* Posts by Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013

Microsoft breaks Office 365 sign-in pages ahead of surprise update

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Unique Identifier

"The phrase that springs to mind is "single point of failure/pwnage"."

It had a name, too. MS Passport. Fortunately this service was too short-lived to be properly pwned.

Taxi app investor SoftBank said to be driving at multibillion-dollar stake in Uber

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Bah

Why would you drive a multibillion-dollar stake when a simple wooden stake would do?

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: El Reg, ad free

"I'd quite happily pay £12 per year to use El Reg, ad free. I bet that'd be more than the dear old thing earns from me through ads"

Ditto. A quid or two per month would be fine.

Extra quids are on offer for simple HTML without clickalyzers or other third-party connections, but that's quite unrealistic in this day and age.

IBM marketeers rub out chopper after visit from CEO Ginni

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"I dunno which Is dummerer <sic>,. an attempt to erase history or the crass stupidity of posting the chopper piccy in the first place."

Why should any dummkopf settle on just one dumb choice when he/she/they can pick both?

Huge flying arse makes successful test flight

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: the HMS Callipygean

"The "[X]y Mc[X]face" thing was funny the first two or three times- long before Boaty McBoatface came along"

Undoubtedly so, but would you spare a thought for foreigners like myself? I had not encountered this gag/meme/whatever before McBoatface and would probably have missed it entirely.

Don't listen to the doomsayers – DRM is headed for the historical dustbin, says Doctorow

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: DRM vs Property Rights

There is no easy way out of that pickle. As you say, problems are fundamental. Mostly caused by applying property rights to something that does not behave as property. Oh, yes, one would probably like to have a property that can be sold infinite number of times without actually losing ownership, but that happens only in a realm of fairy tales. Or in a realm of IP law.

Funny thing about John Deere, though. As farmers are quite fed up with their antics, there is a growing trend in the US (of all places) - farmers are buying several cheap'n'cheerful tractors instead and hire some farm workers who can maintain those on the spot. For example, they are buying lots of refurbished MTZ tractors from Belarus via intermediaries in US and EU. Also they're hiring numbers of farm workers from Ukraine who are not afraid of hard work and know MTZ/Belarus tractors well.

That's karma for you. Or a free market in action.

Just delete the internet – pr0n-blocking legislation receives Royal Assent

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: No sex please, we're British.

There's also that rather famous phrase "There's no sex in the Soviet Union!".

russiapedia.rt.com/on-this-day/july-17/

Apple fanbois are officially sheeple. Yes, you heard. Deal with it

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"I'm thinking it is insecurity and youth in almost every case."

Could also be a form of tribalism caused by a inner need to belong somewhere. Although that's closely related to insecurity.

Or a pseudo-religious zeal, in other words an application of religious feelings towards some mundane object/person/group/whatever. This one is pretty dangerous, because it invariably takes criticism as an attack towards the holiness of...whatever it was that you supposedly treaded on. There can be only one kind of response to that wretched infidel. Only the righteous wrath shall do. And no holds shall be barred in the holy war.

Chap 'fixes' Microsoft's Windows 7 and 8 update block on new CPUs

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: all software sucks

"One question that arises frequently on alt.sysadmin.recovery is "Is there any operating system that doesn't suck?""

"They all suck. Except AIX, which sucks raw eggs through a very thin straw."

https://web.archive.org/web/20160329090859/http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/operating-systems/os-suck

Trump signs exec order signaling foreign H-1B visa techie crackdown

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"I've noticed that whenever I say anything neutral or nice in relation to an old version of Windows, I collect El Reg downvotes."

Right. And instead you've got two upvotes at the moment. One from a guy who has a serviceable NT4 machine with Nero 5.5. That other one has to make his/her own confessions.

Will the MOAB (Mother Of all AdBlockers) finally kill advertising?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: nice reference

Hah. Idiocracy is purported to be a work of fiction, set at 500 years in the future, but... this future seems to be approaching rapidly. We'll probably have to re-classify it as a documentary soon enough.

Ex-IBMer sues Google for $10bn – after his web ad for 'divine honey cancer cure' was pulled

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: They walk amongst us

"That's just the sort of conclusion one might expect from a statistician."

That statistician may have been joking, too. Jokes are easily lost in translation.

Statistics is a science that is very useful for finding correlations, but does not help much with causation. Statistical correlation is basically a label saying "this is the spot needing further research". And then there are those common pitfalls (or even devices for deliberate deception) - samples that are either too small or cherry-picked, ignorance towards reliability metrics.

