Posts by Vic 5860 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
And yes, Amarok lost a lot of features during its transition
The last 1.x version of Amarok (1.44? I forget...) was utterly brilliant. It did exactly what I wanted.
Then it went on to v2.0, with a newer, greyer UI. And a squillion bugs & crashes that its predeccessor didn't have.
I've not used it since :-(
Vic.
getting a copy good enough to make a simulation is not totally straightforward
Not as tricky as you might think
ISTR reports of them using it to fool sensors, but you can google that for yourselves...
Vic.
If this example is so important, why are the systemd devs so lax in their attitude elsewhere: "if we don't know anything, we consider the system online"?
They're clearly Star Trek buffs - it's an opportunity to state out of the blue, at the first sign of any trouble, that "$really_necessary_system is offline"...
Vic.
As you have discovered though the cost of parsing init scripts is not that high and certainly not enough of a problem to justify systemd
That much is certainly true.
SysV init scripts are pretty much bomb-proof, but being entirely synchronous, they run one-at-a-time, and a delay in one delays all of them. It is an inefficient system.
The idea of running independent init scripts in parallel is a good one - but systemd seems to have lost sight of that goal, and is heading for the "replace everything in sight" model. And that's why there is resistance to its adoption; the concept is good, but the implementation is worrying.
Vic.
Yes systemd can control restarts etc but most of the time is is mostly irrelevant to the operation of a Linux server.
I disagree. You might not boot the entire box very often, but services are started and stopped all the time. With SysV, this is both easy *and* it is discoverable - /etc/init.d/ has all the services, so tab completion works to assist the imperfect memory.
unless you were really, really careful some services could start before their dependencies were running. If we were to fix that properly then I'd be happy with staying with SystemV.
That would imply a broken init script - SysV scripts are entirely synchronous, so init will not even begin to start a service until all the previous ones are completed. Dependencies are handled trivially by starting dependent services later than their prerequisites.
SysV has a number of problems, but not that one.
Vic.
They're borging everything but the kernel. How long before that goes too?
There's already been the kernel debug parameter fiasco...
VIc.
This means that ICO are likely to take more action
Well that will make a nice change.
A few years back, I handed them all the evidence they needed to prosecute a significant data breach - a company director had deliberately leaked data on that company's website in order to smear a rival.
When the ICO finally got around to responding to me, they simply took said director's claims that he hadn't breached anyone's privacy at face value, and took no action.
I'm not holding my breath for an improvement; they seem primarily interested in window-dressing.
Vic.
Seemed a clever idea, until my parcel sat in the local Post Office for 2 days before Royal Mail's tracking could tell Amazon/me it was ready to collect
I had a parcel sent to me from China. I had flight tracking numbers, and I could track it all the way into the country and into the Royal Mail depot.
It sat there for a month. They didn't allocate it a UK tracking number, so I couldn't get any info from their web site. And if you ring them up, you just get passed around the IVR until you get told to go to the website, and the machine hangs up on you.
My parcel sat in the depot for a month, until eventually it was returned to China as "not collected". The original Chinese tracking number was still on it, but no UK one...
Vic.
Folding knifes with a blade under 3" in length are technically legal, but if you have one in public and the police ask, if you can't justify it to a reasonable degree you might get taken down the station for a chat.
I'm not aware of any length of knife that is actually illegal, but anything that can be construed as a weapon might get a polite enquiry from the Bill, with a rather less polite one if you don't come up with a reasonable explanation.
I once had a conversation[1] with a cop outside a kebab shop. I was trying to find out whether the law would allow me to buy one of the long blades they were using to shave the "meat" off the stock. The practical upshot was that it was perfectly legal, but if I waved it around, I'd almost certainly be in deep, deep trouble...
Vic.
[1] I was quite drunk at the time. He was very patient :-)
or perhaps they were watching hundreds of potential suspects and made the wrong choice by stopping watching these ones. Perhaps the resources were diverted to something else that did not and can not make the headlines.
