I see. After 2x3 weeks of rented Ford Focus’s MS-sourced* infotainment system I had recurring fantasies involving sharks, fireants, piranhas, scorpions and its dev team.
* I believe Ford ditched MS shortly after, for Blackberry.
Posts by JLV
2252 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013
Page:
Did you hear? There's a critical security hole that lets web pages hijack computers. Of course it's Adobe Flash's fault
Wednesday 21st November 2018 04:09 GMT 
Oi, BBC, any plans to ditch it?
I mean its death's only 2 years away now.
And, before anyone asks, yes, I still see plenty of you-dont-have-Flash-installed s from them on my phone. I thought for a while that it would only happen at first page view, then reloading would show a regular video. As if they were doing just-in-time transcoding.
But now it just seems BBC often still wants Flash.
p.s. wouldn't want to forget Edge in this hall of lame, would we?
p.p.s. and, no, "redoing Flash from scratch" wouldn't do it. Too much flexibility in what can be run from internet sources, essentially an opaque closed source parallel JS, is just not a good idea. If you want video, embed it. If you want audio ditto. If you want animation, there's JS Canvas and SVG. Browsers and plugins are much more able to keep JS stuff locked down and even then it's a constant struggle.
Behold, the world's most popular programming language – and it is...wait, er, YAML?!?
Tuesday 20th November 2018 17:29 GMT
Re: No and yes [Was: HTML-only calculator?]
Ansible is configuration management software. Not a full-on programming language.
In the context of config management, I’d take a declarative approach, as allowed by YAML, over programmatic configuration any day.
YMMV, but I’ve sweated out both Chef and Ansible and Ansible just maps way more closely and naturally to a BASH command you’d be typing in manually.
This is just about my perceived ease of writing, not things like scaling, speed or idempotence.
Tuesday 20th November 2018 08:57 GMT
Re: Proppa language bruv
as far away from me as possible. xslt has the dubious distinction of making regexes seem limpid.
I am sure it’s useful, in some contexts. but it’s part of xml sad slide from, relative, simplicity into the swamps of xml schemas, SOAP and generally over-engineeredcomplicated Java-ness.
There’s a reason a lot of this stuff is getting superseded by lighter solutions, at least on greenfield projects.
Linux kernel Spectre V2 defense fingered for massively slowing down unlucky apps on Intel Hyper-Thread CPUs
Tuesday 20th November 2018 17:10 GMT
inquiring minds want to know
When are we due for Intel chips with the Spectres and Meltdowns vuln classes nuked again? Within reason, of course - nothing remains secure forever - but least without a whole slew of theoretical issues that hackers can play with.
It’s almost as if they didn’t want to jeopardize their current sales by having people put off buying.
If at first or second you don't succeed, you may be Microsoft: Hold off installing re-released Windows Oct Update
Saturday 17th November 2018 19:42 GMT
Re: Technical debt
>unbelievably stupid
Agreed, but that does have some nuances. There's a blog post somewhere titled "You're not Google" and it's about why solutions that work for Google may not work for you (the emphasis was on scaling-before-all not being a fit for everyone).
For FB (not a fan myself), moving fast, breaking and fixing may in fact be a good approach.
IF:
- you can re-deliver working software very easily. This is very true for websites, less so for PCs and quite a lot less for embedded. Steam games and smartphone apps are pretty good there too.
- the consequences to your users of an outage are trivial. For FB or a game, this holds true. For an online banking website it's not.
- you are largely read-only (Netflix)
- your users do not mind having to wait a while until things are fixed. This is not true for a computer's OS.
If you take steps to preserve data and privacy (let's not mention FB here) and if you can segment new code with A/B testing, then, yes, I'd argue this is not a bad approach. Netflix is on the extreme end as they deliberately break things to make them more resilient.
But most companies are NOT operating within those parameters. Stupidity happens when someone drinks the coolaid, takes an approach that works under certain circumstances and applies it willy-nilly.
Frequent build devops CAN be great on a website. It can also be great if it pumps new builds into a rigorous QA process, well-isolated from customers. I know I am dumb enough that getting something right takes me zillions of runs and builds - I'd have been fired in punchcard days - but then it usually stays working from that point on.
