Posts by Michael Felt

Re: The other point of view

No down vote - fair answer.

But you elected to pay.

At issue, imho, are the people who choose a HP printer over a different brand because of the "free ink for life (of the printer)" plan. Marketing is about capturing people's attention and influencing their decisions. So every printer sold because of this plan was successful marketing. Since you make an economical point: that is something HP should have considered before launching this plan. They could have, and should have, imho, only stopped new subscriptions. Those that have it - should be able to keep it. As you say - it does not cost that much. Further, only more food to the fire about how HP treats it's customers. I had nearly forgotten.

Probably, there is some "fine print" saying they can change the conditions at any time - but morally, they are wrong. And, if you have been on the plan 5 years - how could this be a "introductory" plan started two years ago. I read this (between the lines) - they were not getting enough subscriptions - so a manager put his bonus on the line to get more subscriptions (not more money). Goal achieved - let's now milk the subscribers - because we can!

Demon lives in the Netherlands!

Demon was was first provider.

Bought up, in the Netherlands, by XS4ALL - and Demon lived on in the UK....

XS4ALL got bought up by KPN, and KPN is ending "XS4ALL" as a separate entity within KPN (i.e., separate support team).

I am still very happy with the BSMTP (batched SMTP) that would be otherwise unavialble.

Thank you "Spirit of Demon" for that forward thinking service and support.

Re: What exactly is objectionable?

To NDA - "this" whatever "this" may be could be considered normal

To pass ownership - might be okay - if paid up front - that is, you know what you are getting in advance. But not, imho, if they are evaluating it and decide to give you nothing. Maybe you found a patentable effect - and they just take it for nothing.

Finally, between the lines of what people are saying about the formal NDA - sounds like they are making an attempt to also own "future" aka "undisclosed" (to them) information you have. Who can say what you have at time X. Their lawyers contend you had it, but did not disclose fully - and so violated the NDA ownership transfer.

Also not heard - what court are (so-called) breaches of the NDA tried in. USA, Europe, India, ..., China? Also make a big difference.

systemd - the future? or just another way to boot *nix

I have never had to deal with systemd - and I am surprised to hear there is so much division about whether it was a move forward or not.

Before this I was thinking: for a "family" packages built around the systemd philosophy it could be beneficial. Mt concern with "Linux" boot phases is mainly that every distro has come up with 'their' way to "solve" the problem of boot - and learning all of those (just as it is hard to learn all the ways that *bsd, aix, hp, solaris, etc. differ in their ways to boot the system).

If systemd provides a way that ALL distros use the same files, same directories, etc. such that I learn one distro and can effectively administrter any distro - it is a win. Without that systemd, imho, is just a new, different 'thing' that needs to be learned, researched, etc..

In summary - I have doubts systemd will be universal to system administration.

Have a good day everyone! Smile! and then go kick a can ;)

How about PEP8 like guidelines on source-code checks before accepting a patch?

From Scratch? I guess I heard wrong. I thought his key addon was to add demand-paging rather than swapping - starting from the Minix kernel - which had previously been verified by AT&T as not using any of their UNIX code base (as they no longer wanted Tanenbaum using AT&T code in his books and lectures).

I frown on some of the language used in some of the reactions, but some people seem to have a limited vocabulary. However, I do believe - as was mentioned earlier - that specifying a specific style for comments (max of two - okay, but better: one format for single line, one format for multi-line).

One of the things I am finding hard to learn - but do appreciate - is the PEP 8 guidelines for python code. And, perhaps the Linux-kernal is ready for a "pep8"-like beautifier - or maybe just update 'beautify' to what will pass - and identify 'nonsense' (as I would agree that 'wasting' time to write a program to '*' align comments, or worse - doing it manually) does not improve the content (aka quality) of the comment(s).

Re: "So IBM's guidance guidance that will not go down well with users."

If this goes back as far as 2.2.3.X - then, clearly - it is not happening often - and management might decide that the higher risk to business is updating and rebooting a dual VIOS configuration.

As far as change records go: whether they are a major pain or a minor pain or no pain - experience has taught many that no records - ultimately is a 'killing pain'. This again, is a process that can ensure that the business can manage their risk - as they view it. System administration is not the business - even that "we" have the best of intents "they" must okay the process. That is how business is done.

The argument that should be made is that the systems were engineered for concurrent maintenance. Not doing the maintenance now may lead to a disruptive 'moment'. The business does not need to know the technical details - it needs to know the relative risk and impact on business. The design - aka best practice - of using dual VIOS is that the impact should be zero - even with a reboot!

BREXIT - breaking the UK or bringing it together?

I was visiting the UK last week - and the basic comment I got from the few I asked was quite clear, and saddening - "we have never been so divided as a country" and there is more "hate towards others".

In short, it sounds as if "BREXIT" is doing a lot to the country - and most of what has happened / is happening is not the expected outcome.

I do hope other countries, such as NL where I live, learn from the issues the UK face today.

p.s. as to parliament respecting the vote of the public: I would expect them to act according to what they believe is best for the people who choose them to be their MP. They people who voted for BREXIT are not necessarily the same ones who vote for them.