Posts by NickHolland

Cybersec is a thankless job: expanding workload and shrinking pay packet

Re: Aren't cyber incidents rising massively though?

are they rising? yes.

It isn't due to lack of cybersec people. It is due to lack of /good/ cybersec people, and deliberate management decisions. But mostly, management.

Security problems come from the C level. Cybersecurity people try to change that, but they will fail, as long as high-level managers are making stupid decisions with security being literally the last priority (look at actions, not words -- last. absolute...last).

You know the saying, "security isn't a product"? Well, security also isn't a team. You can't buy a product and become secure, you can't hire a team and become secure.

We are not at "peak cyber protection" -- we are in a valley, and we keep digging.

the problem in IT is that security problems AREN'T expensive enough.

Managers keep their jobs -- even the ones that directly CAUSED the problem in the first place.

Customers complain, but keep buying from the same vendors.

The media portrays the attackers as the bad guys, and the company as the victim.

Business insurance pays damages.

Zero accountability.

There are some companies that violate every security standard and just shouldn't be allowed to continue to exist. But instead, those companies are generally the lowest bidder. Doing the job right is too expensive.

Unfortunately, I think there needs to be a "corporate death penalty" -- where companies are just instantly shutdown. Stockholders lose 100% of their value. C-level managers are required to repay the previous year's bonuses and have a lifetime ban from taking a similar role at any future employer. Customers and vendors are screwed without compensation, as they should have been doing the "due diligence" thing, they weren't, share the pain. It is something that should be used rarely, but its possibility should be on every manager's mind during at every decision they make.

Project Glasswing and open source software: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Re: Apples to apples

a lot more sophisticated methods than that have been done. Your process will detect some kinds of language errors, but doesn't work so well for well-implemented flawed-logic. And some newer attack systems, like ROP (Return Oriented Programming) involve exploiting perfectly valid, potentially perfectly "secure when used properly" binary code in unexpected ways (ROP is scary).

This "AI" stuff, at least in code analysis, is nothing revolutionary, just another evolutionary step in a LONG history of using computers to debug code. Maybe you could say it has been "AI" for a long time. Whatever. If you have a good, established code examination tool, slapping "AI" on the product name will run your stock up a lot.

As tools to ASSIST programmers, they can be great. Take the output of these things too seriously and literally seems to be not-so-good.

NASA working on 'Big Bang' upgrade to keep the Voyagers alive for longer

Re: This isn't so much Off Topic as "Out There"...

> It weighs much, much less today.

Why's that? Only thing I can think of that has been ejected has been fuel, and from what I'm seeing, at launch, there was only 100kg of fuel, so that's less than 15%. That's not even one "much less", much less two much lesses. What am I missing?

User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I had a user that did that, too -- probably 25+ years ago.

"I don't know...that's just how I always did it", she told me...and I put her mouse back, tail towards her.

No idea how she adapted to trackpads and such. But then, I still see the occasional user who never uses the on-laptop pointing device, only uses external mice.

Developer puts Windows 7 on a crash diet, drops it to down to 69 MB

Don't forget, the original Macintosh had one 400k disk and 128k RAM.

Granted, it never should have shipped that way -- that was way too minimal for even that day -- two floppies were pretty well accepted as minimum for non-home computers and desirable for home systems, but it did bring up a GUI and could run an application.

Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

Considering Linux's "Reinvent Windows, Badly" philosophy, I'm sure they will, soon.

Starlink is burning up one or two satellites a day in Earth’s atmosphere

Re: cue the fingers in the ears, la la la, can't hear you.

If we DO study it, we will decide more studies are needed. Resolving questions is not in the best interests of those doing studies.

Which isn't to say "don't ask questions, don't seek answers", but be realistic about what you expect to get out of those studies. The money is not in answering questions....it is in coming up with NEW questions demanding more studies.

So much for the paperless office: UK government inks £900M deal for printers etc.

Re: 'Paperless Office'

dang, you beat me. I came here to quote my dad...

"I'll believe in the paperless office when there's a computer in every toilet stall"

(his statement dates back to the early 80s, if not 1970s. Obviously predating the smart phone, though hopefully the use cases are different)

Re: Wet sign...

Physically signing a document is supposed to mean "*I* was here. *I* read this. *I* agree to this contract". Handwriting experts are supposed to be able to tell if it was really me or not. The concept is simple and well understood by most.

I have no idea what typing my name, or trying to write my name with my mouse or with my finger tip is supposed to mean. SOMEONE pushed these keys, or wiggled their finger. Me? Maybe. How do you know? It seems more of a parody of the idea of signature authentication than a serious solution to a problem.

Print a document, sign it, scan it...the document has a real signature. I understand that. If scanned at good resolution, a handwriting expert could testify that it is likely the indicated person. And sure, original documents get destroyed in fires and lost...but I doubt at a rate that compares to "lost in a home computer", and that scanned copy still (hopefully) exists, and if I can't present the original, well, I guess we have to trust your scanned copy.

So yes, I'm all in favor of "wet signing"...when appropriate.