It sucks when it delivers failing code to your end users, destroys their data and keeps them from using the system.
Advice to MS: you are not FB*. Spend some $$$$$, hire some software quality supremos (maybe someone heading Linux/BSD builds), give them power, and fix your stupid practices that are making you a laughingstock, not just to the IT geeks but more and more to everyone else as well.
* holds true for your effin telemetry too.
Bright spark dev irons out light interference
Saturday 17th November 2018 18:46 GMT
Yeah, just shopped a new mini-ITX. The “mini” is stretching it these days: most of the units sold are for gamers. Priorities in cases: thermals, cosmetic LEDS, accommodation of large GPUs.
Ended up getting a used Xigmatek case, about 1 foot cube, for $40. Rest is new (Linux on Ryzen)
Gorgeous, very nice build quality, a joy to work with.
But small it’s not.
Microsoft menaced with GDPR mega-fines in Europe for 'large scale and covert' gathering of people's info via Office
Saturday 17th November 2018 18:35 GMT
Re: Zero Exhaust?
>why does M$ think it will take until April next year to make it generally available?
Easy. 5 months of desperate lobbying and Doublespeak ahoy explaining how _customers_ need slurping, they value our privacy and are always out to listen to customers.
Maybe that horse will sing by then.
Me I’m wondering who the lucky ones to benefit will be: Euro area only or Canadians too? (we already “benefit” from cookie warnings)
Michael Howard: Embrace of open source is destroying 'artificial definitions' of legacy vendors
Data-nicking UK car repairman jailed six months instead of copping a fine
Wednesday 14th November 2018 00:32 GMT
I don’t disagree about the particular legal criteria leading to his conviction.
I’m saying that when you have severe data breaches then individual should be liable for gross negligence or malfeasance.
In Equifax that might end up on whoever cut security budgets to the bone rather than the hapless sysadmins.
Cambridge would be whoever started slurping - who ordered it & who did it.
Assumption of innocence: unless it is proven either negligent or intentional, person walks away. Don’t want the job of sysadmin to become exposed to spiteful scapegoating either in case of honest errors.
Look at medical, public transport operators, etc... for guidelines.
But it’s high time we make individuals liable - large data breaches, not this particular lowlife, can result in thousands, if not millions, being exposed to fraud. How much crime will that facilitate? Not particularly fond of filling up prisons, but at some point it becomes worthwhile to dissuade certain types of crimes or negligence by harsh penalties.
Think of it this way: why are we cheering this bozo getting 6 months and accepting a truly trivial monetary penance from Equifax?
Tuesday 13th November 2018 16:40 GMT
Great. Now, how about applying this newfound severity, with jail time proportional to the volumes, to the bosses involved in some of the bigger data breach.
Thinking Cambridge Analytica, Equifax...
Oh, and some of the direct “just following orders” worker bees doing the dirty work too.
Don’t even always need real - taxpayer costly - jail time. Suspended sentence and criminal record is a good start.
Junior dev decides to clear space for brewing boss, doesn't know what 'LDF' is, sooo...
Tuesday 13th November 2018 05:56 GMT
I was working as an account manager/do-everything-guy at the local branch of an up and coming software multinational. I was tech guy at core, but a dev, not a sysadmin.
A livid customer's IT manager contacted my boss about our app's database crashing on them. He had never liked us, we were chosen by the biz side over his objections, so his moment to gloat. Yes, his "DBA" had been backing up faithfully every day, but now they had lost a full day's work since this was a late afternoon crash. So he wanted our RDMS vendor to examine his database core dump. IMMEDIATELY and he had already notified his C-levels of the snafu.
Dragged in our local CTO - yes, we were that small, and we looked at the Gupta SQL database manual together.
- open at index
- Restore DB, page 35, yes.
- But, that's gonna lose them that full day. That's what they're bitching about.
- (5 minutes later) Wait, what's that Log Journal Replay thingy?
- OK, let's just call them and tell them to restore and then follow procedure at page 42 of manual to replay the day's transactions.
Never heard of Mr IT again, but the customer's business person told us he came off as a proper ass when it became obvious they had never attempted a recovery or even read up on how to do one. Remember how upper management was notified? It's amazing how some people are incompetent at even management games.
