Posts by Joe W 1513 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Aug 2018
I'm actually OK coming in twice per week. There's a bakeholic on my floor, and she usually has something to eat...
Joke aside, meeting my team once a week face to face is not a bad idea. This of course means we have to coordinate those days. Works out every other week. I also get a chance to chat with my fellow greybeards.
To get work done I prefer my own cave. My tea is quite nice.
The phone line has only two leads anyway - so having all of these extra pins is just way overkill. Only the two central pins are actually used.
(yeah, I know, there's other standards, but this one is most common here - and then for different speeds you need different types of cables, but that's networks, CAT5 and upwards...)
Also quite a d'oh moment for the IT department of that school. Why is their account still active after they had stopped being employed? No, I do not blame the victim, but that was a stupid thing to have happened. If you sack somebody you need to disable their f'ing accounts... Jeesh!
Still, not a cool move.
And the bofh would not have been sacked, and not found out. Instead it would have been pinned on the head of systems, helpdesk and IT.
The interesting thing is that these ideas have been around for the better part of sixty years. I have several versions of spacey books for kids, back to 1969 (the moon landing was just about in it!). And especially the early books are full of enthusiasm about interplanetary travel and nuclear powered warships spaceships. Basically "yeah, we'll reach Mars within the next decade". Fun stuff!
"It's also ahead of Ubuntu in the number of editions with alternative desktops, with 11 official spins."
Yeah... why do you need that? Why can't you just install a meta-package to pull in the DE of your choice, or jut an easy way of getting th packages installed? Why does there have to be a separate "spin"?
Now you are thinking of the content creators - their bottom line is irrelevant for YT / Alphabet.
But I wholeheartedly agree: show me relevant ads! I'm actually good with that (ok, mostly). Don't show me crypto scams, pyramid schemes, irrelevant stuff - instead, when I'm looking at, say, a video on repairing some bike stuff, show me ads for a cycling rag, or a bike parts dealer, or maybe even some equipment like jerseys, or maybe even nutrient supplements for athletes (I'm not interested, but they might be relevant for others in my position).
The current system is broken.
On purpose.
Never attribute to the incompetence of Alphabet what can be explanied easily by greed and malice.
... as per his Muskiness (as far as I understand it) is to turn TCFKAT into a "general communication thingy" (basically everything should go through that... app-thingy), so yes, moving all those Farcebook direct messages and WhatsApp voice calls to TCFKAT was the reason for the rebranding.
Or maybe he's just making things up as he goes and Xitting all over the place.
One of my mates, who is a genius[*] (and a nice guy), once told his boss during a similar discussion:
"Look, I can be a genius not more than eight hours a day."
I think that for me the limit is about six hours, but I start at a way lower level of intell-uh-djence. So working only part time (young kids & stuff, and stupid "back to the office at least 50%, no matter if the colleagues you are working with are in the same city, or even state") actually is a pretty good deal for my company. I'm pretty sure I achieve pretty much the same as when I was working full hours. Except when reading ElReg[+]. Ok, back to work, slouch.
[*] not the fruity tat merchant type, but a guy who actually has both a high IQ[#] and can actually apply his genius-ness (I'm not a genius, so I'm allowed to make up words) to real world problems - yeah, he is a genius (or at least quite a bite more intelligent than I am).
[#] he kept quite stumm about it, but we found out, his wife (who is a physics professor) mocked him about it in front of his mates (many do have a PhD in a real science, so not humanities or arts, so I guess it is pretty ok to mock him about it in that group - it is not bragging, that's what I mean)
[+] I am keeping abreast of recent internet technology, as the PFY once put it... and if reading ElReg is not part of your job you got the wrong job.
ah, there's the problem....
... I don't use Ubuntu anymore, not since it turned out to be "brown windows" (as a friend pointed out, both ease of installing and pushing you to other stuff...)
meh, I don't particularly dislike it, I am good with them having a commercial offering - good luck to them. But please don't push amazon ads (and... I won't start any of the discussions regarding the pulseaudio guy's stuff)
"The reader quoted above told The Register they’ve started a migration to GitLab."
Yup. Same here. Similar requirements (data souvereignty et c.).
We are lucky, we had some dev teams host their own GitLab solutions (they were sort of a separate entity), so there are people with some experience (like being able to say: yeah, don't do that stuff, sounds great but you'll regret it).
... and here in Europeland and in my company's line of work we have data souvereignty and strong privacy regulations. I sure hope the powers that be have a migration plan away from things like confluence and jira in mind.
The other problem is that coud is just other people's computers. Some in our management get that. I sure do hope they show Ye ancientte signe for banishing daemons (as Sir Pterry described it) and move to a different product (I know that the technically minded are pushing for it...)
I personally would have put the explanation of the asymmetric key, the first paragraph of which is not specific do the algorithm, much further up in the text. And the paragraph starting with "This type of attack" comes out of the blue, the data harvesting should come before naming the attack, I think.
For this readership I would have left this stuff out anyway. I am pretty sure that most of us know these things quite well (and many know more about it than I do). Additionally, saying that some the countries trying to implement this type of key cracking are considered adversaries by the US read quite weird for this international readership. Many of us do consider spying by the US and US companies a threat, even if we live in the "western" world.
And I would have liked more insights into what makes the new algorithms more difficult to attack,I guess I need to read the papers...