FreeBSD Project isn't ready to let AI commit code just yet

Re: All submissions should be signed off by a real person /recognised expert - Not difficult really.

The "OpenBSD Way" has been to require the examination and approval of almost all commits by an expert in the area impacted by the change.

I'd argue that BY DEFINITION, the person who asked an "AI" to generate code is NOT an expert. So they don't count as an approver.

Really, having SOMEONE ELSE look over all changes is just a good idea.

Goldman Sachs warns AI bubble could burst datacenter boom

this is not the AI you are looking for...

Lessee here...

A human brain does remarkable thinking (well, some of them), consumes what, maybe 25W of energy.

The neurons are visible in an optical microscope

Current "AI" is using huge amounts of space and power, in spite of the elements used to build those computers being too small to be seen in an optical microscope.

Pretty obvious to me that this is -- at best -- a step along the way to true AI computers, and probably a technological dead-end. Kinda like the mechanical delay lines in an early computers...a way to get things done until we figured out a better way, and then forgotten.

The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

key words: "Customers can and will complain"

CUSTOMERS. they already handed over the money.

The deciding factor was not customer support. It was the desirability of the product and the price tag. Once the product has been selected, it's strictly the price tag.

Complaining doesn't mean much once they have your money.

The goal for decades has been to remove as much money from customer support as possible, as that's a cost you don't get back. Send the work to people in a land that barely speaks English, and has an employee retention period measured in weeks, not years. It doesn't matter, you got their money. And if your product had cost 5% more, you would have lost the deal anyway. Better an irate customer than a non-customer, at least financially.

Sure, some of them will jump to the competition, but the competition did the same thing with their "support", so a lot of their pissed-off customers are jumping to you. Most customers don't need "customer service" anyway, so F*** the few that do.

If a company can deliver half the quality of customer service but do it for a third the price, they will. Because that's what the customers voted for by making their purchase. So no surprise that Customer Service would be what we'd expect to see go to so-called-AI. But it turned out to not be a third the price or not half as good.

Where you won't see second rate experiences is PRE-sales. When computers start taking high-margin SALES jobs, THEN you will know it has arrived.

Re: Apartments of the Future? (Recycled data centers)

I had a friend of mine who worked for a company that bought out an not-very-odd Telecom facility (I don't recall if it was a victim of the dot-com bust or the migration of telecom to newer tech). It was filled with rows of two-post racks.

They left a lot of the racks in place, and attached drywall to them. Ta-da, instant office spaces! (or, since they didn't go floor-to-ceiling, perhaps better viewed as "medium privacy cubes"?)

Two scrubs, one Starship: Third time lucky for SpaceX?

Re: Any plumbers reading this?

Cryogenic liquids, needing to be pumped by 100,000HP of turbopumps, which then feed to hyper-hot combustion, all while vibrating due to the 100,000HP turbopumps being just the fuel delivery energy.

Then the whole bloomin' thing is intended to be reused. Quickly. This is rocket engineering (which, I'll define as taking the orbital mechanics of Rocket Science and making it happen in the real world).

A Linux alternative? Debian/Hurd shows microkernel Unix dream is alive

Re: Performance hit

well, a lot of reasons.

1) people don't care about security. Tell me I'm wrong all you want, I'll have no difficulty showing you real world examples of how people love security as long as it gets in the way of literally nothing else. Security is unimportant to the vast majority of administrators, managers and architects. (I wish this wasn't true. I'd love for you to prove me wrong)

1a) if people cared about security, OpenBSD would be what people use.

2) Like it or not, many of your system administrators and system architects come out of the hard-core gaming world (and yes, it does show). When you got an understanding of your Linux or Windows hammer, all the world looks like the appropriate nail.

3) I don't think the security benefits of the microkernel idea are quite as well proven /in the real world/ as we'd like. IF you have a lot of control over the hardware (remember back when we said, "pick your application, the app picks the OS, the OS picks the hardware?), AND can keep the feature creep under control, then a microkernel might really win-out for security. But on modern diverse hardware and the expectation of lots of features, I've seen some pretty persuasive arguments from people who have demonstrated secure programming skills, that microkernel OSs can become a big mess of races and dependencies. Really, stripping features out of the kernel and putting security first (really first) probably matters more for security than a microkernel architecture could ever deliver.

Tom Lehrer: Satirist, mathematician, inventor of the Jello shot

All the world is less in tune / on a summer afternoon...

In the early 1980s, my father found a Tom Lehrer album in a collection he bought, and figured as young teenagers, my brother and myself would be ready for _An Evening Wasted..._ and put it on for us, with the warning that it was pretty "risqué". While the three of us were laughing our butts off (mom was safely at work), at the end dad said, "Well, it was apparently more risqué back when I was young".

I hope his body was examined for possible ingestion of cyanide coated peanuts.

Quantum code breaking? You'd get further with an 8-bit computer, an abacus, and a dog

Re: Encryption is good, but it isn't the answer.

There's still a difference in attack surface.

