Posts by Doctor Syntax

Apple's last tower topples… and the others will follow

Re: Here's where IT "pros" fall over yet again...

Liam, I think we come from different places. Bolting NUCs on the back if monitors is fine although in that case maybe you should have considered all-in-ones (why flog the customer a replacement NUC when you can flog them a replacement monitor at the same time;). Back in the day I was putting together lab kit where being a single integrated box was vastly preferable so that the specialised stuff such as the ADC was inside, plugged into the motherboard. You don't get that with an NUC. Later,I was working in in a situation where big industrial printers were hung onto the PC with SCSI. I suppose the SCSI could be replaced with USB or whatever today but you're still going to want something that can live in a factory environment (IIRC the SCSI was pretty substantial - I think it might have been built as armoured cable just to help it survive).

Re: Expansion cards

I stand corrected. Never used one myself. IIRC the first hard drive I used was 14" (apart from the one in the ICL mainframe that had a building all of its own).

Re: Extrapolation

"Their GPUs are used in datacentres to provide graphics capabilities for virtual desktops. "

I'd be surprised if it's all strung together with Thunderbolt cables.

"it's the freedom to locate and orient your specialist harware"

Actually, it's not. It doesn't include the freedom to locate the specialist hardware in a single box, securely plugged into the processor in a unit that can be tested in a workshop, picked up whole and positioned in a production environment sll ready to go without having to be reassembled and retested. Anybody needing that is going to tell you that your separate boxes are an unacceptable mess of cables and they're certainly not going to buy it.

50 years or so down the road and we're being offered something that looks like a hobbyist solution as the future.

A TV signal tends to be available where the TV is, or vice versa, which amounts to 2 places in the house,, each with a TV there. The solution is likely to be a rat's of cables pushed behind some item of furniture, not good for reliability and not good for working on.

This approach to system-building is a lash-up. It doesn't look as if it's been properly engineered and possibly the best solution would be ot grab an old VCR case or the like and hide it all in there.

Old MythTV boz:

1s Mini-ITX case, board, disk drive and optical drive containing a Huppauge tuner card. The tuner card has 2 tuners, each able to extract several digital channels from a single mux so that it can record half a dozen programmes at once provided they're on a couple of muxes.

1x Powerbrick (powerbriks don't have fans to using a motherboard that takes external power means I don't have the noise of a fan and the box is lower profile).

New MythTV system when I get round to finally putting it together (or it might be some other S/W).

1x Pi in its box

1x Powerbrick for the Pi

1x Silicondust tuner box containing 4 tunsers. AFAICS although each tuner can be on a different mux, so recording from 4 muxes at once, only one channel per tuner so no more than 4 channels at once.

1x Silicondust power brick

1x Netowrk hub - the Silicondust tuner is networked, not USB connected

1x Powerbrick for network hub - can I work out which is for the hub and which for the tuner as they both has the same size plug but different volteges

1x External drive for the Pi

Verdict: old - neat, new- a visual mess

Re: Here's where IT "pros" fall over yet again...

We have the contrary situation here among people who are apparently IT pros. They think it's acceptable to put together a system with a lot of little boxes strung together with leads. It isn't going to play well controlling industrial machinery or a medical scanner, or the like.

Re: Expansion cards

A thin laptop disk? These were full 5¾" jobs. The thickness of the drive mean that the adjacent slot was blocked. Looking back they may seem like an oddity but they were real. Look up old copies of Byte on archive.org &you'll find the adverts. This was before HP/UX and maybe before SCSI.

I'm glad I have sacks of old PCWs and Bytes around the place - all this sort of thing is part of our history and all too easily forgotten.

So in a production environment you expect to have a pile of little boxes on the bench, with a tangle of leads between them as opposed to a single box which keeps everything together and doesn't have so many leads to come adrift? It's not a great recipe for reliability.

When does the Hauppauge TV tuner get integrated? Or the ADC? Or the stepper motor controller?

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

Re: depending on whether it is allowed

11th of September 1752

"they are just trying to get ahead on what the law says they will have to do"

Which law? Those already passed, those in the legislatures or those yet to come? (Echoes of Scrooge's Christmases are not inappropriate.) In what jurisdictions? Why should our OSes be controlled by the political machinations of what looks increasingly like a failed state?

"Australia and the UK already have them"

I don't know about Oz. The UK law applies to web sites not OSes so on the one hand it's a smaller scope but on the other it calls for verification so is far, far more intrusive. Be careful what you wish for - you might get it.

Re: New Mexico Jury Gives Meta $375M Reasons To Protect Children

I have some news that may surprise you. There are places that are not in the US and many of us live in them. Even more surprising: blue and red don't necessarily have the same connotations here. We see it as just ill-informed politicians' crap, and not even the usual category of ill-informed US politicians' crap.

Shirley I think we should call the embassy

SB; That won't be necessary at this stage, madam.

Shirley: Maybe we should phone before there is another stage.

From memory, Our man in Camelot Anthony Price.

It is a field

Let's put that in with just a slight amendment to "a"

"It is just one field"

Does that clarify why "just" is doing heavy lifting? If it's puzzling you try adding the words "as yet" and possibly look up the term "Scope creep".

If makes you any happier you could deal with a radiocarbon age >= 1950 years BP (unless they've redifined it since my time).

Re: this is what I don't get

"That requires the requesting code to be familiar with the laws of every situation in every country."

Those promoting the laws will tell you that it only needs to act in their country which shouldn't be anything more than a minor problem. i doubt some of them could find another country on a map if it had a saucer-sized pin stuck in it.

Re: Not changeable? Except by root?

