Posts by ThatOne 3965 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Oct 2017
I still have boxes of Windows and MS Office (Pro!) floppies! I remember it was great fun installing everything in one go. You had to bring a newspaper/magazine and just listen to the noise of the drive - when it stopped chewing a floppy it was time to insert the next one...
> So I guess that leaves us with only OS the suits the needs of Mr./Mrs./Miss Average : Microsoft Windows.
You somewhat missed my point, didn't you. My point was about an ex-Windows user choosing a Linux distro, not about which OS is best.
Indeed Windows is what used to suit best Mr Average for home use, not only because (s)he has been using it at work and was thus familiar with it, but also because there is always bound to be somebody in his/her entourage who can help when things go south. Last but not least, Windows was built for normal users, not computer whizz guys. Technical specs have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Now obviously things have changed, and Windows is going to hell in a hand basket. Many people (like me) had to change what they used at home (I've been using Windows and various flavors of U*nix at work for ages), and thus went on a search for something to replace their Windows boxes with.
Funny enough, their needs didn't change: Internet, some games, some low-intensity office work with the capacity to view/edit work files. This rules out any really outlandish exotic OSes (I have an old Sun and an old SGI workstation at home, definitely superior kit, but I wouldn't be able to do much with them, I just keep them because of pure nostalgia).
(Didn't downvote you though.)
> What the usual client, the Windows would-be defector wants is free as in beer Windows.
That's the kiddies. Adults usually pay for their computers, so don't really mind spending an additional $100 for a good reliable OS.
I also fail to see how this could be a justification for snooping on people?
(Didn't downvote you though.)
In the beginnings and for a short time Microsoft followed the old system of giving customers value for their money.
But they soon switched to the modern system of taking as much money as possible while giving as little value as possible. Figures: More profit.
Well, kind of modern, it was already fashionable in the 1700s among a specific profession: "Take everything, give nothing back! Arrr!"
I'm with Andy Non here. Mint manages to be as user-friendly as old times Windows (XP, 7). It doesn't require any special computer knowledge to install and run, and ex-Windows users should normally immediately feel comfortable with it.
It's definitely the distro I suggest to non-IT people who want to break free from Microsoft's death spiral.
> you need to work out a system that suits your needs
That's true, but while everybody knows to some extent what his needs might be, the big problem with Linux distros is that as an outsider you have absolutely no clue what your options are!
200+ distros, one would assume they all have some unique characteristics, but unless you spend months reading through scattered, unverified and mostly outdated internet resources, how on earth am you supposed to know what those are and what they mean for you and your everyday work flow?
That's why the usual client, the Windows defector, usually just asks for "something that is as close to Windows as possible". Because what he/she/it needs is a simply a reliable OS to run programs on, not a platform to tweak and to play with. This usually goes way over the heads of the Linux gurus, who's idea of fun is to recompile a kernel, or to test a keyboard and mouse-less OS controlled by throwing M&Ms against a charged metal plate...
Horses for courses, Mr Average needs an OS which just works, doesn't get in the way, and is easy (for a normal person) to find support for. Ideally with LTS releases, since normal people do not consider reinstalling everything as "fun". As for the technical considerations, on the ideal distro they are totally transparent, as in "it just works".
Just my 2 cents worth...
The bounces going to /dev/null and the spam being sent without human intervention or control, there is nothing surprising in that.
We actually only see the top of the flagpole on the tip of the spam iceberg... If spam suddenly ceased to exist, I'm pretty sure worldwide electricity consumption would drop by a noticeable percentage.
> Quite possible the address was already getting intermittent spam before you signed up
While it is definitely possible, I think it's unlikely since I don't have a overly common name and if spammers were constantly shotgunning the server with all possible first/family names combinations it would had most likely toppled over.
I believe that indeed the ISP's greedy marketing department sold (consciously or not) the new addresses to some well-organized and very reactive spammer conglomerate. This was IIRC around the year 2000, many people hadn't yet assimilated that spam is really bad and spammers are the lowest scum of humanity (on the level of pedophiles).
I can better that: New ISP, they gave me automatically an email address I didn't need or want, but I checked it nevertheless in case they were sending me any additional setup info/requests.
