* Posts by Mike 16

1439 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2009

Dodgy-govt fave FinSpy snoopware is back and badder than ever for Android and iOS kit

Mike 16

Cheques don't bounce.

I'd like to cash this cheque for 10Trillion Zimbabwe dollars, please. Yes, I'd like that in USD. Nickles will do, thanks.

Mike 16

Factory Fresh? From a mobile provider?

The new one will come with the default provider spyware. At least in the U.S. Especially from Verizon (My provider, sadly, until someone else manages to provide a signal near my home)

Who's been copying AMD's homework? Intel lifts the lid on its hip chip packaging to break up chips into chiplets

Mike 16

Re: Back to hybrid circuits, in fact

Precisely my thought. Perhaps we should call this latest incarnation "dis-integrated circuits".

Also a time to remember that, at least as I was told back in the day, Seymour Cray had more patents for packaging, cooling, and power distribution than for the more "CS-ish" stuff.

Micro Focus pats itself on the back over SUSE jettison as licensing revenue shrinks

Mike 16

If your COBOL needs are small

I could probably sell you my 2-floppy set of Micro Focus COBOL for the PDP-11. That's two 8-inch Single-Sided Single Density, FWIW. At the time I bought that particular PDP-11, I checked (on a whim) that the software would transfer with the machine, but that was a while ago, so YMMV.

Finding a PDP-11 to run it on could be as simple as getting SIMH, but then Micro Focus probably has some objection to running in a VM.

$10,000 could nab you an Apple-1... manual at auction. Sorry, it's more like $375k for real thing

Mike 16

Please don't tell the missus.

She knows I have such a manual, from Ron Wayne himself. But she has no idea what I could sell it for, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Florida man pretending to be police pulls over real police, ends badly, claim cops

Mike 16

Undermining confidence in the legal system?

So, pretty much anybody working in the police, courts, legislature, or executive branch has a better than 50% chance of being due for a long-term extensive study of the inside of a detention facility Too bad those would be closed, or more likely the inmates would be running the asylum, as usual.

Not to minimize the problem of impersonating an officer. Many police are competent and as honest as the next person, and they are put at risk by this crime. But, just as with banks with online systems that seem designed to train us to be phishing victims, a bit of professionalism on the part of all police would not be amiss.

I am really tired of hearing the usual "A few bad apples.." without the rest of the sentence "..spoil the barrel".

Firm fat-fingered G Suite and deleted its data, so it escalated its support ticket to a lawsuit

Mike 16

Outsourced

Google support has long been outsourced to the vicinity of Epsilon Eridani,with the inevitable increase in response time. (See long delayed echoes for background)

Comms room, comms room, comms room is on fire – we don't need no water, let the engineer burn

Mike 16

negative charge to CHASSIS as the last thing

Well, if you are working on a sufficiently "matured" vehicle of some makes, that might well be the last thing you do.

Positive earth was a thing, back in the day (at least as late as the 1950s for some).

Kids can be so crurl: Lead dev unchuffed with Google's plan to remake curl in its own image

Mike 16

Re: crural

I thought crurl was meant to suggest "cruel". Appropriate, but maybe it should more strongly suggest its association with Google: "gruel"?

Or emphasize its connection to Chrome: so maybe "churl". Would I be churlish to suggest that?

NASA's JPL may be able to reprogram a probe at the arse end of the solar system, but its security practices are a bit crap

Mike 16

Problem with security updates.

When the instructions for applying a security update to your deep-space probe start with:

1) Hold down the RESET button while turning power to the Main board off for 5 seconds, then on.

2) Confirm that blue LED is blinking.

...

You know you are going to have to deal with that guy in corporate travel, and that never goes well.

Freaking out about fiendish IoT exploits? Maybe disable telnet, FTP and change that default password first?

Mike 16

Re: admin is a silly username/password combo

One of my (thankfully _former_) employers used

CompanyName/CompanyNameMMDDYYYY (Date of most recent password change)

to finesse the "must change password frequently. And they rolled out the password change promptly on the first working day of each month.

