* Posts by Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013

FIFTEEN whole dollars on offer for cranky Pentium 4 buyers

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Pipelines

"Instead, it could still be executing twice as many instructions in parallel at the same time"

Could, but with generic i386 code, it was just idling twice as fast. And no amount of marketeering could change that. Blaming the lazy developers didn't work either.

What a comedy it was. I'm almost tempted to pay them $15, for having watched the show over many years.

Disney wins Mickey Mouse patent for torrent-excluding search engine

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Pint

Re: What happened to USER requests?

Yep, there IS a verbatim option. Thanks!

According to this link, it appeared in late 2011, when + operator was dropped. But quotation marks got lost at some later point.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/google-verbatim-search-tool_n_1097443.html

Have I been living without Google for three years? Gosh.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: What happened to USER requests?

Why the hyperbole? He was clearly talking about a period not too distant, say 6 or 7 years ago, when Google honoured search qualifiers along with the query. Plus, minus, site:, quotation marks, etc. Now they just discard most of them, if not all. And no, faffing around with advanced search is not really a substitute, it's too time-consuming. Neither are preferences, if you use a lot of different computers/devices/browsers/networks.

If there is a search prefix available to say "yes, I really-really meant to type what I just typed" then I haven't found it yet. And have dropped Google for other reasons anyway.

Virgin 'spaceship' pilot 'unlocked tailbooms' going through sound barrier

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "Wealthy customers have signed up in large numbers to see a black sky "

"Call the Waaahambulance"

No, call to ban the lot. That's the usual drill.

E-substances, explosions, experiments, expeditions, enterprises, endeavours, extravaganza, expensive entertainment, etc, etc. And that's just an entry list of enormous horrors that are enthralling our endangered society. Don't even dare to look at what comes under letters p and t.

The ULTIMATE CRUELTY: Sandworm uses PowerPoint against Swiss bank customers

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Indeed. If email admins were to, completely accidentally of course, redirect all PowerPoint files to the spam folder, it would be a giant leap for the mankind.

Sure there would be complaints, but there are well-established answers to them. Sysadmin standard answer #112 (Well, it works for me) for one. Flip the bloody excuse card, you bastard!

Bad dog: Redmond's new IE tool KILLS POODLE with one shot

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Grumble, moan.

Serves you right, whippersnappers, for using these newfangled SSL thingies. If you want to live on the bleeding edge, you're going to bleed a lot.

Now get off my lawn!

Want a more fuel efficient car? Then redesign it – here's how

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: potholes

"Yes the UK is the only country to suffer from freezing-melting-freezing, Hey ho, any excuse."

I was merely hinting at a slight difference between continental climate and seaside conditions. As for mismanaged funding and lowest-bid construction tenders, that's hardly unique to the UK. Neither are potholes.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

@DropBear

"someone clearly caring enough about aerodynamics to make the body rocket-shaped then proceeded to leave the rest of the chassis and the whole driver out in the wind."

It was in 1899. Aerodynamics wasn't very well understood back then. And 'common sense' might have been somewhat different to ours.

This Tatra from 1930's was a major breakthrough in aerodynamics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_77

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Fuse wire

"Circuit breakers are a possibility but they have problems with high currents and low voltages."

Pretty much the same story as with relays - susceptible to arcing, electrophoresis, and other wonders of electrochemistry. They'd have to be hermetical and gold-plated in order to work. And probably kill the weight advantage gained from Al* wires.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Depends on assumptions

"Bought small diesel van /.../ Saving 15 tanks of fuel or approximately £825 a year."

Great. That is, if the diesel engine is a good one, and you don't have to blow the money on maintenance. I don't seem to trust those small highly tuned diesels yet. It's a bit of gamble.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: potholes

"UK government wont fix the roads because it gains more tax if they take more fuel."

That's quite a stretch.

Better explanation would be a chronic lack of funds. Weather conditions (freezing-melting-freezing cycles) don't exactly help either.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Cruise control

"A further aid to fuel efficiency I've never seen on a car would be an airspeed indicator. "

Well, it would inform the driver about lower-than-expected efficiency, but there's bugger all it can do for improving it. Nor can the driver, actually. Turning around and going in the opposite direction is hardly the solution.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Depends on assumptions

"Anyone know, is the oil warning stil just a pressure alert, or does it now alert to a low level in the sump as well?"

No good rule here. Quite a lot of cars have an oil level sensor these days. But not all. Would be wise to check the user manual on that.

BAE points electromagnetic projectile at US Army

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Trollface

@Ledswinger

Better yet - declare war on the Switzerland. And when they come over, surrender quickly.