That was mere hours after I had signed up, nobody except the ISP and myself knew about it, and yet it already contained several hundred spam emails (with more arriving all the time)!
Needless to say I never ever checked it again. I still wonder how they managed to pull this off, advertising a brand new account to all active spammers out there in only 1-2 hours' time. Wow.
> Usually the "click here to confirm subscription" email gets through, then the actual newsletter doesn't. Emails from confused.com get through, but emails from the car insurance company I've just signed up to get blocked
And why don't you just whitelist* those addresses you know you want not to get blocked even if they are talking about cheap loans to buy Viagra?...
Put up a list of people and domains you know aren't spammers (friends, family, work, websites you have dealings with) and Bob's your uncle.
* Allowlist, or whatever the politically correct term for it is nowadays
Well, a lot of automated confirmation emails are sent as "NoReply" (when you complete a transaction or some such). Of course they could send those automated emails with a reply address of "sales", but then they would fall foul of the "reply-to address is not sender" rule...
IMHO it's easier to filter by domain. If I have dealings with SomeShop.com, all mail coming from the "SomeShop.com" domain is most likely legit. If I've never heard of them, it's spam, not matter what is in front of the "@".
The only difficult cases are ISPs and email providers (like Gmail). Those are hard to block, because it's usually specific, compromised addresses. But they apparently have stepped up lately and don't harbor that many spammers anymore. Or the server filters got better.
> they're extraordinarily hard to pull off
Sure, but nevertheless they infallibly do what they were supposed to: Give you the moral high ground to do whatever you wanted to do, but would had looked bad if you had done it without that additional justification.
Never forget you only have to convince your followers, not your opponents (those won't believe you either way). To put it differently, the point isn't to convince your adversaries, but to avoid losing your followers, so the hurdle isn't a very high one: Just cater to their specific prejudices and half the work is already done.
> And yet we send unmanned space probes to the moon despite knowing how to send scientists since Apollo. Scientists aren't always useful or cost justified.
Yes, I said so myself. Automated probes are only justified for space exploration, especially and more so since we don't have the technical capacity to send actual humans out there: Right now (May 2022) we couldn't send human scientists to Mars even if we wanted to.
The point we disagree on is the need for "AI". As I said just above, we've already sent dozens of very successful probes all over the solar system, and none of them had a need for "AI"... Why would they need "AI" all of a sudden? Because IBM has shareholders to placate?
> This (admittedly limited) AI ship is 'learning' how to operate without human assistance.
Come on, we've been very successfully sending automated science probes all over the solar system for decades before IBM eventually decided to get into the game. And funny enough, they actually didn't require any "AI" at all. Automated probes is hardly a new domain, and what IBM does here is hardly groundbreaking or even useful, except as a publicity stunt.
Also those buoys aren't in any way comparable, they are just passive, remotely monitored weather stations. Even if they had been manned, it would had only been some untrained person checking the instruments and jotting down the values to phone them back to headquarters (usually the farmer on who's farm the weather station had been installed). Absolutely no "AI" needed, just some way to transfer the data.
Who needs "AI"? Very few people apparently, to the despair of those who desperately try to find suckers to sell it to. Yet another corporate get-rich-quick scheme goes south, like blockchain...
> Or at least there is supposed to be
You said it, "supposed" is the keyword here. In more dense areas there usually is, but normally there aren't, or he's surfing on Internet or watching TV.
.
> There is no substitute for Mk 1 Eyeball
We agree on that, but it also depends on who you talk to: Small pleasure vessels definitely should have a lookout at all times, because big cargo ships don't really mind plowing through smaller obstacles, be it a partially submerged container or a small boat. Not saying that it's good or legal, just stating a reality, the classic "I dare you to run me over" bravado doesn't work on sea, it usually ends in a watery grave.
> better off for the results, or better off for the proportion of the budget spent on executive salaries rather than real scientists?
You have a point there... But I consider the real interest to be science, and so for me "better" means "better science". Stuff the executives.
As for the office hours, most scientists I know love field work. Not only is field work often almost a vacation compared to your dark and noisy office, but also (and more importantly) the real science is where your research subject is, not in some office.
