Posts by Dave 32

Lester Haines: RIP

Re: Uncle Lester

My deepest condolences from the left side of the pond. He was well respected over here on this side of the planet, too.

Dave

12 years of US Air Force complaints lost in database crash

Edward Snowden

Has anyone thought to check with Edward Snowden to see if he has copies?

Dave

Marauding monkey blacks out Kenya

Re: Huh?

It's called a "Cascading Failure", and we have had experience with it in North America. All it took was for one tiny little tree branch to contact one phase of a electric transmission line, and a very large portion of the northeastern US and eastern Canada went dark, in some areas for up to two weeks. That one transmission line that experienced the fault went off-line. Incorrect network management software didn't spot that failure, and adjacent transmission lines were overloaded while taking on the load of that first transmission line, which caused them to go off-line. As more and more transmission lines overloaded and tripped off-line, power plants started seeing over/under-load conditions, and would go off-line, including a couple of nuclear plants that had the reactors scrammed. Restarting those was a fairly intensive process. And, all because of one tiny little tree branch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

Dave

Dell finds liquid cooling tech on eBay, now wants you to buy it

Water

Mainframes have been water cooled for quite a few decades. I can remember, from back in the 1980s, one of the mainframes had a plumbing elbow fracture (probably due to vibration or temperature cycling causing metal fatigue of the Copper joint). The first indication of a problem was when the people working on the floor below called up to ask why there was water dripping through the ceiling. Uhoh! The next indication of a problem was a CPU over-temperature alarm, and a subsequent automatic shutdown of the machine. The service tech showed up a few minutes later, and replaced the plumbing elbow. Everyone was really dreading the need to replace the CPU, which, at that time, was going for about US$50K! Fortunately, when the machine was powered back up, it started working normally, and did so for quite a few more years until it was finally retired.

Part of the trick is that you install the CPU, motherboard, and chiller such than any condensation/leakage/etc., drips down away from the electronics, not on to them (e.g., install the stuff "upsidedown"). Next, put a drip tray under the motherboard, with an appropriate drain in it to drain any drips out of the system and into a drain.

For those cases where you absolutely cannot use water, the alternative is Fluorinert. However, make very sure that you're sitting down before you see the price.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert

Oh, yeah, you can breathe the stuff, too. ;-)

Dave

Norks' parade rocket fails to fly, again

Re: Parade rockets

> To be fair I doubt anyone thinks it's a good idea to wheel a fully armed warhead through the streets.

No, it's a much better idea to load them on accident prone aircraft and fly them overhead. ;-)

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the Potassium Iodide tablets in the pocket.

Ah, that would be a "Broken Arrow" incident. We've had enough experience with them on this side of the pond:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow_incidents

As for programming language, that would presuppose the use of a computer on board the rocket. Is there any evidence that the rocket has such a computer? Or, is it the ultimate in "fire and forget" type of a rocket (as in, once you fire it, you can forget about it, because you're not going to have any control over it anyway!). ;-)

Dave

P.S. My father-in-law was very close to the impact point for that first Broken Arrow. And, I have a friend who was quite close to the Goldsboro incident (close as in "would have been in the blast radius"). And, that one came perilously close to going off. For that matter, the Damacus incident was a little too close for comfort, although, really, all of them have been.

Microsoft's Windows Phone folly costs it another billion dollars

Re: As a consumer - 2 key issues ...

>(cf.IBM - can you still run VM/360 code on a iSeries ?)

Not an iSeries, but a zSeries. And, it's VM/370 code, since the S/360 didn't support virtual storage (well, excepting for the S/360 model 67, which was a bit of a strange beast, and for that hardware hacked model 40 that the Cambridge Scientific Center had, which was a one-off beast). But, yeah, for application mode code, you can (The privileged instructions aren't necessarily the same, but the non-privileged instructions mostly are upwards compatible.).

Google-backed solar electricity facility sets itself on fire

Re: Is it just me?

> I'd love to have a little sun-steam generator (if only there were enough sunshine here).

Do a Google search on "solar stirling engine". They're somewhat common, although the commercial versions are not necessarily cheap; however, I have seen some Do-It-Yourself plans for them.

Dave

P.S. Then, you, too, can set fire to things with a misaligned mirror!

