Posts by BitDr

Where is the benefit? Really?

I see open source is once again the target and being stompped on while the proprietary model incurrs no change in their process. Additional cost, yes, but MEH! They'll just pass that on to the consumer, all in the name of "security". In my humble opinion the CRA law has the effect of eliminating

1- Competition from FOSS

2- Relegation of FOSS to "hobby" status, barring it, as far as you will ever know, from use in commercial products. Whose to say the sre or aren't? People under an NDA? HA! How much for the signoff?

3- Enableing proprietary vendors to use FOSS code their products (they have no transparency, it's all "black box software" so you'll never know if it's there". (See #2)

4. In the case of requiring "inspectors" (paid of course) to approve code, susceptability to corruption of the process. It WILL happen. (See #2 and #3)

Take DieselGate, just as a closed source example that is in a heavily regulated industry. The ECU and its' software is a black box. It was tested as a black box to it's specifications, and the software in those Engine Control Units passed the tests. If that code had been FOSS? How many millions of eyeballs would have been pouring over that code? Would it have been caught right away? Well there's no certaintaty that it sould have, but the probability of it being caught early would have been MUCH better.

Calling it the "Vehicle Data Access Requirement Initiative" is language designed to narrow the scope and keep consumer electronics out of it. Watch for weasel wording such as this and call out anyone who tries to use it.

A surreal article...

A strange read.

This sentence from the article;

"IE is Microsoft’s window onto their ever-growing cloud application suite."

should be rewritten to read;

"The browser is Microsoft’s window onto their ever-growing cloud application suite."

I started to see it as an advertorial when sentences like this one;

"Google have an excellent suite of cloud-based office application of their own, but my Office 365 world seems to work pretty well with Chrome too – which is handy given that these days there’s not a Microsoft browser for non-Microsoft platforms (IE for Mac bit the dust back in 2003, after all) so it lets me work with my cloud apps on non-Windows platforms."

Lets analyse this shall we? It starts off complimenting the competition, then gives them a sideways complement/insult, instilling doubt by saying that they (the non MS browsers) "seem to work *pretty well* with Office 365". This is a classic sales technique, compliment and never directly criticize the competition. You can then cast doubt on their products but also praise, heck, even you use the competition's products! Then another sideways compliment to the competition while building yourself up "it (Chrome) lets me work with my cloud apps on non-Windows platforms." Then give yourself a soft slap on the wrist for not doing a better job in the past, while continuing to implicitly praise the competition "there’s not a Microsoft browser for non-Microsoft platforms (IE for Mac bit the dust back in 2003, after all)".

Now go for the sale, but do it in a round-about way, by asking a question about their own product as if the reader was considering using it but was fearful. That question is this: "But can I be certain that Microsoft’s offering will work with my Office 365 world? " See how the question is about the fear of Microsoft's product not working with another Microsoft Product? Usually this is stated the other way around, but not here, and it is a sure sign that you're now being sold to.

The alarm bells had been sounding for awhile by the time I read that "integration between the Microsoft browser and the Office 365 cloud" was "native and seamless". This is designed to instil confidence in the prospect, but to the critical thinker the question "Isn't that the whole idea of browser based applications delivered via the World Wide Web to eliminate the need for tight integration with the underlying OS"? springs to mind. The answer to this is "yes" and the motives to tightly integrate now must be looked at with some suspicion.

Oh, and one more thing. As far as I can discern there was no "theft" involved when it comes to the subject of Microsoft losing browser dominance on the web. They lost fair and square, and through their own inaction. Google created a better product and supported it equally well on more platforms, including Windows. Microsoft's failure to see the advantage of doing this is telling of their corporate culture, one of vendor lock-in and leverage the installed Windows base at all costs. Asking "what actually is “the browser market” – and is there actually one any more?" illustrates where they want things to go, back to tight OS integration. I think making the browser an integral part of the OS has no upside in the homogeneous World Wide Web, no advantage at all, but for the vendor promoting it there would be much to gain.

The Internet is a secular place, lets keep the church (the Operating System) separate from the state (the web & web-based apps). I'm not a big fan of renting my software and keeping my data on someone else's machines, I prefer to have a choice, to be able to use both if I want to, or just one if I please. The best one will eventually win out, and I think it will probably be a blend of both, but it doesn't HAVE to be... I'll decide for myself; but only if I'm able.

Of course...

Of course you could always not use their product, but if you really HAVE to then license complexity is in your future.

What nonsense...

Now we start to see the shenanigans being played with fees and tweaking of services.

The Personal Computer (in all of its forms) gave us information processing power, placed it in our hands and took it from the service bureaus. The compute cloud is retrograde to that revoloution. Why go in reverse when we can keep moving forward? When an inexpensive compute-cluster/cloud can be had in your server-room why would you want to rent time on someone else's? it's yours it can be used as you see fit, you are the one making the terms and conditions, when it's rented from someone else you don't have that freedom.

