Posts by Doctor Syntax 41179 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
We've already had articles about others. Others including Denmark and if Denmark has had any inclination to slack off a bit (not suggesting they had) they've just had a further nudge and no doubt other countries will have taken note of that.
The nay-sayer A/Cs (how many are there in reality?) get so tiring.
"an open source solutions can be moved to any of the vast number of European bit barns, which will soon be available at knock down prices once the AI bubble bursts."
If they're optimised for LLM processing they're going to be sub-optimal for real work.
"Not because they're evil but because they need to write a 50-page privacy policy in every European language, following the individual rules of every European country, that nobody will ever read because of how big it is."
The advantage of EU setting rules is that you don't have rules for every EU country, you have one set. Of course it complicates things a bit if you have to consider countries outside the EU but even there it helps if the country decides to adopt the EU's rules, foregoing the right to participate in the rule making process because somehow doing that erodes sovereignty.
The basic situation has been festering since the EU (including the UK at the time) started weakening GDPR with various privacy fig-leaves.
It's taken Trump 2.0 to concentrate minds on the dangers. It was OK with TPTB when it was seen as just little people's personal data. It took Trump to make companies and governments to realise that they were also at risk.
There is NextCloud the company but there is also NextCloud the FOSS application which was forked from the earlier OwnCloud. Either can be installed by anyone wishing to run their own service - right down to anyone wishing to run their own server in their own home. Likewise the client S/W can also be installed by anyone who wishes to. Any of those could be forked if that became a necessity.
That's why the one guarantee of digital sovereignty is FOSS. It's not any sort of principled choice - FOSS vs evil corporation. It's a strictly practical choice as, of course, is digital sovereignty.
Are you suggesting I should get pushed into your selection of Mate or Xfce for the desktop? That's not why I use Linux.
Having the choice is far, far more important that having Linux or some other Unix variant take over the world. Having Linux take over the world on those terms would be little better than having Windows everywhere. The whole point of having a modular, layered approach to system design is to enable the user to select their choice.
A quick look at Waterfox suggests the Linux install is a tarball. Not ideal.
However I can't see LibreWolf drinking the AI KoolAid either and you can add it's repository and install it and get updates along with everything else in the apt world. It's a little more security conscious then FF and out of the box it has a few quirks to stop fingerprinting.
"Users should not have to be tech-literate to use a computer"
How did you learn to become expert at using Windows? My guess is that you just clicked around. Right click on this and that and see what the menus offer? Well, stand back and prepared to be flabbergasted.
That's the exact way we learned to use Linux desktops.
"To create a desktop shortcut, the process is you spend a while Googling"
That's your problem right there.
You have a GUI. Use it. How would you do something unfamiliar on Windows? My guess is that you'd experiment with clicking around. This is what you'd find on KDE desktop but I doubt others would differ in more than detail:
What did you want to create a desktop short cut for?
1. An application in the applications menu? Right click on the item in the menu. Select Add to Desktop. Done.
2. A file or directory in some directory that you have open? Select the item, drag it to the desktop and drop it. When the dialog opens to ask if you want to move, copy or create a link select create a link. Done.
3. Anything? Right click on the desktop. From the menu select link to file or directory or Link to application. Type in the name and, for the former, navigate to select the file or directory. For the latter, navigate to the executable, select that and then use the tabs to set the properties you want rather than typing them in as Google told you. You can also select an icon for it. It's a bit trickier than exporting it from the menu but you only do that if it's something that's not already installed on the menu.
But no doubt your post will be quoted by other A/Cs who'll repeat it without checking for themselves. But how come you didn't discover it for yourself? I can see why you posted A/C, after all it doesn't show up your desktop skills in a good light.
What you seem to be describing from Google is something you only need for something with very special requirements, not your average run-of-the-mill application. For instance I run an Informix server* which has a lot of environment settings etc. If I were to set up a shortcut for a terminal session to run Informix clients it I might go through that routine although, in fact, I just set it up in the system profile so that any terminal session has access. This, however, is real sysadmin stuff because it's what I used to do for a living on Unix servers. I repeat, it is not what you'd be doing to set up a typical productivity app.
* I have some genealogical data on it.
"Microsoft’s real win was owning the enterprise.
...