But I'm sure all of the 5K or so employees (from floor sweeper to CEO) knew not to share that knowledge.

(Note: these were not router admin passwords, but the one that gave you access to virtually every computer's network shares)

Who bought the most powerful commercial supercomputer? Come on, it's Total-ly obvious

Mike 16

Exercise Merrily

As it happens, one of my sister's grade-school friends was named Merrily (or, maybe MaryLee, but I was not a top-notch speller at 6). While I imagine there are not so many humans named Merrily, I can imagine a somewhat under-achieving canine, with a show coming up, causing Bob to utter: "Alice, exercise Merrily" .

Of course, Alice may choose to demonstrate her contempt for the patriarchy by ignoring him.

You gotta be kitten me: Pakistan politicos feline silly after filter farce hits purrrfect conference

Mike 16

Fit for purpose?

Are there also Snake, Weasel, and Barnacle filters? I have avoided such things so far (at least on my own phone, who knows what the Paparazzi use?), and those three came to mind, but the politician-appropriate list should probably also include Sloth, Vulture, ...

(Yeah, I'm not so sure how to map a barnacle onto a mammalian leech, but that's why we have developers, right?

Atari finally launches its VCS console. Again.

Mike 16

Re: For the sake of clarity

Thank you. I (barely) restrained myself from replying to the comment above about bottom feeders to note that pretty much _every_ "buyer" of Atari have been such. I lost track around a half-dozen such, in 2000.

As a former employee of Atari (after it had only been bought once, by Warner, not total asshats, but maybe sub-total), it pains me to see a place with so many wonderful, talented, nice (yes, really) people blamed for what has happened to The Brand once it was taken over completely by bean-counters and con-men.

(OK, Williams were OK for a while, but suffered their own dismemberment at the hands of "media moguls" along the way, and there was no room in the lifeboats for the coin-op brands they had collected along the way)

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

Mike 16

Changed the (IT) world

I recall the days around the adoption of SubLogic's Flight Simulator by MSFT, and more importantly by IT (then often called MIS, if not DP) departments.

IBM's failure to prevent "clones" originally promised "A thousand flowers" of PC innovation, but it soon became clear that much PC software bypassed the OS to bang directly on the hardware. The funkiness of early drivers may have had something to do with this. Purchasing departments started evaluating the "quality" of prospective vendors by running, you guessed it, Flight Simulator. Although companies claimed that they were buying PCs for word-processing and spreadsheets, ability to run Flight Simulator became the Gold Standard for "IBM PC Compatibility".

This meant that trying to compete on features like CPU speed, power-supply reliability, or graphics was pointless. The only real criteria were "bit for bit and bug for bug" behavior, and of course price. This drove "white box" clone prices through the floor, while simultaneously reducing the need for shrink-wrap software developers to produce various versions of the products. One (later two) floppy disk format, a handful of glitch-compatible video cards, and we're done. Truly a Golden Age.

Yes, I remember Turbo Buttons, and how infrequently they were used (or, presumably, tested).

But imagine a world where PCs could compete on something other than price, and software developers could code to a published standard with confidence that a rising tide of PC performance would lift at least a few boats.

Yeah/no nevermind

This is grim, Vim and Neovim: Opening this crafty file in your editor may pwn your box. Patch now if not already

Mike 16

Re: It appears to be a default issue under MacOS

Seeing this is MacOS, it is probably controlled by a bunch of XML stashed in one of the Registry wannabes in folders you will soon be unable to see. And don't think that Search will save you, as you will expire long before it finishes displaying all the uses of "mode", and "line" (with various misspellings) and every string with the digraph 'vi', in every file on your computer and in various clouds.

Jello Biafra correctly (although probably inadvertently) predicted modern computing:

"The happiness you have demanded is now mandatory."

Mike 16

Re: which features should be off by default as released?

-- That's like two decades? --

Sounds about right. I recall a post on UseNet about abusing the modeline to create a "viral email". This was back when The Cognoscenti were telling all and sundry that such a thing as an "Email Virus: was technically impossible. So, before ILoveYou, early 2000.

