* Posts by Vic

5860 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007

Now VW air-pollution cheatware 'found in Audis and Porsches'

Vic

Re: Parvenu.

I guess you have not spent much time around afluent people? Money is pretty much ALL they care about

Actually, that's not necessarily the case.

In my youth, I spent quite a bit of time with *properly* rich people. People who had been landed gentry for generations uncountable. And they can be quite wonderful; having always had access to all the cash they've ever needed, they don't even tend to think about money - as you or I rarely think about air. The supply is invariably sufficient.

This was quite bizarre to me at that age - I grew up on a council estate in Southampton, yet they took me for what I was, not how much money I had.

Those that have come into money comparatively recently, though - yes, you're absolutely right there.

Vic.

Windows 10 growth stalls during October

Vic

Re: A pedant writes...

For example some high-tailed aircraft (such as the Gloster Javelin), when stalled, can enter a super-stall where the tailplane is blanketed and there is no ability to alter pitch leading to an inability to recover regardless of height.

The Javelin is certainly a tricky aircraft.

The Pilot Notes give the recommended recovery method: use aileron roll to induce a spin, and then recover from the spin in the usual manner.

I'll dig out a copy next time I'm at he museum and post the official text.

Vic.

Vic

Re: A pedant writes...

Shouldn't that be "wings stop sustaining life"?

No, it should have been "wings stop producing lift", but I'd missed the edit window by the time I noticed.

Stalling an aircraft is only dangerous when you're very close to the ground...

Vic.

Vic

Re: A pedant writes...

No, they do not _start_ producing drag. They produce drag all the time they move through the air. They produce a much increased lift/drag ratio.

There's some drag in unstalled flight. There is a lot more drag once the wing has stalled[1]. It's not just lift/drag; the amount of drag increases sharply once the wing has stalled[2].

Vic.

[1] You can see a typical drag curve here. Note how the drag coefficient rises sharply as the AoA goes through the stall point.

[2] It's a big part of why a developed spin is self-sustaining; the stalled inner wing is much more draggy than the outer wing, leading to yaw, meaning that the inner wing has a higher AoA than the outer, meaning that it is more deeply stalled than the outer (which probably isn't stalled), meaning it is more draggy, ...

Vic

Re: A pedant writes...

I'm sure there's a word for this.

"Typo" was the original word, but I figured it wasn't worth correcting, what with the extra meaning :-)

Vic.

Vic

Re: A pedant writes...

Since we're doing pedantry, ...

It doesn't stop as such, it starts to progress along the vertical axis only

That's not entirely true; what happens is that the wings stop producing life and start producing drag. This doesn't mean you go straight down - certain aircraft[1] flutter down quite gently in a full stall. Some bite...

The pont is - you're likely still travelling (partly) horizontally, even when fully stalled.

Vic.

[1] Part of the BGA Glider Certificate, for example, requires demonstration of the "mushing stall", wherein the wings are stalled, but the ailerons and rudder still work. I didn't see the point, myself, but they required me to fly it.

I survived a head-on crash with driverless cars – and dummies

Vic

Re: As a Biker

Two reasons: Leg Protectors (aka Knee Cappers) and Airbags for Motorcycles.

A guy I used to know was very pleased with those attempts...

He was working at TRL at the time. They bought in two bikes (GPz9? Something like that. The memory is dim) and kitted them out with leg protectors.

It was clear, within a few nanoseconds of riding the bikes, that the idea was ludicrous - so the project was cancelled, and the bikes sold off. Very cheaply. He got one.

It took a good 5 minutes to remove the leg "protectors", and he quite liked the impact markings on the paintjob,

Vic.

Vic

Self-driving cars are so passe...

TRRL[1] had some fun with a DS.

That was five decades ago...

Vic.

[1] As they were back then

World's most frustrating televised Linux install just got more frustrating

Vic

rm -rf / is an error on a POSIX compliant system.

OK, it seems I've gone blind. Where does it say that?

Vic.

E-mail crypto is as usable as it ever was, say boffins

Vic

OK, but even if I served the key over https, you'd still be back the old, "do you trust the CA?", argument.

Yes. I wasn't addressing that point.

At least with my key, you know it's the same, 'me', you are communicating with each time

No, you don't. http is trivially intercepted, so even if I were *sure* that the website is yours, Mallory could be spoofing the signature. Over http, it really isn't very difficult.

Vic.