Darrell Huff's 1954 book "How to Lie with Statistics" is still a worthwhile reading.

Customer satisfaction is our highest priority… OK, maybe second-highest… or third...

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: The customer is always lying

"what possible reason could there be for that?"

Maybe there was a preceeding dialog that was answered untruthfully, like "make sure you have at least x KB of free disk space"?

Under DOS it wasn't easy to check it from the batch file. Without involving 3rd party tools that is.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Error: Not enough resources to display the error message.

From Windows 3.1 if the memory serves right. Certainly pre-95.

BOFH: Defenestration, a solution to Solutions To Problems We Don't Have

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Ah, mister Bond, since you'll be dead soon, let me explain it to you...

Head of US military kit-testing slams F-35, says it's scarcely fit to fly

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Phew, bullet dodged.

"It seems that basically the yanks agreed that the harrier was a fantastic platform that just needed a little tweaking. Whereas the UK decided it had no money and it works good enough for launching in Germany and off the carriers so leave it alone."

Not exactly. British GR.5-GR.9 Harriers were based on the same "Harrier II" platform as AV-8B. Differed mainly in avionics and weaponry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harrier_variants

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_Harrier_II

BOFH: The Boss, the floppy and the work 'experience'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Being on a placement myself...

"There is hope for the future. My grandson who hasn't even graduated to the PF stage yet has not only learned to make tea but also to drink it."

Yes, there's still hope. One of them much-vaunted millenials pulled off a nice feat, being 10 years old at the time.

One morning he woke up and discovered that there's no electricity. Something he's seen only once in his life. Instead of panicking he set out to find things to do. No TV or computers obviously. How about a cup of tea? With kettle and stove out of commission that'd be a tad difficult.

But here's the bright part: he quite correctly assumed that 4 or 5 candles should have just enough power for boiling a cup of water, so he took 4 teacups, put 5 short candles between them, and put a small pot of water on the top of his improvised heater.

I bet that this was the best-tasting cuppa he's ever had.

Good news, everyone! Two pints a day keep heart problems at bay

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: A question

Here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting medical studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

3. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans

4. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Lyft drops $27m on the table to make annoying driver lawsuit go away

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: app-taxi bashing

Fair questions, but no. Bashing is mostly reserved for those app-taxi companies who are lying about it - that they are something entirely different from taxi services and thus should be exempt from regulations & taxes applicable to taxi companies.

See for example one recent discussion

https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/03/03/uber_app_greyball/

User lubed PC with butter, because pressing a button didn't work

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: l33t user

Under DOS the l33t way was

copy con: c:\config.sys

No typos, please!

Iconic Land Rover Defender may make a comeback by 2019

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Spanish tanks

Two minor corrections: these are IFVs, not tanks, and they're being built in Wales.

Rest of the phrase seems to be correct though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(Scout_SV)

Smart meter firm EDMI asked UK for £7m to change a single component

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Really smart meter?

"which 30 years ago was on 1500m not quite the same as the current 198khz"

Hmm. Indeed. It was moved from 200KHz to 198KHz in 1988, that's 29 years ago.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/463316/bbc-radio-4-lw-when-did-it-change-from-200khz-to-198khz

Should be safe to assume that "embedded devices" of the era could be re-tuned for such a small change in frequency. Or maybe they didn't need to, if their frequency filters weren't that narrow to begin with.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: How do customers save anything.

"They said the change had been flagged in some small print on a bill"

Also freely available from their planning office on Alpha Centauri.

AWS's S3 outage was so bad Amazon couldn't get into its own dashboard to warn the world

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Sometimes it happens for quite anecdotal reasons. At one company it was because MD did not like the humming noise coming from their server room just over the corridor.

So IT department got an order to scrap servers and move everything to the cloud. They weren't happy. In a true BOFH spirit they contemplated splashing few grand on soundproofing and setting up a company à la "Cloudy McCloudface Ltd." to issue invoices. But eventually they chose to be good sports and went for a reliable colocation company. Which happened to have "Certified Cloud Solutions Provider" prominently written on their marketing brochure.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Mushroom

Re: "network designed to survive nuclear attack"

And now we've got networks where some faults have a tendency to go nuclear. How quaint.

Granted, it is rather hard to account for a possibility of getting unwanted positive feedback somewhere in the system that'll lead to catastrophic overamplification. Especially if you can control only a small part of the system.

But just for fun, I'm going to snap into the old git mode and blame it on whippersnappers having no experience with op-amps these days.