Mike 16

Difference Engine

I am sorry to report that the one from the Computer History Museum is, well, _from_ the Computer History Museum. Its owner has reclaimed it and moved it a ways north.

Some nit-picks:

The difference Engines are not computers. More like a Systolic Array (or a stack of adding machines) feeding a "typesetter" (which is not quite that either).

There are more than 2 Difference Engines in the world, unless you consider the two from the Science Museum to be the only ones that count. For example:

http://www.meccano.us/difference_engines/index.html

Which lists several, some made from Lego, some Mecanno, and at least one made (in 1859) of the sort of materials one would expect from a proper Victorian Computer.

Mystery GPS glitch grounds flights, leaves passengers in the bar

Mike 16

Re: back in MY day...

Yep. I was in a private 4-seater when VOR failed on one way-point. The pilot just reached back and grabbed his charts and proceeded using a couple other way-points. This was daylight, VFR, so not all _that_ concerning.

Maybe modern systems could fall back to LORAN...

Amazon teases package drone, US civil rights folk want facial recog tech ban and AI carumba – YouTube!

Mike 16

Re: FFS (Adult accompaniment)

But... Uncle Ernie is a wiz at video, and _so_ good with the kids!

Like using the latest version of Microsoft Office? Love Offline Files? Not for long!

Mike 16

Even if those updates break existing functionality.

I have, over the years, reduced my dependency on MSFT to near zero, but my familiarity with a certain fruity company, telecom providers, and various smaller outfits has led me to conclude that the entire _purpose_ of updates is to break existing functionality. Thus is the user "encouraged" to purchase (or more likely rent) a poor substitute for what is lost.

Won't somebody think of the oligarchs?

UK's internet registry prepares a £100m windfall for its board members – and everyone else will pay for it

Mike 16

Front-running registrars

... wasn't there a problem quite a long time back with at least one registrar whereby if someone checked for the existence of a domain, they'd go ahead and register it - so the person searching could then not do so anywhere else? ...

Yes, I do recall that, although I don't recall whether it was GoDaddy or NetSol.

Definitely a thing, though.

Microsoft Bing is 10: That thing you accidentally use to search for Chrome? Still alive and kicking

Mike 16

In an alternative future...

Someone picks Blekko out of the "free for the taking" box at IBM's liquidation and somehow, this time, it survives attempts to Borg it and complaints that it is "not like Google" with accompanying complaints about Google.

Can't quite cram a working AI onto a $1 2KB microcontroller? Just get a PC to do it

Mike 16

Re: Pisces Artists

Just FYI, my wife is a Pisces, and an Artist (in the sense of "Sells her stuff in a few galleries, albeit some orders of magnitude less expensive than a Damien Hirst slowly-rotting shark". OTOH, Hirst is an Aries, so maybe the Rams get the Big Bucks)

As for "code that beats it for efficiency": Not gonna happen as long as managers approve the purchase orders for snazzy software tools and hold mere code-jockeys in lower regard than phone sanitizers. Remember that Time to Market is the _only_ metric.

Supra smart TVs aren't so super smart: Hole lets hackers go all Max Headroom on e-tellies

Mike 16

Re: Smart TV never connected to the Internet

Sure that would work? Keep in mind the next generation of smart TVs will take a page from Star Trek's M5 if you get between them and their Overlord Override.

https://www.startrek.com/database_article/m-5

Apple iPrunes iTunes: Moldering platform's death expected to be announced at WWDC

Mike 16

Re: Last Decade?

Never tried iWeb, but iPhoto used to do an OK job of exporting an album as a website (that worked across at least Firefox, IE, Safari, and iCab).

Photos doesn't allow it at all. Like all the newish Mac stuff, the apps are siloed roach-motels: data checks in, never checks out.

Hmm, I guess the Eagles were right about Hotel California. Maybe I should try stabbing MacOS with my steely knife? Nope, still can't kill the beast.

Mike 16

Last Decade?

