Posts by Doctor Syntax

Musk takes SEC 'Twitter sitter' consent decree appeal to US Supreme Court

Providing they're sure he'll pay them they'll keep submitting the cases. Why not? Money for old rope - that's the rope he tied himself up with to settle with the SEC in the first place. Perhaps the SEC should offer to set aside the agreement in return for whatever sanctions they'd have handed out instead.

What's the golden age of online services? Well, now doesn't suck

Re: Not an angry place .

"when Google was new and actually worked"

Even better: when Altavista existed.

HP TV ads claim its printers are 'made to be less hated'

Re: When good companies go bad

"came on its own trolley"

Hopefully one with a better sense of direction than our former PM.

Re: HPLIP Good, Windows App Bad.

well first, it's "my" printer, morons!

This is not HP's view. Next thing, you'll be telling us it's "your" computer and not Microsoft's.

Re: Missed the target

"No printer -- correction, no product -- should require any personal information to work."

In fact, if you're in the EU or, pro tem. the UK, GDPR says so.

Re: I'm going out on a limb

Whether that sounds good or bad depends on when one's expectations of Laserjets were formed. Mine are rather old.

Re: I'm going out on a limb

Old and new HP kit might as well be from different planets.

Re: H What?

Mick, be very, very careful making statements like that. It might be a Brother but there's still such a thing as tempting fate. Otherwise I'd tell you about my old-school HP laser printer, the one where the hp badge is better engineered than a modern inkjet.

BOFH: Just because we've had record revenues doesn't mean you get a Xmas bonus

Re: In the glorious past

Costs could be cut to raise profit levels by canning some of the beancounters.

Re: Wow!

It's OK, I think most commentards got it.

I should also point out that C can stand for Calcium oxide.

Re: Wow!

C-suite? That was the board.

The C-suite will probably be on the carpet.

Systemd 255 is here with improved UKI support

Re: GOTO hell systemd

Not actually a direct removal but-

sudo apt install init-system-helpers sysv-rc sysvinit sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils

Oh what a tangled web...

I suppose the BSOD is required to real with the binary logs that require the system to be able to boot to read the logs that tell you why the system hasn't booted.

Time for a Geeko remix: openSUSE is looking for a new logo

A hat coloured Geeko green.

Bank's datacenter died after travelling back in time to 1970

Re: battery powered network time clock?

"Why have a battery powered network time clock when everything that needs that time is dependent on electricity to run?"

People buy what's available for the given budget.

Re: Priorities

"some high-up DEMANDS that I attend a two-hour conference call to discuss why the fault has not been cleared."

The temptation to take it seriously might be irresistible.

Re: Priorities

"Do you know who I am ?"

"No, sorry, can't help you there."

The cleaner will just unplug it from the UPS for their vacuum cleaner.

Re: Priorities

Just don't answer the phone. You can explain this later by saying you were too busy fixing the problem. Once the problem is fixed it's difficult to argue against that. A variation would be that you were too short-handed to spare anyone to answer the phone, something that will need to be addressed in the post-incident review. Alternatively just unplug the phone and explain that the problem had taken the phones out as well.

Re: Priorities

"an estimate to resolution"

The answer to that is the same as that to "What's wrong?": "If I knew that it wouldn't be broken."

Messed up metadata could be to blame for Microsoft's Windows printer woes

"We asked Microsoft's Copilot "

At least it didn't send you a poop emoji.

Post-Brexit tariffs on EU-UK electric vehicle imports staved off till 2027

Let me take that like of argument to completion.

And magically prevented any other factors from making any changes whatsoever to anyone's economy. As a consequence any problems found in any economy must be solely and entirely attributed to Covid.

Yup. Completely believable.

Re: So, Brexit means Brexit, except when it doesn't

"someone who can put together a proper, costed, budget to cut tax, cut spending, shrink government and promote growth."

When you're in a hole, stop digging.

Re: Charge

"They are typically bought by more affluent people who want to virtue signal "

Evidence?

Re: So, Brexit means Brexit, except when it doesn't

All cost increases and any other problems relating to Brexit will be excused as consequences of Covid and blamed on the Chinese. As to getting re-elected, I think only the Dunning-Kruger wing of the party believes that's remotely possible.

Openreach hits halfway mark in quest to hook up 25M premises with fiber broadband

I doubt redundancies will stop with Janssen's departure. It's been SOP at DT for decades. It's a wonder there's anybody left there at all by now.

GitLab admits IT ineptitude in finance reporting is ongoing

"failures to design and maintain the correct internal IT systems."

You know what they say about cobblers' children?

Red Hat greases migration to RHEL for CentOS 7 holdouts

Re: "So what are all those CentOS 7 users to do when end of life arrives?"

" I have looked into possibly using Ubuntu LTS on the desktop/laptops, but when you dig deep, there is always something missing that you want to use, but lack the software skillz to build yourself."

Devuan.

I think if I'd seen my employer being strangled by its CFO I'd have been poising up my CV.