Vic

Re: 'Easy' ways to get and validate keys

There needs to be a UI for all that!

There is, This is the first one I came across. There are others. I've not personally used any of them.

Vic.

Vic

My personal key, is in the same place it has been available for ages.

Available over http. Invalid security certificate when trying https, but even if I accept it (which I normally wouldn't), it only takes me to a cpanel login.

Vic.

Vic

Re: Not really hard?

It's stupidly hard.

It isn't hard. It's uninteresting.

I set up encryption on my webmail server some years ago. I wrote a tutorial for all my users, and mailed it to everyone. I got the return receipts to say that they'd read it.

No-one used it.

It's not that they didn't understand - they had a click-by-click tutorial, with me to fall back on if it wasn't clear. They just didn't care enough to do anything about it.

And that's where we are now - the vast majority of email users just don't care about encryption, even after the Snowden revelations. Perhaps they'll care a bit more after they've seen the new Bond film[1].

Vic.

[1] They won't. But I can dream, can't I?

Boffins solve bacon crisis with newly-patented plant

Vic

Re: Fellow vegetarian here - Nutrimatic

Good vegetarian food will rock your world

Completely agree with you there.

it is SO much better than most meat-based dishes

But disagree with you there.

I've yet to have a veggie dish come close to a really good meat dish. Thaat, of course, is partly because I really like meat :-)

It is commonplace in the UK, of course, for meat to be mahoosively overcooked. It's not too tricky to make something taste better than that...

Vic.

Vic
Facepalm

Re: You can't tell it's not...

Looks (a bit) like bacon, "tastes like bacon" (honest), strangely no mention of the texture - which presumably resembles a laminated cardboard/styrofoam composite

It's what they use to make Frazzles out of, isn't it?

Vic.

Linus Torvalds fires off angry 'compiler-masturbation' rant

Vic

Re: Question

Can anyone who dislikes Linus Torvald just go off and fork the kernel?

Yes. It's GPLv2, so as long as you fulfill that licence, you are perfectly at liberty to fork it and maintain your own version.

Guess how many people do...

Vic.

Vic

27 x 7 x 52

They're going to refuse your overtime claims...

Vic.

Vic

Vic is correct, OP is leaking.

No I'm not - I misread the sense of the allocation test - it changes betweent the two mallocs. The goto is on successful allocation for the second one. I should look more carefully next time.

Although I don't make hard-and-fast rules about the use of goto, I think this is a case where it really shouldn't be used...

Vic.

Anonymous hack group plans to out anonymous hate group

Vic

Re: @ Big John Certain comments by DAM

The comment referred to a large number of jewish people as "shitheads"

Well, unless there's something strange going on with ElReg's comment system, you were the first person to mention Judaism here...

Vic.

Vic

Re: Certain comments by DAM

you're saying "shithead = jew," right?

Don't mention the J word.

We'll be crawling in DaveDaveDave before you know it...

Vic.

Hacked TalkTalk CEO: Dead as a Dido? Nope, she refuses to quit

Vic

Re: isn't she connected?

Born on a pig farm

And she's mates with Camoron?

The plot thickens...

Vic.

How Microsoft will cram Windows 10 even harder down your PC's throat early next year

Vic

Re: @billat29 - Software As A Service

So in essence Win 10 is like Android - a free enabler

Currently free. For the first year - after that, they'll be charging.

Vic.

Vic

Re: I just installed it on an oldish HP

a rescued chuck out ... 2GB RAM, dual core 3GHz

You realise that's faster than anything I own?

Vic.

Vic

Re: Will Work. For Free.

more experienced cat-servants will be considered capable of hunting said critter, still living obviously

AIUI, if they're bringing you live animals, it means they think you're shit at hunting, and need remedial training...

Vic.

Vic

Re: Just do the flipping update

I have not come across a Linux distro yet, that 'proactively' fetched the upgrade

yum-updatesd will do the proactive fetch - but you have to set do_download and possibly do_download_deps to True to do so (which is not the default. And I had to look it up). There's also a do_update flag to apply the updates automagically - again, you have to set this explicitly.

The rest of it, though - no. No means no.

Vic.

Vic

Re: wsusoffline - win

My Linux customers (around 30 at present) are a joy to visit

When I was doing at-home PC support a few years back, I moved quite a few "difficult" customers onto Linux. It actually cost me quite a bit - they had significantly fewer callouts than when they were using Windows.

