* Posts by JohnFen

5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015

As sales crash, Gartner wonders who can rescue the smartphone market ... Aha, it is I! 5G Man!

JohnFen

Re: Perhaps

"se WiFi hotspot with laptop for connectivity"

I don't want to have to start carrying a laptop around.

"Root the thing and put an 'open' firmware on it."

That's what I've been doing for years, but what I actually want is to leave the Android ecosystem entirely. The security problems with the OS is half of the issue, the other half is the security problems with the apps.

I'm not saying that my approach is a solution for the masses. It's just for me.

JohnFen

Re: suffering because of Brexit

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you!

JohnFen

Re: Perhaps

I have no doubt that you're right. That's why I said "That's probably true in general."

JohnFen

Re: Perhaps

"I like the concept of a PDA with a radio that I can run Linux on and make sure the firmware isn't bugging me"

I breadboarded up my own smartphone that runs plain old Linux, but in the course of doing so I realized that I don't even want that. What I'm doing now is building that smartphone without the cellphone module, to use as a pocket computer, and carrying it along with a old-style feature phone that I can tether the pocket computer to when I need internet connectivity on the go.

JohnFen

Re: suffering because of Brexit

I don't understand. Wouldn't Brexit encourage people to buy sooner rather than later? After all, it's hard to say what Brexit will actually do...

JohnFen

Perhaps

"The lack of compelling new services or functions means people are keeping their phones beyond the two-year average upgrade cycle."

That's probably true in general.

But here's why I will not be buying any more smartphones: they've simply become too dangerous and too difficult to adequately secure. Adding "compelling new services or functions" would not make a phone more attractive to me (unless the "new services" is actual, honest-to-god, security). In fact, adding new services would increase my reluctance, as "new services" inevitably bring more spying along with them.

5G itself has no real effect on my willingness to buy, except that it brings more security concerns along with it.

"He said, as analysts have for generations, that the industry really needs to shift to a service model"

I avoid service models like the plague that they are. Such things are showstoppers for me.

Consumer campaign to keep receiving printed till receipts looks like a good move – on paper

JohnFen

Re: I'll keep my receipt thanks.

Yes, citizen's arrest in the US is very different. The specifics can vary depending on the state you're in, but generally speaking, you can only make a "citizen's arrest" if you have personally observed the crime being committed.

So, a store could not "arrest" you for failing to produce a receipt. They could if they actually saw you stealing something, though.

JohnFen

Re: I'll keep my receipt thanks.

"Failure to stop for a security scanner is not an offence; neither is failure to comply with a security guards."

This, in the US, anyway.

A store can make compliance with security guard requests a condition for shopping in the store, but even then if you don't comply their only recourse is to ask you to leave.

JohnFen

Re: Receipts

Although I don't stop for those stupid receipt checks that some stores do, if I've set of the antitheft alarm, I do stop for that.

The few times it's happened, I turned around, caught the eye of a nearby employee, and asked if they wanted to search my bags. Each time, they said no. I suspect that my behavior gave them enough reassurance that I wasn't stealing that it was no longer worth the bother of actually checking.

JohnFen

Re: The security guard monitoring it wanted to see

"do you want to be arrested"

Arrested for what, exactly?

JohnFen

I came to the same realization decades ago, and that's when I stopped keeping receipts (except for transactions on behalf of my business or transactions involving a lot of money). It has never been a problem.

JohnFen

Re: Universal store card

"Could some sort of independent and universal store card work?"

I suppose it could, technically, but I certainly wouldn't use it. I'm not willing to use "loyalty cards" due to privacy concerns as it is, and a universal store card like that would amplify the privacy risk by orders of magnitude.

JohnFen

I used to do that, but it became a debate often enough that I switched tactics. Now, I use the same answer to all such questions:

"What is your email?" -- "I don't have one"

"What is your phone #?" -- "I don't have one"

"What is your address?" -- "I don't have one"

"What is your name?" -- "I don't have one"

JohnFen

Re: Evil Thermal

"do what I do when they ask to look in my bag or see my receipt, say "no" and keep walking"

Yes, I've been doing this for years (when I can't avoid going to a store that has this sort of policy). This has never caused a problem, except once when a guy wanted to press the issue. I just ignored his protests and kept on walking.

