Posts by HammerOn1024

Lawn care SWAT team subdues trigger-happy Texan... and other stories

Re: Who had "mosquito tornado" for summer 2021?

Take my up vote!

Also, "We'll need a bigger can of RAID!" comes to mind.

Everyone cites that 'bugs are 100x more expensive to fix in production' research, but the study might not even exist

Re: Fixing things long after they have gone live

One thing not mentioned in the cost here: Are you willing to bet your companies reputation and cash on not fixing a bug?

As several companies have recently found out, how expensive was that cyber attack? What did it cost your company in brand reputation? How much did it physically cost your clients to repair the damage?

How many lawsuits did your company just swallow because of a bug?

I'll put a paycheck on a Los Vegas bet that 100x would be cheep compared to the cost of a very ugly lawsuit train.

Ably blog claims company doesn't need Kubernetes to scale, surge in traffic takes down entire website

"... standardisation processes over the years shows it can just produce the least worse one that works."

I couldn't agree more. Standards are good to a point. Unfortunately it's like voting for lizards; one has to vote for ones own lizard just so the other guy's lizard does not get elected; to paraphrase Douglas Adams. Plus people use standards as a shield for doing really, really, dumb things.

A case in point; the height above the floor of the average display screen in a video conferencing system is defined by a specification. The problem is, it's way too close to the floor. This leads to the display being blocked by most of the participants sitting around a table. When I pointed this out to the IT folks installing my companies systems they pointed to the specification, installed so that no one could really see the screen without playing "gopher" and started walking away. The result: No one uses the expensive video system.

I asked one of the IT guys that if the specification had said to mount the screen on the ceiling, would they have done that? My boss, who was in the room at the time face palmed, because I was right and he knew I was about to add another notch to my "Idiot IT lizard" belt. As you might expect, the IT guy froze, got mad, red in the face, and walked out, he wasn't able to give the correct response, which would have been "no" since he was specification locked.

If a solution doesn't make sense for an organization, it doesn't make sense for THAT organization, and that's ALL it means.

Pipe down, Jeff. You've only gone where Gus Grissom went before, 60 years ago today

Re: Do allow Bezos his moment of glory

He achieved it with his own money, no one else's. No tax dollars, like SpaceX, for example. He deserves his moment and all further accolades as he continues to USE HIS OWN MONEY.

How to keep your enterprise up to date by deploying the very latest malware

Huh...

We just sequestered first articles in a locked, limited access room. No one who was not part of the development team (5 - 15 people) was allowed access to this item until the pre-release HW/FQT and SW/FQT.

Then the HW configuration management folks were allowed supervised access to the system. They generated the final HW P/N and BOM.

Then the SW FQT was similarly run with a resulting SW P/N and BOM.

These days, a third group of Cyber Security folks also run audits with a CS P/N and BOM.

This system works well to this day. So far, given the systems sensitive use, we've never had an issue in 30+ years.

Expensive? Not really. The development budget may be $100,000 or so higher than a process that doesn't do this. The savings, imagine this story played out 1,000 times over a world-wide distribution... $100,000 is cheep insurance.

Microsoft solicits Clippy comeback – later reveals it had already decided to bring back the peppy paperclip

As with Disco...

Things have their time and Clippy, the abomination, should stay 6 ft. under and well tapped down.

Hubble, Hubble, toil and trouble: NASA pores over moth-eaten manuals ahead of switch to backup hardware

Sounds Like...

Another repair mission is needed. I'd thinking a Dragon on Falcon Heavy could easily lift the necessary hardware and personnel to Hubble. The issue is reentry: Can Dragon take the higher reentry speeds?

If it can, then bring along new stabilization gyro's and a shortened Canada Arm to grab the satellite. Break out the shuttle space suites for on-orbit repairs while your at it.

Audacity fork maintainer quits after alleged harassment by 4chan losers who took issue with 'Tenacity' name

Re: Seriously?

Rock salt doesn't kill, but they will be hurting for weeks.

After 15 years and $500m, the US Navy decides it doesn't need shipboard railguns after all

Re: A cunning plan

Sorry, but not even close. As having been an adult during that time, the military budget was background noise, which it still is, when compared to the social spending this country does.

