Posts by Mike 16 1439 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2009
More likely somewhere like Belarus, where repair skills include data recovery, and it's the passwords and contact lists that get recycled.
I don't see what the big deal about physical repairs is about. I mean, Apple will find a way to make even a perfectly functional Mac into a paperweight via software "upgrades", so who cares of the back light works?
@overunder - I agree that the article seems to suggest they will "turn off" instructions, but if one is used to dealing with lawyers, sales-weasels, or math/philosophy profs, one has surely run across sequences of words that appear to mean one thing, but can under careful consideration be found to not entirely preclude something else.
At least in my experience with the software world, "deprecate" tends to mean "fire a warning shot across the bow of any current user of some feature, to suggest they scramble to come up with an alternative implementation of their use case, because not immediately but Real Soon Now the feature will vanish". Generally accompanied with a sneering lip-curl to suggest that said users were complete idiots for assuming that the previous specs had any force.
An alternative possibility is that the warning is more like "We aren't planning to actually remove that ADD instruction, but performance may differ from the expectations you had formed with prior versions. May we suggest you redo your code to instead use this substitute method based on our new extended-precision decimal float hyperbolic arctangent instruction, which we fully expect all our competitors will add to their designs, as soon as their checks for our licensing fee clears".
Generally agree, but "avoid network protocols"? How does that work? The video has to get from the camera to a screen I can see somehow.
Wired? Yes! Segregated network? If at all possible. Encrypted in a standard protocol with multiple implementations and with user generated keys? Yes Please!
Of course if the devices come with an "app" that needs to run on a phone, you have already lost. Running your cryptography on a device where random rogues can read your screen and inputs is not security. And not just for nanny cams.
In the "First Draft" report on which the term "Von Neumann Machine" is based, the machine uses what we would today call a "tagged" memory architecture. If a word is intended to be an instruction, that tag will be set (magically, of course, by the not-really-specified processing of loading the program, and cannot be changed thereafter. The interesting thing is what happens to "crossed use", i.e. fetching "data" as an instruction or read/writing "instructions".
Tagged as Instruction, used as an instruction:
"normal"
Tagged as data, used as data:
"normal"
Tagged as data, used as instruction:
effectively a "load immediate"
Tagged as instruction, used as data:
Read normally, but masked on store (only address bits of instruction changed)
Note that like the ENIAC example, one could always write an emulator for a machine that could alter its (the emulated machine's) instructions on the fly, but the only way to change the actual machine's program was to load a new one, in some unspecified way.
Another interesting wrinkle was that there were no conditional branches. Only conditional expressions like the C "?:" operator (or ARM predicated instructions). The resulting value could then be used to alter the target address of a Jump instruction, which could then be executed.
IIRC, the original paper (1936?) described a machine that did physically separate the "program" defined by a state machine) and the "data" stored (and alterable) on the tape(s). Looks like some time between 1936 and 1967, somebody decided that was uninteresting and defined a machine with a fixed (but "magic") state machine that would interpret a "program" preloaded on the tape. I'd be looking at the hack that made ENIAC sortof "stored program" by wiring an interpreter to read (PROM-ish) "data tables" and operate on (RAM-ish) data. Of course, that program could probably be another interpreter...
I Recall a DataMation article on emulation that referenced a Uni running "precious" software written for a Bendix G-15, on an emulation of the G-15 running on an IBM 1620, running on an emulation of the 1620 running on an IBM System/360. Of course, nowadays the 360 would also be emulated, on something like a Xeon, whose ISA would be emulated by the various hair CPUs made this millennium typically use.
Some (most?) digital content dies only once. But some has multiple lives.
I submit the case of bobbemer.com. Lots of cool articles about computing history told first hand.
Then Bob died and the domain was bought by a guy who turned into one of those "shopping guide" sites. You know, where it consists of a whole page of mini-banners for sites to get you the very best prices on high quality shoes, garden tools, whatever. Presumably for the "link juice" of a gazillion links from various other bloggers and kibitzers. Remember when people created and hosted personal sites that were not just appendages of Social Media?
