Posts by Doctor Syntax 16449 posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"If company A doesn't need your address and bank details, then the compromise is an inconvenience to the average user."
Really? A calendar as per your example? What's on the calendar?
Uncle Fred's 60th birthday next week? Ooh look, with got Uncle Fred's DoB. Is Uncle Fred identified in any further way? Does it have his email address? A little bit of information for ID theft and material for a more convincing phishing attempt - click on this e-birthday card.
Leave on holiday in 2 weeks time, return 10 days later? House unoccupied - nice.
Lots and lots of scope from a busy calendar.
Presentation methods in decreasing order of reliability:
Blackboard.
Whiteboard. There's always one pen that's dried up and one which is solvent based and can't be wiped off without the special solvent that's not there.
Overhead projector. Fine until the bulb goes.
Slide projector. The remote fails or an automatic timer cuts in. Or else the bulb goes.
Powerpoint. The embodiment of Murphy's law combining not one but two electronic devices, a remote and a projector bulb.
"Yes, my plan is to check out around 70; that seems to be the point at which my parents stopped enjoying life."
OTOH both I and SWMBO are in our 70s and still functioning. When you get into your 70s you might find you stuff to do - such as looking after grandchildren.
Maybe this is a reaction Microsoft's statement recorded elsewhere ( https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/20/2111240/microsoft-will-solve-cancer-within-the-next-10-years-by-treating-it-like-a-computer-virus-says-company ) that they'll "solve" cancer.
Apparently they intend to treat cells as computers and reprogram them. Should work well unless too many BSOD at the same time.
"My problem with Which? is the weasel words timing of this, the day after Microsoft removes Windows 10 nagware? Coincidence?"
Are you saying MS timed this to coincide with Which?'s publication date?
"Now I know a lot of people will have the attitude what have you got to hide ?"
Do you notice how hardly any of those who keep saying that never bother to unhide stuff like there banking details. In fact the only one I can think of was Jeremy Clarkson and he quickly discovered that he had stuff he should have hidden.
The truth is, of course, that not only do we all have stuff to hide, we're contractually bound to hide it.
"I get about 4-5 very large bits of junk mail from Virgin. Every month!"
We seem to be off their list now. I think they've finally realised that they have no cable or fibre near here not any likelihood of installing any (last time some work was done on the gas mains the team doing it were horrified when they discovered how tough the rock was just below the road surface). It seems that our neighbours who had Virgin boradband were encouraged to leave.
"Any business can be affected by outside events, whether they are earthquakes, tsunamis, military coups, rampant inflation, massive currency fluctuations etc. and one could argue that the EU referendum and its potential vote for Brexit was one of those external events that could have a major impact on the company."
Spot the one which the employees could influence by their vote.
"If Brexit means that the UK goes to the back of the queue to have TTIP imposed on it then so much the better"
Assuming TTIP doesn't get imposed before Brexit I'd guess we'd be in front of the queue. All this thrashing about to negotiate new trade treaties is going to leave us vulnerable to being screwed like this. It wouldn't surprise me if we were lumbered with TTP as well, just in case there are bits in TTIP which are less disadvantageous to us.
"I did think that KDE 'Activities' would be useful but it didn't seem to work in the way I thought it would."
I just ignore them. I think they're a product of the madness that overtook so many UI designers, the notion that desktop and mobile interfaces could be converged combined with the fact that mobile interfaces are app-based and many desktop users work on documents, and often more documents than a Recent documents menu item can easily support. Unity was a product of the same thinking. In the Unix/Linux world, of course, we have choices; pity the poor, stuck between W8.x & 10.
"I've made an honest effort to use the KDE desktop so I could learn about all this modern bling. However, I just don't 'get it'.
What is the point? Can anybody explain it to me"
Simple. KDE doesn't attempt to double guess what you what you want to do, where you want to put things on your desktop or what init you're using. It just lets you set things as you want and get on with it.
For myself, I set Folder view with a Desktop folder, icons aligned to grid but not locked in place*, kill the annoying bouncing cursor, turn off the magic top left to stop any window located there maximising and select classic menu. Depending on the size of the screen I might autohide the panel (task bar). And of course, I have multiple workspaces set up - who doesn't?
