Posts by Doctor Syntax

Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz

Re: IBM is to FOSS as oil is to water

"Hence we got Apache, Postfix"

Apache & Postfix are from IBM?

Re: Goodbye Centos

"Centos is owned by RedHat now."

RedHat is The Upstream Vendor of Scintific Linux. What happens to them if IBM turn nasty?

Re: Less pessimistic here

"This is a hostile takeover"

Nobody's claiming that. A hostile takeover would be one opposed by the board. The hostility predicted is on the part of the employees and nobody ever took their position into consideration in a takeover.

If you're in the UK, warehousing, especially cold storage.

Re: innovation and work culture

"what is sure is that they will buy a lot of talent."

And what do IBM do with talent?

Re: At least is isnt oracle or M$

"The OS is from Linus and chums"

Some of those chums (can that number really be called chums) work for RH.

So now it becomes Blue Hat.

Will systemd become standard on mainframes as well?

Assange catgate hearing halted as Ecuador hunts around for someone who speaks Australian

"he's being very very stupid, shitting on the people who are keeping him out of the clutches of the US government"

Don't they realise what a privilege it is having him shit on them?

Re: Downvoted ..

"sharing a prison cell with someone who is friendly but not kind to chaps who treat women or cats badly"

His friend Sandy?

Re: Downvoted ..

"Two years ago he might have been a person on interest in the US, but under the new regime anything Obama did is wrong so Julian's going to be free to go."

I suspect it's the other way round. The previous administration would have had the wit to realise the biggest punishment they could inflict would have been to ignore him. I think the current administration lacks wit.

Re: How are they breaching his human rights?

"I think you meant appendage"

That would be the case for the rest of the male mammal population. Your're dealing with someone special here.

Sorry friends, I'm afraid I just can't quite afford the Bitcoin to stop that vid from leaking everywhere

Re: But Why?

"It can't be the same person... can it?"

It'll be the same person selling the list and text to 50+ hopefuls. Guess who's the real scammer and the real scammed.

Re: Apparently, I've won the Lottery

"Two Million Seven Hundred Great British Pounds Starlings"

I know starlings form big flocks but I'd no idea the problem had got so bad. Where do they all roost?

Re: Racist?

"Why can't straight white guys just be civil and realise not everyone got handed a golden ticket at birth?"

Not meaning to upset you but there are those who will automatically take anything said by a white male as being suspect. No, let me rephrase that: who will automatically assume anything thought by him will be suspect even if he harbours, let alone voices, no such thoughts. Such an approach is, of course, just as sexist and racist as that of which the victim is being accused and it's appropriate to point that out, along with the casual ageism which usually accompanies it

Your implied assumption that every straight white guy got handed a golden ticket at birth* is just an example of this. White male children from poor families in the UK today are reported to be the most disadvantaged in terms of educational outcomes. It's contrary to that applied assumption but it would be equally wrong to assume that each such child will inevitably go on to become an illiterate benefits dependent.

*Speaking personally I grew up for the first 14 years in a house which had no electricity, no mains drainage, initially no mains water, few books, not enough bedrooms for the three generations of extended family it housed and in which the cooking facilities were a double gas ring and a C19th coal-fired range replaced eventually by a second hand 1920s model. Could have been worse, many were. While the competitive Yorkshiremen is an amusing sketch there was an underlying reality.

Re: Damn

"offering to sell them £5 notes at a discount"

In reality I expect it was only the attached film crew that stopped him from having his collar felt. It could be a way of cashing in on forgeries.

Re: "muat have missed a random site in the early days."

"As lots of companies want a more private one. I need a public, private, personal, and then company independent and/or throw away ones. Looks like there is a hole in the market for a product there!"

It's a market niche but not a hole as there are several mail service providers who will provide domain and email hosting facilities. Just set up a series of addresses all forwarding to one inbox. Make some long term use case specific (bank, family and friends etc.) and a throw away one that runs for a few weeks and then gets torn down.

Re: Racist?

"this week's column"

I thought you'd decided your column couldn't possibly have appeared in the video.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"How the **** do you dig those up seemingly to order?"

That particular one - I'd clicked on someone else's obligatory Dilbert, either yesterday or this morning and, as one does, gone forward and forward and .... it's surprising how quickly time flies. That was one I went through so it immediately came to mind as soon as I read Dwarf's post, and a quick search for dilbert gullible brought up a list of possibles - it was about fourth or fifth.

