Posts by Stoneshop 5954 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009
Why do MS still store user data on the same partition as the system guff given that users are expected to rebuild their OS as a matter of routine ?
Until recently, just "the way it's been done since forever, people would be confused by things changing, backwards compatibility, yadda, yadda", but now they offer you an (ever-shrinking) OneDrive to copy your stuff onto as a 'backup', simultaneously enabling MS to rifle through your data.
I'm pretty certain it doesn't need to be correctly placed in an anatomical sense in order to conduct security research.
As with any testing regime, there's probably bench testing as well as operational usage testing.
The latter may have some overlap with pen testing.
So are most locks, when you come along with a cordless drill.
Your cordless drill has Bluetooth?
Physically attacking a lock takes a bit of time and requires standing right at the door. Bluetooth, and other forms of wireless, may take a little more time, but can be done at a distance.
Firstly, because it's not relevant to the ECHR for reasons already mentioned, and secondly, because Brexit hasn't happened yet. What has happened is a referendum, the outcome of which is such that the UK government is advised to start proceedings to leave the EU. And that too hasn't happened yet.
On top of that the actual Brexit will be up to two years after the start of the talks.
into his favourite hidey-hole for munching on stuff he's caught
There's a reason my desk bears a Dymo label "Restaurant Les Souris".
(or probably trying to in this case, as I doubt drones are that appetizing).
[x] torn off its wings (rotor blades), [x] ripped open its belly, [x] spread out its entrails over half a square meter and [x] look extremely smug.
he seems to have brought everything bar a Pokémon in over the last month or so...
Have you checked his smartphone?
On the way out, he didn't realise that he also need to beep out, and pressed the big button next to the door; the Big Red Button.
Someone who shouldn't have been in the computer room in the first place managed to hit the Big Red Button high up on the wall, two meters away from the door, instead of the Average Size Blue Button next to the door, trying to get out.
And there was the install team for the no-break setup. After doing a test run on the freshly-installed diesel before adding the generator and other stuff, they found that the "Engine Stop" button wasn't functional, and hit another promising-looking button nearby. Of course it was Big, and Red, and this one was hooked up.
Apparently it all went very quiet (and if you've done something similar, you'll remember that terrible silence, as if hundreds of fans had suddenly stopped).
Even scarier: a low rumble in the computer room soundscape goes absent, and after a few seconds of puzzlement, trying to determine what exactly it might be that's causing the change, it hits you that it's the aircon. And there's close to 100kW of equipment still running, belching heat into the room.
I think it's the only time I've seen a thermograph pen move.
It's not Unix, it's DEC VMS.
Bollocks. OpenVMS is something different entirely than HPUX (which itself is something almost entirely but not quite unlike Unix*). The only thing they have in common is that they run on IA64.
* HPUX can best be described as a Unix that has been left on a dusty shelf for half a decade, then subjected to a superficial cleaning and having some odds and sods added.
HP-UX was at one time promised to get an infusion of VMS file system and cluster technology, but that never happened.
That would have been a clustering and file system infusion from Tru64, with the clustering technology being based more or less on VMS's clusters.
I've only hit a bird once in all my years of driving
Me too, and it was only a second-hand kill. It was a pheasant that was hit by an oncoming van, bouncing off its windshield, and landing right in the path of my front wheel, which duly squished it into a quantity of pheasant pate (augmented with crunchy bits) plus a cloud of feathers.
Hint, the vendor will have weasel words in their documentation
A large and/or fierce enough dog will have little problem with a weasel, and I know some cats who would manage likewise.
Hungry enough they will be sufficiently motivated to deal with the marketing twonks who deal in weasel words.
that contain GPS information on position, speed and direction.
Sure, but that's not a "simple radio transmitter" any more. The receiver likewise has to be adapted to pass that data on to the anti-collision system so that it can be used that way. And while it'll cost just a few cents in hardware, if you want it to be traffic-certified it will be several hundred Euros/Pounds/Dollars
Small low powered radio transmitters are not that expensive and could be retro fitted to older vehicles and mandatory on new sending an 'I'm' here signal out.
Which will only tell a receiver "there's a vehicle somewhere in the vicinity". No indication of distance and direction, unless you have a directional scanning receiver and a calibrated transmitter, and even then there's no sufficiently exact way that the receiver can indicate a particular vehicle on a potential collision course.
The software to turn a Raspberry Pi into a DIY multifunction thin client has existed for a while,
That's true, but I doubt it'll be feasible to get those running at work: the central system expects each workstation to have a single address (with, as said, up to 8 screens). Changing that to eight Raspi's each driving a single screen, so eight addresses, might be doable (at one time displays were driven by a Tektronix NC 900 per screen), but given that there's now some local computing being done on the PCs driving the screens, it'd probably be a no-go, or at the very least quite involved, to move to RasPi's.
At home, my computing resource is my laptop. There's a file server with modest power consumption, and occasionally I boot a big, dual-screen PC for serious stuff (which the file server with two Pi-driven displays won't cut). Apart from that I have no need for a remote-display-to-a-server at the moment.
Also, you and I (and most others here, I expect) can cobble together a Pi plus a screen plus the software, but it's not something Joe Q. User can buy at Curry's, with a bit of software that makes their PC into a server for these devices. Which was basically what I was trying to say.
