.......

The calendar sharing would be done on the server: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/user_manual/en/groupware/calendar.html#sharing-calendars

There also appears to be a facility to share mailboxes although, as I said, I have currently no use case for mail on NextCloud:: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/user_manual/en/groupware/mail.html#shared-mailbox

Re: I predict.......

The point is that, just as in the UK, German users will have been using ISO paper sizes for years in Windows and will do so in Linux. It is completely and utterly a non-issue in moving from ne to the other.

"Powerpoint can go, nobody needs that bullshit."

Oddly enough almost every speaker who gives one of the monthly talks at our Civic Soc used PoewerPoint. I haven't seen a plain old 35mm slide projector for years. The exceptions are those whose lectures aren't illustrated - we don't ask those back - and me with LO Impress.

Re: The 3 assistants with fantastic people skills who effing hate computers

"If IT switches everyone to Linux"

This is not IT changing everyone to Linux. This is the state government changing everyone to Linux. Yes. there'll be retraining but it should certainly not be IT's responsibility, it will be that of the team tasked with implementing the state government's policy.

BTW, who trains your users when Windows upgrades change things?

Re: The 3 assistants with fantastic people skills who effing hate computers

"When an update moves a button, you get complaints and have to show them what to do.."

This is where Linux scores.

Re: even approaching an alternative to 365 in functionality

Although LO does have a ribbon or ribbon-like choice for those who want to view their documents through a letterbox slot.

Re: If LibreOffice provided anything even approaching an alternative to 365 in functionality ...

Isn't that online? Data sovereignty is the key requirement here. But there are alternatives depending on what sort of pictures you want to draw.

There are several distos which are based in Germany plus Devuan just over the border in the Netherlands. Also, as posted elsewhere, the Document Foundation (LibreOffice) and NextCloud, two components of their strategy are based in Germany as is KDE which could well be their desktop choice. There always would have been a home team.

Re: I predict.......

I have calendar on SeaMonkey (same code base as Thunderbird) syncing to NextCloud and that in turn syncs to my phone. NC is also set up to sync a lot of directories. One of the folders on NC is shared with my wife so work I do for her ends up on her laptop a few seconds later. I have no use for the mail aspects of NextCloud so can't comment about that.

Re: I predict.......

Good heavens. Is there still such a thing as US letter? I haven't seen such a thing for years, not in Windows, not in Linux. The mention almost makes me feel nostalgic.

Re: Fingers crossed

The number of times that I've read comments here about "our build" referring to Windows. ISTM that corporate IT departments blow the default install image (which was vendor customised anyway) to install their own and then we get comments like this about "which distro?".

The IT department decides on which distro. Fortunately they know a bit more about it that a Windows-only user or administrator who comes out with this junk. They may even have their own corporate build of it tailored to their own specific needs (in this case starting with everything defaulting to German locale and keyboard rather than US English). They may even have specific builds tailored to the needs of specific groups of users. It's called being professional.

What might have worked in simpler times would have been a franchise arrangement but these days there would be the risk of an "upgrade" that could do a bit of rummaging without involving the franchise. I suppose you could also check the source of all the upgrades....Oh, you can't; it's all closed source.

Re: I wish them luck

It's a long time since I read the then Microsoft terms. What struck me was that there was nothing in there stating what they wouldn't take. If you weren't thinking in that way it would look like "Nothing to see here, carry on".

Re: I wish them luck

Fait accompli is a powerful technique.

Re: I wish them luck

It sounds as if the insurance companies need to collect better data than inadequate box-ticks.

It wouldn't be surprising if, at the conclusion of a migration like this, 1. at least one person turns out to have been producing a product which wasn't needed; 2. at least one person is producing management figures which are being used but which are wrong because of a spreadsheet error.

The underlying issue here isn't "Microsoft is bad" but "Microsoft can't meet data sovereignty requirements". Presumably Microsoft has the option of proposing a solution to that, one sufficiently robust that it can't be broken by having the "don't phone home" version actually replaced in the course of a routine upgrade.

Re: “[Microsoft] has infinite resources for lobbying, legal action, and whatever other actions ...”

That doesn't solve the data sovereignty issue

Re: If only.....

The Document (LibreOffice) Foundation is based in Germany. So is NextCloud. So is KDE. Given that consultancy will be involved in such a migration it's not impossible that what you suggest will actually be happening.

OK, the short answer. It's high level policy based on major political concerns: it's going to happen.

Longer answer.

Part 1. spreadsheets. Excel under Wine might be an answer but very likely short term while individual cases are looked at.

