* Posts by Jad

186 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Sep 2009

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Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Jad

Re: Half Life 3

on which note:

Duke Nukem' 5 will be released with AI content, where all dialogue and imagery has been generated by OpenAI, on the fly, based on your browsing history.

Jad

it would explain the unexpected reason that rust support appeared in the Windows "Kernel" ...

Jad

Low Earth Orbit becomes so full of clutter that Musk announces a robot "maid" (with laser mounted weaponry) that will take out all the competition's satellites

UK government rings the death knell for SIM farms

Jad

Re: Eh ?

and weirdly; I'm pretty sure that that wouldn't be banned, as it's not a single device ...

I can see the next step being forcing the carriers to identify/triangulate non-moving sims in high numbers in a very localised area, so as to identify potential breaches ... would make the police's job of finding potential ne'er-do-wells, by catching them potentially on the "SIM farm" law, which is an easy Boolean law, rather than cold calling which is harder to prove ...

Google killing Basic HTML version of Gmail In January 2024

Jad

Re: What happend to...

We used to use daisy wheel primers back in the day, and if you wanted to draw a picture with them you had to essentially program them to behave like a single pixel dot matrix ... that was a very slow and noisy printer mode ...

Intel woos China with nerfed Habana Gaudi2 AI chips

Jad

Re: Profits must roll in

I'm not 100% sure how stopping sometime buying something from you, so that they run AIs/LLMs slower counts as "national security", but each to their own.

I'm guessing that national security also means that it's not good enough just to do well by yourself, you have to keep the other guy down!

Open the pod bay doors, GPT, and see if you're smart enough for the real world

Jad

Re: We should, within our limitations as humans, act responsibly

mIsUSE of language models like LLMs IS a SIGNificant CONcern, LEADING to an INFlux of maLIcious AND misleading CONTENT. ReLYING solely ON reSPONsible USER beHAVior isn't SUFFicient, conSIDering THE scale AND speed at WHICH these TECHNOLOGIES operate. DIFFerentiATING between HUMAN-created AND alGOriTHMIC CONTENT becomes CHALlenging, ERODing TRUST. adDRESSing THIS necessitates reSPONsible USE, eTHical GUIDELINES, platform INTERvenTIONS, AND poTENtial REgulation. TRANSpaRENCY, media LITERACY, CRITIcal THINKing, AND colLABoration ARE KEY TO miniMIZING THE NEGative IMpact OF LLMs AND fostering REsponSible USE IN this HYPER-empowered ERA.

(so says ChatGPT ... with a little prompting)

Compatibility mess breaks not one but two Windows password tools

Jad

Re: So business as usual

Also see: every update to office 365 ever

HDD Clicker gizmo makes flash sound like spinning rust

Jad

Re: Great product line

you joke, but if the windows had the modem noise on desktop start it would allow me to understand why it takes so long to become responsive ...

A match made in heaven: systemd comes to Windows Subsystem for Linux

Jad

Re: Better idea.

AD integration, SAML connections, GPO functionality, COTS desktop apps with only for Windows, Office and Azure apps (yes I prefer LibreOffice, but we're talking corporate here, and there's lots of Azure connectivity apps not yet ready for Linux), hyper v images (allowing migration to the Azure cloud), user/automated patching ...

Easier to get support staff for Windows, easier access to training, common platform, most likely the same desktop they use on their home computer ...

Don't get me wrong, I'm a UNIX/Linux guy at heart, but there are good solid reasons for running a Windows server and desktop system

BOFH: Selling the boss on a crypto startup

Jad

I see things like that as signs of a mistake ... would have been better to have "coloured" set with a wiggly blue line underneath (suggesting US English dictionary spell-check)

Dev rigs up receipt printer to spit out GitHub issues

Jad

Re: CUPS

While I spent years convincing systems to use pure lp or lpr, cups does have its uses.

In the world of label printers you do need to set the queue up in "raw" mode though, although it's not a standard model, and it's really hard to get it to do it on a Mac ... and don't get me started on Windows printing to labels! Sacrilege!

Web trust dies in darkness: Hidden Certificate Authorities undermine public crypto infrastructure

Jad

DNS CAA

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_Certification_Authority_Authorization

This is meant to make scrupulous Certificate Authorities not generate a certificate unless it's in an allow list, but could easily be deployed to make sure only the correct authority has authorised a certificate ...