As an example, it takes the US Navy 5 years to build a carrier; at about 12 billion dollars. With Social Securities budget it could build EIGHT (8) a MONTH! And that's in 2021 dollars. The 2021 budget for JUST Social Security is about $1.2 TRILLION dollars: https://www.ssa.gov/budget/FY21Files/2021BO.pdf

So please whiners, stop it. The ENTIRE defense budget is trivial when compared to the rest of the US budget.

Biden to sign exec order calling for right-to-repair rules for farmers, maybe rest of us

Re: About time!

Yeah... except he's trying to make new law, which the first lawsuit from the manufactures will nullify before the ink is dry.

I'm amused by the Democrats in Congress. For a group of people who claim to represent "the little guy", yet buy large-tech holdings like a drunken sailor of a 52 day pass, they sure don't seem to be onboard with the whole right-to-repair wagon.

I mean, along with "fixing" our immigration mess, where is the legislation? Nada! Zip! Zero! Zilch!

SO Democrats... why no bills? That's an easy one, they are paid to spew, but hide when their investments will be torpedoed.

Age discrimination case against IBM leaks emails, docs via bad redaction

An Old Addage

Dear IBM,

Tit... meet wringer...

Five words everyone wants to hear: Microsoft has 'visually refreshed' Office

Re: Custom ribbon?

Also, to avoid a reoccurrence, toss the development and management team into a rat infested pit of black death... the only way to be totally sure.

America world’s sole cyber superpower, ten years ahead of China, says Brit think tank

Being a private system, hackable or not hackable, is not what this article is about; it is about national assets - Government assets, within the government in general and the military as called out by the "offensive" verbiage in particular.

Yeah, the US government has had some serious lapses, most recently with SolarWind, but the ability to counter and recover was pretty quick once the attack was identified.

This is in contrast to incidents from the early 2000's where government networks were hacked for YEARS before being detected.

Is US commercial and governmental infrastructure where it needs to be? No way! But it's nowhere near as bad as it was. It is getting better.

Hubble telescope in another tight spot: Between astrophysicists sparring over a 'dark matter deficient' galaxy

Well, Quite Frankly...

While we'll make good use of the James Web scope, building three Hubble class scopes and putting two of them in Saturn's Lagrange points and the other 180 degrees out in Saturn's orbit would be of greater use.

Hubble’s cosmic science is mind-blowing, but its soul celebrates something surprising about us

Re: Correcting the Corrector?

No. It's a more advanced system.

BOFH: Oh for Pete’s sake. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself

Re: Ah, Threat-Detecting Boots

Marvin took them... he's tired of having to face those tanks alone.

Russia spoofed AIS data to fake British warship's course days before Crimea guns showdown

Let's Be Clear

In the prelude to any shooting war, any warship that is using AIS will remove the hardware; not just shut it off, but remove it.

As well with ADS-B on aircraft, the units will be removed.

So, the Russians can spend money on spoofing these systems all they want.

Also, there's no need to actually send a UAV, boat/ship or other physical actor and trace a course, one can transmit bogus AIS information form anywhere or inject it directly into the AIS infrastructure directly... it's not hard.

Hubble Space Telescope may now depend on a computer that hasn't booted since 2009

Re: Er, yes, mate?

Just remember folks, these are space rated computer systems. While the designs are from the 80's a lot of the chips were 70's vintage designs.

But, they were designed to take a LOT of radiation and just keep chugging along. Old does not equate to infirmed nor non-functional.

I'd bet it boots and works just fine for another 20 years.

Also, since these were made before the lead solder hysteria, tin whiskers are not even relevant.

John McAfee dead: Antivirus tycoon killed himself in prison after court OK'd extradition, says lawyer

Neil Young

It's better to burn out than to fade away.

Later dude!

'Set it and forget it' attitude to open-source software has become a major security problem, says Veracode

So here's the thing

There are two big inertia drivers here, one from the business side of the house and the other from Engineering. From the business side it's; If we don't get reports it's broken, it's not broken, so no money to check if it's broken. From the engineering side, it's the usual variation of; If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The engineers are not given the time to check, see the business rule, and the business folk have profit blinders on.

So until the company CEO gets a knuckle ball to the head, nothing is going to change.

The only thing to keep in mind then is: What color is your parachute?

US Navy starts an earthquake to see how its newest carrier withstands combat conditions

Dear Register

Your level of ignorance is really quite shocking. Have you even bothered to learn WHY those "trucks" (There called sled's by the way.) are launched? Do you know what non-destructive testing (NDT) is?

