Posts by alain williams

Maybe it was all the rust ...

that has been added to the kernel, the wheels & gears are grinding a bit.

Oh, the joys of giving your data to someone else

Of course, once SAP [of anyone else] have control of your data, they will take every opportunity to enrich themselves.

This is much the same what Microsoft is doing by sucking all of your documents into its O365 cloud - it will progressively make it more expensive, and harder, to do anything else.

I want my printer manufacturer to make a profit from me ...

I am happy for them to do that by selling me a printer at a price that does that.

When I need a new printer I look ink vendors' web sites and work out the printing price per page and chose on that basis. I do not care who makes the ink/toner.

I would be very happy to buy printer manufacturer supplies as long as they are competitive.

Summary: I am happy for the manufacturer to make a profit but not a killing.

NASA needs to add new boilerplate to mission statements

that each off-planet mission will, somehow, attempt to image Trump's ego from space. He will readily approve all of them.

However: given the size of his ego it will not be hard to find, I just hope that it will not crack some of the expensive optics.

Would it be possible ...

to rotate which instruments are switched on ? So: run one for a week, then power it down and run a different one for a week.

Or is it that once powered down some/all instruments cannot be powered back up ?

I upgraded from Windows 11 years ago

Now I run X.org and will move to Waylan when Debian stable does so.

I am surprised that it does not ask you ...

if you want your heart switched off and on again.

What reasons for not making something repairable ?

• It is cheaper to build

• Make more profit by forcing customers into expensive repairs

• Make another sale when the customer does not want to pay for an expensive repair

• Can make something smaller by not worrying about repairability

• CEO is a Trump supporter

Anything else ?

What do you think ?

As a British tax payer ...

I would much rather that BoE (or any organ of state) paid for services within our shores:

• generate employment here - which will be taxable

• use skills of people here which will:

•• encourage more Brits to become skilled up

•• enable us to better compete for such projects internationally

• keep sensitive data within the UK

Unfortunately: this requires joined up thinking - which is in short supply.

When are the other 95% going ?

Hopefully not too far in the future.

Furilabs is Chinese

They give an address in Hong Kong so I would not trust it. Part of the point of a Debian 'phone is to get away from spyware, what is the point of swapping a data slurp from Google with one from the Chinese government ?

Porridge time

I still want to see some of the guilty at either the PO or Fujitsu spending a few years at HMP Slade. That after they have been bankrupted just as were some of the post masters.

If that does not happen then something similar will happen again.

So when will Google be asked ...

to relabel Greenland as Trumpland ?

Established vs new requirements

I do understand that if you have something that works it might be thought preferable to bleed a little rather than face death if a migration goes wrong - especially for systems where downtime is very costly.

But if a something new is being developed breakages are not so important, indeed expected, before it goes live. So escape from VMware should be much easier -- reskilling being a major cost, maybe also different hardware.

I wonder how many new projects are being built on top of VMware just because of fear of the unknown ?

Meta should consent or pay me

I have never had a FB/... account and do not use their services. However they have a "shadow account" that contains my personal information, they store this outside of the UK & EU, I have not agreed to them having my information, them taking it outside the UK, they have not told me what they are using it for.

Either:

• Meta should seek consent before they use my information -- clearly documented in the GDPR, or:

• Meta can pay me £1,000 per year to keep this shadow information. To be paid into my bank a/c not as credit to some service that I do not use.

No one likes regulation, but ...

without it organisations will do the minimum, especially if the cost of failure is borne by others - especially if those others are too small to be able to fight back.

Regulation has a cost but it also has benefits.

Too much regulation is bad, too little is bad. There is a balance, but finding it is hard and might only be obvious in retrospect.

Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

According to DVLA there were 32,888,476 cars in the UK in Q2 2024 (warning: spreadsheet) so 300,000 charge-points is about 1%, assuming that they are all working and near to where EVs need to be charged.

(40,448,909 vehicles in total, including buses & lorries)

Did Musk/Twitter ever pay its bills ?

In 2023 there were stories of Twitter not paying rent and being sued. How was this resolved, did Musk get away with non payment ?

Is this the sort of person who we want in the government of the USA ? Oh, look at the new president - he will fit right in!

What happens when they collide ?

Will the debris be less damaging/polluting than when a metal framed satellite it hit - thus reducing impact of Kessler syndrome ?

I suppose that the contents will still contain much metal, so the box/contents ratio might be important.

Divide and be ruled

Not living in the USA I am more worried about what happens at home (UK) than in the other side of the pond.

The USA is a large economy and provides a lot of tech and buys a lot of our goods -- but not all of them by a long way.

Trump will try to tie other countries up with individual trade deals, do not do what he says and he will yank the trade deal away.

If the rest of the world unites we can force Trump to behave to everyone's benefit rather than what Trump thinks is best for him personally (and the USA secondly).

Nice in theory but getting countries to act together is very hard. A few will be seduced by Trump offering trinkets - this will seem good in the short term until Trump changes it when escaping his clutches will be hard. Forward thinking is needed - something that our politician are not known for