Posts by littlesmith

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

From my experience: Choose the right words. I had this situation also once. But I realized that is was my fault. As an experienced PC user I see the words mouse and pointer as synonyms. If I want to move the pointer, I subjectively directly move the pointer - the hand movements on the mouse come only to my conscious mind if something is not working right.

But for a newbie this is different: In the mind of those people the mouse and the pointer are two different things, even if the already know that they have to move the mouse to move the pointer.

You can do the experiment: First explain that the mouse moves the pointer. Then let the person play a little bit to get accustomed to the mouse and pointer concept. If you then ask the person to move the pointer up, the person will not even get the idea to lift the mouse. If you ask the person to move the mouse up, the person may think you want to explain something new and will lift the mouse to see what happens.

Gmail is secure. Netflix is secure. Together they're a phishing threat

Re: This has happened to me for years

Google (as well as the infamous mod_spell) ignores two basic rules of good software development:

1. Never fix user input!

2. If the customer insists on breaking the first rule, then let the software inform the user about the fix and let the user confirm the fix!

Fixing user input silently is very wrong. There are so many reasons for wrong user input: Typos, wrong information, fraud etc. If a software fixes it without informing the user, the user has no chance to find out hat something is wrong.

I don't use Gmail, so I was quite surprised that they do such a stupid thing. I thought in 2018 every software engineer should have learned that at university...

BR

littlesmith

No, Stephen Hawking's last paper didn't prove the existence of a multiverse

Re: As far as I can tell, you can prove

It could also mean that it is not possible to destroy other universes. Even if there is an infinite number of constraints to universes, the number of universes can still be infinite. Which one is bigger: the set of natural numbers or the set of even numbers?

Re: Awesome

The sun is already really big, from our point of view. But that doesn't stop other stars to be a 1000 times bigger. Also are the dimensions we use to measure the size of space part of this universe and they are only valid inside the universe. So outside of our space time words like "big", "small", "long", "short", "early" or "late" have no meaning. Space and time as we know it are the fabric of our universe. If there is an outside, there may be some other kinds of space and time, but nothing that can be compared or have any connection with space and time of the inside. From this point of view, our universe has no size at all, also no age.

But basically there is no outside for anyone being inside a universe. We have our own space-time which contains everything. If there are other space-times, there can't be a way to exchange matter or energy with it, because the matter and energy of our universe need the space and time of our universe to exist.

This also means there is no exchange of information, since information needs matter or energy. Therefore I think the borders of the universe are also the borders of what we can know.

Hackers create 'ghost' traffic jam to confound smart traffic systems

Re: In the new automated world we are creating...

Even if I also do not anticipate the FSF Car any time soon, your posting IMHO has a flaw: Open software does not automatically mean that anybody can feed data into it. It just means that it is open for anybody who wants to understand how it works. To be allowed to participate in public (data) traffic, the software still needs to be certified, as it is today with any conventional car before a new model is allowed to hit the road in most countries. Autonomous cars will need to have a certified system to be allowed in public traffic. But a car vendor could use the open system, adapt it to his models and get it certified for those. When signatures are involved, the car could refuse to run with customized software.

Today way you can theoretically customize your current car in an unlawful manner and drive around with it, until the police will eventually check your car. The same thing could go with customized software. If there was a standard for certification and signing, the police could easily check an autonomous car's software.

Closed software does not stop the real bad guys to do their evil stuff, it just adds one or two layers of complexity for them, which are quickly broken if enough money or fanaticism is involved. But open software would enable anybody interested in it (e.g. engineering students) to study existing systems and maybe even come up with a better software.

So closing up all those systems does not stop the bad guys, but makes it hard to impossible for anybody who is interested in those systems in a lawful way.

Intellisense was off and developer learned you can't code in Canadian

Archimedes

Acorn built very British computers back then. The BASIC dialect for the Archimedes had a command for colour selection which was spelled "SETCOLOUR".

Never saw that anywhere else.

The e-waste warrior, 28,000 copied Windows restore discs, and a fight to stay out of jail

Re: Oh, come on

> What happened to common sense in courts...?

TLDR: Nothing, never has been there...

What is common sense? If you look at things considered common sense, you will find that they are not so common at all. There were times when it was common sense that the sun orbits earth .

This is the oldest problem in jurisdiction: Basically laws are the way to try to codify what is considered current common sense. But common sense is mostly common only in groups, not the whole society.

Laws will always reflect the common sense of the most powerful groups in the society. So if you do belong to other groups, having a different common sense, laws and jurisdiction can seem to be contradicting common sense, but they just contradict your own sense.

To be clear: I also think that the guy did nothing ethically wrong. But that is only common sense among people who now something about operating systems, licenses and the technical background.

And this group is quite small...

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Re: That simultaneous landing

Basically the boosters did not land simultaneously. There was a slight delay between the touch downs purposely created, because otherwise the landing radars of the rockets would have disturbed each other.

Can't wait to get to Mars on a SpaceX ship? It's a cold, dead rock – boffins

Re: Start of a retraction

Mining Jupiter will be forbidden because of the Medusae!