* Posts by SteveCarr

73 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Oct 2012

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Unfixable Apple M1 chip bug enables cross-process chatter, breaking OS security model

SteveCarr

Re: T1 - anyone?

New Zealand - at least where I live - 1Gb up/down for under NZ$100, no data limits at all.

Epic move: Judge says Apple can't revoke Unreal Engine dev tools, asks 'Where does the 30% come from?'

SteveCarr
Trollface

Re: Switching to Android

And you assume (incorrectly, I might add) that Apple doesn't snoop on you?

This PDP-11/70 was due to predict an election outcome – but no one could predict it falling over

SteveCarr

I see where they went wrong - they *should* have used the vastly superior PDP-10 (aka DECSystem-10)!

The 10's were mainframes, the 11's sadly mere bit players

And it's off! NASA launches nuke-powered, laser-shooting, tank Perseverance to Mars to search for signs of life

SteveCarr

Re: RIMFAX

Ah, but can you list, in all honesty, "The Gnomes of Dulwich"?

Thought as much....

IBM's sacking spree reaches Australia – and as staff wait to exit, they're offered AU$4k to find new workers

SteveCarr
Gimp

Pleased I no longer have to fear this b/s

It's a perverse pleasure of mine to read that nothing has changed since I left Big Blue - well, not exactly nothing, after all Ginni is a gone-burger too - but I do feel sorry for all my colleagues who continue to live in fear of their career terminating at the whim of an accountant in Armonk.

Remember the big IBM 360 mainframe rescue job? For now, Brexit has ballsed it up – big iron restorers

SteveCarr
Thumb Up

Ah, 370/125.....

We ran a nationwide realtime parts and accounting system on one of those beasts, with 20+ online branches and dealers all online at a mix of 1200 and 2400 bps. CICS 1.3 or1.4 with a home brewed ISAM file system, everything written is IBM Assembler. Those were the days.....

Enjoying that 25Mbps internet speed, America? Oh, it's just 6Mbps? And you're unhappy? Can't imagine why

SteveCarr

Here on the fringes of the civilized world....

....in a cool but sunny winter's morning in Dunedin, New Zealand, I have FTTH, with a consistent and repeatable speed of 930Mbps down and up, no data cap and all for under NZ$ 89/month (that's around US$50 or so).

And dare I mention my 4G mobile plan, at NZ$80/month, again uncapped & with unlimited NZ and AU calling?

Plus they throw in free Netflix Premium & Spotify.

Das blinkenlights are back thanks to RPi revival of the PDP-11

SteveCarr

Re: The PDP-11 lives on

Another extremely elegant machine was the PDP-10 aka DecSystem-10/DecSystem-20. With a 36 bit word length and variable byte size (six bit was most often used, but was by no means the only one), each instruction took up one word/36 bits. Every instruction consists of a 9-bit opcode, a 4-bit register code, and a 23-bit effective address field, which consists in turn of a 1-bit indirect bit, a 4-bit register code, and an 18-bit offset or alternatively an immediate value. Early machines used ferrite core memory, meaning they could be run at arbitrary clock speeds, down as low as one instruction cycle per second or so, all controlled by two knobs on the console. Great fun to watch the lights slowly cycle through as a program ran.

SteveCarr

Re: I cut my teeth on a PDP-11

Same here - my first was a PDP 11/05, that had been upgraded from 4KB to 8KB of core RAM. It had a high speed paper tape reader and high speed punch, as well as two, count 'em two, ASR-33 Teletype terminals.

It lived in the undergraduate room at the University where I studied in the mid to late 70's. You'd start up toggling in the paper tape bootstrap (14 sets of instructions from memory) and then read in the a tape to get it up and running properly - perhaps with the BASIC interpreter (multi user basic, what a buzz!). Writing assembler in the basic stream text editor, loading the (two pass) assembler, then link editing, loading a fresh tape at each step, and voila!

Ah, the memories!

No Falcon Way: NASA to stick with SLS, SpaceX more like space ex

SteveCarr
Alien

NIH - Not Invented Here?

