Posts by keithpeter 2068 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jul 2007
"My parents keep offering to pass on their old, really old, laptops to family members and I keep persuading them that they will not be doing them any favours"
Wipe the hard drives, install Ubuntustudio and suggest parents donate to local digital arts/music/hackerspace
https://toplap.org/
https://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/zero_dollar_laptop.html
Core duo upwards is usable
"You lost the public voted just accept it."
GE2017 was not exactly a ringing endorsement of Mrs May's approach to bexit, just accept it.
Seriously, this is not a football game.
One Mr Dominic Cummings has written a very nice summary of how much of a coin toss the referendum was on his blog.
Google for "On the referendum #21: Branching histories of the 2016 referendum and ‘the frogs before the storm’" and be prepared to read the cached version if the direct link stops working.
https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/
Given the thin mandate, one would have expected a very soft brexit coupled with a slow divergence over say 10 years. Alas, the internal dynamics of the Tory party made such a conservative approach impossible. Irony can be enjoyed sometimes.
Workplace conduct policies in UK public sector often require people to disclose that they are in a relationship if they both happen to work in the same organisation. Same with staff and students (mature students obviously). Not sure any requirement not to work there any more. Just more preventing any suggestion of nepotism and/or issues around power at work.
Shame about Stallman, there is a lot he has been proved right about in terms of free software, drm, tracking &c.
In a university somewhere in England a decade ago, the procedure for resetting a password for staff was
1) Set up conference call with staff member, a manager who knows staff member and help desk operative, manger to be on internal phone book number or work mobile
2) Manager to confirm identity of staff member from voice
3) Password reset to a generic one involving staff reference number and sent to manager by email and set to change on first login
The logic was "good enough for armed services, good enough for us"
I only had to use it once. Not sure what they do now in these times of management by email
Just wondering what the 'analytics' and 'big data' bits of these managerial skills categories actually mean on the ground?
Any actual concrete examples of what a typical job might entail?
My sneaking suspicion is that it might actually be possible to devise a training program/boot camp type of thingy to cover the mathematical aspects for people who had the programming skills already. The programming skills bit being a pretty good filter.
@Bombastic and all
We are, basically, primates running modified software and as such I suspect that we are adapted to monitor our surroundings for things that *change* from the norm. Hence the increased usability of big fat gauges and levers, as Mr Bob says, you develop awareness of what looks like a normal pattern and can detect and deal with any departures.
Teaching basic maths to teenagers has paid my rent for several decades. When you say a number like 14.6 I immediately see a pointer on some kind of scale (because I'm old) and I'm thinking 'could be anywhere between 14.55 and 14.65, 20 is close, 10 is closer and it is nowhere near 146'. The younguns are just seeing digits - numbers in a line - no obvious awareness of what other numbers are near or far (14.7 as opposed to 146).
How we get round this I'm not sure.
http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/index.html
I would suggest, respectfully, listening to some 78s on a well set up acoustic gramophone.
You might be (really) surprised. It's the immediacy. Difficult to explain in words. These things are subjective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_139
What I would like the autonomous vehicle people to explain is what actually happens about public transport in the brave new world?
There are a couple of driverless monorail type systems around, but the Class 139 above was fully crewed (driver and guard) when I was on it yesterday.
Seriously, the economics and social aspects of driverless need exploring as well as the regulatory/safety and liability aspects.
"Better stop using Windows before they abandon it for some Linux distro, which is basically what they have done for Windows Phone."
Don't joke...
A thin linux host + fully supported WINE could get Microsoft out of a lot of long term expensive support commitments and legacy software maintenance. Lets face it they are already distributing most of the userland and have joined the Linux Foundation.
"Absolutely brilliant at what they do, but an utter nightmare to support. Sheldon Cooper isn't an outlier, he's middle of the road batshit crazy."
Just hazarding a guess, but would the stubbornness be mainly around upgrading and possible changes in behaviour in computation environments?
Good luck Sheldon-herding.
As others have commented, I suspect it is Linux on the clusters and desktops for physicists and Microsoft available for admin and perhaps for physicists as well for reasons of user choice.
History links for Fermi Linux/Scientific Linux for anyone interested...
https://slideplayer.com/slide/10899606/
Connieh Sieh's slides from some conference or other. Slide 5 will give you a bit of deja vu.
TD;LR Redhat linux transitioned to a paid model around 2003. What I remember reading somewhere else but is not mentioned on the slide is that the paid model was per core licencing. CERN (and other HEP sites) use rather a lot of cores....
Despite a discount from Redhat, the economics of the situation suggested hiring a few people and doing a recompile from source. Connie was already doing Fermi Linux based on Red Hat sources at that point.
https://lwn.net/Articles/786422/
The logic of Reghat's acquisition of CentOS now suggests distributing CentOS and providing a local repository...
https://springdale.math.ias.edu/
Springdale is an independently compiled RHEL clone with active and fairly responsive support from a couple of IT staff at Princeton University. They do have an RHEL 8.0 recompile out for 64 bit and there is a netinstall boot image (I've not tried it, alpha, not supported &c)
http://springdale.princeton.edu/data/springdale/8/x86_64/iso/
All software is basically crap.
I've had problems with *.BSDs, Linux and Windows.
