* Posts by Charlie Clark

12082 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: installed on every machine

I repeat, the support costs for Lenovo shouldn't necessarily be higher: naked machine with disclaimer that only MS Windows is supported. Hobbyists who buy one and proceed to brick it have been warned.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: installed on every machine

The support costs shouldn't necessarily be higher for non-Windows machines. It's easy enough to provide any update mechanism such as firmware update via a bootable USB image. This can even be secure and it's probably easier to maintain than anything that runs in Windows.

But the article highlights some of the many more practical problems about trying to run Linux on high end hardware. It really shouldn't be a problem to scale resolutions like MacOS has been able to for a decade and even Windows now manages. You want Linux on a machine? Prepare to do the research and by something that is either certified by the vendor or at least highly recommended. Anything else is for hobbyists but begs the question: why splash the cash?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Optional

Thank volume licence agreements: manufacturers pay less per licence but only as long as they install Windows on every machine.

Check out Codon: A Python compiler if you have a need for C/C++ speed

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Definitely a subset

Both exec() and eval() exist because they are necessary. But you are unlikely to ever use them your own code, I certainly haven't in over 20 years. Monkey patching can be essential in tests and can be occasionally be the right tool for the job.

The problem with all languages is the abuse of features for the wrong reason: I've seen people using comprehensions for flow control because it saves a line. It also makes things impossible to debug.

Python's great advantage is that helps millions of non-programmers get stuff done. Generally, quickly, safely and correctly.

BOFH: I care a lot ... about onion bhajis

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Facepalm

"I'm not going to debate you…"

Sorry, what? The Boss is proposing the motion "BOFH"? Or rather he's proposing not to propose this?

Intransitive verbs (debate, protest, etc.) are intransitive for a reason. If you don't believe this then you must work for the marketing department.

Have I hurt your feelings? Sorry about that… now, cattle prod, please!

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Ssh Window

You have been eaten by grue.

The Great Graph Database Debate: Relational can't do everything

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Thumb Up

Re: YAQL is not the solution

Yes, I suspect if we were able to use something closer to relational algebra, we'd have fewer problems and faster databases… I'd certainly love it for a wire protocol between client and server.

I've always found the process of normalising data to be very helpful in understanding the actual task in hand. No problem with dumping associated metadata in "blob" column for the occasional ad hoc discovery query: it's extremely cheap and can help you get started.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Pint

Re: I don't understand the motion

Have one of these, you deserve it.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Re: I don't understand the motion

The above is probably poorly worded I don't have time for anything else, so sorry.

You should have saved your time for something more constructive. The post is full of specious half-truths related to a couple of implementation-specific events.

Consistency always comes at a cost. NoSQL routinely fail because they are prepared to sacrifice consistency and robustness for speed. You can do the same on any RDBMS by simply disabling all the checks and then you can watch your application go up in smoke.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

YAQL is not the solution

Much I dislike SQL, the presence of SPARQL, GQL, etc. which try to provide something like it, show the need for a query language. But all the attempts stem from building something for a different storage engine rather than a better query language, and that is an indication of a greater flaw in the approaches: confusing the model with the implementation. But there is nothing in the relational model that requires data be stored in row tuples. Hence, any conclusions that derived from that are spurious.

in fact, rather than spending even more on licences, I think a lot of problems could be solved by ensuring that people dealing with data are properly supported by RDBMS staff so that models provide the data they should, as fast as is necessary and without breaking the bank. The persistent fad for map/reduce (denormalise and then parallelise) because hardware is so cheap is just leading to massive bills for stuff running on clouds.

Microsoft makes Outlook Mac native email app a freebie

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Client not worth paying for

Outlook for Mac has been crippled for years because not all the protocols have been enabled. This makes it more or less impossible to share calendars, etc. which is one of the main reasons for using Outlook/Exchange in the first place.

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Civil suit for discrimination

Musk really should have said nothing on this. As a result of his comments he's left the company open for a civil suit over discrimination. Who knows, it could even get a class action and he could even be made personally liable for damages by the courts: people have been sent to prison for less. Much better to sack people who are apparently no longer required by the company and pay whatever settlements arbitration deem reasonable. But, whatever you do, don't comment on any individual case.

