* Posts by John Smith 19

16326 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Windows is now built on Git, but Microsoft has found some bottlenecks

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

So to paraphrase "MS Using Fat Gits for development."

Yes I can believe that.

2000 devs. 300GB of code.

It must be good.

Never mind the bugs, feel the bigness.

Intel pitches a Thunderbolt 3-for-all

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Usuually when you hear about hardware standards you expect a bunch of mfgs signed up

But all we're seeing on the list is Intel.

Looks like current USB is good enough for a lot of people.

FCC revised net neutrality rules reveal cable company control of process

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Unhappy

The whole Washington process continues to resemble Ancient Rome

And in most of the bad ways.

Ancient Rome ran on the basis of very powerful individuals wielding huge power. This only works if those individuals have a sense of "service" above personal self interest.

That's not a Democracy. That's not even how a well structured bureaucracy operates.

You can see why "Sweet" Pai is smiling.

Schiaparelli probe crash caused by excessive spin, report concludes

John Smith 19 Gold badge
IT Angle

Given this is a Pathfinder for the main event...

Think of it as a "crash test dummy" for the main one.

I'd say someone had not sanity checked the data streams. For example how it was possible to jump from 3.7Km above ground to -50m below ground instantly

Last week: 'OpenVPN client is secure!'
This week: 'Unpatched bug in OpenVPN server'

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Unhappy

Wow. Just astonished at the down votes.

So what's wrong with my logic?

As man + dog should have realized by now software is not perfect. Some do a better job of writing it than others. I'm trying to get where on the scale of "rock solid" to "utter garbage" this software is.

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What's the context?

How long has the bug been present?

How many others have been reported with this S/W?

How does that compare with equivalent apps installed as part of commercial OS's?

I'd suggest quite well but 90 days is a bit slow given how severe this seems.

They seemed pretty good at fixing client issues but this seems worse.

Particle boffins calculate new constraints for probability of finding dark matter

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"Dark Matter and Dark Energy are more a description of two problems, "

Exactly.

It's the modern equivalent of Roentgen's fogged plates. They had been exposed to "something" IE a ray, but something that can go through visibly opaque covers. Hence the "X rays"

In the same way "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy" are placeholders for something that has to exist to cause the observed effects.

As always in proper science the candidate theories to explain what's happening have to explain all the behaviour and make testable predictions for what can be seen next. Eventually we will get a theory that does both and whose tests confirm it.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Go

Very small number times very big number --> Very small number

In this case O(1x10^-11) and O(1 x 10^9) --> 1x10^-2

IOW to get a 1% (actually about 0.6%) chance of finding something you need to see most (all?) of these particles having energies over the 1GeV mark to begin with

This assumes the machine's working alright and these particles are fairly numerous to begin with.

Note prolonged lack of detection suggests a) Particles not as numerous as thought (model wrong) b) Particles don't exist (model wrong)

Either way something has been learned and they continue to home on what is the real story.

Exiting times.

Facebook shares own tools to trap bugs before they break code

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Interestingly the core team writing the tools seems to be British.

Do they teach Abstract Syntax Trees on US Comp Sci courses anymore?

Network-sniffing, automation, machine learning: How to get better threat intel

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TL:DR. Access control. Not just key cards and PIN's.

Also get automated log analysis tools and learn how to use them.

Other useful stuff.

Set up 1 or more test PC's with the standard network build and test each new patch on them before roll out. Get it in writing from a PHB if they don't want one or more (tested to work) patches installed if they are security related. IOW it's on them if there's a breach.

The eternal questions. What ports are open on this PC? Why exactly are they open? Can this PC be seen from the internet?

64-bit malware threat may be itty-bitty now, but it's only set to grow

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"no defense against a user who knows the root password and blindly clicks YES on everything"

Or the core business application that cannot run as anything else.

'Odour' from AnalTech ramming leads to hazmat team callout

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

"eons ago suggesting that arse-prints could be unique identifiers"

Who remembers the CDC and "Back Orifice?"

Or the rather natty Green on Black teeshirt?

Joking aside it is of course all about the pronouciation. Anal as in "analysis" of course.