As we say over here "ich kan net so viel fressen wie ich grad kotzen könnt" (I cannot eat as much as I would like to vomit out again now). "Activist investor" is just a made up newspeak term for somebody who is after quick money and will leave the business in tatters, has no long term interest in the company. I would say that for a tech company the biggest treasure lies in the knowledge and skills of their technical staff. Getting rid of them just "to reduce headcount" in a "non central" business will have long term effects. I hope management gives them the "old familiar suggestion" in the "baroque style of New York City's underground wall writers".
Sheesh.
That had to get out.
At least they did not yet buy GoDaddy with its own money, did they?
Came here to say that. Why link to an irrelevant stardard? Why did Apple not have the phone certified in the EU prior to sale if it is such an important market? And... why are they allowed to sell a phone that has not been through the relevant tests? Unless, of course, companies do self-certify...
Last job had a lot of international travel. I do not miss it.
The table is useful if you don't have one of those huge "laptops" (luggables, I'd say, or your lap is bigger than mine). I bought an eleven inch Lenovo, low power, ten hours on battery, small enough to work on a plane (if I did not booze myself up in the lounge to numb the pain of air travel and slept most of the flight - a viable plan). Having a high-ish frequent flyer status made some things less aggravating, but since I traveled a lot (too much) the sum of annoyance was high enough to make me not want to go on holidays anywhere I need to fly. Admittedly, one gets used to all sorts of things and is pretty unfazed by most curveballs airtravel throws you. Winter storm, flight cancelled? Ah, I'll spend a night at some hotel, maybe can explore the snowy city. Flight delayed, missed connection? Lounge, have lunch / breakfast / dinner, drink a nice glass of wine (depends on the airline), they'll get me on the next plane. Luggage lost? I got most things with me, it'll turn up eventually, yeah, I'll take the "socks, undies, shirt" money and get changed. Just... relax. Especially when talking to ground staff, who are really not at fault for any of these things. Have a friendly word for them, the job is stressful enough. Show patience. And just... relax. Ask them for a voucher to enter the lounge, some actually can give these out (if you are not eligible) but only if there's not a massive mob of angry paxes that would then shout "UH ME WANT THAT TOO!"
Well, yes and no.
Yeas, it has the same keen pricepoint.
No, it is not as lean as WordPad (which can do the most basic things only). Loading time is quite a bit longer, especially on not-that-new hardware, and it times it can feel a bit sluggish (depending on document size - but these programs are just not fit for longer documents, I very much prefer LaTeX, but let's not start that discussion).
No, LibreOffice does not open the newest docx-format-files in all cases without issues. Formatting gets f'd up - but then opening the same file on different Word installs (even within the same company, centrally maintained installs, same central print server, etc.) has similar effects (don't know about WordPad, when using .rtf, as it does not save to .docx).
LibreOffice has more features, but (actually, in my opinion, like Word) too many possibilities for most people - and offers the wrong options too openly, which leads to people not writing properly formatted documents (don't get me started...).
I actually do use LO on my personal machines, it is not bad. But it occupies a differnet niche than WP.
"In analyzing each image uploaded to Twitter to determine whether it contains nudity, Twitter actively collects, captures and/or otherwise obtains; stores; and/or makes use of the biometric identifiers and biometric information of any individual included in each photo," the suit alleges, in violation of Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act.
X makes clear in its new privacy policy that such data will only be collected with user consent,
Ok, let's assume some xithead takes my picture and posts it on xitter. There is no bloody way to get consent from the individual on the picture, user consent has sweet fanny adams to do with that!
Bah. Eejit.
I'm going to do the stupid "well, actually"....
Well, actually (told you so) there is a large number of geologists that are less impressed by so called epochs and eras if the stuff is still undergoing lots of changes. 'Quaternary Geology", my arse, the stuff has not even properly settled down. The main point is that apparent boundaries we try to identify now might not be as clear cut once it properly petrifies. As somebody else remarked, it is down to future generations (in the distant future, I'd say) to find good terms for this. And adding to that, we have just very recently entered the holocene (recently in geological terms).
Still, I absolutely adore the term "Pleistocene-Plastocene-Transition"!
Spare a thought for me. The company is a Windows shop. Yeah, we do have a bunch of Linux servers (Deadhat... oh, and SuSE, the admining of which I hate with a vengance, it sucks, a lot - but that's the Debian admin speaking). I daily set my standard broser to something sensible (firefox is available and even preinstalled) - but have to use Edge for the stoooopid sharepoint ($deity, I hate sharepoint, we don't even have all of the nice integrations installed / activated). Of course, Edge sets itself as the standard browser, because f'ing Microsoft of course knows better. (this is on Win 10 - let's see if Win 11 happens, with all of the telemetry it is currently unlikely).
Great, now I not only need a coffee, but also something to put into it, no, not milk, rather soemthing grain-based, fermented and distilled... I think I'll write some snarky emails first, the recipients do deserve it.
Werlll... Assuming I get such an email I will flag it as spam. The filters (the weights...) will get updated accordingly.
I would also flag any other political begging for funds as spam, as I'm not interested in that. So they would be told to f'right off. Oh, and it certainly does not help if you send out millions of bulk mails. Spam filters really don't like that (lots of institutions had to learn that lesson, about two decades ago).
I have been running the (then testing) version on my laptop for a year or two now. The installation was easy, did set up dual boot, got my WiFi card working, used all screens I have on my desk. It just works. I'm quite happy with it.
Installers are weird nowadays, like the Debian graphical installer which refused to offer me a German keyboard layout when selecting the UK locale. Terminally stupid.
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