The biz guy was pretty happy, they only lost 15 minutes or so of data. First time I got an inkling of what an LDF was for ;-)
I found a security hole in Steam that gave me every game's license keys and all I got was this... oh nice: $20,000
Tuesday 13th November 2018 00:47 GMT
Re: Tsk tsk tsk
+1
Not to mention that games, or at least a significant subset of them, sit in a massive blind spot for open source, by nature.
Many of our favorite games involve the element of surprise and discovery. How will you be surprised, as a player, if the underlying economic model depends solely on the, otherwise very successful, notion of user-contributors? It can work, very well, for game engines. But not for game content where users need to be dissociated from creators.
Fail, edris90, fail.
Arm kit vendors snuggle up around the Windows 10 Autumnwatch bonfire awaiting supported OS
Saturday 10th November 2018 17:58 GMT
>ReactOS purports to seamlessly run Windows apps and drivers in an open-source environment.
Wondering what the asinine decision to support API copyrighting in the Oracle vs Google Android case could mean for this type of endeavor in the future? This is why the Supremes need to nuke that from orbit asap.
This just in: What? No, I can't believe it. The 2018 MacBook Air still a huge pain to have repaired
Saturday 10th November 2018 17:08 GMT
Hey, Binky, why is how I want to spend my money any of your business again? Do you see me tut-tutting at your driveway because my 25K$-when-new, 10 year old, Civic is thriftier than what you drive?
My point was that we are not comparing 800$ BestBuy laptops here. For this, my work computer, I need lots of RAM and beefy storage (Retina level displays are a waste tho). The equivalents in non-Apple land, by the big PC manufacturers, are not cheap. So, I'm talking paying 30% premium for a tool I'll be using for the next 6-7 years at least. I've also used, in the past, HPs, Toshibas, Acer laptops. They all kinda sucked, IIRC and I was glad to see the end of them after 3-4 years.
>get a Linux support shop to set up Linux
More diktat-ing of what's best for me, Herr Kommissar? I know Linux perfectly well, once it is on a pre-installed system. I just don't want to deal with system configuration from scratch on laptops with somewhat exotic components like say fingerprint sensors and (hopefully decent) trackpads. And, now, according to your wisdom, I need to take a brand new laptop and get Linux on it by a shop. How does that do for the warranty period again? Think Dell will be happy troubleshooting a Linux-ed system if they didn't install it? And the shop will work for free? Some of the Ubuntu-certified laptops are not, in fact, being sold with Linux on it in Canada. Just Windows.
How much is my time worth till I think $900 is not that great a saving, in this particular case?
It's not like I really really like Apple, the company. My beef is that a new laptop from them is not like my 2011 MBP. It's not serviceable and they gouge you on RAM and SSD capacities. I returned a 2016 upgrade after 2 weeks, didn't like the keyboard or the stupid Touchbar. And, yes, I also resent their focus on looks and weight for what's intended as a light workstation.
Show me a laptop with a similar build quality to my old MBP, metal enclosure, Linux pre-installed/supported, and easily replaceable components and I'm willing to consider the, relatively light, changes to my workflow from using open source software on Linux rather than on Apple's consumer-level BSD.
And that's what I was asking about here, not your opinion on how I spend my $, thank you very much.
Friday 9th November 2018 07:09 GMT
In the recent macOS penguinista article there were many suggestions for Linux based alternatives. I ran past the usual suspects and was not that impressed. A highly kitted out Dell or Lenovo is cheaper than a MBP but not by a huge amount ($2700 vs $3600 is not that great if it puts me in charge of driver configuration and installation after wiping Windows - I frankly dislike that chore, sorry. Been there, done failed that).
And lots of them seem to have the same spiffy, sleek, sexy look as macs. And likely the same soldered & glued innards as this article. Leaving me pretty much where I would be with a mac, albeit on Linux. But Linux retro-installed on Windows hardware, most likely.
But one person recommended Librems by Purism. I could care less about some of their ideological aims, such as banishing non Libre components, to be honest. But they apparently have fully swappable RAM and SSD layouts - std Phillips screwdriver and you can go to town.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3223865/laptop-computers/purism-librem-15.html
Now, that gets me all hot and bothered. And a custom Linux distro, which could be very good - stable drivers+hardware. Or bad, as in a rebranding exercise that gets you further from std distros without adding value.
