Posts by Steve the Cynic 1028 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jul 2009
A time in the late 90s when the *total* number of known viruses jumped overnight from 22,000 or so to 42,000, because some plonker cranked the handle on one of the virus generation kits 20,000 times, blew the result onto a CD, and sent it to one of the main AV firms.
That's 22,000 *total*, not +22,000 per day, mind you. (Well, except that day, duh.)
I don't remember if it was a Seagate - the guy I borrowed it from said it came out of a PDP-10, so who knows? The one I had made the PC take about five minutes to even begin to load DOS (1988-ish time frame) because it drew 4 amps from the 12V rail while spinning up, and the PSU was only just big enough to not just shut down from over-current. It also used to drop sectors, so I gave it back and bought a 20MB drive (ST-225) from the lowest cost vendor I could find in the US version of Computer Shopper, located just three miles from home...
Also: arithmetic fail: 10MB per drive divided by eight heads makes 1.25MB per head, not 5.
You know, the scariest part is remembering the model number of a drive I bought over twenty years ago, without looking it up...
"How much of the PKI can we trust at all?" -- In an absolute sense, of course, none of it whatsoever.
The only certificate-signer that you can trust in an absolute sense is the one you know personally who signs the certificate in front of you. However, that is just slightly impractical for certificates that identify web servers on other continents.
Of course, this is the ultimate failing of the hierarchy of trust. At least with a PGP-style web of trust, you have the opportunity to meet up with an old friend who wants to send you preparatory information, so he can give you a copy of his PGP public key. You know it's John, because he is sitting right there in front of you holding a pint, and you have a floppy disk with his key on it that he just gave you, just as he has one with your key on it that you just gave him.
The key part here, of course, is "holding a pint", not all the gobble about keys. You do this key exchange in the pub, duh. (Seriously. I once did this so John could send me semi-sensitive info about the company he was working for during my notice period before I started there. He really was called John.)
The Linux kernel code to assume that the hardware clock is in local time has been in there for at least as long as I've been using Linux - I built my first Linux kernel in 1995, a custom version of 1.3.5. There's a configuration option in the kernel build to use UTC or local time, and it looks like Canonical enabled local time so that it is easier for people dual-booting to Windows.
The conclusion I draw from this is that these students shouldn't be left in charge of a pair of shoes, as they have no (apparent) ability to decide things for themselves. In particular, they seem to be saying that they cannot form their own opinions about things based on the facts of the matter, and must be told what opinion to have. I'm paraphrasing a little here, and probably reading too much into this, but there you are. In fact, it may be worse than I am saying, because it is reasonable to suspect that the specific opinion they want to be told to have matters less than the fact that they won't form it for themselves.
Sorry, but the ZX81 did not contain dedicated video circuitry to prevent the bounce. Instead, it had two modes, "fast" and "slow". In fast mode, it was just like the ZX80, and bounced just as much. In slow mode, it gave priority to maintaining the display, so everything you tried to do went even more like molasses than normal for the day.
For maximum fun, tap out a long line of gibberish BASIC in slow mode, then try to backspace across it. Be aware that you will need something to keep the spiders from building webs on you while you wait for each character to be erased. For even more fun, set this up on one you find in a shop. (This was a common affliction of Timex-Sinclair 1000s (the American name for the same thing) found in US stores.)
It's strange reading that "structured storage" format files (i.e. every version of Office documents for a very long time, at least as far back as the last versions of Office on Win3.1, 1994/5, say) are suddenly classed as "unstructured".
This is, of course, not to say that there isn't fat to be removed from them, but they are far from unstructured. Indeed, the reason they can be defatted is because of that structure. (And, let's face it, because many users aren't sufficiently interested in this stuff to turn off "Fast Save", which just appends deltas to the end of the document...)
The question of laws requiring a label placed on published horoscopes is best answered by reference to the actual history:
1735 brought in the Witchcraft Act of 1735, banning all claims to be able to summon spirits, tell fortunes, etc. It is widely thought to in fact only apply to *false* claims (i.e. fraud) - thus allowing for the existence of true claims - it is based on a contemporary belief that all such claims are false, as the claimed abilities are impossible.
In 1951 this was repealed by the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, and this law, containing an escape clause for the "medium", is in essence the origin of the "for entertainment" wording.
In 2008, this act, too, was repealed and replaced by a batch of new Consumer Protection Regulations, and this is probably the reason for the wording disappearing (that and a certain amount of apathy/unawareness on the part of the public and of plod).