The Great Graph Debate: Revolutionary concept in databases or niche curiosity?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Stored routine

As long as you can describe the algorithm logically, you can implement it for an RDBMS. But the more important question might be do you want to index the results? Recursive traversal can quickly get quite slow and having the right indices is usually the solution to most database queries.

FWIW a sample PgPsql function from 2013. Quite verbose, but I suspect this could now be written more compactly. Functions exist via extensions for most domains (Geodata, statistics, etc.)

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Relational often gets the blame for SQL's shortcomings

Apart from implementation design the biggest problem with contact tracing was that it was a fata morgana, the sort that the tech industry loves to propose to show how good it is. It was always going to be behind the curve and was unceremoniously replaced by sewage water sampling, which is cheaper and more likely to identify potential outbreaks.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Relational often gets the blame for SQL's shortcomings

Modelling graph traversal on a relational system isn't really difficult. But doing it in SQL used to be unnecessarily verbose, as was true for many relational queries. That has changed in recent years with syntactical changes allowing for more compact and expressive querying of the sort that SQL was always supposed to support.

Relational is nearly always the best place to start, with incredible support for domain specific types, indices and functions and the flexibility to cope well with nearly every task.

Zoom chops president it hired less than a year ago

Charlie Clark Silver badge

As a business? You never want to become dependent upon a single supplier.

German Digital Affairs Committee hearing heaps scorn on Chat Control

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Re: Stupid

Yes, it should be pretty easy to set up a virtually metadata free messaging system (basically clone Signal and run it on an encrypted image somewhere and have manual sign-up/verification). Other protocols are possible, but that's been proved to pretty robust and has saved lives as a result.

Law enforcement generally gets, ahem, more joy out of following the money but we obviously don't want light being shined on blind trusts and other wheezes, do we now?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: 1984 - George Orwell

Let me answer your questions: none of it works properly. It's all about being seen doing something and having someone else to blame when the next time the inevitable refrain "won't someone think of the children" starts up.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: I know a way to reduce child exploitation ...

Unfortunately, making laws that are good for headlines but later get struck down by the courts has become very popular. The ECJ's track record on privacy is very strong so, even should this become law (very unlikely given existing jurisprudence in many countries) it will probably be struck down by the ECJ. But then, at least, the politicians and lobbyists will have someone to blame. And that's often the main point.

Meanwhile, those who are already happily breaking the law will move on to better tools that can circumvent this kind of thing.

If Tesla Investor Day was about exciting investors then boy did it fail

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Re: you're all idiots

Nobody is making apocalyptic claims. To see justification in Tesla's share price falling and its P/E ratio normalising is hardly unwanted savagery.

Falling margins are indicative of a maturing market and greater competition. And the competition is getter stronger, not least in Tesla's biggest market: China. BYD et al. have some great technology that they developed themselves and massive scale. Outside China, EVs from other manufacturers are becoming more common and can make use of existing dealer networks, something that Tesla is having to do. The idea is that he could use investor day to announce some significant new developments. He failed to do this and the share price fell, though no one should read too much into that, either.

Thought you'd opted out of online tracking? Think again

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: The non personalised ads .

You have no sympathy for using services that boast proudly of how they trade personal data.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Consent management is bollocks

The law says that opt-out is the default. Therefore, website owners may not collect data, including opt-out preferences without user's consent. "Consent management platforms" break this contract, not surprising considering that they act as aggregators.

US cybersecurity chief: Software makers shouldn't lawyer their way out of security responsibilities

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Re: fine words butter no parnips

Have you ever bought a knife or a cup of coffee in America? Knives must come with a warning that sharp blades can cause injuries and cups of hot liquid must have a warning that hot liquids can cause injuries. Both warnings, and a heap of others (including for microwaves and tumble dryers), were decided by courts on the back class action suits brough because of the concept of unlimited liability in America. So, if you do buy a safe that doesn't close properly, you can indeed sue the manufacturer. But you just can't do this with software products because of the exemption.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: fine words butter no parnips

The "choice", or lack of it, is conditioned by the exemption of strict liability for software. Now, it's possible to run some thought experiments as to what would happen if a large corporation did become the target of a class action suit and whether, if this led to bankruptcy, the software would ever get fixed. But surely, that's a debate that should be had in the first place?

