Posts by The H'wood Reporter

War of the workstations: How the lowest bidders shaped today's tech landscape

Been there done that

I suspect I'm one of very few old enough on here to have actually worked through the entire process and come back around to the realization that there are many, many ways to do things, and a whole lot of them are totally, utterly, rubbish!

I've done 8008 assembly, AMD bit slice coding, 68000, TI 9900, Zetalisp, Common Lisp, Fortran, Pascal, Algol, Swift, Json, Basic, I digress. I've designed real time operating systems for aluminum smelters, air-to-air tracking radars, robot grippers, as well as PLCs.

Zetalisp was my favorite OS. Squeak comes in a close second. Would I like to live with them in the malware society of today? Hell no! VMS clusters ran the worlds wire transfers for decades. You kept them in locked rooms with extremely tight access. Why? Because with physical access you owned the world! Otherwise they were as bulletproof as anything today.

When DEC was pitching NT clustering, I had the privilege of pitching it to a major international bank IT department. The answer to the question, "Who uses DEC clustering anyway?," was, "You do in the wire transfer department." Response, "They don't let us in there." I stayed silent and didn't even smirk.

Level 3 thrown in the C'Link after watchdog approves $34bn gobble

Berkshire Hathaway will make a pretty penny from the sale, as Warren Buffet bought Level3 for $0.05 on the dollar* after the 2000 DOT COM bubble burst.

* or 0.066 cents per GB Pound

Russian subs prowling near submarine cables: report

A Break, or is it a Tap?

Any time a fibre cable is cut one should assume that a tap is being made. The most effective way to tap, is to cause an interruption somewhere, then install a tap while the line is known to be down and the looking for breaks is suspended. Even if someone is looking, wave amplifying taps may not cause enough disruption to be detected.

One can also safely assume that any equipment from China or the USA has backdoors already mounted. The electronic war has long been launched, and it's aimed at you and I.

Self-driving vehicles might be autonomous but insurance pay-outs probably won't be

Hmm, air travel or autonomous vehicles

At this point most air travel is accomplished, for the most part, in autonomous vehicles. When the aircraft got to Cat 3 landings (flew down the approach path in zero - zero visual conditions) we were where cars want to be by 2025, or later (you can't trust auto manuf to give you the real scoop). Having safely flown into Heathrow, and Zurich in conditions that made me have (after over 2 million miles in the air) almost terminally sweaty palms - I can say that autonomous flight is way better than having a pilot fly you into a Provence mountain or where ever, but I digress.

My problem is with the autonomous vehicles on the ground. Just because we have self-driving vehicles doesn't mean we've gotten rid of bad guys. As soon as they figure out that they can box in and stop an ADV (Autonomous Driving Vehicle - not advert, although with a captive audience so to speak ...) they will be all over that like flies on ... . You see, the first people to use the ADVs will be those who can afford them - just like those wonderfully GREEN Teslas, Prius, and BMW iX series, i.e. people with discretionary incomes larger than some GDPs. Perforce, their wallets will contain Onyx AMEX cards, and unlimited NetJet cards (with the chip, of course), so they will be the perfect targets for the 21st Century highway persons (no gender bias here, I've learned my lessons the hard way!).

So what will the insurance companies do about that? Weapons on board anyone?

Why won't you DIE? IBM's S/360 and its legacy at 50

IBM - 10 years late to the party with VM

The Burroughs B5000 had virtual memory starting at the introduction in 1963. Unfortunately, the Burroughs Headquarters on Tireman Ave in Detroit had no idea how powerful the computer they brought out really was. Telling people how cool VM is doesn't do anything for solving their problems.

People were supporting 256 users on a B5500 in 1972 with a whopping 128 KB of core memory and a response time < 2 seconds.

IBM understood how to market technology, Burroughs didn't. IBM won, Burroughs merged.

Side note, Burroughs B series was programmed using Balgol, a derivative of Algol, there was essentially no assembly language. The systems were also hardware stack machines, which allowed you to scroll though the stacks of the machine on a nixie tube display on the door (B6700, B7700).

Boffins demo new holo storage using graphene oxide

Rent seeking behavior

Typical "more research is needed to make it practical," PR blast. If they actually made something that was a product, it would defeat the whole purpose of grant-grubbing, wouldn't it? Next they ooze up to a storage vendor and offer to "Partner" with them, a.k.a. give us money and equipment and we'll see what we can do.

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

Plastic Smastic - folded metal rules

Any half way motivated individual can build a weapon using folded scrap sheet metal and a piece of pipe in less than 24 hours. Automobile axles make excellent barrels, and guess where the sheet metal comes from...

Google the Khyber weapons makers on Youtube to see foot driven barrel turning and rifling. Pull you heads out of your anal cavities folks. Weapons construction doesn't require high tech.

Note that the US Gov has supplied over 25,000 weapons to the ever reliable Mexican Army and police forces. Certainly none of them have been stolen and used in the commission of crimes, RIIIIGHT!

When AKs are so easy to build that 13 year olds in Afghanistan/Pakistan are building them, why would the Cartels need to slowly build up their arsenals using strawman purchases in the US? Other than Fast and Furious, it doesn't seem like huge quantities of weapons are finding their way into Mexico. Note that full auto weapons are available in the US, but you need a tax stamp, and you need to buy them from a Class 3 dealer, who's going to go all proctologist on you. If they show full auto AKs in arms captures, you can bet they didn't come from the US. If they show full auto ARs in arms captures, you can bet they did come from the US, the US Government - but hey, that never happens, right?