If you are studying plankton for instance, how do you get the most interesting results: Sampling yourself the environment using the best tools available, according to your plan and following the results you get, or by passively relying on some limited, uncontrolled and uncalibrated remote sensor smothered in AI sauce you know nothing about? I'm maybe old school, but I would definitely distrust what that AI tells me, and only use it as a basis for choosing locations for future, real research campaigns. At best.
Horses for courses, that AI might be marvelous and a game-changer when sent to some moon of Saturn, but down here on earth science is always best done by quaint old Mk.I humans.
> How do they ensure that this thing complies with its obligations under the IRPCS
That is very simple, especially given the low speeds involved. Any last-century arcade game engine could calculate this easily, after all it's just a long list of "if-then" statements.
.
> I do hope it does not simply blunder around and assume everything else will avoid it.
The ingenuous skippers who do this usually don't last the weekend... Cargo ships rarely have human lookouts and even if they do, they ignore you, it's up to you to avoid them no matter if you're under sail or power: The bigger ships can take up to 5 minutes to change heading, so it's up to the smaller, more agile vessel to avoid being run over.
(Which, despite sounding very dramatic, usually just translates to calmly changing your heading by a couple degrees until the other ship's bearing starts to change again, meaning there is no risk of collision anymore. On open sea it all happens very slowly, very calmly, over a period...)
> I'll be honest, that all sounds just fractionally more involved
There have been and are oceanographic research vessels navigating around the globe for ages. Check the Tara Expedition for a contemporary example. And I'm confident you'll immediately spot the difference: Tara carries a lab and is temporarily hosting groups of scientists, allowing them to do their research on the spot, instead of just carrying a couple primitive sensors and lots of "AI".
Sorry but this IBM project is and remains a solution looking for a problem, no matter how you look at it.
Seriously, do you think "AI" can replace hands-on science done by real scientists on the field? It can be a compromise when you can't really use real scientists (like in space exploration), but if you can, you'd always better off using the real thing: A unartificial intelligent being with a PhD or two, and the capacity to know at any moment what (s)he's looking for and at.
> But "problems" can be helpful because the operators can see what happens and work to avoid the problems in future.
Sorry, but the problems they face are all landlubber problems; Any shipowner with a little experience is already familiar with them.
Ships have this surprising specificity that there is always something to repair. It's a (violently) moving environment in a highly corrosive atmosphere, and things (especially mechanical and electrical stuff) break down routinely, even if designed for marine use to start with. That's why bigger ships have a bunch of mechanics and a full repair shop on board. Surprisingly as it might seem, those mechanics work full time, even on a brand new ship.
As for hurricanes, such a small vessel can only hope to not be anywhere near the zone of influence of a hurricane (or even severe tropical storm). Thankfully the National Hurricane Center is publishing detailed status reports, allowing anybody to plot a course well clear of the supposed path of the hurricane.
My point is, all those problems are already known and have been solved a long time ago, they didn't wait for IBM to discover navigation...
> my best guess is that this is an early prototype of an autonomous marine research vessel
It actually looks more like a publicity stunt by IBM...
.
> And to its credit, it's managed to travel considerable distances without sinking or running into other ships or running into fixed objects
Sorry, but traveling considerable distances without sinking is something mankind has mastered since BC times. As for running into other ships, it's incredibly hard in the middle of the Atlantic.
Maybe if she had managed to slalom her way up and down the Channel (other narrow, heavy traffic zones available), but running into a ship (or even just seeing one) while going from the Azores to the Caribbean (I assume) is extremely unlikely.
Any ship avoidance system they have would be only useful during the couple days navigating near a coast, and for that the (already existing and commercially available) AIS system is perfect: It gives you position, speed and heading of all vessels around you, and given the low speeds, you have plenty of time to avoid even come close to them. That's how cargo ships do it, there isn't somebody up in the crow's nest looking out for other ships...
Me too.
I discovered Evince because it was the default PDF reader on the flavor of Linux I use, and I like it. It does everything it should, and politely refrains from doing all those annoying things it shouldn't.
Something other PDF readers struggle with. I mean who doesn't want to be able to program a business solution or remote control his smart fridge from his PDF reader. It's cool, bro!