Back in the modem days, security basically sucked. But dial-up data breaches were infrequent because telephone calls cost money, so you weren't going to "war dial" long distance calls and rack up a charge for each and every failed login attempt unless you had some idea there was a pot of gold awaiting you in a small number of dial attempts.

To steal information by decrypting it, you still have to get the encrypted data in the first place, which varies from "very local" (WiFi) to "not so local" (long-distance wireless), and often sitting in a place you don't belong...much easier to prosecute for trespassing than data theft. And difficult for North Koreans or russian attackers to get to at all.

You are right -- you go through the barrier if least resistance. But I have seen little evidence of bad actors getting their hands on a big pile of encrypted data and saying "Blast! Our evil plan is foiled!". Just look at your source a little closer, you'll find the key sitting there in a file named "decryption-key" with world-readable permissions, it is pointed to by the script that starts the application. Oh, to live in a world where encryption was something people attempted to go around, rather than just a gate across a sidewalk, and nothing keeping you from going around it. I just don't think that's where we are (or will be).

And again -- don't get me wrong. Encryption is good. Required, really, and should be guided by "what is really difficult to break now and in the reasonable future". But it's not the weak spot now, and I don't think it will be any time soon for the majority of data loss events. There are just too many alternative ways to extract data, and too many incentives to not fix them. I've often said, I'd rather my bank skip https and not have crap code than to have https be the end-all of their "security" as I'm pretty sure it is (yes, both would be preferable).

Encryption is good, but it isn't the answer.

Let's pretend for a moment that Quantum Computers become a real thing, and RSA and friends become trivial to crack.

From a real-world security standpoint: this probably won't be a big deal. Real data theft has historically not been accomplished by unlocking encrypted data, but by exploiting horribly designed software and poorly managed systems.

Decryption of data will have to get crazy trivial before it becomes easier than guessing a bad password or exploiting a design flaw. Remember, you still have to get to the encrypted data to decrypt. In many cases, if you can get the encrypted data, there are easier ways to profit or create mischief.

It would be very nice, in my opinion, if a small fraction of the effort put into so-called post-quantum cryptography went into writing good applications, eliminating bad applications, keeping systems up to date, and laying a beating on managers and sysadmins who do their job wrong. This will solve real problems that exist now AND will still exist if quantum computers become a real thing.

Encryption is good. Good encryption is better. But it isn't the answer to computer security.

Unfortunately, "didn't suck at my job" doesn't sound good as good as "Prepared for Post Quantum Cryptography" on a resume.

Debian isn't waiting for 2038 to blow up, switches to 64-bit time for everything

Re: Linux is Starting to Catch Up...

Worth noting: OpenBSD fixed ALL platforms, including a number of "not really ready for the 21st century", "labor of love" 32 bit platforms, such as VAX, Sparc32, and MVME88k

It's just one of those things...you know you have to do it, just freakin' do it! It only gets harder the longer you wait.

And yes, Linux should fix 32 bit platforms. In 1975, 32 bit time was a design decision. In 2025, it's a bug. How many of us have manage systems running today that were installed more than 13 years ago? (let's just acknowledge that is bad, it shouldn't be, but it is...)

Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

Cars have something called "interoperability", to a degree that they don't even talk about it, it's just assumed.

I can drive almost any car on almost any road.

I can fuel it up almost anywhere.

I can get in a car I've never seen before and drive it safely and effectively.

My friend can drive my car, I can drive his without re-training.

Most people fit behind the wheel or the primary passenger seat of most cars.

I can get my car serviced at many places, both "official" and third-party.

When my car breaks down, the people rendering emergency assistance don't care what brand or model my car is.

I can generally assumed my car will fit in my driveway and garage.

My car can be brand new or 40 years old, and it will still do "the job", and all the above still applies.

All this would be a nice goal for the IT and OS world to strive towards, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime. And with the options we have currently, perhaps that's a good thing if none of the current crop becomes "The Standard".

Fedora 43 won't drop 32-bit app support – or adopt Xlibre

Re: Not surprised about XLibre

yep. about 21 years ago, my GF made me watch the first Harry Potter movie. That night, I went home and renamed my three-headed OpenBSD computer "Fluffy".

In fact, I very shortly after the release of the movie "The Matrix Reloaded", I was making bad jokes about my adding another Matrox card to my computer... "Matrox Reloaded" (pretty sure that was head #3).

xrandr makes it comparatively easy, but I really preferred the "independent" mode (they call it "Zaphod mode", iirc) of years past -- one monitor would have chat and e-mail clients running, another monitor would have the work that e-mail was inspiring, and the multiple desktops in X would be different projects I'd be working on based on those e-mails.

These days, I'm down to one 43-50" 4k TV being used as a monitor (same number of dots and same screen space as four 1920x1080 monitors) on my primary Unix-like machine. I'm really not sure how I used to work with 25 lines of 80 characters or 640x225 graphics anymore... Some day, I'm sure I'll attach another one, then two 4k TVs to my Unix computer, and Fluffy will Ride Again!

