Posts by Gene Cash

Yes, since the date format is such a non-standard, the first thing I do is find out what it is... mainly precipitated by bad experiences like the article's subject.

Re: Hard as I try...

> what's the punishment for violating it

Torvalds will swear at you!

> 'whack my pee pee'

Don't piss him off *too* much...

> Anyone else have a wonderful sense of nostalgia

Nope... because a ton of shit didn't work.

I remember having to compute modelines to get X11 working for a particular monitor/graphics card combination, and if you got it wrong, you could damage your monitor.

And while I'm at it, I remember shitty fixed-sync monitors. And monochrome monitors. And burn-in. And focus/degaussing problems.

I remember the nightmare of getting RS-232 working between devices that weren't a computer and a modem, and playing "guess the pinout" and trying to figure just what parts of the "standard" each side supported.

I remember slow-as-shit networking. When it worked. I remember Winsock issues.

I remember if you wanted to play this cool game, you HAD to have THAT graphics card. And not just a particular brand, but a particular model.

I remember if you wanted something faster than 9600 baud, you had to buy the same brand of modem as the other end of the connection.

Fuck all that broken shit.

Re: "The US approach maximises consumer welfare"

> AT&T and TW are largely in different businesses, and any local monopoly (eg on network or telco assets) already exists and would be unchanged

No, they're not. For example, my "choice" in local ISPs is AT&T... or Time Warner (Spectrum)

Hm. I wonder how the merger will affect me?

Re: If cops had their way...

Sure there are... they just go by the name of "hoarded zero-days" instead of battering rams.

Re: Black and white or various shades of grey?

The shades of grey has always been the level of access to the computer in question.

In this case, she was a judge, so she did have access. She shouldn't have accessed that particular file according to various unspecified rules of conduct, but she had never been trained/told otherwise.

I think that considering her motives to ensure an unbiased trial, this was a just and fair verdict.

Granted, there are the tones of "we wouldn't have got off so easy" but that's a different subject.

Re: Duh!!!

> was support not key to that decision making process

Are you kidding "Which one's cheapest? ... ok, that one."

Re: Gimme speed

> the program differentiated the different calls elsewhere by their entry point addresses.

Wait, what? Why the hell would it do that?

Re: Mixed Feelings

I had to stop upgrading Firefox at v43, since v44 removed several features, such as fine-grained cookie control. (i.e. it asks set/block/session for each domain it hasn't seen before)

I switched to Pale Moon, until they too removed fine-grained cookie control.

So I just use FF v43 again, and it'll never be "upgraded" again.

Re: Surely the solution is simple

> If they cared about the scooters they would be picking up the abandon ones

Actually they do pay people go retrieve and charge them

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/charging-electric-scooters-is-a-cutthroat-business/560747/

Cloud?

Or another change in usage, where now it's all in the cloud and there's nothing to pirate?

Re: The book

It's an AMAZING book. I've read it twice. She's a hell of a writer and explainer, and she makes the driest of technical details interesting. She also does a good job of fitting all the bits together into the whole system and showing how it all interacts.

> a request to contact the registrant by forwarding on the request to make contact.

So then you're suggesting they use an Ouija board to contact the dead owner...?

Re: Shame there is still a spectre in the background

One of the benefits of streamlining a CPU like this is reducing the attack surface for things to pop up like Spectre.

Re: Precision

Actually, I was hoping for a banana in the picture for scale... or failing that, Dabbsy.

Re: FCC enforcement of radio spectrum usage

UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.

-- Robert E. McElwaine

Re: Also watch out for hidden alarms

When I was a college student, and thus cheap labor for the computer science department, I was part of a group laying CAT-5 and fiber optics across ceilings.

One day, we're cabling up the robotics lab when a squad of campus police come in, followed by the local county sheriff, all with guns drawn.

Turns out we'd triggered a LOT of the sensors designed to protect the extremely expensive robots. Sensors that of course no one warned us about.

Re: Startup finagling

Sure... but it only had to "scale" until they got funding to write the code.

Re: Are You Surprised

Then perhaps you should read http://www.thedrive.com/news/21003/thieves-steal-mercedes-benz-by-hacking-the-keyless-entry-in-23-seconds

Re: Google

Bought 'em for $1.3bn 5 years ago

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/10/waze_tops_13bn_in_latest_buyout_rugoogle_back_in_the_frame_as_buyermour/

> Stuck on the doorstep for half an hour? Sounds a bit shit.

Eh, I have my phone tell my Raspberry Pi to open the garage door when I drive up.

The couple times the phone battery has died, I've had to park and trudge all the way around back to my "front" door, go through the house, out the "back" (actually side) door, in the garage back door (whoo, it's really the back door!) and open the front garage door.

Too many fecking doors in a really shitty layout, so the network app really is a hell of a lot easier than opening the door myself.

Edit: the roll up garage door no longer has an opening latch. It broke decades ago and there are no spares available. Nor is there a new garage door as sturdy as the current one.

Re: Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

> It's hard to build a linux kernel for a system whose internals are considered trade secrets

And thus, in a nutshell why I don't have a smartwatch. I only wear my current watch for extremely sentimental reasons.

I don't specially like Android, except the alternative is Apple, and I need my PDA stuff.

Crowds annoyed at RAF Derwent Dambusters flypast mix-up

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-44143634

Re: I've got a phone.

People's "phone" needs vary widely.

I've had my Nexus for 3 years now, and have made a sum total of 4 calls on it. Indeed, my T-Mobile SIM has a limit of 100 minutes a month. For me, it's a constantly-connected PDA, camera, and navigation system.

Re: Is this dependent on Netcat?

>> "Because it manages the network"

> ...for those who don't know how to do it using traditional Unix-type facilities.

And we wonder why RedHat invented systemd...

Re: Further reading

> Whoever designed this toilet has clearly never taken a dump in their life!

Which is sad, because apparently the Skylab toilet turned out to be the best design so far, and the Shuttle one in particular was the absolute worst.

Shoot... I saw the two Falcon Heavy boosters land in tandem in person... and it still looked like CGI, it was so unreal and perfectly synchronized. I was expecting the director to yell "cut!"