Posts by Doctor Syntax

Metaverses are flopping – hard – says Gartner

"Gartner also worries that virtual experiences are silos, meaning marketers will be wary that running them won't make meaningful contributions to the data they collect about customers and prospects."

So it's not all bad.

Brookes, he of TMMM, also published a book "The design of design". Part of this was recounted his university research group's work on this years ago. They discovered something very similar - its appeal to users was limited. IIRC users were much less keen on being able to walk round inside a VR model of whatever they were designing compared to having an image of it in front of them that could be rotated or walked through, something for which an ordinary screen would suffice.

Think of our cafes and dry cleaners, says Ohio as budget slashes WFH for govt workers

"Having those folks back in the office will be very important for our restaurants, our coffee shops, our dry cleaners."

What happened to that great American entrepreneurship? Their customers might not be coming to them any more so why not go to their customers? Open chains of suburban dry cleaners. Start mobile catering.

And repurpose those redundant office buildings as residential. The huge city centre drawing in commuters from more than a thousand square miles of its surroundings isn't sustainable for the future. That needs to be realised and accepted. A city offering a balance of workplaces and nearby accommodation who want to work in the office is OK but that's going to support very large workforces in the office.

Microsoft postpones death date for personally licensed Teams Rooms hardware

Re: What devices are these?

And with what licences? Is this a bait and switch move or a shifting of goal posts?

Re: Is there anyone out there who actually thinks Teams is as great as MS does?

"and every bloody time when a meeting is over it asks me about the audio quality"

Ah, yes. The post-service survey.

I think there's a gap in the market here. A site the customer can use to send a survey to the vendor asking irrelevant questions about the customer's completion of the post-service survey.

First pushback against EU's Digital Services Act and it's not Google

Re: Is it a VLOP??

Amend their definition of "active" to take it below 45 million. Job done.

Way out in deep space, astronomers spot precursor of carbon based life

Life is an extremely unlikely mechanism for perpetuating improbable configurations of matter.

We know that the necessary but unlikely chain of events happened once. It's observer bias that makes it appear inevitable let alone repeatable.

Google asks websites to kindly not break its shiny new targeted-advertising API

Re: "Topics are kept for only three weeks and old topics are deleted"

"f I could demote that interest in Topics, this may actually be useful."

It would not only be useful to you, it would also be useful to washing machine sellers because they wouldn't then waste money by spending it with the advertising to place irrelevant adverts. So it won't happen.

NASA and miners face off over lithium deposits at satellite calibration site

If this is unique then it must be counted an incredible stroke of luck that it exists at all. What would NASA have done if it had never existed?

Attorney sues Microsoft for $1.75M, claiming his email has been useless since May

Re: Second email account

So many places treat an email address as an ID. This is stupid on many levels, this being one of them. It's a destination for communications. It shouldn't be anything else. It might be an issue that's tangled up with this one but it's a distinct problem in its own right. In such circumstances if the ID is important then the email address should be one over which you have better control, ideally your own domain with a reliable MSP. Worst case you can change MSP.

I didn't realise setting up a second email account was so difficult in New Jersey.

Vodafone offers '5G Ultra' to users of very specific phones in very specific locations

"Yeah that was just PR hype"

Sometimes people should be held to their hype.

Re: Easy PR?

ISTR that when 5G (or was it 4 or 6 or whatever?) being mooted it was said that because the range was so small the base stations could be like WiFi and instead of erecting the sort of masts they're now putting up they would be many unnoticeably small boxes similar to WiFi base stations on lamp-posts etc.

This morning I went to give a wheel-chair bound friend a lift. Being built on a steep hillside the bottom of her drive is well below road level. While waiting for her to manoeuvre out of the house I happened to look up & realised just how over-towering the newly installed 5G mast is. It's just over the garden wall but the garden wall is a retaining wall against the road so the effective height is getting on for 30m.

They are monstrously intrusive constructions. Their designers should have been sent back to their drawing boards CAD screens and told to start again. Forget brain frying & spreading Covid nonsense - aesthetics are a completely adequate reason to object.

After decades contributing to science, John Goodenough powers down

If the Nobels included computer science he'd have been a double laureate; core memory would have deserved one.

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

Re: Multiple things lead to the conclusion

"In my very first full time job, the offices were repurposed chicken sheds (don't ask me how they ever got the smell out - it was done before they were sold to my boss.)"

