Posts by Balding Greybeard

FCC urges Americans to run internet speed app to counter Big Cable's broadband data fudging

FCC App Gives An Honest View Performance

I live in a fringe urban area and the best internet service package I can get is AT&T 25 Mbs. The service was great for the first four months of the subscription; lately I am experiencing lots of dropped Zoom calls. I run AT&T’s speed test and the speeds reported are at or above what I subscribed to. The FCC app tells another story; this afternoon after a Zoom drop, the FCC app showed 4.26 Mbs with a latency of 44.82 ms.

Finally I have proof to say to AT&T, “liar, liar, pants on fire”.

Thank you FCC!!!

Astroboffins peeved as SpaceX's Starlink sats block meteor spotting – and could make us miss a killer asteroid

Did We Miss @Spindream’s Point?

“ Solution: Tell musky he has to also launch 1 mini space telescope satellite for each 1000 starlink satalites he launches which must be made available to global meteor hunters for free, and placed where they can best protect the planet.”

Use case, “meteor hunters”.

There are many use cases that space based telescopes would be superior.

It woz The Reg wot won it! Big Blue iron relics make it back to Blighty

Wu Hu

Congratulations!!!

CEOs beg for America-wide privacy law... to protect their businesses from state privacy laws

Re: If only...

YIKES! Surely ye jest.

The California Law is in some respects more onerous than GDPR. GDPR applies to a natural person, whereas the Cali Law applies to the household. One can only imagine the unintended consequences of that.

Committees in both the US House and Senate have been holding hearings on GDPR and GDPR like legislation. GDPR adopted in the US would make compliance easier for everyone and provide great consumer protection.

Massachusetts city tells ransomware scumbags to RYUK off, our IT staff will handle this easily

Just that Simple

Offline backups are key to recover from malware attacks.

FBI’s been saying that for years and organizations are finally listening and doing.

Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf. Microsoft scans Chromium code, lops off offensive words

Re: This is stupid

It’s all about context. In the US, a politician recently tweeted, “it’s all about the Benjamin’s”, in debate about US support of Israel. The same term historically referred to Benjamin Franklin’s picture on a $100 bill. One’s clearly offensive.

Me, I think of white hair, black hair. Devoid of color, all colors.

It’s time to stop using colors when referring to race; black, brown, or white are not acceptable. In the US the term African Americans is the preferred identification term; Euro, Caucasian, or Asian are preferred too.

Ohm my God: If you let anyone other than Apple replace your recent iPhone's battery, expect to be nagged by iOS

1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act

If memory serves correctly, DMCA in 1998 was about protecting digital content; television, movies, music, books, etc. Along with limiting the liability of ISPs. It was passed by unanimous vote in the Senate.

Interesting read on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

Protecting batteries, print cartridges, and other consumables was not discussed nor do I think was meant to be covered by the legislation. No way 100 senators from opposition parties would vote like that.

It’s just an unintended consequence that needs to be fixed.

Meet ELIoT – the EU project that wants to commercialize Internet-over-lightbulb

Re: I can think of several issues

@Loyal Commenter, you got to give power over Ethernet another try. I have 4-Netgear Powerline 2000s, Ethernet over power devices. Brings Ethernet to all 3-levels of my townhouse. And even use it to Connect my 3-node Google WiFi nodes. Google WiFi initially barked about the speed, but once settled in, I have consistent throughput to my wireless and streaming wired Hulu devices. No interference from neighbors, no glitchy performance. I walk around the house with iPad in-hand seamlessly transitioning from Google node to Google node.

Wired is the Best

I once rented space in an old meat warehouse converted into a multi-tenant office building. So many neighbors, so many WiFi signals. Equals too many collisions. Equals no throughput.

Mounted 1” conduit on the wall, with 2-CAT-5 drops by every desk, equals wonderful throughput. And multi-line phones at every desk.

Re: First radio, now light...

@Jedit, me thinks that line-of-sight requires ceiling mounts like most offices do today for WiFi. Question is, how many LiFi transmitters are required? And then I think of my Sammy TV remote, it uses infrared transport which bounces off just about anything.

Too often, I pickup the remote without looking at the orientation and try changing channels. When I realize the channel numbers are going down rather than up I figured the signal is probably bouncing off my great beer belly.

FCC boosts broadband competition by, er, banning broadband competition in buildings

Re: Does Pai mean that every utility - power, gas, water, etc - ...

A different approach by some states was to enact laws separating electric utilities into two pieces. First piece is regulated transmission companies that price based on cost and an allowed profit. Second piece is unregulated suppliers offering electricity at competitive prices and allowing for creative volume, price bundling, etc.

Maybe not a perfect system, but it would be better and more cost effective for infrastructure companies and suppliers. And hopefully a better deal for consumers.

14 sailors die aboard Russian cable spy, er, ocean research nuke sub after fire breaks out

Re: Nightmarish stuff

My father was an areal photographer stationed at Glenview Naval Air Station just north of Chicago. He was tasked with documenting the subs arrival and display at the MSI.

The museum sits about 500m from the Lake Michigan shore. They floated the sub through the St. Lawrence Seaway and thru the Great Lakes to get to Chicago. Once at the museum, it was a matter of “rolling the boat” to its resting place. Total moving bill, $250K.

Interesting short story about the boat’s capture, discovery of crypto stuff, and subterfuge at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-505

Yuge U-turn: Prez Trump walks back on Huawei ban... at least the tech sector seems to think so

Re: @AC

My wife started her IT career in the steel industry doing SAS analytics to eventually running a bar mill, working with vendors and large customers.