Archimedes' Laser

> Or, going back to Archimedes, charging up the satellite-mounted laser.

Archimedes had a laser? And a satellite? Do please tell us more! ;-)

Boffins flip the unflippable: Meet the latest storage extender contender

Hematite

So, is anyone playing with the magnetic properties of Hematite?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematite#Magnetism

Dave

UC Davis chancellor suspended after headlines like this one undo $175,000 online name-scrubbing efforts

> When will those in any form of authority ever learn?

Yeah, just ask Richard Nixon. Trying to cover up for his bungling buddies cost him the presidency.

Oh, wait, you can't ask him; he's dead (Well, I suppose you could still ask him, but if he answers, well, we will all have MUCH larger problems...).

Dave

Google Loon balloon crash lands in Chile

Balloons

So, let's see, the American National Weather Service (NWS) operates a total of 102 radiosonde launch sites in North America, and each of these sites launches two weather balloons with radiosondes each day. That's a total of 204 balloon launches PER DAY. When's the last time anyone heard of any damage from one of these things coming down?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service#Upper_air_observations

Of course, larger payloads have a larger chance of damage. I've heard of some balloon operators who suspend a audible beeper on their payloads so that any humans or animals on the ground can hear the thing coming down (via parachute) and get out of the way. The beeper also makes it easier to locate and recover the payload.

Manned balloonists typically would carry a bottle of champagne with them, to placate the farmer whose field their balloon landed in (I was once part of an impromptu landing crew for a manned balloon.).

Dave

BOFH: Thermo-electric funeral

Re: as if owning IT antiquity was one of those positive character traits

Darned young whippersnappers. What's the use of having a memory device if you can't see the memory bits? So, I keep one of these things around:

http://pw1.netcom.com/~wa4qal/core.jpg

For you youngsters that don't recognize it, it's the magnetic core storage plane out of an IBM System/360 model 65 processor, vintage about 1965 or so. Should still have data in it (Probably OS/360).

But, for when the electricity goes out, and you really need to do computing, I have this device to fall back to:

http://pw1.netcom.com/~wa4qal/abacus.jpg

Who says an IBM machine needs electricity to work?

http://pw1.netcom.com/~wa4qal/abacusfr.jpg

Dave

P.S. I don't live totally in the stone-age. I have a USB flash key. I think it holds 16 MB. Oh, and I also have a stack of IBM 5081 devices (Google them if you dare!).

Linux command line mistake 'nukes web boss'S biz'

Format C:

Who amongst us hasn't typed "FORMAT C:" and then replied yes to the prompt without realizing that we had meant to type "FORMAT A:"? I certainly have. Whoopsie. Spent the next day rebuilding the system. And, yeah, I've also did variants of that on just about every other system I've ever used at one time or another (e.g., "FORMAT 191".). When you've been dealing with computers for close to 40 years, you have had a LOT of opportunities to make mistakes.

However, this also goes to show the silliness of only having one backup. A true IT professional knows that you never only have one backup. What happens if you have a file system error part way through the backup process, such that the original file system is wiped out, and the backup is corrupted? (And, this is coming from a guy who managed to wipe out 400 man-years of data, due to a disk crashing part way through a database compression!!! Felt like tossing my cookies when that disk error appeared. Fortunately, had another backup that saved my bacon. Whew!).

For the truly paranoid, one should ask themselves if their data will be safe if the technician down the hall accidentally denotes that nuclear warhead that he's fiddling with in the building.

Dave

Astroboffin discovers exoplanet by accident ... in 1917

IBM 5081 Devices

I keep all of my critical data on IBM 5081 devices.

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat; It's the one with the pockets full of chad.

The Register to publish Mindful Sysadmin adult colouring book

Darn

I was ready to order a couple of copies.

Dave

Reddit's warrant canary shuffles off this mortal coil

NSLs and the First Amendment

NSLs violation of the First Amendment are being battled out in court, but the case is still somewhat up in the air:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

Plus, we won't know for sure until an appeal reaches the Supreme Court.

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat; it's the one with the mail order law degree in the pocket.

