* Posts by Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013

Britain collects new naval tanker a mere 18 months late

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: What the hell

"I distinctly seem to remember a Commentard based in France menitioning that his local cops had a fleet of Fords"

You probably mean this thread:

https://m.forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/08/18/new_uk_trade_deals_would_not_fully_compensate_for_loss_of_single_market_membership/

Reg readers are tough crowd. Someone is always going to derail a perfectly good agenda with their pesky facts. Like those much-touted "Spanish tanks" actually being infantry machines and not particularly Spanish. Like Germans and French using a wide variety of cars for their police forces. And so on and so forth.

Apple vs. Samsung goes back to court, again, to re-assess the value of a rounded corner

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Paris Hilton

value estimations

"the world's big names in design (Calvin Klein et all) have filed an amicus brief because they want the court to find that the design elements in question are sufficient to make up the whole value of the copy"

Not sure that those design wizards have thought it through. Attributing whole 100% of value to the design (and brand) would imply that the underlying product is worth precisely nothing on its own. So if I buy a pair of CK jeans for €80, then those jeans carry less practical value than a €20 pair of no-name jeans?

Foot, meet gun.

Lloyds Bank customers still flogging the online dead horse

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: halifax not working

2 or 3 days for an inter-bank transfer? Bloody hell. We had few seconds in the north-east of Europe. Got quite used to it, too. Then IBAN system kicked in, transfers are now done in 1-2 hours, and people are complaining about it.

You guys sure have some patience.

Oh ALIS, don't keep us waiting: F-35 jet's software 'delayed'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "I'm sure I read somewhere that the F35 doesn't do well with big amounts of water vapor "r."

If you're referring to the one that got shot down - it was a combination of multiple factors. Experienced anti-air battery commander with a modified longwave radar, F-117 flying on a predictable flightpath with its bomb doors open, and some amount of good fortune. Maybe moisture affected things a bit, maybe it didn't, hard to say.

Fake History Alert: Sorry BBC, but Apple really did invent the iPhone

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Who really invented the iPhone?

Happens a lot. For example, X-ray was actually invented in the 14th century by a Russian peasant called Ivan Sosnov. He frequently yelled at his wife "I can see you through, you bitch!"

Feds cuff VW exec over diesel emissions scam

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Nothing new here

"dumped a big load of pig piss into the exhaust I believe, much more than it did on the road"

That'd be none and none, respectively. VW boasted that their new engines are so bloody marvelous and do not need AdBlue tanks. Emission control was supposedly achieved in ICU software. Well, yes, in some way it was, except...

Other makers are using piss tanks. So no, they're not "all at it". If others are scamming, then these are different scams.

Soz fanbois, Apple DIDN'T invent the smartphone after all

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Apple stole the iPhone

"Motorola couldn't or wouldn't make enough future PPC processors to support Apple's expanding ambitions, and that's why Apple made the switch."

Not quite. Motorola withdrew (or was pushed out) way earlier. AIM alliance was like a regular soap opera, but rough sequence is something like this:

- both IBM and Motorola fabricated G3 processors. IBM sold theirs as PPC750 series, Motorola as MPC750 series, designs were jointly created and pretty much identical.

- Apple wanted multimedia instructions similar to Intel MMX/SSE. G4 was again joint development, essentially G3 speedbump with added AltiVec instruction set. But IBM pulled out shortly before production phase and Motorola became a sole producer.

- G4 clock speeds hit a wall somewhere around 500 MHz, causing many delayed product launches and assorted embarrassment for Apple. Relations with Motorola became very tense.

- IBM had meanwhile launched 64-bit Power 4 server processors in the magical gigahertz range. These were hastily stripped down to create PPC970 aka G5. With AltiVec bolted on.

- Few years on, G5 also hit the wall. It could not reach 3 GHz (which was bad, because Intel had pushed Pentium 4 clocks beyond 3) and power consumption was huge.

- and then the evolutionary leap happened: Intel had a little skunkworks project in Israel that was developing low-power mobile processors around the Pentium 3 core. As it turned out, these little critters had the potential to overtake both P4 and G5. They certainly did.

- and lastly, an unsubstiatiated rumour from that period: at some point IBM looked for a way to get out of the x86 PC business and (allegedly) made a merger offer to the Apple board. Which (allegedly) infuriated His Steveness so much that he (allegedly) ordered to drop everything else and get x86 migration projects going.

