Posts by Mike Pellatt

Re: This is news?

Clearly, the specific vulnerability in the article wasn't caused, directly, by the instruction architecture.

But I was following up to a more generic issue over what you do with your system.

And I'd suggest that the vulns of this type (including Spectre,etc.) we're seeing today are, at least in part, thanks to the prevalence of a CISC architecture and the huge system complexity we now find ourselves with as we play whack-a-mole with each performance bottleneck that pops up.

Or whack-an-elephant back in the days of trying to sort out SMP.....

Re: Poor On-Call this week

This is your ob "MK ain't the quality it used to be any more" followup.

Re: Impressive

But FFS don't put the telephone sanitisers on the "B" Ark this time.

Esp in the current circumstances.

Re: Don't separate the Devs any further!

Devs should not care about where their code gets deployed

And this is how we got code that assumes >100Mbps network speed.

And this is how we got code that assumes <5mS RTTs.

And this is how we got code that assumes >32GB of memory available.

And this is how we got code that assumes >32 CPUs available.

It's a great theory, but it doesn't work in practice.

You absolutely DO need to know, at the very least, the constraints that will apply where your code gets deployed. Or it won't work. You can't abstract out of reality (unless you call it Brexit, of course)

Re: Why?

Windows XP, how modern :-)

I sorted out a CNC machine tool controlled by a W98 machine a few years back. Might even have been 95, memory fades. Managed to track down a spare mobo and disk drive that were compatible for spares before they became (even more) like hen's teeth.

It also had one of those multi-serial-port cards so beloved of green screens connected to *nix back in those days, used to talk to the various components.

Re: Who was the priority?

Who were at the centre of the project?

Why, the vendor(s) of course.

Re: well maybe

Make the tax system even more complicated than it already is.

Great idea.

Almost as good as needing 50,000 customs clerks.

Re: Great reporting

When it _is_ Cloudflare, though, they are exemplary at:

a) putting their hands up

b) Giving a detailed explanation of what went wrong

c) Giving a fully detailed exposition of what they're doing/have done to prevent a recurrence.

No corporate ass-convering by PR droids from them. Like I said, exemplary.

Re: Class action suit in 3... 2... 1...

Except, of course, for users who acted on the old adage:

"There are two sorts of data. Data that has been backed up and data that has not been lost yet".

For them, the data hasn't been lost.

Re: World radio

Hmm. Local community station's not on it.

Fail.

Re: I wonder why?

And there's a way to do it that will be a learning point so they don't f**k up and find themselves being fired again. I'd much rather that outcome for someone I have to "let go" (no, I wouldn't use that phrase).

"Too polite" is a thing, too.

Re: Quelle Surprise!

Ha! I tried to use an Office 365 mailmerge into Outlook recently for a mail to a subset of my entire company.

Turns out (after 30 mins work) it doesn't work if you want an attachment on the email.

Back to Bcc: it was.

Re: And what about the people ...

There is GPS-enabled footwear for that. Much less, errrr, intrusive.

Re: The past is another counttry.

Beer (OK, Watneys Red) was around 2s 6d a pint when I started drinking in pubs in 1970 (age 15, of course). 12.5p to you.

45 years ago was 1975. Inflation hit 25% in that year alone, 20% the year before.

Some google research indicates 25p a pint in pubs was about right in London in 1978 (which suggests beer price rises were below inflation back then). So, I don't think he was (particularly) being ripped off.

Of course, SU bars were much cheaper back then.

Here, thanks to pubs being closed, our local brewery is putting a barrel outside 2 or 3 times a week, self-serve for £1 a pint in an honesty box (villagers only!!!). Happy days.

Re: @Snake - Microsoft shooting itself in the foot?

You've fallen into the classic misunderstanding of the word "free" in F/OSS, and consequently setup a strawman.

Repeat after me:

"Free as in speech, not free as in beer"

Notwithstanding this being a strawman, I will offer a counter-argument, I can show you numerous cases of a supplier's promises not having due diligence applied to them, and the time and effort (along with at least some of the purchase/licensing costs) being wasted.

I'd also posit that applying full due diligence and fit-for-purpose tests to commercial software is not that different from the costs of considering F/OSS.

Re: Been here before

Me too.

But by then (mid-80's, time of the 80386) the new kid on the block, and a real dark horse, was the Transputer. I remember one of the UK FAEs really wondering how much of a challenge it would be.