Was I hallucinating a time when one could partition the space on an iPod and just copy stuff to it?

Having a spinning-rust original iPod got you music _and_ a handy backup drive.

Pretty sure I was not hallucinating being able to re-arrange the apps on my Touch or phone with a decent drag-and-drop bit in iTunes, rather than the multi-window 15-puzzle hell that is modern iOS.

Yeah, iTunes sucks, but it (and iPhoto, and iDVD) sucked _less_ than their modern replacements.

Now get off my lawn!

More facial-recognition bans, new creeper tool links girlfriends to past porno, Microsoft's AI school, and more

Mike 16

Days of future past

The remote-control Food Bots reminded me of a conference some time ago, at which several folks, including some AI gurus, were asked too predict the world in ten years (this was over 20 years ago, so...)

One of the AI gurus had a double prediction: that "ten years hence" (i.e.ago) domestic androids controlled by operators in third-world countries would be replaced by fully autonomous ones.

Das geeks hit crowdfunding target: IBM mainframes are coming home

Mike 16

You call that old?

Check out the Texas company still (as of 2013 at least) running the business on pre-computer punched card gear:

TL;DR version for Da Youf:

https://blog.adafruit.com/2013/04/24/if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-it-ancient-computers-in-use-today-1948/

A bit more info, but still "webish":

https://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-it-ancient-computers-in-use-today.html

Traditional version for those of us with flowchart templates (that have been used):

http://ibm-1401.info/402.html

AI can now animate the Mona Lisa's face or any other portrait you give it. We're not sure we're happy with this reality

Mike 16

Re: They're already doing this

This reminds me of two "ideas" I had back in the day (scare quotes because ideas are cheap, execution is the real issue).

1) A digital camera that would encrypt any images, with a generated key, and then dole out <n> partial keys, such that all subjects (participants?) would need to consent to later viewing. Or using Shamir's "Secret Sharing", some quorum of the subjects.

2) A way to record (on analog tape) a conversation with potential risk of prosecution for both sides, including some preamble and postamble around an agreed course of action. Neither party would want the recording to be seen, but the threat of "blackmail", in pursuit of a "less formal court system" could be used to strengthen the "contract". The basic idea was to shoot the video in a room with a television playing local news and a window onto a busy street, plus whatever other "continuity canaries" are agreed.

As with previous ideas about ways to route (landline) telephone calls to make it harder to associate number with physical location, it was not the work involved (although I am lazy), but the risks of dealing with the most likely customers. Groups like Camorra don't have great retirement plans.

Anyway, also seconding the mentions that the tech from the article will almost certainly find its main use to establish "plausible deniability". Who you gonna believe? Me, or your own lying eyes?

Wanted: Big iron geeks to help restore IBM 360 mainframe rescued from defunct German factory by other big iron geeks

Mike 16

Re: My first job (RAMAC)

You can see such a drive in action, most Wednesdays, at the computer history museum, Mountain View, CA

Mike 16

Re: 7070 emulation

I recall getting a phone call in 2000 when IBM finally stopped supporting 1401 emulation. Guy was still depending on it, although the last 1401 rolled off the line in 72-74 (IIRC).

Impressive in these days when your phone will stop being usable in under 10 years, and be irritating to use within 3, due to "upgrades".

Mike 16

Re: My first job

"Noodle Picker"? I made a similar comment at dinner one time, to be faced down with an icy stare from a guy who had been on the design team. Pro Tip: Never call _any_ baby ugly. Papa or Mama may be within earshot.

Mike 16

Re: The good old days...

@Old Used Programmer

We must know each other. The CPU was not shipped, but loaded on that truck along with the rest of the gear. I was the one that rented that truck, although I do recall being a bit startled to see the result of asking for the "largest I could legally drive with a class 3 license" And I was 20 years old. A couple of comments at the risk of boring other readers...

The club already had one SS-90, gift of the I. Magnin department store. IIRC, there was another, in much worse shape, stored in Richmond at the former Ford Motors assembly plant. Dunno what happened to it. The two that were actually running in the basement of Cory Hall were bought for a small, token payment (again IIRC) by two members when the EE department threw us out of the basement.