As RHEL clones hit version 10, Rocky and Alma chart diverging paths

Re: Loopholes can be closed.

it seems you like Alma Linux based on the number of times you mentioned it. :)

But...first of all, I don't think people are looking at CentOS Stream as an alternative to RedHat/Rocky/OldCentos. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think saying "Almoa is Centos!" is a selling point. Second...you worry about IBM making things unpleasant, but then mention Alma relies on Oracle. I've never been a fan of IBM, but Oracle makes IBM look like the Saints of Capitalism.

The answer, unfortunately, is don't hitch your company to any one vendor or one product or any feature that is not available somewhere else. If you bring a product into your business, you have to have a plan to replace that product with something else, as you can't be betting YOUR business on another business's wellbeing or benevolence. You don't have to have another product in mind, but you have to ask, "How do we get our data out? how do we move our network infrastructure over to another product? How do we host our VMs on something other than VMware?"

Torvalds' typing taste test touches tactile tragedy

"Finest keyboard ...ever"

"the finest keyboard in the world, ever, is the IBM Model M."

well...no. "ever" is a very long time, even in IT.

Let's ignore that people vary, and people can legitimately love/hate different things. There were a lot of options out there before the PC and some were just plain better.

Let's not forget, when IBM came out with the PC, the keyboard was laughed at by many, loved by some. I recall one review (Byte Magazine?) which summed it up as, "how could the company that produced the IBM Selectric Typewriter produce ... THIS?"'. In addition to the weird feel, the weird key placements were just out of line.

The later 101key Model M fixed the placements (for the most part. CTRL moved stupidly). So now it was just the feel. Love it or hate it.

When the IBM clicky keyboards came out, I hated them.

Now, I think a Model M (or a clone -- Unicomp) it is the best I can find. Not so much (I believe) because I've changed my mind...it's just that better computer keyboards went away. There was a lot of good stuff in the Pre-PC world (and a lot of trash, too -- admittedly).

My favorite I've owned: Zenith Z100/Heathkit H100 (a PC class but not PC compatible computer). I used to have people come to my dorm room and say, "I have heard you have a computer with an amazing keyboard, can I try it?"...and I don't recall anyone walking away saying, "eh", except for the rabid IBM lovers (the ones that didn't even want to talk about compatibles -- 4.77MHz 8088 and 6MHz 80286 are enough for ANYONE! After that -- get an IBM Mainframe!). I've used an IBM 3279 terminal which also had a stunning keyboard, though I wasn't using it for "PC" style applications, were I could just type fast, hard and long -- so I'm not sure if my admiration would hold up. And yes, the purely mechanical IBM Selectric golfball typewriters had stunning keyboards. No switches, just rods and levers causing things to happen, and giving the user an amazing experience (except...that backspace key doesn't "work" like I need it to).

Before I ran out of supply, my favorite PC keyboard was the Zenith ZKB-2. Now, if I can avoid a PS2-USB converter, a real Model M is my favorite (I have a lifetime supply). Unicomp is good -- very good -- but feels a bit like a worn Model M. Really good, but not quite 100%. And I wish they'd improve the features, not just clone 40 year old keyboards (i.e., their trackball and button mouse keyboards are fatally crippled by lack of the seemingly required modern wheel and third button functions. Some programmability/macro functions would be nice, too). PS/2-USB converters have been hit-and-miss for me. Some work well, some are laggy. I'd gripe about breaking a Unicomp by spilling some water in it, but I managed to do the exact same thing with a real Model M a few weeks later (40+ years in the business, and the two keyboards I destroyed were just weeks apart!!), so I guess that's authentic.

One GREAT thing about the migration to commodity PC hardware: you can get a keyboard that works for you and put it on your computer that works for you with the monitor that works for you. One sad thing is people cheap out on the very things they interact with the most (monitor/mouse/keyboard), and go for fancy and expensive stuff in the computer's box they don't actually use 80% of. Go buy a good keyboard. $150USD is nothing for something that will make your life better and improve the experience. My only gripe is there few places you can walk in and try out the high end keyboards before purchasing (I'd like to try the Model F clones...but I'm not quite ready to drop $400 for an experiment. If it is good, I'm fine with the price).

Re: The keyboard of the gods

I've got a Model M with trackpoint.

Good, because it's a model M.

Trackpoint, I find useless because only two button mouse. I live off the roller and third button, it seems.

I picked up a Unicomp with trackball. The thing has eight buttons, two sets of four. Two buttons in each set aren't even hooked to anything, and the "right/left" click buttons I found useless due to lacking the roller/third button. I was incredibly disappointed by the lack of evolution in the Unicomp boards. Are they good basic keyboards? Absolutely. Worth the money. But having unusable buttons on the trackball was ... wow. ouch.

OpenBSD 7.7 released with updated hardware support, 9Front ships second update of 2025

Re: I often wonder

Security is everyone's top priority ... second to only everything else (i.e., absolute last place). They won't adjust anything in their decision and selection process if it means moving away from the bells and whistles they want, or are used to, or learned ten years ago.

Governments are even worse than businesses in that regard. Not their data, not there benefit, not their money, no consequences. ZERO motivation to do things well.

