Posts by Doctor Syntax 40471 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"Why not just have the sausage?"
You can have your sausage but it will cost you a few hundred for a new plate from which to eat it. Sausage 11 is incompatible with your sausage 10 plate and sausage 10 is widely advertised as becoming toxic after October. Alternatively you can have this which won't taste too different from the sausage you're used to, is just as good or, in the view of many, better, and you can eat it from any old plate you choose.
Does that answer your question?
It certainly isn't new. My did resisted promotion to foreman and that was a long time ago. It's a completely unhinged notion that just because somebody's good at one thing they must be good at another. If you don't see the (lack of ) logic in promoting a bean counter to chemist why don't you see the same in promoting a chemist to manager?
"it said a lot about the state of our team"
It might have said they were all techies like you.
Companies could save themselves a good deal of cost by getting rid of the managers who depend on a sea of occupied chairs. Just retain those who can manage remote working. It would save more if they could get rid of the big offices but in a lot of cases they're tied to them by contract or maybe eve own them and can't offload them.
"it might educate human drivers to keep their distance from the car in front."
The phantom braking I've experience is either triggered by cars in the opposite lane coming towards me on a bend or by cars driving across the front as I'm trickling up to a stop line on a roundabout or whatever. I've not experienced the braking in a situation where it was correct.
"except with hindsight you can usually work out why"
The significant characteristic of hindsight is that it comes too late.
So, yes, I can see why my car does phantom breaking by detecting oncoming traffic in the other lane on a bend. It wouldn't help in the least to know that if I were shunted by a following vehicle whose drive, quite reasonably, didn't expect that.
The really frightening one, fortunately without actual braking, was the flashing collision detection lights on a curved section of motorway. As far as I could see the only thing responsible must have been detecting the supports for the centre barrier. It also, BTW flashes them under braking approaching a T junction if it takes a dislike to a wall or hedge across the road.
What's needed isn't hindsight by the driver, it's foresight by the designers because AFAICS this stuff isn't really ready for use on the roads.
"RedHat (retail) and Fedora have served me pretty well for twenty five years!!"
Before Linux various flavours of Unix served me very well since the early '80s. What appealed was the simplicity. If something had to be set up to be run by init it could be tested and developed just using the shell. I distrust something that pretends to be simple by being complex and opaque.
I had enough problems with Upstart, an earlier effort along the same lines when trying to diagnose a problem connecting a TV to a MythTV box. I turned out that the TV was lying about its screen resolution but there seemed to be no break-in points to add debugging.
If everything works for you, fine. If it doesn't and here's nothing to let you debug it you're stuffed. A binary choice between works out of the box and doesn't isn't acceptable.
Once upon a time people alked into shops, bought whatever it was they came for, paid money, walked out and that was the end of the matter. If they returned often enough they might become a regular customer and, if the shop was small enough some sort of friendship might develop but always predicated on the fact that they bought stuff, paid money and the deal was completed.
Why shouldn't that happen today, whether it be a charging network or anything else?
"Practically, of course, that will never happen. We need them and their infrastructure"
It won't happen until our need for our own infrastructure exceeds our need for theirs. That should happen as soon as TPTB sit down and think about the risks. The reality is that it won't happen until something, probably an accumulation of things happens that's too big to be ignored. There's no telling when that might happen. If the White House Whimsy has a whim today then it could be today.
SWMBO's laptop is well past being due for replacement so I decided to investigate this possibility. There are a number of howtos for installing Linux on them so it seems to have accomplished already. However, like me, she needs 17" or bigger display and there don't seem to be any so that was the end of that. They also seem a bit on the expensive side for Yorkshire sensitivities.
Arm will have to stay in the cupboard where it's running the Nextcloud server.
investment in the system was limited to 'keeping the lights on' .... The PND transformation is being delivered to address the technological debt in PND which is causing a failing service,
"Keeping the lights on" should include fixing issues as and when they keep up so that it is not a failing service. All the waffle sounds like an attempt fo excuse underfunding and everything between the two quotes sounds like infighting between rival empire builders that allowed the underfunding to happen.
"Here endeth this too-verbose rant."
Not at all too verbose. It's all about what I termed in another comment "a public service ethos".
One thing stands out in the example you linked - difficulties switching to a DR system. The things that people tend to do badly are those they do seldom simply because of lack of practice. DR rehearsals are important, initially to introduce plan to reality so that the plans, rather than reality, can be changed, secondly so that documentation can be filled out by recording what's actually done and finally to give practice to those who will have to carry them out.
Irrespective of whether it was a case of staff not following procedures a company like this, with a critical public service function needs to have a public service ethos, for want of a better term, that ensures everyone is aware of the consequences of actions. Such an ethos starts at the top. If a thoughtless action at any level was the cause that is ultimately due to the attitude of the board and senior management.
"Basically we need to treat the US like a failed experiment"
It's odd that given the "no more Kings" attitude they ignored the fact that England had been evolving the separation head of government powers from head of state for a couple of generations. They stepped back to somewhere about Queen Anne's day and then froze it with a written constitution.
The photo contest could be the basis for a little harmless fun. Pseudonymously* submit some images from an outfit known to be particularly vigorous in pursuing their IP. If you could work out the stock image site they went to and tip off the copyright owner so much the better.
* You wouldn't be at risk of not being able to claim the $1,000 prize.
"To be fair, the Linux and open source world hasn't yet come up with a reliable or familiar way of centrally managing almost 100,000 machines in a vast global directory." It hasn't come up with anything like https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/19/microsoft_entra_id_bug/
"Meanwhile, in linux land, you need a parser to access ini files"
They're not usually called ini but I guess if you view things through a Window that's how you'll think of them. The Unix approach is to make file plain text so the only parser you need is between your ears and, as you point out, a standard text editor is all you need to change them.
But pets? Try work horses. Carefully tended and fed because they do heavy lifting.
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