Posts by Munchausen's proxy

US prez Donald Trump declares America closed to those flying in from Schengen zone over coronavirus woes

Re: Well

"But I bet they made more profit from those 5 tests than the Koreans made from 3500"

I expect we'll see testing numbers skyrocket here, as soon as Ivankacorp LLC gets the sole-source contract for the tests.

Honeywell, I blew up the qubits: Thermostat maker to offer cloud access to 'world's most powerful quantum computer' within months

And it lives again

Multics and a simulator to run it on are freely available.

http://multics-wiki.swenson.org/index.php/Main_Page

is a good operational starting point and

https://multicians.org/

has the history.

If you're writing code in Python, JavaScript, Java and PHP, relax. The hot trendy languages are still miles behind, this survey says

Re: COBOL

"Maybe COBOL developers don't go to StackOverflow the minute they have a problem :D"

These days, it's more like "... the minute they want another problem."

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Re: Instilling new timeframes of thought in a world beset by faster/shorter.

"Visiting the clock will require an effort, a long hike on which to contemplate whatever it is you feel contemplating,"

What time is it? Are we almost there?

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

Re: Why isn't any one offended men were required to wear a blazer and slacks or suit?

"Why are so many in the comments "indignant" about women being told what to wear, but nary a peep about men being told what to wear?"

Because men are such stupid sheep they think being told to dress in stupid clothes (and neck accessories) is actually a compliment on their abilities to select stupid clothes.

ERP disaster zone: The mostly costly failures of the past decade

Re: Can ERP actually be a perfect fit for any company ?

"Good for whoever is in charge of the programming, not so good for the company in the long run."

Citation needed. How many problems are avoided, how much spending is never even planned when you have a more-or-less fixed cost inhouse pool of expertise to draw on?

White Screen of Death: Admins up in arms after experimental Google emission borks Chrome

Google is probably not your business partner

Definitely not your friend.

'We've done it, we've wasted further time!' Judge raps HP over Mike Lynch court scrutiny

Re: Pissing the Judge off over a number of weeks

In the USA this tactic works, does it? Looks like it's failing spectacularly here.....

"If you can't convince them with facts, then baffle them with bullshit" has been a cornerstone of U.S. discourse for quite a while, now.

Rust in peace: Memory bugs in C and C++ code cause security issues so Microsoft is considering alternatives once again

Re: Eh?

It can be argued the owners of Android don't consider surreptitious data extraction to be a bug.

Malicious code ousted from PureScript's npm installer – but who put it there in the first place?

The question is not "how?", but "why?"

"designed to install PureScript, a programming language that compiles to JavaScript, on the user's system using the npm command line interface. It gets used about 2,000 times a week."

It's muppets all the way down.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

Re: Child-proof reset operation

This is the best goddamn thing I have read on the internet this year.

Maybe ever.

The biggest uptick in demand for software devs by bosses is for... *rubs eyes* blockchain engineers?!?

Yes, I'd argue, not sure blockchain is quite as overhyped as "AI"

It's a trick question though. AI is the most overhyped technology over the past fifty years.

Sysadmin's three-line 'annoyance-buster' busts painstakingly crafted, crucial policy

Re: Great system...

"That's precisely the point.

See how we have different answers?"

Of course, in real life, the system will simply use the best config until the worst possible time, at which point it will switch seamlessly to using the worst one.

You like JavaScript! You really like it! Scripting lingo tops dev survey of programming languages

Re: Yeah...

" If you roll your own everything you spend half your time reinventing the wheel."

But at least then there's a chance your wheel will be round.

It's 2019, the year Blade Runner takes place: I can has flying cars?

"So... we should have rats driving our cars?"

Have you ever taken a taxi in the U.S.?

Western Digital: And when I pull the covers off, behold as NAND becomes virtual DRAM

Re: So... how is this different to swap on an SSD?

" So... how is this different to swap on an SSD?"

It wasn't entirely clear to me, but it sounds like they've built in a good paging system so they can bypass Linux's house of cards, and make actual good use of the backing store.

Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz

I can see it now:

systemd-iefbr14

Good luck.

Is this cuttlefish really all that cosmic? Ubuntu 18.10 arrives with extra spit, polish, 4.18 kernel

Re: "the system has a more modern and 'flatter' look"

"Modern KDE can indeed be far too resource-heavy, but at least you can configure it to be light."

Can you easily get rid of crap like akonadi being a prerequisite of every thing I'd like to install but don't want a goddamn desktop indexer for?

I used to like KDE a lot. Used to.

Chinese Super Micro 'spy chip' story gets even more strange as everyone doubles down

Re: Denials

"So far AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and TMobile have denied being the "major telecommunications company" in question. Who does that leave, Centurylink?"

Comcast. But it couldn't be them -- if it were they would have charged the customers for it.

A web where the user has complete control of their data? Sounds Solid, Tim Berners-Lee

Xanadu

So basically, the vision Ted Nelson had, but with more marketing and no more likely to be implemented.

What do a meth, coke, molly, heroin stash and Vegas allegedly have in common? Broadcom cofounder Henry Nicolas

Re: Because there has to be more to being loaded.