As for moving Exchange to ... well, anything, be aware your users will protest. They also want Security only if it means no change to anything. And as mediocre of an e-mail and calendar system Outlook/Exchange is...it's what people are used to.

North Korea’s fake tech workers now targeting European employers

Nothing new here

Almost 20 years ago, my then-employer had problems interviewing one person and a different person showed up for "work". And of course, lying on resumes and Bull S---ing the way through interviews is just normal (as is demanding ten years experience with new technology, and expecting a job applicant to walk in knowing *all* the systems at the company. Ask for BS, get BS). No one wants to admit the new guy they just helped select is a loser, so the paychecks roll on for a non-trivial period of time. Oh, the guy appears to be an operative for hostile foreign state? Oh, we really don't want to talk about falling for that, as that's a failure at so many levels in the company. Maybe he'll leave on his own.

Payoff is big, risk is low, especially with an international border involved. No brainer, really. It is gonna happen. Oooo...bad states figured out what individuals have been doing. I'm not in the slightest bit surprised.

Chimera Linux ghosts RISC-V because there's no time for sluggish hardware

native build is The Way.

Compiling an OS and applications natively is a good test under non-trivial load that your OS and tools actually work. Cross compiling itself tests nothing other than the code builds. Booting it up on a target system kinda hints that there's some functionality, but doesn't indicate suitability for any particular task.

Emulation is a similar situation. Real hardware has bugs, real emulators have bugs; they probably aren't the same bugs (though of course, the emulator should emulate known real HW bugs). If your code works on the emulator, you don't know if it is stable on the real hw. A crash in the emulator may reflect a problem in the code, or it may be a flaw in the emulator.

Cross compiling and emulators are good for bringing up a new platform or for "token" or "vanity" platforms ("oh, look, I got Linux running on my Timex watch!"), but not really want you want to do for something you claim is production ready.

C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from 'serious attacks'

Re: What about...

"What about...... if programmers actually took responsibility for their work"

The problem is... good code takes time to write IN ANY LANGUAGE. If you do it right, you will be beaten to market by your competition. It really is a race to the bottom (or a race out the door). Why learn your tools in detail if you can grab a few pieces off the shelf and shove something out the door NOW, get the praise of your managers, a jump on the competition, and start raking in the money, grab a bonus, and then jump jobs before it all blows up?

And then there's the career problem. Employer/employee loyalty is a thing of the past, and employment cycles are shorter than major software revision cycles in some/most environments. I've seen too many cases where the main application was (poorly) developed by people no longer there, and new people trying to figure out how to bolt new features on old code and fix bugs.

I'm not going to pretend to know what the answer is.

Re: Talking at cross purposes?

Unfortunately, in IT, we hand "guns" to the untrained all the time.

You just have to SAY you have been trained, throw a few buzzwords around at the interview, and you are given the title "senior whatever" and thought to be an expert. Or get someone else to interview for you and then you show up at the job (best for "remote" or "overseas" work, of course).

Programming is hard. Now, I'll be quick to admit that C is dangerous as heck, and yeah, some simple memory constraints and checking embedded in the language would probably be a good thing. But look at what the "safe" Java language did -- lowered the bar to entering "programming" so low that almost anyone can become a programmer, and it shows. And that "Java sandbox" they used to talk about seems to constrain your program within its boundaries about as well as a real sandbox does for a real toddler (not at all).

I'm not a "memory safe denier" by any stretch, but let's be realistic -- there aren't enough GOOD programmers to go around, and there aren't enough managers willing to pay them to keep them or let them spend the time needed to write code, refine code, document code and cross-train their coworkers to make the next generation of good programmers. Memory Safe languages will not change any of that. I suspect "memory safe" languages will do for programming what automatic transmissions did for driving -- enable a lot more less competent people to do more damage in other ways.

Elon Musk calls for International Space Station to be deorbited by 2027

Re: Conflict of Interest

Many/most US presidents (and I suspect leaders around the world and throughout history) have had unofficial advisors. Trump is being open and honest about it, relatively speaking.

Something tells me that Joe Biden was not the person controlling the content of his teleprompter and "his" policies. Just a hunch.

H. Clinton made a snootload of money BEFORE she ran for president by being a horrible public speaker. You think those people paying didn't have "interest" in the outcome of the election, or plan to remind her of their support after she got elected?

Your point is valid. It should be a concern about ALL leaders, not just the ones you voted against.

Time to make C the COBOL of this century

Re: C is the new COBOL

I don't think Ada ever had favor, outside of some government contracts where it was specified. I got to wonder how many contracts were awarded to companies that bragged (lied) about their "Ada experience", with the expected results from inexperienced programmers.

I also don't think things "moved over to C/C++" -- my memory was that C was established in much of the world long before Ada, and things FAILED to move to Ada, unless they had to. By the time Ada was being talked about, much of the world had a computer that could run a good C compiler; few had access to anything that could run Ada. Things STAYED with C.

I have no hard numbers, but I can't think of anything in the consumer world which was written in Ada at any point in the last 45 years, and of course, a lot was and is written in C.

