Posts by iGNgnorr

You want us to think of the children? Couldn't agree more

Re: One solution solves most of these problems ....

How exactly does that work in the huge part of the world which is not USA?

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

Re: click bait

"It didn't lose a wheel according to your article, it just lost a tyre!"

So, you are happy to just lose a tyre are you? The effect of losing a wheel and a tyre is rather similar. Maybe you'd like to try driving your car/bike/truck without a tyre and see how you like it.

UK Online Safety Bill to become law – and encryption busting clause is still there

Re: Blighty seems determined to cut itself off from the rest of the world

Idiot.

Microsoft Visual Studio: Cluttering up developer disks for 25 years

"Where Visual Studio has become somewhat bloated with age, Visual Studio Code, now approaching the seventh anniversary of its release, remains lightweight enough to run comfortably within a browser."

VS Code is far too bloated and complicated to do simple editing, and far too simplistic and complicated (how many add-ons do I need to do *that*?) to do anything serious. I really don't understand why I don't remove it. Maybe I just like to be fashionable.

Microsoft's Cloud PCs debut – priced between $20 and $158 a month

"Good luck with that!"

Not least becuse a Chromebook has a broken keyboard as far as I'm concerned. ([Google developer thinking:] Oooh look, there's a key I don't use: let's remove it (becasue obviously if *I* don't use it, no-one does) and add a Google search key for those who can't figure out how to search Google any other way.

Remember the bloke who was told by Zen Internet to contact his MP about crap service? Yeah, it's still not fixed

Re: I guess some jobs just go wrong.

I've had similar problems. Openreach never fixed anything despite Zen sending them half a dozen times over a couple of months. Suddenly, a few weeks after everyone had given up, things got better overnight. Our guess is that Openreach changed out some of their kit overnight ... never admitted to anything though

Rackspace literally decimates workforce: One in ten staffers let go this week

Re: Leveraged buyouts should be illegal

It is particularly stupid that Sears failed: for decades before Amazon, Sears had a successful catalog business. They really should have been able to adust that to the online world, but failed to do so. Maplin is another which failed to do exactly the same thing.

Cyberlaw experts: Take back control. No, we're not talking about Brexit. It's Automated Lane Keeping Systems

To err is ... AI

Those who make the rules are falling for the idea that humans make mistakes (they do) and that driver "assistance" things do not (provably false, time and time again.) A big difference is that when a human makes a mistake, they take immediate corrective action. The assistance things just blunder on.

IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster, sources say

"As an IBMer, I'd like to say that the article implies that every user at IBM is having issues. I'm not, and I suspect that I'm not alone."

So you'll be the janitor then

BT promises firmware update for Mini Whole Home Wi-Fi discs to prevent obsessive Big Tech DNS lookups

Re: Ping?

And ... once you've looked it up, keep using the one you got until either it doesn't work, or the device is rebooted. Seems pretty basic really.

Home Office slams PNC tech team: 'Inadequate testing' of new code contributed to loss of 413,000 records

Re: an affective spell checker

I'm sure you meant "reel words in the wrong plaice".

Googler demolishes one of Apple's monopoly defenses – that web apps are just as good as native iOS software

Re: Many APIs are undesirable

When exactly do you remember Google pushing ActiveX, which was a Microsoft thing?

If you have a QNAP NAS, stop what you're doing right now and install latest updates. Do it before Qlocker gets you

Re: Hard-coded login credentials - ouch!

"After all, there is OpenMediaVault. You can install it on a RasPi an tailor it to exactly your needs. Mission accomplished."

Have you actually done this? There's slightly more to a NAS than sticking some software in a Pi. How about getting a SSD cached four disk RAID setup working on it for a start. Or two ethernet connections.

Is OpenMediaVault actually more secure than a commercial NAS? While QNAP's screw-up here is appalling, there is no guarantee that *anything* else won't have security issues.