One guy was very happy until his son came home and *insisted* that the machine be returned to booting Windows by default. And then the callouts resumed.

Vic.

Top cops demand access to the UK's entire web browsing history

Vic

I'm sure I read somewhere that London is arguably the worst place in the world to commit a crime as virtually every street corner has a cctv camera on it that the police can access at will for the purposes of investigating crime.

But a significant proprtion of them are at such a low resolution that there is no way they could ever help even in detecting crime, let alone identifying the perpetrators.

CCTV is, by and large, security theatre.

Vic.

Deutsche Bank to axe 'excessively complex' IT, slash 9,000 jobs

Vic
Joke

Re: Oh yeah...

HP provide my company's infrastructure, desktop & support. Standard of service is bloody diabolical

Look at Mr. Lah-de-dah with his better-than-everyone-else HP support :-)

Vic.

Vic

Re: Respect

A few obvious omissions:

It'll all be sat on top of Newdos/80. You mark my words.

Vic.

Open data not a replacement for FOI - Shadow digital minister

Vic

Re: Sir Humphrey wins again

if enough people made alternative votes the outcome could be chaotic for some years

But they just won't.

You've got people like my neighbour, who votes Labour with no knowledge of what they stand for because "they're to party of normal people like us". If only she were an outlier...

And there are people of all persuasions who vote the way they do because it's the way they've always voted. Manifestos are rarely even read :-(

Vic.

UK finance sector: IT security testing 'becoming close to mandatory'

Vic

Re: IT Security... In Banks?

you can get by the around by sitting on a PC that some genius has forgotten to lock

One place I used to work had an interesting answer to that - if you left your terminal unlocked, you would send an email to the entire company, in which you would come out.

Very non-PC, but surprisingly effective.

They had password and creds laying about on the web servers & file system unencrypted, or checked into version control in plain text, and I've even seen them hard coded into source files

The last place I worked, one department had a policy of printing out the root password for every machine and sticking it to the front panel...

Vic.

Why was the modem down? Let us count the ways. And phone lines

Vic

Re: Luxury

I had a Jupiter Ace Forth-based "computer".

I've still got one of those.

Vic.

Have a Plan A, and Plan B – just don't go down with the ship

Vic

Re: other drivers for a plan

You don't pilfer the stuff right away; just insert some extremely covert stuff while you have the clearance and then fix things tootsweet.

There are assorted ways to log all shell activity. That means that the admin's operations can be examined afterwards - both to guard against such mischief and also to make sure that the instructions given were followed correctly.

Vic.

Northrop wins $55bn contract for next-gen bomber – as America says bye-bye to B-52

Vic

I think the next "revolution" will be drones controlled by other front line manned aircraft.

That's hardly a revolution - we've got a Meteor at the museum that was used in exactly that role (albeit only for training).

Vic.

Vic

Re: Why not give the money to NASA

The energy dissipated by the projectiles must be less than the fuel required to give them that energy

Sure - but it's not about the energy. There's plenty of that, even if it's less than a nuke.

The weapon is effective because you don't see a boost phase - that might have happened years before. One little retro rocket on an orbital vehicle and you've got a super-fast strike with almost no notice...

Vic.

Vic

Re: The only reason they're crewed

Remove the meatbags and you can fly above any clouds

Manned aircraft routinely fly above any clouds. Clouds typically form up to 40,000ft. The Vulcan - from 1952 - has a ceiling height of 55,000ft.

They'll be too high for fighters to bother them, and could be far more maneuverable not having to worry about human issues with G force

Typhoon has a service ceiling of 65,000ft. Flying higher than that is going to be pretty tricky for a bomber - the air is a bit thin for the wings to generate much lift. The B-2, for example, has a service ceiling of 50,000ft. And maneuvrability is far more about the bending moments on the airframe from the high masses carried; fighters are limited by their crew's G-capability, but bombers aren't...

Because they could be made so much cheaper you don't even have to care if you lose a few

The cost of the airframe is more about building the airframe and putting engines in it; making drone versions of these aircraft is unlikely to make them any cheaper. There's no difference to the R&D cost, there's a small reduction in the price of not having to have a pressurised aircraft (it doesn't need quite so much hoop strength), there's a tiny reduction in not having to contain the (cheap) life-support kit for the crew, and there's a large increase in having to have resilient comms/nav kit. I reckon the price will be pretty much equal.

Vic.

Vic

Re: Just remember...

