Posts by FIA

I'd be more concerned about your other APs that are burping if I were you?

Have you lost any family pets in odd circumstances?

Re: Vicious circle with high demand

Is that demand always informed though?

Or do you just realise you lack workers rights when you need them?

Re: John Deere-ism Goes International

You buy an Apple, you know what you're getting.

You're getting a device they make it hard to repair, but not a device that they will arbitrarily brick if you take it to another repair shop.

This would be like Apple using the GPS in the phone to brick a phone if it's spent time in a non Apple repair shop.

Re: What like Powershell's tab autocomplete?

Hmmmm.... <tappity tap>... Oooo!

Thank you!

I don't mean charge by usage, in broadband the actual cost of shuttling the electrons about is probably negligible. (it's 2023, not 2003, traffic shaping and throttling technologies are well developed, so a congested network can still be managed).

I mean build a network, then as demand increases, increase the capacity.

Don't charge 'per usage', but just charge what it costs to build, run and maintain, plus some profit.

Re: Windows 365 Boot?

If I'm that paranoid, surely running a machine on someone else's cloud and hardware would also be a big no-no?

Re: Sanctions needed!

Whilst there's no logic or real punishment through a public sector body imposing financial penalties on other public sector bodies, the problem is that there's not any incentive to improve.

Make people accountable. Not just in the public sector, but in general. The idea is the increased remuneration for these roles reflects the increased responsibility. So ensure that responsibility is enforced. Start actually penalising people for doing a bad job, and holding those responsible accountable for negligence.

The problem is (basically) nepotism though, the smaller and smaller pool of people in the higher paid jobs acts as a disincentive, as shitting on one of your friends is hard, and one day it may be you.

Making the trust's CEO walk round for a month with a hat that carries a prominent logo "Mr Bumhead" would probably be an effective deterrent,

I like that, and lets be honest, it's as likely to happen as my suggestion. :D

Re: Stop collecting

Stop collecting data Microsoft!! [...] try reading and implementing from your Feedback Hub, that would give you clues as to customers needs

So should they stop, or not stop, I'm confused?? ;)

Re: Yearly tasks....

Yes it ‘should’ work, but meanwhile back in the real world……..

"...that thing sounds complicated so we best not try, it'll not work anyway."

Yup, worked at places like that. Probably best avoided. Over time this attitude distils, until you get a workforce not only averse to risk, but to even risking doing their jobs with any degree of competence, as the warm comfort of gentle monotony is much much easier.

I was going through some personal stuff which meant changing jobs wasn't on the cards. The main frustration about the whole thing is the one upcoming project that sounded difficult (and therefore interesting) was never ever started... as too much risk.... just dangled like some future development carrot.... whilst the existing creaking poor quality and hard to use system just plodded along.

Re: QR Codes are not the answer to anything

why not just put the goddam error message on the screen in the first place?

Or why not both?

That your system has been hacked in some way. We see those stories here almost every day of the week.

Are you going to risk going to jail and being on the sex offenders register for life because you followed a QR code?

I... erm... what?

I'm not sure that's how the law works; you don't accidentally follow a link and go straight to paedo jail?

In the unlikely event the above situation ever happens to you, close the browser, then take a picture of the screen as evidence. (Quickly mind, the rozzers are probably already on their way...)

Re: I must be a bit thick

but I still can't quite grasp how a *language* can suddenly become "safe". What makes it's compiler (which in itself has to be trusted) so much better ?

Time.

Rust was designed in the late 2000s, when computers were running at multi gigahertz speeds and had gigabytes of memory. This means you can write much more complex compilers, and knowing this you can specify the language with much tighter restrictions than a language designed for the PDP-11 in the 70s.

Remember in C a prototype exists so the compiler knows what function call to generate without having seen the function. Now it would be trivial to infer this information. However in the 70s this was a sensible choice.

It is mainly driven by high energy costs and taxes

Surely it's mainly driven by high energy costs (as a result of the Ukraine war) and high food cost (as a result of the perfect storm between the war in Ukraine and the increased costs and reduced access to cheap labour due to us leaving the EU) that are driving the current round of inflation?

