* Posts by Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013

Windows 8 fans out-enthuse Apple fanbois

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Sigh....

"Who sat down and decreed "The number is 81"."

If he sat down with 99 bottles of beer, that's probably how far he got.

LIVE, my beauty, LIVE! Nokia revives dead phone with LIGHTNING powered Frankencharger

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Mmm, lightning bolts

Crackling sounds, beautiful dance of light, smell of freshly baked ozone. What's not to like.

Thorium and inefficient solar power? That's good enough for me

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Thorium reactors

"Because there are too many vested interests, both business and political, preventing it."

Uh, not that old chestnut again.

Obstacles really are technological - thorium cycle has lots of nasty byproducts, which are messing with the reaction cycle. And it is very hard to handle those in a running plant.

It's not a hopeless situation, but some serious advances in engineering are needed.

One year to go: Can Scotland really declare gov IT independence?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: United Kingdom

"The Soviet Union "ceased to exist" once the Baltics declared independence. But Russia just became, legally speaking the USSR by another name as far as the international community was concerned. This is the precedent and the standard."

Please double-check that standard. 3 Baltic states separated from SU, they are not successors. SU dissolved few months later, leaving 11 successor states. Of those 11, Russia assumed most of the obligations and took over most of the international treaties, so it is now considered the main successor, but not exactly the same entity as former SU.

Quite murky precedent, if I may say so. Certainly not repeatable.

'Occupy' affiliate claims Intel bakes SECRET 3G radio into vPro CPUs

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Billion $ Question

"Ok ..... what sort/type of engineering expertise is being sought/hunted?"

Sadly, I have no knowledge of the program, if there is any.

It was only an observation - that quite a few fellow commentards have advanced knowledge of high frequency transmissions, and were willing to disclose their skills under a seemingly silly story. One cannot help but wonder. Perhaps it was a ploy, a honeypot, to achieve such a disclosure.

Or perhaps it's a diversion - one of the conspiracy theories fed to the public, in order to draw attention away from the true masterplan. Whatever that might be.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

This story may well be a snooping program - to filter out engineers hiding among El Reg commentariat. And does seem to do a good job.

VMware to customers: STOP INSTALLING OUR SOFTWARE! NOW!

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Cloud + Bad Updates = Godzilla

Murphy 4:4

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-technology.html

USB 3.1 demo shows new spec well on its way towards 1.2GB/sec goal

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: SATA

"SATA's trounced 'em through marketability (and I'll drink to that)."

I'll raise one to affordability, but technical side...needs a big bottle for quenching despair.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: The tridents mean that USB is in league with Satan...

Poseidon claims prior art on that.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: SCSI bad?

Agreed. SCSI protocol over various physical transports (FC, SCSI, SAS, even SSA) made SANs what they are today. Or in case of iSCSI, SCSI commands run over TCP/IP protocol running on Ethernet.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: if there were ever a cabling construct that was the work of the Evil One, it was SCSI.

Lucas, Prince of Darkness can not be surpassed so easily. Especially by some fuzzy-wuzzy.

There are more demons of the ancient world. Vampires of Thickernet. S/370 channel extenders. And a lot of creatures whose names have long been forgotten - or they have not had names of their own, instead being identified solely as servants of their evil masters.

Greece ends extra hols for civil servants forced to use hated computers

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Oh, the irony

That's what the social hateworks are for.

Chaos Computer Club: iPhone 5S finger-sniffer COMPROMISED

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Front door keys deemed unsuitable for access control

The key difference is a lack of hype about keys. Well, nearly, some con attempts can be safely ignored here. Keylocks are well understood and most people do not have illusions about them.

Biometrics are not so ubiquitous to have the same familiarity.

Oh, and keys do not have cult following.

Microsoft: Surface a failure? No, it made us STRONGER

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: they must be doing something wrong....

Avoidance of the patent is somewhat plausible. Although big players tend to license the whole dump (pun fully intended), so one patent does not matter very much.

It may also be a matter of control - to prevent raw access to storage.

PEAK APP: After 2013, you'll NEVER again install as many – Gartner

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"When is Peak Gartner?"

When was. Honestly, can't remember.

Tracking the history of magnetic tape: A game of noughts and crosses

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: no more tape in SOHO?

Cheap tape is a waste of money. Especially helical scan types, which have 50-50 chance of reading their own backups during the first year and nearly zero after that. DLT was good up to 7000 - and that is way too old now.

I would go for LTO-4 full-height version. Best compromise between price, reliability and capacity.

