Posts by Herby

They are a bit fussy at times.

I have a friend that has a large format (36 inch wide) that he uses to print posters. One day the "factory rep" showed up to do some P.M. and in the process ripped the transfer belt. This was a brand new printer and one of the only ones in the Southern California (L.A.) area. My friend decide that this droid would NEVER come within sight of the printer. It was the printer that was driving his business, and having out of commission for any amount of time meant a loss of BIG BUX! He wasn't very happy.

Unfortunately the printer was on the ground floor, so ladder trick probably wouldn't have worked.

But the problem really is...

That nobody has "tested" what happens when a plane and a small drone attempt to occupy the same space. So, being ever so cautious and dodging legal fights, the response is to say "they can't be here". Given the conditions, this is the only answer, and probably the least expensive.

This same mentality makes us take off our shoes when going through security and to ban water bottles through security (my test: drink some of it). There are also bans on silly things like radios and cell phones on board commercial aircraft for similar reasons. Someone feels there is a risk (no matter how small), and banning things eliminates said risk.

While I can see that even a small drone MIGHT cause some damage, I think that someone should (Mythbusters has ended) actually find out if this is true. In any task, there is some risk (even sitting at a keyboard commenting for ElReg), but understand the risks and take proper precautions. But it should be incumbent upon those stating the risk to figure out the ACTUAL risk, not some supposed one.

Life goes on.

Maybe one should try...

To look at the code using an ASR33 teletype. Unfortunately it has no lower case, but just setup a terminal connection at any 3 digit speed and edit the code. Lots of "fluff" in comments is annoying, but at the slower speeds, just about anything that isn't code comes close (unfortunately).

The best test of how well you commented code is to go away for about 6 months (maybe longer) and come back to the code and resume with the project. You WILL understand the need for legible comments.

Fancy boxey comments are just annoying, but that's my opinion.

Be careful...

For what you ask for, you may just get it.

Please graduating students: The object of drinking is not to get "falling over drunk" (unless you really are an alcoholic). Remember, you only rent beer for a few hours.

Looks like...

...A person of interest.

Blue moon beer? Must have been drinking it way too much!!

So when??

Will they prosecute the malware floggers that make spambots of unwilling computer users? Seems like a good place to start!!

Oops, The FBI doesn't look into computer misuse, they say it is "careless", not criminal.

This all begs the question...

Is any manufacturer making any 32 bit x86 boxen?

If the boards are still in current production, they really should be supported. I understand that my 16meg 386sx box won't run a 4.x Linux kernel, but I really don't expect it to.

Then again, there IS bloat everywhere. The program /bin/true is over 29k bytes which sounds excessive if you ask me.

She DOES remember history...

Hillary was a staffer during the Watergate hearings, when then president Nixon had his "tapes", that he could have destroyed and that would be the end. Then they were "discovered" and the downfall was inevitable given what was going on.

Fast forward to today: Hillary controlled the server. Hillary edited the contents of the server (selectively "burned the tapes") to sanitize the problem. No "smoking gun"/"Deep Throat" and an uninterested press and the "problem" disappears.

Now we need her to say "I am not a crook!".

Observation: Where is Wikileaks when you need them??

All your base belong to us...

But I said that about another article.

Or, as Scott McNeal said "You have no9 privacy, get over it".

Life goes on.

All your base belong to us.

Yup! That's it.

As for BIOS's installed on machines, I feel that this should be the most open source item of the machine. Then you can "trust" it. The reality is that the BIOS really does WAY TOO much for any given machine. It should just start the first read of secondary storage, and go from there. It really shouldn't need to do much more.

Unfortunately, there are some operating systems that seem to rely upon the BIOS for much more than that. Oh, well.

And this is the UN...

That wants to take over ICANN?

Maybe ICANN needs an army? You never know.

Welcome to graft and corruption. Oh, sorry the internet exposes that, never mind.

I wonder when...

Some enclosed consumer thing (like an ATM) gets one of these nag screens.

One wonders what people in Redmond are smoking, even if it is legal.

This whole things sounds like a ransom where virus (which it probably is).

Me? Thankfully at work they don't use these devices.

Darwin award??

Just thinking...

Or as Forrest Gump says: "Stupid is as stupid does".