In the end, of course, it turned out as successful as VLIW.

Still losing money in real terms, though.

Except... Making Tax Digital should have levelled that off for HMRC, shirley?

Re: "In other words, you ain't got no choice."

The FTD/FMC combo.

Impenetrable and incomprehensible doesn't begin to cover it.

Not to mention the speed(sic) of config change deployment.

Re: Engineer ?

Because unless you have a professional engineering qualification and undertake CPD, validated by a recognised professional association, you shouldn't have the label "engineer".

Germany is (or at least, was) very, very, very hot on this.

Our lives are as much in engineers' hands as doctors', and woe betide anyone who calls themselves a doctor of medicine when they're not. Should be the same for engineers.

Presumably amongst the divergence that our wonderful UK Government wants from EU regulations, the current Eur Ing recognition will be one we have inflicted on us.

Re: How can it take MULTIPLE YEARS to go 64 bit?

Gosh, if that was an OS you were describing there, you'd be describing SCO Unix.

All its compatibility problems with modern hardware are now addressed by it being only sold to run in a VM.

A VM running in FreeBSD, if you get the whole shebang from XinuOS. Now headquartered in that hotbed of technical advancement, US Virgin Islands.

Re: 2019?

I think he confused the EU with NATO, there.

"Empire". Whatever.

Re: idiot

Agreed with you up to here:

It's like complaining that a file created in unix has the creators username and time attached - where is the privacy!! It even logs atime and mtime!!!

It's nothing like that. The metadata you describe is stored in the inode - the file's low-level directory entry on the filesystem. It's not stored as part of the file, so if it is copied to another system - by email, f'rinstance - that metadata is lost. Well, at least that's true for classic Unix and ext[234].

That is a world away from metadata embedded in the file, in terms of privacy. And auditability.

Re: GPRS? Luxury!

God, the VT52, non-ANSI predecessor to the VT100.....

Then there was Newbury Data, who made VDUs affordable. Had a pile of them in the HENP group at Imperial, hooked up to the DecSystem 10 via a DC-10 (not the aeroplane), whose RS232 interface had been created by kludging the current loop TTY interface. Badly.

You brought back memories there.

Re: Doesn't paint JavaScript in the best light...

Rarely do we see evidence that real UI designers - people with actual understanding of UI theory, doing actual UI research - were involved.

Certainly no such evidence when it comes to the Windows UI. I still want to know what the guys who dreamt up the Ribbon for Office, whilst keeping the rest of the Windows UI as the "traditional" one were smoking.

Coz I ain't going near it.

Re: Security passcodes

This was France.

You're trying to apply logic.

Give up now, it can only end in tears.

Re: Topical

_new_ Microsoft idea?

Remind me again when they introduced the Ribbon, which is when it all started.

I'd have been quite happy (well, not really...) if they'd ribbonised everything, but the bastardised half-ribbon, half-traditional interface they left Outlook with for what seemed like decades was just plain insane.

Re: Appeal?

Which is actually just like a criminal appeal. Unless new evidence has come to light or a arguable case can be made that the law was misapplied, an appeal won't be heard.

Re: LOSS OF TAX

I suppose I don't need to point out the problem here, as the commentariat is so intelligent,

but...

that's not even an apples and oranges comparison.

It's an apples and lolcats comparison.

Smokers as a population have horrendous smoking-induced health problems, that our entire society pays for (at least in the UK's healthcare funding methodology). Reducing smoking reduces the health problems too, and that's actually a net gain to the public purse even if the tax take from tobacco products drops (at least in actuarial timescales). Before we even go into "nanny state" arguments.

The IR35 issue is effectively a self-contained financial one. Even more self-contained when it comes to public sector contractors, as someone further up pointed out. It has no (direct) impacts into other arenas.

Re: design

.....can you run the 5G network independently from the supplier

The answer will inevitably be "no". Well, you theoretically could. But I very much doubt that it will be practically achiveable.

Re: Not quite a bereavement..

Dig out the youtube of a 1990's docu on British Railways - "Old, dirty and late"

It has the inevitable "one-under". See the passengers being detrained via a single step half way down the side of the train. No chance today. But the best bit at 33' 26":

MOM (Mobile Operations Manager) to paramedics: "Have we certified the body dead yet ?"

Paramedic "Well, yeah, he's got no head"

Wouldn't see that on TV these days.