Posts by Denarius

French integrator-cum-outsourcing biz Atos confirms bid for DXC Technology

my thoughts sounded like

gurgle, gurgle, slurp...silence

A 1970s magic trick: Take a card, any card, out of the deck and watch the IBM System/370 plunge into a death spiral

Re: You can do that much more efficiently in C

Not just V6 unix. Saw similar thing on HPUX up to 10.10 in late late 1990s. Kernel recompile for most databases required. Early AIX years ahead in its design. Probably why AIX (ITIRC) and later unices kept a few slots free for root only by design

Re: Broken NFS

Nick, similar to BSDs once allowed ^C as a valid char in passwords. Dont have one to test if still works anymore.One wonders how Kerberos/LDAP would handle it, let alone whatever M$ uses these days. Oh, modified Kerberos,LDAP. hmmm.

Re: Broken NFS

too many files in one directory. Simple for early versions of IBMs middleware on unix. To the point doing an "ls" would lock ones terminal. This bothered the developers and application staff for some reason. Most files were empty also. Probably developers left debugging on or failed to turn it off. The only way one could see anything in logs directories without borking session was ( using ksh) print *, then wait for a few minutes as crap scrolled by. xargs and find are beloved tools.

Re: Broken NFS

special chars in name ? Bah, simple. Used to use ^L as a separator in sed commands because not likely to be in a data stream from Vax, dos, NT or unices. Experienced a mainframe production program routinely crash because someone, somewhere used ^Z to finish writing data files. On ftp upload to mainframe, whole process core dumped. A simple tr script process cleaned that up, along with the odd ^C and ^D that occasionally occurred.

Now get special chars in shell variables....easy and potentially catastrophic. Difference between rm .. and rm *. One fails, one recurses, without -r flag, all way down file tree of user. Not my error, just one I had to investigate the cause of half a production system disappearing at 4 AM one morning. Answer to question became critical because management, understandably, wanted to know whether to charge careless coder with wilful damage or merely sack. Not an analysis I enjoyed. When in doubt, RTFM or if one must, google it. Ah for the days of comp.unix.shell and the knowledge therein.

Re: Broken NFS

Unix 1980s illegal filenames. The memories, the first computer, the fear, the terror. Had a boss who hated computers and me more so for liking them.

AT&T Unix, Intel 286 CPU, damaged backup tape causing hell on restore. Spaces in names, control chars in names etc. I was shown the use of metachars for first time by a local unix contractor. Saved bacon and learned something.

Surprise, surprise: AI cameras sold to schools in New York struggle with people of color and are full of false positives

Re: Take a broom handle to school

Err, no. this is MerkinLand. Kids would probably get shot at door, you know, for sake of the children

30 percent of world agrees not to require onshore storage for e-commerce customer data

more spam

great, more unwanted phone calls at unwanted hours for unwanted products, more spam, more BS. We know we can trust some of those countries with personal data, especially ones that Oz gov seem to think are a threat to national insecurity, but I suppose its fair to let others snoop the way 5 Eyes do on Oz citizens in the name of security or some other fantasy.

The car you buy in 2025 will include a terabyte of storage. Robo-taxis might need 11TB

Re: Keep it simple stupid

Indeed. It is no co-incidence that, aside from imports slowing due to YKW, certain Oz made cars are rising in price, despite being over a decade old. Factors like capability in capacity, fuel consumption, towing and easy maintenance are becoming critical. Having vehicle off road for 3 months until one can get part that JIT manufacturing means it has to be mined, processed, manufactured, shipped to warehouse etc. No-one in Oz keeps spares anymore outside of a few in one city. The older cars have spares made locally and dont have hideously expensive electronic gizmos that cant be repaired.

China sets itself 2035 goal for technology self-sufficiency and covets title as the world’s top innovator

Re: China's a ticking demographic time bomb

there is more than population and technical skills to becoming innovative. Essentially the PHBs have said to the techies and peasants to "go, be creative". A classic materialist reductionist view of existence. Creativity is not something turned on and off. Given that creativity is linked to the ability to dissent from whatever orthodoxy is involved, a totalitarian or prescriptive society cannot innovate much. It may improve what already exists, as Japan did, using concepts taught by USA, usually ascribed to Denning but I believe credit lies elsewhere. Lastly, by definition, a planned economy assumes the PHB class knows what is to be produced and is highly innovative if innovation is required. Hence 5 year plans are more likely to ossify a society. Consider the success of EDS and CSC5 year plans in the ruins of the West as well as the years of fudged statistics in USSR.