Nokia Lumia 1020: It's an imaging BEAST... and it makes calls too

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "Ann Frank's drum kit"

"If you want to show respect at least bother to research before you jump in all guns blazing"

Some folks are in the business of demanding respect, not showing it.

Douglas Adams was RIGHT! TINY ALIENS are invading Earth, say boffins

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: LOHAN contamination.

"microbes hitched a lift up"

I shall believe that only when their towels are recovered.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Journal of Cosmology?

Of course Douglas Adams was right. About Life, Universe and Everything.

Latest Snowden reveal: It was GCHQ that hacked Belgian telco giant

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Belgium

It is far worse than a trouble spot. There is a vast international conspiracy. No wonder our finest are so busy.

http://zapatopi.net/belgium/

Five reasons why you'll take your storage to the cloud

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: ("oh shit" as a service.)

Gone with the wind

When it rains, it pours

Torvalds shoots down call to yank 'backdoored' Intel RdRand in Linux crypto

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Linus is totally wrong

"I studied cryptography for one of the leading experts in the world"

...and managed to get away quite unscathed.

Cloud storage: Is the convenience worth the extra expense?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

sneakernet

May be unfashionable, just as sneakers, but has great reliability and bandwidth. There is only one thing able to offer better bandwidth - a white van full of tapes.

Jolla Sailfish OS to support Android hardware, apps

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

A bit of public awareness does not hurt. Provided they are able to deliver.

It's about time: Java update includes tool for blocking drive-by exploits

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: About time!

Silverlight and .Net do have remotely exploitable bugs. Fortunately not too many.

http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/product_id-19887/Microsoft-Silverlight.html

Enterprise storage: A history of paper, rust and flash silicon

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Or the white elephant of storage - using an electron cannon to etch some bits on the film?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2009/11/27/tob_ibm_1360/

Want the latest Android version? Good luck with that

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: @Dave 126 You beat me to it.

"the only thing that is holding Samsung back from forking Android"

Samsung may well go its own way with Tizen. Or not. We shall see.

Canadian family gives up modern tech to live like it's 1986

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: As a child of the sixties...

You had mud! When I were a lad...

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Wow

Onion did carry a piece about that

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/

Microsoft - do you really think you can take on Google with Nokia?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Smart phone from dumb people

"Excel was about fast calculation and not text layout like Word"

In theory, yes. In practice, most people are using Excel as a layout tool. MS figured it out quite well.

Are you for reel? How the Compact Cassette struck a chord for millions

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Casettes did much more...

"I've been told that this "portable" format of recording was a contributor to the downfall of the Iron Curtain."

Short-wave radio was more important, as VP remarked, but cassettes did make a dent in the curtain. Small dent here, small dent there, add some structural weaknesses into the mix, and the rest is history.

By today's standards, the craziest thing I've listened on the CC was few hours of speech by Gorbachev, given right after his rise to power. There, deeply buried in the hours of buzzword-compliant speech, lied the first signs of the coming changes, a breeze of fresh air. Those C60's were certainly well spent.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Magneto-optical

"Minidiscs were magneto-optical, exactly like CD-RWs and all rewritable optical formats since."

/minor nitpick/

Minidisc, yes. But CD-RW, DVD-RAM and DVD-RW are phase-transition formats, not MO.

See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM

Microsoft cans three 'pinnacle' certifications, sparking user fury

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Please get the proofreader back to work on this article

Scratch that. There IS a "send corrections" link.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Please get the proofreader back to work on this article

"Send Corrections link in the comment box at the bottom of each page of the thread"

Hmm. Can't see it. Maybe it depends on user credentials? Or browser?

There is a lightbulb button on the left side of the article, which should alert somebody about something, perhaps that will do...err...something?

Cognitive Networks to bring creepy awareness to LG's smart TVs

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

it used to be a Russian reversal

In America, you watch TV.

In Soviet Russia, TV watches you!

My, my, how times have changed.

'Kim Jong-un executes nork-baring ex and pals for love polygon skin flick'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: It's not agressive atheist - it is an agresive theocracy

"Ah yes, the ongoing militant atheist propaganda that only the religious are capable of genocide

ALL communist regimes have been aggressively anti-religion"

Hmm. Not quite. Those are usually called "political religions". Wiki has an article about it.

In essence, they are pseudoreligions - actively exploiting religious feelings, using rituals and symbols, but lacking a supernatural deity. Agression against other religions, pseudo or not, is a natural part of it.

NSA: NOBODY could stop Snowden – he was A SYSADMIN

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "The damage, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a 12."

"somebody must have been responsible"

For pissing off the BOFH? Indeed.