If they're dealing with spread-sheet experts with analytical skills doing ad hoc analysis then they're likely going to have to cross-train. Excel specifics are only going to be part of their skill set. Very likely the project is going to have LO consultants on board, preferably someone who's a contributor or who knows the contributors. If the Excel users and consultants jointly identify some showstopper in LibreOffice, get some enhancements made and incorporated upstream - this is FOSS, not some closed source unfixable stuff.

If they're just using some unchanging spreadsheets to gather data and generate reports do what should have been done anyway: use the spreadsheets as prototypes to generate programs to do the same thing. If they're just extracting data from a single database it might just be a simple report. Simplify the workflow. In any case it's not unknown for someone to sit there, producing some figures until the day they retire when it turns out they don't need to be replaced because nobody was using the data.

Part 2. Computer haters. If somebody has no aptitude for using computers then either they're in the wrong job or the job's badly structured. This would be an ongoing error which isn't the consequence of a change of systems although it might be an opportunity to fix things. If their people skills are valuable either switch them to a role which uses those without making further demands or restructure things so that somebody else can handle the IT for them. Businesses can be pretty stupid about having somebody whose talents are in X and wanting them to do Y as well irrespective of whether they have any interest or talent at Y. The inevitable result is that they spend less time doing what they're good at while wasting time on the other or they get so pissed off you lose them entirely. Been there, got the scars. But it's a red herring in this particular case.

Devaluing content created by AI is lazy and ignores history

Re: drawing a line between "real" and "fake" betrays a naïveté bordering on wilful ignorance

If the article contains real citations to relevant source material which bears out the point being made then it would matter a good deal less whether the article was written by a human or an AI/ML system. However what currently pass for AI/ML seem to be pastiche generators. Yes, they can create pastiches of articles with citations but it turns out that this is simply because the training has taught the systems what a citation looks like, not what it is and it's the appearance that has been reproduced, not real content.

"It would be fantastic to put all the NHS patient data into a single database run with AI."

The last 3 words are irrelevant to the benefits and also to the drawbacks. It would be better to take the AI out of any NHS consideration and work out how to make a straightforward database work without betraying trust.

I wouldn't call avoiding AI/ML output "ideological".

It seems an entirely practical approach. It the content can't be traced back to original source it can't be subject to any of the approaches we might have to evaluate it. It's worthless despite being created at vast expense. The entire AI/ML enterprise is an exercise in squandering trust, money and electricity.

Torvalds intentionally complicates his use of indentation in Linux Kconfig

Your generosity of spirit is an example to us all.

Re: I Hate Syntax Critical Whitespace Indentation

Quite. Don't make what should be explicit implicit.

Re: trying to find bugs in c or BASIC or Fortran or Pascal trying to find mismatched

Memory says there was once a program called cb (C beutifier) which sorted things out for you.

Nowadays it seems you're expected to use some online service to do that. You're going to paste all your employer's trade secret code into an some unknown online site? Really?

I have no information to say such sites are anything but honest and upright but nevertheless that would have to be regarded as a massive security breach.

Re: It implemented fixed 8 space tabs.

1. A lot of code was written on VT100s, and not only for DEC OSes.

2. Messing with defaults is simply a recipe for causing confusion. If you do it you should be condemned to spend a year debugging code which was written with a mixture of spaces, and n-spaced tabs where n varies from line to line and is any random number from 1 to 10 excluding 8 but occasionally including 12.

Re: Semicolons and curly braces, forever.

What isn't visible, at least in any programming editor I've used, is whether the indents are spaces, tabs or any mixture of the two.

Judge refuses to Ctrl-Z divorce order made by a misclick

Re: Huh? That's Our Courts Dragging Themselves Into the Mud.

"Our judiciary won't let defence contest expert testimony."

Since when? Over a period of 14 years or so I gave expert testimony many times and it was open to the defence to cross-examine me.

The problems I've heard of were dubious defence experts. An example would be a quality control technician making statements about comparing glass fragments based on their practice of measuring RI and not knowing that techniques existed to measure to a couple more significant figures so that what they saw as identical could be differentiated; and the prosecution not taking advice from his own experts on how to cross-examine.

"However, the judiciary themselves are not adequately testing expert testimony."

That's not the judge's role.

OTOH there may indeed be problems with rogue prosecution witnesses. The counter for that would be proper defence experts to be called to counter it.

Re: question....

"Does this mean the system is flawed and was designed to be abused by the state?"

"Designed" seems to be a questionable word here.

NASA confirms Florida house hit by a piece of ISS battery pack

It gives a whole new meaning to fly tipping.