I actually ended up buying it (them) from the service bureau (run by those members), when they shut down (about 1974 or 75). One had been scavenged for parts to keep the other running. So then there was one. I moved it to a corner of a printing plant whose owner was keen on the idea of having a computer, but despite his beliefs, the 480V power he had for his presses was the wrong flavor (Delta vs Wye, IIRC) and the power company wanted something like my annual salary to bring in the right flavor. He got tired of waiting for me to somehow manage it, and called the scrappers without telling me. Thus endeth the saga of the first computer I ever owned, although I never ran it while I owned it nor owned it while I ran it.

Despite the "SS" name, there were valves/tubes, many in the drum read/write stuff, but also six 4CX250 (forced air cooled tetrodes with max plate dissipation of 250 watts each) in the "clock", which was really the main power supply to the diode-core logic.

There were, (again IIRC) 65 Thyratrons in the printer (which had been adapted from an earlier Univac printer), because the drum was "checkerboarded" to reduce ghosting, so only 1/2 the hammers could fire at once

More than you probably want to know at

http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-u3.html#UNIVAC-SOLID-STATE-80/90

and some manuals at

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/uss/

The drum is in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA. I had pulled it out for the trip, and was not intending to re-install it until we had power. So it escaped the scrapping.

San Francisco votes no to facial-recognition tech for cops, govt – while its denizens create it

Mike 16

Public / Private Partnership

I'd expect a number of "research organizations" will spring up to study surveillance tech. They'll need a lot of test data so will contract with local businesses (and public libraries, etc.) to share the data collected from devices "on loan". The Authorities will see an uptick in useful "anonymous tips", and the whole thing will be funded either by skimming a bit off the "Widows and Orphans Fund", or under some obscure title in the 500 page "Unicorn Preservation, Rainbow Appreciation, and Omnibus Funding Bill", passed at 4AM in an extraordinary session, after being introduced at 2AM.

Shortly thereafter, a number of people who look a bit too much like stock photos of terrorists may mysteriously disappear.

Panic as panic alarms meant to keep granny and little Timmy safe prove a privacy fiasco

Mike 16

A list of approved contacts?

Given the apparent ease of spoofing pretty much any number, what is the point of having such a list? If you are targeting a particular granny or kid, it should be pretty easy to guess who is on that list.

Crap band sues crap beer maker: Hair-metal rockers have an Axl to grind over Guns N' Rosé

Mike 16

Re: Butthole Musician

But then they would be sued by whoever currently owns the catalogue of Le Petomane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane

Although I doubt he is still performing, having died in 1945. One never knows.

US government internet and spectrum overseer resigns, along with legislative director

Mike 16

Who should be burning the White House down?

--- Isn't burning down the White House our job? ---

You seem to have missed that foreign workers are no longer wanted. The job must be done by Real Americans (preferably wearing stars and stripes lapel pins).

America's favorite toothless watchdog FTC pleads with Congress to give it LESS power to tackle tech monopolies

Mike 16

data privacy national standard

When a congresscritter talks up a "national standard", one can usually assume that it is intended to supercede (i.e. "gut") any local or state regulation of whatever activity their favorite lobby represents.

If the thing you were doing earlier is 'drop table' commands, ctrl-c, ctrl-v is not your friend

Mike 16

Social Network?

I see ElReg comments as something like an Anachronistic Social Badgering Organization.

Could make a catchy acronym, too.

Cocaine, psychedelics, DMT? They sure knew how to party 1,000 years ago: Archaeologists make startling discovery

Mike 16

Religious artifacts

See also Frederik Pohl's "Heechee" stories with "prayer fans" classified as religious artifacts (and tourist items). I suppose one _could_ make a claim for that being a bit true, if one wants to stretch things a bit., but that would be a spoiler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heechee

Cool story, brew: Utah karaoke crooners receive cold, refreshing shock as alcohol authority refuses beer licence

Mike 16

Elbow lifting may not count, but bar fights probably should.