Why Teflon Ballmer had to go: He couldn't shift crud from Windows 8, Surface

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Where is Microsoft's Edward Snowden?

For some peek-in, see http://minimsft.blogspot.com + anonymous comments there

Microsoft: YES Windows 8.1 is finished, but NO you can't have it

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"not internal politics or egos or empire-building by one division at the expense of another"

<cough>

Stack ranking.

Well, once more does it confirm this old adage - incompetent metrics are much worse than having no metrics at all.

Top 10 Steve Ballmer quotes: '%#&@!!' and so much more

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: 2005: The Kodak Moment

Yes, a lot of compromises to make, and a lot of lines to draw.

Make it very modular - and it brings along a dependency hell. Which MS clearly was trying to avoid, by throwing in everything and a kitchen sink ^W^W chair.

Eh, choices, choices.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: 2005: The Kodak Moment

Upvote for daring and out-of-the-box thinking.

That said, these suggestions are not particularly good for the current day. NT kernel does have some serious limitations - TCP/IP stack, driver model, memory and storage handling.

Somewhat better way would be to put W7 kernel on a diet, unbolt GUI from it, make all bells and whistles optional. Something like W2008 server. Although they did not go far enough, there is still too much cruft in the minimal install.

"Back to basics" approach is always hard, but sometimes it should be seriously considered. Especially when you're stuck in a cobweb of half-assed solutions to the problems which should not have existed in the first place.

A long-forgotten article about that

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000319.html

Windows NT: Remember Microsoft's almost perfect 20-year-old?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: A question from a young'un of 31...

"Well, back then in 1995, RAM was for sale about 33 US dollars per Mb"

There was a huge upshot in DRAM prices before that. In 1993, a substrate factory in Japan burned down, so nearly 80% of DRAM manufacturing capacity was stalled. As MB price shot over §100, it created quite a havoc. Heh, burglars started to snatch DRAM sticks and leave the computers behind.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

@LDS

Most ways to access registry are usable only when kernel is up. If it fails to start, for example due to 7F checkstop, then this fancy database is just a binary blob. Sure, there are ways to get to it, and a lucrative job it is too, but it just should not have been designed like that.

OK, if you haven't been there, then I shall not vent too much about it.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

I'm afraid I have to downvote you. SPOF, which resides in a database, and has multiple copies, is still a SPOF. And it sure fails a lot, for silly reasons, with all copies corrupted and system un-bootable. If there was a proper way to repair b0rked registry, it would be a lesser issue.

AIX ODM is better in one regard - it is possible to edit it via boot-CD. But still an abomination.

As for mksysb - no, it's not a registry tool, it makes a bootable OS backup, so allows a bare-metal recovery.

Yahoo! web! traffic! BIGGER! THAN! GOOGLE! in! July!

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Hard to believe

Google who?

UK micro pioneer Chris Shelton: The mind behind the Nascom 1

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Happy

Re: Intel/Schmintel

After burning down a few 8080's (being on nMOS, it absolutely needed -5V to be applied before +5 and +12) it was high time to ditch it and replace with Z80. Could even double the clock then.

So yes, Z80 was better than 8080. Alas not pin-compatible.

Palestinian Facebook flaw-finder getting $10,000 payday in online appeal

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Twice vs Once

Precisely. Uncovering a flaw in the critical process (an algorithm, sort of) should also be worth something.

Circling the wagons is definitely a wrong approach here. But we shall see.

/popcorn icon/

Taiwanese spill on Zuck's racks: Servers powering Facebook REVEALED

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: FCC?

In simpler terms - instead of shielded servers, they opted for a shielded building. Or a room.

But it leaves a problem of interference between servers.

Legal bible Groklaw pulls plug in wake of Lavabit shutdown, NSA firestorm

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Groklaw impact

It sure helped the everygeek. To understand what is going on.

Influence on those cases was probably minuscule. Maybe it was harder for the parties to fold & settle. Or maybe the lawyers got some useful hints from there, we'll never know it.

British spooks seize tech from Snowden journo's boyfriend at airport

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

BUGGER

A fascinating read. For lot of that, pure truth may never come out, but fascinating nevertheless.

One gem in there:

"Neither of them noticed that he had been stealing a huge amount of MI5 top secret documents and stashing them at his home. Bettaney was only caught when he took some of the best of these secrets and tried to stuff them into the letter box of the Second Secretary of the Russian Embassy - Mr Gouk.

Mr Gouk was so confused by this that, instead of passing them on to the KGB, he went round to MI5 and gave them back, and told them where they had come from. MI5 arrested Bettaney and he was put on trial."