A few Dilberts stick in the mind and then it's just matter of Googling for key bits of dialogue & dilbert. Sorry, no magic involved, just serendipity. Another nice one from that sequence can be found with dilbert "law school" "ant farm"

Re: Racist?

"Poor syntax and grammar are deliberate. They're used to weed out those who might stop and think "

People say that but I'm not convinced. I sent back a wind-up to one of the Indian "improve your website" spams (originating IP address from an Indian ISP. OK?). This eventually lead to a reply assuring me they had English and Australian offices. StreetView revealed the English branch to be at the same address as a language school (the irony!) in Longsight, Manchester and they listed a number of sites as examples of their work.

The writing varied from almost idiomatic to totally unique. The worst one appeared to have constructed sentences by making lists in random order of the words needed in the sentence, starting to arrange them and after the first two or three abandoning the job as too difficult, leaving the rest where they lay and moving on to do the same with the next sentence.

Re: I've seen a definite uptick in these

"IBM. You would think that they might have got some idea about how the email system works."

Having had dealings with IBM and emails, no I wouldn't think that at all.

Re: I've seen a definite uptick in these

"That is excellent for folks who don't own their own domain and mail server."

It only costs a few quid a year to own your own domain and you don't need a mail server. Either get a mail service from your domain hoster (again not expensive - even I do it) or simply get it all sent to your free gmail or whatever mail service.

Re: I've seen a definite uptick in these

"I'm a crusty 52"

Another youngster.

Re: That is not cool dude.

I believe "chinaman" is regarded as racist these days.

Not so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-arm_unorthodox_spin

Re: Have fun with scammers!

"Take the contact email from one scammer, configure your email client to use that as "your" outgoing ID, & then reply to a different scammer as if you were the first one."

I've tried a variant of that by replying along the lines of that sounds very interesting but I'm too busy to deal with it at present, could you contact my colleague ....... While typing this I've just realised I slipped up. It should have been "one of my colleagues" and given them a list.

SEO and similar scammers are requested to send the results of "our" self-assessment questionaire (supplementary questions can be added prompted by particularly egregious lapses in spelling, grammar or punctuation):

1. Is the candidate a company registered in accordance with the legislation of the country in which it's based?

2. Is the company name given in the proposal?

3. Does the company have its own domain and website at that domain?

4. Does the website appear on first page in Google when searching for "first place in Google"? (Very important - if it can't promote itself it can't have any credibility for claims to promote others.)

5. Does the company use its own domain for email correspondence?

6. Does the proposal list the website(s) for which they're making a proposal?

7. Does the company buy cheap and utterly useless spam lists?

8. Did the proposal arrive in my spam bin address at [e-mail] rather than one of my real email addresses at my own domain?

9. Does the company actually write its own proposal email or did it buy it along with the cheap and utterly useless spam list?

10. Was the email unbelievably lucky to make it through Hotmail's spam filters?

11. Is the proposal from an out and out liar who lacks any competence to do the work themselves but is just generating leads to sell on?

Re: Racist?

"Being an old white bloke.... As a result, I have to be careful when dealing with people who are not the same sex as me"

Just accuse any complainants of being ageist, sexist and/or racist depending on which of their personal attributes differs from your own. It's a game that can be played more than one way.

Re: Racist?

"regard them as my equals in all pertinent respects."

It depends on which respects you consider pertinent.

Re: Racist?

"Maybe I am mistaken about this too."

If one of the professional umbrage takers are after you it doesn't matter what you write they'll put their own twist on it. The best way to deal with them is probably Dr. Johnson's: https://artsandculture.google.com/theme/UgKSIabPSjsSLw

Re: Damn

"How gullible are you ? Send £20 for our questionnaire."

Obligatory Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-06-09

Re: Racist?

Please can I give Dwarf a second upvote for "moisturist"?

Re: Racist?

Any email has to come from somewhere and if you're running a scam making it seem to be from somewhere safely foreign is a good idea, even if you live next door to the would-be mark. After all you don't want the plod getting involved which they might do if your text is in perfect English.

And in any case one has to abide by tradition: financial scams are obligatorily Nigerian, SEO proposals just have to be Indian etc. It would be unfair to leave the Chinese out of it - that would be discriminatory at the very least.

The D in Systemd stands for 'Dammmmit!' A nasty DHCPv6 packet can pwn a vulnerable Linux box

Re: Old is good

"Theo de Raadt bollocking him every other week"

As infrequently as that?