Find pushes back birth of Europe's steel hardware to about 3,000 years ago

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Absence of local production and of steel artefacts do suggest transitory use at best. The logic "this can only have been made by steel, they must have had steel, they must have known how to make steel" seems more than a little shaky to me. In fact, it's close to a strawman. What finds generally tell us is that our current theories and assumptions are insufficient to explain them.

Twitter rewards remaining loyal staff by decimating them

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Mushroom

Re: It just got worse (again)

For years Scott Adams has held a mirror up to tech world. There's a lot of stuff that he's been accused of that I woudn't agree with at all but with Dilbert he's been on the money again and again, not by victimising anyone but highlighting the hordes of people who are prepared to jump to the defence of an imagined sleight. For many, this counts as argument enough (debate isn't required when "cancelling" someone, just fingers in your ears and "nananana"). And fair play to someone who is prepared to take this kind of risk to defend the right of free speech.

This from <a href="https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-02-23>last week</a> seemed a "good point well made" that I'm sure a lot of people will have missed.

Musk should be given credit for at least sometimes having the courage to put his inherited money where is mouth is, though he does seem to me like yet another entitled fool. I hope Twitter crashes and burns and takes him with it. Well, one can hope!

Pop open a cask: Homebrew version 4.0.0 is here

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Thanks, but no thanks

I should add that, in over 20 years working on Macs, I've yet to see user who is not a developer use a terminal in MacOS.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Thanks, but no thanks

Linux folks expect to just be able to apt install python-3.11 or the like

And why would I ever want to do that only to find out shortly afterwards that I probably wanted python-3.11-devel? Apt gets so much wrong it's embarassing, and definitely not something to be emulated! Then there's all the problems associated with wher the stuff gets installed and whether you want to override the system build.

And the solution: install MacPorts, fire up a terminal (iTerm 2, of course) and use port install …. I have Python 3.6 to 3.12-dev (the Python itself version is in development). Installs are usually from precompiled binaries but source compiles are always possible and I don't have to go along with Homebrew's decision to trust Apple to get system libraries right and keep them up do data (little chance of that). /opt/local has always been used to ensure isolation from system stuff. In summary, everything that ports got right in the first place. With binaries.

Who writes Linux and open source software?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Services have replaced licences in the business model

That's a post hoc justification and covers mainly the customer perspective, which is not what the article is really about and frankly doesn't say very much. Lots of companies have committed billions to making Linux a good server OS that will run on a huge variety of platforms, though maybe IBM should get some credit for its early work.

Financial firms will spunk huge amounts on anything that makes things the tiniest bit faster: if Corning brings out some new fibre optic cable with go faster stripes, they'll have it. FPGA to make the network or database faster? Certainly, sir? How many would sir like?

Investments over the last 10 years by the big corporations have evolved around making their stack shinier. The libraries are now full of publications trumpeting the benefits (and glossing over the costs) of handing over your data and processing to another company, which shows how the software-marketing industry (which owns a large part of the US tertiary educational system) did its job well. And I have no problem with Microsoft making improvements to Linux so that Azure containers are more profitable. But we've gone way beyond the "enlightened self-interest" bit. When it comes to open source contributions from these companies, I'd be looking beyond their Linux work. Google still continues to set an example by being actively involved in projects that have no direct upside for them, but the contributions elsewhere in machine learning, systems management and instrumentation are all impressive and to a certain degree indicative of a bottom up culture. Now, watch those projects get culled as the beancounters regain control.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Services have replaced licences in the business model

The main reason for the large scale adoption of open source by large IT companies is the bottom line. Once they moved from selling products to selling services (and this applies as much to RedHat as it does to AWS) they didn't need to worry about cannibalising licence revenues because these would be replaced by juicier regular service fees. And, once the data has migrated, you can never leave. This means that they can continue to contribute to open source and extracting more surplus value than they actually provide. In a sense, open source has given them the keys to lock all our data away,

Microsoft injects AI search into Bing, Edge, Skype apps

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FAIL

Bing, why should I care?

