Musk has a Linux distro?
I bet it stinks!!! But attracts all the females....
Posts by ITMA
1284 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2019
I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems all too well
Wednesday 8th June 2022 17:57 GMT 
Re: Do they really?
"That's not their issue. Their issue is simply that it's Not Windows(TM)."
No. It is MUCH simpler than that...
Does the OS run the application software we need to run our business? If does't, it is no damn use to us.
In the business my employer operates in that is Windows. Not because we are in some way "in love" with Windows or "don't like" Linux. It is because the tools we need just do not exist for Linux. They do for Windows.
And the OS is there to run applications. End of.
Wednesday 8th June 2022 17:40 GMT
Re: Computing smarts in the cloud
Not only that.
There is a fundamental princple to data security which is all too often overlooked:
He (she) who has physical control of the hardware your data is on has ultimate control over your data. If your data is "in the cloud" that sure as hell isn't you...(unless YOU own that particular bit of "cloud").
You only have ultimate control of your own data when it is on hardware you own and which you have physical control over.
Smart homes are hackable homes if not equipped with updated, supported tech
Wednesday 8th June 2022 17:47 GMT
Thermostat!!!!
Try educating them with the REALLY difficult bit - heaters with thermostats AND TIMERS!!!!
Teaching them to turn the thermostat down instead of switching the entire heater off at the wall is next to bloody impossible.
Then you end up with a building full of heaters coming on at silly times times like 1:15am because when they do turn them back on all the timers are out. And then the "clever people" complain that the heating isn't working properly.... Jeezzz
Saturday 4th June 2022 18:49 GMT
Nope, I disagree.
The whole point of more granular "demand based pricing" to is to stuff the consumer when they use the most power at times they may well not be able to do too much about it - like drastically shift meal times - and when people's lives are (generally) scheduled around work/school times.
Economy 7 was more about to trying get money for the grid generation capacity they couldn't just shut down at night when demand was low, rather than just "dump" it (electrically speaking). Hence the rise of "storage heaters".
The baseload of my place - yes easy. And I have all electric heating/water. It is called "knowing what is switched on all the time". I don't need a so-called "smart meter" to tell me that.
Friday 3rd June 2022 11:15 GMT
Not when the "reading gadget" doesn't work because your meter is 40m away from your home in an electrical services cupboard down one flight of stairs in a block of flats.
Besides how hard is to figure out that some lights (particularly if LED) use very little power, but if you turn the kettle on or an electric cooker you use a hell of lot more.
The "big ticket" items for energy consumption are things that heat - be it space, water or food. You don't need a smart meter or know the consumption every 15 minutes to figure that out.
Knowing electricity usage every 15 minutes day and night is only of real practical value to the electricity supplier when wanting to introduce "peak demand pricing".
To the average home user is of very little value.
Friday 3rd June 2022 07:53 GMT
Re: Wrong headline?
I would disagree.
The problem isn't about using or not using the latest tech. It is about using "appropriate" tech for the job.
Far too much over complicated tech is thrown at problems which just do NOT need it.
Why? Because, to put it simply, it sells more product.... ££££££
Friday 3rd June 2022 07:49 GMT
Have you any idea what the thermal mass of your building is?
Depending on its construction, it can actually use less energy to raise the building to the desired (reasonable!) temperature and then keep it there 24 hours a day rather than have your heating go on an off all the time.
Particularly in older buildings, you can find the central heating comes on late afternoon/early evening and then sits there blasting out heat which gets absorbed by the fabric of the building while the rooms remain "chilly". By the time they get up to a reasonable temperature, the heating goes off again.
The fabric of the building then cools down again without necessarily having much (postive) impact on the room temperatures
This is then repeated when it comes on in the morning.
It goes off again and the same thing...
You don't need a "smart" heating system for that. Just some knowledge of the construction of your home, and the ability and willingness to try some experiments and read your meter(s).
Friday 3rd June 2022 07:40 GMT
Have you seen this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32NYQpvy8Q
I have always been and remain of the view that so-called "smart meters" are of no value what-so-ever to consumers. From a consumer's POV they are nothing but a con which we (in the UK) are paying (via taxes) to have installed and on the verge of being forced to install them.
They tell you nothing you could not learn by reading your own meter regularly.
Thursday 2nd June 2022 10:44 GMT
I think what you are referring to is this...
Generally speaking the radiators in the room containing the main system (or zone) control thermostat should NOT have thermostatic valves. Otherwise the thermostatic valves could shut off the radiators before the room ever reaches the temperature set on the thermostat. Result is the thermostat constantly "calls for heat". wasting a lot of gas.
Plus if all your radiators have thermostatic valves you should have a by-pass in the system so there is a return path for the wather during pump over-run.