That would mean that they are far more keen to destroy our liberties than to admit to a cock-up.
We all screw up from time to time. The Public would accept the occasional mistake, particularly at a time when resources are tight. But the Security Services don't seem to worry about the cost to us, as long as *they* don't have to lose face. And that's not acceptable.
Vic.
So, what the security services appear to be pointing out is they think US companies may not be responding satisfactorily to UK warrants, correct?
No, not at all.
What the statement says is that US companies do not consider themselves to be under any compulsion to comply with warrants issued by a foreign power. And that's as it should be.
Whether or not the companies in question do comply with any such warrants - and whether such compliance might or might not be satisfactory in the eyes of the UK authorities - is not mentioned.
it's not entirely clear whether the report is merely dealing with a technical point, or squarely trying to shift the blame.
Yeah, it is. It couldn't get much clearer...
Vic.
They enter the symptoms into their iPad and it tells them what the problem is, how to treat it and write you a prescription
"Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded"
I'm going to have to go and watch that again now...
Vic.
The scientific unit of force is NOT pounds!!
Yes, but this is not a study aimed at the scientifically-literate.
The giveaway, to my mind, is the values quoted - 60 pounds at 60 degrees? That implies a head weight of nearly 70 pounds, which is getting on for half my body weight. And I'm no racing snake these days...
Of course, these might be instantaneous forces, rather than static loading - in which case, it's surely the act of addressing your phone like you're at the Headbanger's Ball that is to blame, rather than the phone use.
Vic.
I've got a box at home that started on OpenSuSE 10.3 and it's been upgraded (over the network) to 13.1 via all the releases in between. No re-install required
My two primary machines both started life as RHL7.0. I've done several in-place upgrades on those over the years, without the need to re-install...
Keeping your /home on a separate partition helps.
Yes. This is always good advice.
Vic.
You are driving on a confined road, an out-of-control lorry rumbles towards your car and the only space you can evade it is currently occupied by 20 philosophers. Do you want your car to drive through them?
You are driving on a confined road, an out-of-control lorry rumbles towards your car and the only space you can evade it is currently occupied by 20 lawyers. How many times do you back up for another go?
Vic.
I backed Elite: Dangerous on Day 1
I ... errr ... meant to. I forgot. Sorry.
But given what's happened, I'm quite pleased about that - I've no intention of playing multiplayer, and whilst I could cope with having an open Internet connection to do so, I'd rather not, for all the reasons stated elsewhere.
But I downloaded the full Elite game from the link posted elsewhere in this thread, and threw it at beebem[1]. And now I can play Elite.
Is it modern? No. Is it sexy? No. Does it dazzle the viewer with awesome graphics? No. Is it Elite? Fuck, yeah.
So I am transported back to 19<coughty><cough>. I'm having a really good day today[2].
Vic.
[1] Installed through my distrbution repo, and it works just fine...
[2] I did my first 4 night-time landings tonight. And whilst that has nothing whatsoever to do with the thread, I'm still chuffed :-)
even with the cleaver split screen technique reducing graphics memory
That wasn't about reducing memory - it was about doing something very clever indeed.
The high-resolution mode used for the main viewer display could only display monochrome. They needed colours for the instrumentation display beneath it.
So the split-screen thing was to change graphics modes on the fly to get high-res at the top and colour at the bottom.
Vic.
No! That would only turn snappy old 8-bits lovelies into sluggish monsters
Perhaps my favourite game of all time is Defender. The graphics on that are - by modern standards - utter crap.
But those graphics do not detract from the game. I suspect that improving them would not enhance it, either...
Vic.
You should really have another look at the latest TVs
I did - a few *hours* after posting, my CRT TV died - it took on a bright yellow cast :-(
I now have a 40" Samsung LED unit. The blacks aren't wonderful, but I'll get used to it, I guess. But it plays directly form my USB drive, so the benefits are quite good :-)
With OLED black IS the new black.