How do 'high taxes' contribute to this?

We have a below OECD average tax burden, although it is split with an above average on personal income and a below average on corporate income and gains. Surely this should reduce personal income relatively, acting as a deflationary pressure?

Which taxes would you reduce?

Reducing the personal tax burden would act to increase inflation (greater spending power). Your other option is corporation tax, and as trickle down economics has been shown to be a fallacy before now, reducing that will only enrich the shareholders, many of whom invest for the long term, so would have little net short term inflationary effect.

You would then either have worse public services, or have to increase personal taxation to pay for it. (which would help inflation, but would also be considered 'higher taxes').

Or have I misunderstood, and you just mean 'taxes in general' contribute to inflation? But then I'm really confused??

Au contraire. It's fascinating that some people can live without it.

I don't understand? Spotify not paying what you consider 'fair' won't make musicians stop writing music, or artists stop, erm... arting?? It never has, and it never will, as generally artistic people express themselves regardless.

You could say it about any profession.

Yes, in general that's how it works isn't it?

Surgeons should be able to support themselves until they fix the patient big time.

That's how it works... yes... Often higher skilled professions will incur a much greater 'no decent income' time at the start too. That's why students work in bars or restaurants.

Warehouse workers should keep themselves afloat until they put their 1000th OLED TV on the shelf without breaking.

That doesn't make sense, but warehouse workers should be paid for their work, yes. That pay will keep them afloat.

It's not anybody's fault bricklayers don't have viable business model (if there was such a thing as Spotify for Bricklayers).

Most bricklayers lay bricks. That's been a fairly viable business model for a good while now.

Appeal to tradition. Remember that at some point one could have said that to someone saying slavery is wrong. "We always had slaves".

???? And people are being forced into writing music? I'm not sure comparing a badly paid (in general) profession someone enters by choice to human trafficking and enslavement is helpful, or accurate.

Workers are entitled to a minimum wage for their time, at very least if they work at a for profit business.

And any musician can go and work for a 'for profit' business and get paid that minimum wage. However if you work for yourself you need to convince enough people as to the merits of your output, be that a lovely tune or a fine oak table, to pay for it.

The problem isn't really Spotify, it's people.

Throughout history artistic people have been exploited by business people. It's a weird symbiotic relationship that I'm not sure you can ever really fix. How many now famous painters were poor in their lifetime? There'll always be someone with a mythical pot of gold, and there'll always be someone talented but naive to fall for that.

Re: exchange rate

...and a teensy bit of gouging....

At current exchange rates $59.99 + VAT works out at around £57.

I can't imagine compliance with the consumer rights act costs another 20%?!

I mean, I'm sure Borkzilla will bury it,

They've just put the code on github, and according to the Eclipse foundation will subsequently be re-licencing it under the MIT licence.

The current licence forbids you from creating a competing product, which you will be allowed to do once it's re-licenced.

That doesn't seem like burying it?

Re: "proprietary gatekeeping wrapped in open washed clothing"

You remember Microsoft's Monkey Boy ? Ballmer. The one who said Open Source was a cancer.

To be fair to fester, he said the GPL was cancer, due to it's requirement to licence code it touches under the GPL.

It was a pejorative term, but the point is valid.

Re: Try a modern Lisp

Modern Lisp?

Seems as good a time as any to bring crypto into the mix. :D

Always be polite to PAs ...

Always be polite... especially to 'prickly' people.

I've worked with a few 'difficult' people over the years, more often than not simply being a little more polite and a little less dismissive makes one hell of a difference. One day, you'll need something they control and then your patience will be rewarded.

At a previous job we had a software repository, controlled in another country. A dev needed something adding, I suggested they email and ask for it. They complained as that particular department never responded and always took ages.

I fired off an email and had the software in the repo in about an hour.

My colleague was genuinely shocked; the only thing I can put it down to is whenever I had to email this dept and they did something I would always take 10 seconds to hit 'Reply' and say thank you.