Red Hat listed several Frequently Asked Questions around the issue, which, strangely, did not include the obvious "Why did you do this?"

They don't even mention jumping ship entirely. I wonder why that might be.

Veteran editors Notepad++ and Geany hit milestone versions

"Yo-- in Philly we say "scarfs RAM", and scoff at guys who talk different."

Regular English supports multiple meanings for words and doesn't resort to such tactics. That leaves me wondering how many words you have to disambiguate "set".

Mine's the one with both volumes of the SHorte Oxfrod Dictionary in the pockets.

Re: Why can't it be both?

I think I'd be inclined to make the assumption that a rule forbidding log rotation was an obvious typing error in one mandating it and carry on from there.

"good, modern, graphical text editors"

Good - essential

Graphical - depends on environment

Modern - mey

Re: EMACS or death

"*No* possible editing power or functionality is possibly worth making me learn a new UI in the 3rd decade of the 21st century."

Well said.

Hence vi. That was what was the available editor when I started using Unix.* IME one of the best things about it are ex mode commands for making bulk changes. The notation has passed into common use here with expressions such as s/emacs/vi/g

I've just taken a quick look at your preferred tilde and rebounded promptly: grey on medium blue. These old eyes prefer the contrast of black on white with white on black as an acceptable alternative. I do take your point about CUA. It's been built into many GUI interfaces, at least to some degree, for a long time except those which seem insistent into drifting off into realms unknown.

* Not strictly true, the first Unix box was supplied without a few things including vi & C shell but had the Rand editor which I've never seen since. First day in a new job where it was vi rather than Rand was a slight panic,managed by vague memories of ex commands and an after-work dash to Dillons. The hastily bought book on vi is still in my bookshelves.

Re: EMACS or death

As an nvi users, yes. Very briefly.

Iran launches 'biological capsule' to low Earth orbit

Maybe they should send up a few of their spiritual leaders first, just to check things out and ensure they can face Mecca whilst in orbit.

Mere minority of orgs put GenAI in production after year of hype

First rule of reading somebody's statistics: ask what the sample is & what it represents.

What are these organisations? Are they businesses? University CS departments? Small businesses?

As many as 10% of businesses of all sizes using AI? I wonder what "More or Less" would make of that.

AI development

What are we shipping now?

Label it AI

Issue press release

Job done.

EU running in circles trying to get AI Act out the door

Re: First to legislate?!

"I care that the laws you make a good."

Agreed.

"You can be the tenth to have made the law, if yours is the best, it's the one everyone should use. the ship will already have sailed"

Re: The EU is not the centre of the universe.

And what is that killer app going to kill?

'Wobbly spacetime' is latest stab at unifying physics

But what was George Kistiakowsky's monthly pay?

Re: Suspected as much . . .

<i.We are probably wrong about “reality is special and totally not mathematics”….</i>

As opposed to "mathematics is special and totally not reality"?

But don't Gödel's incompleteness theorems say maths is in trouble anyway?

Re: String theory has taught us….

I read elsewhere that the 2nd paper was suggesting that fluctuations in successive weighing of the standard 1kg mass might be the basis of a test. I'm not sure what you'd weigh it against that wouldn't be subject to the same fluctuations.

Re: Oppenheim proposes to overcome the barrier with the idea of "wobbly spacetime"

"This is ample proof that we live in a giant cosmic jelly."

What flavour? And are you going to trifle with it?

Re: Understanding

It sounds as if he's saying it's monotonic but not rectilinear. Even a non-mathematician like me can grok that. Doing it 4 dimensions - maybe a bit trickier.

And if you want a physical representation, think of an old surveyor's tape (it's probably an old surveyor who owns it). It's a bit stretched in places - the tape, not the surveyor (well, maybe the surveyor as well). As you trace along the tape the numbers get bigger all the time (monotonic) but sometimes the next number is further away and sometimes it's closer (not rectilinear).

Now you can roll it up but keep it safe - I may need it later to explain the difference between accuracy and precision.

NASA engineers got their parachute wires crossed for OSIRIS-REx mission

This may be a bit self-centred but I'm more worried about how the Apophis encounter affects the Earth, assuming I'm still in residence.

Half a century ago, NASA's Pioneer 10 visited Jupiter, then just kept going

"While the Voyager probes impressed with the science collected and their astonishing longevity, it is important to remember the trailblazer that went before."

Well said.

And now I feel older than ever.

Digital memories are disappearing and not even AI or Google can help

Re: Information evaporation

DUckduckgo

Re: Information evaporation

It's not necessarily as easy as you might think. I have the Yorkshire part of Domesday as image, as an old translation from the Journal of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society and a massive Penguin paperback translation of the whole thing. The translations don't necessarily agree with each other while reading the original as image isn't easy and even then you're stuck with medieval administrative Latin. Then there's a paper of Stenton's from the 1920s where he argued that's what's written down might have been a misreading of the originsl notes...

17% of Spotify employees face the music in latest cost-cutting shuffle

Re: I still buy independent artist CDs

And then there's radio. Some of what's worth listening to even survives on the Beeb.