As for the negative population bomb currently hitting Japan, South Korea and Singapore, this is spreading and altho robotics are touted as a solution I see little evidence of widespread adoption due to energy storage and density limitations. These capacities are improving very slowly and expensively. In short, an aging population will become a burden. China my grow its middle class, but that is only good for a generation before China joins Japan, Europe etc in an economic decades long slump.

President Trump's H-1B visa crackdown wiped $100bn off market value of America's largest corps, top study finds

do they mean speculative algorithms

are actual real economy values instead of transient bits in in silicon memory ? Since when did stock market numbers actually have much to do with real technology jobs and the economy outside of superannuation schemes ? Is there any evidence that high skill jobs are vacant due to EO ?

Facebook tells academics to stop monitoring its political ads for any rule-breaking.... on privacy grounds

Re: For the third time...You can only choose one:

or neither

no surprise

a business model under threat perhaps. Reminds me of a MAD article years ago about interviewing a sect leader with the interviewer, Mike Malice (sic) asking if a sect leaders advertising was misleading and the reply was, "Isn't all advertising?" I'll treat political sloganeering less contemptuously when truth in advertising laws apply to political ads, instead of having them explicitly excluded as in Oz. I use the term sloganeering because ads purport to inform. Mere slagging off does not meet that high standard

Linus Torvalds hails 'historic' Linux 5.10 for ditching defunct addressing artefact

Re: Ancient Systems

I used AT&T Unix 5.2 on 286 for real work in early 1990s. Ran well so long as user count < 5. Ran Xenix III on a 8086 with Z80s doing terminal management for amusement for a while before booting early RH in mid 1990s. I had colleagues complaining how RISTOS was so much better. I was puzzled that AT&T could fit a real OS with 14 character names and multi-user on a 286 while DOS struggled to do one user and one task at a time until I did a bit of OS theory, being told DOS was not an OS, but a stand-alone monitor. So pleased times and OS have moved on. Now if only someone could kill off JCL...

Congrats, Meg Whitman, another multi-billion-dollar write-off for the CV: Her web vid upstart Quibi implodes

Re: "Our failure was not for lack of trying"

My thoughts. With failures so magnificent, a perfect candidate for White House as USA recedes into dust of history like USSR. Both doomed to be ghosts in cultural machine like the selective memory of Roman Empire helped blind European political thinking for 1500 years and ensured the death of Eastern Empire earlier.

Work life balance? We've heard of it. Pandemic means 9-5 shifts are a thing of the past for many

WLB ? dunno about working from home. Usually working from shed or in paddocks.

Microsoft will adopt Google Chrome's controversial Manifest V3 in Edge

Quoting Mandy

"is absolutely not the goal." Well, they would say that, woudn't they?

Even 2020 cannot bring forth the Year of Linux on the Desktop

Open Source has won ?

Another SCO type lawyerfest is only years away. Dont feed the tiger

NHS looks to the market for advice on one system to replace two separate, giant Oracle ERP and HR systems

Re: Why?

Indeed. Specify what APIs will be used based on what the medical staff need, For robustness, distributed systems communicating via stable API should be more robust and once the GPs systems can talk to central databases (where necessary) and each other, If properly implemented (stop snickering over there) it could be built from local GP and hospital up incrementally. OK, back to padded cell

Your web browser running remotely in Cloudflare's cloud. That's it. That's the story

1990s called

Sun wants diskless clients back

If you can see this headline, you're certainly not reading it on Twitter: All tweets, notifications vanish

does this mean

some sort of world peace may break out briefly ?

Diplomats are supposed to be subtle and clever. Australia’s just leaked 1,000 citizens’ email addresses

DFAT, NSW same same only worse

A state government leaked 1000s of names and bank account details recently. Worth not getting a refund to dodge that fail.

Good news: Euro sat spots liquid pools on Mars. Bad news: Under ice, saltier than someone who put last penny into a failed crypto biz

gas it might be, what what element is in gaseous form ? At those temperatures the transition elements are most likely, not light ones. As for life, the randomisation by heat makes any stable matter complex highly unlikely, let alone life. Wish fulfillment, too much cheap later Star Trek or worse, blah blah

Airbus drone broke up in-flight because it couldn’t handle Australian weather

Re: Riposte

nope, just jets. Even new C17 hits ground, controlled or otherwise with full engine power due to drag of everything hanging out in breeze, plus lift dumpers extended

Re: Walking away ...