There's a slight chance Asteroid 2024 YR4 could hit Moon in 2032

Was I supposed to be hearing that sang that in Justin Hayward's voice?

(for those not catching my probably obscure reference, I'm thinking of Jeff Wayne's 1978 musical version of War of the Worlds)

AI revoir, Lucie: France's answer to ChatGPT paused after faux pas overdrive

Re: I wish everyone would get it

This was just individual words, or more accurately, names. Since "T" is often followed by "H", words with "TH" would often be in the output. That kinda thing. Since they fed it a bunch of UK names, "shire" was at the end of the output in many cases. Super simplistic, but ... also produced interesting results, which just feel a lot like the modern "AI".

And yes, there are archives out there...but that also requires time to sit and dig through them. And I'll probably scour the years I'm suspecting, and then in ten years, figure out it was really Dr. Dobbs or worse, some one-off Commodore magazine I picked up and I translated a program into my system's BASIC interpreter.

Re: I wish everyone would get it

Somewhere around 1983-1985, BYTE magazine ran an article with a BASIC program where you could enter a list of words, and it would make NEW words out of that, by linking sequences of letters that appeared together. The example I'm remembering was a list of U.K. town/county/region names, from which, this program produced some total gibberish, some REAL town names that were not in the original set, and some names that SOUNDED like they could be real U.K. names...but weren't. (I'm believing I remember this because, though I live in the US, at the time, I lived on a street named after a British county).

I haven't managed to re-find this program, but after playing with it in the 1980s, I just see all the AI stuff doing basically the same thing, but with 40 years of improved technology, storage and data input.

AI facial recognition could sink this murder probe

Re: People are just as falible

well, resources are an issue...as is the cooperation of the victim and neighbors of the victim (and perps).

But another big factor is also score keeping. Police like to talk about "arrest rates" for crimes -- an arrest (and later found "not guilty", or even "insufficient evidence for prosecution") is better than no arrest. Prosecutors like to talk about convictions -- a wrongful conviction is better than no conviction. A hung jury beats not going to trial. A plea bargain beats going to trial ("Admission of guilt! Sure, lesser charge, but we all know what he did"). It's easier to prosecute a crime victim that fights back than it is the criminal -- as the criminal generally had a plan going in, the victim made it up as it went along. The victim who shoots or stabs their attacker is an easy win on the score card for all parties (arrest, prosecution, conviction!).

I do believe there were even scandals in a few big US cities where crime rates were deliberately INFLATED to get more money to "fight crime".

And unfortunately, many of the people who claim "the system is stacked us!" don't even bother to show up to vote in local elections, where the prosecutors and people who manage the police departments are chosen.

I don't know what the answer is. But it is all related to people...

Microsoft to force Windows 11 24H2 on Home and Pro users

Re: "an ever-lengthening list of known issues, many of which remain unmitigated or unresolved"

And that's why I, a Unix person, dislike Linux. The Bar is set to "better than Windows" -- and that's it. No desire to be a good OS, just "better than Windows". And Linux often stumbles over that bar. File system of the month, firewall solution of the year. Always more fun to reinvent something from scratch rather than improve (or fix) the existing things, and then leave support for both the new and several old solutions in place. Lots of re-inventing of very round wheels, with zero apparent benefit to the users.

We used to say, "Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly.". Now we have Linux trying to reinvent Windows, poorly. Linux has been taken over by people who hate Windows, not those that understand and love the Unix philosophy. And yes, systemd...but that's just one example.

And yes, Windows is getting easier to hate, but I'm not finding Linux "easier to love" as anything other than a bad re-invention of windows.

SpaceX resets ‘Days Since Starship Exploded’ counter to zero

Re: Looking to the Future -- The Limits of "Move Fast and Break Things"

Noah's family were the only surviving witnesses.

He left out his test and failures from the official reports.

SpaceX will try satellite deployment on next Starship test

are humans on Mars even a good idea?

Let's pretend it is practical to set up a self-sufficient Mars colony, and it is basically free to do so. Let's also pretend it is reasonably safe.

Is it a good idea? I'm thinking ... environmental impact and scientific impact.

As I understand it, we are still looking to rule out the possibility of both extinct AND current life on Mars. If Mars is confirmed "dead", both now and in the past, fine. Go ahead, no harm, no foul. But I don't think we've done that yet. If we put humans on Mars, we are going to be making ecological changes, and nothing we discover afterwards will become simple (as if the search for life has been "simple" on Mars so far). I'd assume any microbial life we introduce might well mutate/evolve fairly quickly to a point that we might not be sure if it is recent transplants from earth-to-Mars, or long-time inhabitants.

I'm suspicious I might be missing something, as I'm just not seeing this discussed much in the "colonize Mars" stories, so please tell me what I'm missing.

