Posts by Doctor Syntax 33045 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
amazed that people still store their data locally
Just lop "locally" off that phrase to get to the reality. Either you store your data or someone else stores it. What amazes me is that people trust someone else to store their data for them, not as a backup* but as the only store.
* There's scope to have concerns about that as well.
"and the Linuxi still can't understand why Windows is on more PCs than ever."
Oh, I understand that. It's a whole lot of commercial strong-arming of H/W vendors. What I still can't understand is why it's tolerated.
Having Windows and Linux on the same H/W I know from experience that Linux Just Works and Windows Only Just Works - somewhat reluctantly and very lethargically. At best Windows is slow, possibly because something is chewing up disk usage (even when nothing is apparently running the disk drive is in constant use) and when it comes to updates -- Windows folks, it doesn't have to be like that.
Unfortunately NextCloud user forum sits on it. I haven't logged in for ages but if I click on one of the links in the occasional email feeds it gets arsey unless I use one of their choice of browsers. Unfortunately NextCloud itself seems to be going that way as although it doesn't complain it just doesn't present an login prompt.
"Having a choice of a thousand distros"
With an Android phone you have a choice of a thousand apps, all wanting to slurp more data than they need. What a choice.
The reality of Linux desktops, of course, is that for a daily driver you have a choice of a very few distros from which you can pick one that suits you best. You can ignore all the projects that either (a) all offer the world's smallest footprint or (b) aim to completely revolutionise the desktop in particularly odd ways.
This, of course, is still more choice than Windows which only offers two choices: take it or leave it.
I have a laptop with W10 and Devuan on it so I can compare the two. If I have a quick job to do I could fire up the Devuan, do the job and be closing down in the time that W10 takes to spin little dots and then display the login background while it has a think about displaying the actual login prompt over the top. My W10 choice is inevitably leave it.
"all my data remains Not With Me"
If you're a traveller this is a good idea but if I were a traveller using it for anything sensitive I think I'd want to have a choice of where the data remains with the device completely amnesiac about where it expects for find it. That way any inquisitive border official can be presented with an innocuous target on Google whilst the confidential stuff remains on a private NextCloud server I'm not sure whether the Chromebook does that.
"Chromebooks are the Netbooks of the 2020's. Designed to be used a bit and thrown away"
I have a netbook from the Windows 7 era I've not thrown it away because I wanted it to use, and still do use it, when the need is for something physically compact. It still works because, of course, I'm running Linux on it.
If it becomes common for the military to send a couple of MP*s round to every travel agent who sends a booking to .mil travel agencies will simply stop doing business with the military. The article makes it clear that, at least now, it's largely civilians who are the problem.
* Deliberate misunderstanding doesn't make you smart.
"It is not possible to implement technical controls preventing the use of personal email accounts for government business"
Yes, it is. All you need is a bespoke mail client that has the proper restrictions in place.
But as Jake has pointed out, the article says that the problems almost entirely originate from personal or business emails, a lot of them from travel agents. Short of compelling everyone to use it a bespoke client isn't going to help. Even if government email domains were set up to refuse messages from the bespoke client it still wouldn't stop non-gov users sending messages intended for .mil to .ml instead by use of another client.
"I'm no particular fan of Microsoft, but blame them for the things they are actually responsible for, not standards that they have had no input into."
When they indulge in stuffing ISO committees there are some standards they can be blamed for.
The pity is that although there is an RFC for encryption of email it's only for an extension. What's needed is an RFC that mandates encryption as standard, including a means of distributing private keys and deprecates the existing RFCs for email with effect from, say, a year of publication.
"In all of the years I have been driving, I've never damaged a wing mirror."
Well, somebody did, to the nearside wing mirror - that's the whole assembly - not to mention the door handles and paintwork.
Include the electrical gubbins that's included and it's not easy to find the correct version and not exactly just a cheap piece of glass either. And that was just a small Japanese car.
The essence of limited companies and especially of those listed on major stock exchanges is that the share ownership of widely distributed between those who play no part in the management of the company and share ownership is not limited to "powerful and rich people". In fact most of the ownership of PLCs is likely to distributed between pension funds and other investments. If you have any sort of pension fund including corporate pension funds and workplace pension schemes you will have a smidgeon of ownership of a lot of companies, possible even PO and Fujitsu. Does this make you a "rich and powerful person" and more to the point, if your pension scheme owns shares in these companies should you, personally, be prosecuted for their wrongdoings? A company might well be successfully sued for compensation or prosecuted for corporate wrongdoings but that, rightly, does not extend to those who, quite possibly unknowingly, hold shares in it.
Having said that there is no protection for individuals within a company if they knowingly and deliberately break the law in determining and following some course of action for their company. That would include any perjury in providing evidence,* any deliberate perversion of the course of justice or any conspiracy to do those things.
* I spent about 14 years in a job where providing evidence was the sole purpose. I was never in any doubt that the responsibility for the truth of that evidence was solely mine and not that of my employer.
It's not just one scandal, it's a whole stack.
First there's the scandal of the original prosecutions including inducing the innocent to plead guilty.
Secondly the fact that as soon as it was discovered urgent action wasn't taken to proactively and promptly quash every single verdict as unsafe. There may well have been some real fraud cases in there but given the circumstances it would likely have been impossible to work out which they were.
Thirdly the fact that immediate urgent action wasn't taken to proactively and promptly compensate those convicted or forced to make up "deficits".
Fourthly that criminal cases weren't investigated and, where appropriate, prosecuted by the barrier presented by the ongoing enquiry and finally that the PO has been allowed to drag out the enquiry for so long with delaying tactics.
It's not just an IT scandal either, it bears on the entire British justice system. There's an old saying "justice delayed is justice denied.". An awful lot of people are being denied justice.
I reckoned at the time we should have had a whip-round for Labour funds. I'm sure we could have managed half a Bernie,especially as it would be refundable when the press found out. As we'd have had to include some freelance journalists on the basis that they might be affected it would have been hard to prevent them finding out.
Mine's got a brown envelope in the pocket.
This particular story is a recurrent one. It will turn up every so often in every Who Me, On Call or any other IT forum and, if you've read the comments, you'll see that the articles that prompt it are only the tip of the iceberg as commentards will add there own experiences.
You'll also find a few of us complaining that email clients are to blame for poor design; personally I'd like to think that some day someone working on Thunderbird, Outlook or whatever would read such a thread and undertake a bit of introspection.
However it does provide a bit of light relief to read of someone who's bullied their way to the top get a bit of comeuppance for failing to have picked up a few working skills along the way.
Presumably these Linux boxes were servers, not PCs that get shut down every night - or even more regularly than that. The contents of /tmp are not unimportant but the application would be expected to manage its temporary files. Also, a proper shutdown procedure would signal the application to shutdown and give it time to do so. However in the event of an unplanned shutdown it would be important not to clear /tmp because the files in there might need to be recovered.
Paranoia is a requirement for a DBA or any server admin. Managing a server is not the same as managing a PC.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
