Posts by PeteA 148 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2011
Hmm, I know about the other parts of the approach, but don't remember that bit. Don't think anyone could accuse Windows 3 of being fast. Or Windows 95. Or 98, millenium edition, NT, 2000, 7, 8 or 10 really. Haven't had the misfortune of having to use 11 yet, but I'm sure it's coming.
So it's a markdown editor then. If you're just looking for a lightweight markdown editor, then when not just use vim? Ultra-lightweight, intuitive commands (e.g. 'w' to Write a file, 'q' to Quit, can even be strung together so a simple `:wq` is sufficient to enter command mode, write the file, and then quit).
Flames incoming in 3... 2... 1...
Emacs as an HTML editor? Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. Although _exactly_ why the unwashed heathen masses don't bow down to the power of the One True Editor, Vim, escapes me*
*Have realised on occasion that I'm busy changing things with vim ... running in a WSL session in a VSCode terminal ... ho-hum!
To an extent, the "global operating system" is the emergent behaviour from the combination of all the various standards (formal and informal), legislation and "standard practice" that has developed over the years into a rather arcane IP-based API.
It's all fractals-in-fractals ... what's the OS on my desktop? I'd probably say "Linux", although I really mean "a Linux kernel with a GNU userland and whatever other binaries I install". But in fact, that's just the OS I interact with. I imagine that each of my disks has an OS too (pointless having an ARM processor if not!!), along with all the other peripherals that gain "smarts" over time. So yeah, I buy into the idea of higher- and lower- level control planes^h^h^h operating systems. A shell running inside a container might _think_ it has an operating system, courtesy of the various kernel features (such as namespaces and cgroups) that have been cunningly kludged into the virtualisation construct known as "a container", but it doesn't really, it's just an illusion.
When I deploy some workload into Kubernetes ... I'd suggest that the k8s API's come very close to Wikipedia's definition of an operating system ("An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. ") ... hmmm ... a bit like kubelet then? And how does kata fit in?
Von Neumann / MIT architectures are interesting concepts. The reality is that we are rapidly moving to a much more distributed & interconnected system which resembles an ecological environment and has lots of different morphologies. Many of the inhabitants are symbionts (such as the OS on my HDD's), some are classic Von Neumann / MIT behemoths
Doesn't informative and _instantly memorable_ documentation constitute professional quality? Bit better than than a dry description of enforced descheduling which barely references the offending word - note that "Aborting" is a logical derivative of the function abort(), so it's pretty hard to document the function without using that word somewhere .... and I really appreciate this stuff being documented!
That said, no room for gratuitously offence content, and even though I appreciate freedom etc. I do wish that we could standardi[sz]e on one spelling convention for technical work .... sadly, probably American because it is the dominant branch ... I often get caught-out by UK-origin CLI commands that use my native language (`--colour` ...) because 97% of the time it's the American spelling
Clearly rhetorical question answered: the person who used the gun. Exactly the same as any other murder weapon.
Framing the AI question similarly: the person who chose to entrust [a particular] AI with a life-critical decision. The AI is just a tool, speaking purely personally I'd like to some _real_ intelligence before we move on to artificial.
Back in the real world, it's usually not so simple - in my experience, you often see organisations forming a "cultural identity" which is essentially a shared-belief-system. This can help promote workforce unity, but can have ugly consequences when a "freak wave event" of shared identity ("tribalism"), social pressure and external pressures are combined with dubiously ethical directives from "The Boss". Haven't personally experienced the phenomenon to this level of importance, but have seen the general sequence of events a couple of times.
[IMO] this order isn't really about ID'ing "foreigners", though the language and implications of foreign malevolence will of course play to a certain demographic. The actual *aim* of it is to cut foreign resellers of IaaC out of the US market by making the cost of entry prohibitive. Typical misdirection in the pursuit of MORE MORE MORE in my personal (malleable-to-reason) view.