That would have several perks. They'd trample over the France, twice. Debates about being or not being in EU would be over. Mayhap they'd bother to fix the railway system, out of sheer compassion or something. Pretty sure there could be more.

Although it may not go entirely peacefully - question of having the best beer and the best chocolate may well merit a vicious battle or two.

Chipmaker FTDI bricking counterfeit kit

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Pretty nasty

"Secondly, I'm not sure the new FTDI driver actually writes zero into the PID of the clone parts, I think they come with zero as the PID, but I could be wrong."

Couldn't have been. Under Windows, neither new or old FTDI driver would tolerate zero PID. Hence the suggestion to use PID recovery tool AND older driver.

These links seem to hint the same:

channeleye.co.uk/microsoft-bricks-scottish-ftdi-clones/

hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/

Latter link has usable workarounds for Linux. Apologies for copying.

Arduinouser says:

My arduino got hit by this I think. If you use linux, you can tell the serial driver to load even if the pid=0: echo 0403 0000 > //sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/ftdi_sio/new_id

Jiří Němec (@BluPix) says:

Thanks, whole operation to restore pid using http://www.rtr.ca/ft232r/

echo 0403 0000 > /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/ftdi_sio/new_id

ft232r_prog –old-pid 0x0000 –new-pid 0x6001

France to draft blacklist banning alleged piracy websites – what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Theft/Piracy

"So tapping an electrical line isn't theft because no electrons are permanently removed? They just went bank and forth? HEY EVERYONE! No electricity bills ever again! The electric co still have their electrons."

This analogy isn't correct. Drawing any amount of energy from the tapped line is a permanent consumption for the providing utility. They have to pump more energy into the line to compensate the loss, which costs them real money.

Observing something, whether directly or by the intermediate medium, will not consume the subject, nor deprive others from seeing it. That's a significant difference.

The debate is actually about lost revenues - whether there has been a revenue loss, and how big that loss may be. At one extreme stands the claim that any unauthorized download equals lost sale at the street prices. Equally extreme claim is that anyone, who wanted to purchase the viewing ticket, has already done it, and downloads are of zero significance. While it is reasonable to assume that the truth lies somewhere in between, there are no solid ways of drawing the line. It's a guesswork and nothing more.

The future health of the internet comes down to ONE simple question…

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: DNS MUST DIE

DNS? Ah, yes, it's a virus or sumthing. Maybe a paedoterrorist.

Happy 2nd birthday, Windows 8 and Surface: Anatomy of a disaster

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory...

"However ... “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” as Henry Ford said."

Bah. Henry Ford was not bold enough, or not Modern enough, to push out the product with bright-coloured square wheels. Had he done it, history would have been very much different.

DEATH by PowerPoint: Microsoft warns of 0-day attack hidden in slides

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Tried and True

"I wonder how many people will continue to use [XP] until it achieves the status of too old to run current malware."

NT4 has reached such a sweet spot - it has gained a level of security via obscurity, while remaining somewhat usable. Of course it's not impenetrable against a determined attack, but most of the automated exploits wouldn't work against hardened NT, because expected features just aren't there. Widely known attack vectors have widely known mitigation techniques. No further patches forthcoming, ergo no new nasty surprises, just the old and toothless ones.

For XP it's harder to achieve. It has more attack surfaces that cannot be closed without breaking it. TinyXP seems to be as slim as it gets.

Computer misuse: Brits could face LIFE IN PRISON for serious hacking offences

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Any place?

It's as clear as it gets, citizen.

Anybody doing anything, anywhere, will get any number of years.

Big Azure? Microsoft and IBM ink deal on business cloud

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Coat

Re: cut and paste from a press release?

OTOH, Windows Sever looks like a Freudian slip. Or a half-baked translation from Russian.

/ a coat large enough to hide a smart-ass, thankyou /

UNIX greybeards threaten Debian fork over systemd plan

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Devil

An apt comparison. There's an ominous power rising, one *d to rule them all.

While dark speech may not be the best way to handle the threat, as very few can wield it without becoming a prey to it, sometimes it's a necessary evil. Like using Beelzebul to drive out Beelzebul. But that was another tale.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: systemd to incorporate a shell too!!!

Get off the Kool-Aid, kiddo. Might kill ya someday.

CONSUMERISM IS PAST ITS SELL-BY DATE: Die now, pay later

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Pint

Re: Ban interest and live within your means

Words of wisdom. This is one of the days when I regret not having a dozen of sockpuppet accounts to give more upvotes. Maybe a pint will do.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Sub-Components consumer ?? try a REAL parts jobber...

