Posts by Doctor Syntax

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead

Re: management

When a government makes a strategic decision to commit to Linux (or BSD or anything else that isn't Windows) anyone coming along whining that there isn't AD (or substitute anything else MS specific) is going to be told fairly brusquely to stop bringing problems and come back with solutions.

The old orthodoxy will have become the new heterodoxy and those who fail to grasp that quickly will find their careers are in decline. It won't be product X being incompatible with the MS product, it will be the MS product incompatible with product X and that makes it the MS product's problem.

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

There is nothing new or unusual about hardware manufacturers funding the development of operating systems to run on their hardware. How many OSes did DEC provide back in the day, for instance? The reason is obvious. Without the OS there's no market for their product.

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

"The Schleswig-Holstein migration seems to have been successful enough that other states are considering following it."

I read several reports of them starting with finish due this year. Is it there or thereabouts?

It seems common, looking at similar projects over the years, to see reports of them starting - and nothing more. That doesn't mean that they didn't complete, it's just that as they asymptotically approach 100% it's not news. It would be good to know how these things progress.

Re: It’s all about apps

Serve jail time for attempted corruption and lose out to the competition. Strategic decisions at government level are going to be hard to overturn.

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

There are quite a few government organisations that have done it including in France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

Perhaps el Reg could have a periodic roundup including progress reports on announced migrations - how are Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein coming along?

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

Three and a tanner might be all we can afford.

Re: It’s all about apps

Let's imagine you're a software vendor selling Windows-based packages to European Civil Services. A large part of your user base says it intends to migrate to Linux. What to do, what to do?

Re: management

If only there was some way to search the internet to find answers to questions like this.

https://www.devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-linux-fleet-management-tools-features-pros-cons-comparison/

Re: Walking the hard path

"but then you're back to US owned and controlled platforms"

The hoo-ha that's been reported about LO restarting development of a cloud-based version, NextCloud forking OnlyOffice and various initiatives to put together NC-based platforms for government use says that Office <365 and Google Workspace are expected to be replaced - in fct they should be prime targets even before the desktop. SAP is also a European product - so we can read about SAP migrations going off-course instead of Oracle.

Hosting or on-prem is going to need building up, though.

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

There's also the point that several contributing projects are based in Europe - KDE, LibreOffice and NextCloud being the most prominent. Then there are distros: Suse, Ubuntu, Zorin and Mint.

And what nationality is Greg Kroah-Hartman, the stable kernel maintainer? I believe he used to work for Suse so maybe there's a European steering that.

UK defense startup to supply drone interceptors for Britain and allies

A turbojet sounds unduly complex for a single use device.

Digital sovereignty isn't just a buzzword – it's the future

A Linux desktop future for public administrations may still come, he suggested, but only "at the end of that conversation," once resilient, sovereign back‑end services are in place.

The recent French announcement is making this view obsolete already. I trust, however, that they're running the Linux desktop project in parallel with a back-end project.

What happened when AI ran into the cold hard reality of the legal profession

It's the only way.

It's likely more a case of civil suites and if somebody loses their case and their lawyer has contributed with an AI-written brief then the scale of damages will br huge - providing their new lawyer running the claim against the old one doesn't make the same mistake.

Once judges start recommending that those offering hallucinated briefs get disbarred or the equivalent natural selection will sort it out.

Suits won't quit AI spending, even if they can't prove it's working

Transformation into a hollow shell.

Don't worry. The death of the dinosaurs will enable new, more nimble successors to take over - to become dinosaurs themselves in due course.

I think you'll understand where this is coming from if you remember that report from a week or two ago about those least able to recognise bullshit being impressed by it. This is what happens when they get into C-suite positions.

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

Re: In sympathy

My limit was a 3 item basket which gave me a reasonable chance of completing the checkout before anything goes wrong. I'm beginning to think enshittification is in progress there as the last attempt a few days ago failed on the 1st item.

Snowflake manager explains the 'Spider-Man' theory of AI agent data access

Hmm. Somebody seems to think what I left on the table was a column of CRUD.

Careful. You'll cause a row.

"more and more you need to have a single copy of the data.”

Yes, that's how we used to do things. A corporate database with corporate applications built on it. Deterministic applications. OK, there might be a few databases and application sets for different lines of business and very likely an accounts package with some means of feeding that from the line of business applications.

Then it got dumped on somebody else's computers. Possibly multiple somebodys. Dumped or replaced piecemeal but still, hopefully, with deterministic applications. Because it just grew piecemeal it's now hard to string it together and the answer to that is going to be some non-deterministic agents.

Good luck.

Microsoft locks out VeraCrypt and WireGuard devs, blames verification process

Re: It's worse than that..

"no changes had been made on the SharePoint side"

How would you know whether they'd been made or not? It's on somebody else's computer.

Re: The usual misleading headline and buried useful informatiom

It sounds like they were sending important signals in noisy channels that are ignored if they can't be blocked.

Re: Why do people keep working with Microsoft ?

"Your question implies there's some kind of way to write software where everyone you interact with treats you as an important person and resolves problems, but I haven't found it."

I certainly didn't read the OP as having anything to do with the way software is written. AFAICS the complaint is that microsoft produces products, gets people to put their trust in them to use in their business - after all, that's the only reson to buy the products - and then betrays that trust.