Seems that NASA are scratching around looking for excuses for their platinum coated solution.

Wish you could log into someone's Netgear box without a password? Summon a &genie=1

SteveCarr
Thumb Up

Thanks for the heads up

Patched! Phew!

Dick move: Navy flyboy flings firmament phallus for flabbergasted folk

SteveCarr
Joke

"Show us your Growler"

Oooo errrr....

Developers' timezone fail woke half of New Zealand

SteveCarr
Megaphone

Only the rubes on Voda got this

Us sensible folks on other providers slept the sleep of the righteous!

I do wonder if it would have overridden my "do not disturb" setting, come to that. I like my sleep, very much, so beeping, farting and otherwise annoying things are disabled from 10 pm to 7 am (that's New Zealand Daylight time, BTW, none of your silly GMT or UTC).

Shouty, because that's what Voda did - to OTHER people!

Boeing slams $2m on the desk, bellows: Now where's my jetpack?

SteveCarr
WTF?

Martin JetPack already exists...

...taking orders, even!

Oracle staff report big layoffs across Solaris, SPARC teams

SteveCarr

Set The Controls....

....For The Heart Of The Sun!

Nasty firmware update butchers Samsung smart TVs so bad, they have to be repaired

SteveCarr
FAIL

Try the land of the Long White Cloud

The only service center is almost 1000km from me, on another island. There is a local Samsung presence, in the middle of a local shopping mall, but that's it for the entire South Island and it'd be a seven plus hour drive from the further flung cities. Thankfully our Sammy TV is an older plasma model!

Oldest flying 747 finally grounded, 47 years after first flight

SteveCarr

Don't forget the DC3

There are still commercial DC3 flights being flown on aircraft built in WW2

Web-enabled vibrator class action put to bed

SteveCarr
Joke

Re: That's the best headline you could come up with?

Keeping what you do with your private in private, private

It's August 2017 and your Android gear can be pwned by, oh look, just patch the things

SteveCarr
Happy

Re: which will post their own updates in time, hopefully.

Just had yet another security update for my Galaxy S7 Edge, they roll out regularly. Maybe you run old kit, or don't pick premium kit?

So. 256GB. 3D NAND. MicroSD. SanDisk. $199. Any further questions?

SteveCarr
Joke

African or European Swallow?

Who cares if they are migratory or not?

Lack of Hurd mentality at Oracle OpenWorld: Co-CEO's cloud claims fall flat live on stage

SteveCarr
FAIL

Doh!

Someone will be finding a pink slip in their pay envelope......

'What this video game needs is actual footage of real gruesome deaths'

SteveCarr

Re: They forget one small detail...

As someone who lives in NZ, on a small rural block, I can attest to the wonders of "home kill" meat. So much tastier, and there's that warm glow you get from knowing Bessie went out blissfully unafraid, rather than in trembling fear of her impending doom in a Belsen-like abattoir.

Japan's Hitomi space 'scope bricked, declared lost after software bug

SteveCarr
FAIL

Someone's not getting a bonus this year....

....if they haven't already done the seppuku thing, that is!

Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge

SteveCarr
Go

New Zealand once again at the forefront of progressive social change

World's first legal Pastafarian wedding to take place in Akaroa this weekend

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/weddings/78766088/worlds-first-legal-pastafarian-wedding-to-take-place-in-akaroa-this-weekend

Google to snatch control of Android updates from mobe makers – analyst

SteveCarr

Re: Don't get your hopes up

One way to get around this problem is to have an "early adopter" program, akin to the Windows X fast ring, where those, like me, who love to test the new and shiny releases of everything get notified of update code a week or three before general release. That way, the bad updates will only affect those who expect such things. Also, early adopters tend to be the ones who use for functionality, so even a smallish number of these makes for a great sniff test of a new release.

Capita hiring temps to cover for call centre redundancies – staff sources

SteveCarr
FAIL

How not to deal with fluctuating workloads...

