Posts by preppy

Languages don't breed bugs, PEOPLE breed bugs, say boffins

Definition of "bug".....or definition of "defect"?

I'm not sure what the paper is trying to measure, since there is a hierarchy of defect types with the most immediate defect being "fails to compile" or "fails to run"........all the way up to "fails to match the original business requirement". In this latter case, the code might be technically perfect!

Examining Table 5 in the original paper ("Categories of bugs...") it would appear that failure to match the original business requirement is NOT considered a bug!!!! So perhaps the rather technical focus of the paper misses the main point of having software in the first place.

....just saying.

Facebook OCP crowd to ogle MICROSOFT'S server-room SECRETS

Microsoft "Open" Server Specs.....but wait.....

.......what about the software needed for the ROM used for cold booting? Do I build that myself from the specs, or does Microsoft "helpfully" provide the code?

GNOME 3.12: Pixel perfect ... but homeless

Re: Just wondering...

keithpeter:

You were wondering about Fedora........the answer is Fedora and XFCE! Lightweight, fast, simple to use. I've got two AMD/Radeon machines using Fedora 20/XFCE with absolutely no problems.

Meet the man building an AI that mimics our neocortex – and could kill off neural networks

Re: model a neurone in one supercomputer

Quote: "...If you feed a computer program with the same inputs, it will always produce the same outputs. A brain is not like that."

This is simply untrue of most "computer programs". I ask a system to print my personal details. At some later time I ask it again.....most likely the result is different....maybe a different address, maybe a different age, or maybe "user not found". And that's before you consider programs which involve some element of random behaviour.....like games.

Rasp Pi skydive: Ballsy Baumgartner best beware Brit bionic Babbage Bear

Bear in the Air

The surgery is COMPLETELY unacceptable!!

What's wrong with a helmet-cam, as used by all other dare-devil leapers?

It's a disgrace! You should all be ashamed of this flagrant abuse of defenceless bears.

PS Where's the video footage?

Experts: Network security deteriorating, privacy a lost cause

What about the LEGAL data aggregators?

As usual, no one is worried about the privacy threat from perfectly legal data aggregators. Look up ChoicePoint or Axciom. These people know more about you even than Google or Facebook.

.......and then there's the worry that someone has hacked THEM!

Snoopers' charter rests in shallow grave - likely to rise again

Re: Nope

Agree completely. Scenario: I war-drive and find someone's open wi-fi, and use it to set up half a dozen one-time use free email addresses. Then I go down to Starbucks for a couple of hours, and use their "free wi-fi" signed on with some of these one-time email addresses. Of course, I'm spoofing my MAC address, and I pay with cash! How in the world will "the authorities" link my transactions at Starbucks back to me, unless the content I transmit or consume identifies me directly?

1 in 7 WinXP-using biz bods DON'T KNOW Microsoft is pulling the plug

Windows XP Upgrade

Of course users will get to pay for the hardware and software upgrade.

....but can anyone tell me what additional VALUE or additional FUNCTIONALITY most Windows users will get from upgrading from XP to something else?

Google takes Chromebook upmarket with touchy-feely Pixel

So...the idea is that you spend $1300 of YOUR money. Then you hand over all YOUR data, plus evidence of all of YOUR processing, and evidence of ALL THE PLACES WHERE YOU use your shiny new machine.....to Google.

And apart from the money, why would Google be interested in this proposition? I'm sure I can't imagine.

Ubuntu? Fedora? Mint? Debian? We'll find you the right Linux to swallow

Re: Mint is great but ...

Regarding XFCE......it's simpler, cleaner and faster than GNOME. If anyone plans to start out on Fedora (my distro of choice), install XFCE.

What Compsci textbooks don't tell you: Real world code sucks

...and here's what you get when people TRY to write bad code.....

Obfuscated C Competition here....

http://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2012

Linux kernel dumps 386 chip support

Re: 6502 / Z80? Hah!

No...don't remember Turbo Pascal for CP/M.....but I do remember BDS C and dBASE II - both good tools in their day.

The bad memories are all about trying to use Prestel using my Osborne 01's 300 baud modem.

New transistor tech could beat silicon and save Moore's Law

Editor: Transistor symbol is wrong....

The Register main page shows the symbol for a bipolar transistor.....should be for a field effect transistor as here >> http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.interfacebus.com/JFET-N-Channel-symbol.png&imgrefurl=http://www.interfacebus.com/Glossary-of-Terms_J.html&h=106&w=103&sz=2&tbnid=u4OWZwlZ2VT86M:&tbnh=84&tbnw=82&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dfet%2Btransistor%2Bsymbol%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=fet+transistor+symbol&usg=__ayrb0Oa0WlWlp6II6Nv9pVM_lMM=&docid=7vUgV1eI3SBFCM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2GXHUJ3ENIvC9gTCi4CIAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CE8Q9QEwBQ

John McAfee blogs from Guatemalan jail, says coffee excellent

EasyTag???

