* Posts by ITMA

1033 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2019

NASA builds for keeps: Voyager mission still going after 45 years

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Re: Multiples of less

"and transmits information back to Earth at a speed 38,000 times slower than 5G"

So what if it is 38,000 times slower than 5G. It is hard enough getting 5G here on planet Earth in cities that are supposed to have it! Never mind 14,599,462,103 miles away (Voyager 1 as at 18:30 BST today) and going at 38,000 mph using a maximum transmitter power of 22.4 W

Sudbury DTV here craps out in hot weather and that is 100 KW and only 28 miles away.

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Mouse hiding in cable tray cheesed off its bemused user

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Mice? pah....

I'd rather it was just turned off along with all other bloody "gestures" and left to those who like them to enable them - the option with the potential to do least damage.

For those, like me, for whom tapping and gestures don't work. It is not a matter of just not liking them. They are bloody DANGEROUS. For us it is like driving a car where every third time you put your foot on the brake it accelerates and every third time you turn the wheel left it lurches right. It is that bad.

Possibly a simple question durintg setup of "Do you want tapping/gestures?" and if you answer "No" they are killed, TOTALLY.

Found

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Mice? pah....

"Grant visited the user, who moved the mouse pointer to a box – at which point it did indeed start to move despite no human hand upon the digital rodent!"

Dell laptop track/glide pads are (or used to be) notorious for this.

And why of why does every damn manufacturer keep shipping them with bloody tapping enabled?

If you get on with tapping fine... if you don't and, like me, find the bloody thing constantly misinterpreting my movements for tapping it is bloody dangerous. It is constantly selecting, dragging and dropping God knows what to God knows where until I can turn the stupid thing off....

The truth about that draft law banning Uncle Sam buying insecure software

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Re: What with the what how?

In the same way the FAA were the agency responsible for certifying the Boeing 737 MAX as air worthy?

That worked SO well didn't it....

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Hahahaha

Microsoft could be up shit creek without a paddle then....

NASA wants a hundredfold upgrade for space computers

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Re: They're still around?

"Edit: a little googling shows the Mars Rover uses a PowerPC CPU"

Which "Mars Rover " are you referring to?

Sojourner?

Spirit & Opportunity?

Curiosity?

Perseverance?

Sojourner - 80C85

Spirit & Opporunity - RAD6000 (Power 1 architecture)

Curiosity - RAD750 (PowerPC 750)

Perseverance - RAD750 (ditto)

To add a bit of variety, the New Horizons spacecraft uses a Mongoose-V (MIPS R3000) clocked at 12MHz.

As the line in the Apollo 13 film goes - "(electrical) Power is everything"

ITMA Silver badge

The Sojourner rover used an 80C85 CPU.

And highest speed isn't everything. Power is a very finite resource on spacecraft. The general rule with processors is the faster they go, the more power they need.

If you run out of power - brown out - at a critical moment you can have a dead spacecraft. Aka LOV (loss of vehicle) and thus probably LOM (loss of mission).

Then you really are buggered...

Plus older "hardened" electronics are worth their weighrt in gold compared to new "non-hardened". Sheilding is heavy compared to hardened electronics and costs you dearly to launch.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Extra redundancy

"with lots of built-in flexibility that can later be upgraded with software updates, similar to what they did with Hubble"

Even Voyager 1 and 2 could - and did - receive software updates and virtually every NASA mission since.

I think you are getting confused with Hubble's capability to be have HARDWARE upgrades. At least until the space shuttle fleet was grounded.

https://hubblesite.org/mission-and-telescope/servicing-missions

Security needs to learn from the aviation biz to avoid crashing

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There is another apspect...

They (the appointment security people) coming up with the proper procedures and policies but having to work under senior management without the backbone to enforce those policies - in case they "upset" people or just don't take it seriously.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Preaching to the chior

The very same Dido Harding who was CEO of TalkTalk when this shit storm happened:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-46264327

https://www.itpro.co.uk/security/24136/talktalk-hack-two-men-plead-guilty-to-talktalk-hack

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/talktalk-cyber-attack-how-the-ico-investigation-unfolded/

The hack was in 2015 and at the time TalkTalk didn't even use HTTPS on their customer login page. Despite customers having told TalkTalk about it many many times.

