Posts by Doctor Syntax

Microsoft open-sources its emojis as part of new design philosophy

Re: The same applies to country flags

They might avoid calling it country.

Ask TfL about New Johnston.

That's a gobbet of open source I can do without.

Court voids 34,000 unfair Fuji Xerox contracts

34,000 might be enough for an ambulance chaser to start work.

Re: Is there a single printer vendor...

"a Peterbilt of printing"

I think that needs explaining for those of us on this side of the pond although I suppose the sentiment can be grasped.

For the wider point I haven't seen any such problems with my Brother printer. It accepts 3rd party cartridges without complaint.

"Customers won't be compensated"

That seems unreasonable. Does the decision lay the basis for allowing them to sue?

BOFH: Who us? Sysadmins? Spend time with other departments?

Re: "You need to listen to your users more"

Almost!

Re: No fenestration?

I didn't see that one coming. "Internal relationship manager" had the ring of underlying cause on a death certificate.

'I wonder what this cable does': How to tell thicknet from a thickhead

Maybe the effort of lugging the luggable* had drained all the blood from his brain.

*Those who experienced the era of the luggables aren't going to complain about even the heaviest laptop.

General Motors charges mandatory $1,500 fee for three years of optional car features

Re: Given that the US didn't make 100K cars last week due to a lack of chips

They still haven't worked out that if they didn't put so much chip-based crap into them they could have sold 100k more cars.

Re: Just another manufacturer to ignore for the duration.

I'm about 10 years younger. I think I've already bought my last car. I don't need to do much mileage these days and the newer stuff is loaded up with crap I don't want let alone don't want to pay for.

Re: We know what’s best

Followed by non-dealer remobilisations.

Re: Other car manufacturers are available.

"Because chances are everybody will do this at some point, the whole point being to make more profit without spending more money."

It depends. All it takes is one manufacturer to realise that they can corner the market by not doing this.

Scientists unveil a physics-defying curved space robot

If you're that close to a black hole moving without anything to push against would be the least of your worries.

Google gets the green light to flood US Gmail inboxes with political spam

If you move all the non-spam email to another provider you can just ignore all the email sent to the Google account. Just leave it in the inbox to fester. That's what I do with a Google address that exists for other reasons then to use for actual email.

DoE digs up molten salt nuclear reactor tech, taps Los Alamos to lead the way back

Re: Timing

I think reality is just starting to dawn on TPTB. Years later that it should have done, of course.

Re: REstart?

The molten salt is the coolant and the core. Drain it into a tank and it's still a nuclear reactor.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

I can't help feeling that if SCO hadn't imploded Microsoft might never have got a hold of the small business server market. A small SCO box - vastly underpowered compared to a small server of today - ran many businesses. I supported a few of them. Usually they had an industry-specific multi-user application. I've encountered a business deploying a general purpose sales order/stock control system (not exactly rocket science) in two branches; property management and rental; two print-shop management and accounting systems, one of them with three in different branches and general purpose accounting packages. Generally they were powered by Informix although I've also met Ingres.

Re: Feh

"so suddenly we have to deal with formatting issues between MS and Libre"

Maybe things have changed but my experience back in the day was that there were formatting differences between MS & MS.

Having worked through a few books written with Office but using LibreOffice I think a lot of issues are to do with dire user practices, especially using tabs and spaces for layout where a table or even enabling flow round an image would be better. And the allegedly cropped images which were just masked...

"I suspect a lot of businesses ... would feel that having applications work as expected is a fairly high priority."

Right up to the time they get hit with ransomware or a massive breach. Then they realise why they made the wrong trade-off between convenience and security.

Re: Deliberate sabotage but necessary

"Sometimes the only way to educate such people is to give them exactly what they ask for."

That is always IT's ultimate revenge. Don't use it too often.

"You've gone from possibly a pure windows estate, to managing four operating systems."

Life gets awfully complicated when you throw Windows into the mix.

"It would have been interestign to see how Munich would have managed during the pandemic, if they'd carried on."

