Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Mac/Linux user

Xerox, just like Jobs did.

Re: Endless recycling

I've spent a lifetime applying this principle to physical desks. It's known as the one heap system. "I know where it it. It's in there."*

The problem with that it that sometimes manglements tried to apply a clear desk policy** so the whole lot periodically got dumped into a pocket of a filing cabinet. At that point stuff was truly lost because after that had been done a few times I wouldn't know which pocket it was in.

*The same applies to a large extent to the desktop on my computer. It's one reason I prefer KDE - I can do that, something Gnome devs, obviously empty deskers, try to make difficult and, unlike some others, it's easier to setup so that stuff stays in the same place.

* *Believers in this policy keep saying things like "A clear desk means a clear mind." whereas I think "An empty desk means an empty head." usually applies to them.

Re: Opposite button labelling

"Or like if you want to shut down your computer you click START?"

No, I click on the little blues square that has a K and 3/4 of a gear wheel on it. Or type in shutdown -h -now.

Re: "who wondered whether Thompson might somehow have used uppercase or special characters"

IIRC control characters including backspace were acceptable.

Re: I have to thank ken for my passwords

Real BOFHs certainly are.

Re: I have to thank ken for my passwords

" statistics application ... retype it from printer listings. In the process they discovered several bugs that affected the validity of the application's previous results."

Let me guess. FORTRAN. Misspelled variable names. Been there, done that.

Thanks for that link. Awesome indeed.

Re: few days?

"I very much doubt that anything they had in the day could have brute-forced that password in any time within a human lifetime."

It depends which day. The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll is an interesting read. I can't remember the period to which it relates but I think it was the 386 era. Someone had hacked into a system he looked after and he discovered they'd copied the passwd file. In those days passwd contained actual passwords. They came back a few days later using some cracked passwords.

The passwd file needs to be universally readable so that programs can look up the owner name of a file from its numerical owner, e.g. ls -l That's why we don't now have passwords in passwd but in shadow.

Re: At the risk of topic drift, can I ask for a recommendation for a mono laser...

"just leave the faulty one resting for a bit!"

The service fairies - first cousins to the tooth fairies. I had the same with valves in an old PA amp. Periodically it would go seriously awry with one valve running its anode red hot and the other about as cold as an 807 (IIRC) can get. Swap in the resting valve for one of them and carry on for a few months.

Re: At the risk of topic drift, can I ask for a recommendation for a mono laser...

Old printer plus new drum might still have been a better combo than the new printer.

Re: Gave up on HP years ago

"died, caught fire andsank into a swamp."

You're not going to leave it there are you? Enquiring minds need details.

I believe it was thought as a way for "planned obsolescence"

No doubt, but it doesn't work with the make money on cartridges problem; that works best if the cartridge design has a large installed base of printers to fit. If it only fits those you sold last week and maybe the week before it's not going to recoup its costs let alone those of the printer. I think HP's problem was too many ideas for screwing customers colliding with each other even without third party interventions.

Re: Landfill

"near" is the killer word there. I didn't find my Laserjet 3020 on the Mopria site. I'm not sure if it's not there or whether their website simply couldn't find it in a long list. I got the impression, however, that the website was simply cycling through the same list of Laserjet Pro, Laserjet Enterprise etc. The site wouldn't encourage me to use their drivers.

The tattiness may be part of their problem. If they sell a low quality printer at a loss it might never last long enough to eat enough HP cartridges to give an overall profit before it joins the empty cartridges in land-fill.

Do you understand what the word "offensive" means? It offends, by definition.

OTOH if you don't want to be offended stop looking so assiduously for offence to take.

"businesses are there to make a profit."

And a few businesses contribute to free S/W such as the Linux kernel but these areonly fringe businesses, right? Fringe businesses like Intel.

Re: Hmmm

Why give potential spammers (and that includes any business where you are the product) your main email address?

Re: An outsider asks....

And also read roomey's post above and how reports of that violence affected him as a child.

Re: technology yet to be available

These terms have different meanings in politics. Theory is what you invoke to prove that the untested thing you're about to d will work. Hypotheticals are how you dismiss the explanations of how and why that untested thing won't work.

Re: Not going to work but

The ones who at one time provided a number of guaranteed Parliamentary seats for the Conservative and Unionist party, the last part of whose name BoJo might have conveniently forgotten.

Re: Let's not forget...

Agreed, but it's going to be a rather wide verge.

Re: Mission Impossible

"No-deal Brexit instantly guarantees a hard Irish/NI border."

Not instantly. It'd take time. And that's only in terms the extend to anyone could guarantee such a thing.

I suspect the solution is going to be Boris crashing us out with no deal in defiance of the Benn Act followed by a strong dose of reality. After that the defiance of the Benn Act can be invoked as the basis for saying that it never happened, rather like the first prorogation never happened. Alternatively as a punishment Boris should be kept in place to run the mess he created up until the end of the fixed term Parliament next May.

Re: Real inanity

"the Maybot (who voted remain) "

We don't know how she voted in the referendum. As a thoroughly house-trained Home Sec she'd have wanted to get out from under the ECJ but saying so in public would have ended her career after the expected Remain victory. I'm convinced that a minimal support for Remain was simply a career choice.

Re: It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic

Given the nebulous requirements the solution must be cloud-based.

Re: In event of Brexit emergency, break grass

The international order follows county borders. I'm not sure how old those are but I'd guess they follow older parish and/or townland borders and maybe property borders before that. As at the time it was all one country it didn't matter too much if a property straddled a county border. Given partition the border had to be drawn somewhere and, short of sending out a team of surveyors and lawyers to argue every inch, the county boundaries would have seemed the most practical. But as to whether partition was ill-judged or not, the alternative would have been the north fighting a war of secession. Whether that would have settled the Irish Question permanently is a matter for speculation but as we know politicians favour a short term solution whatever the long-term cost.

Re: Not a moment too soon

People also do legitimate business over the internet. That requires that it should be possible to exchange information confidentially if that's required and essential to confirm a transaction reliably. By "reliably" I mean that it shouldn't be possible for some third person to intercept and amend the transaction, impersonate one of the parties, forge a transaction nor for one of the parties to repudiate their part in it. That requires an end-to-end secure system. Whilst that may upset some branches of government others, those concerned with trade and the economy, should be pressing for it.

While personally I'd not want to use anything provided by Facebook for such a purpose the need for a secure, end-to-end secure messaging system needs to be met somehow and the best way to achieve it would be through an open standard defined, in the internet way, by an RFC with multiple, including FOSS, implementations available. Email ought to provide that but doesn't, not without add-ons. Either e replacement standard is required for that or a new standard is needed to sit beside it to provide for such messaging.

Re: Out of curiosity ...

" two down votes ... No explanations why!"

I think it works like this. Somebody posts something. You post an irrefutable reply which contradicts it. OP can either mutter "oh shit, why did I post that?" and move on or get upset and resentful. OP's only recourse is to keep downvoting every post you make.

TL;DR Wear your downvotes with pride, you were right and somebody knows it.

Re: Phirst Aid ?

Maybe they were suggested in Irish and only translated once they'd been approved.