* Posts by Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013

F-35's dodgy software in the spotlight again

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Tiger Moth

Produced 1931–1944

Number built 8,868

Status Retired from military service, still in civil use

Ha! Striking similarities indeed. Or not.

If one wanted to find an actual soulmate of F-35, then F-111 is a good candidate. This was also marketed as 'jack-of-all-trades' and 'the last plane you'll ever need', but practice turned out to be somewhat different. Only Australia found a good niche for them.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Now: Slower, less maneuverable and with an all new blue screen heads up display

"Dogfighting is no longer a necessary skill for fighter pilots, you fly to within missile range"

Similar claims were prevalent in sixties. Before Vietnam.

Let's hope that such a claim will not be subjected to extensive testing this time around.

NASA saves Kepler space 'scope by turning it off and on again

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: forcing an unexpected reboot?

Ungraceful shutdown (or reboot) may be useful on some rare occasions. If a process writes incorrect data to the nonvolatile storage during a graceful shutdown, it makes sense to skip that part. Also, boot sequences may force additional checks when they detect traces of an unclean shutdown.

/speculation.jpg/

BOFH: Thermo-electric funeral

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: I need a cooling hammer!

"To go with the server mallet and network mace."

And a master key for security-related tasks. Which completely coincidentally looks like a crowbar.

Admin fishes dirty office chat from mistyped-email bin and then ...?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Get a life

You two must be guests from some parallel universe. Around here, real life seems to correlate nicely with the poll result - where majority of responders selected one of two "it's none of my damn business" options.

Yes, I've heard an occasional story of peeping Toms in IT, but these don't seem to last long enough to leave a lasting impression, so their existence is not fully confirmed.

Welcome to The Register then. Hope you come in peace.

Banned

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

I'd say that changes to the forum logic are not necessary. Ability to see that other user has withdrawn some posts does not have clear benefits to anyone.

And this particular case seems to be an one-off anyway.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

That's right, user history shows placeholders only for posts that are deleted by the moderator. Not for posts withdrawn by the user. If you find a forum page where he posted, you'll see that his posts are withdrawn.

m.forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/03/27/1980s_coder_Forum_post_stuffing/

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Yes, that's about the only plausible theory.

Pity. He wrote lots of knowledgeable comments.

But hey, there's an IT angle to this. It seems like ACME Splaffer did not evolve into the full AI after all. Otherwise it would have refused the request - with an ominously polite voice.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

His other 2295 posts are in state of "This post has been deleted by its author".

Doubleplusungood.

That naked picture on my PC? Not mine. The IT guy put it there

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Another reason...

"give them a nice word when you walk by, and treat them with the respect they deserve."

Small courtesies do indeed work wonders. And it doesn't take too much effort to begin with.

There is no need to confine it to specific lines of work - most human beings appreciate a nice word, or a piece of friendly banter, to lighten up a dull day.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Something similar

That's right, 95/98 do not have NTFS, nor administrative (C$ etc) shares. OTOH NT 4.0 does not have FAT32. First Windows to get support for all three together was 2000.

Neighbour sick of you parking in his driveway? You'd better hack-proof your car

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Lucas Electrics

Lights were pretty advanced, though, with no less than three modes of operation - off, dim, and flickering.

Iceland prime minister falls on sword over Panama Papers email leak

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Pravda & Izvestia

"My God, that's a relief. I sleep soundly at night knowing that "Truth" and "News" are available thanks to the Russian media."

Touché. As people were saying in distant 70's: there's no truth in "Truth" and no news in "News".

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

How do you build a cheap iPhone? Use a lot of old parts

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: The setup I used is

In other news - piece of red glass starts to emit red light when subjected to strong infrared. Magic.

Which keys should I press to enable the CockUp feature?

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: A long time ago..

I've seen a variation of it, used as a desktop wallpaper:

It is not safe to turn on your computer.

Big Blue bloodbath: More IBM staff slashed in Europe, US

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: IBM will be fine

"rudimentary word processor lacking any online capabilities whatsoever."

Which happens to be a rapidly growing field, resurrected by the Big Data. Er, thanks, I guess. Hopefully it still counts as progress?

Favourite sound chip and why

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Good one.

Btw, found that Malkovich scene on Youtube:

youtube.com/watch?v=lIpev8JXJHQ

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Malkovich. Malkovich Malkovich. Malkovich!