Probably used Zoom for conferencing.

Very likely NextCloud for file sharing. Maybe OpenKolab. Maybe just mount a remote drive; networked drives go back an awully long way in Linux history, well before Microsoft got into the act.

It's amazing what you can do when local politics doesn't get in the way.

"If only some large body had thought of this! And tried it! Oh wait, Munich did, and gave up."

Yes, but even Microsoft can't afford relocate a big local office into every city that decides to quit using their software. I suppose, of course, when they've retrieved the situation in one city that office is now redundant and they can relocate it if they want to play whack-a-mole.

Re: Genuine Question

Of the recent RHEL clones AlmaLinux has a link on their front page to TuxCare who will provide commercial support. Rocky Linux has a link to CIQ but their site seems to have been designed by a marketing so concerned to make a good impression that they don't actually say what they do: support? hosting? In any case I'm quite sure TuxCare would be equally happy to support it - and Debian.

Canonical offer enterprise support for Ubuntu as does Suse for Suse.

Lack of enterprise support is just another of those scare stories that doesn't stand up to close examination.

Re: LibreOffice is not as good as MS Office

"And if management want you to send them the data which they can easily handle, without going through hoops to convert or munge it, what then?"

Save -> Excel2007-365(.xlxs)

Job done.

Re: preaching the gospel

"But Windows supports more programs that are significant to more people."

There's a circular argument here. People decide that MS Office is significant to them. If they were to deide, as GitLab presumably does, that something else such as LibreOffice is significant to them then the compulsion to use Windows goes away. But people see Office as significant to them because they've been told that that's what Windows provides.

Now as MS wants to move more users to subscription and inflation tightens budgets does a monthly spend for Office 365 seem a good idea any more? And what happens if the next Windows is also the subscription model that MS seem to want?

Re: "Red Hat and others have been doing okay for decades"

"If they were really doing OK, they would have bought IBM."

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

Tech industry stuck over patent problems with AI algorithms

Re: Patents Require People

"The patent has to be invented by a natural person"

The invention might involve a large team working on prototypes, testing and discarding. Wasn't that Edison's method with the light bulb? Do all those get a share in the patent or just the boss man?

It devolves into who was the inventor not how they did it, whether by pure brain power or by wielding some tool, even if that tool is a research team or a computer program of some sort.

Re: "Lawyers at Google are unsure if they can patent chip floorplans created by machines"

In fact, if the output of an algorithm isn't copyrightable by the operator of that algorithm then no binaries are copyrightable. I don't think anyone can claim to be compiling software by hand.

Boffins rate npm and PyPI package security and it's not good

Re: Not Impressed.

Apart from anything else it disregards the possibilities of cybersquatting such as was reported here recently. If someone pushes a deliberately malicious piece of software onto a repository as a new project then they'll happily tick all the boxes claiming to follow best practices. Don't expect someone being dishonest in intent to be honest in method.

The first check needed is "Are there gatekeepers?" It seems not.

Facebook hands over chats to cops in abortion case

Maybe this will give other FB users cause to think about just what it is that they're using.

Microsoft asks staff to think twice before submitting expenses

Re: M$ looks to be pinching pennys

"The good times may be over in a Biden economy."

Remember that changes in the economy usually lag behind the government actions that caused them.

Re: "think twice before submitting expenses" - consequences

Don't get mad, get even. Invite them but offer them far less advantageous terms than anyone else.

Google tells Apple to 'fix text messaging' in bid to promote RCS protocol

Re: Well, Apple sure needs to do *something*

And the "most mobile vendors" are, in fact just Google when it comes to OS. If Google want to unify mobile messaging why don't they adopt whatever it is Apple use?

Can we have a "just stirring" icon?

Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing

"I have no doubt that one day, self driving cars will be better at driving than humans ever were."

