Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: '"how far can I push this before it gets silly". A true engineer'

Whether it was good engineering depends on whether it was well optimised for its target. It would appear that the optimisation was for cost, not CPU use.

As recently as that?

1) Easy to configure. If I want to change how an init-script controlled service behaves, I sometimes can do that by changing a 12 line init script. And at other times, I have to wade through hundreds of lines of uncommented shellcode. I prefer a unified way, where the same syntax is concise, and applied to every service in the same way.

If I want to change an init-script I can see exactly what it does. The workings are exposed, however many lines there might be. I can run the code from the command line and step through it if need be. If I change a config file I'm just relying on a black box to do something, hope it's right and submit a bug to be marked WONTFIX is it isn't.

2 & 3) See 1 above.

AFAIK the Gnome crowd are trying to make systemd essential to their stuff. As far as I'm concerned they're welcome to each other but if too much other stuff just assumes systemd and its tentacles are there to be used then it could become worrying time to move to BSD.

"for too long Linux (and the rest of us) has been riding on the ancient UNIX/POSIX design"

The reason I use Linux is that it implements that design.

Re: @jake - "2 users though have frequently requested systemd support"

They have the signing keys for secure boot. So long as you can turn that off it's not an immediate problem but in essence it's a dangerous monopoly. If systems are sold with BIOSs that don't provide for that they have control of what can be booted on a PC. Strange things seem to be happening in the world of BIOS - my current laptop has a very strange one without the many parameters you could tweak on AMI and the like.

Re: My email wasn't blank...

VISA can charge whatever they want get away with.

If a few other merchants follow suit they won't get away with it for long.

Re: My email wasn't blank...

I wonder if the email was entirely HTML (except for visible sig) and the client set to plain text. That can lead to apparently empty emails even when there are a few megs of images included.

Re: My email wasn't blank...

"However, I am really surprised Amazon chose to take this public."

If they're going to stop accepting a major payment method they could hardly keep it quiet. It would have been an even bigger story if it just stopped without warning on January 19th.

Re: That trade deal with the US to make up for Brexit...

World Beating is not just even a vain boast !

FTFY

Re: The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)

I think of it as Culture Media. You can grow very nasty things in culture media.

How free does a society remain once monopolists get to work?

Re: That trade deal with the US to make up for Brexit...

"meant to be, eventually, a grand US trade deal"

Meant to be and reality don't necessarily coincide. In this case you also have to take into account who it was who was doing the meaning.

Re: "There is no inventive concept that provides something more than the abstract idea itself"

At least the courts are starting to notice. What I'd like to see next is a party losing a patent infringement case successfully claiming its costs against the USPTO on the basis that if the office hadn't issued the patent they wouldn't have incurred their costs. That would make them tighten up their scrutiny.

Re: Contractors

It can also happen when contract admin forgets to renew the contracts or there's a freeze on spending.

Re: What this boils down to

Expensive lessons are likely to be buried in unmarked graves.

Re: Workplace Bullying

A lot of whooshes in those downvotes, I think.

Re: But it's up to us

"Zoom doesn't work on older computers (e.g. Vista etc)"

Zoom works on Linux. When SWMBO was running her patchwork classes remotely they met by Zoom and, of course, her laptop runs on Linux.

A problem shared is now somebody else's.

"dealing with a sales person"

Say what you like about crabs, but they're not fussy eaters.

Re: Alternatively. . .

I once spent a couple of very cold, wet, smelly days watching the contents of a pig farm slurry pit being pumped out* to see if any of the thousands of bones looked human. None did.

* Result of a false tip-off to the police. There were a few of those over the years in the search for Thomas Niedermayer.

Concentrated Sulphuric acid and 95%+ Hydrogen Peroxide potassium dichromate?

Makes chromic acid. We used it to disinfect used bacteriology kit. Very effective disinfectant. The H&S briefing for the lab assistnat was to simply drop a few sheets of filter paper into it so she could see them instantly disappear.