And what about...

Those up Redmond, Washington??

Note to tech industry: Be careful for what you ask for, you may just get it (and its baggage).

"Pay no attention to the man woman behind the curtain.

No good deed...

goes unpunished. I suspect a big fine is in the offing, and the $50k debt will be the least of his problems.

I see a couple of years of porridge in his future.

Of course there are those who get $$$ by saying they are the IRS, and they won't even get their hand slapped. Yes, I got a phone call today. It went to voicemail, and I scrubbed it before it was over. They use machine voices so as to not be traceable.

Then you get....

The half hour (or more) inquiry of medical facts when you go into the hospital EVERY TIME since they can't be bothered to "look you up".

One time when visiting my dad in hospital, I was AMAZED at how much faxing they did. They would print out something and blast it off to somewhere. Weird to happen in the last decade!

Maybe they would be more accepting if you had a PDF of your (brief) history on a thumb drive and they accepted it as well, but that is another story.

Computers? I've heard of them...

Be careful...

For what you ask (net neutrality) you may just get it.

And that streaming video streaming will stop that nice stock trade you were hoping to get done in a timely fashion.

Kinda like trucks lorries tying up the Interstate motorway.

Notification...

We have a TV Advert here in the USA that tells of a "notifier" that tells you that something is happening, then doesn't do anything to fix it (it is for a identity protection company which I won't name). This sounds like the same thing. A note goes to the FCC "the cable is out" and life goes on as usual. I can't see much coming from this other than TPS cover sheets that do absolutely nothing.

I'd go to the beach and cut a wire underground just to file a report to see what happens. My guess is "not much".

When...

Will someone exercise their 2nd amendment rights to those at the other end of the wire? Law enforcement should be "on top" of this and get cracking.

Maybe when something like this infects a network at some big country capital will they start to so something!

I'd comment, but...

I'll leave it to a ElReg hack to privately email me and then they will know why.

This is why...

...The USA needs "Loser pays".

Female sales reps and other observations...

For engineers, a female sales rep seems to have all the right buttons enabled. Maybe that's why Penny's career (on the _Big Bang Theory_) got a lot of sales (it was pharmaceuticals though). Irresistible to many people, and an "easy on eyes" helps as well.

Paper: Always needed, especially for "Honey can you print a copy of this" (again female persuasion).

Pens in pocket: I have lots, but they aren't all pens. I have a pen (duh!), a pocket screwdriver, a flashlight, a sharpie marker, and a camera (evidence) pen. Yes, people ask!

Another reader writing with sadness...

So many comments, so little time. So much sympathy to express.

Only thing left to do...

Is for ElReg to setup a "personality" that all us commentards can link to (and will get approved).

As for "qualifications", I value my "silver badge" from ElReg as quite unique. It says that I might have something to say, and others appear to confirm it. Pretty good in my book.

A start!!

Now if others who are a prolific would get the same result, maybe my 300-400 messages a day that I get as junk might go away!

p.s. I don't need home warranties, or "free" electricity.

Maybe it is time...

To design a different CPU that from scratch has proper checks and the like. With known exploits cataloged it ought to be easy to try various threats against the CPU to see if they still work.

Oh, make it a big-endian CPU as well!

Begs the question(s)...

Who is going to buy twitter?

How soon are people going to leave...

As for the $60/user, just remember: If you can't see the product, look in a mirror, the product is YOU and it is being sold!!

Notice taken...

That beer isn't taxed like this (it probably has an alcohol tax already.

I don't know if club soda is taxed. It does taste nice and refreshing. Perrier?

They don't want to tax sugar directly, so I can continue to add it to my coffee/tea.

Governments are addicted to things as well. Usually those that they get LOTS of taxes from. I have yet to see an outright ban on smoking/tobacco/other stuff by any government.

I suspect that these taxes will go into the "general fund" and just be spent like any other.

Does this have ANY relation to the diabetes spam I receive every day??

These taxes are all a DUMB idea. What will they want to tax next? Hot Dogs, or Hamburgers? McDonalds?? NO, NO, NO!!

I'm surprised...

No title with BOFH in it somewhere. That would make a nice series for El Reg's audience to watch.

One would need an endless supply of No. 2's bosses.