It might vary depending on where you live but if you take the number of vehicles on UK roads, reasonable estimates for annual mileages and the statistics for fatal accidents the bar for self-driving cars is fairly high and higher still when you realise that it should match or beat the experienced driver and the accident statistics are skewed by inexperienced drivers.

Re: Road Awareness and Secondary Sensors

"The underlying issue is situational awareness"

Or even just plain awareness.

Re: Comparison

"I hope the California DMV slaps them down hard, he needs to be taught a lesson about false advertising."

Not just the California DMV. Isn't this stuff that could affect the share price? In that case the SEC should be interested, particularly given that he has form on this.

Re: Comparison

"The important difference being that it wasn't really the autopilot that landed you, autopilots were on airplanes for literally decades before the automated landing systems were flight rated"

Which really proves the point. If people over-estimate what autopilot on planes do and confuse it with automated landing systems it's very likely that they'll over-estimate what it does in cars.

Will the Tesla cars run down Tesla robots? And which will come off best?

Re: Cats and Dogs?

This is what's apt to go wrong with specifications. Specify exactly what the system is supposed to do and it might do that and nothing else.

Never mind the flock of sheep, can it cope with just one sheep that looks as if it's about to head into the road? And how does it recognise "looks as if it's about to head into the road"?

Re: You're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel and be able to take over at any time.

"actively malicious"

Not really. Just blame shedding.

Micron pledges $40b for US fabs as financial headwinds mount

Here we're told falling demand is causing problems. A couple of stories back we're told that car makers are cutting production because of shortages. Two apparently contradictory stories. Just what is happening in the semiconductor industry? Perhaps el Reg could give us an overview story.

Digital Ocean customers back away from blockchains

Cheers, Charlie. I wondered where it had got to.

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

"At least drones have some kind of viable, believable and remotely feasible use cases. NFTs are a gigantic steaming pile of festering bullshit designed to part even more fools from their money."

Parting fools from their money is the feasible use case for NFTs.

Report slams UK plan to become 'science superpower' by 2030

Re: thank you

"What about just sticking to what was agreed, cannot be that difficult."

I'm not sure which agreement you mean.

The Good Friday Agreement was for no hard border in the island of Ireland which worked because both N & S were in the EU.

The withdrawal agreement left NI effectively in the EU whilst Britain left.

The agreement by which the Irish Republic became independent of Britain whilst the six northern counties remained in UK (full name The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).

Any two are mutually consistent, the three are not. This simple piece of logic may have not have given rise to a problem in Brexiteer's heads but in reality it's been a problem since day one. Brexit done? Only if you shut your eyes to reality.

Re: thank you

"What sort of referendum in N Ireland could solve the problem of a border with "The South" ?"

Unification of course

And why should the north vote for that just to let Brexiteers off the hook.

Re: thank you

Then it only leaves southern England to melt / sink into the waves / fall victim to a plague of zombie estate agents (delete as appropriate) and "Global Yorkshire" will be free.

This is an attractive idea but I'm not sure that the post-glacial rebound* is even still continuing and it would never have been enough for the sink beneath the waves option.

* The weight of the Ice Age ice on Scotland, N England & N Ireland caused them to sink somewhat and sea levels fell due to the amount of water tied up in the ice cap When the ice melted sea levels rose quite quickly. The deformation recovered much more slowly but did recover. It gave time for Late glacial beaches to be formed which were then hoisted tens of feet higher giving rise to the phenomenon of raised beaches, readily visible around the coasts of N Ireland and Scotland if you know what you're looking for. But the S of England wasn't covered by ice so as the north was pressed down the south bulged up a bit and then when the rebound took place it sank slightly.

Re: thank you

It may have escaped your notice but the Irish Republic is part of the EU. They joined when we did but they didn't leave.

Why on Earth would the EU want to fence of part of itself? They didn't instigate this, the Brexiteers did and obviously considered that fencing off part of the UK as their logical solution was an acceptable price to pay.

Well, Cameron's background was in PR but I always assumed he was chosen as the most Blairalike candidate they can find so it's a tendency of governments of both hues going back into the last century.