Posts by swampdog 361 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Nov 2011
"A smart meter might encourage me to reduce my personal consumption of electricity but it will have f***-all effect on my children."
They haven't thought it through. Power starvation will result in more children. When it's dark, people shag!
Our local primary is covered in green beige, like a billiard table. Literally. The tarmac is covered in green beige.
The infants walking near the river: boys have to wear incandescent pink whilst the girls get to wear standard green hi-vis.
Our council spent a few £million moving the servers a few feet to the left during the recent banking crisis. They popped some RCJ's underneath the current server room and said it wasn't safe. It had an ICL mainframe in there for 30 years.
Queue many ground staff job losses, management is still considering their options. One manager is lost through "natural wastage" (caught viewing porn) and another management position is sold to the public as saving money. It was actually a re-designition of an existing job whereby that manager was retiring.
Two years later manglement has moved the server room a few foot to the left. Then they discovered there wasn't enough space so extended right on top of where the old server room used to be. Oh. Forgot. The whole reason for this debacle was flood defence. Running out of money they replaced the 1st floor aircon with a pair of sub river (massive) hoovers.
The leader of this project got promoted. They couldn't *not* promote him. We all know why don't we boys & girls?
@ BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
"I know that some of my appliances are not efficient"
Ditto. I have three vmware servers. They average 250 watts total, 450 if they're all powering up at the same time. They compensate for the energy efficient light bulbs that don't provide extra heat during the cold weather.
@Tridac
"Have they really thought this through ?. Seems like they need some real engineers on the job, rather than arts graduates with no clue..."
I have two fuse boxes in my house. Has anyone considered legislation where if one energy supplier cuts me off, what the other does? Yeah I know it's all the same power but as it's all legal bollox my question stands.
"The cost of installation will affect GDP. Then when the burglars see that you are on holiday GDP will again be boosted when you have to buy replacements for what they nicked."
This is actually my argument in reverse. Make drugs legal. Sell them for cost price. GDP will flatten out because everything we own would only have to be stolen once.
I see where you're coming from though. With your economic plan GDP increases!
"I asked my supplier how the data was encrypted... and they said:
"We can't discuss that for security reasons"
Bodes well!"
Bit like my medical practice. Number withheld then straight into asking me security questions. Ha! Let's see who has the last laugh when I don't turn up for my tablets.
Hang on. I haven't thought this through!
It's more likely the case those Civil Servants have a vested interest in maintaining their niche "dept of wankography".
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence!
The trouble is it's infectious. I was recently told by my bank (on complaining I could not set up a payment for my Virgin Credit card) "you will just have to find another way of paying".
Thank you Ledswinger, for giving an insight into the energy industry.
It's a National Security issue in any case. We all see the "panic buying" at supermarkets just because they are going to be closed "tomorrow". We didn't have Just In Time back then but I saw for myself how quickly a community can fall apart.
Take the bad UK winter of the 80's. My car was amongst a few that would actually start. No diesels would and most petrol had poor batteries. My friend owned a Fruit 'n' Veg shop. Sold all his milk within minutes of opening. I get his call - can I make it into town? Three trips later: boot full and rear seats filled with hundred's of pints of milk we are finally prevented from selling milk because an adjacent shop complained.
Three decades ago shops had stock. Our shops had two days worth of milk. We were snowed in for four days. A little moderation from all and I'd have not had to make any trips.
Store tins. Don't tell your friends you have them because they *will* kill you when their kids get hungry.
I generally agree but you are incorrect on one point..
"In a 1970s home, heating that would operate without electricity was perfectly normal. Not so now; how many homes, offices, etc, have heating that will work without electricity."
Central heating was reliant on timers back then, as now.
The 80's were great. I fell out of a 1st floor window onto the roof of my own car just as the father of the "blond twin sisters" was dropping them off. He tried to drive off but both rear doors opened and out they came: "bye dad". I was wearing a Churchill romper suit on account of losing my friend's trail bike into a pond a few hours earlier.
