Posts by Dwarf 1514 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Dec 2014
I remember in the NT 3.51 days when they have 3D screen savers - in the days before 3D video offload existed and Compaq servers had very basic video cards. Servers were running at 100% CPU because one of the admins had logged in and locked the screen and nobody could work as it was scrolling some 3D stuff on the KVM port.
One of my first jobs there was educating the admins about why that was a bad idea and updating the build process to overwrite all the screen savers with the blank screen one. Oddly the problem never came back.
Was it not irresponsible for the code to be publicly accessible in the first place ?
Blaming the black hats is not the right route here, Boeing needs to realise that they live in 2019, we rely on things to be secure. You should not try to rely on security by obscurity.
If they need help in doing security reviews, there are plenty of suitably skilled consultants who can help them. There is no excuse for poor security or buggy code, particularly on safety critical platforms that affect people's life.
Now that would be a handy thing to have around if you are in that field. Can’t imagine how much paperwork they probably had to go through to get one up there.
But what would they call a Rad Hardened PI ?
A hard crust Pi
An over cooked Pi
A burned Pi
I bet the SD card is more of a problem - because they barely work properly down here in the first place.
I wonder how a mobile operator can operate if they have no facilities to communicate with mobile devices ?
Sounds like the accountants are in charge again..
What happens when they upgrade from this Generation to the next Generation (4G to 5G, 5G to 6G).Who would be paying for that ?
How much more will consumers end up having to pay for the privilege of making a call ?
Yep, they are called welders :-)
I'm fairly sure that the 3D CAM versions of those is not in the hobbyist price range and an order from heat-sinks-r-us is probably a lot cheaper and easier.
Would be a fun toy to play with though - until the point you burn your garage down with it..
I remember in a previous life having to produce the hardware and software for a PC that allowed different systems that had printer ports to be interfaced so that we could capture printed output direct to disk, rather than into reams of paper. This connected to various things with Centronics parallel ports, RS232 serial ports and a mainframe printer port, so we had to do the inevitable character set mapping from EBCDIC to ASCII.
We very quickly became popular with our customers as we shipped them CD's and DVD's rather than truck loads of dead tree. This also made searching and processing the printed data far simpler and faster and made the working environment a heck of a lot quieter without all the printers buzzing away.
The more that people understand complex subjects the better for all of us on the progression of life's journey and how we evolve in future generations.
An understanding of IT security and how to detect where weaknesses are allows us to build stronger computer systems that are resistant to misuse. This is why many companies have bug bounties.
So, how do young people gain knowledge of the complex fields without experience and guidance ? You don't meet many of them down the pub (if you can still find a pub) and its not like more common skills like welding, bricklaying or plumbing where you might have a mate who knows a bit about that if you really want to learn it.
Raspberry Pi's are instrumental in breaking down barriers on understanding things like OS's, programming and GPIO based control rather than someone saying "its a phone" or "its a TV" but having no clue about how the device worked.
In many ways IT security is the same problem with the same solution. Poorly deployed systems need to be called out so that the vulnerabilities can be resolved and better systems produced. It is the vendors problem when they do things badly, not the hacker who finds their weakness out. Better that than someone who gains access for nefarious purposes and nobody has a clue in how that happened and quietly brushes it under the carpet and offers a coffee with doughnuts to make people forget about whats happening.
Knowledge should be freely available so that we can evolve to the next set of technologies and we all know we only learn by our mistakes, this means that we need to understand what those mistakes are first. You can't do that if the information is not freely available.
If it’s exactly over his head, then introduce him to the RF doughnut. There is no power at the centre (due to the hole where the jam goes) - it is a management summary after all !!
The chore was when he took the decision that all the pictures really needed his logo on the backdrop and so he had to update the entire catalogue over a few weeks...
What was wrong with using a transparent image overlay on top of the pictures or scripting something in image manipulation software ?
My performance on my computer is best achieved when I choose the apps and add-ons that best for my need by not having to download and watch things that are irrelevant. I trade my computer doing things so I don’t have to. No developer can measure my effectiveness, nor define it as “browser performance”.
The same goes for security, I’ll choose the products I trust to secure my life - from the locks on my doors to the browsers and add-ons, to a non-slurpy OS, it’s really not a difficult concept for people to grasp.
As a company, you might want to try and control me by making choices for me, but I can tell you that I’m far more stubborn about what I will and won’t do than you are.
Given that bean counters like to have cost codes for everything, how about they set up cost codes for the following so that they can analyse the effectiveness of the hot desking platform.