My late cousin's garden shed came from a chicken farm. It still bears a residue, not of the chickens, but of shrapnel. A factory about a mile away was the presumed target for an air raid - reputedly at one time it was the only one still standing machining certain parts for Spitfires. The factory was missed but the chicken farm got a direct hit.

Open source licenses need to leave the 1980s and evolve to deal with AI

Some of the above discussion just prompted this thought. One of the tenets of software freedom, the principle that underlies FOSS, is the freedom to study the code. Does this - or was it intended to - include the freedom to have your LLM study the code?

Re: Let us hope that we can ignore licensing

"at least in the US"

Other places exist.

Re: Unsettle law

Train it on the licences the code comes from and let it write its own. A combination of Microsoft & BSD 2-clause would be interesting. (Actually early versions of Windows did include a BSD licence for the BSD network stack.)

Maybe the burden should be shifted to require the output of CoPilot & the rest to prove it doesn't contain or depend on the OS inputs.

Licences recognised as Open Source licences don't have such exclusion clauses. Adding one to an existing OS licence would produce a non-OS licence as a result.

If AI drives humans to extinction, it'll be our fault

1. What AI? Currently we have pastiche generators.

1.1 As soon as the novelty wears off the cracks will get noticed.

2. Next fad will be coming along soon - whatever it might be.

Old & cynical? Moi?

Red Hat strikes a crushing blow against RHEL downstreams

Re: “ who can't legally share it.”

"For those who are clinging on to the idea that Linux is somehow going to successfully avoid being absorbed (for all practical purposes) by big business, this is just another reminder of how things are slowly sliding away from them."

See the posts by Ian Mason & thames above.

What could happen is that the Linux market slips away from RHEL.

Any business using RHEL in production & several CentOS/Rocky/Alma instances elsewhere is going to be reviewing its situation next week: is it cheaper to buy all the extra RHEL licenses they need once those work-alikes are unavailable or to move. As part of that they'll be talking to any application vendor who currently only supports RHEL and who consequently will also be reviewing their situation.

Also, expect Suse and Canonical to start pitching to application vendors PDQ.

Re: recipients of their binaries

"They'd have to sue you, and that's different. Defending yourself is not the same as bringing suit against a big, deep pocketed company."

To which the response might be cease and desist letters from various copyright owners for being in breach of the licence for the software they're distributing.

Re: GPL violation

"there's loads of stuff that it's not GPL v3, most notably the kernel."

The kernel is still GP - GPL2. Updating it to 3 would have involved tracing and contacting all the existing contributors or their heirs and getting agreement of all of them.

Re: No good people, not good!

"I have never liked the Debian packing scheme, or its updater"

Why on Earth not? It Just Works.

Re: What about any non-GPL components?

It applies to any code derived from GPLed code. It doesn't apply to code with other licences. There will be nothing to stop Red Hat adding free-standing components which do not derive from GPLed code in future. They have now unmoored themselves from the rest of the Linux world and would start to drift away from it if they added such components. How badly that affects their attractiveness to the rest of the Linux economy remains to be seen.

Re: What about any non-GPL components?

Some parts of the distro may be based on BSD or other licences. RH could make their own modifications of these. However the kernel is GPL and so are the GNU-based utilities around it and they make up the core of any distro.

It may well be that some of those customers were running it on CentOS and its successors rather then RHEL. They now have the choice of paying more the RHEL, looking around to see if there are other options or talking to their suppliers about ports to other distros.

There will also be those running production on RHEL but test, training, development, backup or whatever on CentOS and successors. They also will probably want to move those extra systems away from the RH world.

Between that and the existence of users on the other distros as a potential market must surely be prompting vendors of what are currently RHEL-only applications to review their own positions.

Re: GPL violation

"No ownership means RH don't need to offer you the source code either."

No they don't - not unless they also provide you with the binaries and providing binaries happens to be their main business.

When they do that they are obliged to provide the source of those binaries to any recipient who asks for it. They are obliged to provide it by the licence which is carries. They are obliged to provide it under the same licence. That licence specifies that with limited exceptions any additional restrictive conditions may be removed by the recipient.

This applies to any code derived from code originally distributed under the GPL. Changes to the code do not change the licence but they do make the binaries a derived work and it is the changed code with RH modifications which the customers receive .

"Welcome to the real world"

I'm sure the vendors will want new customers. But if that part of the real world that isn't dependent on these applications moves away from RH or becomes unwilling to move to it the supply of potential new customers will dry up unless they elect to port to other platforms. And what does such a port entail? Possibly no more than a recompile and test. Does RHEL really include show-stopping differences?

