* Posts by JohnTill123

81 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Oct 2021

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Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

JohnTill123
FAIL

Re: Every single time

And then you get the networks where SOME of the RJ45 ports on the walls are connected to 10BaseT ports on switches, but other RJ45 ports are connected back to a Token Ring concentrator.

Labels? We don't need no stinking labels!!!!!

Then of course, you discover the wonderful result of plugging a live Ethernet card into a Token Ring port. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth until all the Token Ring systems were rebooted.

Good times, good times...

JohnTill123
Trollface

Re: Every single time

You had TWO ports!?!? The 2017 Macbook only had ONE USB-C port.

Must be nice to have such luxury. Check your privilege!!

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

JohnTill123
Big Brother

Nahhh...

"...Microsoft rethinks desktop security..."

No, that will never happen. They will just move on to the next thing that they think will let them Take Over The World And Get ALL The Money.

University cuts itself off from internet after mystery security snafu

JohnTill123
Facepalm

Re: MTS

MTS FTW!

Ah, the memories back at SFU in 1980.

I remember helping a student with a very large program that wouldn't run. Once the student learned that "0" was different from "O" and had to be typed differently, the program ran fine. Good times...

BOFH: Zen and the art of battery replacement

JohnTill123
Trollface

Perhaps...

Perhaps it was a test of regolithobraking?

Have you ever suspected your colleague doesn't hope this email finds you well?*

JohnTill123
Facepalm

Hmmm...

I'm not sure the first item on that list is all bad. Ever send a coworker a message looking for a quick reply and you're standing there looking at the "writing something" animation and waiting, waiting, waiting while they write, erase, and rewrite their magnum opus that takes >5 minutes? While you're standing there looking like an idiot because you said your coworker would "get right back to me as soon as I send them a message!".

FFS, press Enter every now and then just so I can get a head start on dealing with your bloviation!

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

JohnTill123
Black Helicopters

Re: They'll try

It's unlikely they would be able to "buy" OpenBSD and their projects. They are a pretty independent bunch.

However, "buying" them is not needed. Under the BSD license, they can use the code for whatever they want. Indeed, Microsoft used some FreeBSD network stack code for a while (NT 3.1): https://web.archive.org/web/20051114154320/http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory%3Bsid%3D2001%2F6%2F19%2F05641%2F7357

Why would they bother to buy the cow when the milk is free?

NASA, DARPA enlist Lockheed to build nuclear-powered spacecraft

JohnTill123

Whee!

Project Orion for the win!

If we can make a manhole cover go 150,000 mph with a small nuclear blast (Plumbob/Pascal-B only produced a blast equivalent of 300 tons TNT. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_steel_bore_cap ) then Project Orion should be considered.

Besides, the launches will be spectacular!

Microsoft whips up unrest after revealing Azure AD name change

JohnTill123

Re: Terminal Services

"...the fertile minds(think about that one, not a compliment) of the UI market research team."

Thank you for the laugh, sincerely. I almost needed a new keyboard.

BOFH: Cough up half a grand and we'll protect you from AI

JohnTill123
Black Helicopters

Re: Its a cunning wheeze

The naming of ammunition cartridges is one of those things that grew chaotically over the last century and a half.

Example: The 22 Hornet (Later models), 222 Remington, 222 Remington Magnum, 223 Remington, 5.56 NATO, 224 Weatherby, 220 Swift, 22-250 Remington and several others all have the same actual caliber (bullet diameter): ".224 inches", although they are not interchangeable. The number in the name of the cartridge usually doesn't indicate the actual caliber! And that's just in the 224 caliber class.

The ".303 British" so well known in English-speaking countries? The ".303 inches" is between the LANDS of the bore, not the diameter of the bullet. So the actual "caliber" is supposed to be .311 inches, but is known to vary between .311 and .312. Reloaders often run a lead slug down the bore and measure with a micrometer to get the correct bullet diameter for a specific rifle, to improve accuracy and avoid overpressure loads.

So Brexit or no, "caliber" when referring to bullet diameter is always going to be an imprecise concept.