So this

cp /var/lib/libvirt/W7VM_001 /mnt/RAID5/VMBackups/

would violate the 086 patent and this

cp /mnt/RAID5/VMBackups/W7VM_001.raw.bak /var/lib/libvirt/W7VM_001.raw

would violate the 558 patent? <sarcasm>Well done USPTO!</sarcasm>

Metal As A Service...

I don't buy it, sounds like outsourcing your SysAdmin to ubuntu and their software management stack. Nothing more.

Have you ever seen one of those adverts on television where the clumsiness of performing [TASK] is exaggerated, but when [GADGET] is used everything is incredibly easy? Well maas.io has a video like that, where they describe setting up servers (on real metal, not virtual) as incredibly painful.

Managing many servers can be a pain, setting up clusters of servers is difficult, but setting up and managing 5 or 10 is not that difficult, and SMBs don't generally need massive numbers of servers, and most businesses fall into the SMB category.

"think of the children"

When it comes to (most) businesses a cynical take on the motivation for their actions is generally proved true. I think MS sees the writing on the wall and is playing the "Think of the children" card to lower resistance to what they are doing. It's an emotional play, one of the strongest you can use as people will do anything to protect their children, up to and including sacrificing the future freedom of those children.

A policy such as this gets them using edge or IE when they are really young and under the control of their parents, as opposed when they are older and their parents only think they control them. "Think of the children" gets rational thought out of the way. You really liked Chrome? Oh, sorry, you have family settings in place to protect your children, Chrome doesn't respect your choice to use this feature of WX, but you can re-enable them, just [long-convoluted process] and turn them off.

It's a pretty slimy psych-tactic that will probably work.

Of course I could be wrong, it could be all sunshine, kittens, and unicorns and they actually could have your child's online safety at heart, and if you believe that then perhaps you'd also be interested in some ocean frontage in Saskatchewan.

Not enough gain, too much pain.

I want my hardware to last longer than 2 years! A $700 nexus 6p or $400 5x should not require replacing unless it can no longer do the job for which it was purchased. Changing the operating system does not change (but may broaden) the tasks for which the device is being used, but that is not enough of a reason to go splash a few hundred hard-earned dollars on a new device.

At that frequency of obsolescence of every 24 months with minimal gain in functionality means that the law of diminishing returns is in play. My hard-earned cash stays where it is.

To Dropbox & Box

Be careful when cavorting with dragons, for thou art crunchy.

Best not to cavort at all.

-or-

Rule #1: Don't make deals/do business with Microsoft.

Rule #2: See rule #1.

Your Network, your Data, your hardware

Don't rely on other peoples compute infrastructures (cloud), the Internet and cloud services should not be relied upon to replace your compute environment which will in turn keep lack of access to the Internet from becoming an insurmountable problem.

Complexity is...

Complexity is the enemy of execution. Years ago I was involved with a large Bill Of Materials and Project management application for an automation house. There were many facets to the overall project, an RFQ system, QA and change management for engineering drawings, costing, shipping and receiving etc. The end product was simple to use, so much so that one manager questioned why the company threw all that money at the project when it appeared that a file manager and a spreadsheet could do the job. I thanked him for his critique and invited him to try as he suggested. He took me up on the offer, and failed. The initial impression of simplicity and ease of use was deceiving, and he later complemented us on the effort we put in to hide the underlying complexity of the application from the user.

Don't you just LOVE...

How the options to "Notify me three more times" and "Do not notify me again" are in a low contrast colour and don't look like buttons to be clicked on, while the "Upgrade Now" and "Remind Me Later" have white rectangles (buttons is you're using GEOS on a C=64) surrounding them with high contrast text.

This is the kind of scummy tactic used by crapware vendors in their adverts on sites like ZDnet and SourceForge to get the user to click on the wrong thing, or, in this case, not readily see the options to get Microsoft out of your face.

Change for change sake...

When KDE went off into the weeds I needed a saner GUI (you couldn't even put a shortcut on the desktop in the first release of KDE 4), and Gnome 2.x saved the day. With a clean configurable interface and a more logical arrangement of it's menu (Applications, Places, System) I found Gnome 2.x to be a pleasant work environment. I missed Konqueror and it's ability to split it's panes vertically and/or horizontally, however Nautilus was good and I could install and run Konqueror if the need arose.

Then paradise was lost. When Gnome 3 came out I figured they improved things, how wrong I was. There was no clue to the depth to which the lot of them had gone insane, and if Gnome 3 had been adequately described I would never have installed it. "Task-centric", and "unclutterd" was the constant chant being heard from the clearly megalomaniacal devs, who rebuked every critique with vitriol instead of considered thought. While Task-centric and uncluttered are both desireable traits, "usable" and "productive" are far better and Gnome 3 was neither of those. Their attitude and unwillingness to change/compromise has meant that Gnome has not since darkened my desktop, and likely never will, as I now use the more RDP/VNC friendly Mate.

MATE and Cinnamon have my support, in use and in the case of MATE, financially. Cinnamon is very well done and a quantum leap improvement on usability & customization vs GNOME 3, but does not get deployed due to it being less than usable via an RDP/VNC session.

Systemd is pernicious.

Targetted Adverts?

Kind of like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ

Nothing to see here...

Move along... move along.