Posts by Number6

Much to my surprise, Comcast rolled out IPv6. Somewhat better than VirginMedia in the UK, who seemed to be kicking the can down the road as much as it could.

I did set the cable box into modem-only mode and have my own router (running OpenWRT) as my primary gateway. This was after Comcast did an 'upgrade' on the old box which broke Wifi and also reset it to default and I lost all my firewall settings. Now they can't. The IPv6 defaults to 'safe' because unless I make the effort to add a traffic rule, it won't pass IPv6 packets from the WAN to the LAN, so it's no worse than IPv4 and a NAT router with no port forwarding. That lets you use IPv6 outbound but still only be accessible on IPv4 if you've enabled any inbound stuff.

The only irritating thing is that the IPv6 prefix changes occasionally, I guess it's the equivalent of re-segmenting the network and changing everyone's dynamic IPv4 address.

Re: Have Laserjets gone out of fashion?

I had a 5MP with duplexer and a 4M+ but had to leave the 5MP when I moved country. the 4M+ should have been left but accidentally got shipped but isn't much use in the US. Many years sterling service from both of them, it was a shame to lose them.

Re: Home Server

I refuse to have a smart TV. I use a dumb TV with a Linux-based media centre to do the smart bits, so I can be reasonably sure that the TV isn't transmitting my conversations to some unknown place out on the web or ratting out my viewing habits to advertisers.

As for the music stuff, I have several Pi-based systems in the house that hook into a Squeezebox sever running on a machine here. Very cheap way to get networked music around the house, a Pi, a small USB power supply and a pair of computer speakers. Not hi-fi, but the environment here is not good enough for that anyway.

Re: They have subpoena powers

They can compel him to attend but given that he's turned up, is there anything else they can compel him to do? I don't know if they do stuff under oath, but if not, he could respond to everything with a quote from Shakespeare or similar.

I don't know what happens if one refuses to take oath, presumably there's a clause about contempt to cover that.

Re: A final throw of the Minty dice before

I moved my uncle and my dad from Win XP to Mint Mate. I don't get support calls any more. It's an LTS version, and i use team viewer every now and again to run updates.

What's wrong with ssh? That's how I update my father's machine. The only time I need something more is if I have to troubleshoot a GUI program, but now he's learned the three or four things he needs his computer for, they're mostly well-behaved.

Re: Two Stages

It's not quite that one-sided. The rest of the EU may wish to trade into the UK so we have rules too, that's why negotiation and reasonable attitudes are required. If a forest of red tape and tariffs suddenly hits UK business when trying to sell into the EU, there may be a trade war where all the EU imports get hit by equivalent red tape and tariffs. Business leaders won't want that, it'll only be the politicians trying to maintain their egos.

Re: Sounds worrying

I thought Telegram was open source, at least the client side. If it's got end-to-end encryption then in theory a compromised server shouldn't be an issue if it's been done properly.

Mind you, how many people download the source and compile their own app?

Re: Government clueless on rates as usual

The way to fix council tax is to replace it with something based on the last sale price of the property, inflated annually by some fixed amount, to be re-assessed each time the property is sold. That way, granny who paid a pittance many years ago but lives in a £2million house in London isn't forced out, but anyone buying it from her (or her estate) knows in advance how much tax it's going to cost them annually over the coming years and can budget for it. Then apply it to all property, business or residential.

Re: Oh training budgets....

I'm also amazed how quickly things go from "required for role" to "nice to have" when you point out that if it's a business requirement, then the business should be paying.

Yes, had a variation on that too. Many moons ago, the my employer was trying to tidy up the software environment, removing all the dodgy stuff and giving everyone a legal copy of WordPerfect (for DOS, so that long ago). We'd been using it for several months by that point, a whole group of engineers writing a lot of procurement specifications, so between us we'd pretty much figured out all the useful features. The catch with the legal upgrade was that we were all required to go on the WP training course, and reading the syllabus we realised that it wasn't going to tell us anything we didn't already know how to do. We finally escaped from this one when the engineering manager realised that all the course fees were going to come out of his budget and suddenly we didn't have to do the course before getting our legal WP. This is the same company at which I filled out that training feedback form I mentioned elsewhere.

That was my immediate thought too.

Re: Would also bork legitimate code

Back in the days of the 8-bit processor, I remember writing code (in assembler!) that would implement a 16-bit jump by pushing the target onto the stack and doing a ret. Not all processors needed it, the 8080/Z80 has a JP (HL) instruction so that one didn't need to involve the stack, although it also had the EX (SP),HL instruction to make it easy to manipulate the stack content.

Re: Maybe,

Easier approach would be to tip off MS that the poachers are running pirated copies of Windows. that way the poachers would be fighting off the MS legal department, which would then actually be performing a useful service to the world.

Re: ....The boss and the PFY have become rather patient of late

Just let it wash over you, while grabbing the occasional item of interest from the flow for further examination and entertainment. Plus there's the concept of the long game, it might be that the PFY needs to put in a month of effort but thinks that the end result will be spectacular and worth the effort.

Re: Ob: Pournelle

Here we go, hypersonic technology, 60s style...

Re: I thought I recognized "Sensus"... We have met the enemy and he is (Sens)us

Having said that - some apparently kosher small switching supplies have enough leakage to make you jump if not under load. In the early days of switching supplies for computers the earth conductor was very substantial to handle the leakage.

If it's the kind without an earth connection, then the usual thing is for the negative side of the secondary to be connected to live and neutral via about 3nF of capacitance, presumably for EMC purposes. This means that in the absence of anything else, a UK PSU will look like a 120V AC source in series with 1Mohm impedance, so if you grab it and a convenient earth you'll be tickled by about 120uA of current, which is enough to feel.

If you've got a suitable multimeter you can try it - put it on AC volts and measure between earth and the PSU output, then on AC current and do the same thing and you'll get something in the ballpark of those numbers.

Re: @ Sir Runcible Spoon. One reason is because of the dogs

Our dog is big and loud and the meter is not visible from outside. Worse, you have to run up some stairs to the gage from where the meter is fitted. However, the pool is much further than the meter so there's no need for the meter reader to fall in that.

Re: Onset of turbulence is entirely predictable

Yes, works for me too.