BOFH: When the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East, only then will the UPS cease to supply uninterrupted voltage

Jad

Re: Reminds me...

I was told by an old friend of mine who used to work in manufacturing/milling ...

They had a lot of grinding/drilling equipment.

He was on the shop floor drilling as usual, with the "old reliable" (set to "3") when the CEO decided to tour with his young whippersnappers.

One keen eye'd kid saw the machine set to "3" and "instantly realised that if it ran at 10 that the whole system would be more productive and efficiency could be improved".

He informed the CEO, and berated the guy operating the machine about how inefficient he was being

My friend stepped in to replace the guy operating the machine. My friend tried to explain why it was only set to "3", but kept being cut short. The CEO stepped in, and the machine was indeed turned up to "10"

My friend (wearing all the PPE he could) started to use the machine as it destroyed itself in about 3 seconds, with metal bits flying all over the place and drills embedded in the wrong places.

Apparently old machines don't like to be run at their maximum, and the new kid cost the company a couple of months on that machine, and potentially a lawsuit, if my friend hadn't known what would have happened and made sure it was him operating it ...

the red faces were almost worth it ...

You can only hope they "live and learn"

Is it still possible to run malware in a browser using JavaScript and Rowhammer? Yes, yes it is (slowly)

Jad

Re: I wonder why they decided to break Firefox and not Chrome....

I'm guessing it's because Firefox is open source and, although Chromium is open-source, the javascript implementation will be "tweaked" in Chrome to not be identical.

I doubt it's impossible for this to happen in Chrome, I'm guessing that it was just a few steps easier when you can see inside the black box.

At Mozilla VPN stands for Vague Product News: Foundation reveals security product will launch eventually, with temporary pricing, in unspecified places

Jad

This all comes down to trust ...

If you want a VPN, you need to trust someone, or you need to have your own VPN that you control ...

If you're willing to trust Mozilla, then this is probably as good as any, but it all comes down to how much you trust them now, and also how much you will trust them in the possible future ...

For me, if I'm on a private network that I control I will not use their VPN, if I'm on any other network I'll VPN to my private network ...

Already in final beta? That's Madagascar: Ubuntu 20.04 'Focal Fossa' gets updated desktop, ZFS support

Jad

Re: ZFS is for dedicated file-servers

*cough* software raid boot disk, with almost no hassle *cough*

Another amazing feature of it on the desktop is the compression out of the box ... The Lz4 compression used has been proven to take less time than not compressing, as the algorithm is so quick ...

Ddrescue or similar to a file and find out that it only takes up the space of the used data, automatically compressing all the blank space.

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

Jad

Re: The power of suggestion

my life in a webpage ...

Linux in 2016 catches up to Solaris from 2004

Jad

Re: Slowly, slowly

While most of what you've said is true, dockers are not containers, they are completely different things that appear on the outside to look similar. containers allow resource limitation on a scale that dockers don't ...

And while systemd works, I recall (I can't find the references) that there was a linux guy who reviewed the code from OpenSolaris and referred to it as a "battleship" compared to our "rowing boat" ... (he went on to say that he didn't think that Linux needed or wanted a battleship)

Oracle were porting Dtrace to their Oracle Solaris, but I don't believe they have / certain that they haven't released it to the wider community.

That said, Linux USB support is much better and more resilient, and support for hardware means that I can run it on this laptop ...

Sysadmin flees asbestos scare with disk drive, blank pay cheques, angry builders in pursuit

Jad

Windows NT

"Back then even with the exact same model drives a tape created with one drive could not always be read by another. Plus the weekly backup wouldn't have the last two days' work anyway"

I call Windows NT ... that was before I grew into proper operating systems

Stop lights, sunsets, junctions are tough work for Google's robo-cars

Jad

Re: So ? Humans can mis-see things too.

we shouldn't compare to humans, better to compare to horses!

http://xkcd.com/1720/

Oracle confesses to quietly axing its UK software support centre

Jad

Re: The reason?

Easy fix ... Sterilise?

Jad

Oracle support

almost every transaction I have had with them went along the lines of:

Me) I have a problem, here is the problem.

Them) I don't think you have a problem, are you sure?

Me) yes, here is even more supporting information

Them) yes you do seem to have a problem

Me) Hmm ... I've just been checking and I've found this work around

Them) that's good

Me) Okay you may as well close this ticket, as it's been 3 months already, and you've not provided me with any more information.

