Posts by Doctor Syntax

Climate model code is so outdated, MIT starts from scratch

Re: students can't learn Fortran ?

Not being able to learn a simple language like FORTRAN doesn't sound like the best and brightest. Maybe that was one of those throw-away lines said without thinking and intended to diss the language.

Re: A language they cannot read?

Yup. My introduction to computing was a 5 day FORTRAN course of which I missed the first day.

Not being able to read it isn't much of a recommendation.

Why the Linux desktop is the best desktop

Re: Mint needs to drop Ubuntu as its base distribution

They have Buster & Bullseye based versions. I wonder if their rejection of Snap might be a step to moving away from Ubuntu altogether.

"The penguins will tell you to try another desktop rather than admit one of the key problems with Linux on the desktop."

What if you don't like the Windows desktop? What do you try then?

AKA the Linux wall.

AKA the balls in the subscription vice.

FTFY

Re: ... and to a racing driver, F1 isn't hard, either

"Sure, these sentiments do not come from IT professionals, but they do come from people who want computers to work the way they expect them to. To deny that is one of the biggest failings of the Linux community. Which could explain why most Linux desktops strive to look like Windows or Macs."

But then I find Windows to be a largely a hard to use mess - why can't I arrange the menu, for example.

Familiarity is the issue. Are Windows or Macs any easier to someone coming from the opposite camp? And can that be eased by making the one look like the other? The big advantage of Linux is that the UI isn't baked in, it can be made to present something close to whatever you're familiar with, even CDE if you want. I can fairly quickly reproduce my preferred UI on any new Linux installation. With the commercial alternatives I'd simply have to adopt the vendor's changes as and when they choose to impose them - and that really seems to be the harder alternative.

Re: "Linux Desktop"

one desktop UI (which you cannot change)

Microsoft, of course, will, whether you want them to or not.

Re: Linux "Desktop"

"My wife refuses to use a Linux desktop"

Miy wife uses Linux. If it were Windows there'd be a problem every time I have to help her with something - invariably application related. (Usually that's "I can't close this tab". The answer is "You just did. It's now showing the next tab which is on the same page as is the next one again and the next after that." Maybe tab proliferation is Pinterest's party trick.)

Re: One reason to stay with Windows - Outlook

You could turn that round. There's the Windows wall where something you take for granted on Linux doesn't exist such as an equivalent to Gimp or Inkscape that doesn't need a subscription. And if you suggest Photoshop or Illustrator you can have your inodes back in the form of a load of NTFS disk fragments.

Re: The joys of Linux

I mean Windows has its own day of the month – Patch Tuesday – just for fixes

And Linux has so many patches that practically every day is patch day. And don't deny it.

The difference is that Windows needs a day for its slow and long-winded updates and forced reboots. Then maybe an out-of-band update to fix the breakages.

I'll have Updates available showing once every few days - as like as not for applications (e.g. Signal desktop once a week) - and it takes seconds to deal with. Every few months there'll be a kernel update but even then the system keeps running with the old kernel until I restart at my convenience.

Re: "Linux Desktop"

"multiple choices of UI"

You say that as if it isn't a problem with Windows. And yet every time MS bring out a new version of Windows there are complaints about the fact that they've changed the UI. Every time. The difference is that on Windows you don't have a choice other than to stick to the old version until MS manage to overcome your efforts and manage to foist the new one on you.

OTOH the article author says he prefers the Cinnamon UI. At a guess he originally preferred Gnome 2 but not Gnome3. So did a few others so there was rapidly a choice of two other desktop managers, both providing a UI as close as possible to the old Gnome 2. Personally I never got along with Gnome, KDE plays well with the way I work although Ken G above doesn't like it. It doesn't matter - Ken & I can both have the desktop we prefer.

Would you have liked multiple work spaces? You didn't get them until MS said you could. Would you like a tabbed file manager interface? You might be lucky on the next iteration of W11? If you don't like a tabbed file manager interface will you be able to turn it off when it arrives? Who knows? I've had choices of these things for years. I have the desktop which is pretty well what I want. You have the desktop MS wants. That's choice.

Re: re. Anyone who tells you Linux is hard to use wasn't paying attention

Our TV is occasionally used for live broadcasts but mostly as display for MythTV (mini-ITX, venerable Ubuntu release) or Kodi (Pi). I did have a lot of grief with resolution using our old TV, eventually traced to it reporting back its resolution as being that of a PDA! (StackOverflow strikes again?) That was cured by snipping the appropriate pin of the VGA connector.

Huawei reportedly furloughs Russian staff and stops taking orders

Today furloughed, tomorrow conscripted.

Stolen-data market RaidForums taken down in domain seizure

Re: Extradite him?

He's not one of ours so the alternative would be to send him back home to Portugal as an undesirable alien. Portugal can then send him to the US.