The death of the sysadmin has been predicted for years – we're not holding our breath

JohnTill123
Trollface

The pointy-haired manglers and the clueless c-suite

In many companies, the pointy-haired middle manglement will latch onto replacing the sysadmins with AI as the best thing since sliced bread since they can finally lay off the expensive sysadmins and get a bigger bonus, as well as a nice kickback from the grifter^H^H^H^H^H^H "AI supplier". The adult-diaper-wearing C-suite will see this as "some sort of silliness from the proles, but they say it will save money" so they will support it.

It will all be OK for a month or two, until the AI falls over like Uncle Bob at a wedding's open bar, and business is disrupted. Then the "leadership" will be running back and forth looking for a neck to wring, and the AI supplier will be "This number is not in use".

As sh*t rolls downhill, the most junior mangler will be nailed to a cross, and someone will call the sysadmins desperately looking for a short contract to get them back to fix it. If the sysadmins are smart, they will take the company to the cleaners and grab enough money to immediately retire to the fleshpots of Spain.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

JohnTill123

I suspect there's something in the EULA that fully indemnifies Amazon from any legal vulnerability. Something along the lines of "You give up any and all rights to any recompense for damages no matter how hard we abuse you. You can't sue us, you can't even contact us to complain. Nyah, Nyah, Nyah..."

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

JohnTill123

Mining landfill?

I suspect that many resource-hungry companies already have extensive plans in place to procure landfill sites and mine for metals. The tipping point will be based on the price: Once it's profitable there will be an avalanche of landfill mining projects.

Microsoft’s Azure mishap betrays an industry blind to a big problem

JohnTill123

Re: If a tiny typo brings down half of Brazil, perhaps we’re the nuts

Haiku:

It’s not DNS

There’s no way it’s DNS

It was DNS

Boss put project on progress bar timeline: three months … four … actually NOW!

JohnTill123

Re: Bunch?

A chaos of arseholes?

A bedlam of arseholes?

An obfuscation of arseholes?

An infarction of arseholes?

Red Hat to stop packaging LibreOffice for RHEL

JohnTill123
Facepalm

What about requirements for secure documents?

I'm sure that many companies don't care if their employees are putting sensitive and mission-critical information in docs "in the cloud" through any of the many office tools available. What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure any hackers who get into their data won't do anything bad, such as sell their plans and data to their competitors.</sarcasm>

But what about information that needs to not only be held securely, but must be *provably* held securely? Such as work by government agencies, law enforcement and legal work where an accusation of unauthorized information disclosure can have serious repercussions whether or the disclosures actually happened.

Dropping LibreOffice support and development means they are deprecating the desktop. Sad.

Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you

JohnTill123

"... and speak to the aviation industry..." I'm not too sure about that.

On Quantas flight 32 the automated problem system "ECAM" generated errors in 100 checklists (out of a total number of checklists of over 1200), which had to be dealt with sequentially. Apparently that took all the time and attention from one of the flight crew until it was completed after many minutes.

"While automation and complex systems can indeed make life/tasks much easier, there are also quite a few problems associated with these systems. On Qantas Flight 32, the pilots claimed that once the failure message had been received, checklist after checklist after checklist had consumed the 55 minutes it took for the aircraft to resolve the failed engine issue. Too many checklists on the automated system had congested the pilots' time. Within that 55 minute timeframe, the aircraft could have been consumed in a fireball, killing all 500+ passengers and crew. In addition, the pilot claimed that he had to check off every single checklist before moving onto the next, which also congested a lot of his crucial time. "

So it looks like there still is a long way to go before they get the UI for aviation where it needs to be.

Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32

https://stonybrook.digication.com/amrit_singh_esg201/Qantas_32_Accident_Reflection

The future of digital healthcare could be a two-metre USB cable

JohnTill123
Trollface

Considering other applications...

You have to wonder how this use of a home webcam would work in a consult with a proctologist.

Seriously, boss? You want that stupid password? OK, you get that stupid password

JohnTill123
Pint

Re: I wouldn't call it malicous compliance, but yes, I have a story

You are NTA.

Have one of these ->

BOFH: Ah. Company-branded merch. So much better than a bonus

JohnTill123

Re: Acronym-Ignorant

I remember taking a course in Electrodynamics in my 3rd year of a B.Sc. and asking the 4th year students how they did on the notorious exam. One said he finished one and a half questions on the four-question exam and managed an A. So I went into the exam and managed to finish a whole two questions, and left the exam feeling pretty good. One of my classmates was grumbling into his beer that he failed because he didn't quite finish two questions, and I joyfully told him that he got an A! He looked at me with intense scorn, as if I was completely insane.