Seriously, Management can be so totally stupid! Management by spreadsheet, guaranteed to fail

Samsung appeals to Supreme Court to bring patent law into 21st century

SteveCarr
Stop

The law is a Ass

The whole ridiculous US patent law charade is a great way to keep law graduates employed, while at the same time stifling competition and innovation. Surely this is not was intended, but clearly it is the outcome. And now, with trans-national corporates pushing ever more trade agreements based on said patent laws onto the rest of the world (TPPA for one), it can only get worse, not better.

The original Apple vs Samsung decision defies logic!

Science Museum trumpets Da Vinci expo

SteveCarr

Re: Kiwis beating you to it...

Oh yeah, and ours is free!

SteveCarr
Pint

Kiwis beating you to it...

http://www.bethere.co.nz/event/22176

Apple's Watch charging pad proves Cupertino still screwing buyers

SteveCarr

Re: In NZ we are of course higher rate Apple Tax payers...

Time for the (rather toothless) NZ Commerce Commission to investigate - oh wait, we're a "free enterprise" state here, so no way will this happen!

Oh, and of course Apple make almost zero profit in New Zealand, pay almost no corporate tax, yet the prices we pay are way higher than other places, even though all the product ships from the same place. Maybe the IRD could take a look at that?

Perhaps middle-aged blokes SHOULDN'T try 34-hour-long road trips

SteveCarr
Childcatcher

In Samoa, the change came into effect at 6:00 am on Monday, 7 September 2009. The 7th and 8th were public holidays, so that residents were able to familiarise themselves with the new rules of the road.

Microsoft: Stop using Microsoft Silverlight. (Everyone else has)

SteveCarr

Try telling LightBox (Spark NZ) this!

I use Chrome, Chrome hates Silverlight..... something needs to change!

Kaspersky Lab hits back at Bloomberg's Russian spy link hit piece

SteveCarr
Big Brother

"You can trust US", says Uncle Sam - yeah, right!

State sponsored actor or not, Kaspersky Labs does a lot of very valuable work cutting cyber threats down to size. Now, it's pretty safe to assume that US based companies are likewise working hand in hand with the CIA, FBI, NSA or whatever. So how would it be different for Kaspersky? Plain and simple, it's probably not.

The difference that the US wants to point out is that they are the "good guys" and the Russians are the "bad guys". Yeah, right.....

Apple Watch: Wait a minute! This puny wrist-puter costs 17 GRAND?!

SteveCarr
FAIL

Wonders what planet has 18 hour days....

... and that is only if you don;t do anything more with the watch than look at the time! Ree-dick-u-louse!

Tesla bumps up Model S P85D acceleration – with software update

SteveCarr

Re: I didn't have sound...

If you check out the description attached to the video on YouTube they claim this is not just on snow, but also on a 14% grade, in slick conditions. That's rather more impressive!

"Tesla Model S P85D Up a 14% grade in extremely slick conditions. Michelin XICE XI3 tires."

Rosetta probot drilling denied: Philae has its 'leg in the air'

SteveCarr

Re: It's actually not German, it's very much pan-European

And bits from New Zealand as well - Rakon crystals are used in there somewhere...

Kryder's law craps out: Race to uber-cheap storage is voer

SteveCarr

Re: Service Life of HD

Point missed - after even 5 years, under the previous rate of storage capacity improvement, the drive was well and truly obsolete, in capacity and also likely in terms of throughput. With a slowing rate of capacity increase a drive won't hit that obsolescence wall as quickly, so might, just might, have a longer effective service life.

I've seen a lot of changes in my time in IT - the DEC RK05, IBM 3330 for instance - and there's no way you'd want to be running something like that any more. If I dig deep into my spares pile I'll find some low capacity IDE drives (the old MFM interface stuff went west a long, long time back, along with the SCSI-1 and SCSI-2's), but I recall fondly the 320MB full height 5.25" SCSI server drives I used to run in my old dialup BBS days. Enough current draw to make the lights dim when you powered the box up (not really, but compared to todays stuff, they sucked huge amounts of power for what now seems to be bugger all capacity).