"Capitalism acts to raise prices for *everything* as high as the market will bear."

If you choose to see only that part. Actually there are many conflicting force vectors at work - some pushing prices up, some down, some sideways (well, not really sideways, but there may be some useful changes that will leave the price intact). So it's a system that tries to achieve an equilibrium.

There are cases where one equilibrium is not optimal, and it makes sense to split the product into several price ranges - low end, high end, something in between.

Cable guy, Games of Thrones chap team up to make Reg 'best sci-fi film never made' reject

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: The trouble with "older" sci-fi...

"I suspect the older writers thought the science was what the book was all about so the rest was just pencil sketches."

To me it seems they were deep into exploring an essence of humanity. Which happens to be the main topic for most good writers over the history. Futuristic science serves mainly as a plot background. There's a frequent notion that technology alone will not solve our main problems. Plus swaths of witty observations about the societies over the time, and some outright prophetic bits.

Quoth Asimov:

"The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity - a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop."

"The civil wars of the last two centuries have smashed up more than half of the Grand Fleet and what's left is in pretty shaky condition. You know it isn't as if the ships we build these days are worth anything. I don't think there's a man in the Galaxy today who can build a first-rate hypernuclear motor."

And then there was Hober Mallow, with a stunning discovery that almighty Empire doesn't have any people capable of repairing a planetary powerplant, nevermind building new ones. Classy.

So long Lotus 1-2-3: IBM ceases support after over 30 years of code

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

@LDS

"Sure, OS/2 could run Win 3.x applications /.../ newer 32 bit applications which couldn't run on OS/2"

Hmm, there's more to that. OS/2 was destined to run 32-bit NT applications, and did for a while, but Win32s spec kept changing rapidly.

Quick search suggests that Win32s version 1.25a was the last to run on OS/2.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Its legacy lives on

Joel Spolsky had lots of fun with those date functions:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html

A moment of brilliance? UPnP for Internet of Stuff lightbulbs

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Terminator

Mk.2

"The existing IoT2 devices that you bought a few years ago will not work with the new IoT9 devices on sale now"

Until the day when your Mk.2 devices are the only things that work.

Ellison: Sparc M7 is Oracle's most important silicon EVER

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"Has anyone on this thread read about this new fangled thing called the cloud?"

Why, yes. Warm vapour that floats around, thought to be divine or magical. But when it cools a bit, it'll come down raining.

But I can't remember how newfangled it is - we might have had them in the Jurassic period.

Microsoft WINDOWS 10: Seven ATE Nine. Or Eight did really

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Yes they did say that

"Windows runs on many, many Point of Sale terminals (think Target, Inc.)"

What a coincidence.

What's in your toolbox? Why the browser wars are so last decade

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: IDEs

REAL men have a look on the files, which makes them to edit themselves.

Business is back, baby! Hasta la VISTA, Win 8... Oh, yeah, Windows 9

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Probably the wrong kind of excitement.

Like discovering that W8 doesn't quite do background audio anymore - Metro-mode app can claim exlusive lock on all audio channels, including audio CD. How quaint.

Inequality increasing? BOLLOCKS! You heard me: 'Screw the 1%'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: about that trickle-down

And to follow up on that - it is actually a good litmus test for judging the 'filthy rich' types. Some of them have got their riches by providing useful improvements for the society. Like better tools that are enhancing our productivity. Some provide entertainment, which is not so clear cut anymore. There are, to put it mildly, those who will part fools from their money. Even some outright leeches abusing their power to the detriment of many.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

about that trickle-down

"You need rich people in your society not so much because in spending their money they create jobs, but because of what they have to do to get rich. I'm not talking about the trickle-down effect here. I'm not saying that if you let Henry Ford get rich, he'll hire you as a waiter at his next party. I'm saying that he'll make you a tractor to replace your horse."

-- Paul Graham

paulgraham.com/gap.html

paulgraham.com/wealth.html

SMASH the Bash bug! Apple and Red Hat scramble for patch batches

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: I wonder

Careful now. Should you ever bump into Eadon, you'd create a sizeable crater, lots of gamma radiation, and possibly a shear in the space-time continuum.

Have an upvote, though. For...erm...amusantly relentless reflection of the vividly virtual alternate reality.

Titan falls! Blizzard cancels World of Warcraft successor

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: I say good for them

Yeah, good old days, when they had The Knack.