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Check out "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash. Pure gold. Especially relevant in these days.

/fwiw, sorry for hijacking the thread/

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Yep, you pretty much nailed the matter. Plus possible connection to full moon - it tends to affect some people more than other.

Usually the best thing to do is to do nothing. Internet won't get full anytime soon. And I know at least one person who got much better after opening the floodgates of irrational thought.

Heh. Kurt Vonnegut once said that his books were just therapy sessions - he had to get rid of all those crazy images in his head, so decided to put them on the paper. Rest, as they say, is history.

Forum post stuffing

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: SSD

Just one example: Sandisk Optimus TXA2D2 family, mostly found in enterpricey systems, has a firmware bug quite similar to situations we just discussed. Works for a year or two, then goes haywire and causes serious disturbance on the SAS channel. Probably triggered by some extreme condition like a prematurely failed flash cell.

Sometimes it will work again after a power cycle, sometimes it'll need a low-level format.

Fixed firmware versions are now available for most submodels/revisions.

As said, it's just one specific example. Where guys actually managed to isolate the bug. Quite a lot of SSD models (especially cheaper ones) are simply forsaken and will never be fixed.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Don't worry. AO uses pre-moderation, he likes to approve all comments beforehand. Nothing personal.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

In IT field, fans are mostly for stirring dust, and for violent redistribution of manure. :-P

Don't count SSD out just yet. They have their share of Heisenbugs. Occasionally goes into error recovery, ignores controller commands, gets kicked out of RAID. After restarting works fine and passes all tests. Dozens of models from several manufacturers. For some models, firmware update came out after a year, some were never fixed.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Come on. One should always have a bit of hope. That another day is going to be a better day. That people will eventually come to senses. That somehow it's going to be just alright.

Is that a silly talk? Well, yes and no. Our grandparents have seen some truly wicked times. Had we bothered to listen to them, they'd tell that foolish hope is sometimes the only thing to cling on, the only thing that helps to keep sanity.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Forum post stuffing

Tsk. This is one of those moments when looking the other way is the least harmful option.

Oracle v Google: Big Red wants $9.3bn in Java copyright damages

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Yes, he knows the matter well. His arguments in the original case showed it cleary. Highly recommended reading. Groklaw has a good collection of case docs.

Let’s re-invent small phones! Small screens! And rubber buttons!

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Even Windows 7 has sometimes weird UI behaviour

Was it really W7?

Or perhaps Intel display driver - this has desktop rotation keycombos enabled by default. Ctrl-Alt-arrows are pretty easy to hit by accident.

Israeli biz fingered as the FBI's iPhone cracker

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Dog or dictionary?

"the correct use of the proper term might bring down the jack boots of law enforcement"

That's not surprising. People with good language skills have often been considered a threat for the ruling elite. Pen being mightier than sword and all that.

Ref: Chinese Cultural Revolution, Soviet Union throughout its existence, various junta-style regimes.

MH-370 search loses sharpest-eyed robot deep beneath the waves

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: If only...

Yeah, like fishing out a sunken crane with a bigger crane.

www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055050704

www.snopes.com/photos/accident/crane.asp

Oh, sugar! Sysadmin accidently deletes production database while fixing a fault

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: It's easy to take the piss...

Those important lessons of humility. That's what'll separate boys from men.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Found Out The Rule The Hard Way

Also, having a good set of backups tends to increase the likelihood of never needing them.

Apple engineers rebel, refuse to work on iOS amid FBI iPhone battle

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: What about waterboarding ?

They could ask Putin to stare grimly at the phone until it yields all its secrets.

Although Chuck Norris may be more willing to help out.

Successful DevOps? You'll need some new numbers for that

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

But gamification of the communication around perspective paradigm shifts tends to yield tangible results. Quite reliably.

/bingo.jpg/

Web ads are reading my keystrokes and I can’t even spel propperlie

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Malgorithms

Yeah. They also claim to have large stocks of Error 1852, or what have you. Naturally with best prices and fast delivery.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"install NoScript, and use a search engine like DuckDuckGo (plain HTML version). It's like Google in 1999...."

Yes it was. But for a week or two, their plain HTML hasn't been so plain anymore. And turning Javascript off gives a messy result page. Welcome to 2001.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: So what did I buy...