SvarDOS: DR-DOS is reborn as an open source operating system

Re: DOS memory limit

Heathkit H100, actually (a.k.a., Zenith Z100)

Pure graphic machine -- no "text mode"/"graphics mode". I used to have fun with friends by writing a quick-and-dirty random line drawing program in BASIC, hit CTRL-C to stop it, and the text output would pop out in the middle of the graphics. They'd jump with shock. Then I'd do a LIST to put some text on the screen, and the graphics would scroll. Then I'd hit CONTINUE, and watch them freak out as the thing drew lines THROUGH the text on the screen. That was pretty amazing stuff in the early 1980s consumer market.

Also...640x225x8 colors graphics resolution, 192k RAM devoted to just video (64k reserved for ROM, and 768k main memory...so entire 1MB address space accounted for!). A whole lot of showing what the IBM PC COULD have been.

The tantalizing part was how much "future" was designed into the machine. 16 bit expansion bus (IEEE-696 -- updated and standardized S-100) with 24 bit addressing space, so basically the IBM AT ISA bus several years earlier. I've heard stories of a prototype 286 version of the H100 at the factory, no idea if this was true, but as good as the H100 was, it was also clearly intended to be a stepping stone into the 16 bit future.

Re: DOS memory limit

One of my favorite bad examples of "640k wasn't an MSDOS limit" was the 3Com 3+Share network software. As their software got too big to fit in the PC 640k limit, rather than rewrite their code for the then very available 80286 processor...they built NEW HARDWARE that didn't have video or floppies, but was otherwise PC-ish (80186 proc, though). Console and boot media was through a bizarre network application (because the then universal serial port was too simple, I guess. I did this once. I succeeded. But bootstrapping a network server over a network was definitely an interesting event in the mid 1980s). Gave them almost 900kB for their applicaiton...most of which was used. Caching data? nope. Their big sales pitch against Netware: "We are easier to manage if you have ten servers!" Novell basically ignored them, but their response could have been: "If your application and hardware didn't suck so bad, you wouldn't NEED ten servers!". 3+Share ended up being the basis of MS Lan Manager and then NT networking, hopefully just the protocols, not the 8088 code.

Other than the interrupt table in 8086 page zero, I can't think of any reason the entire 1024k RAM space of an 8086 couldn't be used by MSDOS. Sure, there's the boot code, but CP/M people figured that out long before -- disable the boot ROM once the OS is up and running. Display could be serial terminals (granted, that was very much out of favor by the time the PC came along).

Re: DOS memory limit

I think you are confusing "MSDOS" and the IBM PC BIOS. Granted, I stopped looking at MSDOS function calls around MSDOS v3, but up to that point, there was ZERO support for graphics in MSDOS itself. Text output. Even moving the cursor around the screen was a BIOS call, not a MSDOS call. (in the CP/M days, the BIOS was how the OS interacted with the HW. In the PC world, the BIOS became an extension to the OS itself -- beyond what the OS supported).

Yes, because of the ubiquity of the IBM PC and its BIOS, it's a fuzzy line, but as a one-time user and lover of a non-IBM PC MSDOS machine, it's an important line to me. Yes, the (IBM PC) BIOS graphics calls gave you a degree of device independence (but then, so did the ubiquity of PC compatible HW), but only on PC hardware with a PC BIOS. There were some attempts to emulate this in non-PC systems, but...as you indicated, they were doomed to failure because doing it yourself directly to the hw worked so much better. One of the things that impressed me early on with the IBM PC is just how bad the performance of going through the OS+BIOS was compared to writing to HW directly. My non-PC compatible MSDOS system needed to manipulate 27 bytes to put one character on the screen (8x9 matrix, three bits per dot for the three colors), compared to two bytes for the IBM PC. Writing directly to the HW, the IBM PC kicked my machine's butt (as expected), but going through the OS, my machine ran circles around the PC.

Re: 2GB

according to the article, "We gave the VM a 2GB virtual drive, and it automatically partitioned and formatted it as one big FAT32 volume."

so..sounds like "yes"

FAT16 did 2G volumes, but the block size was huge (64k, iirc). Back in the day of 1GB drives, which were actually a hair over 1GB in size, I would partition them to be a hair less than 1GB, tossing away maybe 8MB or disk space or so, which got a HUGE savings in wasted space due to the smaller block size at below 1GB as opposed to over 1GB. I started doing this after upgrading a client's almost full 200MB drive to a (hair over) 1GB drive, and after copying over all her tens of thousands of tiny files, ended up with less than 400MB free. Reducing the drive size below that 1GB boundary got us the almost 800MB free that she was expecting after the upgrade. FAT32 was a nice improvement.

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

Giving BASIC a bad reputation

I never programmed in C64 BASIC. Based on the statements in this article, I'll just grant it was bad. But I don't think I believe that was really the "killer" for BASIC's reputation. No one bought a C64 thinking it was the ultimate computer to write business applications in, and no one was going to be writing cool games in BASIC in home computers. It was colorful, it had good sound, it was a game machine you could justify because it was also tried to be "practical". I'm not glad Commodore skimped on the BASIC for it, but...it was a budget machine, we all knew that. This is why I never had any interest in the C64 at the time.