We'll probably never know whether that last part is true or not, but that was the gossip back then, and it makes just as much sense than anything else in this glorious soap opera.

Could YOU survive a zombie apocalypse? Uni eggheads say you'd last just 100 days

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Coming soon - Trumps version of "The Purge"

"big ass 10,000KVw generator a few gas cans"

10 MW? Planning to kill them with exhausts? Have to be quick with that, one jerrycan will last for a fraction of second.

(nooo, not doing jokes about 10 million Volkswagens, not today)

The Register's Top 20 Most-Commented Stories in 2016

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: I'd love to see a top 20...

"2016 was my biggest year ever for downvotes, a few thousand,, I even lost my Silver Badge..."

No, downvotes do not count towards anything, bar some minor ego bruises.

You need to make 100 posts in a year to regain your badge. As explained here:

m.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/register_comments_guidelines/

Twas the week before Xmas ... not a creature was stirring – except Microsoft admitting its Windows 10 upgrade pop-up went 'too far'

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Ostap Bender

That fall guy was called Sitz-Chairman Funt.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Little_Golden_Calf

Christmas Eve ERP migration derailed by silly spreadsheet sort

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Win95

Urban Dictionary has a rather short definition:

"Windows 95/98, (n): 32 bit extension and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition."

'Upset' Linus Torvalds gets sweary and gets results

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Torvald's Tongue Back To Normal - XMas May Proceed

A programmer once quipped: Forget C, forget Java. Swearing is the #1 language for coders all over the world.

Crim charges slapped on copyright trolls who filmed porn, torrented it then sued downloaders

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Officers of the court engaging in illegal activities

"It's usually quite hard to get struck off by self-regulatory bodies"

Yes, it's hard, but these dimbulbs have so painstakingly laboured to achieve it. Bar associations do not have much choice, they have to disown them.

Sysadmin 'fixed' PC by hiding it on a bookshelf for a few weeks

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Aaron is a twat.

"We've all had the whiny, loud, obnoxious, know-it-all..."

And not just that - we've all been loud, whiny, obnoxious know-it-alls at some point or another. What truly matters is whether we're learning our lessons and improving our behaviour.

Signed,

A Twat.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: deja vu

Only when working from home. Strongly unadvisable in other environments. And when at home, put some tape over the webcam.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: deja vu

"My explanation to the user: "It just wanted a ride in a car"."

Yes, happens a lot. Maybe they're just craving for attention and affection? Soon they'll start asking "Are we there yet?" after every 2 miles.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Aaron is NOT a twat

Do without doing,

Act without action.

Savor the flavorless.

Treat the small as large,

the few as many.

Such is the Way of Tao.

Word of caution: this non-doing does not mean that one should always sit around doing nothing. It's about respect. Respect for things being as they are, moving in their due course. Respect for the forces of nature. One should not meddle with things that are already going in the right direction.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

deja vu

Finnish language has a jargon word for that kind of work: valohoito. Treatment by light.

Used in situations where the bloody thing just works after having a rest on the well-lit working bench, so the fault is never seen. If it existed at all.

It's now illegal in the US to punish customers for posting bad web reviews

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: blink tag

And for next thing you'll be wanting marquee? Oh, behave.

MacBook Pro owners complain of short batt life – so Apple kills batt life clock in macOS

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Time remaining is always a guestimate

"Macbook Pros ought to be for doing serious work on and they shouldn't be made to be exhibits in a design museum."

Nitpick: do we really know what kind of professionals are the target market? Maybe serious, boring, unimaginative workaholics like us do not count as professionals in the new Digitally Nextified HyperPROVirtualAIReality?

If only our British 4G were as good as, um, Albania's... UK.gov's telco tech report

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Joke

By this line of reasoning - it seems that Scandinavians are truly lucky bastards: no mountains, no 2G networks and no laws of physics to worry about.

HPE storage meltdown at Australian Tax Office lost no taxpayer data

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: so many eggs and only one basket?

"If we are having a sweepstake on the root cause I'll go for de-dupe."

Plausible. Wouldn't be the first case of someone getting duped by de-dupe.