So John McAfee was located because of a location tag in a photo taken of him and a journalist.

Interesting......given his technology chops, why was he not INSISTENT that ALL the tags be stripped out of the photo before it was posted?

This is (yet another) warning that much of the new "user friendly" technology in place today is actually spying on its users - whether actively or (in this case) passively. BEWARE!

Where were the bullet holes on OS/2's corpse? Its head ... or foot?

The other part was the hardware mistake.....

Intersting article.....but no mention of IBM making a serious mistake by trying to change to a proprietary bus on the PS/2 with their Micro Channel architecture (as compared with the open architecture of the original PC and then the AT).

Come to that, the article makes no mention of the PS/2 hardware at all. Perhaps a third part of the series could be on the relationship between OS/2 and PS/2???

Privacy group damns Ubuntu's Amazon search marriage

"...moving to Gnome 3, KDE or Cinnamon".

No....not Gnome 3.....but what about XFCE....it's the closest you will get to Gnome 2.

Windows 8: Never mind Office, it's for GAMING

Slightly OT

How did Windows 8 get to 8? Should it not be Windows 10?

1 Windows 1.0

2 Windows 2.0

3 Windows 3.0

4 Windows 95

5 Windows 98

6 Windows NT

7 Windows XP

8 Windows Vista

9 Windows 7 <<<<< ????????????

10 Windows 8

Sysadmins: Your favourite tool's now ready for, er, fondling

Linux?

Looking at the Spiceworks site, it seems that the only OS support is for Windows, Apple, Android. No sign of managing from a Linux client. Am I missing anything here?

LinkedIn adds nagging notifications to social-network-for-suits

Re: I get enough nagging from LinkedIn as it is

Almost all of the "LinkedIn" emails which arrive in my inbox are actually spam from elsewhere....but they look exactly like the genuine article. Beware!

LinkedIn inked out: Twitter cuts off jabberhose to suits

Twitter on LinkedIn

One of my connections in LinkedIn posted a tweet to LinkedIn every 30 minutes or so, maybe 18 hours a day. I got so used to skimming over these tweets that I was actually shocked this morning when they disappeared.

Shocked.....and pleased too!

'Super-powerful' Flame worm actually boring bloatware

Flame - Why did it take so long to detect?

I'm curious about a slightly different question....."Did it take the TARGETS two to five years to detect it?"

After all, the malware is huge, and the alleged data gathering impact must have created significant network traffic.

And if the targets knew about Flame all along, how much MISINFORMATION have they passed along to the spooks who own Flame?

Preppy

Vixie warns: DNS Changer ‘blackouts’ inevitable

What am I missing?

On my (broadband) connection, all the machines on the LAN are configured to point to the router as the DNS source. After that the broadband provider sorts out the real DNS server.

1. Sounds like I only have a problem if the broadband provider has DNS malware.

2, Also sounds like a lot of people have their machines connected directly to their cable modem with no router/firewall to protect them. How hard can this be?

Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros

Osborne 01

The Osborne 01 was a bit more expensive in 1982 - around 1500 pounds. But for that you got the complete Digital Research CP/M toolset (assembler, debugger, etc), CBASIC, MBASIC, plus Wordstar, Supercalc. I added dBASE II and the BDS C compiler.

For me the bottom line was that I got a machine which allowed me to hack (assembler, C) but also use the Osborne as an office machine to write documents, build spreadsheets and write database apps in a (reasonably) high level language. This flexibility may seem run-of-the-mill today, but it was amazing in the earky 1980's.

The machine was turned over to the Science Museum in Kensington in the 1990's -- still fully functional and with all the original documentation and floppy masters.

Hard-up Iceland plumps for cheaper open source

Iceland? What's happening in Munich?

Can we have an update about what's happening in Munich? I seem to recall that Munich planned to move 14,000 seats to Linux? How did that work out? Did they save money? Were there other benefits?

Here at PreppyCentral we've been a Red Hat/Fedora shop since 1999 with no problems at all. And we've cut our licence costs to close to zero.

IT departments need productivity plan: Gartner

Gartner Advice?

Gartner advice from way back when sounded like this - Get with Portfolio Management. That way:

- the user community set the agenda for the IT department

- the user community made the hard choices about what NOT to fund

- the user community got to hold IT accountable for Programs and projects which were funded

The article might read better if the advice was "Propose and fund a new Program within IT for process and productivity improvements - with some hard targets set by users".

