This decision won't stand
A few hours at most, until the phone call comes in from Washington.
1648 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2022
There's the people in charge, there's the serfs (who think of themselves as citizens), there are the oligarchs, and there are the international companies.
The people in charge have their money in city so-called traders, the sort of people who do things like manipulating LIBOR. Despite absolute prima facie evidence of fraud, nobody faced criminal charges. Some of the banks paid some money to shut up the regulators, money which of course was peanuts to the banks.
Dave Blogs, a serf, does a bit of work off the books for cash in hand. Down come the authorities and he gets a criminal record, and the Daily Mail writes about dodgy Daves. The Daily Mail is owned, of course, by somebody who lives abroad for tax (of should I say avoiding-paying-tax) reasons. The Daily Mail represents the oligarchs. How they cheered when Liz Truss nearly broke the economy in a few hours. The serfs are the stupid people like you and me who pay all our tax and get the shit end of the stick every time.
The international companies all "perfectly legally" pay way less tax than the serfs on a per £ basis. Starbucks, for example, makes £95 million gross profit but pays £5 million corporation tax. Google, Amazon, and the like are in this group. One way or another, the people in charge, the oligarchs, and the international companies will somehow pay less tax on a per £ income basis than Dave.
If the USA runs its infrastructure on bug-ridden/full-of-backdoors American products while shutting out competition it can hardly complain if it gets compromised. Of course, what is good for the goose... Europe should get rid of American products in its infrastructure too. Goodbye full-of-holes Cisco for one.
-> due to fears about the company’s ability to spy on businesses and citizens on behalf of the Chinese government
No. It is due to Huawei being better and more advanced and cheaper than American companies. That is it. The USA only likes competition when it is winning the competition.
Small correction:
-> the traditional UFS, and this now supports snapshots, so long as you're running with journaled soft updates
UFS on FreeBSD has long supported snapshots using mksnap_ffs, which is very hand for consistent backups. The new feature is snapshots when using journaled soft updates (which is a very common use case). This was not previously possible:
# mksnap_ffs /pies
mksnap_ffs: Cannot create snapshot /pies: /: Snapshots are not yet supported when running with journaled soft updates: Operation not supported
-> I do object to the casual ageism
Sort of the point I made. There is a huge amount of it about, as though "old people" do not matter and their views should not count. It really is a dreadful conceit when I hear and read very inexperienced and unworldly "young people" thinking they are so much more clever and knowledgeable than older people. Some of these young people are the sort who think not having the internet for a couple of hours is a big thing.
We've heard all the arguments. It does seem there are a lot of antidemocratic people in the UK, who want to disregard a majority vote. You do not speak for everyone. The majority voted the way they did. Accept the result or admit that you do not like democracy.
-> Michelle Donelan, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Could they find a scientist or engineer for this role? Let's see...
According to Wikipedia she worked in marketing "on Marie Claire magazine and for World Wrestling Entertainment". Donelan doesn't know 5G from LG. But I guess marketing is about presentation rather than knowledge. Of course, the UK is hampered in its 5G roll out by blocking one of the leaders, if not the leader, in the technology to appease its American bosses.
-> some totally unqualified nobody managed to round up all those billions in investment money, and conned former cabinet members and generals to sit on the board of her imaginary company
Good sales tactics from her, greed from them (as you indeed mention). Look how much money we can make, they said. Never underestimate just how greedy some people are. Fraud and greed are as old as time, which is why it goes on day in day out.
-> Not the USA then ??
The cause of the bad relations between the USA and China: the USA cannot compete. It is too slow, too expensive (by a long way), and too inefficient. The USA's "solution": sanctions and trade barriers = keep being inefficient, slow, expensive.
-> To suggest stuff like this that's appropriate for Reg readers. But the average person will only consider something they can buy at places like Walmart or Amazon that's entirely plug and play.
Amen unfortunately. If it is not convenient they will not get any customers. Not just "loose" customers but not even get them in the first place.
I predict it will be a drop in the ocean. It might start off with some good intentions but will then fade away to a smaller trickle. The only realistic way for open source devs to get reasonable income for their work is if the big hardware and software companies that use open source reach into their pockets. When we buy a laptop with Windows already installed (yeah I know it's nasty), we don't give MS our money directly. The real question is why are companies that make billions in profits so tight fisted? Would it really hurt MS to lob somebody a few thousand? Even that would be better than the tips.
I am constantly surprised by how little people know about the NHS. What you mean by "tackle inefficiency and waste" is cutting services and rewarding the people who make those cuts.
A few years ago, maybe a couple of decades as time passes quickly, a Tory minister was interviewed on TV about removing "thousands of unnecessary regulations and business red tape" (my paraphrasing but accurate. He was put on the spot with a question like "such as?". His response was "errrrrrrrr licences for shoe blacks". That was his first and only answer.
Could the NHS do things more efficiently? I don't know for sure as I am not involved with it. But probably given its size it could.
We have a sanguine view of for profit health care in the UK. We see what it is like in the USA where people get a taxi rather than an ambulance because of the cost. And don't try and pretend that health care is better in the USA than in the UK. Life expectancy in the UK is higher than in the USA. And we also do not have an opioid epidemic caused by for-profit issuance of addictive pills. That's OK, there will always be some people to prescribe opium to = more profits.
I see that somebody has given you a down vote. That somebody no doubt has a very small brain.
The Royal Mail used to be reliable and relatively inexpensive. Then it was privatised and the service got worse and more expensive. I guess that some people enjoy lower quality service and higher prices.
-> racists having their fingers in the collective pie: is there any chance you can offer some evidence of that?
I'm going to chime in here for a moment. When crack cocaine was mostly (but not entirely) affecting black people the response was no-knock warrants and lock 'em up. When the opioid crisis hugely (but not entirely) affected white people it was "we must find a different way to deal with this". So is that racist? I think there is a good case to be made for saying it is. I've read and heard all the arguments, that crack was being "abused for fun" while opioids were "prescribed for pain". But that is just a smokescreen. I've seen it and heard it all. I've read about police officers who locked up umpteen black people for having drugs, but when it affected their family it was "we need to find a better way to deal with addiction". It's double speak. Everyone knows it but not everyone is prepared to admit it.
-> All of which leaves the world a little safer thanks to the demise of this outlet.
This sounds like the sort of comment we hear from the police or a judge every time a drug dealer is put in prison. Except there is no overall affect at all. We are now 50 years into the so-called war on drugs. And it is not even close to be being "won".
-> all set the screen to 800×600, even though most installers don't fit into such a low resolution
I've never quite understood why they do this. It's such an easy thing to program for and/or to test. I've experienced something like it but I can't remember what it was now. The tops of the buttons were just about visible and tabbing to the button I wanted highlighted it.
-> Finally, at 19GB, it deigned to try.
That really is bloat. I wonder where it is all going. It's probably worthy of an article on its own - the bloat of Linux today. How much more is one getting in this release compared with a release from one or two years ago?
-> The installer boots using X11, but once installed it defaults to Wayland.
This is what gets me about some of these distros. Why have both? If Wayland is not considered good enough during the install then attention should be given to make it good enough. Now we see where some of the bloat is.
-> rclone
A very good tool.