Re: Foolproof plan
It'd never happen. Too many children of MPs work for banks ...
And indeed ex-MPs ...
Posts by .@.
16 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Aug 2014
Bank of England to set new standards for when IT goes bad
A Logic Named Joe: The 1946 sci-fi short that nailed modern tech
Tuesday 3rd May 2016 19:15 GMT
If only they had met the Crazy Russian Hacker ...
...there was no tin-opener to be found. . .I took the tin off myself and hammered at it till I was sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand. We beat it flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every shape known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened.
Just in case you ever need to open a can with no can-opener ... :)
How to Open a Can without Can Opener - Zombie Survival Tips #20
Tesla books over $8bn in overnight sales claims Elon Musk
Saturday 2nd April 2016 19:47 GMT
Re: The elephant in the room...
>There will be a range of battery lives. I agree it is hard to see people thinking battery replacement is economical and resale value of cars with weak batteries will be dire. I guess most Teslas (and other pure EVs) will be scrapped before being 10 years old.
However, 10 years is a long time in the battery industry and we're already seeing developments which promise greater battery lifetime and capcity. It is plausible that, by the time the original pack expires, an affordable alternative is available which might even have higher capacity and a longer lifetime ...
Bash on Windows. Repeat, Microsoft demos Bash on Windows
Thursday 31st March 2016 23:59 GMT
Re: A very interesting detail - the root fs is per-user
The windows model doesn't have the concept of "root".
Users have attributes which make them root, rather than a fixed uid as Unix does.
In a way, it does. It is just hard to get to. It's called NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. That's your root equivalent. You can't directly access it but you can get to it by various means (PSEXEC -S being one method).
The Administrator account also has a fixed relative ID (-500, if I recall correctly).
However, in general usage you are correct. Administrator access is all via group membership (relative ID 512 IIRC for local admin access).
Wednesday 30th March 2016 20:11 GMT 
Wheels within wheels within wheels ...
This reminds me a lot of the CoLinux project (which seems to have died off, last update 2014). But this time, it comes from Microsoft themselves. We do indeed live in interesting times. Does this mean you'd be able to run Microsoft SQL for Linux inside Windows? Or as someone else suggested, WINE inside Windows. Wheels within wheels ... :)
For businesses, this allows you to have your cake and eat it. If someone ever manages to make a version of Apache that actually cooperates with HTTP.SYS, you can have your proprietary Windows software, AND your FLOSS software, all running on the same box and all talking to each other, no pesky virtualisation or separate servers needed. It's a brilliant idea, but I see one big danger ...
Now that (one distribution of) Linux is part of Windows, what incentive does Microsoft have to provide boot keys for signed booting of standalone Linux for normal hardware? 'Why would you want that, we have Ubuntu available!' I hope that doesn't happen ... :(
Name that HPE boozer: Last orders please
HPE's private London drinking club: Name that boozer
Crimestoppers finally revamps weak crypto. Take your time guys
California cops pull over Google car for driving too SLOWLY
Saturday 14th November 2015 21:01 GMT
Re: This made me laugh
It's just self-certification ("I think I am fit enough to drive ...") every 3 years once you're past 70. Now that my dad is 71, he's had to do this once so far. A lot of other people he knows his age have just given up and not renewed, but he's still going. Having been driven around by him recently, I couldn't fault him; he's a bit domineering on the road for his age, but that probably comes from his last job being a van driver... ;)
Edit to add: I do believe that if you have certain medical conditions, a doctor will have to sign you off as fit to drive. But, only if DVLA actually know about it. Doctors are supposed to inform DVLA for certain conditions, but I don't know how robust that system is ...
Of course, even if you keep self-certifying, there may come a point where you have so many minor bumps and medical problems that not even SAGA would insure you ...
There was a great programme a few years ago on the BBC about centenarian drivers. Most were a bit on the slow side and one was so pisspoor (and, given he'd had a few sherries, probably pissed ...) that they were caught on camera almost getting wiped out by a lorry. At that kind of age, these people had never, ever, done a driving test in their life ... At least my dad had two; he did one, failed to hand the pass slip in and get his licence exchanged (even though he had ten years to do it) and had to go and do it again!
Shocker: Net anarchist builds sneaky 220v USB stick that fries laptops
Confession: I was a teenage computer virus writer
Wednesday 14th October 2015 20:43 GMT
Ah the good old days :)
I remember my time at university (the university shall remain nameless). One of the common things people did was try to write password grabbers. I had a trick up my sleeve, though ...
The operators used a shared account called OPERATOR. Unlike other accounts, this had the 'secondary password' bit set on the account, meaning it required two passwords to log in. This was to make life harder for shoulder surfers, as they would have to get both passwords and they cycled them around every few days. This was a VMS cluster, by the way.
So when I was suspicious that there was a password grabber in operation, I'd try to log in as OPERATOR and see if I got two password prompts. If I did, I knew it was the real deal. Nobody was clever enough to write a password grabber that simulated this.
Luckily I never made my knowledge widely known, because I didn't know the system would lock the account out after five (?) bad attempts. Which would have made me very popular :D
An unverified story someone told me too ... they could not figure out why their terminal servers (old definition of 'terminal server' ... ever heard of LAT?) kept crashing on Friday afternoons. Apparently, some student had a father who worked at Digital and knew what all the default passwords were, and they had never been changed. He'd log in and reboot the thing so that everyone got to go home early as their classes were cancelled ;)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