Anyone used them in anger? Happy?
My hoard of obsolete hardware might be useful… one day
UK rail lines blocked by unexpected Windows dialog box
Macs to Linux fans: Stop right there, Penguinista scum, that's not macOS. Go on, git outta here
Wednesday 7th November 2018 16:23 GMT
Uh uh. System 76, for one, had a bunch of users complaining about build quality. On a forum dedicated to laptop Linux. Do your research carefully, wise penguins.
I spend enough time in bash, Ubuntu, browsers and text editors that going off Apple is a distinct option for me if their gear doesn’t shape up a bit from its current style-over-substance, no repairs or upgrading.
But I’d want something well built and just because something is sold with Linux preinstalled doesn’t mean it can’t be more Acer than Toughbook.
Mything the point: The AI renaissance is simply expensive hardware and PR thrown at an old idea
Wednesday 7th November 2018 00:58 GMT
>A system like this can be trained to play a complex game like Go, or Chess,
good point, but to go further the current state of the art is a computer can’t be taught Go and Chess together (other than doing it twice). it really is very single-purpose, there is _no_ generalization involved in the actual learning.
Tuesday 6th November 2018 16:43 GMT 
Good article, need more
Very well-said. Pattern recognition and trained systems _are_ impressive. Back in the 90s the little we heard about AI had a lot to say how hard it was conceptually to design a computer to recognize objects* (granted, more T-72s & 80s than cats). We seem to be making excellent headway there - and, again this is a significant field. In many ways it has more real world relevance than most of the fledgling real AI work to date.
And the Go-winning computer did have some fairly novel takes on strategy IIRC.
But is not making thinking computers, let alone self-aware ones. That's a subject that is both the perennial 20 years away, always, and not talked about much these days.
I'd be curious to know how much this new found fervour for "fake" AI has impacted funding and researcher uptake on actual AI - the kind where a computer could reliably infer and respond to a new question like "is there water in the fridge?" without scanning millions of dialog transcripts to guess or being an advance-built kitchen/appliance narrow specialist. What's that field up to?
I'll guess it's meant massive brain and $ drain but would welcome a future article.
p.s. old book, but 'Blondie 24' is an accessible and entertaining pop sci take on neural nets. author site: http://www.davidfogel.com/ No affiliations on my part.
p.p.s. re the black-box, can't-explain objection to neural net AI, that's a valid point, but there's no guarantee a "more worthy, traditional" AI system that isn't based on humans pre-entering rules would automatically be transparent by nature.
Facebook sets Linux kernel tools free
Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads
Thursday 1st November 2018 11:44 GMT
Whatever else Apple is up to, Lana is such an amazingly hot, over-talented, singer who writes her own lyrics and controls her own 50s-styled videos. Jazz? She'd almost make me like jazz.
Like, she's a really good, rainbow-unicorn-level Youtube-launched artist, and really doesn't hurt looking at either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chsnOSzLjJk
Bomb squad descends on suspicious package to find something much more dangerous – a Journey cassette
Woman who hooked up with over 15 spectres has found her forever phantom after whirlwind romance and plane sex
From today, it's OK in the US to thwart DRM to repair your stuff – if you keep the tools a secret
Tuesday 30th October 2018 09:33 GMT
Re: But how are...
Dumb argument. There are tons of after market car parts available for purchase.
And I bet tons of legal precedents skewering drivers who proceeded to render their car unroadworthy by screwing with it. In case of accident, someone who effed it deserves the book thrown at them.
Till then, you buy, you own.
Gotta try harder, you ain't going to be taking on the equivalent of Pai's responsibilities lobbying for "regulating" your chosen industry with such a feeble effort.
BTW, wouldn't sharing source code, if it's not aimed at circumventing a law, be covered by the First Amendment?
Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz
The D in Systemd stands for 'Dammmmit!' A nasty DHCPv6 packet can pwn a vulnerable Linux box
Saturday 27th October 2018 02:33 GMT 
how did it get to this?