She got to see the rough-and-tumble construction industry. She shares that in construction and large-scale commercial real estate, that that’s how things are done; high-stakes bluster, big gambles, pushing contractors and customers to the edge and eventually getting a project completed.

While Trump is embarrassing in the civil world, if you understand where he came from, you can get a glimpse into how he operates, and how he has been successful.

Not condoning his boorish behavior, but if anyone watched his television show, heard about bragging about fingers up a lady’s private stuff, they knew what they were getting.

When history is written at the end of his presidency, I’ll hold my nose, but believe that he will have accomplished a lot in international trade.

You're not Boeing to believe this, but... Another deadly 737 Max control bug found

Unsafe At Any Speed

There’s something wrong with the design of the plane that can’t be flown by a human and requires a robot to override them.

Boeing needs to remove the plane from operation and go back to the drawing board.

Me, I’ll never fly on one and I imagine the public will avoid them too.

Prez Trump's trade war reshapes electronics supply chains as China production slows

Re: It all gets paid for by We The People.

Yes, initially tariffs are paid by “We The People”.

And over time China pays as multi-national suppliers move production elsewhere and manufacturers’ goods in other countries look cheaper in comparison.

I’ve been to China twice on business. On both occasions Chinese government officials screwed with us. Stupid stuff; for example the United Airlines plane I was traveling home on was ‘heavy’. Captain asks for the longer runway. Air Traffic Control says no. Captain taxies the plane to a remote spot, revs up the engines for 20m to burn off fuel to make the plane lighter.

China will receive its due karma for stealing and f*cking with foreigners.

Baltimore hit with more ransomware, ChinaMobile gets the boot in the US, and another (mild) Systemd system-d'oh!

Penny Wise Pound Foolish

The city of Baltimore’s woes were all over the US media this weekend. Oh poor me, I’m a victim. Too bad, the FBI and several federal agencies published an interagency warning to government agencies; federal, state and municipalities. In the warning, the FBI recommended having an offline copy of data to recover from an in case of a destructive attack.

Can only imagine the pinheads in Baltimore decided to save a few bucks.... or maybe they were holding out for a grant of other people’s money.

Pay row latest: We aren't biased against Big Tech, says Uncle Sam as it rolls eyes at Oracle

Re: People ith the same job title dont do the same work

I have the same job title as several of my peers. We each bring different skills and experiences to the job. Some skills are highly in demand in the market. I’m a security guy. Should a security guy be paid the same as a Linux admin, no offense to admins, I started my life as an admin on DOS 26.2 (I think - too many brain cells lost in the sixties). It depends on a number of factors. Should a security industry recognized expert be paid more than me? Am I coin-operated pain-in-the-butt, or a creative problem solver? There’s a lot of intangibles to consider.

That said, does the DoL take into account role, expertise and performance meeting goals on time?

What's in a name? Quite a bit when it's the most hated abbreviation of 2018 (GDPR, of course)

Re: Funny

Sarcasm fail.

Should the super-rich pay 70% tax rate above $10m? Here's Michael Dell's hot take for Davos

Re: Ocasio is nuts

Uhhm, income tax is on income, not worth.

Me thinks you need to select different data for your analysis.

Income Tax - Smincome Tax

Ain’t gonna do much. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez needs a better soak the rich plan.

The bulk of Mike’s worth was attained thru capital gains, increasing income taxes on people like him is laughable cause it won’t budge the needle much.

If she wants to gin up more tax revenue, she needs to find another way to do it. Perhaps tinkering with the cap-gains tax might do the trick. It was reduced to zero in the last tax law update. Okay the rich pay 20% gains tax and jamokes like me pay nothing.

But a tinker that takes gains and loses annually could be a better way to go.

Tax coders just need to be wary of unintended consequences. The last time the US imposed a luxury tax, the rich stopped buying yachts, putting yacht builders out of work.

Pick three people you think will replace Google Cloud CEO Greene, then forget them – because it's Thomas Kurian

The Tech World Needs More Diane Greene's

Mentoring and Educating our next generation of female founder CEOs.

That says it all.

Good Luck Diane. The tech world needs more women in leadership positions and up-and-down the ranks.

Truly a brilliant approach - mentor would-be female CEOs. And their sucess will encourage more young women to enter the IT ranks from high school, thru college, and into the work force.

RIP Charles Wang: Computer Associates cofounder dies aged 74

Smoker

If memory serves me correctly, Charles was a smoker. Wonder if lung cancer led to his demise.

Apple to dump Intel CPUs from Macs for Arm – yup, the rumor that just won't die is back

Need To Think Differently

Imagine an OSX hypervisor running on an ARM chip on a motherboard that has an x86 low-cost Atom chip.

Problems solved... IOS functionality on the ARM, MS PowerPoint, Visio, etc. on the Atom.

Honey, I shrunk the mainframe: Fujitsu freshens up GS21 kit

Long Live the Mainframe

Self identified balding greybeard here...

The IBM Mainframe Architecture allows 256 I/O channels. How many HBAs can you cram onto on x86 box? Or maybe better considered as, how many parallel I/O operations does your biggest favorite box support?

I work for a DASD vendor [spinning rust for the open systems types], and see MF boxen in the largest transaction processing environments, airline reservation systems, credit card authorization systems, supermarket cashiering apps, etc. I've watched several large customers try to replace the mainframe, but fail because they can't replace the I/O parallelism capability that the MF provides.

Until Intel, PCI or HBA vendor figures out how to match that type of parallelism, the MF will live on.