Like that classic spoof dog food commercial. "Mate, with added vigor."

Are telcos' customers expecting too much of IoT connectivity techs?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

So who are these "customers" of which he speaks?

And what is this information they so desperately need to collect?

And who from?

Still looks like the Internet of Trash or the Internet of Trouble to me.

Google now mingles everything you've bought with everywhere you've been

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

They know their Lenin

"Push the bayonet in. If it meet fat, push harder."

So far all they've met is fat.

And they keep pushing.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Gave them permission to do this?"

It's a free market, did you not know?

They are free to cross reference your data from other sources to build a very detailed picture of you that they can sell to retailers for money

Your free to give them your data.

That's a corporations definition of a free market.

Britain's on the brink of a small-scale nuclear reactor revolution

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

"It's only a matter of time before an accident occurs involving an errant aircraft."

Actual fact.

In 8 decades of reactor operations no one has.

That said the one thing that the world does not seem to be running out of a supply of is misguided loons and fanatics so probably the way to go.

Hitachi exits mainframe hardware but will collab with IBM on z Systems

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Unhappy

HDS were the only other makers of IBM plug compatible mainframes outside Amdahl.

But no longer.

Looks like in the IBM compatible M/F space IBM has won.

Good news for IBM. Not so good for its (and HDS's) customers.

NSA takes one-two punch to the face

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Be sure not to let them overcharge you for information retrieval."

Indeed. Electrocuted and bankrupt.

BTW Terry Gilliam always said he did not make up that idea for "Brazil." He said he got it from a report that some political prisoners had received essentially a bill for "time and materials" for their interrogation.

Water, electricity and skilled labor is expensive.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

"t's illegal, then at least it won't be routinely used to combat domestic crime"

It already has been, with the DEA falsifying the source of some information against drug dealers where the "confidential informant" was in fact the NSA supplying phone and email data (although following their SOP this was probably a digested version, no direct quotes etc).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Eventually America might end up..some degree of balance and checks in their system,"

"America will always do the right thing. After it had done everything else." Winston Churchill.

It might take a long time before they get to the right thing however.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

"Three of the four spying programs (that we are aware of) have been abandoned"

The rest are operating BAU.

If you are unable to verify a statement how can you know if it's true?

I think you've be very foolish to think the NSA does not have a Plan B to continue what their management seems to think is their "sacred" mission to spy on everyone, all the time, forever.

Japan (lightly) regulates high-frequency algorithmic trading

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Unhappy

Substitute "trade" for "trad" and "probe" for "prove"?

Yes. I missed that I'd written "prove" when I meant "probe."

That is the critical idea about how HFT's behave. Building up a picture of the market without having to commit funds first.

People have suggested a "transaction tax" to stop HFT's but HFT are already a transaction tax on the rest of the stock market.

Paid by every non HFT company in the market. for the benefit of HFT companies.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"Read this three times and I still don't understand what it means"

"No man's ignorance is so great as a man whose livelihood depends on his ignorance." Upton Sinclair.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"stick orders in a queue for xx minutes before they are processed. "

You're assuming that HFT are actually "speculating"

In fact they are reading the market (though their probe share deals) to find out who is buying and jump the queue. They have a guaranteed customer and a timing edge no real trader can afford to buy.

The real trader is gambling they have real insight into the share they are buying and that it will move as they predict.

IRL imagine someone following you around a shop and (just before you reached for something) buying all of it off the shelf before you did, then turning around and selling what you wanted at a price a bit more than the listed one.

That's what HFT does.

They are parasites.

Traders do make money on short term movements in the markets. A sharp trader really could see news of (say) a major oil spill by an oil company and plan to short (expecting it to fall) or wait (till it has fallen, expecting its price to recover fairly quickly) depending on it. That's a short time scale.

Let's be real. Once a company has sold its shares in the market any direct connection to improving the financial health of the company is gone. Everything else is a gamble on its future to make money by the traders.

What you are actually saying is that you don't like gambling and you want it to stop. That is unrealistic. But HFT's are not gambling. They've rigged the market so no one else can win.