Hooray! When the spam site gave up, some hero bought it and re-populated with the previous contents, courtesy of the Internet Archive.
Just checked. Now it's a page of dire warnings about deprecated PHP.
For now, or course, the Internet Archive still has a mostly working copy. It's going to be a race among various causes for its next disappearance:
Rabid DMCA abusers
Climate change
scarcity-driven WWIII,IV,V
Pissed-off E.T.s finally stopping that beacon of advertising we've been spewing into space for over a century.
If the rocket was actually from Blue Origin, or part of comingled inventory and actually supplied by a group of teens with too much time on their hands and a stash of fireworks that "fell off a truck". And who published those glowing reviews from back when they sold dog shampoo?
One of the episodes of my college years that I am still ashamed of was when I recorded my roommate's Outstanding Guitar Licks one evening and played them back to him when he was sober next morning.
He did forgive me and we still correspond occasionally, but I don't recommend it.
I recall an incident when a large mainframe had an unexpected crash when a student ran what would today be called a "fuzzing" test, to see what would happen when attempting to execute (allegedly) un-implemented instructions in user mode. Turns out the customer engineer had "implemented" one of them (i.e. removed the jumper that was installed in systems whose owners had not paid for that feature) because the new diagnostic set required them, then forgotten to return the system to "stock" before leaving.
This was in the early 1970s, so clearly such things could not happen today, unless you are dealing with a machine that contains at least one computer with remote auto-update capability. Of course nobody would be daft enough to do _that_, right?
IIRC from some memoir of Babbage, having tokens does not prevent the owner of the company (Chap named Brunel) from moving a locomotive onto a track that Babbage was currently using with another loco. Disaster was averted, but I suspect there was at least a discussion.
That era was rife with "could this boiler explosion have been prevented" stories. Much like today with a few edits.
In my own case, it was my paranoia in checking the supply (which I had shut off at the breaker) to a mid-size motor-generator I was meant to de-commission (after tagging said breaker "Man on Line" and going down to the). Long story short, I am alive to post this because of adding my own personal bike-lock to the various safety measure that some twit had decided were intended solely to inconvenience them.
From acquaintance (as a bystander) with such a "legacy rewrite in hot new language" project, pretty much as soon as they had an Minimum Viable Project, they needed to re-deploy some largish fraction of staff just to keep up with shifting language specs and rapid, often undocumented changes to the pile of dependencies.
It's a Red Queen's Race, where you have to run as fast as you can to stay in place.
OTOH, I've also been on the other side where the customer made regular "small" (their definition, meaning "Hey, come on, you're not going to make us write a change order") changes to the deliverables. Great way to end up a contractor on a defense-related project netting below minimum wage.
So there's an expiration date. At least near me, the coverage radius for TV has been shrinking for years. It's gotten to the point that I suspect the only reason broadcasters broadcast is to get "must carry" status and the resulting payments from Cable providers. Ditto radio "broadcast", and the refusal of mobile phone manufacturers and operators to support broadcast radio for disaster and other emergency use.
"A visible indicator". This requirement will be followed by the revision: "A truthful visible indicator, where visibility is to be by reference to human vision, not, for example, honeybee vision". Of course, compliance with the new requirement will be self-certified by the vendors and installers.
Not to forget poem codes (used at least in some cases by the SOE in WWII. I recommend "Between Silk and Cyanide").
If I use a poem that has been banned for naughty words, can I (in the U.S. at least) claim fifth amendment right to not disclose that I have, or had, a copy of that poem in my possession?
I too was a happy Time Machine user, until I discovered (a bit late to the party) that round about Sierra time people had started having issues with networked drives. No warning, just one day "corrupted backup, oh, well, suck to be you" Fair bit of comment to this affect on various fora, nary a peep, then or last I checked a couple moths ago. Apparently not affecting drives connected directly, only networked drives. And of course not _always_ failing, so the comments could fill with "well, it worked for me, you must be evil to impugn it"
Shifted to a USB external drive directly connected to the computer, burning one of the scarce USB ports.