The following term, it turned out he DID get an A, but he'd forgotten our exchange so he still thought I was a nutter. No good deed goes unpunished...

Note: The course was based on "Classical Electrodynamics" By Jackson.

Cops cuff teenage 'Robin Hood hacker' suspected of peddling stolen info

JohnTill123
Joke

Re: Designer duds, not prince of thieves?

Unless ALL the Sheriff's minions were red/green colour-blind, it's probably a Bad Idea to go flouncing about Sherwood Forest in scarlet tights. Such colouration attracts arrows...

Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond

JohnTill123

Re: We've been here before ...

There's a significant community of "makers" and model airplane fans who make model airplanes from cardboard and cheap foamboard, so the design requirements and useful tricks and methods to make a functional small airframe are established and available. Also, the use of cardboard makes it easy to repair and modify as mentioned in the article using locally available and inexpensive materials.

So cardboard is a really good design choice to enhance capability, reduce costs, and maximize availability.

Pager hack faxed things up properly, again, and again, and again

JohnTill123

Re: Last pager I saw...

"if it's not broke, don't fix it".

Yeah, that's just fine. Until you have to move files from a 1994 Win95 PC to a brand new (2020) Win10 PC for an accountancy practice, and you realize the ONLY medium that's usable is a 3.5" disc, using a USB external floppy drive on the Win10 box. For 26 years worth of data.

Darn straight they did my taxes for free that year!

Cosmic rays more likely to glitch out water-cooled computers

JohnTill123
Devil

The most energetic cosmic rays have energies that are quite spectacular. In the range of joules: The cosmic ray in the following link would have probably smashed the chip into smithereens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle

Yes, Samsung 'fakes' its smartphone Moon photos – who cares?

JohnTill123
Facepalm

Who cares? Really?

So now if someone takes a picture with such a camera that winds up as evidence in a court case, all the defendant has to do is say "Hey that camera has AI that MIGHT have modified that picture. So it can't be trusted as probative evidence!"

A killer who's caught in a background shot can get off: All they have to do is argue that the cellphone was designed to let the AI mess with the image. Similarly, any authorities caught on cellphone video doing something wrong can similarly argue that the cellphone evidence can't be trusted and must be thrown out.

In recent years the ubiquity of cellphones and cellphone video has caused massive advances in exposing abuse of power: The effect of this new cellphone technology will be to seriously impair these advances going forwards.

Musk said Twitter would open source its algorithm – then fired the people who could

JohnTill123

I still have to stifle a giggle when I remember the turtle's last instructions to the eagle.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

JohnTill123
Alert

Re: If I have to look in the manual (absolute last resort of course) it's a really bad design!

One of the worst interfaces I ever saw was an inexpensive early Timex digital watch. It came with an "instruction sheet" that was about .5 meters square, and printed in a TINY font , around 6 point. The text was very dense, and the only interface was a single button. So to turn off the default beep that played every hour, you first had to find the appropriate sequence which was something like 5 presses, pause, 3 presses, pause, 4 presses, yadda, yadda, yadda...

It was a ridiculous thing to try to configure.

JohnTill123

Re: Manual is optional,

Yup, that works.

You never really understand anything until you teach it.

(learned that as a Physics TA back in the 80s)

Find pushes back birth of Europe's steel hardware to about 3,000 years ago

JohnTill123

Re: People move around shocker !

Why wouldn't steel-makers from China or India want to live in Portugal? The wine is SO much better!

Seriously, though. If there are steel-makers in a location where there is a surfeit of such skills, they would do well to emigrate and find a place where exercising their skills will be profitable. So it could be "voluntary emigration" of people looking for economic opportunities. Or it could be a diaspora of steel-makers caused by warfare and conquest: The world experienced a LOT of violence around the time that steel-making was discovered.

The "infrastructure" used to make steel back then really just required a source of iron ore, appropriate fuel (charcoal, wood) and leather, clay and stones to build a hearth/forge with a bellows.

Ref:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_warfare

http://dtrinkle.matse.illinois.edu/MatSE584/articles/steel_greece_rome/steel_in_ancient_greece_an.html

US cybersecurity chief: Software makers shouldn't lawyer their way out of security responsibilities

JohnTill123
Devil

Re: Proper Regulation

For Microsoft, how about 103% of sales revenue instead of 3%? Let's make SURE the motivation is sufficient.