Dodgy software will bork America's F-35 fighters until at least 2019

Idea

Hey, why not convert the carriers over to handling Zeppelins? Those won't require a catapult, nor arresting wires. And, those Zeppelins were somewhat effective in the World War I.

Dave

Wait! Where did you get that USB? Super-stealthy trojan only drives stick

Mass Storage

Don't forget that one of the benefits of the USB system is that a particular device can choose to appear as a Mass Storage Device, or a Keyboard, or a Mouse, or a temperature sensor, or .... For that matter, a sufficiently adept hacker can probably make a single device appear as any of these. So, that USB flash drive you plug in very well may act as a keyboard, and start "typing" commands into the system, even if Autorun is turned off.

Dave

P.S. Ohoh, now I've gone and given some d*mned hacker an idea. :-(

Canuck named as next UK privacy watchdog

Not a Stuffed Shirt

It looks like she's not just a stuffed shirt; she's not pulled any punches in Canada:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Tears_murders#B.C._government_email_scandal

Dave

P.S. Even if she isn't a stuffed shirt, she is remarkably cute. :-)

What to call a £200m 15,000-tonne polar vessel – how about Boaty McBoatface?

RRS Davy Jones?

RRS Davy Jones?

Uncle Sam's boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail

Prussian Blue

I wonder what will be evolved in the event of a fire in that Prussian Blue battery? Remember that Prussian Blue is the nice name for Ferric FerroCyanide. Someone should at least ask the question.

Dave

Amazon kills fondleslab file encryption with latest Fire OS update

Drat!

Just got one for Christmas. Price was right. Functionality just went down the toilet, though. :-(

Spanish cops discover illegally parked flying car

On this side (left) of the pond, MIT is famous for various pranks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacks_at_the_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology

Dave

Google wants new class of taller 'cloud disk' with more platters and I/O

Disks

There are all sorts of variations possible.

Consider, for example, a disk with 12 platters instead of the more normal number (3?). Now, that many R/W heads (23 or 24) will be a lot more massive than the 5 or 6 heads for a three-plattered disk, which would either require a strong drive mechanism, or slower access. But, who says that all 24 heads have to be controlled from the same actuator? Group 6 heads together in a group, and put four actuators around the disk. Now the drive mechanism can be the same, along with the same speed, as for the smaller disk, but you have four times the capacity out of the disk.

There used to be disks with multiple heads per platter surface. These could produce faster access by reducing the wait time for the desired sector to pass under a R/W head.

There also used to be disks with fixed-mounted heads. These were mainly useful for paging applications, and areas where extremely fast access was required to a limited amount of data.

And, may other variations were done historically.

How one of the poorest districts in the US pipes Wi-Fi to families – using school buses

Re: How does the driver get home?

I'm guessing that the driver drives their private car to where the bus is parked, makes the bus trip, deposits the bus back at the trailer park, and then takes their private car back home.

Or, maybe some of the bus drivers live in the trailer parks?

This is why copy'n'paste should be banned from developers' IDEs

Temporary Fix

Not too many years ago, I was doing some maintenance on a compiler, and came across a comment which stated:

/* The following two lines are a temporary fix for the xxxxxx problem 11 September 1971*/

I wisely decided that a temporary fix that was old enough to drink legally wasn't one that I wanted to touch. As far as I know, that temporary fix still exists!

Dave

IEFBR14

For a real howler, look up the story of IBM's IEFBR14 routine. Nuff said.

Hackers mirror 250GB of NASA files on the web

Eyewashing

So, is this just another version of "Eyewashing" that the hackers fell victim to? Sounds awfully convenient for them to find machines with root/root access.

http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-distribtues-false-memos-to-deceive-its-own-workforce-2016-2?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=referral

Did water rocket threaten Brum airport Airbus?

Re: Extreme water rocket

I had a buddy, who owned a welding shop, and was carrying an Oxygen cylinder down a flight of concrete stairs into the shop. It slipped as he neared the bottom, and the bottom step sheared off the valve. That cylinder shot across the shop (narrowly missing one of the workers), and then smashed through a six inch thick poured concrete wall, before embedding itself some distance into the adjacent hillside!

Dave

P.S. Ohoh. Now, we've done it. There will be a rash of out of control Oxygen cylinders in the news now.