Straw man - the "Linux plug" was in response to a comment relating to the installation of native software:
Had a shock a couple of days ago, building up software on a new PC. Moving through the list of stuff on the old one, came to BitTorrent, and installed the latest.
Irrespective of operating system, browser or other specific technology choices though, the fundamental issue is one of untrusted code execution; specifically, _who_ do we trust? Can I trust my hardware (particularly the firmware) at all? If so, then do I trust the operating system - even if it was pre-installed by the vendor (think Android) together with a bunch of arbitrary software of their choice? How about when I choose some ${package} for the software I'm developing as a convenience utility?
The reality is that at some point you have to trust your supplier. I don't claim to have a good answer for the core problems, though I do like the kubeos ideas. Given that I'm a reasonably experienced "IT professional" without a watertight solution, and in the context of the article; is it truly reasonable to expect "average users" to be able to make an informed decision about what they install from an apparently-supplier-sanctioned source (the Chrome web store)?
If the answer is "No, an average user cannot be expected to make an informed choice" then there is a consequential burden on the supplier to do so on their behalf. Apparently, in this case, they have fallen short because the black-hats have found a loophole in the decision-making progress and are ahead for a while. Unfortunately, Google appear to have chosen the Boeing strategy of denying this and working to close the hole.
The essential concept behind SystemD (modelling the system as a dependency graph) works for me, but unfortunately the implementation is rather lacking in reliability. I've developed the same level of nervousness about rebooting that I used to have for Windows a decade or two ago. Init relied on you to get things right, and had nothing more than basic linear prioritisation. Much more basic - and much less maintenance hassle.
CRLF is correct ... for a TTy.
Sadly, TTy/VT is lowest common denominator ergo CRLF is corrrect regardless of 1-bye (semantic) excess. Seems a bit ironic to refer to {CR}/{LF} as "clearly seperate operations" that should be treated as such for RTL, which is reason they're separate operations^h^h^h TTy codes in Windows.
Speaking as an old fart who *used* mechanical typewriters, MS got this one right. CR and LF are different. VTxxx mimics the mechanical operation, ipso facto *either* CR/LF or LF/CR are just fine but merely LF is not. Oh, and please remember line-oriented hard-copy output, e.g. DM printer* .... I know, it's archaic, but it still *works* and some of us don't like wasting money on shiny)
* Citizen 120D - amazingly robust kit
CRLF vs LF vs LFCR - let the religious wars being.
Heretic here - I think C/LF is spot-on-right semantically, Un*x / MacOS is wrong. Horrible admission, but there we go. Maybe because once upon a time I use a real mechanical type-writer where CR and LF were different physical actions, as replicated in VT{52,1xx} and thereby into history..
Icon because, well, DOS^h^h^h Windows got it right IMO
Too long since I actually wrote code - but agreed, that's good behaviour. It's essentially a bit of static-analysis baked into the `compiler` (inverted commas because it's all JIT compiled to MC anyway). Always been a proponent of static analysis/"code contracts" personally, the less that fail at runtime c.f. compile time the better IMO.
Icon because, well, I've rather obviously had a few based on this comment's lack of literacy ...
Unfortunately, the day doesn't really have "an end" point - there's a concrete *start* at 00:00, and various times leading up to that such as 23:59:59.9999. But no specific end point, just an analogue rollover. There's also no such time as 24:00; the constraint is 0 <= HH <= 23. So midnight is always YYYY-MM-DD 00:00, where DD represents the day that is just starting [which feels a bit counter-intuitive].
FWIW, the most serious Excel issue here doesn't seem to have been noted: the default association of a CSV with an application that doesn't handle CSV's properly. All one of those scientists has to do to destroy their data is double-click the file and then hit "Save"; there is no point at which it is even possible to intervene during the "import". This has caused grief in just about every business I've worked in, particularly when the marketing team have been involved.
Mine's the one with the group policy to associate CSV's with notepad....