If you wanted to do serious programming in an 8 bit machine, it was generally assumed you would have to do either a compiled language or assembly. The computers were just too small for interpreters. Not unique to Commodore at all here. I believe most "serous" programs were developed using cross-compiling from "big iron" systems, so they were probably too small for compilers, too.

In my mind, it was Microsoft's MSDOS BASIC (IBM PC BASIC, BASICA, GWBASIC, whatever) is the "BASIC that killed BASIC being taken seriously", because it just wasn't what it could/should have been. For small systems users, MSDOS systems had huge (for the time) memory capabilities but the BASIC interpreter was a machine rework of the 8 bit CP/M BASIC, with a lousy 8 bit 64k program space (one 8086 RAM segment for the interpreter's code, one segment for your BASIC code and data) . So...this was the Commodore "BASIC that doesn't support the hardware" all over again, but without the "shoestring budget" justification. For MSDOS systems where BASIC wasn't included, it was a non-trivial cost product, and an utter disappointment. Just that CP/M product with graphics. I get their need to "get it out the door quickly" in 1981, but ... it got very little development after that. (There was a much-later "QBASIC", but that was a decade late, and the world had given up on BASIC by that point, and I don't know if it fixed the memory limitations).

So..I'm gonna blame MS BASIC on the PC for giving BASIC a bad reputation.

Australia moves to drop some cryptography by 2030 – before quantum carves it up

encryption is nice, but ...

... the real risks to data loss were, are, and will continue to be bad software and bad management. If I'm talking to someone about computer security, and "encryption" is the first thing they start talking about, as far as I'm concerned, discussion is over. We aren't using words the same way. Encryption is cool, and it is a good thing, but bad software and bad administration is how real world data is lost.

Why worry about sniffing data and running it through a hypothetical quantum computer when you can sit in a basement half a world away and see how many accounts you can get into using the password, "Welcome123", on a system where the only implementation criteria is "get it working" and the OS hasn't been upgraded in ten years, because the person who cobbled that crapplication together was laid off shortly after it was "completed"?

Broadcom says VMware is a better money-making machine than it hoped

IF they get their return on investment plus "cost of money" in those three years, he did the job he was paid to do.

IF IT managers learn to not hang their company's infrastructure around one product/brand, he did a job that needed to be done.

I'm not praising Broadcom (and I've had a dislike for VMware long before Broadcom), I'm just marveling about how companies -- in business to make money and maximize profit -- don't comprehend that their vendors are in business for the EXACT SAME PURPOSE. Just as a change in management at your employer can change a workplace from great to unpleasant (or unpleasant to great, presumably, though I'm lacking hard data here), a change in management at a vendor can have the same effect. Some people show more blind devotion to their vendors than they do to their spouses.

Broadcom makes U-turn on plan to serve top 2,000 VMware customers itself

Re: Downpour

Oh, I'm sure Broadcom will ride it out.

If they get more in revenue (with time value of money stuff calculated in, of course) than they paid for VMware, it will even be a win.

There are too many companies out there who are too committed to VMware (first mistake) to make a quick change. Or even a slow change. So VMWare will be a money maker for a number of years to come. As customers scale back, chop VMware R&D staff, then support staff, customer relations staff. A small billing department can take in a lot of money. Couple people to deal with security patches (who am I kidding? Whaddya gonna do, shut down your VMware servers? move to another product? Chop the security people, too! Oh wait, that looks bad. Outsource that to Elbonia, and show your "commitment to security"). It becomes almost pure revenue, minimal cost to produce that revenue.

Broadcom is going to ride it out just fine. VMware will probably vanish as a "product" in a decade or so, but the money will be made. Return on investment had. Success.

If this gets companies to realize bedding down with one vendor is a Really Bad Idea, that's all fine with me. If this gets companies to realize their vendors are in business for the same reason they are (to make money), again, all the better.

NASA finds Orion heatshield cracks won't cook Artemis II crew

Re: I have a bad feeling about this ....

SpaceX: "That worked, but let's see if we can make it better!"

... vs ...

NASA: "that didn't work as intended. We'll change the mission profile so it is 'acceptable'."

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

Re: It’s not a race!

Safety is most important! behind ...well, um... everything else.

(much like computer security)

Windows 95 setup was three programs in a trench coat, Microsoft vet reveals

Re: "Progress, eh?"

Back in The Day, I'd tell my clients, "buy a CDROM drive". If they wanted to pay me to insert floppy after floppy, I'd do it, but I'd point out that a CDROM drive cost about the same as one hour of my time, and it would save more than one hour of my time. It was far cheaper to pay for a CDROM and then have me do the install off CD, and then they had a CDROM drive on their computer (and by Windows 95 days, CDROM drives were getting pretty useful). I'm pretty sure I NEVER installed Windows 95 from floppy.

For Novell Netware 3 installs, I'd put my own CD drive in the server, install off that, then remove the drive, because other than the initial install, the CD on the server was of very minimal use. I'd have the customer buy on floppy, but install off my Netware CD, and serialize with their floppy. (by Netware 4 days, CDs were common enough I just told 'em to get one in the server).