Posts by Morrie Wyatt 162 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Oct 2008
Unfortunately I have one specific ODBC driver to access an Informix database that our company's ERP software runs upon.
Excel has no problems with it, nor does Crystal Reports.
LibreOffice lets me set up an ODBC connection to it via "Base", but despite telling me that I have successfully connected to the ODBC source, it doesn't see any of the database tables. No error messages of any sort, just a blank list.
Our overseas supplier requires us to submit purchase orders using their password format locked Excel template, complete with hidden macros.
(Their incoming order processing bot spits out any order that doesn't comply with the exact template layout.)
These circumstances pretty much paint me into a corner, as I can't get to the Informix data using LibreOffice.
(The same supplier is now heavily pushing the use of SharePoint. The misery never ends!)
Whoever does end up with the job has a better chance of being listened to seriously when they point out security issues.
Doesn't mean that they will follow through on any recommended actions though.
There's always that managerial type person convinced that it will never happen to them. (Until it does of course. Then it is open season on scapegoats.)
When he started developing linux, I bet Linus never envisioned seeing a flying penguin on Mars.
Doing well so far. I've seen all to many model helicopters end up doing the dead chicken dance at the slightest excuse.
If I recall the definition correctly: Helicopter: Thousands of parts all trying to kill you.
The bugs are being found faster because Microsoft now has so many more beta testers.
They are known as Windows 10 users.
(Azure outages are just to keep people from looking too closely at the other things Microsoft have managed to foul up.)
Don't attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by Microsoft.
There's also Austin Meyer's Xavion app, which plays continuous "What if?" using plane performance data to provide best alternative airports. (Not necessarily the closest, but the best that fits the glide profile of the aircraft.) It also provides standard instruments, artificial vision, maps jet wake turbulence and many other features. (The wake turbulence feature was added after Austin found out the hard way that hitting it can be a serious pain in the neck.) It does this independently to the aircraft's avionics, so a full power outage of the standard instrumentation, providing a very useful level of redundancy for the pilot.
"So something that's not true can be true? Politicians apparently live with a different set of logic rules than the rest of humanity."
Of course they do.
They also believe that it is possible to have secure encryption that is breakable by themselves, (or their duly appointed representatives) at any time they feel the urge, but not be breakable by any other party.
Secure encryption is a binary choice. It's either secure, or it's not secure. There is no third option.
(Unless you are a politician, in which case tri-state binary somehow becomes possible, and the laws of mathematics no longer apply whenever they happen to be deemed inconvenient.)
<Grey Beard>
Actually, CTRL-S is the XOFF terminal control character for VT100 terminals and the like.
</Grey Beard>
Yes, I remember when such things were new and exciting with instant (nearly) responses to your inputs.
(Usually syntax errors.)
The alternative was punch cards and batch processing.
(And they almost invariably included syntax errors too. It just took a lot longer to find out how badly you had stuffed up.)
Hydrogen is only liquid at extremely low cryogenic temperatures 20.28ºK (-353ºC), or at very high pressures.
So hydrogen in an aircraft will be able to destroy it if the tank ruptures, spray all aboard with cryogenic liquid, or go up in flames given oxygen and an ignition source. Kerosene based fuels by contrast are liquid across the range of temperatures experienced during flight without need for pressurisation, and don't transition from liquid to gaseous state anywhere near as easily as hydrogen.
These types of schoolroom explosion go back beyond my father's youth.
(And I have a 14yo grandson.)
Back then it was the gas tap in the chemistry lab. Two holes pinched into an empty coffee tin. Into one was fed a rubber hose from the gas taps (used for bunsen burners) and the other (upper) hole left open.
Turn on the gas, wait a bit then light the gas coming out of the upper hole. Turn off the gas and remove the rubber tube. Stand back and wait until the stoichiometric ratio was reached, then BOOM, off went the lid to the delighted juvenile cackling of the assembled miscreants.
OH&S would be all over such activities these days of course.
If 16 degrees warrants an e-bike, what would they prescribe for Fargo Street in LA?
(A padded cell perhaps?)
It has a 33 degree grade and runs an annual challenge to see who can make it to the top on self powered wheeled devices.
One fellow "Terry (Unigeezer) Peterson" has beaten the challenge many times. He was 55 the first time he did so back in 2011.
ON A UNICYCLE. Last I heard he is still holds the title as the only person to do so on a unicycle.
This one's old enough that it's hardware rather than software testing.
Vinten Communications used to make the radio equipment used by the Victorian Police and other emergency services.
This was back in the days of valves and dangerously high voltages.
They had one wiresman in particular who was absolutely meticulous in his work. Every wire of a particular colour entering one end of the loom would exit at precisely the same position with respect to all of its neighbors. This greatly simplified fault finding. (Debugging wasn't yet a part of the common vernacular.) As such, he was the go to person for all new prototypes.
On day however, a new product was put on the test bench for it's first power on. Unbeknown to the wiresman, his colleagues had got there first.
The prototype was duly turned on, and they watched the blood drain from the poor wiresman's face, as smoke started wafting out of the case.
One worker was hidden away out of sight, and a string of waxed paper drinking straws had been run to an inconspicuous location on the unit under test.
The hidden worker was blowing cigarette smoke through the straws.
However one of the observers broke up laughing, and the ruse was revealed, much to the relief and annoyance of the poor wiresman. The device itself worked flawlessly.
Radios before transistors were valve radios (thermionic valve radios to be more precise). They used a vibrator (no, not that kind) where a solenoid would open the contacts supplying power to its own coil. (A bit like an automotive turn signal flasher can on crystal meth.) The resulting intermittent power would provide pseudo AC power to step-up transformers to generate the necessary high voltages to run the valves. There were no transistors in those radios. Triodes and Pentodes, not transistors.
(The inverter circuitry sometimes had its own box, hidden in the engine bay to keep noise (electrical and acoustic) well away from the radio itself.)
There were portable (a loosely defined term at best) that ran on valves, powered usually from lantern sized dry cell batteries.
Then came the transistor, allowing a radio that was much smaller and ran on far safer voltages.
"Or what did you think they used before silicon?"
Germanium. (Well you did ask.)
Germanium transistors were what you usually found in early transistor radios. Silicon transistors came along later.
Why?
What makes you think it's restricted to the UK?
As I'm not British either, I felt it best to be carefully non-specific.
Examples:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/28/malawi_legislation/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/19/oz_anticrypto_legislation/
And just about anything to do with Donald Trump.
It seems to be endemic to the breed anywhere around the world.
(I'm an equal opportunity cynic.)
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