@EclecticMan. In Finland glider pilots are taught landing in lakes because it beats forests... Hair driers in fuselage and wings overnight and plane ready for next day, so I am told.

also Feisler Storch

AFAIRC when the 7/8 kit was first shown the pilot demoed its legendary slow speed STOL by flying backwards down runway in moderate wind. Might have been Oshkosh

IT guy whose job was to stop ex-staff running amok on the network is jailed for running amok on the network

Re: disabling company users

@chivo*. Not uncommon to merely lock accounts, not delete. One site I worked at a millennia ago never deleted accounts. As staff moved thru the hierarchy, left and rejoined, accounts were locked and unlocked over the years. Reasoning was that all transactions remained identifiable. On unices I prefer the delete account and do a hunt for user owned files in nonstandard locations, especially in crontabs and at files. Most users did not have that level of access but one never knows.

However a real risk is with admin level accounts having legitimate scheduled jobs running which may report to sysadmin accounts no longer in use or checked, right up until exchange slows even further.

Hong Kong wants to teach kids more STEM – once it's defined what that is

now if only there were capitalist states out there to show this, rather than the centrally planned and stuffed up countries that have elections where one can choose between buzzword bombastics or bureaucratic bast*ds.

Re: Modern Latin and Greek

Disagree completely. While learning _some_ classics one reads the thoughts of competent politicians and leaders, eg Seneca or Marcus Auralius. Even an ancient Greek may contain wisdom. The classics also explore fundamental questions such as "What is a good life?" and "How does one live a good life given the difficulties that will happen ?" Having learned to think, discuss and use logic, one is able to use rote learning acquired skills more effectively. Using history one can integrate geometry to demonstrate how an ancient Greek accurately worked out the diameter of the Earth around 200 BC. Comment on flat earth is mere vituperation, demonstrating insufficient knowledge of the past. Or worse, someone who still believes 19th century propaganda. I rest my case.

AI in the enterprise: AI may as well stand for automatic idiot – but that doesn't mean all machine learning is bad

not again

AI, so far, is slightly more flexible Expert Systems. Narrow set of tasks, narrow field of "knowledge", narrow application. In the set field the expert system may do well. That does not mean it fits any useful definition of intelligence

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

Too Late

Toyota just planning ahead. In the ever extending hunt for money, gummints are looking at distance traveled for registration fees. Supposedly to "reduce" costs but as in Oz, the GST removed none or few of the more nefarious state taxes it was sold as removing. No doubt with AI, implemented as simple inference engine, fines will be automated from compulsory data. All for our own safety of course.

Former HP CEO and Republican Meg Whitman – who split HP with mixed success – says Donald Trump can't run a business

Pot, meet Kettle

says it all

Pot, meet kettle: Google claims Australia's pay-for-news plan could see personal data put to nefarious uses

Pedantry

nope, comma is correct as it is a list signaler, indicating a break in context

Australian government wants power to run cyber-response for businesses under attack

From the ministry most associated with Tech troglodytes

Ah yes, the gummint that outsourced its own IT to foreigners so focused on cutting costs that patching slowed, software, hardware and OS became years out of date, jobs sent overseas. Yep call in experts, if there are any. Twanky described the rest of issues well. Another distraction from the creeping totalitarianism infesting the ruins of western civilisation

Steve Wozniak at 70: Here's to the bloke behind Apple who wasn't a complete... turtleneck

was it that long ago

we lost Dennis Ritchie ? A good and great in computing. Pity some sales weasels death swamped news of a sad day

Snortical warfare: Wild boar launches amphibious assault against German beachgoers

Re: Over Here

Jake, interesting post. In the Oz NT the belief was the bigger the caliber the better as big pigs can have small caliber bullets bounce off head. No-one eats big wild porkers due to the multiple diseases they carry. Young ones are cooked in ground oven. Bow hunting seems to becoming more popular here also. Probably because its quieter so newly arrived townies taking up hobby farms are not disturbed by unaccustomed sounds. Anyone who hunts wild pigs with a bow and lives uninjured has my respect.

indeed

even pet pigs bite is serious. Friend of daughter had pet pig severely damage her wrist while she was separating dog and pig. Just after a big tree had bisected their house completely, in the rain and wind. Not dark tho. Did I mention in Oz even the trees try to kill you ? If the falling branches don't, the whole tree might by incineration or crushing.

An irritating itch down the back of your neck? Searing midsummer heat? Of course, it can only be SysAdmin Day

Sysadmins mate ?

I thought they were mostly mutants

Two large flightless birds walk into a bar... The pub's owner was not emused *ba-dum tsh*

Re: Toilet as a verb!

Indeed, Users flush with success

media

Pub owner trying to reduce offense. This to Oz journos. Local excuse for a broadcasters "entertainment" seem to have comedians (allegedly) who F bomb routinely. Weird how outback characters once noted for being a bit coarse now are more restrained in speech than inner city dwellers.