Going forward, we'll want our 3/4/5/6TB drives to last longer. My current server box is running 2TB drives, and most of the drives have 4-5 years of spin time already, with no urgency to replace them any time soon.

ONE MILLION people already running Windows 10

SteveCarr

1 million less 1...

I tried it for a week, and have gone back to Win 7 - too half baked for me, with poorly implemented and totally not thought out functionality, and zero response to feedback, there was no way I'd waste any more time on it at this point at least.

Russia: SEXY LIZARDS which landed FROM SPACE are all DEAD

SteveCarr
Trollface

But even more important - what about the veedeeooh!

I was under the impression that footage of their (s)exploits would be made available on the return of the satellite to Earth - please tell us it is so!

Reptilian zero-g space pron, because, you know, WE ALL NEED IT!

Tesla, Nissan, BMW mull all-for-plug, plug-for-all electrocar charger plan

SteveCarr

Re: Battery Cars.

Wiper motors, electric window winders, fuel pump......

Hello Moto... It's the Nokia Lumia 630

SteveCarr

Re: One word...

Or Slimbean - my old SII has trickled down to my wife, and SlimBean has vastly improved battery life and seen a considerable performance boost as well, over the stock Sammy bloated software. That, and it also runs JellyBean, and has enabled connection of Bluetooth 4.0 LE devices as well!

Recommendations for NAS-based home media set-up

SteveCarr

Windows Home Server on an Acer Atom CPU here

My current setup -

Acer AH340 Microserver, WHS V1.1

1x1TB plus 3x2TB disks in the Acer

USB 3.0 PCI-E card in the one free slot

4 bay USB 3.0 enclosure with currently 3x2TB drives installed.

The WHS box also connects my weather station, serves as a test publish host for websites I develop, and runs the following media servers:-

SubSonic (for 250GB or so of audio files)

Serviio (for the 6TB or so of video media)

The above is limited by 2GB RAM limit, fixed CPU, and 2TB drive limit (able to be bypassed with a bit of hacking, but why should I)

Future Plans:-

HP Gen8 Microserver

WHS V2 or Windows Server 2013

DriveBender or similar to give WHS V1-like drive management

The Gen8 has 16GB RAM limit, replaceable CPU (up to Xeon CPU), dual GB Ethernet, built in USB 3.0, etc. I'll probably keep Serviio and SubSonic also.

Hot, young under-25s: Lonely slab strokers who shun TV

SteveCarr

Never ever watch live tv

I'm a very long way off being gen y being a boomer from 57. Yes we have a 51 inch plasma 3d screen but it plays from our media server with 5tb of movies and tv series as do our laptops and tablets. No adverts and watch only what we want when we want. Only idiots watch the idiot box as the advertisers want you to.

UK IT supplier placed on ASA naughty step over 'misleading' HDD ad

SteveCarr
FAIL

4.67 years...

...and 500GB drives have been around for at least that long. Calling "porkies" is disingenuous at best.

Kiwi inventor's court win rains on Apple's parade

SteveCarr
Holmes

A victory for common sense and the little man....

At least the courts here in New Zealand are capable of standing up to a mega corporate and their hordes of legal beagles. Unlike certain courts (and jury members) in Cupertino!

Sinclair's FORGOTTEN Australia-only micro revealed!

SteveCarr

Telecom New Zealand had them too...

The ICL OPD/One Per Desk. I had one as part of the beta test programme, as we had an ICL mainframe at work. Long lost to the landfill now. Telecom never actually released them to the NZ market, but I heard they had a shipping container full of 300 or more. Mine was the colour screen version - very spec!

'PATHETIC' Galaxy Gear sales skewer smartwatch HYPE-O-GASM bubble

SteveCarr
Coffee/keyboard

I'm one of those millions with the Note 3, sans Gear....

The Note 3 was enough of a $ to spend, and the local price of the Gear too big an ask for what it does.

Sorry, Samsung - no sale.

Forget invisible kittens, now TANKS draped in INVISIBILITY CLOAK

SteveCarr
Big Brother

This one has me thinking...

....perhaps it could also be used on the National Debt?

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