EU dings Sony, Panasonic over rechargeable battery cartel

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Nice, I hope next they fix the sparc plugs Cartel in Europe

For cheap plugs, first thing to do is to check that "Bosch" is spelled correctly. ;-)

Good equivalents are rarely less than half the price of an original part. If somebody sells them very cheaply, caution is in order - they may be counterfeit, stolen, refurbished, or just a different type.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: One quick question

Can't remember bad batches from Panasonic, but Sanyo has had few recalls and Sony had quite a lot.

Discounting mistreatments, of course. Every lithium cell can combust if mistreated.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Payback?

1st supplier: Samsung SDI

2nd supplier: ATL

Neither of them got fined.

Higher tech prices ARE here to stay. It's Mr Farage's new Britain

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: In the dark ages

"I also reckon dual clutch gearboxes will be a time bomb in a few years."

VW DSG has a mighty stink already. They're replacing them like crazy. Yes, official solution is to replace £3000+ grindbox for a clutch failure, not to repair it. Lots of unofficial repair shops have surfaced to fill the void. China got wise and banned the whole sorry lot.

Busted Windows 8, 10 update blamed for breaking Brits' DHCP

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: OK here...for now?

KB3201845 is a cumulative update changing god-knows-what.

According to this German page it really could be the culprit. ISPs in mention are Swisscom and UPC.

www.notebookcheck.com/Kein-Internet-nach-KB3201845-Wieder-Probleme-mit-einem-Windows-Update.187280.0.html

Russian hackers got Trump elected? Yeah, let's take a close look at that, says Obama

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Perhaps the US should require any presidential candidate to prove their sanity

Thing is, manipulative psychopaths can usually prove their sanity with ease, and with a next breath, they can prove anybody else to be a wackjob. Even a well seasoned specialist has trouble* breaking through their reality distortion fields. You just can't have a reliable assessment in this matter.

*that's a rather serious understatement, by the way.

Samsung, the Angel of Death: Exploding Note 7 phones will be bricked

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Undermining the right to property

Now you've done it, citizen. No more 1984 for you.

www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/18/amazon_removes_1984_from_kindle/

Engineers say safety features got squished out of cramped Samsung Note 7

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Heh. Some do. Just the other day I was walking by a mobile phone stand and saw N900 on display. Going for €50.

When I got back with the cash, it was already gone. Tough luck.

Sysadmin figures out dating agency worker lied in his profile

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Password?

"the Blobs were there to disguise his password so no-one else could look over his shoulder while he typed"

Even this explanation doesn't always help. One chap got accused of lying - because asterisks also appear when no-one is actually looking!

A Rowhammer ban-hammer for all, and it's all in software

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Should't be possible.

No, ECC is pretty much guaranteed to detect multi-bit errors. It calculates CRC-like checksum of every data word and stores it in a separate space. Most commonly it's 8 checksum bits for every 64 data bits. Checksums are used on every read and write operation. If there is an uncorrectable error, memory controller has to issue NMI signal and reboot the machine.

As for correction - normal ECC has sufficient checksums to correct one wrong bit, but there are implementations in the wild that can correct up to 4 bits. 8-bit versions exist in research papers.

Airbus flies new plane for the first time

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: All very well, but the music?

The Swedish Chef is coming.

Bork! Bork! Bork!

You want SaaS? Don't bother, darling, your kind can't afford it

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: 'No, never 'tech' anything

Ericsson R520m is also good for trolling. Besides being a bloody good phone.

Up next - the John's Phone.

Pythons Idle and Cleese pen anti-selfie screed

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: I think the GOGs are on here!

"prolonged exposure to hyped up technology"...

That's pretty much what Douglas Adams politely implied, when he quipped that technology means things that do not quite work.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: I think the GOGs are on here!

Which should be a solid proof - prolonged exposure to technology makes people grumpy.

Customer data security is our highest priori- ha ha ha whatever, suckers

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Inflation

"I deeply believe consumerism is the root of nowadays explosion of selfishness."

Allow me to disagree a little bit. Selfishness is deeply embedded into the human nature. People are usually (with exceptions of course) just as selfish as they can afford and get away with.

Several things have changed from the times of yore. Living standards have greatly improved, meaning there are more resources available, getting them does not need that much struggle, wit and cooperation as before. There are legal and economical frameworks to provide a safety net for the socially challenged - they too have rights, y'know. There is an army of workers to take care of our daily necessities, workers that seem to be always there to serve our whims, just like servants of old.

