Posts by Doctor Syntax

"I suspect a lot of businesses ... would feel that having applications work as expected is a fairly high priority."

Right up to the time they get hit with ransomware or a massive breach. Then they realise why they made the wrong trade-off between convenience and security.

Re: Deliberate sabotage but necessary

"Sometimes the only way to educate such people is to give them exactly what they ask for."

That is always IT's ultimate revenge. Don't use it too often.

"You've gone from possibly a pure windows estate, to managing four operating systems."

Life gets awfully complicated when you throw Windows into the mix.

"It would have been interestign to see how Munich would have managed during the pandemic, if they'd carried on."

Probably used Zoom for conferencing.

Very likely NextCloud for file sharing. Maybe OpenKolab. Maybe just mount a remote drive; networked drives go back an awully long way in Linux history, well before Microsoft got into the act.

It's amazing what you can do when local politics doesn't get in the way.

"If only some large body had thought of this! And tried it! Oh wait, Munich did, and gave up."

Yes, but even Microsoft can't afford relocate a big local office into every city that decides to quit using their software. I suppose, of course, when they've retrieved the situation in one city that office is now redundant and they can relocate it if they want to play whack-a-mole.

Re: Genuine Question

Of the recent RHEL clones AlmaLinux has a link on their front page to TuxCare who will provide commercial support. Rocky Linux has a link to CIQ but their site seems to have been designed by a marketing so concerned to make a good impression that they don't actually say what they do: support? hosting? In any case I'm quite sure TuxCare would be equally happy to support it - and Debian.

Canonical offer enterprise support for Ubuntu as does Suse for Suse.

Lack of enterprise support is just another of those scare stories that doesn't stand up to close examination.

Re: LibreOffice is not as good as MS Office

"And if management want you to send them the data which they can easily handle, without going through hoops to convert or munge it, what then?"

Save -> Excel2007-365(.xlxs)

Job done.

Re: preaching the gospel

"But Windows supports more programs that are significant to more people."

There's a circular argument here. People decide that MS Office is significant to them. If they were to deide, as GitLab presumably does, that something else such as LibreOffice is significant to them then the compulsion to use Windows goes away. But people see Office as significant to them because they've been told that that's what Windows provides.

Now as MS wants to move more users to subscription and inflation tightens budgets does a monthly spend for Office 365 seem a good idea any more? And what happens if the next Windows is also the subscription model that MS seem to want?

Re: "Red Hat and others have been doing okay for decades"

"If they were really doing OK, they would have bought IBM."

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

Re: Road Awareness and Secondary Sensors

"The underlying issue is situational awareness"

Or even just plain awareness.

Re: Comparison

"I hope the California DMV slaps them down hard, he needs to be taught a lesson about false advertising."

Not just the California DMV. Isn't this stuff that could affect the share price? In that case the SEC should be interested, particularly given that he has form on this.

Re: Comparison

"The important difference being that it wasn't really the autopilot that landed you, autopilots were on airplanes for literally decades before the automated landing systems were flight rated"

Which really proves the point. If people over-estimate what autopilot on planes do and confuse it with automated landing systems it's very likely that they'll over-estimate what it does in cars.

Will the Tesla cars run down Tesla robots? And which will come off best?

Re: Cats and Dogs?

This is what's apt to go wrong with specifications. Specify exactly what the system is supposed to do and it might do that and nothing else.

Never mind the flock of sheep, can it cope with just one sheep that looks as if it's about to head into the road? And how does it recognise "looks as if it's about to head into the road"?

Re: You're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel and be able to take over at any time.

"actively malicious"

Not really. Just blame shedding.

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

"At least drones have some kind of viable, believable and remotely feasible use cases. NFTs are a gigantic steaming pile of festering bullshit designed to part even more fools from their money."

Parting fools from their money is the feasible use case for NFTs.

Re: thank you

"What sort of referendum in N Ireland could solve the problem of a border with "The South" ?"

Unification of course

And why should the north vote for that just to let Brexiteers off the hook.