Perhaps there is the technology to wire a load of screens and keyboards together and run one PC as a true multi-user host but it isn't obvious.
The systems I manage at work serve at least half a dozen users, each with 5 to 8 screens. Now, the X display controllers are essentially full-blown Linux PCs themselves, but they're not doing any actual computation except for one particular subtask on a number of them.
Setting things up like that isn't particularly difficult but you're not gaining anything because the cheapest way to get a remote terminal for your central system is by getting a tablet, laptop or even a PC. I think that only if you have a totally 'dumb' terminal with a total energy requirement just a tick over that of the screen will the effort pay off.
IOT is a waist of time...
A fat load of it is, indeed. Like the electric kettle I saw on a website, that you could control via BT, keeping the content at any selectable temperature for up to 12 hrs. Which I consider a serious distance into Whatthehellweretheythinking territory.
But I would like to keep being able to minimise my (external) energy usage, for instance by automatically opening windows for ventilation if the outside temperature is over a certain minimum, and it's higher inside and over a certain minimum (plus a few other conditions, like not being away). Or running the washing machine on solar if there's enough of that, else on off-peak. Shutting off the heating if there are windows open, and notching up the recovering ventilation system when they're not. Maybe even being able to send an SMS to the heating system that I'll be away for a few more hours, so it can adjust the heating accordingly.
But maybe that's not worthy of the (id)IoT moniker, because it does not involve other computers than those entirely my own.
Well, NAND flash SSD, maybe.
Basically, core memory is SSD too. And in the 1990's several manufacturers had a couple of solid state drives in their program DEC had one, physically the size of a HSC50 (can't recall the model number; ESE50?) which was essentially a backplane filled with 150MB worth of DRAM boards and a SDI interface, plus a MVAX board with an RD54 hooked up and an UPS. If the power went out, the UPS was to keep the lot running while the memory contents were transferred to disk. Later they had a drive with a 3.5" form factor, SCSI interface, static RAM and a rechargeable battery. Couple hundred MB, IIRC. No idea of the list price of either, but definitely well over that of their size in spinning rust.
Everyone said I was daft to build a datacentre on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up
Most of the ones I saw back in the late 80's/early 90's were Microsoft InPort devices with round plugs, but I seem to recall some other brands used D plugs/sockets
Even the MS bus mouse card had room for a DB9 connector, but on all the ones I've seen it wasn't fitted, and no cutout in the slot bracket. There's a Siemens-branded Logitech bus mouse around that has a (male) DB9, but the matching card has gone missing. They probably switched from DB9 to mini-DIN because a bus mouse plugged into a CGA or Hercules card doesn't quite work like one would want.
And the first mouse I bought was a bus mouse with a mini-DIN plug, with a bus-to-DB25 converter block and a DB25 -DB9 pigtail.
It might be worth getting a list of what bits of kit people carry with them 'just in case'
Leatherman multitool (Charge TTi), PB Swiss tool roll, one of those nicely bright LED flashlights (single 18650 cell. And a headband LED light.
Got a DS25 going again, twice, and oodles of DS10's.
For PC's I have the Lowa Tibet size 46 (11)
Anything short term before article 50 is even invoked is pure FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) based on pretty much nothing at all except "well something MIGHT happen"...
Nope. It's "well, something WILL happen". Even if you lot manage to postpone triggering A50 indefinitely, it's not business as usual any more. Because I doubt that businesses are willing to wait until A50 is invoked, then wait again to see what comes out of the negotiations. It simply won't be as good as being inside the single market, and businesses will want to pre-empt that degradation. So, legally there won't be a difference NOW* and not even until A50 is invoked and its negotiations finalised, but businesses tend to look ahead a number of years to prevent being caught out. Science projects, often being long-running, tend to take the same approach.
* Some people have been implementing their interpretation of the referendum rather prematurely.
You mean like a broken down or stopped on traffic lights car stationary object ?
I expect the guidance system to have a hard time detecting narrow, non-metallic objects in the dark (no radar signature, little contrast from the background), and the restriction is based on that.
And if you're doing 60mph (100km/h) in an area with traffic lights, running into a statio9nary object will quite likely be the last thing you do. Ever.
(I'm sure a motorcycle could use the pavement at a push too, but they're not so easy to get up the curbs).
Not sure about the first response bikes used in the UK, but over here they tend to be the large allroads: BMW R1200GS, Honda Varadero, Yamaha Tenere. A fairly usable combination of carrying capacity and agility. Add some Advanced Rider courses to that and London curbstones shrink to a minor nuisance.
The dimensions are just right to accommodate a 19" rackmount device between the legs. Unfortunately the current version has been cheaped down to a level that you can only screw a single 1U device in; just the top inch (0.18 linguine) and the bottom half inch (0.09 linguine) are from a material that can, with not too much stretching of the term, be called solid; the remaining parts of the legs are stiff paper on the outside with a stiff paper honeycomb filling, with the paint layer making a significant contribution to the load bearing properties. But it'll do for a rackmount network or KVM switch, or storage unit (may require an additional bracket on the rear, because of the weight)
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