PC tech turns doctor to diagnose PC's constant crashes as a case of arthritis

JohnTill123

Re: Don't get me started...

Agreed. And make up words that are NOT needed. Every time I here someone say "incentivized" instead of "motivated" I wince...

Unless things change, first zettaflop systems will need nuclear power, AMD's Su says

JohnTill123
Holmes

"This flattening of efficiency becomes the largest challenge that we have to solve, both from a technology standpoint as well as from a sustainability standpoint," she said. "Our challenge is to figure out how over the next decade we think about compute efficiency as the number one priority."

Way back in the days when Xerox made mainframes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDS_Sigma_series ), programmers used to work to optimize their code. This was required to fit into memory and to finish in a useful time.

The modern predilection to throw together masses of "libraries" into a bloated, inefficient, and slow binary and calling it "enterprise-class programming" is sad. It is a primary cause of wasted time and electricity. Go back to writing tight, efficient code and that will improve "compute efficiency" far more than just by throwing hardware at it.

Trust, not tech, is holding back a safer internet

JohnTill123
Trollface

Re: "Global spending [is] a quarter of the US defense budget"

It's very true that Canada has a small military. Although we do contribute to NORAD and NATO, the size of the contribution is embarrassingly lightweight.

But consider the following: When an American says they are ticked off at Canada for "not pulling our weight" in NATO and keeping military spending low, I always ask them the following question: "If you think Canada needs to spend more on our military, do you really want a country on your northern border with a large and effective military capability?"

I've never received a reasonable answer to that question.

Chinese surveillance balloon over US causes fearful gasbagging

JohnTill123
Mushroom

Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lyfj_D_qfM

An IT emergency during a festive visit to the in-laws? So sorry, everyone, I need to step out for a while

JohnTill123
Alien

Re: Didn't Happen of the Tear Award

In a different life, I was one of the "Senior Security Incident Handlers" at a large financial institution. Large, as in > 150 billion USD capitalization.

The process to handle incidents was very well documented and maintained. There were maintained contact lists, conference calls at set times, and fully documented steps in the process. By being a dedicated "Incident Handler", I coordinated the needed work and reports, but mostly acted as a buffer between the people fixing the problem and the manglement screaming about it.

Of course, you would often find a new senior manager or junior VP who would attend a call and bluster demanding to take over the entire process, since they were *important*. Fortunately we also had a list of SVPs we could contact to come on the call and tell the blustering mangler to knock it off. We had good cooperation with these senior people: They knew the process Worked and trusted it. We never had to bring that hammer down twice with the same clown: They very quickly learned that the "Senior Incident Handler" may not have a fancy title and parking spot, but we had the trust of the highest level of management so they needed to back right off.

The trick was to have the entire process developed and document AND signed off at the highest levels. Then when it hit the fan, we just ran the process. Doctrine defeats Doubt!

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

JohnTill123

Re: Learn both?

Your point about the metric system in CGS is well taken! Most people don't realize that there are more than one "metric system".

The CGS and MKS system may seem to be similar, but trying to convert between the two systems in the equations in "Classical Electrodynamics" by Jackson will bend your mind. (Note: The third edition of this book partially changed to SI units, but the first two editions were Gaussian/CGS.)

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_units

JohnTill123
Windows

Re: The amount of times...

A useful "feature" of Fahrenheit for people in snowy climates is that zero Fahrenheit is the temperature where salt on icy roads ceases to help melt the ice on the road to make it less slippery. So if the temperature is less than zero Fahrenheit, you know to be very careful when driving.

In Celsius, you have to remember that the critical temperature for salted roads is about "-18C", which is not as intuitive.

JohnTill123

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

Actually, the standard building timber IS a "two by four" when it's rough sawn. But it's normally "dressed" so it doesn't have saw marks on the surface. That knocks it down to about 1-5/8 inches by 3-3/8 inches.

I once pulled a 70 year old rough sawn 2x4 out of a wall in a basement of a house built in 1919 and measured it with vernier calipers. It was exactly 2" by 4" to within a 1/10th of an inch.

If your DNS queries LoOk liKE tHIs, it's not a ransom note, it's a security improvement

JohnTill123
Go

StudlyCaps for the Win!