Camels vs Emu

In NW WA emus are noted for their destructive affect on vehicles. Seems direct hits results in a legless bird with attitude beside you in car and a very borked windscreen. Not a drop of booze in sight either. Roos just smash front up. Nearly hit camels once. Also not fun. Yet to hear of the very large feral pigs which even live south of Canberra (oblig jokes expected) which at nearly 2 meters long and meter high could be expected to outwombat a wombat for destructiveness. Love Oz, deadly wildlife, shark infested seas, stupidest and cheap politicians with some wild weather to keep boredom at bay. Look up rainfall figures for Oz SE coast this week.

Hats off to the brave 7%ers who dived into the Windows 10 May 2020 Update within a month of release

OTGH

Update blew away the linux dual boot installation by adding a 450 MB WinRE hidden partition out of the space used by / on a sandpit box. Same on HP laptop of little use.

No warning, just no linux installation. Seems to be designed to enforce EUFI and preventing dual boot on traditional BIOS dual boot. As for Windows, the little I use it, nothing to make it desirable. Still have to find 3 drivers for Nvidia and a couple of other chips. All Win 10 Pro versions.

OTGH

it blew away the linux dual boot installation by adding a 450 MB WinRE hidden partition out of the space used by / on a sandpit box. Same on HP laptop of little use.

No warning, just no linux installation. Seems to be designed to enforce EUFI and preventing dual boot on traditional BIOS dual boot. As for Windows, the little I use it, nothing to make it desirable. Still have to find 3 drivers for Nvidia and a couple of other chips. All Win 10 Pro versions.

CompSci student bitten by fox after feeding it McNuggets

Re: Let them eat rabbits

Antron, not quite. Some of the flies carry truly fearsome gastro diseases. In an Oz summer, that is deadly if not treated quickly. So yes, even our flies can kill

Once caught

Most of us shoot the damned things,caught or otherwise. Brought in by some pom major whining "farmer always dislike a gentleman's pastime" Haven't found his grave yet to spit on it. Also, judging from the airhead city dwellers I have had to work with, or worse, meet at polling booths, most of them seem to think Disneys cartoons like Bambi are nature documentaries. Much prefer the Mr Hell show parody of Lion King.

Ex-barrister reckons he has a privacy-preserving solution to Britain's smut ban plans

population bust

OK, Singapore. And for fun, DRC noting problems with age demographics from 2050 if not earlier thanks to 1 child policy, hence now 2 is OK.

What did it take for stubborn IBM to fix flaws in its Data Risk Manager security software? Someone dropping zero-days

takes me back

to AIX 3.2.5. rlogin bug 30 years ago. Lovely being able to log into any box without authentication as root user. IBM ignored warnings until finder went public. You can tell the RAs did not hit the PHB levels. Almost as entertaining as HP Bug of the Week from late lamented Kernel Panic. Some of those were as gobsmacking. Now if only MS decided all objects arriving by mail were untrusted bt default, 40 years after Morris Worm we might be getting somewhere.

Offtopic, why has concept of bastion host vanished ? Data theft is much harder if clear separation of private/internal machines is maintained, yet so many intrusions seem to work because a mere firewall, if that, is between the Interweb and the internal servers. Or am I just too old because I think internal stuff should not be accessible from outside without at least TPA and external devices being clean slated every month or less. Stuff the BYOD policy. Recipe for leakage.

Microsoft 365 and Azure outage struck Australia and New Zealand just as business rocked up for a new week

back up

my NSW stuff works at least, complete with MS advice of all is now well. The reliability and resilience of the Cloud, full failover, no need for on site IT staff etc. Not

Facebook caves to Australia's call for explanations of News Feed algo changes

futile anyway

Given most of the local media, such as it is, has no news worthy of the name, so what.

Oz media seems to be obsessed with Trumpery, (ABC mostly) fatuous CGI objects (seriously, most of the characters in reality TV series look like good CGI fakes), and entertainers babbling fashionable buzzwords of the day. Al Jazeera, El Reg and a few other internet sites have become many citizens source of news, in all adult or nearly so age groups. The general skepticism about pollies extends to news purveyors with the added comment that it is always depressing so why bother. For you Poms, commisserations. It is sad how low quality the BBC world news has become.

Mortal wombat: 4 generations of women fight for their lives against murderous marsupial

Re: to be honest, I think this is a beatup

No, not a beat up. Some seem to be insomniacs and can be seen during day.Saw one wander across a glider winch launch rope just as Take Up Slack given, which was rapidly followed by Stop Stop Stop. Time: Around noon in middle of big clear paddock, a long way from burrows. Local ones are mostly evening and early morning, not nocturnal. And given rural Ozzies being used to space, perhaps wombat got cabin fever from the lock down, like the rest of us.