However, I was able to resolve the problems on OpenBSD myself by reading the man pages, and, in one case, a search of the mailing list archive (OpenBSD-misc).
And on Linux by googling the text of the error messages and filtering the search terms by distribution and release number.
But, I have to admit, on Windows I needed the help of one of the 5 professional IT support staff that the organisation employs. It was a funny thing about a graphics driver under Windows 10 for Education on a fairly low spec endpoint machine with a large monitor. The issue was resolved by replacing the machine.
Nice broadcast, thanks for link.
Caveat auditor: I had to register (supplied my usual demographic profile that I use for confusing analytics) and then discovered that this is not actually a podcast in the usual sense. Can't download it any way that I can see and you have to use the player embedded on the Web page.
Quote from the Krebs on Security post linked to in OA
"Accounting Today says the limited ability to share updates angered CCH users, many of whom took to social media to air their grievances against a cloud partner they perceive to be ill-prepared for maintaining ongoing service and proper security online."
Perhaps services companies that depend on the cloud should have a completely separate status reporting system? Just a small system that has nothing in common with the main service (perhaps even with a separate DNS entry).
I recollect that Sony in the US had to resort to a drawer full of old Blackberrys after their hack five years ago...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/business/media/sony-attack-first-a-nuisance-swiftly-grew-into-a-firestorm-.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1
Might be worth keeping an eye on Springdale Linux as well as CentOS if you are in a hurry. Springdale have been known to get quick and functional builds out quite quickly once the source is chucked over the wall. However, CentOS is itself a RedHat tentacle now so maybe not this time
Google groups: springdale-devel
https://www.christitus.com/2019/02/15/garmin-express-linux/
I don't use wine and have no experience of Garmin's software, but just thinking that a pretty complete Linux + wine would fit OK on 32Gb with a reasonable amount of storage for /home.
Icon: people pay me to use Windows
Running a Windows compatibility layer on top of a convenient host OS which is developed elsewhere has struck me as a possible way forwards for Microsoft for some time. Cost of maintenance must be getting larger with each new layer, and onboarding programmers must be harder with each generation. I shall miss the last of the actual microcomputer OSes.
Icon: people pay me to use Windows
"They save 1 engineer of costs, wonder how long before employee downtime wipes out that saving."
Different budgets?
Target on headcount but no obvious way to apportion the employee downtime attributable to poor local support so gets lost in general noise (sickness, turnover &c)?
>> Giles said his suspicions were first aroused by the man's suit, telling The Register: "He wasn't scruffy but he wasn't wearing the high-end tailoring and well-polished shoes I'd associate with someone in his supposed business." <<
Years ago when involved with bid writing (at a lowly level) for a public sector organisation I had to find and work with appropriate private sector project partners. I was given advice along the lines of 'check their shoes'. I think my advisor meant something along the lines of 'make sure they have their shit together enough to present themselves well and make a coherent case'.
Icon: I don't dress posh
Lucky him, my entire desk area is about half a sheet of flip chart paper if that (a good unit of area there by the way). And that includes the PC box, the monitor stand, keyboard, mouse area, and the actual paperwork I need to find space for (college, teacher, marking) and the phone and one of those mains adaptor blocks - both plugs taken up by PC/monitor.
I have admiration for whoever installed the PC and phone as they have managed to reduce the cable lengths to the absolute limit, making it impossible to actually move anything.
I agree that in this case the statement was probably just ticking the motivational box, and I hope those in the company do well in the future (perhaps by leaving for alternative employment?). However, it is possible to have a situation where success might be a random outcome (see any of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books), or heavily dependent on other forces.
As a concrete example, one of the centres I teach in (adult education, uk) now has 'percentage of students entering employment during course' as one of several performance indicators. We could be teaching our socks off, delivering a thundering pass rate, and yet that indicator could tank completely as a result of some large change in the economy caused by external factors. I can personally see a whole flock of distinctly grey swans heading our way soon...
Coat: off out
Quote from OA
"The theme tune is still like a sonic screwdriver to the eardrum"
Delia was the glamorous one (with, sadly, alcohol problems) but Daphne wrote the book on electronic music.
I say all this having wielded a razor blade to 1/4 inch 15ips tape myself some half a century ago.
"For instance, a user could create a form (say a new starter form) and easily add it to a workflow, add an approval step from a line manager and store the result in a database, with very little effort, very little technical expertise and very quickly."
Random un-audited shadow IT used to capture confidential and personally identifiable information as a feature?
Good luck everyone.
Depends on your definition of trivial.
I find LO fine for my trivial word-processing, spread-sheeting and presentation needs. Typically course guides with 80 pages, formulas, diagrams &c associated presentations destined for import into interactive whiteboard softare. Nothing amazing.
For non-trivial stuff (in my definition) I'm using LaTeX / programmatically generated graphics anyway.
"Both Brooks, 58, and cofounder Susi Lennox, 73, decided to start the company when they grew tired of their jobs in the drug safety departments of various pharmaceutical companies."
I wonder how many people who work with detailed regulations and checklists all day dream of starting a small business selling something outrageous? These two actually did and seem to be fairly successful. They perhaps need to consult more widely about changes to their Internet presence however.
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