These changes mean that it has become much easier to live a selfish life. It's not a privilege of the rich anymore. Of course there is that cultural side you mentioned - that selfish life is actually encouraged throughout the society. But I wouldn't say that consumerism is the only root cause.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: GDR propaganda

I remember some of that.

Had the honour to visit GDR in the summer of 1989. Was a 'last chance to see' moment as it turned out. Soviet Union was already crumbling, but Honecker regime seemed to be quite stable at the moment. Mere months later it imploded very quickly.

As for propaganda - it wasn't very different from the contemporary Soviet propaganda. So we ignored it. We were much more interested in the daily life, which was very nice and orderly compared to most of the USSR. Also did a lot of sightseeing trips around the countryside. Driving a Trabant.

Here's a nice collection of GDR propaganda examples translated to English:

research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/gdrmain.htm

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Inflation

"Or perhaps we were always like that and it took the Internet to tell us."

Probably true. For example, historians have to spend a lot of effort weeding out exaggerations from historical sources. Pretty much part of the job description.

And then there are/were regimes where one-upmanship is part of the culture. Like late & lamented Soviet Union, where pretty much everything had to be bigger and better than in the "rotten capitalist wasteland". If it could not be achieved, it had to be at least spinned as such. Of course not everybody was a true believer. Political jokes like "Soviet microchips are largest in the world!" were quite abundant, despite the potential to get into serious trouble for telling them.

User needed 40-minute lesson in turning it off and turning it on again

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: CR/LF and Enter

Bah, you can keep your newfangled CR/LF. Decent keyboards have separate LF and CR keys. Or, even better, a sturdy lever for CR.

/lawn.jpg/

Hyperloop One settles hangman lawsuit

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"The lawsuit [PDF] was brought before a Los Angeles court yesterday by Hyperloop cofounder Brogan BamBrogan, who, amazingly, changed his name from Kevin Brogan when he married his wife Bambi Liu (she's now named Bambi BamBrogan)."

www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/13/hyperloop_one_stifled_with_lawsuit/

Gone in 70 seconds: Holding Enter key can smash through defense

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Gone in 10 seconds...

As seen on TV - shell command DECRYPT ALL FILES works without asking for the password.

:-p

World-leading heart hospital 'very, very lucky' to dodge ransomware hit

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "incremental backups are now done every hour."

These are very valid concerns.

Usual way of getting a good snapshot of a database is to quiesce its disk I/O for a moment, issue snapshot commands on the storage system, and resume I/O. Takes about 5 seconds or so. After that it's sensible to mount snapshot volume on a separate server for doing consistency checks & backing data to the tape.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "incremental backups are now done every hour."

That's where it gets tricky. Disk snapshots, clever backup software that can deal with open files, lots of additional procedures and lots of administrator work. And it's still bloody hard to get consistent data. Backing up something is easy, but getting any levels of confidence is hard.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "incremental backups are now done every hour."

'Hourly backup' does not mean very much. Backups are easy, but good backups are surprisingly hard. Well tested nightly backup is sometimes worth more than untested one from 5 minutes ago.

Without knowing how they're done we cannot really judge.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Dunno, for me it parses just fine.

Digital backups come in different flavors: disk-based, tape-based, optical media, online, offline, very offline aka vaulted. Some of those can be easily targeted by cryptoworms, some not.

For some bits of information there are paper printouts that are obviously non-digital.

Samsung are amateurs – NASA shows how you really do a battery fire

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Only 96 batteries

"Why is the mileage comparison irrelevant - that's why the 2 Gallons was being questioned as I read it..."

I was actually supporting your 2 gallon estimate, just with a caveat that in order to assess safety, we have to compare thermal energy of burning Li-ion battery with thermal energy of burning fuel. Mileage comparison is misleading because electric car gets its mileage from the stored electrical energy, but ordinary car from thermal energy. Apples and oranges.

So yes, previous poster was wrong to challenge your claim on the basis of mileage.

There are of course other aspects besides available combustion energy that are affecting the burning process - especially the speed and violence of it. For one, fuel needs sufficient quantity of oxygen for burning, whereas Li-Ion cells carry their own oxidiser. Skews the comparison quite a bit.