Apparently this made her an ideal choice to run the governments COVID Test & Trace IT project....

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Preaching to the chior

Two words sum that up....

Dido Harding

Major IT outage forces UK emergency call handlers to use 'pen and paper'

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Re: To doctor or not to doctor...

Don't worry about it.

One of our UK "eccentricities" LOL

And and as Fruit and Nutcase quite rightly pointed out

"Our Members of Parliament expect to be addressed as 'Honourable'..." and certain MPs on the Privy Council go by the title Right Honourable.

More like "the wheezers and dodgers" (though such a comparison is likely to insult the real Wheezers and Dodgers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Miscellaneous_Weapons_Development).

And as for "honourable" - if they shake your hand, be sure to check your wallet and watch after...

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Per Ardua....

We've had a fleet of new Fiat ambulances which a significant number of ambulance crews can't fit in properly to drive!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-61847310

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: To doctor or not to doctor...

Absolutely...

Once consultants, especially surgical consultants, they can then behave like Sir Lanceleott Spratt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVWjAeAa52o

And while were on the subject of "titles", why is that some in the USA seem to get very upset about who can and can't call themselves "engineers" again all based on bits of paper and/or membership of a professional body. Despite some not actually being able to physically make anything themselves.

And yet in the USA you call train drivers "engineers". We prefer to call them more accurately "train drivers".

ITMA Silver badge

Re: To doctor or not to doctor...

"(UK usually doctor)

a medical doctor, especially one who has general skill and is not a surgeon

The latter addressed correctly as 'mister' and not 'doctor' of course..."

Sorry but don't try and impose your Americanisms here in the UK especially as this is a UK based item.

Plus UK surgeons can often also be referred to as "doctor" depending on their experience and seniority. You are confusing them with the much more senior "hosptial consultants" who are called "Mr/Mrs/Ms" to differentiate their higher seniority from more "lowly" doctors.

https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/international-doctors/life-and-work-in-the-uk/toolkit-for-doctors-new-to-the-uk/doctors-titles-explained

Homes in London under threat as datacenters pull in all the power

ITMA Silver badge

Re: It's all about cities AKA a systems problem

"The north and south circulars eventually had to be replaced by the M25"

The North Circular at least feel like a proper actual single purpose built road.

The South Circular is a line some twat drew on a map along a random swath of existing roads that happened to be going in roughly the right direction and labelled it "The South Circular"

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Not near wind farms

The problem is NIMBYs don't want pylons to bring the power across land from the windfarm landfall.

I bet they wouldn't want data centres either.

But I guarantee they don't want to pay the significantly higher cost of buried cables - and would almost all object to them being buried on "their land".

It's pretty much a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

Lapping the computer room in record time until the inevitable happens

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Quake Deathmatch with the Bombs8 QuakeC patch used to be WAY more fun in the IT office at one former place of work. LOL

Especially if one or two "colleagues" were not "informed" about the new weapons HEHEHEHE

The expression on their faces when hit by a homing rocket or the gibgun was pure joy!

Google: We had to shut down a datacenter to save it during London’s heatwave

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Hot cloud

Or on fire..... OVHCloud...

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Move it up north

"Said individual got patted on the back...."

With a baseball bat? Or, since this is a UK based story, a cricket bat?...

"Odds are there was a SPOF in there someone overlooked..."

Usually the short sighted senior level manager/director who signed off on the cheaper option because it was, well cheaper.

"I'm currently having to refrain from smashing someone's head into a desk..."

Doors work just as well and usually easier to get away with as "accidental". FD60/120 doors work really well.

Oh sorry, was that your head on the door? I'm sure the dent will come out.

Microsoft Teams outage widens to take out M365 services, admin center

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Devil

I did phone Sky myself about it.. LOL

ITMA Silver badge

The landord did get a full report fom the proper AV company which came and (very quickly) sorted it out (they maintain the communal TV distribution system).