A customer should be treated as an important person by a business. No customers, no business.

Something similar happened to an Apple developer a while ago. We hear of businesses described as too big to fail. Sometimes it seems they're too big to succeed.

Crypto? Huh. Good gawd y'all, what is it good for? $45M in this case

"need for international collaboration to stop cryptocurrency fraud,"

Once that's done the only things it will be good for will be paying ransoms and money laundering.

AWS: Agents shouldn't be secret, so we built a registry for them

"But when companies deploy software automations, they don't always have visibility into what their roboscripts are actually doing."

How does this give any visibility into what they're doing?

Microsoft cuts cloudy desktop prices by 20 percent, warns they’ll wake up slowly

Re: Overpriced

"In both cases the dependency on a functional Internet connection can be mostly mitigated"

Even when you don't have one?

Re: Overpriced

"how much better can I do A-Z on the cloud comp?"

Or "Why can't I do A-Z because Azure's down, Mr Back Hoe paid a visit or I'm working from somewhere where I have neither a wired connection nor a WiFi password?"

It takes the pee out of PC.

BOFH: If the meatbags can't agree on aircon, AI will decide for them

Perhaps that vast majority know something you don't.

I just knew this was going to come up

What do you mean by "the room"?

It's more than the air temperature. It's the walls and everything in them. You need to get those warmed up before the room stops feeling cold.

Unless you have built-in heating in those you're using the air to transfer heat from the heat source - hot-water radiator, electric element or whatever - to all those things. Air isn't that great a heat transfer medium so it's going to be very ineffective if you just try to use air at your target temperature. Unless you set the timer to turn on well before you want the room to be warm an initial boost will be more effective.

Still unpersuaded? Remember that water is a far more effective heat transfer medium than air. What temperature is you water circulation set to? It's not room temperature, is it? It's more like 70C.

Your significant others are working by observation, not theory.

If theory and observation disagree you need to revise the theory.

Fewer than 3 in 10 register for HMRC's Making Tax Digital shake-up

Re: Rude

And is there a Linux version of the software?

Tech support chap's boss got him out of jail so he could finish a job

Re: Define work.

From Fowler:

"Guard against the use of phrasal verbs that one knows or suspects to be relatively recent formations or that seem too clever by half unless the one in question seems to add an element of intensification or a dimension of meaning not present in the simple verb."

Does the "with" add anything except prolixity?

Re: Brentry

Clichés are the best way of getting simple ideas into the heads of idiots.

(The late, great Len Deighton)

'Several dozen' high-value corporations hit by new extortion crew in helpdesk phishing spree

"the Adobe breach appears to be legitimate"

Genuine maybe, but not legitimate.

Sigh.

Another supply chain attack. Yet again it has to be said: a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.

RAF eyes cheap drone-killer as Typhoon jet tests laser-guided rockets

Re: Cannon

Thanks. I take it that something the size of a drone can still be targetted from far enough away that the result isn't - errm - embarrassing for the pilot.

Re: Cannon

How much easier is it to target the drone with a laser? The difference in speed is still the same and the target needs to remain designated until the missile gets there.

Peace President's Iran war piles more pain on already battered PC market

I wonder if anyone suffering financial losses will get together with a class action in a jurisdiction outside the US. Perhaps with a distraint on a few golf courses.

UK.gov's top tech jobs pay more than prime minister earns

Re: a better year

I know a retired MP slightly. He lives locally. He writes local history books. I have bought some of them but I doubt they sell by the container load. In fact I doubt the publishers could print on that scale. He has given a few talks to our Civic Society. We certainly don't pay him £100k - we couldn't. I'm not even sure we pay him anything; £60 (not k!) is about our maximum.

Re: Managers win again

That's devolution.

Zephyr Energy loses £700K in cyber hit that rerouted contractor payment

"highly sophisticated" attack

Translation: cleverer than us

Cryptographers place $5,000 bet whether quantum will matter

Re: In the words of Christine Keeler

Maybe she did say that but she's not the one who's famous for it.

OTOH, for anyone of an impressionable age at the time, that photo lives on...

UK to spend £15M on AI-powered crime mapping in knife violence crackdown

This is more or less what the local coppers could have told them, just for the asking, assuming the areas have such things as local coppers any more.

Sticky-note security turned gym into hall of '80s horrors

Re: Manual

What do you expect from a vending machine?

DARPA looking for battery that could power a laptop for months

Mr Baylis would like a word.

Ex-Microsoft engineer believes Azure problems stem from talent exodus

Re: Remember Great Britain?

Their position was essentially the equivalent not only of not admitting there were ICBMs but not mentioning that continents existed.

"But I don't think Rust has anything to do with this."

I don't follow the Rust jargon but my understanding of his point was that simply the choice of language brought what I, in my old-fashioned way, would call external libraries, or dependencies if you prefer.

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

Re: Obviously bollocks

Even if you have an old Linux computer with old S/W on it you can still use it to do whatever you used it for before, including reading or downloading new files from online. It's not bricked. The functionality remains. The situation with Kindle is that if you reset it you brick it.

Re: Obviously bollocks

They just don’t want to or can’t be bothered want to flog some more hardware.

FTFY