JohnFen

I don't want digital receipts

99% of the time, I don't want digital receipts. I also don't want paper receipts. I want no receipt at all.

Quic! Head to the latest Chrome version and try out HTTP/3

JohnFen

No hurry

HTTP/3 doesn't solve any problems that I have, so I'm not going to go out of my way to try it out. It'll come to me eventually.

The D in Systemd is for Directories: Poettering says his creation will phone /home in future

JohnFen

I was talking about people, not corporations.

I can think of a number of reasons why an enterprise-scale deployment would care about boot times, but that's a different issue that could, and should, be addressed without making the OS worse for everyone else.

JohnFen

"the amount of sysadmins I've seen generate terrible little scripts"

Hire competent sysadmins.

JohnFen

Re: I have good news.

That's awesome! It makes the idea of switching all my machines to BSD much more attractive.

JohnFen

"the problem is that nobody else made an alternative that gained any kind of wide-scale adoption"

That may be because the faults of SysV init, while real, aren't as serious as some people assert. Yes, having something better is desirable, but outside of some edge cases (for which there are alternate init systems that can be used), it's not really that big of a deal.

Also, in my opinion, systemd is worse than SysV overall anyway. It does improve some things, but brings so much badness along with it that it's not a good tradeoff.

JohnFen

"RedHat's blog covered how AWESOME IT IS FOR SERVERS."

Hell, it's not even awesome for non-servers. NetworkManager is a serious pain in the ass for all but the simplest of configurations.

JohnFen

Re: This may solve my procrastination

I tried devuan out on a test machine, but decided not to go that direction for the very reason you cite: I think it's a temporary reprieve.

JohnFen

Re: This may solve my procrastination

I thought about that, but I have a lot of machines and very much prefer for them all to be running the same thing, to reduce my mental state-changing.

JohnFen

I do reboot my laptops, but I still don't care about bootup time. I've long wondered why this metric is a big deal for people.

JohnFen

Re: That was a serious breath of fresh nerdiness

...as did Linux.

JohnFen

Re: "It's going to be BSD or nothing."

If I switch to BSD, one of the first things I'll do is begin working to port it to the R-Pi.

JohnFen

I run Linux on multiple laptops. I SSH into them on a regular basis, too.

JohnFen

Re: If you really want that this system can come up on its own, don't use this stuff.

It's been my normal practice for a long while now to remove PulseAudio from my installations. Doing so makes life easier.

JohnFen

This may solve my procrastination

I've already decided to move to either Slackware or BSD in order to escape SystemD, but the amount of work involved is quite large (I have a lot of machines) so I've been procrastinating.

This may get me off my butt about this.

Google takes sole stand on privacy, rejects new rules for fear of 'authoritarian' review

JohnFen

Just Google being Google

Since Google is overtly hostile to internet users and (especially) their privacy, and has been working hard to ensure that the internet is only good for corporations for years, this move makes complete sense.

Microsoft: Dynamics 365 to hook up online, physical retail... 'cos we love tracking so much we want it offline too

JohnFen

Re: Leave the poor customer alone!

A million times this. Upselling annoys me tremendously, and I tend to avoid patronizing shops that engage in it.

JohnFen

How to improve customer interaction

"The theme overall is to use pervasive data, IoT, machine learning and AI to streamline production and improve customer interaction."

Get all that spying, IoT, and machine learning nonsense out of the equation and actually interact with your customers.

Emergency button saves gamers from sudden death... of starvation

JohnFen

Interfering with nature?

Natural selection -- it's only natural.

Call-center scammer loses $9m appeal in stunning moment of poetic justice

JohnFen

Re: The thick twat

Not to mention having to hand over everything he earns (except for what the courts will allow for living expenses) for the rest of his life.

JohnFen

Re: Not poetic enough

"Your idea that criminals like these will ever regret their actions is foolish and dangerously naïve"

I personally know criminals who have changed and genuinely regret their past actions.

