Posts by Doctor Syntax

Florida Man and associates indicted for conspiracy to steal data, software

Re: I like Americans…

More tragic than funny...for the rest of us.

Re: The smell of desperation

"He makes the rather elequent point that the UK's House of Lords reforms meant people with business and other specialised skills & experience could get enobled and given a seat in the Lords."

I'd like to see an arrangement where the president, or whatever the title might be, of the chartered professional institutions* automatically became members. Also far fewer political retreads and definitely no Dorries.

* The Royal Society, the various medical Royal Colleges etc.

Re: The smell of desperation

Are there really no competent politicians under the age of 70 in the whole of the US or the UK?

FTFY

Re: Election Integrity

"The US, and many countries rely on elections for a slew of official positions, or decisions."

Whoever you vote for you always get a politician. Having politicians make political decisions is inevitable. Having them rather than competent people implement the decisions is madness.

Re: Election Integrity

"Best of all, extremists get side-lined where they belong and those who shout loudest don't get any more exposure than they deserve."

Great idea but N. Ireland has shown it not to work. When PR was introduced I hoped and expected to see the moderates such as Alliance hold the balance Instead the Unionist vote migrated from the more moderate parties to the DUP and the SDLP vote to Sinn Fein. The result was power sharing between the two extremes.

Tango?

Re: This is the most problematic indictment for him, by far

How do we know it's the same one if they post A/C?

Re: This is the most problematic indictment for him, by far

"A jury does not rule someone innocent. Only 'not guilty'."

Maybe you need to understand the concept of presumption of innocence. Under English, Welsh and N Irish law (not sure about Scotland with their "not proven") one is assumed to be innocent* until pronounced guilty. I tale it the US adheres to the same principle. There is, therefore, no need for a jury to rule someone innocent - in fact it would be meaningless. If they are not guilty they remain innocent.

* Successive governments have been working on this in regard to justifying surveillance over the last few years but it still just abut stands.

You're not seeing double – yet another UK copshop is confessing to a data leak

Re: Isn't it seeing triple now?

"or are not given the appropriate training to ensure FOIA requests don't leak personal data"

More likely this. A further possible cause is someone being handed the job just before the deadline and not having time to do the job.

Whatever the factors there seems to be a collective lack of quality in this area. Perhaps the forces could join together to set up a central, properly staffed office to which it would be mandatory to send responses to review and release.

Re: Isn't it seeing triple now?

East of England includes everywhere from Northumberland to Kent.

Oracle, SUSE and others caught up in RHEL drama hit back with OpenELA

I checked a dozen or so. RMS, FSF, Debian, KDE or none listed (gcc appears to have no man page at all!). No Red Hat. OTOH I suppose if you were running RHEL or Fedora maybe you would then see Red Hat listed instead.

Re: I'm against this, but wait...

"training people to use RHEL"

This is what the RHEL downstreams did and you see what thanks they got from it. As I understand it this effort is just the opposite: a statement that RHEL isn't needed as there'll be a non-RHEL enterprise standard with wide support with RHEL becoming an outlier.

the majority of code contributions are by the employees and contractors for the "big players"

There's at least one of their contributions many of us wish hadn't been made by them, not by anyone else.

Re: founded to create continuity for all Enterprise Linux downstream distributions

I'll add Informix to the bought by IBM list.

Re: founded to create continuity for all Enterprise Linux downstream distributions

Alternatively "Taking the Big Blue out of Red Hat Enterprise Linux"

Pack of GM Cruise robo-taxis freeze, snarl up Friday night traffic amid festival crowds

Loud chorus of "Told you so."

Indian armed forces gives Windows its marching orders, but only for desktop warriors

Re: First step

Do not confuse specific business applications with the functionality they provide.

Re: If you must drop Windows...

"no matter how much we whine to the suppliers... "

The Indian Government as a potential customer can probably whine a good deal louder than you.

Re: All I'm saying is...

In other words, if you want a secure system don't start with anything on the desktop. Is this what you're saying? Because when it comes to users they will behave the same whatever desktop OS they have.

Having an OS which has proven sufficiently secure to run most servers on the internet is a good start.

"when policy rather than practicality has the upper hand, the results can be excitingly mixed.

Let's stick to the practical for starters."

When governments are concerned data sovereignty is, or should be, a matter that's as much practical as political. If this is what's concerning the Indian government I can only say good for them and wish governments closer to home would wake up to the same. If you want to self-host your data you certainly don't want the front end to depend on a desktop which seems to be heading in the direction of on-line subscription based as fast as Microsoft can push it.

Re: And MayaOS is?

There's no mention of battlefield systems. According to the report I read it's to be installed initially on all internet facing systems in an administrative building which includes the Prime Minister's office and Ministry of External Affairs (i.e. the equivalent of 10 Downing St & FCO) as well as the MoD with the MoD to go live first, deadline tomorrow.