The Beeb report says another 21-year old co founder was arrested in the UK with "£5,000 in cash, thousands of US dollars and ... crypto assets worth more than half a million dollars." Presumably US dollars don't count as cash.

Why, I wonder, are these sites allowed to run for so long? I appreciate that once an operation gets to a certain size there are a lot of individuals involved and the investigation needs to be complex to ensure all its tentacles have been accounted for. Taking it down once it starts to get noticed but before it gets that diversified would have stopped at least some of the criminality it will have facilitated.

AI-powered browser extension to automatically click away cookie pop-ups now promised

Re: You need AI/ML for that?

You don't say whether JS is required for these sites nor, if it is, whether 3rd party JS is required. In general I find that whatever other faults gov.uk sites may have (such as always apparently being in beta!) intrusive JS isn't one of them.

Until these issues are actually tested in court we don't actually know whether they're really legally enforceable or not. What, for instance, would happen if a fishing vessel couldn't get a connection for one reason or another and went to the harbour-master, not DEFRA*, to report the catch? What would happen in the event of a discrimination case brought on behalf of someone who couldn't use the benefits calculator?

*MAFF hasn't been its title for years.

Critical bug allows attacker to remotely control medical robot

Re: Worrying

"the entire design efforts for any medical device are to make them work 100% and cause no new health issues"

A device with remote access vulnerabilities doesn't meet that description. It seems likely that the cause must be omitting auditing and/or testing for this in the current criteria. You'd think after Wannacry that more notice would have been taken of this. Maybe it is and is grinding its way through some regulatory process.

Backup frustration brought this CTO to forefront of ransomware protection

"the time-consuming and unreliable process of backing up massive amounts of data that was only tested when it failed....a cloud-native global file platform that does away with traditional backups and instead constantly creates new versions of files that are not shipped to a backup system but instead are kept on the cloud-based platform. In addition, everything is managed – both in the cloud and on-premises – via the platform."

If I were in the market for something like this I'd walk away at this point.

As CTO wasn't it his job to test the backup restore process? If he did he'd have made it more reliable and probably less time consuming. And maybe the description under-sells - it probably does - it but if I read it right there's a single platform containing all versions. Lose that platform and...

At last, Atlassian sees an end to its outage ... in two weeks

Re: Unfortunate

I've always said paranoia is the first requirement for any DBA. Maybe this has been a suitable paranoia upgrade for Atlassian.

"Instead of deleting the legacy data, the script erroneously deleted sites, and all associated products for those sites including connected products, users, and third-party applications."

With an SQL database any sufficiently paranoid DBA will run a SELECT with the same WHERE clause as the intended DELETE to check that what would be deleted is what's intended. I suppose this is all trendy NoSQL stuff. Doesn't that have the same facility?

Why is IBM selling post-quantum crypto when it's still a pre-quantum company?

"t's only competing in that category against itself."

To be exact, it's competing against its previous model. By and large that's how the entire industry has worked for decades.

For instance I've lost track of the number of ways to connect storage to CPUs over the last 40 years or so. Need more storage to hold the accumulated data and bloated software? You can't connect it to that old computer, you'll have to buy a whole new system.

Microsoft dogs Strontium domains to stop attacks on Ukraine

Re: Cool, but why are Microsoft doing this?

A question many of us have pondered. Almost everyone seems to be the answer.

Re: Cool, but why are Microsoft doing this?

"Also, I don't know about you, but I don't (knowingly) run any software written by my local government."

I'm not suggesting governments write software*. What I'm suggesting is that if someone is running a malicious server on behalf of one country in the territory of another I'd expect the government of that other country to be the one that puts a stop to it, not Microsoft acting as investigating office, judge, jury and jailer.

* I don't expect many members of any government to write software. I, on the other hand, have been a Civil Servant, i.e. employed by a government, and as part of that employment, have written software and run it. OTOH I'm most reluctant to run software written by Microsoft.

Re: Cool, but why are Microsoft doing this?

And why not the authorities in whatever country the servers are located?

US defense department wants to fund open, interoperable 5G

Re: Much Worse

Or take him back to Facebook.

US Army to build largest 3D-printed structures in the Americas

Just wait 'til HP Inc get their hands on this.

Re: Finally- a solution for the homeless

The problem with cities like London is the separation of housing from work places end hence commuting. What they need is it to replace some of the existing office space into homes so that there is a balance between the remaining office space and homes for the people who need to work in them. The functions of the replaced office space can then be moved out to where the former commuters live, either as working at home or by provision of local office space.

Buying a USB adapter: Pennies. Knowing where to stick it: Priceless

Re: What's "a bomb of money"?

Please live up to your handle.

Re: As an ex

Then tell him not to moan - didn't ask for extras.

Re: Seems ok

If it was a friend you'd have installed LibreOffice. You know how it goes: "friends don't let friends..."