NFT

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

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Stop

Re: Cease and desist

I don't see any relation to adblockers as this is happening in the browser. Anyway, my blockers continue to work fine.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Cease and desist

The difference here is that they're effectively defacing Google's website.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Cease and desist

Having recently signed off on the next set of MS licences I'm definitely in the market for an alternative. I could live with Windows for clients but the costs of Exchange on the server are getting beyond a joke. Unfortunately, I've not come across an alternative to Exchange that would satisfy the users. I'd consider pretty much anything that managed to do shared calendars properly.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Cease and desist

There's no doubt that most courts would consider this "hijacking" of the web page. Google should, if it hasn't already, apply for a cease and desist order. Potential civil suits over the intervention are also possible.

Petaflops help scientists understand why some COVID-19 variants are more contagious

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Stop

Re: Two sides of the coin

This kind of processing is not really suitable for molecular design; the idea is to help develop a kind of early warning system. Other systems for this have already been developed and tools like CRISPR-CAS9 are already being used to make them.

Unless things change, first zettaflop systems will need nuclear power, AMD's Su says

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Old solution

Work on optical components looks the most promising and has already started.

This pitch sounds very much like a plea for government cash.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: late stage capitalism

The argument of monopsidic investors in several branches is fairly convincing. It's alleged to be the case in US airline companies (and railroads) and does provide a reasonable explanation for the perceived lack of competition. But, across branches as the poster suggests is going too far IMO.

Kremlin claims Ukraine hackers behind fake missile strike alerts

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Update on this: there are reports that Russia is planning full-blown "false flag" (Russian soldiers dressed Ukrainian ones) attacks on its own citizens to stir things up. They're currently close to the Russian-Ukrainian border but it wouldn't surprise me to see them turn up in Moldova, especially Transnitria.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Probably one good reason for the UK not to have such a system.

The German one for mobile phones only went live today. The technology has been there for years but the networks needed a couple of million Euro to find the switch…

Charlie Clark Silver badge

To that you can add that the Russian population has been under attack from its government for years.

How many HPE staff does it take to pay for one CEO? 271

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Re: With an ear to this morning's 'More or Less'

Arithmetic mean.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

If they're only paying $ 64,000 for mid-level engineers you could argue that they're very successful!

Shareholders have a say on pay for board members. But since these were effectively captured by investment companies a couple of decades ago, short term interests, skewed by favourable tax treatment, prevail.

Open source software has its perks, but supply chain risks can't be ignored

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Perhaps this is a business opportunity for the OSF

I don't want any self-appointed QUANGO doing anything in my name! And I certainly don't want something like the Musicians Union collecting and distributing money for my work!

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Flame

Haven't we read this article before? More problems than this

As the maintainer of a popular open source library I'll admit to having recently made a release that caused some problems with downstream software because it contained breaking changes that were difficult to test.

Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth but also a couple of useful pointers about the problem. TBH I've stopped giving a shit about reports from downstream software because they're no use to me, and the more sanctimonious the report the less of a shit I give. Sorry, for the breakages but workarounds were fairly straightforward (pin to the previous version), but at the end of the day: but, without a support contract, I'll get round to fixing it when I feel like it.

The same risk exists for commercial software, of course, but you've got even less of a chance of picking up problems in CI. As every Windows sysadmin knows!

Activist investor tells Airbus to end Atos Evidian talks now

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Thanks for the extra information, especially the actual shareholding breakdown. Just goes to show what complete waste of time "activist" investors are.

Government intervention should always be viewed with a certain degree of scepticism because of the tendency to pick winners or bail out zombies. If a company does fulfil a strategic role then, by all means ringfence it. But, wherever possible, avoid special treatment. The EU has been working at this for 30 odd years and has broadly got it right, though there are still too many cosy utilities out there.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Not just that, but both France and Germany own golden shares because Airbus is in a strategic business. No idea whether the deal makes commercial sense but then not everything in Airbus has to. It has been commercially successful despite government intervention. But the commercial success has come from making very good planes and ensuring reasonable competition.

Puri.sm puts out LapDock for its Librem 5 smartphone

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Re: Dex?

Samsung DeX is really pretty amazing.

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: I think you'll find...

You mean swap the problem of the noun for that of the pronoun? Seine Majestät, Ihre Majestät. Okay, we coud go the way thee/thou. But, let's not go there!

Deutsche Bank's takeover of Postbank hasn't gone well, according to customers

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Awful systems

I recently had to help someone set up online banking for Postbank. Now, I know security is both very important and difficult, but does it really need six letters and at least two different username/password combinations? I work with computers all the time and I found it very difficult and very confusing!