And never give a customer cause to review the market. Some of those customers were likely running on CentOS previously, now on Rocky or Alma rather than RHEL. They will now be reviewing their own situations which might in turn lead them to review the application software market as well.

The same rules apply to any other GPL2 or 3 code that makes up a distro. They could make private changes to any BSD licenced components; I'm not sure how much of that exists in RH. And, of course, they can't take any GPLed code and convert it to BSD.

Birds of a feather...

RH are distributing binaries derived from GPLed code. Their use of the code is subject to the conditions of GPL which include permission form the original authors of that code, not some intermediary such as RH, to remove such restrictive conditions. Some of that code will have originated with RH themselves but before these conditions were imposed. It seems likely that this new tack will make it hard for them to get more code into the kernel or other GPLed projects.

Re: GPL violation

Under the GPL, Red Hat doesn't have to give you the sources unless you get their binaries.

True

You don't get the Red Hat binaries unless you agree to their terms, which includes not giving out sources.

If you receive the binary GPL specifically gives you right to receive the source of the binary as it exists, which would include any mods made by whoever supplied the binary, not just the source as received prior to those mods being made.

If you have the source GPL also gives you rights from the original authors who placed the code under GPL to redistribute the code. It also specifically gives you the right to remove all restrictive clauses which may have been added with some limited exceptions and I can't, at least at first sight, see how these new restrictions fall within those exceptions.

Those terms *override* the GPL.

The code that RH started with was already covered by the GPL which invalidates such added terms. It allows RH to make a charge. It doesn't allow them to impose NDA terms. It does allow the recipients to remove such NDA terms.

The grey area here is that some of the code which is included would have been contributed by RH before they came up with this idea. I don't see how they could use that to try to impose terms retrospectively having already contributed under GPL. It may well impinge on projects to willingness to accept code from RH contributors in the future. At its worst it could require Linux distros taking something analogous to the de-AT&Ting of BSD sources but I can't see that being likely.

Oracle has a distro based on RHEL but I suppose the two have a financial understanding which covers this and, presumably this term will be imposed on Oracle's Linux customers. However RH have been kernel contributors. As I pointed out in another comment GPL ensures that those receiving GPLed source code get their permissions from upstream. What happens when RH themselves are the upstream for a particular snatch of source?

I wonder what effect this will have on projects receiving contributions from RH or even individual contributions RH employees.

From the GPL ( https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html ):

"If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term."

"Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License."

AFAICS that means that the only code on which RH can impose these new conditions is code entirely created by RH or a 3rd party which does not derive from GPL code. All other code receives GPL terms from upstream.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

Re: Unique keys

VIN in the UK these days.

You brought back memories of restoring ground out numbers. For some reason it was always Fords, stamped at the top of the near-side suspension strut. Mines' the white lab-coat with the big ferric chloride stain.

Re: Unique keys

"but admittedly practical in everyday life."

Until it gets taken in a data heist. Do they have provision for changes?

Re: Unique keys

And have at least 3 characters 1 charaacter

FTFY

Re: Unique keys

Ed It whould have been better.

Re: Unique keys

Or the former secretary general of the United Nations, U Thant

Re: Unique keys

I have a design rule: Any assumption you make about what a system will have to do will become a limitation of that system.

Names are an outstanding example of that.

Re: Unique keys

"Not everyone in the world has an 'English' name, or naming conventions."

And possible naming conventions also include single letter names so imposing rules to try to enforce full names and eliminate the use of initials will fall foul of that.

BOFH: Cough up half a grand and we'll protect you from AI

Re: Its a cunning wheeze

More like the opening salvo from the BOFH. Which is only a diversion to let the PFY get close in with the grenades.

Re: Hmmm ...

"that means he probably will want you to get fired"

That doesn't sound like a survivable state of mind.

Being ordained so as to carry out last rites would be an even better certificate.

ASML caught in Dutch oven with China export restrictions

Re: An Error?

Whatever the direct effect on ASML it seems very likely that the effect on the Chinese will be to push them into developing their own industry.

The Law of Unforeseen Circumstances is nothing like as strong as the Law of Foreseeable Circumstances.

Mega-data platform worth half a billion will suck in info from family doctors

No doubt Lord Markham is well qualified to give us that assurance. I'm sure they teach IT security as part of an LSE economics degree.

38 percent of tech job interviews offered exclusively to men: report

"what they are willing to pay"

All too often the biggest limiting factor of all.