QNAP going downhill

My first NAS was a Drobo. After this stuffed itself, I went for a QNAP. It has been much better than the Drobo. Until recently.

A non-functioning Drobo sometimes recovers by itself if left disconnected in a cool dark place for several months (seriously!) Mine actually did so, and it is now a backup for the QNAP - and powered off 99% of the time.

A few months ago, QNAP updates started breaking things. Sometimes they'd get fixed, then broken again (broken timestamps on files copied to n SMB connected drive for example.) Their huge failure in putting hard-coded credentials in the Hybrid Sync Backup is just the icing on the cake. QNAP seem to have abandoned any pretence of quality control.

The aforemention Hybrid Sync Backup arrived unasked for on my QNAP. Luckily for me, I decided to disable it just a few days agao as for me it is completely useless. I also don't actively use any of the internet-facing aspects of the QNAP, although it is well-nigh impossible to have a NAS which has no internet access at all: it is no use whatsoever if it isn't on a network, and unelss you are going to run more than one network, that network is going to be connected to the internet.

My QNAP is currently off, and to the best of my knowledge unaffected by this malware, but later today I'm going to disconnect my wired LAN from the router, and investigate thoroughly.

Chrome 90 goes HTTPS by default while Firefox injects substitute scripts to foil tracking tech

Really useful blocking

One of the most useful things any of the browsers could do is permanetly and completely block autoplay of *anything*.

LastPass to limit fans of free password manager to one device type only – computer or mobile – from next month

Re: Classic ploy

"A sharpened quill and a fireproof safe?"

That might need wheels if you intend using it with that computing device in your pocket.

Linux maintainer says long-term support for 5.10 will stay at two years unless biz world steps up and actually uses it

Re: Please donate

"Linux is a community effort but they could use the money, okay?"

From the article, the main gist of his request is commitment to use and test the kernel for six years. There's no point devoting resources to supporting a kernel for six years if no-one bothers to use it or test it.

Firefox 85 crumbles cache-abusing supercookies with potent partitioning powers

Firefox 85 hangs

Firefox 85 is unusable: it hangs immediately. On the up side, that does prevent user tracking.

Another piece comes to .NET Core: Microsoft will keep the runtime patched automatically

Re: .NET 5 doesn't run on Windows 7 ... unless ...

Why is this a problem? If you are running Windows 7 you are either already paying for ESU, or you really shouldn't be developing any new software. I sure as heck wouldn't want to use any software built on a non-ESU W7 system.

Re: It's a myth that it's intrinsically impossible to create bug free software

"Why is why the correct solution is to generally simplify."

I worked for some time under a manager who kept wanting to *add* simplicity. She didn't seem able to understand that adding anything is the exact opposite of simplicity. You can just guess what the product was like both before and after simplicity was added.

Considering the colonisation of Mars? Werner Herzog would like a word

Comparison

If there's one person who is as annoyingly opinionated as Elon Musk, it is Werner Hertzog. However, one makes real progress toward the future and the other makes films.

Xen Project officially ports its hypervisor to Raspberry Pi 4

Re: ARM or x86?

Sometimes I wish I could downvote and upvote at the same time, just to keep things in balance.

Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid mechanical keyboard: Weird, powerful, comfortable ... and did we mention weird?

H2G2

"Not come across any smart lifts, in my experience."

You have clearly not visted the Heart of Gold.

If you think Mozilla pushed a broken Firefox Android build, good news: It didn't. Bad news: It's working as intended

"...even some of them have been guilty of switching to a "pay++" model where you are nagged to pay again for stuff you don't want."

Or switch to a new owner and/or to in-app payments and want you to pay for it again. This is usually accompanied by non-improvements. (e.g. AquaMail or Solitaire Megapack.)

A bridge too far: Passengers on Sydney's new ferries would get 'their heads knocked off' on upper deck, say politicos

Re: They could

"You are thinking small. If you dredge deep enough then eventually there will not be enough water to fill the gap and job done !"