> "coke, meth, heroin"

> When you're that loaded you need to get loaded more?

" There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.” -- Hunter S. Thompson

Do Optane's prospects look DIMM? Chip chap has questions for Intel

Re: i've been waiting for this since the first experimental Dimm loaded scsi SSDs

"persistant ram is going to need a whole new programming model to be used effectively I feel."

Or a whole old one -- multics used that model. Almost 50 years ago.

Developer’s code worked, but not in the right century

Re: timestamp is a date format

"Maybe The Register can come up with its own special timestamp ? Milliseconds since el'Reg started ?"

VMS (and OpenVMS) uses tenths of microseconds starting November 17, 1858.

Git push origin undo-my-last-disaster

"So basically... Stick all your configuration in source control and you can check out old versions when you screw it up?"

It's actually more than that. The point (I think) is that you can automate that process almost completely, so you can commit a change, press a button, and the change works its way through your machine farm, paying attention to which machine does exactly what thing, and therefore needs exactly which change, and so on.

Of course, if you can automate it, you can give the button to someone who doesn't understand the inner workings, doesn't have a good model of those machines and their relationships, and is all too willing to push the button because, hey i'ts automated - the button knows all that stuff.

What can go wrong?

As I understand it, there's a reason U.S. Navy submarines have so many people on board. They think it's better to have humans who know stuff in the loop than to have a fully automated system with catastrophic failure modes.

Every major OS maker misread Intel's docs. Now their kernels can be hijacked or crashed

Re: PC 2.0

"IIRC the VAX architecture had instructions for BCD arithmetic."

The VAX had instructions for EVERYTHING. Including a single machine instruction for solving polynomials.

Re: So all of this is just a case of...

"If OS developers - highly intelligent people with excellent knowledge and understanding of their domain"

Try to work with memory overcommit in a shared HPC environment, then try to repeat that with a straight face.

A kernel house of cards designed for no other real purpose than to make bad code run (for a while).

ZX Spectrum reboot firm's shareholders demand current directors go

Re: A Wide Spectrum of opinions

"Hopefully the shareholders will be able to salvage something out of this mess."

Well, I don't know about the shareholders, but the 'backers' are all receiving a good lesson, for those who can understand it.

BOFH: We know where the bodies are buried

I like the new Boss

He seems to know his place, and could prove to be a real asset to the team.

BOFH: Give me a lever long enough and a fool, I mean a fulcrum and ....

Re: Isn't it time for LART to get updated?

"Any suggestions for a modern Agile, IAAS enabled version of it?"

Thought leader.

Teensy plastic shields are the big new thing in 2018's laptop crop

"f laptop makers were really serious about security, then hard swtiches for the camera and mic, just for starters."

Yes, it's not the camera that worries me nearly as much as the microphone. I'd really like a laptop without one, or failing that the confidence to open it up and cut the correct leads.

A tiny Ohio village turned itself into a $3m speed-cam trap. Now it has to pay back the fines

"Try not speeding. Total fine $0"

Speeding is so ubiquitous in the U.S. that 'scrupulously staying just under the limit' has been used occasionally by police as an indicator for suspected impaired driving, justifying a stop.

Trump backs push for bumpkin broadband with presidential orders

Re: Republicans voted against financing municipal broadband

And just wait until they start raising the chocolate ration.

UK.gov puts Suffolk 7-year-old's submarine design into production

Re: Art World

"He's cross because he didn't get credit for producing all that piss. The artist just took it."

That's the crux of the matter, I think. You've nailed it.

WD My Cloud NAS devices have hard-wired backdoor

Re: Feeling smug now

"Sometimes it pays to be a Luddite :)"

A lot of people ignore the fact that the Luddites were pretty correct in their analysis, and rational (if ill-fated) in their response.

Developers, developers, developers: How 'serverless' crowd dropped ops like it's hot

Re: A true paradigm shift!

Dataless. That's the future young man! If only all our apps don't need any data, then there would be no need for any sysadmin, or security.

Software-Defined Data. I see it coming.

No, wait. Hyperconverged Software-Defined Data.

Data-driven hyperconverged software-defined data.

Yes, I think that's it. Is it Friday yet?

Jingle bells, IBM tells more staff it is D-day ♫

Re: walking dead

"I can't see any company in their right mind lining up to buy anything from IBM. "

IBM seems to be very well placed in the early development of actual quantum computers. I don't know if that will turn out to be a real thing or not, but if it does, it will probably be a massive game-changer, that could leave IBM sitting on top of practically infinite possibilities.

I wouldn't bet against their executives screwing it up, but their smart people do have something going on that's worth keeping an eye on.

Net neutrality nonsense: Can we, please, just not all lose our minds?

Re: 2 questions

"2. What services will suffer as a consequence of the loss of net neutrality? If a more lucrative end of the Internet will cost more, will the ISP throttle the bandwidth so that the connections become slower? That is, if you want faster Internet connections, you have to pay for it?"

In principle, ANY internet endpoint without the money to pay for its own distribution is at risk.