Criminal records checks 'unlawful' and 'arbitrary' rules High Court

Time Travel?

"Among the claimants was a woman identified only as P, who was charged with shoplifting a 99p book in August 1999. After failing to attend her appearance before a Magistrates' Court 18 days later, she was summarily convicted of a second offence under the Bail Act 1976.

In November 1990, she was given a conditional discharge in respect of both offences."

So, she was discharged 9 years before the offenses? Cool! ;-)

Dave

Did North Korea really just detonate a hydrogen bomb? Probably not

Re: US Air Force

Constant Phoenix:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_WC-135_Constant_Phoenix

I just hope they have plenty of fighter escorts for it. I wouldn't put it past the Norks to try and shoot one down. :-(

Dave

Happy birthday to you, the ruling was true, no charge for this headline, 'coz the copyright's screwed

Re: @ PassiveSmoking

" for example, "For as long as it's being actively developed, + 10 years"."

Hey, cool idea. That means that Windows XP would be dropping out of copyright in a few more years. And, at the rate things are going, there'll still be a few hundreds of million copies of it running. :-)

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the CD of Windows XP in the pock...hey, who stole my CD?

BAN the ROBOT WHORES, says robot whore expert: 'These AREN'T BARBIES'

BSOD

This could give a new meaning and fear to the term Blue Screen of Death!

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one that's beeping anxiously.

As McAfee runs for US President – we ask a crucial question: Will Reg readers back him?

I would rather drive a nail through my foot

I do love that campaign slogan, though:

"I would never run for office, neither would I want to be in office, of any kind. I would rather drive a nail through my foot."

Dave

Edward Snowden for President

Hey, cool idea. If he won, he could pardon himself. I wonder if they could administer the oath of office in Russia?

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the stack of "I Voted" stickers in the pocket.

BOFH: Power corrupts, uninterrupted power corrupts absolutely

Amish Electrician

Oh, well, they'll just have to call their Amish electrician to sort the electricity problems out. ;-)

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat, it's the one with the key for the horse and buggy in the pocket.

Spaniard claims WWII WAR HERO pigeon code crack. Explain please

Poem Code?

Could the original message (and, thus, presumably 4YEO) be a "Poem Code"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poem_code

Dave

Spanking Spam King: Sanford Wallace faces jail for Facebook flood

Afterwards

One hopes that a condition of his release will be that he doesn't touch an electronic device for the next 20 years. And, any violation of that (even answering his desk telephone) will subject him to an additional prison sentence.

Dave

Canadians taking to spying on their spies

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F

Dave

WD unleashes bigger, badder, Black and revved, rapido Red Pro

Re: 6TB is lighter than the 5TB product baffles us

Extrapolating that out, by the time they get up to about 30TB, the drives will have a negative mass.

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the warp drive in the pocket.

China's Tianhe-1 supercomputer back online after Tianjin blast

Ammonium Nitrate

Yeah, we learned about Ammonium Nitrate on this side of the pond with the Texas City Disaster back in 1947:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster

:-(

Dave

BOFH: Why, I LOVE work courses. Please tell me more, o wise one!

Re: Am I the only one...

Well, it really depends upon the cuteness of the administrative assistant (which, of course, depends upon the quantity, and, perhaps, the quality, of the beer).

Dave

Boffins have made optical transistors that can reach 4 TERAHERTZ

Re: Hey Dave - I think you could get a very high paying job with this knowledge!

The problem is that I have a mostly very high paying job, in the field of cryptography. Then, again, if someone were to come along and offer me a rather huge pile of money... ;-)

Dave

They might be on to something here. I did my MS/EE project paper on optical computing, close to 30 years ago, and most of the limitations he speaks of were known back then. The problem has been that no one has found a way to get around those limitations, at least until now. That idea of controlling a photo-reactive material with UV light, while it switches IR light is interesting, and makes a lot of sense. All they would need to do now is to run the IR light coming through the device through a frequency doubling crystal (e.g., something like KDP) twice to get the IR up to UV frequencies, and then use that to control the switches. And, no, it won't be easy. Based on the progress I've seen over the past 30 years, I'd estimate that his two decade number is quite optimistic. Still, it could happen.