Re: thank you

Then it only leaves southern England to melt / sink into the waves / fall victim to a plague of zombie estate agents (delete as appropriate) and "Global Yorkshire" will be free.

This is an attractive idea but I'm not sure that the post-glacial rebound* is even still continuing and it would never have been enough for the sink beneath the waves option.

* The weight of the Ice Age ice on Scotland, N England & N Ireland caused them to sink somewhat and sea levels fell due to the amount of water tied up in the ice cap When the ice melted sea levels rose quite quickly. The deformation recovered much more slowly but did recover. It gave time for Late glacial beaches to be formed which were then hoisted tens of feet higher giving rise to the phenomenon of raised beaches, readily visible around the coasts of N Ireland and Scotland if you know what you're looking for. But the S of England wasn't covered by ice so as the north was pressed down the south bulged up a bit and then when the rebound took place it sank slightly.

Re: thank you

It may have escaped your notice but the Irish Republic is part of the EU. They joined when we did but they didn't leave.

Why on Earth would the EU want to fence of part of itself? They didn't instigate this, the Brexiteers did and obviously considered that fencing off part of the UK as their logical solution was an acceptable price to pay.

Well, Cameron's background was in PR but I always assumed he was chosen as the most Blairalike candidate they can find so it's a tendency of governments of both hues going back into the last century.

Re: thank you

I think the problem can be summed up like this:

United Kingdom - no internal border of any kind

Good Friday Agreement - no hard border in the island of Ireland

Brexit - a border somewhere.

Pick any two because all three together are impossible. Brexit was BoJo's addition. The conundrum won't go away just because he's going. Goodness knows what his successor will do with it.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"The Blair years! It took over a decade to pay off."

For those at University in the Blair years when tuition fees were hiked it will take a long time for that to pay off.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"We have had the tories for a while but varying governments from Cameron to Boris."

I think it's a truth that applies universally to governments of all hues and shades. Announcing the same money for whatever it might be several times over as if it's new money each time is part of the same mind-set.

Re: a slogan, not a policy

With Johnson United Kingdom was also a slogan, not a policy. (I think the past tense should be acceptable now.)

"just as good as actually delivering on it,"

And much cheaper.

Re: Sonos' chief legal officer, Eddie Lazarus...

... or programming in Pascal

Re: The guiding principle

It's not just teenagers. If I ask SWMBO something the answer is quite likely to be something unrelated and very likely an unrelated question.

Re: The guiding principle

"True", "False" or "undefined" drives me absolutely nuts.

But if the real value cannot be determined you either end up with 3 possible values including undefined or demand a plain unvarnished Boolean you end up with 4 possible values:

true,

false,

true but might be false because you demanded something and you've no way of telling the difference between this and true

false but may be true because you demanded something and you've no way of telling the difference between this and false.

Re: You'd have thought that a company the size of Google would have thought...

"Some things you only learn by making the mistake."

Preferably someone else's mistake.

Re: $5M for not getting something for free

Google should be made to give them their money back.

Re: moving back to Windows was a relief

"When in reality desktop Linux is (more specifically its UI offerings) still woefully lacking on the user experience front and at least a decade behind MacOS and Windows."

It's always easy to spot those who haven't used it.

It's also easy to spot those who regularly use it; they're the ones who get roped in to sort out friends and family with Windows woes.

Re: Collapse

Have you ever been to work meetings and found that there are a few individuals present who will drag it into the mire by finicking about minor details as far off topic as possible with everyone else losing the will to live? I rather think the average grass-roots party setup will be a magnet to them. Commit time? It would be a time sink.

Re: Collapse

This is exacerbated by the likes of some commentards here and elsewhere whose immediate attitude to anyone in politics is that they're unscrupulously corrupt and only in it for their own self-interest. Oddly enough it never occurs to them that they might, as such principled individuals, go into politics to make an improvement. Maybe that's because they realise that the likes of themselves would immediately brand them as unscrupulously corrupt and only in it for their own self-interest.