Group 1 - Hotdesk users
1. Locating a hotdesk / Evicting that person who hasn't booked it but swears blind that they have
2. Cleaning up the hotdesk so its habitable - yesterdays lunch, coffee cups and random stationary
3. Configuring the hotdesk so that the monitors work properly and are positioned properly
4. Finding a working chair
5. Using the booking app (login time, navigation time etc) Also covers when its busy / down / retries etc.
Group 2 - Remote workers
5. Remote working set-up time - sitting in my office, firing up remote access.
Now lets see what the cost analysis shows about efficiencies
... and there is the flaw in the plan.
If you had a good reputation for building rock solid planes that didn't pile into the ground as you cut costs, then perhaps people might say "OK with caution", but right now, if you expect me to be a live crash test dummy on your next plane - then nope, no way, that isn't happening
I went to open a word doc on my ipad the other day - first time I've need to in several years. it opened, but no siree, you can't edit it without an Office 345 licence.
Well, stuff that, close doc, open in Pages and do what I need there. If that hadn't worked, well I'd have not bothered and would have waited until I got to my Linux machine or my Mac and used one of the tools on there..
Microsoft - bully boy tactics won't work. Making things more difficult just makes us more stubborn to do something else that doesn't involve you.
I lost my hearing for a couple of days when a large electrolytic capacitor decided to disassemble in close proximity to me. Even 6 months later, well after the acrid vapours had passed, we were still finding bits of paper and plastic in completely illogical places.
The other unanswered question is how exactly the cram so much stuff into such a small package as its clear after they go pop that it shouldn't have been possible to fit it all in there in the first place..
Looks like those who design offices don't have a clue about what its like to work in them.
Where do you collaborate ?
Where do you store things ?
Where do you put your bag and your lunch ?
Where is the natural light source ?
Where is the cooling in the aircraft hanger ceiling ? - It looks like it will get mighty hot in the summer and freezing in the winter.
How comfortable are the seats to sit on for an extended period ?
I wonder what the office looks like in 3 years once its had no maintenance, everything looks tardy and half the chairs are missing vital bits like arms ?
I wonder which desk the senior management will be sitting at -- oh, no of course these are just cattle desks, not management desks
Observing that shops are busy or empty is called observing the truth.
If you want them busy, go and round up your windows fanboy friends and go to them.
In the meantime, we will just take the piss out of another Microsoft failure.
As a previous poster said, Windows is done as a consumer product. Corporates are moving away too. Everything new is Linux based and uses open standards, no more lock in. Most devs use Macs as their machine of choice. Many others do the same.
It’s time for you to catch up too, open the windows, go outside and see for yourself.
Let’s not forget who’s eyes they are and who is paying for the bandwidth to pull down the irrelevant adverts for stuff I’m not at all interested in. Also remember who is paying to clean up the infected machines when malicious adverts do something bad to the machine. This is why we block adverts.
Seriously Google, rememberer that we have real work to do, so we are not interested in your ad platform, ad revenue and the like.
My response will simply be to move to a browser that doesn’t try to control what I do and to close any web page that manages to get an advert on screen.
You’ve already broken YouTube on IPad with the adverts, did you notice how many people just close what they were watching when a forced advert comes up ?
People don’t like adverts - get the message, it’s a really simple concept.
The list of changes from the patch seems to be missing one key line.
1. Stop flying the plane into the ground and killing everyone on board
You also have to hope that they realise that its a good idea to stop putting safety above profits. If there was an option that was only safe if another option was fitted, then you have to wonder how many other "options" are on the plane that really should come with all the other pieces of the Meccano kit that makes it a full working capability.
How about pricing it just above the cost to run it for the year, that way people get the capability, but nobody is profiteering.
Registrars - if you hike prices, I’ll expect to see a breakdown of cost, so that I know I’m getting good value. You might also note how the broad swathe of expensive domains out there are largely ignored by those of us who want to run a couple of sites for a bit of fun, the same thing will happen if the convenient domains hike their prices too.
I wonder if MS can point to a single use case where XBox or Zune is on the customers requirements for the OS
1. Must be able to play games in company time
2. Must be able to store a bunch of probably not legal music files and have the user plugged in to their PC / bluetooth connected. Add in a bit of bandwidth slurping with the music downloads, requests to export "their music" when they leave or when their PC gets rebuilt, additional storage requirements on the file shares.. the list can go on and on.
Now overlay the common use of virtual desktop infrastructure where its in some remote DC and screen re-displayed across the LAN and it makes even less sense.
But then how many years ago was it that we realised that MS weren't in touch any more
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