In principle, in fact, some non-favored-by-ISP endpoints are at risk of having no distribution at any price.

That means ANY internet forum run by amateurs for amateurs to discuss their interests.

ANY website collecting, for instance, freely available software or documentation.

ANY local organization who want a web presence for their members.

ANY mailing list whose traffic an ISP doesn't like for some reason.

Making the argument into Comcast vs Google is beggaring the question by assuming the internet is NOTHING BUT a top-down commercial entertainment distribution system.

With net neutrality, amateurs have a presence. Without net neutrality, it's money all the way down.

2001: A Stob Odyssey

Thank you

Thank you. Thank you. I thought "Nothing honey, it still makes the right noise." would be the high point of my day today, until I hit "nineteen one hundred and one."

Thank you.

DXC spills AWS private keys on public GitHub

Re: Techie dummy?

"As a trade we learned molbio."

Fundamental rule of molecular biology - If some is good, more is better.

Leading to the definition of a molecular biologist:

A biochemist who uses enzymes in stoichiometric amounts.

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

Re: APL - without a shadow of doubt.

"I have a knack for picking up languages quickly, which meant that I’d often have to pitch in on eclectically coded projects. APL tested my abilities and patience and - although I got to be reasonably adept at it - I never want to touch it again."

This is actually pretty common. People who already know programming tend to have a difficult time picking up APL, but people who have never programmed at all tend to pick it up fairly easily. Understanding how the computer itself works makes it difficult to cast aside habits dealing with linear, sequential strings of instructions. What APL does well is allow mathematical ideas to be expressed without going through that 'how does a vector get processed?' step that most of us in this forum cannot ignore.

I freaking love APL. I use it as my desk calculator app. I'll never be any good at it because I've spent too many years thinking in Fortran/C/assembler/Pascal, etc., but I'll keep trying, because it rewards, maybe even forces, thinking outside the box.

Mozilla ponders making telemetry opt-out, 'cos hardly anyone opted in

Optimize for specific websites?

I know this is crazy talk these days, but why not optimize for the freaking Standards? If you want to go down a partnership / monetizing path with some sites, do that separately. Make your browser generally useful and maybe people would generally use it again.

US cops point at cell towers and say: Give us every phone number that's touched that mast

Re: Anyone seen the The Wire?

"Surely every perp knows about 'burner' phones..."

This isn't about perps. It's about YOU.

Samsung drops 128TB SSD and kinetic-type flash drive bombshells

Re: 128TB ?

"1Tb is enough to do everything you want, home or work."

HA!

(I upvoted you anyway - I agree completely ----- for now.)

When 'Saving The Internet' means 'Saving Crony Capitalism'

"Net Neutrality is about innovative content providers being allowed to continue piggybacking on the common carriers without pulling their own weight on the cost side of infrastructure and last mile delivery"

The problem is -- well, A problem is -- wait let me start again -- among our problems is the fact that cable TV companies in the U.S. for mostly historical reasons now, have very strong regulation-mandated monopolies throughout the communities they serve. And it is entirely disingenuous to conflate "common carriers" with cable TV providers. Net neutrality is all about making them behave like common carriers.

What I mean is, in many if not most local communities, it IS NOT POSSIBLE for a content provider to legally pull their own weight by providing their own infrastructure. Whichever TV provider owns the franchise has a monopoly on "cables to the houses", mandated by the local city council or state legislature. Any content provider who wants to "pull their own weight" could only do it by paying the

TV company whatever amount the TV company demands.

That, in a nutshell, is what the Net Neutrality argument is about -- Does Comcast decide what websites you can usefully connect to? The alternative is to repeal the thousands of local ordinances that currently give Comcast that power, or alternatively, mandate that Comcast transport bytes at a non-discriminatory price for all comers.

Do we want an internet and a TV viewing system, or just the TV?

Fresh cotton underpants fix series of mysterious mainframe crashes

Re: Cats at 40,000 volts

The general rule of thumb I learned long ago was "about 50,000 volts per inch of spark in dry air." I think there's an awful lot of slop in that number, though; it would probably be more accurate to just say "tens of thousands."

Beer icon, because I've personally seen a falling droplet spark generator run on beer.

Shock: NASA denies secret child sex slave cannibal colony on Mars

As someone once said

They would say that, wouldn't they?

Stack Clash flaws blow local root holes in loads of top Linux programs

Re: Why am I not surprised to see sudo there?

My sshd's NEVER listen on 22.

Software dev bombshell: Programmers who use spaces earn MORE than those who use tabs

Re: Of course there's a right answer!

===

"Do you KNOW what happens when you press the TAB key on an IBM 029 card punch? Do You?? DO YOU?????????

NOTHING, if you're good! Card punches don't have TAB keys --- the 029 has an Error Reset key there, like the Good Lord Watson intended!"

===

Well, duh. You put your tabs on the drum card.

HPE hatches HPE Next – a radical overhaul plan so it won't be HPE Last

"“And finally, we’re going to right-size end-to-end cost structures of HPE to ensure we deliver on our financial architecture,” the CEO added."

Good luck and safe landings to the competent people. It's time to hit the silk.