'Hey, Homeland Security. Don't you dare demand Twitter, Facebook passwords at the border'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "only block those [..] who have never entered the country previously"

Broken irony detector?

Installing disks is basically LEGO, right? This admin failed LEGO

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Not a PC

"Any chance you can explain why 20a is a standard?"

Don't know about NZ (sorry), but in continental Europe fuses can be as small as needed. It's quite common to have 10A fuse for a single Schuko socket or 16A fuse for a set of two sockets. Slow blow, fast blow, whatever you need for your particular application. But wires have to have higher rating than fuses. No skimping on copper.

UK systems with their ring topology are a different kettle of fish. In these it's very important to have right fuses in right places.

If NZ really does have some kind of regulation mandating 20A, you are probably still allowed to use an extension with its own fuse. Perhaps with a ground fault breaker too. Makes every sense for a repair/testing environment.

Unlucky WD Ultrastar drives are knackered, need replacing ASAP

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: The IBM "Deathstar" curse lives on

That's a good joke, but they broke free from that curse 10 years ago. HGST has had pretty solid quality since Deathstar days.

Welcome to my world of The Unexplained – yes, you're welcome to it

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Terry 6's dad's old Lada

Some pictures of early 2101 specimens:

vaz2101.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30362

vaz2101.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31071

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Terry 6's dad's old Lada

Yes, 2101 was a licensed production of 124. With minor tweaks. First batches produced in 1970 had FIAT insignias stamped all over, even on boltheads. 1972 model I happened to have still contained lots of components manufactured abroad - Italy, Japan, Yugoslavia, Hungary, East Germany come to mind.

Bodywork had its own story: for first 4 years, huge rolls of sheet steel were shipped to Sweden for post-processing, then shipped back. Without this extra processing it wasn't possible to punch body panels out of the sheet. Corners were way too sharp for that.

Jimbopedia has differences between 124 and 2101 mostly covered:

"Compared to the Fiat 124, 800 modifications were made in all,[5] including to rear brakes (discs to drums),[5] suspension (for higher ground clearance), carburettor, and some other parts in order to satisfy a wide range of Russian climate conditions, as well as thicker-gauge steel (so the 2101 weighed 945 kg (2,083 lb), the Fiat 90 kg (200 lb) less[5])"

"Early models included a crank, in case the battery went flat (an item later dropped) and an auxiliary fuel pump.[5]"

But this part about the engine is fishy:

"first variant was equipped with a 1,198 cc (73.1 cu in) engine (a overhead valve design, never used in a Fiat)[5]"

All Lada engines have single overhead cam (SOHC) layout, not OHV. Whereas Fiat 124 used OHV and DOHC engines throughout their production run. SOHC engines appeared much later on 131.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: RAVPower

550A over these leads? And from a lithium battery? This thing will become dangerous if used for more than 1-2 seconds.

For a good engine it'll suffice, of course. One guy made a jumpstarter from large capacitors. Worked quite well in extreme cold, but only for a better part of a second.

Planned Espionage Act could jail journos and whistleblowers as spies

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: something freely available elsewhere

That brings back memories of ever so resourceful Soviets.

General public was not allowed to have accurate topographic maps. Only military had good maps. For even greater security, all publicly available maps were heavily mangled to thwart evil spies.

So, if someone wanted to hike in wild areas like Karelia or Kola peninsula, they had two workarounds available: to grease a pair of palms at some military base; or travel to Finland and buy a set of decent maps from the nearest bookstore.

Russia (A) bans web porn as a 'bad influence' (B) decriminalizes domestic violence – or (C) all of the above?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Etymology

"Mir" can also mean "the world". But it's actually trickier (and etymology often is).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_(name)

"There was no ambiguity prior to reforms of Russian orthography in 1918. The spelling of the two words was миръ (peace) or мiръ (the Universe),[3] but the name was spelled a third way, Владимѣръ,[2] from the Gothic suffix mērs meaning "great". Thus the name originally meant "Great in His Power"."

Revealed: 'Suicide bomber Barbie' and other TSA quack science that cost $1.5 billion

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Bah!

"Don't forget to email corrections@thereg ah fuck it."

Ssso you want to keep hiss preciousss rant to yoursself. Yeesss you do. Nasty hackses! We hates you!

Want to come to the US? Be prepared to hand over your passwords if you're on Trump's hit list

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: What happens

"Well doh! You mean that you have never once read a Tweet from the Great Leader?"