I've been using runit, because I am too lazy and clueless to write init scripts reliably. It's very lightweight, runs on a bunch of systems and really does one thing - keep daemons up.
I am not saying it's the best - but it looks like it has a very small codebase, it doesn't do much and generally has not bugged me after I configured each service correctly. I believe other systems also exist to avoid using init scripts directly. Not Monit, as it relies on you configuring the daemon start/stop commands elsewhere.
On the other hand, systemd is a massive sprawl, does a lot of things - some of them useful, like dependencies and generally has needed more looking after. Twice I've had errors on a Django server that, after a lot of looking around ended up because something had changed in the, Chef-related, code that's exposed to systemd and esoteric (not emitted by systemd) errors resulted when systemd could not make sense of the incorrect configuration.
I don't hate it - init scripts look a bit antiquated to me and they seem unforgiving to beginners - but I don't much like it. What I certainly do hate is how, in an OS that is supposed to be all about choice, sometime excessively so as in the window manager menagerie, we somehow ended up with one mandatory daemon scheduler on almost all distributions. Via, of all types of dependencies, the GUI layer. For a window manager that you may not even have installed.
Talk about the antithesis of the Unix philosophy of do one thing, do it well.
Oh, then there are also the security bugs and the project owner is an arrogant twat. That too.
Californian chap sets his folks' home on fire by successfully taking out spiders with blowtorch
Should a robo-car run over a kid or a grandad? Healthy or ill person? Let's get millions of folks to decide for AI...
Thursday 25th October 2018 17:12 GMT
The pure trolley problem sounds cool and interesting, but is a bit of intellectual masturbation, innit? At least in the context of self-driving cars.
I wouldn’t mind if it was a problem that really happened and had to be solved. But has it _ever_ happened? How much energy is going to be spent on it while other AI driving issues are not addressed? But, hey, plenty of jobs for self proclaimed AI ethicists recycled from philosophy PhDs ;-)
If the car can spare the processing cycles to ponder this, why would it not be able to avoid the issue in the first place? In fact, as anyone working in tech knows, keeping it simple is one of the best ways to have performant and effective systems that don't fail often. So, if you did manage to code in the trolley problem, what effect does that have on the car's ability to make decisions insplit seconds on more general conditions? Would it become less reliable, and less safe?
Not that there aren’t valid variations on it. Your car is about to hit a pedestrian crossing out of bounds. It can hit her. Or swerve you into a wall. You won’t get hurt, car will be totalled. I’d say car ought to get sacrificed, as long as you are not at serious risk. Now, what if it’s a dog? People do get into accidents for this stuff unlike trolley pretend issue.
The trolley problem certainly _does_ have large scale real life applications, such as allocating finite medical funding in national health car systems. The difference is it is a real problem and that the decision need not be made quickly.
But let’s not pretend it has much to do with real life self-driving AI’s current concerns.
Sysadmin running a Mac fleet? IBM has just thrown you a lifeline
Wednesday 24th October 2018 18:52 GMT
>Apple doesn't really care about enterprise customers - at least they don't deliberately target them
Agreed. However Apple has a 1$T market cap to look after. Unless it wants to be “tacky” and “old-economy” and issue dividends, it has to keep finding new markets.
Making cars is an expected move, and it would take off pressure, because of the scale. But it’s not easy.
Except for that, they’ve stuck their fingers in about all the usual suspects wrt to consumer gadgets.
This gradual disaffection w Windows is opening up a massive opportunity for whoever manages to take advantage of it.
Extrapolating the future from the past is not necessarily wrong but is hardly foolproof.
Wednesday 24th October 2018 16:58 GMT 
Isn't Apple's lacklustre support for enterprise fleet management a welcome relief for MS at this time? I remember, among other things, big holes in macOS' LDAP configuration security.
Anything that gets Apple more credible for big businesses should be a big worry @ Redmond. And, if it were to gain traction, it would be a big new market for Apple, all at MS's expense. It's also a small step writing and managing non-GUI Posix code for macOS and and Linux. And IBM announced some biz apps for iPads a while back too.
Windows 8 and 10 have eroded goodwill. Consumers mock it. MS can't afford complacency wrt corporate customers if credible desktop competitors arrive.
Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait
Wednesday 24th October 2018 10:20 GMT
alternate look by Ars at the same issue
Good article and a much needed wake up call to Redmond. Ars has an alternate take on this, which starts out with the same premise, that that Windows is broken, and suggests a complementary possible cause.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsofts-problem-isnt-shipping-windows-updates-its-developing-them/
Basically, the author says that new features are developed in isolation, often without using automated testing. The active coding interval is surprisingly short, 8-10 weeks. Then, near the end everything is thrown into the pot together, integration testing - a lot of it manual - starts and bugs are slowly brought under control.
His concern is that this process, barely adequate at the best of time, managed to somewhat work under 3 year cycles. Under accelerated, cyclic releases, there just isn't enough time to corral all the bugs.
It seems kinda hard to believe that this would be the case, but I know of at least one ERP system, by a one of the usual billion $ suspects, where the development pipeline of 200+ engineers regularly came to a crashing halt whenever a bug made it to the build: there is only 1 test server. Must do wonders for software quality, when every bug, no matter how complex, requires immediate fixing to unblock everyone else. Bug found at 9pm Friday has to be fixed by 8am Monday. Every. Single. Time.
In a way, that is even more worrying that this article's premise. Sure, MS has enough money to throw more people at testing, and it should. And, sure, it should stop treating Insiders as a serious resource: witness their assent in the face of the Windows 8.0 GUI changes. Everyone else hated it, so they obviously weren't an appropriate way to gauge user acceptance or suitability.
But these remain fairly simple problems to solve, given the will and the resources.
But if MS's culture and tooling is incapable of using a mature and efficient process to flag bugs early in the development cycle, including issues arising from interactions between features, then changing that culture would be extremely challenging for any organization, let alone one with a product with as much technical debt as Windows and one with such a rich history of interdepartmental conflicts.
MS can't go back to 3 year cycles, but it also doesn't seem like it is at all capable of making do with 1 year cycles, at least not with its current way to approach development.
Wednesday 24th October 2018 07:21 GMT
Re: Here are some tips on how to reduce the testing workload
> I finally figured out I had to hit a greyed out option somewhere deep in the energy settings...
+10. Been there. It was worse though: not in the energy settings proper but under 2 levels of unlabelled GUIDs in the Registry - there was Sleep-related Boolean to toggle ;-) No, I didn't figure it out myself: this idiotic setting is all over the web, because it's been putting machines to sleep at unwanted moments ever since Windows 7.
Say whatever you want about obscure Linux settings: they usually have cryptic names, not GUIDs.
F***=off, Google tells its staff: Any mention of nookie now banned from internal files, URLs
Tuesday 23rd October 2018 00:50 GMT
Re: Call me a prude..
Agreed. I can have a fairly foul mouth, but putting it in writing (even in personal emails) is just not the cleverest thing. Let alone company documents. Prudes and ill wishers can easily use that to undermine you. Sadly, we’re not all indispensable a la Linus.
Good moment for life-work balance separation.
GitHub.com freezes up as techies race to fix dead data storage gear
Monday 22nd October 2018 23:29 GMT
Re: The Microsoft Curse?
>MS bashing is just sad.
Well, technically speaking you are right since purchase is still ongoing. But, looking at the headline I just knew MS was going to get bashedpowershelled and was looking forward to it. And also to the logic contortions that the haters were going to be use to somehow blame them.
What, you’re always reasonable, fair and mature?
Joking aside, github effups are very high profile, MS best take that into account once they do run it.
Insects with farts that smell like coriander assist in covering up Paris's aroma d'urine
Friday 19th October 2018 19:52 GMT
Arome de pisse? Could have something to do with having to pay for bathrooms everywhere, including in businesses you have to pay for.
Exhibit A. Sundays 20 years ago Gare de l'Est would be filled with trains taking Army draftees to their barracks in Germany. Very poorly paid, beer guzzling draftees, like me, I would add. SNCF insisted on making extra money on their bathrooms, so the back alley to the left was flooded with piss.
Free toilets - mostly serving SNCFs customers - would have solved that in a jiffee. But, no, gotta have our Dames Pipi instead - old women, in the men's room, sitting at a desk, collecting coins.