Still using Macs and planning to update a couple to the ARM models once a few pioneers have soaked up the arrows in the back. But really, it's just "well, most of alternatives suck more"
And BTW yes, Snow Leopard was "peak stability/reliability". That's why it had to die.
Seriously, if your security endpoint is not outside your communication endpoint (e.g. if your top-secret proprietary encryption scheme runs _on_ the phone), you lose almost immediately. Why would Officer Plod and Nefarious Hacker bother to decrypt when they can just watch the keylogger in real time via a back-channel?
So the premise of the episode I saw on One Step Beyond in the 1950s or 60s was based on... what?
The premise of the show, set in the U.S., but I am willing to stipulate that it may have been inspired by UK detector vans, was that a detector van um, detected, a stronger than usual signal, which (Spoiler) turned out to be an alien observer "phoning home" with the day's observations. I was amused but skeptical, but not about the existence of detector vans..
1) "fox and hounds" contests (radio direction finding) had been popular among radio amateurs since before I was born, and in somewhat more sophisticated form for military intelligence in both acts of the Great War.
2) Detecting the intermediate frequency of a Superheterodyne receiver would indicate that a receiver was operating to a particular standard. That is, looking in the 30-45 MHz area (depending on local TV modulation standards) would "find" televison receivers, but ignore audio receivers for AM (typ 455kHz) and FM (typ 10.7 MHz) receivers.
3) In principle, such a van would be quite feasible, although before the retirement of analog TV, I'd expect them to be operated by Cable TV providers or market survey companies.
4) That said, I don't recall if the show mention the signal being a _lot_ stronger than typical IF leakage, let alone "right side up" in spectrum as opposed to the normal spectrum inversion in a typical TV. That said, Outer Limits was not really a "learn to be a nerd" channel. I doubt that later shows like Star Trek made anybody believed one could create a "Universal Translator" from a painted cardboard tube, nor would they waste time including a cobbled up "technical explanation". McGyver bent the laws of physics more.
Anyway, I don't find the concept of a detector van absurd. Yes, FUD is also a possibility, but for me the take-away from the show was "Hey, if you want to communicate less obviously, unused TV channels are a good place to hide".
That can be parsed in at least two ways.
My recollection is that SGI started circling the drain when they attempted to move their often admired software from Irix to WinNT, and couldn't understand why people used to paying Windows prices and running on gray boxes balked at the continuation of "Custom Unix on custom hardware" prices.
But I suspect you meant "their hardware/software bundle on WiTel could not compete with the existing Win-native products on gray boxes"
You might want to look into Kryoflux. I had limited (that is, no) success back in the day, but people who should know have reported it's much better now, and if you are that curious, not a bad gamble.
That said, I've also had success getting data off 7-track tape, and even cassettes, so YMMV.
I do still lack ability to read Univac round-hole cards, but since that box of cards has gone walkies it doesn't seem to matter.
Does that mean the recruiter who took me out to dinner and then suggested we move on to finding me a woman (I told him I wanted to get home to my girlfriend) also no longer exist?
How about HR departments who insist on CVs being in Word .DOC form? Yeah, the ones recruiting Linux kernel and driver developers. (Made me wonder if they demanded CVs for Access DBAs in Latex)
I've already mentioned keeping my IBM 1401 experience on my CV well past its "use by" date, just to weed out the interviewers who would take one look at my thinning grey hair and reject, after wasting both our time.
IIRC, the MSFT network stack (once there even was such a thing, not just Clarkson packet drivers and a bunch of TSRs) also had "a background in BSD"
I am a little surprised that FreeBSD can easily port Linux drivers to their kernel. back when I was maintaining a few drivers (10+ years ago), it seemed like the kernel cabal delighted in "stirring the ant-hill" with frequent API changes.