(sheepishly) No, I really haven't. Is this a mandatory reading? Any repercussions/repressions for missing out?

Facebook investors yell at CEO: Get the Zuck out of our boardroom!

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Monopolists Rule !

Thanks, did not know that. Also, platinum filament was older than I thought - Sir Humphry Davy used it in 1802.

From the wiki:

"In addressing the question of who invented the incandescent lamp, historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel[8] list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison. They conclude that Edison's version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve (by use of the Sprengel pump) and a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Monopolists Rule !

Edison conceived a major breakthrough - carbon filaments - which made lightbulbs practical. Thus commercially successful. Platinum filaments were much less reliable and had, ahem, somewhat higher cost.

Would you like to know why I get a lot of action at night?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: State of the art

"I sometimes wonder how many people were killed by those things."

Or got an ogre strength for their efforts. 'Things that don't kill you...' and all that.

Motivational speaker in the slammer after HPE applies for court order

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Classic sociopath

Connect on Facebook? Connect on Linkedin?

Bah. That's so passé. ButtPlugg is where real connecting is going on! At least that's what Aleister Dabbs and Hank Waggenburger III were telling us.

www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/15/something_for_the_weekend_double_entendres/

Coming to the big screen: Sci-fi epic Dune – no wait, wait, wait, this one might be good

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Starship Troopers

It wasn't meant as an adaptation. Verhoeven started working with a different script. Somewhere along the way they had an idea to buy rights for ST and mash some ST elements (characters, plotlines) into their story.

As has been frequently commented - Verhoeven achieved a decent piece of satire, thus making it watchable. Whereas Heinlein's book is hopelessly serious.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Can't be a single movie

"Nor gigantic worms for that matter."

They did conjure some up for the last film in The Hobbit series.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: I thought Arrival was decent.

"There's no problem so big that it can't be solved with time travel."

A modern variant of deus ex machina. Works for most people, except for cynical bastards like us.

Trump decides Breitbart chair Bannon knows more about natsec than actual professionals

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: It will be yet another war soon

"It's all 'bots"

So ACME Splaffer is back with a vengeance?

Ransomware killed 70% of Washington DC CCTV ahead of inauguration

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

White hack hatters?

2017 is already fail: Let’s try a Chinese reboot

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: doubts

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

"Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."

- Bertrand Russell

National Audit Office: UK's military is buying more than it can afford

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: In Abkazia and South Ossetia

Товарищ Archtech, за успешной борьбы на идеологическом фронте награждаем вас...вилочкой и туфлями.

ic.pics.livejournal.com/re1ayer/16354475/948/948_320.jpg

ru-vilochka.livejournal.com

President Donald Trump taken on by unlikely foe: Badass park rangers

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: So want to see this at some point

"Now we just need to rescue Howlin' Mad"

That's where the analogy breaks apart. Plenty of howlers to choose from, but they're hardly worth rescuing.

'It will go wrong. There's no question of time... on safety or security side'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Yup. Add Heisenberg and Schrödinger to the team and we'll start to get an inkling of what's really going on.

UK.gov still drowning in legacy tech because no one's boarding Blighty's £700m data centre Ark

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Legacy stuff isn't the problem.

"I respectfully submit that a self-contained industrial control system, written in machine code and running on an extensively and carefully documented PDP-11 hardware is fairly easier to understand and maintain."

It has also stood the test of time. Unfixed bugs are either rare or have known workarounds. Most failure types are already known, with known recovery methods. Not a lot of "unknown unknowns" remaining there. Which is something industrial customers can appreciate. They tend to be surprisingly content with known bugs that are well documented, but quite wary of new stuff with lots of unkown bugs.

Britain collects new naval tanker a mere 18 months late

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "ship's wiring is nowadays very neat and tidy, and you're in for a bollocking if you mess it up"

"I'd guess the problem with the Sheffield was the use of Kapton for wiring insulation.

Kapton explodes on short circuits."

Sure about that? Kapton does not burn easily. It can cause some short circuits because it has a tendency to fall apart in humid conditions, but otherwise it should be fairly inert.

Excerpt from the MSDS:

"Not a fire or explosion hazard. The flammability characteristic of polyimide film is reported as “self-extinguishing”. Kapton chars but does not burn in air. Kapton will burn in an atmosphere of 100% oxygen. The major off-gases are carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide."

It could have been the good ol' PVC that burned down HMS Sheffield. Quick web search did not yield solid answers for that. Only stories of horrid fires and unspecified toxic fumes.