The landlord came to the same conclusion though - was it worth the hassle with Sky and would they get anything worthwile out of it, probably not.

ITMA Silver badge

Well....

In the flats where I live in the UK we lost the TV signal for the entire block for best part of a week a while back.

Why?

Some utter moron twat of a Sky "engineer" came to install a Sky Q upgrade for someone. He needed a 13A socket to plug his shiny new shit into - oh none free.

Rather than go to his van to get a short mains extension block out to create some more sockets (not great but it is all low current stuff) he just unplugged something else. His shiny new shitty Sky Q was working so he duly fucked off.

Leaving the entire communal terrestrial aerial distribution system fucked with no power until the landlord called in the company that maintained the system. Fixed in 10 miniutes, entirely avoidable and all because of some Sky "fuckwit" so-called "engineer".

There is a path to replace TCP in the datacenter

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Proven technology

"I also found multiplayer Doom/Wolfenstein/Quake. (one of them) was much better"

That was our standard network "stress testing tool" LOL

The trick was (with three or more players in Quake Deathmatch) to load the Bombs8 QuakeC weapon patch and not tell most of the other "testers".

ITMA Silver badge

Flashers!

This has vague overtones of Flash Boys by Michael Lewis.

Not just trying to get your links to exchanges data centres as fast a possible and thus latencies as low as possbile - but even going so far as to buy/bribe you way to get your servers as physically close as possible to the exchange's servers WITHIN the same data centre.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Multiple stacks

Cheers!

It was a loooonnnggg time ago when I used it.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Multiple stacks

IPX/SPX, Token Ring anybody? LOL

Have used both.

What protocol did the original Banyan Vines use? I can't recall...

Microsoft warns Windows 10 patch broke printing for some

ITMA Silver badge

Re: A traditional problem

There was a joke "cartoon" in (I think) "Practical Computing" back in the 1980's which went something like this:

Man sees another guy approaching dragiging a "train" of trolleys (at least 5) loaded with stacks of fanfold paper.

He asks:

"What's that?"

Reply

"It's the documentation for our paperless office"

ITMA Silver badge

Re: A traditional problem

It is far simpler than that.

In Microshaft's view, customers ARE the test/software QC department....

And what EXACTLY is it that printing in Windows 10 does that means it won't work with versions of PCL < 6????

FFS!!!! Printing is basically putting marks on paper...

And I have worked for TWO global printer manufacturers and very little has changed.

The only real developments have been GDI (aka "brain dead") printers where your PC does all the work and .... that is it. Nothing else.

So WTF does Windows do that can't work with PCL5???

I've been fired, says engineer who claimed Google chatbot was sentient

ITMA Silver badge

Re: The order of the last two levels is important

Did it pass the "Deep Thought Test"?

Not just being able to talk all four legs off an Arcturan Megadonkey, but also being able to persuade it to go for a walk afterwards....

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

You can (in effect) if you borrowed it for free from a public lending library... Just take it back... LOL

ITMA Silver badge

Re: AI?

Well I've checked it on four different PCs (Windows 10 Pro) using different browsers

2 PCs on my network at home and 2 PCs at work via RDP and VPN through the M290 firewall there - all worked fine.

4 PCs, two different browsers (Edge spit spit, and Chrome) two different networks behind two different firewalls and three different antivirus products.

Works fine.

Care to provide some details on the setup you are using? Have you considered the problem may be at your end rather than just moan?

EDIT: Add also works via a mobile network data connection on an Android 10 phone - also works fine.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: AI?

Full (OCR'd) text of the article is here:

https://archive.org/stream/PersonalComputerWorld1985-12/1985-12_djvu.txt

Search on the page for "Soppyware".

A VERY interesting read LOL

I particularly like Yesman/Yesbut and Forgon.