JohnFen

Re: Summary justice yes. But...

"I find it hard to believe that they were all genuine tax dodgers who thought that their game was up."

I rather suspect that none of them were, that instead they thought a serious error had been made either by them or the IRS. A lot of people are terrified by the IRS and pretty much will agree to pay whatever they think the IRS wants just to ensure that their life won't be made even worse.

JohnFen

Re: Federal Prison

Yes, I suspect that he meant "punitive fine", not "restitution". There's a reason that they are considered separately.

JohnFen

Re: Danny 14

They're only related in the sense that people often mistake one for the other.

JohnFen

The picture

The picture with this article expresses my opinion perfectly.

Those furious gun-toting Aussies were just a glitch. Let's try US drone deliveries, says Wing

JohnFen

I wouldn't shoot it

I wouldn't shoot it, but if I had to put up with the sound of those things near my home more than very occasionally, I might consider jamming it.

Supply chain actors agree that everyone's a security risk – except themselves, of course

JohnFen

Genuinely scary

"But when asked whether they themselves could be a risk to everyone else, only 19 per cent admitted they might."

That's a scary level of ignorance about the realities of security. The reality is that 100% of everybody might be a risk, and that why everybody has to pay careful attention to these issues at all times.

COBOL: Five little letters that if put on a CV would ensure stable income for many a greybeard coder

JohnFen

Re: Untitled photo of Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper is one of my heroes.

JohnFen

Re: Worth learning today?

Why would that be unpopular? You're right.

Although I'd refine it a bit. There are three primary programming methodologies: procedural, object oriented, and massively parallel. Within a given methodology, the language doesn't matter -- as you say, the differences are mostly syntactical -- but there is enough daylight between those three that they pretty much each have to be learned on their own terms.

JohnFen

Re: A stable income – yes, but ...

That's a different issue, though. I was saying that whether or not I enjoy working at a place is not related to the language(s) I'm using there. Whether or not the place is full of corporate nonsense absolutely is, though.

Not all places that use COBOL are of the sort that you cite. The place I work now requires some COBOL development (new, not maintenance) and is the exact opposite of that. The last place I worked that involved COBOL wasn't of that sort either.

How long is a lifetime? If you’re Comcast, it’s until a rival quits a city: ISP 'broke' price promise

JohnFen

Re: Lifetime warranty

Indeed.

Although since I've had nothing but bad experiences with warranties, I long ago stopped paying them any attention whatsoever.

JohnFen

Re: Free markets are great.

It's certainly a monopoly in my neck of the woods -- Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me.

Five NHS trusts do DeepMind data deal with Google. One says no

JohnFen

Holy crap

This may be the only area where the US health care system is better. While the medical industry here regularly shares way too much patient information with drug companies and the like, at least (as far as I know), they aren't shoveling it all to Google!

Remember that security probe that ended with a sheriff cuffing the pen testers? The contract is now public so you can decide who screwed up

JohnFen

Re: Contradictory document

"That's contradictory: 5:59pm isn't really "evening", it's more "afternoon"."

5:59 sounds squarely like "evening" to me.

I think maybe there's a region difference here? "Evening" is a loose, subjective term for most people, so I did a little searching. All I found was that as used colloquially, "evening" is a loose, subjective term, but is most commonly considered to begin at 6pm.

Interestingly, the term is slightly more precise among the astronomically inclined -- in that crowd, "evening" begins at twilight and ends at the start of astronomical night.

You can trust us to run a digital currency – we're Facebook: Exec begs Europe not to ban Libra

JohnFen

We're Facebook

That's genuinely hilarious. "We're Facebook" is one of the major reasons why the Libra effort is dangerous and should be rejected out of hand.

Scott McNealy gets touchy feely with Trump: Sun cofounder hosts hush-hush reelection fundraiser for President

JohnFen

Re: What a scumbag

I've not been remotely sparing of criticism of Zuckerberg in articles where such commentary is on-topic. But if it makes you feel any better, fuck Zuckerberg too.