"As a consolation, I can use Raspbian on my Raspberry Pi, and it's based on Linux. Apparently they now have a version that can run on a PC "
OK - I sympathise with your desire to use Linux on your desktop, but think you might need to do a bit of reading around before the assertion that you're not able to use any current distribution on your machine [presumably PC]. It may also be useful to quantify "not a one of them will work" into HOW they don't work; are they all the same [i.e., possible hardware-vs-Linux-defaults issue] or different [i.e., possible distribution-specific issues]
No joke ... after enduring 1.5 hours of the latest upgrade I rang a colleague to warn them and generally grouse. Too late - they started the conversation by complaining of the 2 hours just spent upgrading.
Why is it that my [multiple] linux boxen at home upgrade within a few minutes and rarely with any issues, whereas my work machine with Windows always takes "forever"? Admit to no recent [in last 2 years] issues though, this has gotten better in my personal experience
Does anyone know of a good UK-based IT news site, ideally with good journalism backed by sarcastic British cultural references? There used to be one here, but some American outfit seems be cybersquatting. I really miss El Reg '(, you were part of IT's good times where craftmanship, elegance and creativity were seen as aspirational virtues rather than potential impediments for hordes of generic code-monkeys.
Fix the aerodynamics, lose the band-aid.
Essentially, the problem is that the aircraft is inherently unstable because of the engine positioning compromises. Boeing's initial test pilot (Ray Craig) recommended a hardware [aerodynamic] fix during simulator testing, but Boeing went with software compensation instead. Unfortunately, more issues emerged during real flight testing, and the software was "enhanced" and given more control. The rest, as they say, is history. Very good analysis available at engineering.com.
IMnsHO, this is a typical greed-induced clusterfsck resulting in an essentially unsafe design without the knowledge of anybody important (engineers, pilots, technical regulators etc.). I've no doubt that the approved "fix" will involve various changes so that the calculated probability-of-failure is inside some arbitrary threshold value, but the aircraft will continue to be unstable by design. And one day, everything will align in just the wrong way, the tiny probability of MCAS failure will come to pass, and more people will die. Refer to swiss cheese, or the old software development adage is that "If something can happen, soon or later it will happen".
OK, I'll bite ... it's not infrequent that I use vim from WSL (at work - at home I can use gvim). In general, I can open up vim, change code, recompile & get the changes pushed before Visual Studio's even got around to opening. So terminfo's still very important for me :). Excellent point about a terminfo entry for the shiny new terminal (ROFL - MS've caught up with the noughties. Next thing you know, we'll even be able to split it into a grid! OTOH, why you'd want to try doing anything serious on Windows eludes me anyway unless you've got a sadistic employer.)
Icon because it's what I look forward to after a week of fighting Windows at work.
Don't ... feed ... don't ... feed ... ah sod it, I can't help it
But there is no reason to suppose whatever that this would have been forced to occur by "evolution".
There's every reason. Why do you think they looked where they did [a PET bottle dump] for "PET-eating bacteria"? In other words, they formulated the hypothesis that bacteria might evolve which could digest PET, then they proved the hypothesis, and then they started studying the discovery. It's evolution being predicted and exploited. Consider reading the abstract of A bacterium that degrades and assimilates poly(ethylene terephthalate).
Interesting - I prefer buying independently where possible (just got some kit from ebuyer, who were actually the cheapest of the 'usual suspects' for standard gear). Direct was (very roughly) 5% lower than Amazon price, and I really loathe the way Amazon treat me with the constant devaluation of their products.
Indeed. Props to the libcurl team for helping people not to shoot themselves in the foot, but the (previous) behaviour is exactly what I'd expect from the man page:
-L, --location
(HTTP) If the server reports that the requested page has moved to a different location (indicated with a Location: header and a 3XX response code), this option will make curl redo the request on the new place.
Headers are part of an HTTP request, so I'd expect them to be sent to "the new place".
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