Probably the next thing that needs to happen, though, is for someone to come up with a better/faster/cheaper way of producing the Al doped ZnO. CVD is a bit of a royal pain. Something like the Czochralski process, to produce large, single crystals of ZnO would be interesting, and, based on a quick literature search, it appears that it may be possible, given some rather exotic constraints of crucible/oven conditions.

Of course, massively parallel, ultra high speed cross-bar switches, using the optical switches could also be quite interesting, and may be just the thing that's needed to allow massively parallel conventional processors to be networked. Imagine, if you will, a few thousand (or 10s of thousands, or 100s of thousands) of processors being cross-coupled to many TB of RAM, I/O devices, etc., all of which can be dynamically reconfigured at 4 THz speeds.

Dave

Random numbers aren't, says infosec boffin

RNGs

There are some of us here to take RNGs VERY seriously. I happen to work on a hardware cryptographic card, which has an embedded hardware RNG.

The basic rule is that PRNGs are all but useless for anything other than toy applications. Even the best ones are subject to predictability, if one had enough data and knows the algorithm being used (and, one has to believe that there are organizations out there that can reverse engineer the hardware/software being used).

There are even some us who are somewhat skeptical of NIST's SP800-90A "Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators" as being possibly predictable (although unlikely).

As for noise sources, note that not all sources are necessarily random. Some of the posters here have mentioned using Avalanche/Zener Diodes as a source of randomness. There is some empirical evidence that indicates Avalanche/Zener Diodes may exhibit a negative resistance characteristic, under a certain set of conditions, in which case, the typical circuit will produce a relaxation oscillator, which will produce a VERY non-random signal. As evidence of this, consult figure 5, on page 19, of On-Semi's "TVS/Zener Theory and Design Considerations

Handbook":

http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/HBD854-D.PDF

Especially, note those zigs in the expanded portion of the voltage-current chart, and realize that those zigs represent regions of negative resistance. The theory behind these zigs is something called "Microplasma Discharge Theory", which, as far as I've been able to tell, is not well understood in the physics community.

There are, of course, a LOT more considerations that need to be given to producing a good RNG, but I really don't want to write a book here.

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the pair of loaded dice in the pocket.

First SPACE SALAD on Monday's menu for ISS astronauts

Lift Their Moods

"It's also hoped that adding fresh food to astronauts' diets will help them to cope with radiation and may even lift their moods."

So, how long before they start growing marijuana? Or, have they already? Maybe that's what's contributing to the grungy condition aboard the craft. Oh, well, at least the initials will stay the same: International Sewage System.

Dave

Beaming boffins feel the rhythm as neutrinos oscillate over 500 miles

Various

Do Neutrinos really oscillate, or is there just one type of Neutrino which then interacts differently, and somewhat randomly, with matter?

As for lawyers, which one is going to be the first to file a class action suit for exposing the residents to Neutrinos?

As for watching ice in a bucket, the real question is whether there were beers in the ice? Oh, sorry, chilled beer is an American thing. ;-)

Dave

P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the pockets full of ice and beer.

Playing with graphene? All the cool kids are using TIN – atom-thick sheets of stanene

Crystalline structure

What crystalline structure are they attempting? Tin normally has two common allotropes (beta/white, and alpha/gray), although two other allotropes exist at higher temperatures/pressures. Given that the crystalline structure can dramatically affect electron conduction properties, it may not be all that surprising that they're not seeing what they hoped to see. I really have to wonder if what they've deposited has been more of a single atom thickness of an amorphous layer of Tin, rather than a two dimensional crystalline structure of Tin. More analysis/details would be required, though.

Dave

BOFH: My diary is MINE and mine alone, you petty HR gimps

Re: Ohhhhh Simon, yer warmin' the cockles of me heart...

Should have taken that Leaded glass faceplate off, you know, the one that blocks most of the x-rays that are being produced, in the interests of, umm, readability. Oh, and, while you're at it, crank the high voltage up from 27 KV up to about 50 KV or so, in the interests of brightness. Just hope that the nuclear power plant that's 10 miles down the road doesn't have too many of their radiation sensors start going off when that monitor is fired up.

Dave

P.S. My, oh, my, is that a new tan that you're sporting. It almost looks like it goes all the way through your body.