By showing text-based examples of a visual effect. My jolly FreeBSD system, while it does run a reasonably modern browser, something called Firefox 3.6.13 that some of you may have heard of, does not have Comic Sans on board. Consequence: the examples of how Comic Sans looks in various contexts of questionable appropriateness come out in a marginally elegant seriffed typeface.
FAIL. Sorry, Verity, but it had to be said.
I wonder if I'm the first to post that the famous "Blue Marble" picture, to which he is undoubtedly referring when he comments about Apollo 11, was actually taken by the crew of Apollo 17... And it's almost always printed upside down.
Also, I think I'd prefer to have my memories recorded in the squishy thing between my ears. It doesn't always work very well, but it's always there, never has flat batteries, and doesn't require me to go around with a camera strapped to my head.
The word is, if you are owed at least 750 quid, that you submit a "Statutory Demand". This document should be prepared with the aid of a solicitor (to make sure it gets done right), and then it should be served on the non-payer (with evidence of service logged with a county court - all private detective agencies have a sideline in this kind of work). When done to an individual, it effectively says to pay up or face a creditor's petition for bankruptcy. When done to a limited company, it is the same, except that the penalty is involuntary liquidation, **no matter what the size of the company**.
Yes, you heard it right. If the largest plc in Britain owes you £750 (and you can prove it) and won't pay within the three weeks specified in the demand, you can file for them to be wound up by a court (and if they still won't pay and can't prove that they don't owe the money, the court is obliged to do it). Real companies don't let this happen, needless to say, and the arrival of a Statutory Demand usually shakes loose the money owed, unless they really don't have it.
The voice of experience speaks here of the versus-individual mode of things. The tale was long, and somewhat depressing, but with a few WTF-inducing moments to lighten the mood. Along the way I learned more than I ever wanted to know about English contract and insolvency law, and heard a full District Judge tell the debtor that she would not be able to "bamboozle" (his word) the bankruptcy hearing judge if it came to that.
Can be found in the house I lived in in the 70s. Both my parents worked for LEO at one time or another - my mother was a programmer before I was born, and my father was a maintenance guy. When some LEO machines were decommissioned around 76/77, the aluminium honeycomb panels from the racks wound up as flooring in our loft.
Where's the memory lane icon?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that.
On a more serious note, this is the illogical conclusion of the trend toward merging all devices into one. All it needs now is an internal GSM aerial (actually, of course, external might be feasible here) and a mike, and you have an all-in-one device: headphones, MP3s, WiFi chat, and an Android smartphone.
Of course, as noted, it's hard to see the screen when it is on your ear, and I don't fancy the idea of showing the world who is calling me, etc.
If you ask me, it's just a (misguided, duh) way of jumping on the "see, we use Android" bandwagon.
... on my WinMob6.1 Samsung Omnia. OK, it's because I can't find the "template messages that are MY templates not some non-changeable preset crap" feature that my old V3i RAZR had, but I do it... (Start a message from the conversation view, copy previous, paste, send, job done).
So it's a FAIL for WM6.1 for not having the feature I really want, and a FAIL for WP7 for only now providing the alternative feature that I use to work around the first FAIL.
(If someone knows how to create my own template messages that work like the ones the RAZR had, please tell me!!!)
If so, he is showing his ignorance, or his inability to do basic arithmetic. The 8086 was introduced to market in 1978 (33 years ago this year), and the 80386 introduced the 32-bit architecture more commonly assumed when one talks about "x86" in 1985, just (!) 26 years ago.
You distribute ownership of the patents across all those shells so that if one of the shells gets exploded by a counter-suit, it only takes out ownership of that small block of patents, rather than costing you the whole kit and kaboodle.*
* Yes, yes, I know, a company like this has neither kit nor kaboodle, just lawyers. It's just a phrase, so get over it.
A /8 block is 16 mebiaddresses. So they handed over blocks of this size. So what. Does it mean that all 80 mebiaddresses are now in use by devices? Eff no.
They have been handed to people who can in turn hand them to others (ad lib to...) who can in turn sell them to clients to stick on devices.
What I want to know is not "how much space is allocated to top-level allocation organizations?" but "how much space is actually being used by devices?".
When the latter maxes out, we have a problem.
And, as it has been for at least the last ten years, universal adoption of IPv6 is a couple of years away...
Where's the <SIGH/> icon?
I double-clicked the FF 3.6 icon yesterday, still waiting for it to appear...
(And another thing: why does it pop the blasted "update firefox now" box while you are typing, with "update now" as the default button? I accidentally updated 3.6.9 to 3.6.11 because of this.)
For me, it's easy-peasy.