Emissions cheating detection shines light on black box code

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"5% CO2, in an enclosed box won't hurt you, "

In the sense of "Won't kill you outright." Which is why I chose the level, as I didn't want someone to die to prove that statement is bu***hit.

The CO2 level in your lungs is what triggers the human breathing cycle, not the lack of O2 (see what happens if you learn your science watching Deadpool?)

IRL symptoms are

"Breathing becomes extremely laboured, headaches, sweating and bounding pulse"

as listed here

No doubt some will say that sounds a bit like a hangover. But it's a permanent hangover and not drinking alcohol won't fix it.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: "CO2 is not a pollutant. "

For those wondering what actual levels of CO2 can do here's a list put together for people who might find themselves near volcanoes, which put out quite a lot of the stuff.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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And if you think what's coming out the exhaust is nasty

Wait till you see the results of sampling the internal environment.

Very bad indeed for some cars, rather better for others.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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it looks like open road testing is the way to go.

Fortunately modern test machinery is a lot more compact than it used to be.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"CO2 is not a pollutant. "

Perhaps you would like to sit in a suitably sized airtight box with say 5% CO2 in the atmosphere to demonstrate it's completely harmless?

Uber found to be doing something awful? Yep, it's Tuesday

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Unhappy

"The dial-a-ride app maker " No. The internet cabbie firm that's active in multiple jurisdictions

FTFY.

I think "Taxi Driver" is overdue a 40th anniversary remake (well script development can be kind of slow).

Say hello to "Travider Bikle Singh, Asian taxi driver."

"You looking at me, punk?"

Uncle Sam drags feet on govt data center cull

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

" the nature of these agencies is that 99% of their operations are in the U.S"

My point exactly.

Of course you can bet it will get tricky due to investment in the local community. "Fairness" would suggest one center per state for each agency (yes, I know that's barking mad).

More sensible options would be

1)Roughly the geometric centre of the US (about where the US telephone network has it's time standard) to give (in theory) equal delays in all directions

2) Most seismically stable area for backup data center.

3) Coldest state to lower electricity bills.

4) Cheapest electricity state for raw input.

Least sensible option.

5) Washington DC. Because it's the seat (as in posterior) of government.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

It's 2017. There's high bandwidth FO cable all over the US & virtualisation but...

Every agency still needs multiple data centres to do it's business.

including it's own personnel, payroll and purchasing?

Chinese e-tailer beats Amazon to the skies with one-ton delivery drones

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

A drone that size is just about right for the UK MoD's drone delivery programme.

Of course its country of origin may pose a few issues...

EU security think tank ENISA looks for IoT security, can't find any

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

" How long until a muppet gets influence and proposes some stupid rule they dont understand "

First you're behind the times. This is not a proposal. In IT language this is a plug-in for RIPA to spell out exactly what they want, where the original paragraph basically said "To be to determined."

Second is the fact you seem to think this is being driven by politicians. Did it not seem strange to you that 9 Home Secretaries from Labour and Conservative parties have spouted the same line?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"The British market is too small....suppliers..just sell the EU product to UK consumers."

IRL that's exactly what I expect to happen.

Without the UK the EU population is 678m Vs UK population 65m (Google listed 743m but I took off the UK figure), roughly 10.5x bigger.

IRL the UK could have easier qualification standards than the EU but so what? You've put in the effort and got access to a market 1/10.5 that of the EU. Why bother?

Unless an EU standard is massively stupid the UK will harmonize with EU standards anyway, without any say (hard Brexit, as promised by the Great & Glorious Leader herself) in how it's set.

Good to know the UK is "Taking back control (c)" is it not?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Oh no

" Is this going to be mandatory back doors"

The UK govt has already issued the Statutory Instrument describing as much, reported by El Reg previously.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Trollface

Pheeeh. The UK has really dodged a bullet on this one with Brexit, eh?

Not letting those pesky furriners dictate their absurdist Socialist fantasists to plucky Brits.