I wouldn't want a replica, but I wonder how a Vulcan-shape would work as a design starting point.

Looks good so far. You can see how it performs in the (short) documentary on the airframe here.

Vic.

Vic

Re: Just remember...

it's not strong enough for the turbulence encountered in sustained low level operations

The Vulcan was pretty good at low-level ops; it was the Victor that couldn't handle the stress. So they were converted into tankers.

There was concern about stress-cracking in the wings, so a modification was developed to patch the wing root after a certain number of flying hours. Only one Vulcan was ever actually patched - XH558, and that just a couple of years ago.

Vulcans were obsolete within 3 years of their introduction

Well, I spent some time with Martin Withers last year, and he doesn't agree with you.

Vic.

Big mistake, Google. Big mistake: Chrome OS to be 'folded into Android'

Vic

Re: So what's your point?

They may add GNU to Android

I really doubt that.

Substantially all GNU userland stuff is GPL or similar; to start putting GPL into Android means that redistributors (i.e. the phone manuacturers) will have to track the GPL stuff and release it properly. That's just asking for trouble - so many vendors are notoriously crap at compliance. And Google - whilst not responsible for the phone makers' compliance - will take flak for it. That's something they won't want...

Vic.

Oracle's Larry Ellison claims his Sparc M7 chip is hacker-proof – Errr...

Vic
Black Helicopters

Re: I'm having a vague flashback here...

What is it even supposed to mean? What constitutes "producing data" in this context?

Amount of CCTV video lying around with your face on it?

Vic.

Vic

Re: Heartbleed

The Heartbleed exploit relies on reading sequentially beyond the payload. For you to be correct, then the entire 64k (the typical exploit size) would have had to have been previously part of a single malloc call

It is. That's the problem...

Vic.

Vic

Re: Can we ditch the silly political correctness in reg articles

"They" has gained common usage as a non-gender specific pronoun these days. You see it in place of "he" quite often.

You see the utterance "innit" tacked onto just about everything certain people say. That doesn't make it right.

"They" might have come into common parlance, but the OP claimed it was the "standard non gender pronoun". Which it isn't.

Vic.

Cops use terror powers to lift BBC man's laptop after ISIS interview

Vic

Re: @x 7 -- @AC (the naive one) Works for me

they may be observed cleaning up afterwards.

Yep. And not in the "mop and bucket" sense of that expression...

Vic.

How to build a totally open computer from the CPU to the desktop

Vic

Re: From scratch?

When he didn't like the chip development tools, he even developed his own chip design software so he *knows* exactly what goes into the processors he designs.

I was employed by a company developing a Forth compiler for (what I believe is) Chuck's latest chip[1].

His tools were ... interesting. Let's just say he didn't exactly hit the yield points he needed for the chip to be marketable.

Vic.

[1] I'm not sure the company producing the chips still exists. There was certainly a very public falling-out with Chuck that pretty much destroyed the whole project.

TalkTalk attack: Lad, 15, cuffed by UK cyber-cops

Vic

Re: Bobby Tables, 15, cuffed by TalkTalk hacking probe cops

No they won't. I've been with my current company for about 6 years and in that time I've had 7 bosses. Trying to identify which one is responsible for a given feck-up isn't trivial.

No, but that's because there is no personal responsibility; they can all just play on the blame-go-round until nothing happens. But if the CEO or MD were to be personally responsible unless he can prove who actually is, that would cease; when the big boss doesn't get paid this year, he's going to find out what really happened...

The only way it gets better is to make the developers better - management will always be inept. While you can roll a turd in glitter, you can't really polish it, so ultimately the quality control has to begin with who is allowed to practice software development professionally, and who isn't.

Both are required. It's no use having a superb set of devs if the management force them to cut corners. And Management are going to cut corners if they think it will gain them some advantage because they will get away with it every time. They need to be held responsible for their actions if code quality is going to improve. And once that's happened, they will seek out a talented group of devs, rather than just a cheap set...

Vic.

Ex-Microsoft craft ale buffs rattle tankard for desktop brewery

Vic

Re: Brewing beer ain't exactly rocket science.

Water, grain, hops. Bring to boil.

Will look and taste like shit.

Mash temperature is very important for the quality of what you produce. If you're boiling your grain, quality is not on your agenda.

Vic.

Vic

Re: Doesn't look that hassle free

You mean you store your beer in a plastic bag?

Key Kegs are fine.

Vic.