Well, seeing as your mostly a bunch of IT (Idiots in Transition) people, I'm not shocked you are clueless on NDT.

Get a real engineering education or stop writing about real engineering.

Google cans engineering diversity training scheme after alumni complain of abysmal pay packages

This is my...

Shocked Face:

:-|

Nominet is back to 'the same old sh*t' says Public Benefit campaign chief as EGM actions grind to halt

Look to the French...

Guillotine? The threat of "Death by razor." has a tendency to focus the appointed ones energies like nothing else.

US Air Force announces plan to assassinate molluscs with hypersonic missile

Some things...

... are in the way of the impact blast; non-explosive but a hypersonic impact will have the same effect as a warhead. That's what.

Now on to more important things: "... type will have been in continuous service for almost a century." I'll put a Vegas bet down that the B-52 will see 100 years!

Windows 11: Meet the new OS, same as the old OS (or close enough)

Dear Register, Speak for Yourselves

"... Windows 10 is so much better than..."

Yeah... no. So much customization has been lost since XP that it borders on criminal cruelty to animals. Shoot! One can't even get rid of the directory tree in a folder view without every stinking file explorer instance following suit!

Yes I realize, under the hood, 10 is good, if one can deal with the absurdities of Windows policies, but 99% of the people don't care! They don't use nor manage their systems like sysop's. They want to load and go and customize as THEY see fit.

FYI: Today's computer chips are so advanced, they are more 'mercurial' than precise – and here's the proof

Re: Allow one to disable a core

So much for my power supplies... and power plants... and power infrastructure in general.

Wyoming powers ahead with Bill Gates-backed sodium-cooled nuclear generation plant

To Bad...

that before shooting your mouth off, you didn't bother to read, ya know, the part about molten sodium SALT!

NaCl... not Na!

VC's paper claims cost of cloud is twice as much as running on-premises. Let's have a look at that

This Is My Shocked Face

:-|

If a company is NOT annually reevaluating their networking costs, then they are loosing revenue. There are aspects that are better left in house and those moved to the cloud. When loads swing wildly, such as ones customer interface, then the argument for running it in the cloud makes sense.

If it's corporate finances and engineering work, as examples, with fairly well known loads and relatively small foot prints, compared to the customer interface, that should be in-house. Also, from a security point of view, having ones family jewels not under ones control has always fallen into my "Bad" box.

Microsoft: Purveyors of the finest BORK since the 1990s

Wrong!

Muppets... only Swedish muppets!

Faster Python: Mark Shannon, author of newly endorsed plan, speaks to The Register

Or...

Just learn 'C' and Assembler and stuff python.

Real-time guy here... interpretive languages are for script kiddies and a waste of my time. :-)

Lessons have not been learned: Microsoft's Modern Comments leave users reaching for the rollback button

Well... there's always...

In no particular order:

1) FreeOffice

2) LibreOffice

3) Open365

4) WPS Office

5) Feng Office

6) Calligra Suite

7) OnlyOffice

8) Apache OpenOffice (I know... meh...)

9) SoftMaker FreeOffice

Each can import and export Microsoft stuff.

UK's competition watchdog sniffs around AMD's proposed $35bn all-stock buy of Xilinx

Re: If you use Xilinx

Your logic is a bit flawed.

The use of FPGA's is accelerating as they do well much better at dedicated tasks than general purpose CPU's. Where making an ASIC is prohibitively expensive, but the speed of a dedicated chip is required, FPGA's are the money shot. They have become so embedded in the aerospace industry that they come with their own general purpose CPU IP cores these days.

AMD wanted another channel for selling CPU cores so this is marriage of FPGA-CPU is perfect for them.

Yet they didn't bat an eye when Intel bought Altera.

The Starship has landed. Latest SpaceX test comes back to Earth without igniting fireballs

Yes but!

Do you have your towel?

Transport Scotland has £47m to drag its traffic management systems into the 21st century

Ha!

Given how shitty most software is designed, laid out and written these days, I'd keep that old system around for a while since bring the new system "live" will involve 5x the original cost, at lease one vendor lawsuit, and a hacking event of biblical proportions.

Key Perl Core developer quits, says he was bullied for daring to suggest programming language contained 'cruft'

Well, I've always found...