I see the headline "Brexit Takes Back Control (c) of the Internet (of Things)" (C Rabid Xenophobia Publications T/A The Daily Heil)

"tacking back control" "Take back control" and all variants thereof in terms of font and capitalization copyright 2016 Lynton Crosby

Capita and Birmingham City Council 'dissolve' joint venture

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

One personss flagship is another persons cash cow.

And the word (allegedly) came down "Milk the b**ch hard."

Local government.

Where the only think capable of making larger (alleged) savings than outsourcing is insourcing.

Mind you 3 years untangle this (when Whitehall cannot seem to untangle their contract on a timescale of decades) is greased lightning.

Let's see if the gradual sharing of back office services across the 12 councils of the region is more effective at actually saving money.

'The internet is slow'... How to keep users happy, get more work done

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Lot's of AC's posting to explain why it's impossible to do anything like this.

A fascinating article about how to move away from supporting a company like a bunch of stanalone PC's.

Having worked helpdesk I did indeed find recording the time spent on a job a PITA. What really p**sed me off was all PC's have clocks. I wanted to do

1)Go to job

2) Hit start button (yes I do want the control)

3)Hit stop button or pause (if I've been interrupted, and with a note box to remind why).

BTW Taking the top 10 help desk call reasons and fixing the root causes is what is some times called "Capability Maturation."

Something which seems as implausible in the UK today as it was a decade (or two) ago.

Scheming copyright scam lawyer John Steele disbarred in Illinois

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Unhappy

What do you call a copyright troll lawyer whos'be been disbarred and may do 85% of any sentence?

A start.

Supreme Court closes court-shopping loophole for patent trolls

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Note the vote 0-8

Looks like the Supremes have have felt this situation was well overdue for revision.

Damm right too. Is anyone else hearing the voice of Ron Pearlman saying "You dirty ol' Troll."

The downside is that in principle trolls could choose to still sue overseas companies in East Texas if they had no incorporated US office. But that would raise the question "Why are you suing them when they have a US subsidary to go after, that is incorporated in the US (but nowhere near E.Texas)?"

Gravitational waves permanently change spacetime, say astroboffins

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Go

Astonishing. I think.

Sort of like building a seismometer that operates at 0.1Hz and then making it operate at voice frequencies.

If I understand correctly.

Google leak-hunting team put under unwelcome spotlight

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

Bottom line. ..

We are eternally vigilant for anyone who may fail to demonstrate the necessary level of loyalty to the company.

For your own good of course.

7 NSA hack tool wielding follow-up worm oozes onto scene: Hello, no need for any phish!

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So unpatched Windows 7 or only unpatched Windows 7 running XP?

In theory this round should be tougher as most of the infectable should have been hardened.

Or maybe not

Telecoms fail in UK takes down passport scanners in Australia

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Obvious question. Did any UK readers spot some kind of phone trouble around then?

It seems very hard to believe that something that can clobber links from Aus to UK would not have had some effects on local traffic (I'm not sure El Reg is hosted in the UK for example).

Project Gollum: Because NHS Caring means NHS Sharing

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Another great hit from the Bong.

Always appreciated.

Blighty's buying another 17 F-35s, confirms the American government

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"it wouldn't be able to completely depopulate Russia immediately. "

"Russia" has never been the target for the UK "independent" nuclear deterrent.

Moscow, and in particular the Kremlin is the main target. Any warheads left other will be assigned to high value targets to disable the Russian's ability to fight a war.

To be a deterrent with such a small force both the UK and France have to hurt their opponents in a way that makes them think twice about starting a war in the first place.

Parallel programming masterclass with compsci maven online

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Unhappy

Someone has repealed Amdahl's law?

Who knew?

Once anything has to be shared the real ability to parallelize a problem goes right down.

Wannacry: Everything you still need to know because there were so many unanswered Qs

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"the difference between..a general worker..checks that a secure door is locked by trying the handle"

Actually I would have described a port scan as exactly like trying the doors on a building you work in.

Not attempting to enter (by your analogy), just test to see if it's open to begin with.

However if you're writing your own authorization letter you should probably include a clause to allow repeat scans whenever there is a significant change in the system, with "significant" being loosely or tightly defined on how awkward your boss is likely to be.