I've heard people ask (here in Blighty) whether someone digging a hole was trying to get to Australia, so if those down under start digging in the opposite direction, they may meet in the middle. I'm not sure this solves the original problem however.

Trucking hell: Kid leaves dad in monster debt after buying oversized vehicle on eBay

eBay, PayPal and Amazon customer support

If I had to rate customer support for these threee, I'd rate them:

Amazon 9.9/10

eBay 2/10

PayPal -1/10

PayPal are the least helpful company on this planet in my experience. They simply will not help. Unfortunately a number of small businesses use PayPal to process online payments, so either you stick with Amazon or take a risk and use the small business and PayPal.

Fortunately, in the UK the credit (not debit) card rules force the card companies to properly process chargebacks when things go wrong with a PayPal processed payment. I always think at least twice before using PayPal to process a card payment, and often just don't take the risk.

I've not had to force a chargeback very often (3 or maybe 4 times in my entire life,) but 2 of those have involved PayPal card payments.

Better Java than Java: Kotlin 1.4 introduces new compilers for JVM and JavaScript

Re: Sprouting like mushrooms (or are they toadstools?)

There's change, and there's change for change's sake. There's far too much of the latter, which makes useful changes easy to overlook.

An important ability in programming is to get it right. Jumping from one language to another doesn't help this necessary ability. Do one thing and do it well, aka "Jack of all trades, master of none."

ANPR maker Neology sues Newcastle City Council after failing to win 'air quality' snoopcam project bid

Re: Misconceived...

Hmmm. You must live somewhere not a million miles from Kidderminster! Another Diamond trick, which is best performed on a narrow blind bend on a hill, is breaking down and lubricating the road.

NHS tests COVID-19 contact-tracing app that may actually work properly – EU neighbors lent a helping hand

Re: How will they know it's a false alarm?

"Yes this pandemic costs money. So what?"

So someone has to pay for it. The government? They don't actually have money: what they spend comes from your pocket and mine. Soak the rich? Well, there's actually not enough of them to pay for all this. Businesses then. We're already seeing that many of them are struggling - of course, to some they are just laying off staff so they can keep their big bonuses, but with no income and your prospect of making them pay for unnecessary isolation, it doesn't actually work quite like that. How's your local pub/nightclub/beauty salon/etc. doing for example? Rolling in cash?

Nokia 5310: Retro feature phone shamelessly panders to nostalgia, but is charming enough to be forgiven

Re: This is NOT that suitable for older people

What older people need is not patronising people like yourself.

So you really didn't touch the settings at all, huh? Well, this print-out from my secret backup says otherwise

rm -r

I used to work as a systems administartor who, among other things, provisioned Linux virtual machines. As these were development systems, the users all needed root. One user was persistently and increasingly noisily complaining that the systems I supplied were very unstable and kept needing to be rebuilt.

After the third time for one particular system in a couple of days, with management now involved, I decided to mount the offending broken system from another one. It had managed to perserve the bash history before it killed itself: yup, rm -r from the root directory.

The complaints from that user about unstable systems stopped. No apology was offered of course.

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

Re: It still doesn't look good for air travel

"extending the life of the current 737 fleet, some of those aircraft are looking "tired" these days"

Tired, but properly designed, built and maintained aircraft can carry on safely for many years. They don't need to look pretty, just work.

"If their senior management won't get on them, they're not safe."

You are assuming there won't be a defeat device which detects the presence of top brass and allows the pilots to actually fly the aircraft properly.

IBM's Watson Health wing left looking poorly after 'massive' layoffs

Re: When IBM was good, they were helping with open source

"But for most of their lives they've been horrid."

I don't know how long you've been around, but IBM have been around over a century (only 96 as IBM though,) and particularly in the context of this article, for most of those, they were excellent with their employees but also their customers. Their competitors did no fare so well as evidenced by a few anti-trust actions and consent degrees.