Wednesday 1st June 2022 17:36 GMT
Re: "The problem with IoT devices is that consumers tend to treat them as appliances."
One of the worst examples of the "overuse" of technology.
Internet connected light switches (aka Hive) - what a massive environmental footprint from all the infrastructure needed to allow someone to switch their lights on and off from their phone instead of getting off their backside to use a mechanical lightswitch.
And then OVENS!!! Yes there are internet connected OVENS!
A number of manufacturers selling those - Bosch, AEG, Anova and others.
Now there is an opportunity for some hacker to give you food poisoning by messing with the cooking paramters or even try and burn your house down.
And fridges/freezers. How long - if it hasn't happened already - for your fridge/freezer full of food to be spoilt by it being hacked.
Not to mention the vast majority of these "appliances" require an account on someone else's servers external to your network. The "appliance" then estables a near permanent outbound connection to it allowing potential access into your network.
It has already happene to domestic "security" appliances:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44809152
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/23/amazon-ring-camera-hack-lawsuit-threats
They are even finding their way into businesses via "the back door".
Dear Europe, here again are the reasons why scanning devices for unlawful files is not going to fly
Friday 3rd June 2022 15:28 GMT
Re: The sound of Perseverance
Unfortunately, "talking to" often doesn't work with children who are too young to understand such things.
The same as when does a child truly understand the meaning of "Don't touch HOT!!"??
Is it when the parents say that to them?
Or is it when they burn themselves?
Which do you prefer if the child is too young to under stand the meanig of the verbal warning? They get a (moderate) slap to associate the warning with (some pain) or burn them themselves, possibly badly?
You can't wrap a child up in cotten wool and protect them from every form of danger.
They have to learn about the real world and risk. How to identify it and how to assess it and make a judgement about it.
The sooner they learn that, the safer they will ever be compared to wrapping them up in cotton wool and shielding them from it.
Because at some point they have to go out into the real world and THAT is the job of parents - preparing them for that. NOT to be their friends. That comes way WAY down the list.
Reg hack attends holographic WebEx meeting, blows away Zoom fatigue
Thursday 2nd June 2022 18:18 GMT
Re: Holography?!
I've no problem with that - but they should stop calling them what they are NOT which is "holograms".
They are using it as a marketing "gimmick" because calling them what they really are doesn't sound anything like as "cool" as "hologram". Whereas calling them "holograms" conjurs up mental images of the "hologram" effects in Star Wars in the hope of selling product (IMHO under false pretences)
At least in the Star Wars films the special effect immitation "holograms" at least reproduced the impression of some of the properties of real holograms. When you saw the Princess Leia "hologram" from Luke's POV looking towards Leia, you saw her from the front. The shot looking from behind the Leia image towards Luke and Ben showed the correct view of the back of Leia.
Wednesday 1st June 2022 12:02 GMT
Re: Holography?!
Absolutely correct.
Just because an image "looks 3D" or appears ot "float in the air" does NOT repeat NOT make it a hologram.
Stop misusing a term which has a very definitive meaning.
These are NOT holograms any more than those "Tupac" things were which by the way were video versions of the Victorian "Pepper's Ghost" illusion.
East way to tell...
Blank off the display for one eye. Then using the other eye, holding the headset in your hand (better still on tripod so it doesn't move), move your head around to change the viewing position of your eye in relation to the single eye display of the headset - particular viewing from a position to the left and right of the image.
For it to stand ANY chance of it being a hologram, the view your single eye sees from the left should be distinclty different from the view it sees from the right IN THE SAME IMAGE i.e. there shouold be parallax just by moving where view it form WITHOUT moving the headset.
That is the whole point of visual holograms and basis of the name hologram.
One image contains MANY points of view simultaneously. You change which you see by changing WHERE you view it from. NOT by changing the image.
We've never even built datacenters using robots here on Earth
All-AMD US Frontier supercomputer ousts Japan's Fugaku as No. 1 in Top500
BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?
Monday 30th May 2022 16:43 GMT
Re: Too Often...
"The first one I really do think people should be taught the difference between possible and probable"
For use at home, quite possibly.
In a work environment lawyers and HSE could have a field day under The Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 1994 if someone were stupid enough to use one wrongly and there was nothing in place to ban them and find/remove existing ones.
Last time I checked there are still no formal/academic qualifications which include good old "common sense".
Saturday 28th May 2022 10:32 GMT
Re: Too Often...
I've lost count of tte amount of electrical shit, usually from China and bought on eBay/Amazon, which staff have bought and I've had to condem or, if possible, "make safe" because they are a fire/electrocution risk:
- No safey certification markings of any kind (CE/BS/UL).