Man's future in space ... Barack Obama: Mars. Narendra Modi: Mars. Vladimir Putin: Er, Moon

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: No bucks, no Buck Rogers

"The US ran the former USSR into the ground by printing money"

I'm pretty sure US did not print those surplus roubles that caused hyperinflation in the late 80s.

Decision to print money was probably made around '79, because of the huge expenditures - Olympic games, war in Afganistan, space race, arms race.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: How do you say, "awesome fucking moonbase" in Russian?

No, that's meaningless Googrish.

"Ni figa sebe baza" would be more like it, at least in the cultural sense. Apologies for not having any cyrillic fonts at hand.

Patch Bash NOW: 'Shellshock' bug blasts OS X, Linux systems wide open

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Devil

Re: And they said I was crazy

Yay, ksh. Always knew it had to be good for something, besides pulling pranks on the unsuspecting juniors. "Hey, what's wrong with the terminal?"

/cue maniacal laughter/

Why does it take 8 hours for my posts to be approved?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Why does it take 8 hours for my posts to be approved?

Are you absolutely sure that all your comments are delayed?

Because pre-moderation doesn't necessarily mean you're on the naughty step. It may have been enabled for some specific articles only, by the author's will.

Want a Tizen phone to build apps for? Now's your chance – provided you don't need it to work

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Hah. It already looks like a plan conceived by Elop. Maybe he's been moonlighting for Samsung.

Microsoft to patch ASP.NET mess even if you don't

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Coat

Re: MS changing your server behinder your back?

They're doing it via their new and wonderful invention: Quantum Entanglement (®, TM, pat. pend). If they enable the flag on their server, it gets disabled on yours. Large scale deployments are also possible - in order to disable it in our universe, it has to be enabled in the parallel universe, where, as an added bonus, it might actually work well.

There is a downside, though. Every time the switch is flipped, a cute cat with a German-sounding name will be either dead or alive.

/the one with QT for Dummies in the pocket, thank you/

Time to ditch HTTP – govt malware injection kit thrust into spotlight

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

stolen shamelessly from a haiku site

guess what i found out

my cat rules the universe

that explains a lot

'Things' on the Internet-of-things have 25 vulnerabilities apiece

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Flame

Re: "Starting the cooker, washing machine or whatever to coincide with my arrival home"

"I am absolutely not interested in having a Microsoft house that attempts to set fire to my kitchen"

There's a bright side, though. We might see that bungling Clippy fried for good, when it attempts to help with the cooker.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Not surprised, but...

"The internet of things is more"

Sure is. More stuff to sell, more bollocks to tell, more holes for the peeping toms, more data to keep miners busy, more adverts to serve, more vulnerabilities to worry about. Did I miss something? Ah, yes, a little bit more convenience for the lazy. That sure justifies it.

Bitcoin on ATM? Pfft! We play Doom on ours

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Steam Punk Cool

This computer rag went titsup in 1995, so it had to be either 1994 or early 95. I'm almost tempted to trundle into the library to find it. Unfortunately there's nothing else to see besides the picture.

Yes, cover shot was a real deal. ATMs of that era had 386SX boards and it was quite possible to get Doom up & crawling there. Just enough to get a static shot of it. It's kind of obvious that those rascals did not want to stop there - next steps would have been a TSR routine to map ATM keypad buttons into the PC keys, and a card billing routine - but the lack of horsepower made it pretty pointless.

Russia: There is a SPACECRAFT full of LIZARDS in orbit above Earth and WE control it

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Trollface

Re: June/July?

"affectionately known as Ural Seks"

That's a short moniker for Westerners.

GlavBytVetMatYobTvoyuDrovNet might break somebody's tongue, if they lack experience, and do not take proper precautions (1/2 litres or so).

Climate: 'An excuse for tax hikes', scientists 'don't know what they're talking about'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: People of the world?

"In our highly evolved society, we don't use that name [Tiamat] any more"

Oh, but we do. It's been recycled though.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiamat_(disambiguation)

Get ready for LAYOFFS: Nadella's coma-inducing memo, with subtitles

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Microsoft's productivity challenge

"Under competitive pressures they had to listen to customers and understood what it takes to build a productivity tool."

It used to be that way, in the ages long past. They (well, somebody influential in there) wanted to scrap the old boring toolmaker image and dip into entertainment. Thus bringing about those silly hide-and-seek games, weird selection of colours, myriad of uncanny ways to draw user's attention on the interface, changes for the sake of change, lots of babbling about "user experience". Attention whoring, to put it not-so-mildly.

In this regard, any talk about enhancing productivity has to be viewed as a good sign. Maybe the tools will get usable again, instead of trying to "entertain" users to the point of mental meltdown.