Posts by Doctor Huh?

Dear hackers, Ubuntu's app crash reporter will happily execute your evil code on a victim's box

Re: Failure the Unix way...

Chaining applications IS very Unix-like.

Failing to check inputs is not at all specific to an OS or architecture.

You can blame programmers for Unix, but you cannot blame Unix for programmers.

Re: Confuzzled Researcher

What if we attach friction' lasers to the sharks?

Is your Windows 10, 8 PC falling off the 'net? Microsoft doesn't care

Re: Next Option?

I'm moving my elderly in-laws to a Mac. A nice vintage 2011-2013 Pro with an SSD and a Time Capsule should do the trick. Then I'm out of the Windows support business forever. I'm done with Microsoft's strides to make their products entirely unusable. I don't use LibreOffice just because I'm cheap -- I _prefer_ it to MS Office.

RIP HPE's The Machine product, 2014-2016: We hardly knew ye

Re: Just for fun:

No, the Star Trek tie-in that applies here is just this:

"It's dead, Jim."

Grab your code ASAP: Nitrous cloud IDE evaporates in two weeks

Re: Cloud IDEs have been used since the 80s...

No, you are not developing in The Cloud. The essence of The Cloud (vs. client-server) is that you don't really know the server. The address used to access the server/service is really that of a router/dispatcher/load-balancer/call-it-what-you-will/false-front that vectors requests/traffic to available servers/service-providers. SSH, on the other hand, fingerprints the endpoints and makes a certain amount of effort to prevent endpoint spoofing, so you care deeply and intimately about the particular server you are accessing.

Remote access != Cloud. SSH/Vim != Cloud Development. Vim != IDE

At the risk of restarting the war, VIM is an editor; EMACS is an IDE (or just an Integrated Environment for Everything).

Nuke plant has been hacked, says Atomic Energy Agency director

According to at least one group of haters, that PDP-11 virus would be....Unix...

Before Bitcoin, digital cash was called Beenz – all that's left is a T-shirt

CueCat anyone?

I think I still have one gathering dust in the Bin of Old Technology.

The notion was that one would read a magazine, become so impressed by an ad that one had to go to the nearest computer, pick up the CueCat, scan a barcode, and order the product. It was the '90's :^)

IBM swings axe through staff, humming contently about cloud and AI

Re: The American Dream

IBM is certainly following the HP path, but HP is innovating newer ways to fail. IBM still needs to have a big merger and then start fragmenting itself. Both are circling the bowl, but HP seems a bit closer to the bottom.

Australian national census fails in the IBM cloud

Not a TITSUP, though

Seems to be totally supporting usual performance.

What new term can describe this?

Standard Horrible Information Transfer?

Continued Reduced Apache Performance?

Failing Accumulated Cloud Engines Performing As Little Machine?

Tech support locker scam poses as failed Microsoft Update

What is the difference between a bogus Flash update and a legitimate one?

Your computer is going to get pwned anyway. I suppose the bogus update just defines the time and beneficiary a little more precisely.

Cash, fear and uncertainty: The Holy Trinity of Bitcoin and blockchain

Re: "systems where trust cannot be exploited"

That last sentence is worth some thought. Why do you believe it is particularly difficult to control over 50% of the computing resources in the community? Over the years, people have cornered the market (or come close) in any number of commodities, and blockchain computing resources are just another commodity. Bitcoin mining is dominated by a few major players who can expend the capital necessary for large amounts of electricity and massive GPU farms, and it seems to be headed in the direction of chip fabrication, where each 2x increase in performance requires a 10x (or at least something more significant than 2x) increase in cost. As time progresses, it seems reasonable that fewer and fewer entities will be capable of investing in the infrastructure required to write to the blockchain. At that point, trust has been largely re-centralized. There are indications that this is happening already, and that it is an unavoidable feature of the blockchain.

Law enforcement versus Silicon Valley's idle problem children

Re: Vehicle security

If the quality of driving in my neighborhood is any indication, either we need autonomous cars with fantastic entertainment systems to keep the meat puppets distracted from touching any of the driving parts, or we need fewer distractions, so that the meat puppets concentrate on the road and the driving tasks at hand.

My current vehicle lacks cup holders, because its builders felt that the proper activity to be undertaken in a car was driving, and that if one wanted to consume beverages, one could always stop at a cafe.

Windows 10: One for the suits, right Microsoft? Or so one THOUGHT

Yawn

So, Microsoft is previewing an OS that "skips a version to signify a new generation of Windows" and won't be fully baked for another year. The stunning innovations contained therein are features that other desktops (oooh, multiple virtual desktops) have had for one to two decades and reversals of previously made bad decisions (Welcome back Start button. We spent a pile of dough in '95 to get people to press Start to shut down their computers, and it must have worked, because man-oh-man did people get irked when we took the button away).

It must be Xbox keeping Microsoft in business, because it surely isn't "innovation" like this. Is _anyone_ really waiting for Windows 10? Here is the question for the geniuses at Microsoft: if they hadn't put a bullet in XP, how many people would STILL be running it? Here is another question: despite the lack of official support, how many people ARE still running XP? It simply stuns me that 4 subsequent generations (Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and now Windows 10) have failed to improve on a 13 year-old OS in any significant way, other than to plug security some security holes.

Of course, Office is cut from the same cloth. Microsoft has made it "collaborative," has put it on a subscription model (benefitting Microsoft, and not the customer), has made a complete hash out of a formerly usable menu structure, and has invented several new file formats to confuse and delight, but is there _anything_ significant that a new copy of Office can do that a vintage copy of Office 97 can't? Microsoft can't even compete with itself (from almost 2 decades ago), much less with the plethora of free products out there that are perfectly adequate for day-to-day document processing needs.

This used to be the most feared competitive company in the industry. Now, it is like the unmasked Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi -- a pasty-faced, overweight former tyrant with some good in it.