Posts by fobobob 302 posts • joined 18 Nov 2016
I remember seeing the lonely Warp machine languishing at a standalone desk with a burned in Mag CRT every time I went to my dad's office as a kid, well into the early 2000s. I was told never to touch it. Would not be shocked to learn that it still exists in spirit form, in a VM.
I'm probably somewhat biased as I never got to use a new one, but at a previous job, those were the standard deployment. Unfortunately, it seemed that about 3/4 of them had 'sticky' keys that couldn't be depressed smoothly (key support tube binding in its channel), making it impossible to do more than 40wpm without significant error rate.
Recently upgraded my ~7 year old Latitude E5430 to the fastest Ivy Bridge dual core (higher clock is more desirable than more threads in my use case) I could get my hands on; with 8GB of RAM and a decent SSD, it's more than enough for most tasks. Sandy/Ivy bridge was about the point in time where it seems like Intel stopped trying, until recently, so it has worked out quite well. Sadly, can't upgrade the machine past 8GB, though it seems a factory option was available for 16GB. At work, we have a few Ivy Bridge laptops with 4x DIMM slots, and support for 32GB RAM, good for a few more years running Windows 8.
16:10 monitors are a wonderful thing, especially when one must work on 16:9 content. Trying to work on 1920x1080 content on a same-sized screen is a nuisance. I finally got my hands on a lot of 5x ~7-8 year old HP 1920x1200 monitors for work and home, and couldn't be happier. Heck, I even found the 2x 1680x1050 monitors I had been using previously at work to be significantly less annoying than a single 1920x1080 monitor, as the 30px vertical loss isn't noticeable when you already have to scroll.
The CVE mentioned in the article is for a buffer overflow exploit in Philips' firmware; the exploit does seem to be doing something within the ZigBee software stack (ZigBee Light Link), as implemented there. That does raise concerns that maybe this is not limited to one manufacturer.
On long hauls, modern airliners with very high passenger loads can easily rival or exceed the fuel economy of the best ICE/hybrid cars. On average, they seem pretty comparable, especially when considering the amount of driving done with only 1 or 2 passengers. Of course, I'm guessing this guy's flight wasn't particularly packed.
Recently had an ultrasonic motion detector at my office go haywire and emit a high frequency whistle at an unusually high volume. The pitch was roughly what one might expect from a large CRT television, but much louder. It also created hot/cold spots (constructive/destructive interference) where it was unbearable/inaudible. Even older employees whose ears had poor high frequency sensitivity could hear it at times, or at least feel the sound pressure. Solved by wrapping masking tape around it until the interference patterns were 'adjusted' to not bother anyone while they were at their desks. It eventually stopped emitting noise, having failed entirely. Still has a working PIR module on the same unit, so all is well.
After having seen more photos of the damage (more available now at that link), in this case photos of both sides of the vertical stabilizer (i suppose they flipped it over), that puncture (seems to have gone clean through it) does suggest something of relatively high velocity striking it, from the side. I've seen more than my share of crash photos, but I don't recall having seen anything like that on a relatively undamaged tail; the vertical tail seems to be the one flight surface that often survives relatively intact, in all but the most forceful of impacts... plenty of exceptions, but it's quite often the single largest contiguous section of aerodynamic surface that remains after impact.
Large photo of the purported 'shrapnel' damage can be seen here (there's a link above the photo to load the large version), and turns out to be rocks/other debris:
http://avherald.com/h?article=4d1aea51&opt=0
There's a large hole torn above one of the passenger windows, but also inconsistent with warhead penetrators.
For an example of a piece of computer software with a truly terrible ribbon, look to Articulate Storyline. Totally non-customizable, beyond being able to kind of set up some quick access shortcuts. The whole program is like a post-lobotomy PowerPoint; no VBA, no custom keyboard shortcuts, glitchy drag-drop...
I routinely end a work week with > 3 browsers (Old FF ESR for Firebug, Normal Firefox, Firefox forks, Chrome), 10 windows, 100 tabs open. 12GB RAM in a Windows VM on an older laptop (Sandy Bridge) with 16GB RAM, and usually don't have to close anything unless some crap JavaScript takes it out. I'd say any given tab gets actively reviewed maybe 25% of the time, but most of them get used at least once as bread crumbs to help me recall what I was doing.
Know your CPL files! Winkey + R to execute:
appwiz.cpl (add/remove programs)
main.cpl (mouse! why? don't know, but it is now. or invoke like "control mouse")
ncpa.cpl (network adapters)
sysdm.cpl (old "system properties")
firewall.cpl (basic firewall config)
Know your MMC files! WinKey + R to execute:
devmgmt.msc (Device Manager)
diskmgmt.msc (Disk Manager)
services.msc (Services Manager)
lusrmgr.msc (L(ocal)user Manager for WinPro elites; no Home plebs)
wf.msc (advanced firewall config)
compmgmt.msc (Computer manager, basically all of the above)
Know your other handy stuff! WinKey + R to execute:
mstsc (Terminal Services / RDP client)
inetmgr (IIS manager)
control (control panel; can also do:)
control mouse
control userpasswords ("modern" user manager)
control userpasswords2 (old Win2K era user manager)
There's a bunch of this stuff, and it's a hell of a lot more convenient than fumbling through Windows Settings:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/86339-list-commands-open-control-panel-items-windows-10-a.html
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