Posts by Doctor Syntax 42030 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"If the UK is to participate in cloud computing, we cannot do it with asymmetric services. It's no good having 30mbps download and a 5mbps upload. You can’t upload all your material into the cloud."
This assumes I want to participate in uploading all my material, whatever that means, into the cloud.
It's as well to remember that if you do upload a lot of stuff into the cloud you're liable to find that some of it gets deleted because of excessive use of your unlimited storage.
I wonder if May is playing a strategic game. The Brexiteers have been given jobs of setting up deals. At some point whatever they come up with can be put before the HoC as a basis for invoking Article 50. The govt. doesn't actually have to recommend the proposal and she could even lay down some criteria to be met to gain a recommendation.
If they can actually put a viable proposition together then all well and good. Personally I'll be surprised but pleased. If not it will be up to them, the Leave campaigners, to accept that they couldn't make their good idea work at which point it can safely be remembered the referendum was only advisory. In the meantime any malcontents on the backbenches can be added to the team so they can accept their share of responsibility.
"We have met and continue to engage with the ICO on personal data usage. We regularly review the ICO’s published guidance about current and future legislation, particularly in relation to GDPR. We comply with all aspects of the Data Protection Act and take the operational privacy and security of people’s personal information very seriously."
I recognise all the words but have a problem extracting meaning. I do, however, recognise the last bit. It occurs frequently in association with "only a few customers were affected" or similar expressions.
"Essentially you have a computer with an array of DVB-S2 cards."
Or one DVB-T card with a couple of tuner modules on it. As it can take several streams from a single physical tuner you'd be hard pushed to find enough simultaneous watchable programmes to exceed its limits. In fact, I'm not sure mine uses the second tuner very often.
"there was a dearth of programmers interested in writing software for Windows"
There may be something in this. At the time there was a DOS office suite called Smartware. My employers of the time were big users. Informix bought it. In one of several inexplicable decisions the then management team made they didn't port it to Windows (they did contrive to add Informix as a back-end storage for Smartware - but only to the spreadsheet component and not to the database). A bit of rationality there could have seen them taking over the Windows office market. In the end IBM took them over instead.
"That depends to a large extent on what you need a computer for. If, for example, you're into full time publishing, then you're most likely going to be running Adobe InDesign....Since engaging in that battle requires time, and time is money, then it's a no-brainer to run your business on OS X."
Like you I'm retired so I don't need that sort of thing. Writing. A little development, mostly with Lazarus. GIS. Any Unix-style OS does fine.
@TeeCee
Your choice of icon seems appropriate for your views.
As I've said a number of times here, go and read what Microsoft grant themselves access to once you've agreed to their T&Cs. And read it carefully enough to spot that they don't exclude any accreditations you may have with non-Microsoft entities, nor to any transactions you may make with non-Microsoft entities. Remember that Microsoft, at the very top, is run by lawyers; do you think such gaps were accidental oversights?
Yes, they've made various statements as to the fact that they don't do this, don't do that. They may well be prepared to swear on a stack of Bibles that they don't. It doesn't alter the fact that that can be changed tomorrow by an update that their users won't be able to decline and the legal gate to allow them to do that has been left wide open.
And if you still don't think that amounts to anything, then at least take a little time to ponder why the French data protection regulator is now taking them to task over all this.
"Funny thing is these same type of people gave the same complaints for every new ms os , including their beloved windows 7, "I'm never moving off of windows xp, windows 7 is piece of junk, spyware ridden, I cant believe you have to switch to admin to change system settings""
You seem to have an intermittent problem with your shift key.
Actually, from my recollection, no previous Windows version seems to have triggered this amount of ire. In fact I don't think all the previous versions put together have done so, and Vista and W8 have made serious contributions. So you have to ask yourself whether there might, just possibly, even slightly, be something that you're missing about this. If you can overcome your lack of curiosity I suggest you start with reading all the T&C/Privacy policy stuff. In particular, ask yourself what ought to have been there on the limits to their "telemetry". Don't look at their blog posts which say "we don't do that" or "only people with a business case" (what business case FFS?). Look at what they get you to grant them that right to do any time they decide to do it.
"If you work in IT you're just making yourself outdated."
If you work in IT you become very cynical about upgrades. You become very cynical indeed when people try such extreme tactics to force upgrades onto you systems. And, if you've got your wits about you, you read the T&Cs very, very carefully. Just go and read those. If you can't grasp the problem you should take up a job that doesn't require reading skills. Note that I avoided saying "if you can't see the problem" because the problem lies in what's omitted.
"use the advanced installer to opt out of the telemetry."
How do you know that you're opted out? How do you know a future update won't opt you back in without telling you? How do you substitute a more restricted set of T&Cs than the standard ones? Have you ever read those carefully? If you think you have, read again and try to find any restrictions on what they can take. I would not be prepared to put anything with those T&Cs on anything other than a burner test box.
'They have never explained the term "supported lifetime of the device".'
As far as the UK is concerned there seems to be a likely collision with Trading Standards at some point and with the corresponding regulators in other countries with strong customer protection legislation. Maybe not in France if it gets banned completely due to their run-in with CNIL
'They asked for someone with "5+ years experience with Solaris 10"'
I blame ISO9000 and similar crap for this. They have their quality manuals saying that everyone working with whatever should have a minimum of 5 years in it because it looks impressive. Unfortunately it's written by someone with a total lack of contact with the real world (my view of most quality wonks) who doesn't realise that (a) in some fields technologies turn over faster than that, (b) there's no way everyone arrives fully minted with 5 years' experience in anything and (c) there's no way on paper of distinguishing between 5 years' experience and 1 year's experience repeated 5 times.
"Apparently once we leave the EU we wont be able to employ Engineering talent from europe in our car factories"
Probably because at least some the car factories here will be run down.
1. They belong to foreign companies who are here because it provides them with a manufacturing base in the EU. Note those words: in the EU.
2. When we leave the EU we won't be providing a manufacturing base in the EU.
3. If we're not providing a base in the EU the owners will make their new investments in countries in the EU because that's what they want.
4. That means that new products will be made in EU countries, not the non-EU UK.
5. When the product lines made in the UK reach end of life there'll be no work for the factories and they'll close. Or maybe made into museums so people can see that a car factory looked like back in the olden days when we had no control over our destiny.
"It's called job security, computers that just work leave you with nothing to do and management wondering what the hell you are doing all day.
Ironically I failed miserably at establishing job security by standardising, idiot-proofing and automating everything, which was my job."
You seem to have been very unlucky. Most companies simply go out and recruit a better class of idiot.
