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Comment Re:More IBM vaporware (Score 2) 19

OS/2 had no security features needed for multiuser support. It might as well have been classic MacOS. Citrix had a multiuser version of OS/2 with security tacked on, but it wasn't a realistic solution and was never popular. Building an OS without security was the moronic decision that killed it. Plus IBM never did anything meaningful to promote it so nobody cared. That it was used anywhere (especially in ATMs) was a horrible decision itself because of the lack of security features and has created untold woes. Maybe nobody ever got fired because they bought IBM, but they should have.

Comment Re: Good products (Score 3, Insightful) 102

It is neither right or wrong

It's wrong. The processor has a feature. People will reasonably assume they can use that feature. Then they find out it's disabled.

assuming the features or lack thereof is declared upfront.

If that declaration is not in the largest font size used in the materials then it's hidden.

Comment How cute. (Score 2) 23

It's adorable how they pretend that the 'well being' gap between the people who matter and the ones who don't is some sort of surprise that calls for urgent action; rather than a deliberate outcome carefully achieved.

It's the pandemic-period numbers that are the anomaly, from a period when at times downright existential issues forced people's hands(at least for white collar workers; if you are 'essential' good luck and back to dealing with the public in person); and a lot of work has been put into rectifying that period.

What's next; a comparative analysis of the labor markets of the 1950s and the 1980s that studiously pretends that it's not exactly as Milton Friedman and Neutron Jack intended?

Comment Re:Sad (Score 1) 302

So I'm all for evidence-based medicine as a starting point, but when you realize it isn't behaving normally, you should adjust accordingly.

The thing about adopting evidence-based policy is that you also need to review and if necessary change policy when more evidence becomes available. The kind of situation you're describing would surely qualify.

Comment Perspective probably dooms him. (Score 3, Insightful) 209

In a sense his puzzlement is justified; when the tech demo works an LLM is probably the most obvious candidate for 'just this side of sci-fi'; and, while may of the capabilities offered are actually somewhat hollow (realistically, most of the 'take these 3 bullet points and create a document that looks like I cared/take that document that looks like my colleague cared and give me 3 bullet points' are really just enticements to even more dysfunctional communication) some of them are fairly hard to see duplicating by conventional means.

However, I suspect that his perspective is fundamentally unhelpful in understanding the skepticism: when you are building stuff it's easy to get caught up in the cool novelty and lose sight of both the pain points(especially when you are deep C-Level; rather than the actual engineer fighting chatGPT's tendency to em-dash despite all attempts to control it); and overestimate how well your new-hotness stacks up against both existing alternatives and how forgiving people will or won't be about its deficiencies.

Something like Windows trying to 'conversational'/'agentic' OS settings, for instance, probably looks pretty cool if you are an optimism focused ML dude: "hey, it's not perfect but it's a natural language interface to adjusting settings that confuse users!"; but it looks like absolute garbage from an outside perspective both because it's badly unreliable; and humans tend not to respond well to clearly unreliable 'people'(if it can't even find dark mode; why waste my time with it?); and because it looks a lot like abdication of a technically simpler, less exciting, job in favor of chasing the new hotness.

"Settings are impenetrable to a nontechnical user" is a UI/UX problem(along with a certain amount of lower level 'maybe if bluetooth was less fucked people wouldn't care where the settings were because it would just work); so throwing an LLM at the problem is basically throwing up your hands and calling it unsolvable by your UI/UX people; which is the an abject concession of failure; not a mark of progress.

I think it may be that that he really isn't understanding: MS has spent years squandering the perception that they would at least try to provide an OS that allowed you to do your stuff; in favor of faffing with various attempts to be your cool app buddy and relentless upsell pal; so every further move in that direction is basically confirmation that no fucks are given about just trying to keep the fundamentals in good order rather than getting distracted by shiny things.

Comment Re:not a shock (Score 0) 29

Yeah, that was a big goof, thanks for understanding.

Apple is capable of hiring talented people and creating a useful product. They just don't seem to be capable of being user-friendly in the ways that matter to me. TBH they were never great at it, and MUGs did the heavy lifting in the customer relations department for them for free. Anyway I'm totally capable of believing their performance claims, to a reasonable point, especially when the results aren't putting them first.

I wish they were friendlier, because their hardware is reasonably impressive. I'm also just not in their target demographic apparently because I'd rather have a slightly thicker device with better cooling and battery capacity.

Comment Re: How dense can they be? (Score 1) 51

It's not impossible, but the switch would be expensive. It's probably easier and just as effective just to shield them, and tie the shield to the chassis ground.

Another option would be to switch power to the radio chip, if it's in a package which makes that convenient. This might also disable bluetooth if you do it to the infotainment system, or cause a code to be set...

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