Re: Meh

"debootstrap --arch amd64 --variant=minbase ascii /devuan http://deb.devuan.org/merged"

My idea of a clean reinstall is boot from optical drive/USB stick, reformat and install.

Re: how did it get to this?

"init scripts look a bit antiquated to me and they seem unforgiving to beginners"

Init scripts are shell scripts. Shell scripts are as old as Unix. If you think that makes them antiquated then maybe Unix-like systems are not for you. In practice any sub-system generally gets its own scripts installed with the rest of the S/W so if being unforgiving puts beginners off tinkering with them so much the better. If an experienced Unix user really needs to modify one of the system-provided scripts their existing shell knowledge will let them do exactly what's needed. In the extreme, if you need to develop a new init script then you can do so in the same way as you'd develop any other script - edit and test from the command line.

Re: Old is good

"refusal to accept patches to let it work on non-Linux Unix is just plain nasty."

Who would want to run it on non-Linux Unix systems? I can't imagine any of the BSDs wanting such a thing.

Re: Meh

"FYI, there may be pain on the Debian Jessie -> Devuan Jessie -> Devuan ASCII path."

Providing you've got /home and as many of /opt, /usr/local and /srv that you use on their own partitions why not go for a clean reinstall?

'BMW, Airbus and Siemens' get the Brexit spending shakes

Re: BMW and Airbus have more to worry about...

"Thers no brexit angle to that behaviour"

Read Len's post again. The Brexit angle makes it a damn sight easier for the Belgian company to buy and strip the British one than vice versa because it has a bigger home market and isn't in a self-damaged economy. There's no sign yet of the magic fairy dust that was going to make the post-Brexit British economy so powerful.

Re: BMW and Airbus have more to worry about...

"Furthermore, their domestic market has taken a hit as buyers have tightened the purse strings."

It's taken a bigger hit than that. Its domestic market has shrunk from 28 countries to one.

Re: Oblig

"Those factories in Malaysia don't build themselves."

Nor those in Singapore.

Re: "Keep calm and carry on"

For many people it was seen as an opportunity to stick two fingers up at "the establishment".

And after all, it wasn't binding so nothing bad could come of it.

Re: "Keep calm and carry on"

"JRM has said that the decision was taken before we even had a referendum, and is not because of Brexit."

It's always a good idea to consider what's actually said and what's not actually said. Cameron had already been forced into conceding a referendum after the 2015 election. Where does the decision fit in between that concession and the actual referendum?

Re: "Keep calm and carry on"

"I don't think the treaty has any provision for that"

OTOH is there any provision for not rescinding such a letter. Obviously there's no precedent either way.

"she'd probably need parliament to approve the rescinding."

It might be Parliament telling her to rescind it.

Californian chap sets his folks' home on fire by successfully taking out spiders with blowtorch

As regards the evolutionary psychology, I think the significant adaptation is to remove anything that looks as if it could be an ectoparasite. Spiders have the misfortune to look like bigger and nastier (more legs) versions of fleas and the like so the beneficial reaction goes into overdrive.

The best way to screw the competition? Do what they can't, in a fraction of the time

Re: Karma

both unethical and unprofessional

"we managed to throw out the effing cable"

That can't have been easy.

Re: "Ethernet is so much better"

"Nobody has yet mentioned Token Ring."

For Nick Kew: http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-05-02

"One of my regrets is not keeping hold of samples of various bits and pieces over the years"

There's a series on YouTube about renovating an Alto. One of the episodes is a visit from the Ethernet inventors who arrive with a box of various interface bits & bobs none of which can weigh less than a couple of smartphones.

Re: Nah.

"The only people I've known well who are actual self made millionaires spend most of the time looking flat broke."

Memory of Last of the Summer Wine. The three scruffs wandering round a car show room. Salesman asks manager "Shall throw them out?". "Nay, lad. Round here they they can look like that and be millionaires."

Re: Nah.

"I'd rather lose a contract if the client is a shit."

On the whole I'd agree but in your particular case I'd have thought you'd have had a rather pliable client - you could always drop slight hints about grassing him up to his wife if he didn't behave.

Re: I'm quite happy

ethernet over a cable designed for it "an ethernet cable"

So ethernet cable is 10Base5 then?

Re: Nah.

"used a thick (1/2" dia)"

Was it really only 1/2"" dia? It seemed bigger than that. Maybe that was just because it was so inflexible.