- No electrical power rating label of any kind.
- Not supplied with a proper UK fused plug/lead.
- Supplied with a "foreign" mains plug (usually with no fuse in) and a "death daptor" (also unfused) to allow it to be plugged into a UK mains socket.
"Death Daptor" - see BigClive's very sobering examination of these hiddeous bits of Chinese shit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESIzuV6kdWY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB1DlBpyS9w
Lonestar plans to put datacenters in the Moon's lava tubes
Thursday 26th May 2022 18:34 GMT
Re: RE: Simple question: if knowledge is so completely lost...
Nah... Much easier than that...
Take one bag of Dreamies cat treats and shake...
The poster accepts no liabilities for damage caused to or repair costs for holes in plasterboard or other walls.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nel8S0sbkVY
Beijing needs the ability to 'destroy' Starlink, say Chinese researchers
Thursday 26th May 2022 08:18 GMT
Ah... but....
"Especially given degrading Starlink would not in any way impact any of the other numerous satellite-based communication systems actually used by the US armed forces and their allies"
Unless the primary objective is not in itself to take out Starlink, but (depending upon orbits) to "weaponise" it as kinetic debris:
As outlined in the book by Lnida Dawson "Space Debris as a Weapon"
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-93052-7_4
Amazon puts 'creepy' AI cameras in UK delivery vans
Tuesday 24th May 2022 14:27 GMT
Amazon!! Cameras for "Safety Reasons"!!!
Now there are two words which don't go together - Safety and Amazon - given the amount of downright dangerous electrical shit made in China which is sold on there into the UK.
And what is Amazon's response when someone gets injured by it? "Nowt to do with us mate. Sod off".
Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment
Sunday 22nd May 2022 16:50 GMT
Re: Oh shit.... Not agian
Would that be a local domain AD account or an Azure linked AD account?
I'm just trying to determine, as someone who is trying to avoid Windows 11 like the pox, whether in my IT estate I'll still be able to click in "Join domain instead" (or whatever it is called in Windows 11) or if it is more privacy invading "must be a Microsoft controlled account" BS.
Logitech Pop: Stylish, portable, but far from the best typing experience
Your data's auctioned off up to 987 times a day, NGO reports
Logitech's sales plunge 20% as demand for PCs slows
Windows 10 still growing, but Win 11 had another bad month, says AdDuplex
Thursday 28th April 2022 12:08 GMT
Re: So which is it?
Good point Falmari.
One can't be "baulking at the prospect of having to replace so much IT kit " while simultaneously looking "to Macs on the desks".
How many PCs can one buy for the cost of a single Mac?
From the point of view of RTI and TCO, we'll be running our W10 PCs until W10 goes EOL and Microsoft can go whistle.
Despite the adverts and hype, W11 does SFA that W10 can't. So why should we upgrade?
ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40
Monday 25th April 2022 10:47 GMT
BITD I wrote the software for a prototype on-board vehicle weighing computer (for articulated HGVs and council "refuse" vehicles - aka. "shit carts").
A colleagues Microtan 65 (with mini 2 slot backplane to mount the CPU card and the TANEX Iss2 expansion card) served as an initial development test bed.
The assembler code was written on a BBC Master 128 and, because it needed to do floating point calculations, I even "acquired" (ripped off) the 2K BCD floating point maths package built into the Atari 800XL. Extracted it a nibble (4 bits) at a time through the Atari's joystick ports to the BBC's user port. Then relocated it to a different 2K page boundary before building it into the eventual 8K EPROM image.
All done on 6502s
Windows 11 usage stats within touching distance of... XP
IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims
Thursday 7th April 2022 19:00 GMT
Leopard and spots...
IBM have, as the saying goes, "form".....
Has anyone else read Richard Thomas DeLemarter's book "Big Blue - IBM's Use & Abuse of Power"?
IBM know how to, and are well practised, at playing the US Department of Justice. They have better lawyers, deeper pockets and greater stamina to keep things dragging through the courts until who ever opposes them runs out of money, gives up, has had their 8 years in power... or dies....
First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets
Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements
Intel counters AMD’s big-cache PC chip with 5.5GHz 16-core rival
Telehouse adds fifth datacenter to Docklands campus in London, UK
C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language
Sunday 27th March 2022 21:31 GMT
Re: So if C isn't a progrmaming language, what would you say is a programming language?
"I once interviewed a guy who had no clue what xor did. His Resume claimed that he had extensive experience writing compiler backends and codegen's."
That reminds me of an MCSE back in the early part of this millennium who asked us "non MCSEs" -
"Which one is the serial port?"
Didn't know what the serial port on a laptop looked like (back when most laptops had a 9 pin D-Sub serial port).