Microsoft: Yo dawg, we heard you liked Windows password expiry policies. So we expired your expiry policy

Mike 16

Re: Words of Satan

-- being nasty is the only way any one takes anything seriously --

Or you could try the approach of the IT manager at one place I worked. He was generally quite polite, but did have a concealed carry license and the .45 automatic pistol it applied to. And we all knew it. (also drove a Dodge Viper and wore cowboy boots, non-ironically). I later heard he went to work for MSFT.

Mike 16

Recent Research?

IIRC, the first paper about the (negative) effects of frequent mandatory password changes came out in the 80s or 90s. Did the 2010 folks do their research in a library? Probably not, because who the heck looks at paper anymore...

Meanwhile, upon being borged by a major networking company I attended a mandatory security training session, moderated by the head of corporate security. After the session I chatted with him for a while and mentioned the password expiry issues, and how long they had been known. His answer shocked me: "I know, but it's not my call". In case you missed that, the head of corporate security could apparently be over-ruled on security policy. By whom? Marketing? HR? Catering?

Of course the whole company was a pack (gang? confusion?) of weasels (apologies to mustelidae everywhere) and I left as soon as my retention bonus vested.

Owner of Smuggler's Inn B&B ordered to put up a sign warning guests not to cross into Canada

Mike 16

Re: Haskell Free Library

Having retired over a decade ago, I'm pretty sure all of the libraries included in my software projects were Haskell Free. Unless Eddie Haskell took up Computer Science after High School, for its ample opportunities for strategic truthiness, or to Curry favor with Ward and June Cleaver.

Turn on, tune in, cash out: Hipster chat plat Slack whacks beardie millennials with features

Mike 16

MSFT has experience

AFAICT, the entire purpose of Slack is to destroy productivity, with the equivalent of of a PHB hovering over your shoulder at all times, while klaxons sound at random intervals carefully tuned to maximize anxiety. MSFT has decades of experience at this sort of demotivation, from LookOut! to Clippy, so should have an Edge.

New UK counter-terror laws come into force today – watch those clicks, people. You see, terrorist propag... NOOO! Alexa ignore us!

Mike 16

Re: Anarchist Cookbook

Not seen the online version, but various mimeographed equivalents I (may or may not) have seen contained enough wildly inaccurate information to make me wonder if they were essentially attempts by The Powers That Be to troll wannabe revolutionaries into blowing themselves up, or being arrested for intent while planting totally ineffectual WMD.

But stay away from the (1950s/60s) Encyclopaedia Britannica articles on pyrotechnics if you value your freedom.

And... now I'm pretty curious why I just got asked to re-authenticate my Register username and password, after posting another comment only a few minutes ago.

Mike 16

Re: Online train time table

Lucky you, apparently living in a place distinct from the U.S., where an online train time table would be almost perfectly unsuited to planning a terrorist attack (or, really, any sort of travel by train, tram, bus...)

Shock revelation as massive American presidential election hack confirmed

Mike 16

Re: Don't even need 2FA to make it more secure

That works well, until the district decrees that the _only_ way to get homework assignments, required reading, and scheduled exams (not to mention the only way to turn in homework) is "The Portal", managed, as with corporate equivalents, to provide maximum annoyance and ridicule for the masses, and endless fun (and kickbacks) for the administration.

Soon, not having your child's every thought sent to a privately run (but government mandated) data center for pre-crime analysis and ad targeting will be deemed child abuse.

Apple disables iPad for 48 years after toddler runs amok

Mike 16

How many times?

If they are using exponential backup (doubling the "cool off" time for each failure) and keeping the time in seconds, that would be about 31 times. Of course, if their code was using a 32-bit variable, it might be an interesting question whether the next "fail" would wrap to a low number, while a signed/unsigned confusion could lead to requiring one to wait -48 years.

"Set the WayBack machine for 1971",

"and the place?"

" Funky Town!"

(OK, off by a decade, but that's not the worst thing the MacOS calculator has done to me)