Down to Carrefour on the tram.
Pick up the stuff I want. Make intelligent selections of alternatives to out-of-stock items. Select the specific fruit and veg I want, avoiding the bashed, bruised, or just plain withered-or-mouldy ones. Select the exact pack of cheese, ham, etc. Grab stuff from the deli counter.
Take it all to the special tills, where a nice man puts it all in delivery tubs.
Go home, and wait for the stuff to arrive.
(Just outside Lille, that is...)
The most "act-of-faith"-y bit is just walking away from the till empty-handed.
Check your history there... A Deltic is (was?) a reciprocating engine. Sure, it was a weird one, but reciprocating nonetheless. (triangular groups of cylinders each with two pistons and no head driving three geared-together crankshafts. that sort of weird. Wikipedia has a good description.)
Yes indeedy, there are two kinds (plus the weird hybrid used by ADSL peeps). The "real" kind (i.e. the original sense, as used by scientists and anyone who talks about kilograms or kilometres) is based on 10**3. The "other" kind is the newer sense, based on 2**10. We can tell that it is this way round because all non-IT uses of these prefixes are decimal, while IT uses decimal for some things, binary for others, and both at once for the rest.
Of course, in reality, neither kind is real.
There are two kinds of K, M, etc., the binary kind, based on 2**10, and the decimal kind, based on 10**3.
Scientists talking about physical units use the decimal kind.
IT bods talking about RAM use the binary kind, but when talking about small units of time, they use the decimal kind (milli, micro, etc.).
Hard disks are measured in decimal units, which causes interest because it isn't until you get to GB sizes that you can actually have exactly n GB (decimal GB is 10**9, or 5**9 * 2**9, and you need a 2**9 to deal with the 2**9 sector size...).
Telecoms, however, introduces the third of the two kinds. An ADSL Mbps is neither 1,000,000 bps nor 1,048,576 bps. It is 1,024,000 bps, or a binary K of decimal K of bits per second...
In fact, the problem for correct handling of eggs, wine glasses, and stock pots with the same hand (not all at once, thanks) lies not in knowing how much pressure one is exerting, nor how much the thing weighs, but how much pressure the object can withstand. Fancy pressure-sensitive "skin" won't help with that problem.
The manoeuvre in question (at Farnborough) was a sharp transition from nose-up to nose-down. The rotor is a gyroscope, and tried to continue rotating in the same direction as before (axis toward the rear). The body of the craft wanted it to be axis toward the front. The rotor flexed (as they do) and collided with the propeller and/or tail with predictable effects on the continued flight-worthiness of the craft.
The part about wearing sensors to display our mood reminded me of a short story I read in Dragon magazine in about 1983. In the story, wearing such sensors (and displays) was mandatory, due to the stress caused to those around them by insensitive clods. OK so far, I hear, but this meant that everyone was permanently in a state of oh-sh*t-what-if-I-upset-someone paranoia about social interactions, because "infractions" (saying stuff that upsets someone, mostly) caused fines etc. A more f*cked up society cannot be imagined.
In hindsight, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the author's assumptions, but it makes you think a bit.
The reason people don't move their consoles much while discks[1] are spinning is that the console is out of the way, right? If you put the blasted thing in the middle of the floor, you can expect it to get broken pretty much straight away.
[1] I can't remember who uses c and who uses k in disck, so I used both. At least I didn't write diskc.
self-publishing is when you act as your own publisher, doing all the stuff that comes before (and alongside) actually printing the books (or packaging them into the e-book format of your choice). for many niche writers, this may be more effective - publishing houses are notorious for not actually doing any marketing outside of the latest pot-boiler, and even in some cases for what amounts to sabotage of the writer's own marketing efforts.
vanity publishing is when a normal publisher lets *anyone* pay to publish books on the publisher's label. vanity publishers usually have lower-than-normal acceptance criteria (i.e. non-existent aside from legal liability checks), as the vain writer is paying to have the book published.
Intent is very much a part of criminal law. For example, the essential difference between murder (killing a person) and manslaughter (killing a person without meaning to) is that in the second the killer didn't mean to kill, while in the first he did.
"Conspiracy to [something]" is, of course, the ultimate "intent" crime. In a conspiracy case, the accused is not accused of actually doing [something], but merely of having (and discussing) the intent of doing it.
For some offences, of course, the question of intent is specifically excluded: English criminal law has the idea of "strict liability" offences, i.e. ones for which the mere fact of having done the deed is sufficient, and no account will be taken of a lack of criminal intent when determining guilt or innocence.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