Yeah, but OLED is more money than I want to pay right now...
Vic.
Leakage tends to dominate at smaller nodes
Only when the device is idle. If it's switching - you're charging/discharging capacitors (since that's what a FET gate is), and the Vf2C thing dominates.
If your leakage current is greater than your switching current, your process is useless.
Vic.
There are a lot of dimensions to measure transistors aside from gate length, and it is well down the list when it comes to power draw.
Errr - not really.
P ∝ f2C
C is pretty much determined by the gate dimensions - there's little you can do to the dielectric that leaves the gate tenable. So your power draw is determined by voltage, clocking frequency[1], and gate dimension. For a given performance, there's a limit to how far you can reduce the voltage, so power draw for a given task is pretty much determined by gate size.
Vic.
[1] This is naturally the averaged clocking frequency, integrated wrt time across the device and divided by gate count; a static module that isn't changing state consumes only leakage power.
the BBC's excellent but 50%-of-races-as-highlight-shows-only
The BBC's coverage would be much better if it had less of the Eddie Jordan Self-Promotion Show in it.
Although it is occasionally amusing watching David Coulthard desperately trying not to use the word "twat" on air...
Vic.
In what world is source patching the only form of patching?
Ultimately, it is pretty much the only form of patching - veyr few people still do direct hex-editing these days...
Windows Update is two clicks and forget.
Ah. So getting someopne else to do your pathcing is easy. Well, it's just as easy in any environment where you can pull down someone else's code. That's my "at best, as easy to patch as Heartbleed" comment - if all you're doing is pulling down someone else's binaries, there is no difference whatsoever in ease of correction (thus proving the original statement of the SChannel bug being "[e]asier to patch in most cases" entirely incorrect).
But if you don't *have* someone else's binaries, Heartbleed is still trivial to patch, whereas SChannel is not. Thus proving the original statement of the SChannel bug being "[e]asier to patch in most cases" entirely incorrect.
If you ever look into it, I think you'll find that building a copy of DD-WRT is significantly more painful than changing one line of code, despite having the source. Then come back about how trivial it is.
Got a patch for Windows XP? Nope, of course you haven't. Patching is much harder if you get no support from upstream. But if you've got an old copy of - as per your example - DD-WRT with the Heartbleed bug, you can still patch it...
Vic.
Easier to patch in most cases
No, I don't get that at all.
Heartbleed was a very serious bug, but it was *trivial* to patch. Mind-numbingly simple.
The SChanell bug can only be, at best, as easy to patch as Heartbleed - and that implies that you have the source to patch (i.e. you are Microsoft).
Vic.
a replacement battery that may cost five times what even Halfords would dare to charge but does come with a slightly extended guarantee
The batteries are all the same.
I briefly worked for a parts distribution company[1]. When we had batteries to deliver, the order sheet would specify which guarantee the customer had ordered. We would then stick the guarantee sticker for that to the battery of the appropriate shape/size/capacity spec, and deliver it to the motor factor.
Vic.
[1] ADS, in case you were interested. They're gone now...
I've never in those 10 years heard anything good about Fasthosts.
I use Fasthosts as a registrar for some of my domains.
When I was doing my IPv6 training, I had to get them to apply some glue records. The girl I spke to was completely upfront about the fact that she had no idea what I was talking about, but was happy to be guided through it.
Between us, we got the records in properly at the first attempt. I don't care that she didn't understand what I wanted - most people don't, even now - but I was impressed that I got through to someone who was willing to try with minimal effort.
They later posted me a questionnaire about my experience - I put down that they had exceeded my expectations, because I expected them to be utter numbskulls, and instead I got someone who could sort things out for me...
Vic.
Still more cooking projects, please.
The pub I frequent has taken to having cooking projects presented of an evening. It makes for a particularly homely feel, with the whole pub getting fed on grub cooked by volunteers (contestants).
I've only been disqualified once :-)
Vic.
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