Me and my mate used to piss about with this car. What can you do with an 850cc "big gearstick" puke coloured mini? Put four bikers into it, play Pinky & Perky and other silly songs. One of those songs was Russ Abbot's & we got to quite like it!
My mate & I got a date with the pair of unobtainiam sisters on the strength of my roof exploit. My 2.3ltr (only made 500) vauxhall firenza collectors item refused to start on date night so we had to go with my mate's imported "new"(*) mini. Sisters were crammed into the back. He got lost(**) and by the time we got where we were supposed to be food was off.
(*) He imported belgium mot failure mini's, converted & resprayed them - until the "Q" reg came out, whatever year that was.
(**) down a dead-end in lincolnshire, stinking of silage.
Things went downhill from there. The 80's were great because I don't remember them!
Do you happen to know if that (old) story about alcoholics nicking the handwash had any truth?
In any case - its the punters who need a good slap. It's in front of them on entering a ward. Typically it's positioned so their face is right in it, to open the door, yet some people don't.
I'd have a camera there and post them up on a large screen to embarrass them. You'd only have to do it a few times then all you'd need is the sign.
Damn it. I've been up all night & read this just before crashing out.
Now I've got thoughts of shoving a raspberry pi zero up a chicken's arse so one can tell when it's cooked. I guess it'll need a temperature sensor and a wireless connection so it can send an email. I reckon it'll all fit nicely inside a heavy-duty condom.
With the addition of two more IoT objects, (an oven with an actuated door and jack-in-the box spring) plus an old fashioned flip-top bin the whole project is complete. In fact, add a speaker to the pi. Once cooked..
Dustbin lid opens. Pi sends email. Oven door opens. Pi commences to emit an audible scream. Oven launches chicken across the room into the bin. Lid closes. Pi changes to make eating sounds.
I have all my best ideas when overtired.
Oh yes.
Consider the scenario where one public authority needs to transfer employee records to another public authority. The target authority does not have the expertise to figure out how to use FTP so the problem fell into my lap. This was a good thing because the database dump was unencrypted. To cut a long story short.. what should have been an 'scp' for less than a CD's worth of data turned into many days of fiasco whereby a dvd had to be created with the data encrypted upon it.. also the software used had to be on there and the target had to be trained in how to use it. It all had to work under windows7 (src) and windows xp (dst) and be documented to fuck. All this for a one off transfer between a pair of (unix) oracle systems.
The target drone then drove to the source authority, picked up the dvd & became royally miffed when I refused to hand over the decrypt password: more so when they saw I'd scribbled some nonsense on the dvd. How were they to know what was on it?
Hmm. Email me once you're back alive drone!
This is what happens when the clueless position themselves the "firewall" between two IT dept's. :-(
That vuln is equivalent to you using "Administrator" or "password" as the password for an administrator account under windoze. It can be fixed thusly..
sudo cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config | egrep "PermitRoot|PasswordA" | egrep -v "^#"
PermitRootLogin no
sudo /etc/init.d/sshd restart
..and the reason it exists in the first place is because linux often runs on headless machines. You need to get into those remotely at least once in order to set up the real account through which you will always subsequently connect (also: "PasswordAuthentication no").
First off make sure you create a non-root user account for yourself. I'm not familiar with any recent Mint versions but I'd be surprised if the installer didn't prompt you to do that.
Don't be phased by linux listening on a myriad of ports (eg: netstat -an) because most of those are what's known as domain sockets. 'netstat -ant' shows the "internet" sockets and its the foreign address column you need to look at. "netstat -ant | grep LISTEN" narrows that down to the ones which are listening: "netstat -ant | grep LIS" shows both listening and connected sockets (because LIS also occurs in ESTABLISHED). Look at the local address column and the number after the colon is the port number. The file /etc/services lists commonly used ports and services. eg: "grep 2049 /etc/services" reveals "nfs" on one particular system here because it has an NFS server running.