EE Harrier Mini grounded by errant Wi-Fi calling upgrade

Jad

Re: "we are speaking to those customers directly to resolve any issues"

same as being told to call "150" ...

New Google APIs: Point your phone at a telly like a streaming hose of vid

Jad

New google gaming console, no wires?

Someone at Subway is a serious security nerd

Jad

Re: Apples & Oranges

Absolutely, low hanging fruit and all that.

It's the same reason you shred all your financial documents (and letters from school, and Virgin, etc) so that it's hard to get information from them ... you can't stop a really determined person getting data back from shredded paper, but if someone else has non-shredded paper with all the details you want on it they will go there first.

Migrating from WS2003 to *nix in a month? It ain't happening, folks

Jad

As a Unix bod, working for a company that uses Unix as the backend ...

1 month to transfer to Unix just won't cut it, and certain applications and protocols cannot be replaced by Linux counterparts.

Our accounts department uses windows software (does anyone know an accounts department that uses non windows software? Seriously if we can find a good package to work with I'll suggest it to the board!) We replaced their desktop computers with "SunRays" using RDP to connect to a windows server (2008 R2) running the Windows software for the TAS system. We have ripped apart the TAS system so that it works on a Linux server with a PervasiveDB Linux installation ...

anyway I'm not sure where I was going with this, but suffice it to say, we're a big unix/linux house and even then there are applications that we cannot get off of Windows, even with all the time available to us.

Fujitsu shrinks SMB file transfer metadata traffic jams

Jad

Steelhead?

Umm, isn't that what a Riverbed is for?

VirtualBox 5.0 beta four graduates to become first release candidate

Jad

Re: Ah, but...

It isn't licensed for product evaluation, and it's valid to run it inside a company.

their terms for the extension pack are pretty good, in this case it's personal use if it wasn't installed by an administrator, or installed by default on lots of machines.

So if you run it at a company, get the users to install it themselves and you're quite legit.

If you're a big company then you can afford the small price for it if you need it :)

LOHAN's final test flight set to honour PRATCHETT

Jad

4 years

It's been 4 years since you stared this project ...

I know it's great to watch the progress, but others have come along and stolen your thunder a little.

how long till we see the bird fly?

Chrome trumps all comers in reported vulnerabilities

Jad

Re: I wonder how they measure vulnerabilities in Gentoo and Solaris.

It wouldn't surprise me if the figures were related to how much/how often the systems were patched.

I know for myself that in general we don't patch the Solaris systems we're using, we firewall the f*ck out of them, and only start services we know are going to be used. We have Solaris systems that have been untouched for over 10 years, but they're still doing the job they were supposed to, and aren't facing the outside world.

If a system is inherently more secure, with very low visibility and very low attack vectors, on an operating system that few use, is it not unexpected that the hackers will be going for the lower hanging fruit?

Meh!

Jon

Firefox hits prime time as version 37 manifests

Jad

Re: Feedback

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

:)

Delving into Office 2016: Microsoft goes public with new preview

Jad

Thanks

Good review, told me (almost) everything I needed to know.

Internet Explorer LIVES ON, cackle sneaky Microsoft engineers

Jad

Re: OK, I think I've got it...

unfortunately yes :(

Firefox 36 swats bugs, adds HTTP2 and gets certifiably serious

Jad

Re: "El Reg search" now available in FF36

The "Fedex" website stopped working on some of our machines yesterday ... turns out the main fedex site's certificate was fine, but one of the frames ran on a site with a "bad" certificate.

'YOUTUBE is EVIL': Somebody had a tape running, Google...

Jad

"Don't be evil"

Yet another reason that Google should abandon that motto ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

There's life after Oracle, but very little left in Oracle's reseller channel

Jad
Stop

We still use solaris ...

But we bought Fujitsu gear from the reseller ... a 1/3 of the cost of the Sun gear and they can provide the hardware support ...

Demon Internet goes TITSUP: Outage borks ancient ISP

Jad

Alternate Routes

Good job we took the precaution of installing multiple lines at most sites, with different ISP's ...

We've been with Demon a very long time, and although they went through a rough patch, they have been very reliable up until this incident ...

Never mind ...