And why don't we have query langauges which have:

IF true THEN IGNORE

IF A is not equal to B THEN DELETE all reference to A

WHILE statement 1 THEN PRETEND exact opposite of statement 1

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

And have you? :)

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For me 99% of the time it comes up with stuff with, at best, 50% relevancy.

Google has - in view - become much, much worse.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

AI?

This from a fun article first publised in PCW magazine in December 1985:

5th Generation — Artificial Intelligence (Al)

6th Generation — Artificial Dishonesty (AD)

7th Generation — Artificial Stupidity (AS)

8th Generation — Artificial Libido (AL

9th Generation — Artificial Omniscience (AOS)

10th Generation — Artificial Omnipotence (AOP)

Boffins release tool to decrypt Intel microcode. Have at it, x86 giant says

ITMA Silver badge

"Microcode isn't really part of the how the CPU operates. Its just code that the processor runs to do complex actions."

You mean like twiddling the bits necessary to operate all of the CPU's lowest level core functions that allow it to execute the CPU's "official" instruction set instead of having to design hard coded logic to do it all?

Browsers could face two regimes in Europe as UK law set to diverge from EU

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: The essence of this is to treat the public like crap

They've been moved - I've looked there LOL

ITMA Silver badge

Re: The essence of this is to treat the public like crap

Also the ICO will not uphold anything which appears to be a breach of privcy under GDPR if it goes against government policy.

A case to illustrate this - I complained to them about my energy supplier, EON (and their "agents"), keep pestering me about when I want an appointment to have a "so-called" smart meter installed. My answer always been "NO - FUCK Off and DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN. You DO NOT have permission to conctact me about anything other than meter readings and my bill. I do NOT give you permission for my details to be used to contact me about anything else, especially smart meters".

However, according to the ICO, because the roll out of "so-called" smart meters is government policy, energy companies are obliged to keep pestering me until I give in and can ignore my wishes and GDPR.

In other GDPR and the ICO are utter shite.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: The essence of this is to treat the public like crap

No it isn't.

It is so that businesses can get back to treating us how they would like to treat us - a cash crop to be harvested and sold.

Your job was probably outsourced for exactly the reason you suspected

ITMA Silver badge

Re: NERD HOLDS COMPANY HOSTAGE.... TIME TO OUTSOURCE

You're thinking of AD - Artificial Dishonesty ;)

See my posts in:

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/07/23/in_brief_ai/

Hospital IT melts in heatwave, leaving doctors without patient records

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Re: New software solves this ?

"clouds" are not an issue since heat waves are the result of high pressure regions leaving the skies pretty devoid of clouds. ;)

Perhaps that is why the data centres failed - clouds driven off by the high presure LOL

ITMA Silver badge

Re: How is this the fault of "Legacy Systems"?

Very true.

Harder to have a working DR plan if it depends on equally old, out of support/warranty hardware and software to work. And when was it last tested?

Having said that, where the hell was the data centre's EOPs (Emergancy Operating Procedures) to deal with the failure of critical HVAC equipment. And for it to happen at TWO data centres?

Someone seriously took their eye of both balls so should, arguably, lose theirs (metaphorically speaking as I'm sure gender is and should be irrelevant in efficiently running data centres).

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

How is this the fault of "Legacy Systems"?

There is something I don't get.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

The aircon system in a data centre breaks down casuing temperatures to rise and - presumably - IT equipement to either start shutting down or failing.

So HOW is this the fault of "legacy IT systems"?

Unles one is counting the HVAC as a "legacy IT system".

The failure was the HVAC and, by extension - unless they run their own data centre, which I doubt (if anyone knows please do tell) - the mob who run the data centre for failing to either maintain the HVAC or have adequate backup HVAC provision.

Not the IT. The IT failing was a symptom caused by the HVAC not working.

My smartphone has wiped my microSD card again: Is it a conspiracy?

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: The Bit-Theory

Couldn't the 1s use the 0s as life belts/floatation devices?

It would give new meaning to "floating point binary" ;)

CityFibre loses appeal against Openreach discounts for ISPs

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Devil

IBM have been doing this since the year dot (com).... LOL