You stop ssh from allowing root connections by changing "PermitRootLogin yes" to "PermitRootLogin no" and disable password prompting via "PasswordAuthentication no" - the latter won't allow a login unless an acceptable key has been generated (hint: ssh-keygen). The file is typically "/etc/ssh/sshd_config" but as some stuff varies between systems you might care to run 'updatedb' which builds a small database of the filesystems (hint: locate -i sshd_config).
You might also care to edit /etc/sudoers. Where it says "root ALL=(ALL) ALL" shove "foo ALL=(ALL) ALL" below it where foo is your normal login username. You can now become root using your own password (hint: 'sudo su -').
A useful command line editor is 'nano'. "nano -w /path/to/somefile" because 'vi' is enough to put anyone off linux.
Now you can look at your firewall. 'sudo -i iptables -L -n' (omit "sudo -i" if you're already root) shows you what is currently in effect and you can post that output onto a suitable Mint forum for advice. If there's bugger all in that output then it may be the firewall isn't enabled. Fix that as 1st priority.
Desktop systems tend to be configured so their firewall allows all outbound connections (and replies back from those outbound connections) and likely nothing but 'sshd' will be allowed to connect from the outside world. Trust me. You don't want to be turning 'sshd' off. It is far too useful. Just ask how to change the firewall rule so that nothing external can connect to it.
Assuming your firewall is working..
$foo sudo -i iptables -L -n | grep NEW
..will reveal what the outside world can connect to. You'll see this for 'sshd'..
ACCEPT tcp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22 state NEW,ESTABLISHED
..if it can accept external connections. Note that even though the above can accept outside connections it will reject all of them because of the sshd_config changes above.
Here's hoping Mint has iptables. Been years since I tried it!
I shall have to start following you around Mr Dabbs. There will then only be a 50% chance of it happening to me.
There was a "fantom farter" at work: drops one in the lift: vacates. Yours truly rushes in. Very next floor a lone female enters.
Or the time the lift wasn't quite aligning itself with the floor. It was actually out of service but I knew how to make it work. One of those hydraulic ram jobbies. The higher it went the more out of alignment it got. Rush in, drop your keys. By the time you've bent to pick them up a woman has followed you in and pressed "top floor". Oh dear! I have two options:
a) explain the lift was out of order and we'll need to jump up & down for it to align enough with the top floor for the doors to open.
b) just jump up & down when it gets to the top floor.
Not many floors so no time for (a). Fortunately I knew the latter female else I would have been in trouble!
@dogged
As someone who has just been forced to reinstall a windows 2003 WSUS onto a windows 2008 box I can tell you WSUS is not free. Almost a week to get the same thing running. Software free but somebody has to pay for that time! The VM now needs twice as many processors and four times as much ram to serve many less machines.
<personal rant>
Who-tf thought it would be a good idea on a *server* OS to default the NIC power-saving flag to enabled?
</personal rant>
I think..
#yum check-update
#yum update
..is a bit less costly on manpower.
All I've ever done when using my laptop outside of the house is..
"ssh (-YC) -L localport:destination:remoteport somename@securehost"
..then use the services/applications of "destination" via "securehost". The laptop is essentially nothing more than a remote terminal. Worst case scenario is the laptop gets nicked. No data is on it other than the key for securehost.
The profit margin would dictate such a device would be constructed using ever cheaper labour and ever cheaper parts until it teeters into a quantum entanglement such that the non-desired state becomes inevitable.
Btw. I know next to nothing about about such matters. I happened to rewatch Jim Al-Khalili's excellent documentary about the quantum robin last night & for a short while I thought I might just be able to grasp it. Fading now though!
..for face fondling balaclavas and head hugging hoodies. Have the eastern companies embed a chip into each garment which will silently upload the wearer's facial profile at every opportunity. Those buggers can go straight onto the suspicious felon police database. What's not to like?
Ditto, c*ck cradling condoms.. get onto to that perv DB!
In case anyone is concerned I decided not to make myself Prime Minister because I have too many of these ideas.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