Whoever thought that StudlyCaps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_caps) would wind up being a security tool?

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

JohnTill123

Re: Why not share via Bitwarden?

Absolutely correct!

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. - Benjamin Franklin.

JohnTill123
Facepalm

Re: KeePass

Absolutely correct. The cloud is just "someone else's computer" and why would you put your sensitive data there?

Keep your sensitive data to yourself. It's that simple.

Native Americans urge Apache Software Foundation to ditch name

JohnTill123

Jerry Cans?

Many years ago, my dad had a genuine ex-British Army "jerry can" from WWII. Good thick steel, with a fine threaded cap. Solid and safe as houses.

Of course, one day #1 son (me) was sent to the gas station to fill it up so I could mow the grass (Dad had finally accepted that me mowing a quarter acre with a manual mower that was dull as dishwater was Not Going To Happen) and the officious operator shut off the pump because my can wasn't red and it didn't have the right warning labels. The fact that it had been an effective and safe gasoline container for about 30 years at that point made no difference to Mr. RulesMustBeObeyed.

Of course, we then had to buy a plastic can that had the right features, even though it was leaky and easily punctured. Sad.

JohnTill123
Big Brother

Re: Oracle? Sun? Java?

"When will this bullshit stop?"

Follow the money. There is a huge industry based on creating to create complaints and conflicts over these issues. The profits come when they convince NGOs, governments, and soft-hearted people to fund the "reparations" and "reconciliations" that are required to assuage the terrible injustice. When the money stops, this nonsense will stop.

How to stop the money is the question: The influence of "social media", the "legacy media" and the takeover of institutions, universities, and political parties with the cult of "wokeness" is going to keep that money flowing for a long time to come.

This can’t be a real bomb threat: You've called a modem, not a phone

JohnTill123
Mushroom

Re: Back in the day ....

It would depend on the explosive. 250 grams of C4, or even just 190 grams is a LOT of explosive power: If it detonated in a room, you'd definitely lose the desk (and any windows) but anyone in the room would probably die from blast effects and unless you were in a building with concrete/rebar walls and floors, people in adjacent floors or rooms would be in great danger from flying debris.

The Mythbusters did a bit where they showed a small quantity of C4 cutting through very thick steel in different ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwyniA5ryhY

https://alexaanswers.amazon.com/question/5vXMcuxnbCRuyPIgwMz6Ii

New software sells new hardware – but a threat to that symbiosis is coming

JohnTill123

Re: Slow software

The first C compiler I ever bought fit on 3 x 360K 5.25" floppy disks. Years later, the first MS C++ compiler I saw was on a DVD. And "Hello World" with MS C++ was over a megabyte.

Ridiculous bloat.

How to track equipped cars via exploitable e-ink platemaker

JohnTill123

Re: Stick them on a Tesla.

Interesting. Here in Canada the drivers who are the worst are the Audi and VW Jetta lunatics. In the urban areas, Subarus are usually either found at Lee Valley tools (Very high end woodworking vendor), or driven by short-haired, very serious women who don't wear makeup.

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

JohnTill123

Re: Nothing new, kinda pathetic really

As per your last point, I am quite certain it is a rational argument. I used to do a lot of science-related number crunching, and understanding what the computer was actually doing is critical to getting a program to be efficient. Just knowing how an array unfolded in memory and programming accordingly could speed up a program manyfold.

Google debuts OSV-Scanner – a Go tool for finding security holes in open source

JohnTill123

Re: wrong conclusions

Agreed.

The modern "programming" practice of extracting various code blobs from a massive library and pasting them together is a security nightmare. There's no chance that in 1,764 dependencies there won't be a vulnerability somewhere. So you can pretty well guarantee that every single such app can be abused.

Anyone who uses this "programming" paradigm in financial or industrial sectors, or other critical sectors like hydro, water, sewer utilities etc, is taking a massive risk.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/

What did Unix fans learn from the end of Unix workstations?

JohnTill123

Re: The "problem" was...

I agree to a point. I still contend that trying to deliver an expensive and proprietary product while competing against FOSS and commodity hardware was and remains a doomed business model.

Perhaps if they had not been mismanaged and corrupt, they might have managed to pivot and find a profitable way forwards, but "staying the course" was business suicide.

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