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

Jad

Re: Domino Effect

I remember the time when my boss was running Windows 98 (windows xp had recently come out), and there was a virus/security warning put out that Microsoft released a "test" for.

We downloaded the test and ran it ... it said something like "Congratulations you are not susceptible to the threat, have you considered upgrading to one that is?"

Bada-Bing! Mozilla flips Firefox to YAHOO! for search

Jad

Re: Cue panic

Actually, from what I've seen our users/my relatives do, the biggest search term will be "google" :)

Are dangers lurking on your workers' operating systems?

Jad

TL;DR

Q: "Are dangers lurking on your workers' operating systems?"

A: "Yes"

Amazon: DROP DATABASE Oracle; INSERT our new fast cheap MySQL clone

Jad

Re: "They're proprietary. There's a high level of lock-in."

Agreed ... When I can get the source, compile it, run it on my own trusted systems, develop on it and run my apps from it then I will consider moving them to the AWS if I don't want to worry about them running in the future, and have no concerns over the information stored in them.

I won't be happy using this system for anything enterprise until I can do all of that.

Mozilla shutters Labs, tells nobody it's been dead for five months

Jad

Probably Short Sighted ...

History and Evolution seem to point to the fact that it's not the animals/objects that are ideally suited to their environment that improve ... you need to take a step back and look at it from a different angle, from a small branch of the tree/code and look at making it better, while leaving the original intact ...

If there is no champion of the Labs, it will not succeed, if they bring labs in house it might be quicker at reacting, but it will not be able to produce things that are not seen as core to the browser, at least not core at the time that they are thought up ...

just my 2cents.

Quit drooling, fanbois - haven't you SEEN what the iPhone 6 costs?

Jad
Alien

Perfume and Drugs ... and iPhones?

Products in economics that actually are considered to be better when you pay more money, therefore the price does not affect the supply/demand ratio ...

Take the shame: Microsofties ADMIT to playing Internet Explorer name-change game

Jad
Happy

RE: Internet Exploder

In the days long ago when we used to use "Pegasus Mail" almost all of the icons in our company were labelled "Horsey" ...

I forgot about this for a long time, when one day I was helping someone on a support call and I asked them what email system they were using (we were transitioning to Thunderbird at the time) ... there was a pause at the other end of the line and then a very sheepish "Horsey" was announced ... I have to say that that really made my day :)

Jad

New browser names:

In no particular order (names I've heard it called):

1) "Internet thingy"

2) "the world icon that opens the internet"

3) "Windows Internet"

4) "internet"

5) "the internet"

6) "facebook"

7) "twitter"

8) "google"

9) "search"

...

I've got 99 problems, but a Facebook boycott ain't one

Jad
Unhappy

Emails and Announcements

I set up a facebook account to see pictures my family uploaded online. I turned off all notifications and all emails, I don't want that stuff

My brother invited me to his sons christening on facebook.

I didn't log in to facebook until the day after the christening, missing the entire event.

He didn't get it when I told him that I have email, 3 phones and a physical address that he could have sent the invite to; why did he have to use facebook as the only medium ...

He's my younger brother, so I guess I'll just have to leave it at that ...

Wireless-controlled contraception implant is coming, says MIT

Jad

RE: switch off the contraceptive implant?

It looks like this is an activate each time type of thing, the power it uses to give out the drug appears to come from the wifi signal ...

The 2 problems I can see with it:

1) if it's manually delivered (or automatically delivered by a specific device) you have the chance of it not being delivered, or not getting the signal from the device, and therefore not activating.

2) You could receive a major dose (problematic?), and then not have any of the drug available in the future ...

New research: Flash is DEAD. Yet resistance isn't futile - it's key

Jad

Shut up and take my money already!

Tell me when I can get it commercially, and I will have it in my computers that day! :)

Nexenta beats off rivals as Citrix testlab rates its VDI offering 'cheapest'

Jad

Re: Misleading

"Foolish to compare sw based, all flash, and "select" hybrid arrays"

maybe so, but looking at the Nexenta Blog (that shows the IOPS in it's graph) they appear to be performing at least as well per desktop ... only Violin and Sanbolic scored higher (the Gartner post shows different numbers in the IOPS in which GreenBytes also does well)

As for the Nexenta SW based RAID, I know they're using ZFS, which if placed on systems with enough memory can outperform hardware RAID based systems, especially if they're using SSD ZIL.

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