> I rather have firefox for the more technically inclined while the great unwashed mass can stick to a prettied up chrome
Indeed, that's Firefox's customer base, and that's why Mozilla is constantly dumbing Firefox down and removing features. Yes, they say they can't leave things lying around idiots users could cut themselves with, but it's way more simple. Once the "technically inclined" have had enough, there will only remain a handful of older retired people their kids had provided with Firefox, and then that's that: Curtain! Chrome rules the world.
> *Or possibly a serpent, given his ability to make people want apples.
Actually the bible originally never mentions apples, it only talks about "the forbidden fruit", whatever it might be. Could be a watermelon for all we know.
Now obviously the apple with the bite mark is an allusion to the forbidden fruit in question, so imagine Apple Inc.'s logo being a bitten banana (Banana Inc.). Or the aforementioned watermelon (Watermelon Inc.)...
> I still think dedicated apps work better on small screens
You're clearly not a web app developer (those who downvoted you)...
Remember, to a guy with a hammer...
I personally am pragmatic: Some apps are definitely just copying the functionality of an existing website and I definitely don't see why I would need to encumber my phone's limited memory with them; Others however are definitely doing things which don't (shouldn't) really need a network connection, and are much more efficient as a stand-alone native program running locally. Shoehorning everything in the browser "because we can" is IMHO dumb. Sorry guys, I know you're defending your livelihood, but please have the intellectual honesty to admit not everything is a nail.
Firefox might not be based on Google's engine, but they are definitely based on Google's money.
So their main occupation is shooting themselves in the feet, removing options and dumbing Firefox down to make it less appealing to power users. Because of course their main customers are the clueless masses who click on whatever is on their desktop and who think Google = Internet... *facepalm*
My point? Yes, technically you're right, and I'm using Firefox right now, but Firefox is definitely on the way out: Once Google doesn't need them as a anti-monopoly shield anymore, they will join Netscape in the "Was in the way of somebody rich and powerful" club. Sad. Firefox was a marvelous browser, infinitely configurable, a pleasure to use. Key word "was"...
> allow you to set global cookie rules that websites would accept with no user interaction
Come on! That's precisely what websites try to avoid: They harass and pester the users as much as possible so they either start claiming they don't want to be asked about consent ("Spy on me, please!"), or at least so they start quickly clicking through the nag screens picking the most easy solution ("Accept all") instead of trying to go through the cumbersome and well-hidden "Maybe not all" option... Basic marketing.
I see two problems in your example:
First I don't know many workflows which might require a 4x increase in RAM overnight. It happens, but usually it's foreseen, planned ahead, and integrated in the company's hardware upgrade cycle. Out with the old, in with the new, bigger, more modern servers.
Second increasing RAM by >400% would require more than flipping some switch on the processor. Like adding that additional RAM for instance... Chances are you'd need to change the motherboard, of course the power supply, obviously the memory, so actually it means buying a new server. Ideally with a new processor, since by that time there are certainly faster ones available (or simply because the new motherboard has a different socket).
Sorry, no, this isn't a reasonable use case. The only explanation is CPU-as-a-Service rental services where you don't own the CPU, but have to pay a monthly fee if you don't want it to turn all of a sudden into a 1985's 80386.
Okay, I'm not in IT so I might talking nonsense, but I don't think they allocate dedicated hardware CPUs to each VM. That would be more often than not a total waste of resources. AFAIK they only allocate CPU cores, and I don't think you'll be able to only unlock (for instance) 8 out of the 56 cores on a given server CPU.
> it may be possible to use the CPU to it's fullest potential
Yes, if you pay...
But then again, if you have the required money, why wouldn't you just buy the fastest CPU to start with, and not have to pay a monthly fee to unlock it? Chances are the total monthly fees are much higher than the one-off price for the highest-end CPU (else Intel wouldn't go through the hassle).
It might make sense for people having exceptional-yet-rare needs for increased processing power, but for most others it doesn't make any sense: If you need a powerful computer, you need it to be powerful all the time, not just one month a year.
> So now there is going to be a market for enabling the features on Intel CPUs?
Sure, the brand new and much claimed "CPU-as-a-Service"...
Pay your monthly subscription or your CPU turns into a pumpkin: The writing was on the wall, it was bound to happen, Intel could not lose out on the "aaS" feeding craze.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