The way it actually reads is "Gartner says IT is unproductive".....not helpful!!!

Workers can't escape Windows 8 Metro - Microsoft COO

Deja Vu

This is not the first article I've read which contained similar criticisms of a new GUI. The other articles were about Gnome 3.0 and Ubuntu Unity.

Are GUI designers ALL ill with the same disease? Or is this just a symptom of the "bleeding edge" -- where we'll all just have to wait for the technology to "mature"?

What you can do to enforce endpoint security

What about authorized users using authorized software?

Recent news items (securities fraud, WikiLeaks) make it clear that organizations can be compromised by authorized users using authorized software. This problem is not mentioned at all.

The real issue is a much more general one of risk management......how high is the risk, and how much are you prepared to spend to minimize that risk? The highest risks cannot be lowered to zero, and no amount of technology implementation (software, hardware, network monitoring, etc etc) will make the risk zero.

Facebook rolls out Timeline to world+dog

Facebook.....

Why oh why the continuous emphasis on "keeping my own page secure"?

The real problem is that FB is a DATA AGGREGATOR, and that everything that everyone has ever uploaded is available as a whole to FB. Also to the CIA, the FBI, and all the hackers that no one (even FB!) knows about.

Happy surfing!

Sinclair ZX81: 30 years old

I waited a bit.....

I bought a Mk 14 and did some machine code programming. I even modified the thing to use a UV erasable EPROM to save my code. The whole thing was interesting, but I couldn't really say the results were useful!

So I waited a bit, and bought an early Osborne 01. This had CP/M, floppy disks, dBASE II, the BDS C compiler, Wordstar and a 300 baud (!!!) modem........almost modern really.

Microsoft lovingly open sources .NET package manager

Microsoft lovingly open sources .NET package manager

...so why is there no mention of the EXACT OPEN SOURCE LICENCE being used. GPL....surely not!!!!

Microsoft to set record with next Patch Tuesday

"a modern operating system is so big one single person ... cannot understand it all"

Well, that may be true. But it's beside the point. Professional shops do lots of things both before and after compiling code to make sure that the code is sound. Two examples:

- [Before] Code walkthroughs (so that bugs like SQL injection are not written into the code)

- [After] Using LARGE suites of test cases which can be run automatically....it's called .... err ... testing.

Microsoft should starve on radical penguin diet

Please be careful who you call a fool....

"A demo recently showed just how perfect this system can work." So you saw the demo!

I saw a demo at Microsoft in 1994 (yup....1994) showing a really great integrated communications client on a Windows desktop. It looked like an email client, but it integrated email, voice-mail and faxes in a single tool. It looked and worked like an email client, but brought all the various media items together in one place. Fantastic demo.

......but I never saw anything else like it ever again! That's the thing with demos....sometimes you never see anything ever again.

Microsoft to banish 'responsible' from disclosure debate

Microsoft to banish 'responsible' from disclosure debate

"We all want to protect customers and users"

Dear Microsoft:

Well why not start by designing secure software in the first place? From the "brain" virus, through Wordbasic macro viruses to the latest USB vulnerability, Microsoft have ALWAYS put "speed to market" first and security last. This latest step in the Redmond game is more "blame the messenger" posturing, and as such clearly does not represent any change from the sloppy security practices of old.

How many more messengers will get the blame before the world wakes up and stops buying inferior products at elevated prices from the Gates/Ballmer crowd?

Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx: A (free) Mactastic experience

Re: Another answer to the question that still hasn't been asked

Well....ALMOST nobody. I care, and there are a few others out there too. But you're right - outside of the Linux Server community, there isn't much traction for Linux on the desktop. Pity really, because it's pretty good for most of the basic things that I do every day.

Satellite to offer 10Mbit broadband to entire UK

VOIP???

Isn't 150 milliseconds the target for latency. If these are geo-stationary satellites, then the latency just from the satellite round trip is around 250 milliseconds - and that's before any latency associated with the terrestrial network. Am I dreaming, or is the promise of a functional VOIP service just a pipe dream?

Activist coders aim to deafen Phorm with white noise

...you don't need AntiPhorm!

....all you need is an anonymizing proxy which encrypts the session. Like:

www.proxyweb.net

It's slow, but the Internet Provider will will only see the connection to the proxy, and none of the traffic piped through the proxy!

Preppy

Oracle scans BEA code for GPL and LGPL

GPL - Remember Unbreakable Linux?

ORACLE....isn't that the company which used the GPL to redistribute Red Hat Linux? Is this hypocrisy...or what?