The brief time spent openly defending open source - while creditable - was but a blip in their long history.

Square peg of modem won't fit into round hole of PC? I saw to it, bloke tells horrified mate

Re: ain't no problem in the world that can't be solved with hot-snot

"or cyanoacrylate Superglue?"

In my experience, the only thing that stuff sticks is me.

Resistance is futile: Some Cisco security appliances are ticking time bombs of fail thanks to faulty resistors

Re: The manufacturing process issue

"A process failure during manufacturing of one batch of resistors should be found when the random samples of the batch are tested."

Generally, items like resistors are not tested for 18 months. As another poster suggested, this may be an under-spec'd item which is not itself at fault, merely over-used. That a mere resistor dying causes an entire unit to fail sounds like a potential design issue too. Re-furb of a board with a dead resistor ought to be possible.

Further proof ...

Further proof that China/Huawei bad, US/Cisco good. Or so I am led to believe by the orange headed one.

Guess what's heading to trial? IBM and its tactic of yoinking promised commissions after sales reps seal the deal

Re: IBM will desperately try to settle

"bankrupt if he loses"

Not necessarily. He may be on a no win, no fee deal with his lawyers. Given how IBM tends to win cases, that would normally tend to suggest it is unlikely, however, in this case, IBM have lawyered themselves in a bind: they are in trouble either way, so I'd say there's a good chance he (personally) has nothing to lose.

COBOL-coding volunteers sought as slammed mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response

Despair

"What is wrong is the ridiculousness of keep using software that's so old it was invented when computers didn't have enough memory to hold the full date of the year and keep replacing the hardware while keeping using the same software.

Practicality the whole servers have been replaced by now, if anything remains of the old servers at all, and yet they keep using COBOL for them.

Hard disks start to fail at about ten years if not earlier, wires and fans don't last forever, there are also problems like the bios ending being so old it just dies even if you keep changing the battery

Buying cheap ends becoming expensive and replacing the whole servers with a version of Linux and up to date (By Debian stable standards) software would end saving the state a huge amount of money in the long run.

Yes, there are newer versions of COBOL but this is the COBOL that was used in the eighties,;even if you want to keep using COBOL you should at least update to the modern version so there will be people left alive that can use it when the Year 2038 problem strikes."

There are some absurd comments posted hereabouts, but this one is beyond ridiculous. Have you no clue whatsoever about managing computer systems? Even the Linux ones you seem to think are the answers to everyone's prayers?

Yes, hard disks fail. You apparently don't know that it is possible to move data from old disks to new ones, and even if the old ones fail before you do that, you restore from backups. Maybe you've heard of RAID? If not, maybe should learn about it. You'll no doubt be shocked to know that shops which run large COBOL systems actually perform regular scheduled backups in case of worst case disk system failure. And know how to restore from them.

Most systems which run COBOL at scale don't have BIOSes, but even if they did, BIOSes don't fail due to batteries. As for wires wearing out ... maybe the cheap eBay knock-offs you use for your 'phone, but not those used on business systems.

What the version of COBOL originally used has to do with it is entirely beyond me. COBOL programs compiled 40 years ago on IBM mainframes will still run today. Assuming the source code hasn't been lost (this is actually a genuine problem) it can be recompiled with the current compiler, usually with no changes.

UK Information Commissioner OKs use of phone data to track coronavirus spread

Re: More Panic Buying

"This time for old-style dumb phones with no geo-location hardware. See the flip-phone beloved by Gibbs in NCIS"

As other posters have pointed out, a mobile 'phone's location can be triangulated from nearby cell masts. That's what allows a cellular network to connect to your 'phone. No need for GPS, no need for Wi-Fi location. No need for Bluetooth location. Just the mere fact it is a cellular 'phone and is switched on.