Much like how the structure of gcc (mentioned in before) was a real PITA for anybody trying to re-target to a new processor. Or, of course, to anyone wanting to do a front-end for a new language.
I had the same thought. Flashed back to reading (circa 1965) about weapons of the U.S. Civil War (or "War Between the States" if south of the Mason Dixon line). One was an interesting rifle that was, to a first approximation a revolver with an extended barrel and a long-gun stock.
A large percentage of these were (reported) "lost crossing a river", which should surprise nobody familiar with the notion of "chain fire". This is a situation where more than one chamber fires at once. It can be scary (and dangerous) enough when the shooter has all body parts behind cylinder. When one of your hands is quite close in front of the cylinder, it is a far more serious situation.
BTW: I suspect that there is non-trivial overlap between modern tech-heads and antique weapon fans, and not just in the U.S. Of course, many will not admit it.
"Someone made a mistake" Yep. Been that someone. The particular mistake I am thinking of was a case when I was asked to sprinkle some "performance dust" on a bit of bottleneck. Moderately simple bit of code, so what could possibly go wrong? My "improved" code suffered random crashes I lost some sleep (and hair) trying to find.
Cutting to the chase, the original code had an "off by one" error that I assumed (yeah, I know) was intended for some subtle reason I did not need to worry about. After all, the original code ran just fine, passed tests, etc. Trouble was, that "off by one" error trashed a bit of memory that did not "belong" to it. A bit of memory used by a DMA driver, but hey, the original code ran slowly enough that the trashing happened after the DMA was finished. Tightening up that performance bottleneck made the corruption happen before the DMA used it.
So "the old code worked" has to take the particular definition of "worked" into consideration.
Shades of the I.T. manager (by some other title, long ago) when I was surprised that the operators smoked in the computer room with the spanking new System/3 that had replaced the Tab equipment.
"Aren't you worried about the disks?"
"Doesn't hurt them none" - Said as they blew smoke into a pack with the cover removed...
Another place, moving into a new building where the "computer room" (PDP-11/20 and a pair of 11-03s) air conditioning intake was right next to the exhaust from the paint shop hood. Big fun.
At the end of contract period.
Hands up those of you who would be perfectly fine with the workman to whom you had lent a key to your house (to expedite repairs) making a copy of said key without your knowledge and consent?
Those with hands up, does your view change when you find out said workman has been convicted of multiple burglaries?
The difficulty of enforcing such contracts meaningfully, when oversight is in the hands of the very officials who picked the vendor, is a pretty high bar.
Not to pick on Palantir. They are far from alone.
Good luck with that.
Definitely not unique to Apple, but pretty much all the major (and many minor) software suppliers will tuck all sorts of crap into their "critical security updates". Sort of like how the locksmith who replaces your aged front-door lock just happens to also install a hidden camera in your daughter's bedroom. Or would, if the typical locksmith had the same ethical sense as the typical executive.
Not new at all. The "Dual USB" iBook (2001) so frequently sent its video into witness protection that when I went looking for advice on the intertubes, there was an amazing variety of "this should fix it", some involving tea-lights.
No idea if that was lead-free solder, or just typical shoddy manufacture.
I guess I am just too darn old to consider the study of Ethics and AI to be "new".
OTOH, when I took a course with (roughly) that title in the late 1960's, it was
not so much about what ethics we should instill in AI (and whether we could), but
what "human rights" should apply to AI.
Note also the time, when not all biological humans were consistently deemed
worthy of these "human rights". 50+ years later, it's not clear yet when (if?)
they ever will be.
The robots may have to stand in line.
The Smithsonian Museum in the U.S. is actually named for a guy name Smithson. I nice blend of "Your last name is your father's name + son or daughter" (See, Iceland) with "Your last name denotes your trade or skill".
Perhaps ElReg felt that "Your last name denotes where your live, or came from" (see, Leonardo da Vinci) had missed out on the fun and added that bit.
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