Microsoft made its money from every PC sold"
You've got them the wrong way round. By all sorts of leverage they got OEM installs so that's what people knew and that's how they got into the enterprise. They managed to distract SCO by offering to hold their coat while they had a fight with Linux. By the time that settled they'd got an arguably inferior server OS into the enterprise.
"And that's my point: Joe and Josephine have no idea how to install anything - or configure anything for that matter."
I agree with you. It's just there on the PC they bought, they don't need to install it.
But what do they do when Patch Tuesday banjaxes their Windows? The recommendation for what to do when that happens aren't pretty and my experience was that the only way out was a reinstall.
"Unix died because of endless incompatibilities between versions."
Unix lived because of the different versions portability to different H/W. I wouldn't expect to be running Solaris on HP Prism or VAX. I wouldn't expect to be able to run HP-UX on Sequent, etc. but because it was all Unix it was easy to move from a gig on one platform to a gig on another. This adapability mattered less as Intel/AMD H/W trounced most of the other stuff. The feature of different versions became less of an advatage.
Unix's problem was that regulatory issues required that it be transferred away from AT&T and ended up in the hands of SCO. SCO in turn ended up in entirely the wrong hands and Microsoft egged them on to fight IBM in the courts over Linux, distracting them while Microsoft took over the server market with an arguably inferior product.
You mean it's safer to go with someone you know you can't trust rather than someone you can trust for now on the off-chance that they might become untrustworthy later.?
For avoidance of doubt, Microsoft's president has admitted that they can't be trusted, although wrapped up in slightly longer phrasing.
Our internet connection failed a few weeks ago - weather related - which got fixed fairly quickly but the tech ran through a series of tests. everything was working but he announced we had a split pair. Plugged his tester into the master socket after unplugging the modem cable and found the master to be OK. Confidently announced "It's your modem". Never stopped to think that a modem, identical to thousands of other mass-produced modems is unlikely to have been manufactured with an internal fault but --- the cable he'd just unplugged?
"It shouldn't have to fall to her to write it down, that's your job."
I'm not sure about that one. Sometimes it helps to learn. Perhaps produce an instruction list but also sit with the user who's having problems and walk it through with them suggesting it might help if they take notes.
"Mike decided the best way to support the teacher was to leave him alone."
I think I'd have told him that if the problem was too much stuff in the inbox or on the PC I could leave it to him to clear some space - he'd have to do it himself as only he knew what had to be kept. And then reply to the follow-up calls telling him that he needed to delete more stuff.
It's hardly rocket science but would require a rewrite, retest etc. Then there's be the H/W refresh*. Yes, it's not rocket science but it gets all the expense and complication of being a government job because an extremely complex set of rules have to be followed to ensure the government gets value for money.
Of course it would need new H/W. Whatever made you think it wouldn't?
Does the UK have an "Einwohnermeldeamt" ??? My preferred translation helper only gives "local residents' registration office
Not really. There's voting registration but the only consequence of not registering is not being able to vote and it only requires listing of people of voting age. Apart from that there's the census* at 10 year intervals but I think some short-cuts are being put in place for the next one so it will probably become less reliable - the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if it all gets handed over to AI.
* It doesn't really tell where people lived, just where they were on census night.
I've lived in an attic flat like that the door, first part of the hallway and bathroom were at a lower level than the rest of the flat and then there were four steps up to the other half of the wall and the living room, bedroom and kitchen. For some reason the hall was very wide. It could have had a studio flat built into the space.
That achieved its ultimate destination decades ago in my experience. A Stranraer* to Larne ferry had something called a Scotch pie on sale in its definitely not restaurant. I made the mistake of buying one. It consisted of a rigid pastry case whose contents were a greasy smear on the bottom.
* Yes, that long ago. In fact, longer.
"We want people to be able to ask questions as they would in everyday life; for example: 'I've just had a baby, do you know what help I can get?' Responses would combine material from multiple departments including HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Department for Education into "a single, simple conversational answer."
Simpler, less new shiny, of course, but probably better, to have a single, well written, information page bringing all that information together, linked from wherever someone might look including the sites of those departments and NHS.
I suppose it's the "less new shiny" that's the killer. If it's AI it must be better, mustn't it?
Mustn't it?
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