Posts by Doctor Syntax

Nginx web server forked as Freenginx to escape corporate overlords

Re: Deal

Almost. They bought the name and rights to maintain something someone else could download for free and then fork. But the forkers have to vary the name.

Re: West Good, Russia Bad

How do you go about registering a FOSS product in a country? His complaints about Nginx and Angle was that they were owned by companies which did have a geographical location. Some products are overseen by foundations and there might be an issue with where the foundation is registered but otherwise FOSS is a citizen of the world. I grant you that may irk some people and governments.

Oxide reimagines private cloud as... a 2,500-pound blade server?

Nine foot high? I've seen computer rooms where there isn't that much height between raised floor and dropped ceiling.

Dell staff not alone in being squeezed to reduce remote work

As per my suggestion above. Put pressure on as senior manger as possible that the oly way to get work done is if you borrow their office for a little while - like the rest of the day and the day after.

"so there isn't room for the entire department to be back on site"

Arrange for everyone to go in on the same time and hound senior manglement for more space: "I can't find a desk. Can I use your office for an hour or two?" "Bill say's he's having problems as well. Can he come and join us?". Then the killer, "I know it's hard for you with all of us in here. Why don't you work from home? we'll be OK here if you do."

Re: Hybrid

None of that worries you when you can't hear it because the dot-matrix printer somebody installed on the desk behind opens up for a long print.

Cybercriminals are stealing iOS users' face scans to break into mobile banking accounts

Re: This is not a biometrics flaw at all

The young are never over-credulous? Nor the middle-aged?

Re: Wahahahaaaaa!!

A variant on phishing but using facial features. Perhaps we should call it "fishing"?

Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner

Re: We need a new Unix

Draw up and implement your set of new ideas. What happens when a new new idea emerges? The test of the quality of your design is how well it gets accommodated.

The original Unix ideas were few and flexible so that networking and GUIs could be built on top. They didn't have to be built in as first-class clients (whatever that means).

If you start out be saying "this needs to be built in and that needs to be built in as special cases" then you're making assumptions about what belongs in there. Assumptions have a habit of becoming limitations.

If the new new idea violates the assumptions, you have to take the back off the system and build in another extra case. That way lies bloat.

The original ideas of extensible simplicity have lasted for decades and been scaled from some controller based on a Pi to supercomputers. That seems a good indication that they got things right.

If there's a case for a new Unix it has to be for removing cruft and getting back to the minimalism.

Re: What is unix anyway?

"The sticking point would be libraries and support programs that came with Windows, and couldn't- at least legitimately- be run on top of some other foundation OS."

Wine can run Windows applications without Windows being present so it must be (not!) emulating them already. What I'm pondering is whether it would pick up applications already installed in Windows as if it had installed them itself. If so then, at least at first sight, there should be no difference between Windows being there and not being there except for the paths where it finds them.

On the other hand the original installation might be directing the executables to use the installed Windows libraries. S do the "libraries and support programs" come with Windows or are they part of it? There would still be a registered* copy of Windows installed. If the libraries are part of that then while they're executing Windows would be executing. And how would that differ from running the original installation in a VM, which would be an alternative way of going about it?

Much the same applies to any support programs from the original installation although there would be a greatly reduced dependency on them as the Linux installation would largely take over their roles.

* Assuming it was legit in the first place unless Microsoft were to actually cancel licences when a version goes out of support.

Re: Not *everything* is a file

Try ls -lR /dev

Re: What is unix anyway?

It's like saying that OS/2 or Windows "is A Unix" by virtue of their compatibility layer.

I was wondering about the reverse of that prompted by the end of W10.

It would be possible, if there were sufficiently free space available, for a Linux installer to compact and shrink an NTFS partition and create a new partition into which to install a bootable Linux. The user's data files could be linked in to the new home directory.

But would it be possible to retain in place any Windows applications that couldn't be substituted, run them via Wine and reassure them that they were still on the same Windows machine on which they'd been registered?

I wondered if I might have been anticipating where you were going.

The list of things that make something look like Unix needs to include Unix system calls.

Someone had to say it: Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches

Alternatively, just wait for the VCs and C-suites to move onto The Next Big Thng.

Apple Vision Pro units returned as folks just can't see themselves using it

"giving 3rd party devs something to play with"

If they see potential customers returning them they'll probably return their own and more on to something else.

Re: re: Overall, once you've had the Watch, it becomes very difficult to live without it.

My point is that I put the watch on when I get up and it stays there, weighting the square root of damn-all on my wrist, until I go to bed - and even then it's on the bedside table. And I don't think it's had a battery changed since I got it several years ago.

But the phone is, comparatively, a big lump to carry about, quite often with a flat battery when I need it. And I locate it, assuming it still has a charge and is within earshot, not from the watch but by ringing it from one of the DECT landline extensions.

Re: re: Overall, once you've had the Watch, it becomes very difficult to live without it.

I've got a stop and alarm watch right here on my wrist - don't need to scrabble in the back of a drawer for one. I can't remember exactly what it cost. It must have been more than a tenner but it's a cheap Casio.

Re: Killer App & Price

Aha! Just thought of one. An app that lets micro-managers wander round an empty office seeing all their staff, who are actually working at home, sitting at the desks and virtually interrupting them to their hearts' content without doing any actual damage.

Re: Killer App & Price

"The question is whether they can be translated into actual use cases rather than interesting curiosities."

That's the critical bit. A Demo is not a killer app. What can be done with a VR/AR headset that can't be done as well, or well enough, more cheaply on a screen?

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

Re: What happened to the server?

I'd guess they sold it back. It would have been the safest way to get money for it with no possibility of questions being asked afterwards.

Re: So, he was just fired ?