Re: Wedge

"I'm interested in just how accurate any of these measures are. For example, A lot of houses (in the UK at least) have the living area separated from the street by two courses of brick and an air-gap, often pierced by a window and a door. Someone who is legitimately indoors following the self-isolation rules could wrongly be placed several metres outside the house. Alternatively, people walking on the pavement outside could be classed as contacts despite never actually having anything to do with the self-isolating individual."

You are missing the point. Twice.

1: This is being implemented using anonymised data, therefore it isn't for tracking individuals. (Clearly, without anonimisation it could be, but this isn't the stated use.)

2: This isn't anything to do with people just stepping outside, it is to track significant movements. It is to get a picture of how much general movement there is, and where it is taking place. (Again, without anonimisation, it could be used to track individuals, but that isn't the stated use case, and in any case, not whether anyone is one side of a wall or the other!)

For example, this data can be used to see if tens of thousands of people are driving 20 miles to exercise, or whether just a few hundred are. One may require further restrictions of movement, but the other probably not.

There are obvious concerns about how this data could be [mis]used, but mistaking someone walking past your home for you isn't one of them.

Oi! You got a loicence for that Java, mate? More devs turn to OpenJDK to swerve Oracle fee

Re: Oracle drives non-java uptake

"In the mean time, we start with languages that compile to JVM, but aren't Java."

I don't wish to give Oracle ideas, but once they've got the Java APIs nailed down (which given the makeup of SCOTUS seems at least somewhat likely,) if they then follow that up with the bytecodes supported by the JVM, then anything else using the JVM is also in deep ... stuff.

No Mo'zilla for about 100 techies today: Firefox maker lays off staff as boss talks of 'difficult choices' and funding

Re: I like firefox..those 1000+ what are they doing?

"Pet projects and administration are almost always the very last things that organizations in a bind cut. The peons who keep the place running have little cachet, so cutting them is easy."

The rationale for this is simple: QA and support do not create revenue. Pet projects, in someone's mind, might one day, possibly, maybe, create revenue. Administration is where the decisions are made about who goes, so administration is clearly essential in order to determine who else to get rid of.

Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost

Re: fucking incredible

"pushing out a firmware update that breaks people's RAID arrays will turn this situation from a problem to a disaster"

Unless the article has been updated, this is a reading fail. They are warning that a RAID array with a bunch of these will have them all fail at the same time *without* the firmware update.

Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues

Re: 6.5 foot bed?

"Stainless steel is HEAVY!"

And the steel other trucks are made of isn't? Really, stainless steel doesn't have significatly different density to other steels.

Re: NCAP

The US also has jaywalking laws, making it illegal to step off the sidewalk onto the pavement except at a formal crossing point or intersection. I'm not sure it applies if you are pushing a bicycle though.

(Yes, I do know this isn't applicable everywhere, and it is widely ignored anyway.)

Microsoft joins Google and Mozilla in adopting DNS over HTTPS data security protocol

Re: Where's the logic in this?

"This is a solution looking for a problem unless the problem is actually the internet giants trying to reduce ISPs down even further to nothing more than dumb pipes so they can ultimately grab their business."

Please see the UK Labour party's intention to take over internet delivery in the name of making it "free" (as in beer, not as in freedom.)

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

Re: Endless recycling

Back in the day when printed dumps were the way to debug a program, I found that making extensive use of the office floor was an excellent substitute for having a very large desk (which was in any case already in use for filing.) Really useful to be able to look at variables, logs, and [printed] compiler listings at the same time.

Spacecraft that told us 'you're screwed' finally gives up the ghost after doubling its shelf life

Re: Sea level rising

Ignoring any other flaws in this argument, coastlines are not vertical walls. As the sea level rises, it takes a greater volume of water to produce each mm rise.

You've got (Ginni's) mail! Judge orders IBM to cough up CEO, execs' internal memos in age-discrim legal battle

"IBM's lawyers have always been formidable"

They aren't know as the Nazgûl for nothing.