Re: Seems ok

"promptly and conveniently"

And competently. The friend down the pub who would do it for free might just have decided the only way to deal with it would be to reinstall, reformatting the disk.

Re: Seems ok

How close a friend? A best mate or someone he just knew slightly? We're not told. If you start doing that sort of thing for a friend you'll be surprised how many friends you've suddenly acquired, and how many relatives, not necessarily bereaved, they have. Fifty quid sounds like mates rates.

The secretary had it right. The cost was a lot less than the alternative. What's more, when he agreed the price he did so because the result was worth at least what he was being asked.

Fish mentality: If The Rock told you to eat flies, would you buy my NFT?

At a guess the fish was previously very unhappy because it didn't have any of the cover it would have had in its natural environment. It now has somewhere to hide and defend and this is being interpreted as looking grumpy.

Re: Jean-Luc Mélenchon

"His stated political goal is to stop someone like him becoming a millionaire like he did."

Pulling the ladder up behind him.

For some value of lucky. Unless he gets to sell it to someone even luckier.

I doubt there's much difference between actors and actresses influencing the gullible to go vegan or to eat insects. It's the same principle. If the money's right it might even be the same actors and actresses.

Re: Lab-on-a-fish

Why not? Phish as a Serivce is already a thing.

Vital UK customs system outage contributes to travel chaos at its borders

Re: Bit late to blame brexit

"Its not like this gov hasnt given plenty of opportunities for an opposition party of any size to bash them hard."

I think they've had a series of lucky breaks in the way of things getting steadily worse. Covid came along at just the right time to confound the effects of Brexit. Partygate almost had them sunk and then Dick threw BoJo a lifeline as from one clinger on in post* to another, by effectively delaying the Grey report. In his SOP BoJo rewarded that by throwing her under a bus. And then the Ukraine conflict came along.

* A post she shouldn't even have been in since managing the killing of Charles de Menezesz.

Re: @Spaceman9

"And who is in charge of the single market?"

Its members, of course.

Which we were one of but no longer are. However for many UK businesses its members are an essential market.

Re: a clique of aristocrats

fabulously wealthy friends and non-dom family

FTFY

Re: @Spaceman9

"If Scotland wanted independence they should have let England vote too."

That's one thing we agree on.

Re: @Spaceman9

"You do realise project fear turned into a disappointing damp squib for the EU and fanatical remainers?"

ISTR you saying the EU was about to collapse so get out while we can. EU still there, UK starting to look as if bits might drop off, such as NI.

Microsoft hikes prices for non-profit customers, ends on-prem software grants

This is the right time to update our pricing. Although there are still questions and uncertainty, we see clear signs of economic recovery around the world. Moreover, over the past few years our competitors have increased prices, in some cases aggressively. We simply have a better story and proven track record of reinvestment in the product and consistently delivering new value to our customers.

Because we can.

European Right to Repair resolution headed for vote

Re: My wishlist

Why? He's not going to get that wish-list there. He might in the EU.

Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by

Of course it is. It's another idea beneficial to the populace that the EU is in favour of but the con-artists who now constitute HMG are against. As far as I can make out their main motivation seems to be that they found the EU's pro-individual, attitudes, especially the idea of a supra-national court protecting human rights, irksome. What does that tell you about their intentions?

If you couldn't work that out, note that they intend to repeal the Human Rights Act. Yes, they're going to replace it with a "Bill of Rights". That probably means they get the rights, we get the bill.

Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by

And those who did vote were almost equally split between leave and remain. Although the Brexiteers seem to insist that "we" voted for it - including those of who voted against. We said it was a stupid idea then and even if we're in the same boat now we're certainly not prepared to go along with the idea that we're willing passengers.

Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by

It's a smaller market than the EU. For a UK manufacturer it's a much smaller home market than they had pre-Brexit.

Being the Beeb they couldn't possibly quote names but I think a series of reports referred to the same business. Pre-Brexit he three directors were gung-ho for it. After it happened it turned out that they could no longer sell their product, cheese, to individual consumers in the EU as they used to do. At least they could but the paper-work involved in food products made it impractical when applied to individual orders for consumers. The remainder of the EU had been a significant part of their home market, if not the bulk of it. In the last report I read they were having to spend money they'd intended for a new factory at home on a distribution centre in the EU so they could ship in bulk. Along with a plaintive cry from one of them that this wasn't what they thought they'd voted for.

Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by

"I think you will find that in the U.K. there is a law that gives consumers a right of repair or replacement and in some instances their money back for up to 6 years."

Just before the car's warranty period expired the little plastic button on the handbrake leaver broke up. Clearly internal stresses - the fragments didn't quite fit back together. Oddly enough the dealer carrying out the last in-warranty service shortly after overlooked this despite being told.

Yes, I can but the part to repair it. The part to repair is isn't the plastic button. It's the entire handbrake assembly at £86 IIRC.