Then again...

The movie 36 hours comes to mind. In the movie they used the Ahwahnee hotel which is quite nice to visit.

More flags??

All 50 of the states here in the USA have individual flags (the one I live in says "California Republic"). We don't get emoji flags either.

Oh, the humanity.

I believe that cities have them as well. Does Unicode have enough spaces?? UTF-32?? I hope not!

Just so you know...

Most fire sensors are removable for maintenance purposes. When they are removed, the lack of a sensor usually raises an alarm. So, instead of "starting a fire" simply remove one of the sensors (commonly they "unscrew" a 1/2 turn or so). While it won't indicate a fire, it will indicate a fault which should alert someone.

The other alternative I've seen is that some sensors have a magnetic reed switch in them for testing purposes. If you hold a magnet up to the sensor, it trips the alarm. The person testing the sensor wiring used a magnet on a stick to hold it next to the ceiling sensor. Truly a BOFH device when used properly (around noon on Friday).

And we complain...

When Volkswagen cleans up ITS act in order to pass its test, and blows smoke the rest of the time.

Tests are tests, and instructors (or car manufacturers) will teach to the test if they know the subject matter. Then after the test is passed, life goes on and we get sloppy programmers/cars.

Oh, well......

D-Day??

Strange how this was posted on the 72nd anniversary of D-Day. Makes one wonder what is next. I'll leave that to other speculators (or conspiracy theorists).

As for D-Day itself, we should never forget!

Gouging the government??

While many contractors do take advantage of our wonderful government, it goes the other way as well. The many hoops and delays in the government procurement process can (and do) add up to real costs.

Now I have no knowledge of what Deloitte did, I sometimes wonder if some of the added costa are brought on by the government itself.

Good luck getting a government agency to admit it though!

Can you keep a secret??

So can I!

So I won't tell you anything. Third parties are dangerous.

p.s. Note to bank robbers: turn off (like completely) your phone when doing an illegal activity.

At least...

The antenna (and other stuff) is unfurled and working properly (Galileo). Oh, and the receiver isn't drifting around (Voyager aka MJS-77).

Best of luck.

Uninteresting, but simple test...

Just put a brand new machine on a publicly available (exposed) IP address, and wait. See how long it takes a "brand new" machine to become taken over.

My understanding is "not long" is a typical answer.

No, I wouldn't do this without some very good isolation and monitoring.

IBM vs. Microsoft way of thinking...

THINK vs. REGURGITATE.

Pretty obvious if you ask me. Modern languages (take your pick) are getting so complex that nobody really knows them completely. The only way to do things is to try what someone else showed you how to do (even if irrelevant) and paste it into your "solution". This yields debacles that are well documented. Yes in the 'old days' things were much simpler, but the complexity was something that the author of the software did in a "good way".

There are several videos on the Apollo Guidance Computer, and that was done with a code space of around 72kB (yes, kilobytes). Nowadays a computer program couldn't get a character echoed for that much code (I may be exaggerating but maybe not). In broad terms, people have become lazy with the implementation and put together Lego blocks hand hope it looks good. Not the best way to make up a "system" of things.

Life goes on.

Playroom?

Where is the bed and velcro sheets?

People have wildly different views of the word "play".

At least...

It wasn't filed in the eastern district of Texas. Whatever the outcome, it has a chance of being based on reasonableness (if that exists in legal proceedings).

But in general, software patents are EVIL, but that is a fight for another day (*SIGH*).

Isn't it wonderful.

Arbitrage is a wonderful thing. Someone has different exchange rates than you and you move money from place to place. Currency traders do it all the time.

The shame is that something as big as Micro$oft can't keep up to date on exchange rates, maybe they need to ask Google what the rate is today.

Oh, well. Better luck next time Microsoft.

Unless you password protect...

Everyone is authorized. By definition.

Law enforcement please go away!

Nothing is safe....

While congress is in session.

And so it goes. DiFi (our wonderful senior senator from California) should consult with some industry people, look there are lots of them here in SillyCon Valley. Just a phone call away!

Apple for instance is in area code 408, and HP (in its many forms) is in the 650 area code (both of which I have here on my multi line home phone!). Local call. Information is '411'. Shouldn't be hard.