Effin embarassing to be French in this context. And don't get me started on that other tradition, the ever gross Toilette a la Turque - squat upright loo. https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilettes_%C3%A0_la_turque
Enterprise Java caretakers float new rules of engagement for future feature updates
Thursday 18th October 2018 22:00 GMT
Re: Not evolving fast enough?
Why the f... do you feel the need for your usual stuck uppercase keyboard “2D FLATSO” rant in the context of a J2EE post?
It’s tedious enough - even you’re admittedly somewhat correct - in the context of a Windows/macOS desktop or a mobile UI.
But J2EE is server tech. Not GUI. Move that stuck needle outta the groove, dear, it’s grating to listen to.
Thursday 18th October 2018 19:24 GMT
Re: Try more tricks.
>Java exists
This isn't just Java though, it's the J2EE server side spec. Whatever you think of Java proper, J2EE manages to make it look simple and lightweight. J2EE is heavily predicated on XML-izing Java code, basically to sidestep Java's so-useful typing. Ever tried to grok deeply nested XML? It's also a triumph of OOP design purity over common sense. How about Entity Beans that can instantiate wherever they want, instead of preferentially or exclusively on the local machine? Because SQL network access is free, time-wise. Java designers' love of Design Patterns seems to have reached its high mark here.
In short, who would _start_ a greenfield project in this tech? Esp considering Java core's new licensing costs. That survey? 92% of respondents are on Java SE 8, which came out early 2014. Or earlier.
21st Century COBOL, just more complicated.
Google Cloud chief joins Saudi shindig exodus over journalist's worrying disappearance
Wednesday 17th October 2018 16:51 GMT
Re: Lets face facts
A wily king who pulled the oldest trick in the book and coopted his local religious leaders to support him in return for his kind assistance in asserting their dogma and rooting out heresy and laicity.
See also Putin. And Trump, who’s managed to convince a sizeable proportion of religious folk that he’s somehow promoting Jesus’ values.
Back to the House of Saud tho. Without those $hitheads, their $$$$ and the unfortunate fact that that the Wahhabi branch is an outlier bunch of fanatics, we’d get along much better with Muslims.
France’s massive fail in the 80s and 90s when I was living there was to do absolutely nothing to accomodate Muslim mosque requirements, in the name of laicity. (Never mind the centuries of tithes that begat all those mostly empty churches).
Instead we welcomed Saudi money to build mosques and fund imams. Clever.
Look up Pakistan and Afghanistan in 79-89 anti USSR timeline. 1 to 1 fund matching CIA/Saudi, but Saudi controlled which groups got funded. Hint: anti Russian military capabilities secondary to Islamic zeal and bigotry.
Islam is really badly served by those lecherous jackasses and their control of their holy sites.
Tuesday 16th October 2018 20:59 GMT
Re: Catch 45
He could just say that he's taking it very seriously and expects full explanations from the Saudis*.
Very presidential. Also, and it's just a concept I am throwing out here, gives the impression of someone who thinks and waits for the facts to come in before making decisions and giving his opinion. In real life, most of us value that in our leaders, whether we are Liberals or Conservatives, grunts or office workers.
Should the American people not hold this president up to this level of expectation?
* In fact, that is what he started out saying earlier. Just couldn't keep his mouth shut tho.
Fed up with cloud giants ripping off its database, MongoDB forks new 'open-source license'
Tuesday 16th October 2018 20:59 GMT
https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license
Seems worse than GPL and AGPL, where you can use software, as long as do it across process boundaries and don't link to it. I.e. you can run GPL mysql without any worries. And only the bits that were linked to the GPL code needed publishing.
The REDIS spin was much more forgiving and likely more pragmatic as well. Only some particular value-added modules were shoved under their new license. I use REDIS and see no problem with that at all, it's a reasonable compromise between openness and paying the bills.
REDIS aside, never been a big fan of Mongo and NOSQL and this won't be changing my mind. Basically I fail to see what use case you would have, as a for-profit entity, for running the risk of using it with the new license. Perhaps if only your data is something you need to keep to yourself?
13. Offering the Program as a Service.
If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge, under the terms of this License. Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Software or modified version.
“Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