I'd guess the dealer got paid off to return it. It would very likely have been at the director's personal expense, given how you wouldn't want that pay-off showing up on the books. After all the dealer probably wasn't even VAT registered.

Quest Diagnostics pays $5M after mixing patient medical data with hazardous waste

Re: Quest takes patient privacy and the protection of the environment very seriously

The media could stamp on it by simply refusing to publish such statements without further questions being answered - such as "Well you didn't that time, did you?". Or "But you said that last time and the time before, didn't you?" to serial offenders.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

Re: What a strange position to defend.

Maybe their legal team used a chatbot to decide what to do. Or the C-Suite used a chatbot that told them they didn't need a legal team at all, just use a chatbot. Perhaps Ait Canada has already been taken over.

Worried about the impending demise of Windows 10? Google wants you to give ChromeOS Flex a try

Re: Mint

"at least as maintenance free to use as Windooze"

Damning with faint praise.

Re: Chrome appears to be more or less Andriod

"you'd be surprised just how well the thing works"

Actually, I wouldn't.

US Air Force's new cyber, IT skill recruitment plan: Bring back warrant officer ranks

Re: Pay grades might be a problem

"I'll bet if you redid the math taking into account that pension and lifetime health care the picture looks a bit different."

The phasing matters, however. The pension doesn't help bring up a young family unless the family is your grandchildren.

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

Re: Three cheers...

Oops. ERG.

Re: Three cheers...

Maybe we should make the "E" stand for something other than "European" to assuage the EG. How about "Essential"?

Re: re: Don't they get enough from Microsoft already?

Bing, although a good mile out of place, has a better idea of where my computer is than Google. Google, OTOH has a much better idea of where my phone is although as it's not welded to my ear it's very frequently not where I am.

Re: Cue Daily Heil headline "Euro Court Won't Protect Our Children"

"Brianna Ghey's mother Esther says Online Safety Act does not go far enough"

There's an old legal maxim about this sort of thing: Hard cases make bad law.

Re: Puzzled....Again!!

"Politicians of course will be exempt."

They'll backdoor their communications anyway. One of them will hand over all their messages to a journalist who's going to ghost write their autobiography for them and then publish elsewhere whatever else they find of interest.

Re: Puzzled....Again!!

Don't complain to Kevin, complain to your MP or whatever party. (Who will almost certainly, given that there's an election in the offing, reply with a platitude but otherwise ignore you.)

Re: Problem solved

"MI5 knew about the Manchester Arena bomber months before it happened, but didn't have the resources to follow it up."

And quite a few others IIRC.

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

Legal with a visa, illegal without.

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

And assorted North Africans, AKA Barbary Coast pirates.

Microsoft 'retires' Azure IoT Central in platform rethink

Taking a leaf out of Google's view. OTOH it's IoT...

IT body proposes that AI pros get leashed and licensed to uphold ethics

BCS favours registration. Wow.

Moving to Windows 11 is so easy! You just need to buy a PC that supports it!

Re: Ecco-destruction

Why stop at within?

Re: Work PC fine. Home PC? Waste my hardware!

It's not arbitrary at all. It's quite specifically intended that you should replace your hardware and hence buy a new Windows licence to provide themselves and their hardware buddies with revenue.

Re: cool beans!

Then there's Mark Pesc's story in his column yesterday about a friend whose Dunning-Krugerrands got raided overnight, apparently because the PC was left running.

Re: cool beans!

"Because you have something very wrong with your computer. Mine goes from powered off to Windows login screen in roughly 1 minute."

I just switched mine off and restarted. 26 seconds to login screen. A few seconds extra to KeePass prompting for its password with the full desktop displayed a second or so later, WiFi being established in the background. Admittedly no VPN to start. A minute would be about the time from switch-on to getting KeePass and email logged in.

8 × Intel® Core™ i5-1035G1 CPU @ 1.00GHz, 16Gb

Re: I'm no fan of some of MS's previous decisions

Home users don't have the help of your IT department.

Irritation isn't a desirable quality of something that's supposed to help you do your work.

Re: It is easy

"Show me a press release, sent out by the company's official channels, that makes this claim. Is there any official statement on the MS website that claims Windows 10 would be the final version ever?"

Where are the press releases or official statements contradicting the statement that one of their employees.made. Perhaps he was being over-enthusiastic. Maybe he hadn't got the message that marketing might find that concept embarrassing. Maybe it there was an intent to make it a subscription service but he hadn't been told not to blab about it. Whatever, MS seem to have beenhappy to let it stand uncontradicted when it was widely reported.

"It still is Windows 10. The 11 designation is just a marketing name."

And thus utterly cynical, especially the inflated H/W requirement.

Re: It is easy

"That was the message from Microsoft employee Jerry Nixon"

And not, as far as I can see, contradicted or withdrawn until marketing needed to increment the number.

Re: It is easy

Learning new things helps prevent things like dementia in old age and is vastly better and more interesting than wasting time having to re-learn old things because some misanthropic martetroids decide that everything has to be changed in their new version because otherwise they wouldn't have a new version to sell.

Re: damned with faint (or feint) praise

If Microsoft want to learn how to make a good start menu they should look at KDE. The menu choices can be ordered by the user into whatever sub-menus make best sense to them and their use case and there are three options for how to present them. Nobody needs to be unhappy.

"The office 2007 ribbon was a broken concept "

A good UI is, as far as possible, unobtrusive. That's not the ribbon.

AI won't take our jobs and it might even save the middle class

Re: Who gets to train the AI?

We know what it's trained on. Everything that can be scraped uncritically from the internet and the contents of every account on cloud services run but the usual suspects. Given that will already include its own output, and increasingly so as time goes on it's clearly going to develop by eating its own dog-shit.