A good "Fuck you nut sack licker" or "You can French kiss my furry <insert color of your backside here> ass." to be a good responses to harassment.

And if those don't get it done, blocking communications from those village idiots works wonders.

FSF doubles down on Richard Stallman's return: Sure, he is 'troubling for some' but we need him, says org

IBM creates a COBOL compiler – for Linux on x86

And the wayback machine

Cloud == Servers == IBM

Are we done yet?

Atheists appeal to higher power for intercession over alleged sins against privacy

Re: There is no File?

Wait, I thought it was a bowl of petunias and a whale...

Wait, I've seen this movie

Life of Brian right?

Cryptic US Strategic Command tweet reveals dangers of working from home with kids in the way

Re: Trigger warning in 3..2...1

You all do realize that the Internet and the Strategic Defense Network are not wire together... right?

So stand down all ye Chicken Little's.

Other than a chewing out for proper account locking when stepping away, there's nothing to see here.

Biden's $2tn infrastructure plan includes massive broadband rollout, equates internet access with water and power as essential utilities

I am TIRED

I am tired of paying for everyone's wet dream! Stop the madness!

State of Maine orders review of $54.6m Workday project as it alleges delivery failure and threatens cancellation

Workday

Workday, the nemesis of rational thought. Since I too have to use this nightmare POS, obviously development to keep HR vampires in positions of control and knuckle dragging, moronic twit programs employed, I find it incredible that an organization would speak the truth about this utter pile of bovine excrement.

Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy

And I've cuased Controversy...

By coining the alternative definition of 'IT' due to the complete lack of rollout planning, testing, fault detection, poor product layout and the classic e-mail server down/access 'We sent you an e-mail' response:

Idiots in Transition

Yes, there are a whole lot of moronic end users. There are plenty of rocks and glass houses everywhere. Be careful where you throw yours, you'll probably take it in the face when it comes around.

Space station dumps 2.9-ton battery pack to burn up in Earth's atmosphere after hardware upgrade

Re: Pollution?

Since the speed of re-entry will destroy the object via heating and plasma decomposition, there won't be anything left but molecular powder at best.

Desperate Nominet chairman claims member vote to fire him would spark British government intervention

Too bad...

keel hauling has gone out of fashion. Have any of you gotten a 30% salary increase for failing miserably lately?

SpaceX wants to slap Starlink internet terminals on planes, trucks, and boats – but Tesla owners need not apply

Probably Not

"Granted they could probably shrink the size down somewhat..."

Probably not. Phased array antennas are very size sensitive for a number of reasons like the minimum aperture necessary to reconstruct the waveform, emitter power levels, etc. As with any antenna there are trade offs; the primary advantage is that there is no mechanical system needed to steer the beam. The primary disadvantage is the amount of power needed to transmit is quite a bit higher since any given element is effectively an omni directional antenna; one only gains an advantage during constructive interference between the emitters.

Also, sticking a 2 ft. antenna on the top of a car, hood or trunk lid would involve structural redesign of the vehicle as antenna and their associated radome make very poor load bearing devices.

"Retrofits ain't easy."

So it appears some of you really don't want us to use the word 'hacker' when we really mean 'criminal'

I knew this would happen...

Everyone! Join Mr. Peabody and Sherman in their way back machine for the 1990's when this argument began!

Back then we had two terms: Hackers and Crackers.

Hackers were "white hats" looking for system vulnerabilities and trying for as many "See if they could" moments as possible. Not to do damage or theft, but because there was a mountain needing to be climbed.

Crackers were "black hats" in it for the cash and mayhem.

The hacking community didn't like the distinction and did everything they could to stamp out the differences based on some bizarre moral objections; they won. The Cracker community said nothing because this added a layer of free cloaking to their activities.

So we're back to this again... wasting calories on a moot argument.

Google's ex-boss tells the US it's time to take the gloves off on autonomous weapons

Re: Can be banned

Only if everyone agrees can it be banned. And there IS the rub. These days, there are too few in power that have seen the horrors of war, experienced the horrors of war, lived with the scars or understand the repercussions of their actions; DAISH/ISIS anyone?

And an item you left out of your argument; they also found that if one dropped said round it could go off injuring or killing the soldier attempting to use the thing. So it would end up probably more lethal to the person using it than the enemy since not every bullet hits its target yet an ammo belt that explodes because the soldier lands on it while diving for cover would happen much more often.