Sometimes people forget, especially software people, that work is as much about programming the people as it is the machines.

erm?

Or do you mean his personal stuff? Maybe he doesn't want to?

Re: fingerprint works <25% of time

Sorry, I was replying to the comment 'fingerprint works <25% of time', not the article in general, just pointing out that the leading fingerprint sensor became vendor specific, and that is why the Apple stuff tends to be better. :)

Lets be fair, realistically, fingerprints aren't that secure if you're an 'important target'.

If I've nicked your device I've more than likely nicked a device covered in the fingerprints I need to unlock it.

Also, as this thread illustrates, consumer grade FP readers tend towards convenience rather than overall accuracy. I've worked with industrial applications of the technology for building access (slightly different as you're trying to identify someone from a fingerprint against a database of hundreds or thousands of people rather than trying to determine if a fingerprint is one person), and in order to be good enough to not have a shocking rate of false positives you often take a few goes to get a successful read.

Re: ZFS includes block deduplication...

But if you're on ZFS you might as well just use snapshots.

Then zfs send the fs elsewhere periodically for redundancy.

This is what I do at home, rotating hourly/daily/monthly snapshots, then some heith-robinson esq scripts to send it elsewhere every hour.

The remote stuff is a bit fragile but I assume there's pay for tooling for that stuff that is a bit better than my shonky shell scripts, but it does mean I can basically restore my home server's root FS from an off site backup if needed.

Re: True but somewhat illrelevant

The Boeing 737 MAX flew thousands of times without crashing due to flawed sensor data and a recalcitrant MCAS system. . . until it did. . . so a "success rate" is somewhat irrelevant.

...

I certainly hope that there's nothing overlooked and that the SpaceX human flights continue safely but given the safety track record of some of Mr Musk's enterprises well documented in this very journal. . . well, I'll just have continue to hope, I guess.

So 'success rate' doesn't matter, but 'safety track record' does?

How does one measure the second without the first?

What other metrics do you suggest, as it seems like 'not liking musk' is the one you're using?

Put it another way, if I was going to put myself or something else into space, would I chose the rocket company that has more successful launches than all other rocket companies (state or private) combined, or does that not matter because... Elon?

My side comment wrt Mr Musk still stands. That's a fact. Whether it's salient, well, I suppose that depends on where you're sitting. . . on the business end of a rocket or on the sidelines.

It is a fact, and so long as you take it in context that Blue Origin and Virgin both offer low altitude space tourism flights, and Space X can take you into orbit and dock with the ISS then that's fine, but to imply that all 3 crew vehicles are in the same ballpark is disingenuous.

Also, I might point out that New Shepard is currently grounded due to a booster failure in it's last flight, but that doesn't seem to matter because it's not Elon?? Or was it not the 'businesss end' that failed? ;) Personally, I'll trust a rocket that's flown well over 200 times without issue over one that has flown 30 times, the last of which ended in failure.

Re: @Binraider

Of course, if you remember the ZX81, you also remember systems with just 1K.

I do, although as I got a second hand ZX81 in the Spectrum/C64/Amiga era it also came with a memotech memopak 64K. This meant wobbly ram upgrades were just a thing of legend.

It also came with a good stack of old Sinclair Users too, I used to covet the various keyboard expansion options available.

There's a lot to be said for fat binaries, especially in the Linux world.

A few years ago I had a (Windows) Qt app I wanted to distribute cross platform. This was in the days before Snap et. al.

Windows and Mac were fine, NSIS and macdeployqt respectively. However, for Linux (which I didn't really use) I concluded that a 'fat' binary was the way to go.

I didn't wish to spend time learning the various package managers for OSs I didn't actually use, so just ended up statically compiling the binary and shipping that, along with the object files and instructions needed to re-compile against a modified Qt for LGPL compliance.

(This was a hobby freeware app just to be clear, not a commercial or work thing).

Re: Not Mac daddy

That would probably be one Burrell Smith, another Woz level Apple genius.