Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: A wise man once told me..

Alternative version:

Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and then beat you with their greater experience.

Re: Awkward

Won't they be on the embedded version which still has life left in it?

Re: Upgrade from Windows 7

In my case there's a W7 Starter edition on a little dual boot net-top. As of yesterday it had 4 updates that failed to install (5 really but one seems to be the one that warns of doom and EoL so I hid that). I'm not really persuaded that, even with best efforts to keep it updated, a current Windows box can be kept secure. Fortunately neither that nor the W2K VM are going to be used on the net.

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

I think that's what Linus wants to do. But it's hard for him to express this without the use of profanity... do this without contacting and getting the approval of all past kernel contributors including those who have experienced their own kernel panic and gone to that great dump partition in the sky.

FTFY

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

"So why is it Oracle’s fault?"

Or at least Sun's...

Back in the day there were suggestions that the CDDL licence was deliberately designed to be incompatible with GPL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License

Re: Hypocritical

"Surely someone remembers SCO?"

Yes. It made a really good but maybe overpriced SMB server OS before it turned into a litigation company.

Re: Hypocritical

For example?

And ask Travlex if that's really a good idea.

Re: Even Easier

The irony is that the database storage could be OK and this is just a bodged print conversion. If not the print problem is the least of their worries.

Re: ... but it's all publically available anyway ?

If you published their integrated version of it their lawyers would be very quick to explain to you the difference between what's in that and the separate publicly available data bases - and complain you were infringing their copyright.

Re: Ted Codd

Too much like hard work.

Re: And closer to home?

To be fair why should they expect UK police forces to be any more scrupulous in handling somebody else's database when they persistently fail to delete data they've been told to delete by UK courts.

Re: CheckMate

"Here they'd be fined an astronomical amount, then close the business to avoid paying the fine."

In which case their failure to read the fine print of the DPA would come as a nasty surprise to them. Yes, officials can be held responsible.

Re: @ Warm Braw

"Airliners have to undergo expensive maintenance at regular intervals, and there's a whole infrastructure around that. Not to mention the certifications of aircraft maintenance technicians."

But flying taxis would be disruptive so they don't have to worry about things like that.

Re: We have the technology

"The bigger problem with mega cities is they are just too 'ing dense. Most people don't want to live in them so they find a house or flat in the burbs and commute."

Those are the second and third order problems. The first order problem is that they're too big in terms of both population and the volume of business being conducted in them. Distribute the business to smaller cities which need a smaller population, less density and less commuting.

There may, of course, be a zero order problem of too many people but we seem well overdue for a pandemic which could take care of that.

Re: Flying taxis = wrong solution to right problem

"In a city like London, the surface is full up."

Crossrail shows that things are getting tricky below the surface as well.

Re: What we need are

No, you just get chopped into packets and reassembled at the other end.

Re: "Lightsaber"

Emmer.

Multiverses seem to have their own branch of cosmology.

Re: the Hubble variable

Compile? Maybe it's just running in an interpreter.

Re: Differences

Fair enough. Didn't see it in time.

Re: Differences

"Constant's aren't" is one of the basic rules of software development. Maybe it applies to universes too.

Re: 281 cases settled

I bet the settlements were on the basis of "No admission of wrongdoing" or similar.

So do I.

Because a company can settle and then publicly deny the factor that lead them to settle I think they get into a habit of thinking that this applies to any dispute that went against them. Maybe this is why we then get companies continuing to deny an actual decision that went against them.

Re: To the Armchair Engineers

"You can test each change."

"Can" and "will" are different words with different meanings and consequences.

Re: That's interesting..

You have to wonder how much of that stock will ever get delivered.

Re: Decent aircraft

"it wouldn't be too much to ask the Boeing be broken up and sold off"

I can imagine something of that sort happening. The US would want to preserve the armaments business. If the loss of reputation on the passenger side were to put that at risk then breaking it up might follow PDQ.

Re: "the FAA remains focused on [..] returning the Boeing 737 MAX to passenger service"

I wonder to what extent the FAA's [lack of] involvement in all this should be counted as state aid, something the US has been vocal about in others and particular others who were competing with Boeing.

Re: I guess

"a lack of production capability to suddenly take up the entire market share that Boeing had this time last year."

Sub-contract some of the work to Boeing? But inspect it very, very carefully.

"unless business as usual comes to a screeching halt over this, which I doubt"

If it has enough bad effect on sales it could well have that effect. Of course the armaments side of the business wouldn't be affected and the US govt obviously has an interest in keeping that going. I wonder if we'll see the corporation split to protect that.

"Can anyone recommend any alternatives?"

I only use them for domain and email: Mythic Beasts.

"Surely Virgin, Unimax (who?) and the US gov are more responsible for these phones since they actually make and distribute them."

The US gov makes or distributes phones? Since when?

OTOH I'd agree that the obvious line of attack would be those selling them, at least under European customer protection legislation. It's then up to the vendor to twist the arms of the makers.

Re: Isn't Android open source?

There is a big difference between Google using its monopoly power to favour its own products and using it for customer protection.