Is this a case of the systemd folk adding something to "just shut up people?" or is it their corporate influence showing?

Yes.

Re: It is *not* required

"Over 18" is also personal data.

Re: Limited practical utility

Yup. The smart kid llearns how to make a bootable stick. The entrepreneurial kid works out he can flog them. And so we have the next generation of Musks, Zucks etc.

Re: Yup....This root user was born on 1-Jan-1906!!!!

And no doubt you'll argue against California when they decide it has to be toughened up. It'll be too late then.

Re: Yup....This root user was born on 1-Jan-1906!!!!

"Perhaps the smoking ban for under 16s or alcohol ban for under 18s should be lifted because someone's big brother can buy them instead?"

We have the situation that if I put a packet of paracetamol in my shopping in some cases the checkout operator has to call someone to confirm that I (in my 80s) am old enough.

Staff too scared of the AI axe to pick it up, Forrester finds

Re: mandated AI

Maybe it is. Maybe it wrote the policies.

It's a good fit. There's an old saying that a lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client. So does an LLM givinglegal advice.

I wonder if here's a third reason, somewhat allied to the first. Staff are a fraid of being personally blamed for all the hallucinations and mistakes.

Engineer sabotaged hardware then complained when it didn't work

Re: Back in the late 90s/early 2000s

"took the speaker out of her computer"

The more subtle one is to find a way to short out the speaker. If it's connected by some sort of twin cable a pin does nicely - just clip it to length so nothing obvious shows.

That's the way to burn them in.

That depends on what components got cooked.

That's not cool.

AI companies lick their chops as FCC proposes forcing call center onshoring

Re: Yechhh

If, by East Asia, you mean India my expectation would be shambles.

Re: The only thing worse than an offshore call centre is a chatbot. And that is what we will get.

The other week I phoned the car dealer to book a service. I got through to a speech activated chatbot which was about as bad as might be expected. I got a text confirmation. Afterwards I realised I'd chosen a bad day and rung again and the call was answered by a human. The chatbot's booking wasn't on the system.

Perhaps this is explained by the fact that the dealership had been taken over by another. The lot who took over was, unfortunately, one I'd decided never to deal with again - once was enough. I'm sure they consider themselves very progressive which means aggressive sales spam. If I'd known that was on the cards I'd not even have bought that make of car.

"Waitrose offer a better service proposition, but at a higher average price, that gains them 4-5% market share"

To get market share it helps to have shops. Their store locator returns a blank screen on my preferred browser with javascript enabled by default - not exactly a good way to gain customers. The nearest one is at a motorway service station, far enough away already, and the rest miles further than that. I wonder why they have a poor market share.

So not, you're not going to get improved customer service through this. Not until some bright spark realises it would be a USP.

UK government admits Capita pension portal was crapita at launch

Re: Crapita has a crysal ball apparently

It certainly has balls. Less sure bout the crystal bit.

"in conjunction with the Cabinet Office, it had agreed to split the functionality between December 1 and the end of March before go-live"

When exactly did this agreement happen? November 30th? 2 minutes before go-live?

BOFH: Are you ready to raise our expense account limits now?

"Why does X need to be repaired?"

"It's about to be broken."

"How?"

I'm going to beat you over the head with it."

Re: Tip yourself - on a Friday

No, the tip is for extra incrimination. It's just the nail stuck through the end of the stick.

Re: obviously

Nah, power is useless if spread to thinly.

HP stuffs OpenAI LLM into new laptops in bid for small biz

Re: can we find another name?

Should add that the router is not that supplied by the ISP.

Re: A solution in search of a problem

Oops. Civic.

Re: can we find another name?

The laptop on which I'm typing this was purchased with no OS, abd runs Devuan (no systemd). A good deal of its contents, including my calendar, is synced to my own NextCloud server running on a Pi. My personal email Is hosted on my own domain by a service provider of my own choice (not the ISP) as is the charity's email service I also use.

In what way is that not a Personal Computer?

Re: A solution in search of a problem

Thanks for the reminder to print out the last Covic Soc committee notes in time for tomorrows meeting.

Re: Just another bloatware

|Find someone who sells kit with no installed OS.

Brit lawmaker targeted by AI deepfake fails to get answers from US Big Tech

I suppose they might well think "If Starmer can get away without answering at PMQs so can we".

Digital euro goes full sovereignty mode, US cloud giants not on guest list

Re: Presumably..

Add in some really stiff penalty clauses that are really poison pills.

"The supplier's beneficial ownership must reside within the EU or EEA"

"In the event of the supplier's beneficial ownership becoming resident outside of the EU or EEA the company will, at its own expense, facilitate, within 24 hours, the transfer of the contract, all data, operational facilities and, if appropriate, premises to another company whose beneficial ownership is within the EU or EEA and TUPE the staff to that company for the nominal sum of 1 Euro" (AKA the cheapest and fastest management buyout in history.)

The issue isn't a digital settlement system. Those have existed for years. This isn't, AFAICS, pushing it any further, it's just an attempt to wrest back control from the US for EU settlements and good for them. But why AI?

"However, the AI boat is still in the harbor and this may be a step towards building an AI-enabled payment system based on European technology complying with EU rules and regulations."

Why? Just Why?

Welsh government used Copilot for review to justify closing organization

"The use of Copilot during the review of Industry Wales was limited to producing full, accurate and unbiased transcripts of interviews, analyzing and grouping comments into common themes,"

And did amybody actually check its performance in that? Check in person, that is, and not simply get some other LLM to do it.

GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all

Somewhere, down on the 37th page of the small print you'll find a clause saying that they promise nothing.

Re: Smell that?

"That's desperation."

That's somebody else's computer.