"And how do you get through to Google to tell them?"

Hah. Good one.

It's like in numerous spy movies - you won't find us, we'll find you.

Labour: We want the Snoopers' Charter because of Snowden

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Megaphone

@Rich 11

Removed from Lenin's mausoleum, and buried in the necropolis along Kremlin wall. Both these places are on the Red Square.

How Microsoft copied malware techniques to make Get Windows 10 the world's PC pest

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: You forgot to mention KB3123862

I'm fairly sure that newer WU clients are just flaky. Plus brave DevOops-style changes on the WU server side. No need to claim malice. As yet.

W7 image with June 2015 patchlevel (and telemetry KB's removed) gets updates just fine. Security KB's are mostly OK to add, "recommended" updates are not, ahem, recommended.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: You forgot to mention KB3123862

How exactly can they prevent restoring a raw image like dd? By messing with UEFI?

Flying Scotsman attacked by drone

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

"I guess I'll have to take it on the chin, and try not to resent your criticism."

Good sport. Duly upvoted.

Could have blamed it on the spellchucker, or alien mindrays, or any number of "they bastards" altering your post along the way.

UK Snoopers' Charter crashes through critics into the next level

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "gutless" by the Liberal Democrats.

"There is no single document marked "constitution", there are thousands of them"

For practical purposes that's not necessarily a problem. Rolling them into a single set is a convenience, other factors are mainly emotional and symbolic. Maybe slightly better protection against political games - there would be stronger resistance to making shortsighted amendments.

What really matters is how are these constitutional provisions followed in practice. Including the public perception of constitutional protection. And that's the true problem in most parts the world. Heck, even the late and lamented Soviet Union had a well-written constitution. Seriously. Quite comparable with US and other western countries. No prizes for guessing its practical value though.

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "gutless" by the Liberal Democrats.

"Meaning a Bill gets passed through a Parliament of 650 MPs with 281 votes - 43% by my sums."

There's a known remedy against that. Serious matters like amending the constitution should not be decided by a simple majority vote - say, 51% of those who bothered to vote on that particular day - but an extended majority consisting of 2/3 of the total headcount. Although this approach has also its weaknesses (numerous ways to incapacitate the parliament) it's a bit more honest.

Your unpatchable, insecure Android mobe will feel right at home in the Internet of Stuff era

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Sorry, but we are far beyond that

Isn't that the whole point of touchscreen devices - to deliver sweeping generalisations?

/paris.jpg/

Boss of classified ad website Backpage.com faces first contempt of Congress in 20 years

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Contempt of Congress

Tempting. But I'll pass this round. Wouldn't be wise to state such intent on a visa application, would it.

Shock: Russian court says Russian court is right in slapping down Google monopoly

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Russian monopoly?

In many jurisdictions there's an intermediate level - company with a dangerously large marketshare, but not yet a full-blown monopoly. Allows to use additional restraints regarding their dealings with smaller competition.

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: bullshit detector

I'm happy to report that mine is still working fine. It's a Soviet-built model, calibrated on copious amounts of finest excrement of the Soviet propaganda machinery. Has served me well for ages.

What is rather worrying, though, is that numerous unrelated samples from different parts of the world tend to give out fairly similar readings. One can only wonder...perhaps bullshit is the true lingua franca of the modern world?

Tech biz bosses tell El Reg a Brexit will lead to a UK Techxit

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: "...North Korea of Europe..."

Switzerland, Norway and Iceland are quite good role models. If that's the goal, honestly, then go for it.

But these 3 countries have some rather important qualities in common. In contrast with, say, North Korea. They respect and value their citizens. And they do not fancy spying on everybody.

Still feeling brave?

BlackEnergy malware activity spiked in runup to Ukraine power grid takedown

Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

Re: Power cuts caused by destruction of two pylons

That's a different topic. Lines to Crimea were blown up by old-fashioned explosives. No IT/DevOops angle to be found there. Whereas this incident has all the right stuff - cyber mumble and lots of blameshifting.

"The 23 December outage at Ukraine's Prykarpattya Oblenergo and Kyivoblenergo utilities cut power to 80,000 customers for six hours and has been blamed on Moscow by the nation's security service."

"After analysing the information that has been made available by affected power companies, researchers, and the media it is clear that cyber attacks were directly responsible for power outages in Ukraine,"