It's not difficult to cosmetically theme a Linux desktop in the style of any version of Windows you want so it's doesn't have to look very different. Very likely the main desktop applications will be word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. That functionality is well provided for on the Linux desktop. Apart from LibreOffice and OpenOffice there are at least two other cross-platform suites targetting the MS Office Ribbon work-alikes. Alternatively they may go for browser-based applications in which case they could be using OnlyOffice.

Chromebook itself isn't going to be a good solution for a country trying to achieve data sovereignty which I assume it the objective although they could well come up with something self-hosted.

It's a little surprising that they stared from Ubuntu rather then the Indian BOSS Linux used in Tamil Nadu.

The price of freedom turned out to be an afternoon of tech panic

I thought increasing the prices was standard practice for Bank Holiday promotions & the like.

Lock-in to legacy code is a thing. Being locked in by legacy code is another thing entirely

Re: So much fail...

It's a good trick if you can also defeat the alarms and CCTV which guard the premises with valuable assets. As Jake said before, name the jurisdiction where lockable fire exists are legal.

Re: Screaming Alarms Included

They probably still saved money even after paying Old Dog's invoice.

office suite called "Smart Office" (which makes the product difficult to google, as the name is too generic).

Probably SmartWare which is googlable.

For some inscrutable reason Informix bought it. For an even more inscrutable reason they didn't make the database element a front end for the Informix database.

Re: So much fail...

In the event of a fire the only difference between having a hard locked fire exit and one opened by crash bars is whether, in event of a fire, the staff die. The valuable asset gets destroyed anyway.

The original Elite? Fibre-glass monocoque IIRC.

Re: vehicle detectors

"induction loop vehicle detectors for left-turn lanes"

Or right turn lanes in the UK.

The loop for this one used to be situated where the cement mixer is now: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.6438468,-1.773666,3a,75y,328.58h,92.19t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1unTI35lU_eVQU5hVOqt_A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu i.e. past the stop line. It meant that when the lights changed for the straight ahead the leading vehicle for the right turn had to roll forward and then wait for the filter. If that vehicle was driven by a stranger it could take a few changed before they noticed the loop and realised this.

Re: Door Access Readers

With the rule that the emergency key had to be kept locked in a key safe in the security office?

Re: I've been locked out ...

And if it's locked it's not an exit. If it can be locked it's not an emergency exit.

Judge denies HP's plea to throw out all-in-one printer lockdown lawsuit

Re: To add to this...

Cut your losses and ditch it now.

Re: I ditched HP printers

Why they need it or why you still have them?

Re: Epson

"As for HP, I’ve been advising clients for years to avoid their printers"

Not even old, second hand ones?

Zoom's new London hub – where 'remote work' meets 'we need you back in the office'

It upsets JRM because he's never worked out how to use it.

Re: I must be out of touch from all the remote work... [*]

A four-legged table with one leg not quite the same length as the others. Also pretty nimble.

Re: Commute should be considered contracted hours...

"part of our contracted hours"

Or overtime at appropriate overtime rates.

Re: If you

But then you're in Milton Keynes.

Re: 15,000 sq ft central London site??

It seems daft that anyone does.

Re: Zoom video meetings ..

...and the passive smoking lung damage.

Re: Writings on the wall for these companies

"that could just be creative AI and video editing."

OTOH he's a beancounter.

There's this thing called email. It's asynchronous. If you're zoned in on something else you don't even context switch to check email until you're finished.

Enquirers don't get instant responses? Well. why do they think their demand for an instant answer outweighs your concentration on your job?

The reality is that the owners are the thousands millions of small investors who have this included in pension plans, etc. I include myself in that - should have seen the obvious a couple of years ago and switched out. But if you have any sort of pension, personal or company, look carefully and you might have to include yourself in that category.

We really need the education system to reach people about the financial facts of life as well as the biological.

Re: 15,000 sq ft central London site??

I think the likely explanation is that they're stuck with it. Probably on a long lease and the landlord knows what their prospects of re-letting are so wants a large sum for early termination.

Re: commercial landlords

"Zoom really ought to think about what they are in business for."

They probably can't renegotiate the lease.

Re: I think it is the perfect time to start a new company : Gloom

There are several. The problem is they're likely to be in the wrong places. I think there would be good reason to set them up where people live so that those whose circumstances aren't reasonable for working from home - or who just don't like working in isolation - could rent a desk to work from without having to commute. We should stop seeing long commutes as no longer sustainable.

Re: Tastefully decked out with demotivational posters from despair.com …..

I eventually found one such meeting very motivational. It motivated me right out of the last job I had before going freelance.

An outwardly austere salesdroid? Never seen one.

FTX crypto-clown Sam Bankman-Fried couldn't even do house arrest. Now he's in jail

Re: He really can't just shut the fuck up, can he ?

The prosecutors could drop the hint that they'd settle for indefinite detention in a secure hospital.

Electoral Commission had internet-facing server with unpatched vuln

Simple question

Are you siting on data which you would absolutely have to get back if it was leaked?

Well, you can't get it back so the only option is to absolutely not let it leak.