*This gives me the freedom to arrange icons how I want them. I keep a lot of stuff on the desktop** but this allows me to organise it; a number of desktops I tried don't seem to support this.
**I subscribe to the view that an empty desk is a sign of an empty head. And yes, I've always treated physical desktops the same way although with them stuff seems to wander about of its own accord. On KDE I can make it stay put.
"I think the MS install base is a little larger than the Debian one, and also has less consumer users."
The scale effect might come into play with download speeds and to some extent the speed of checking for updates. But as Stuart said, the installed base is very diverse: from the Raspberry Pi upwards to larger server installations. I think we can reasonably conclude that scale wouldn't shake out many if any hidden quality problems. And having installed updates on both Windows and Linux I know from experience that the latter are still faster even if you disregard the download speeds.
"Fixing it is a dark art."
When I had to do this some week ago it seemed to consist of finding various interweb postings saying apply KB$Number and then finding a chain of MS support pages saying KB$Number-you-were-looking-for has been replaced by KBAnother-number-to-look-for.
If it wasn't a dark art it was certainly an Adventure.
"On the BBC News website, they're reporting that Which? have condemned Windows 10: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37431343"
I liked the quote at the end: "On the whole, Windows 10 has been received well, and was a notable step up from the previous Windows 8, which did not go down well with many users." I'd call that damning with faint praise.
"The reason for this is that development tools have become unbelievably productive."
Which enables features to be added easily. Making decisions as to which features should be included is extra work. If it's easier to just put them in anyway you get bloat and its associated performance costs.
"Besides, although it's widely said it's not completely true. Modern high FPS animated UIs are intrinsically compute intensive, as are many cloud based data workloads. Web browsers, too, are surprisingly compute heavy - layout and render of modern HTML is non-trivial, and that's even without taking Javascript into consideration."
In other words it's Shiny that's the problem.
"One of these two is a constructive statement."
With dieselgate fresh in the memory I'd have expected the CTA to have taken the moral high ground - which in this case would probably be the fence on which it could sit. Otherwise, if NRDC is proven right when the shit hits the fan they'll be standing right in line to get their share.
AFAICS under the IANA contract ICANN does two main things.
It maintains the register of protocol numbers but the authority for that comes from the IETF and IRTF with the IAB as final arbiter ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2860 ). According to that RFC the agreement can be ended at not less than 6 months notice from either side.
It maintains the root DNS server.
The servers are mirrored by other servers.
It would appear feasible for the mirror operators to come together and decide that the governance of IANA is in such a parlous state as to justify their selecting one of their number to be the primary copy, at least until the situation is resolved, and for the rest of the mirrors to mirror that. In practical terms there would be no effect until either ICANN or the new primary made changes not tracked by the other. At that point it would be up to lower lever servers to choose which to follow and it wouldn't be a difficult choice - go with the mirror set. In effect it would be the internet de facto taking control of itself in order to route around breakage.
The US government can then continue to squabble amongst itself as long as it wants.
"So basically you are saying the same thing as the judges: monopoly (by M$) is good!"
No. I'm saying these are two completely different cases with different facts.
I read the previous report. It turned on reimbursement of the cost of the licence for an unwanted piece of software which had been removed.
This, should it come to court, turns on the locking of the device to prevent the removal of the unwanted software. In the report here there's no mention of wanting reimbursement for the licence and if that continues to be the case then the complaints are quite different.
I doubt, however, that you'll want to prevent facts getting in the way of a good rant so please continue.
"EU Judges are already on M$'s payroll, and have ruled that, see here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/09/sony_wins_case_over_preinstalled_windows_software/"
That is a somewhat different situation dealing with a refund of the cost of the licence when the installed Windows was blown away to install something better. Locking the thing in place is a different matter. Cases are determined on facts and the facts in this situation are very different.
"I'm not a Brit, so I have to ask: does that mean he's like the Meta Baron or something?"
He's an ex-local government politician, ex-MP with form, particularly when he was Home Secretary. I don't know how it fits with your admin but back then it included, police, prisons, forensic science and spying on the populace. He seemed particularly keen on the last. He is also blind which explains some of the previous comments.
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