Re: Why indeed the observable Universe may not be spherical...
I think the Universe is cat shaped
Whatever it is, it's not at all shaped like a spherical cow of uniform density.
Posts by Stoneshop
5954 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009
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Supernova bubble clocked at 19,000,000 km/h
Landmark computer hacking archive deposited at TNMOC
Wednesday 18th May 2016 17:45 GMT
Re: "In 1985, the internet did not exist"
The context, dear Cynical Observer, was accessing a central Prestel host in 1985. .
From Brief History of the Internet
Which happens to describe, for the year in question, the situation in the US. Apart from that, from being able to exchange mail and Usenet news and perhaps even access the odd ftp site and such, doesn't necessarily follow that it would be easier to get into the Prestel system that way instead of connecting via dialup more or less directly.
GM crops are good for you and the planet, reckon boffins
Chaps make working 6502 CPU by hand. Because why not?
Brit twitchers a-tizz at bearded vulture sighting
Inside Electric Mountain: Britain's biggest rechargeable battery
Microsoft phone support contractors told to hang up after 15 minutes
Dragon capsule bids adios to ISS
This is what a root debug backdoor in a Linux kernel looks like
Label your cables: A cautionary tale from the server room
Wednesday 11th May 2016 11:58 GMT
Re: It was Working Yesterday.....
1. Of Course it was working yesterday, otherwise you would have called me yesterday - you moron.
Really? It was already "broken" (misconnected, powered off, forgotten about by the system drivers, whatever) since a week or two, but all the jobs since then were totally non-urgent (and thus postponed because, well, non-urgent), but now this one crucial job needs to be done by, oh, yesterday noon and you have to drop whatever it is you're doing no matter its priority and come over right fucking now to fix this shit.
French duck-crushing device sells for €40k
Tuesday 10th May 2016 15:27 GMT
Re: ... or call the breakdown service.
A friend once found a quite unroasted but still rather pressed chicken between the wheel of his sidecar and the tarmac. Presenting it at the farm to which he presumed the chicken had belonged, the farmer's wife matter-of-factly pronounced "So, that'll be chicken soup tonight".
The recipe for chicken soup was published in the club newsletter as "Ingredients: one tyre, Metzeler Block K, one chicken (whole), one screwdriver (for removing bits of chicken from tyre)"
Experian Audience Engine knows almost as much about you as Google
Ecobee3: If you're crazy enough to want a smart thermostat – but not too crazy – this is for you
Sunday 8th May 2016 11:10 GMT
Re: The elephant in the room...
Ah, but how much heat is added to the room energy balance by said elephant? The average human clocks in at around 80 Watts when idle; if energy output is proportional to body weight an average elephant (adult, spherical and of uniform density) would radiate up to 7kW (500 NorrisLinguini per second), enough to heat the entire house, not just that one room.
Google, Honeywell put away Nest patent knives
Sunday 8th May 2016 09:51 GMT
Re: Honeywell
Actually, a company looking to solve the problem that the existing domestic HVAC control gear companies were oblivious too[sic]:
Funny, that. When my dad and me fitted central heating in their house, now 35 years ago, we fitted a thermostat that did a fair bit of the stuff current 'smart' thermostats tout as 'innovative'. Sans Internet connectivity allowing remote control and weather report integration, obviously, and nothing like a touch screen either. But it had an outside temperature sensor, a sensor on the return feed for the heater, an easily-settable timer and a day/night/auto override switch.
With the two extra sensors it adjusted the energy delivered into the heating system to anticipate the actual demand (an adjustable PID regulator, although you had to tweak it yourself; it didn't have the smarts to be learning the characteristics of the house + heating combo) based on the outside temperature. The timer was electromechanical, and you could turn the day/night switch from day to night and it would simply flip back to day on the next night-to-day setpoint (or vice versa). Temperature setpoints were straightforward dials.
It does what it has to do, and still works fine today. And they still carry what's essentially that model, with one improvement: it has a week timer instead of the 24hr timer.
'I thought my daughter clicked on ransomware – it was the damn Windows 10 installer'
Saturday 7th May 2016 20:04 GMT
"Reg readers share their tales of spontaneous OS upgrades"
Interesting how none of the comments in the article complained about Windows 10, just that it arrived unexpectedly.
Funny how that actually matches the headline and the byline of the article. Kindof unexpected around here, but there you have it.
'Apple ate my music!' Streaming jukebox wipes 122GB – including muso's original tracks
Friday 6th May 2016 19:26 GMT
Re: A: he is not a real musician
But there must be some process by which it randomly goes off and gets some more,
It's the iTunes equivalent of your car's glove compartment, where any cassette, from Paul Anka to Megadeth, turns into a Best of Queen compilation.
The one with the WM504 in the pocket
Siemens Healthcare struck by rebranding madness
Friday 6th May 2016 19:04 GMT
Re: If only...
The marketing folks are probably all on a cruise spending the big fat paycheque that they received for the rebranding.
ITYM The marketingific folketeers are probabiliteristic all cruiseteering spendingification the big fat paychequeingie that they receivedeers for the rebrandingeers.
I am Craig Wright, inventor of Craig Wright
Chap runs Windows 95 on Apple Watch
Europe's Earth-watching sat beams back icy first pic
Quad-core coffee table trumped by dual-Mac garden furniture
Friday 29th April 2016 07:55 GMT 
Adam's disks
Such a stack of platters, and late '80's? Those disks were way more than 20MB; more like 200..500MB. They're also thin film (shiny, reflective) instead of the oxide coated platters (reddish-brown) one would find in the average 20MB disk like the ST225, also indicating higher capacity.
My PC back then ran two Maxtor 4170 ESDI drives (5.25", FH). Those had a platter stack that looked quite like these.
One black hole, three galaxies, four BEELION solar masses – found by accident
Thursday 28th April 2016 11:39 GMT
High school stuff
The centripetal force required for the gas with mass m1 to circle the black hole at the measured speed v and distance r is F=(m1*v^2)/r. This force is the gravitational pull by the black hole with mass m2, with F=G*(m1*m2)/r^2. Colliding these equations to eliminate m1 (the mass of the gas) you'll be left with v^2=G*m2/r, or m2=(r*v^2)/G.
Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware storms live TV weather forecast
Thursday 28th April 2016 09:12 GMT
so it makes me wonder what kind of organisation this TV station is if they are using off the shelf windows setups.
At work we have two systems rotating status displays for various tasks. One status display being a weather radar, BTW. Both just run a browser, full-screen, so you wouldn't even know which browser that was, let alone what OS would be underneath. Normally, that wouldn't matter much either, and running Linux on them would make (temporarily) adding particular status screens remotely much easier. However, for network reasons they need to be part of the AD (but not WSUS), so, W7Pro it is, and they had been showing the GWX task bar icon when you got out of full-screen mode until we kneecapped the updater.
It's perfectly possible that this rain radar display is a special snowflake that needs to be set up the way it is because of a particular video card that interfaces with the studio gear.
Redback sinks fangs into Oz builder's todger
China's Dalek-like robots fear only one terrifying nemesis: Stairs
NASA eyes stadium-sized orb launch: Part 3
US intercepts Bermuda Triangle bubble podule
Furious customers tear into 123-reg after firm's mass deletion woes
Monday 18th April 2016 15:28 GMT
Re: Takes courage
And you probably can't afford to perform that careful testing procedure for every new set of $1 and $2 values.
That's why you write the resulting commands into a file, which you inspect before running it. I also mentioned checking the results from the database for sane values
And if you can't afford testing potentially disastrous stuff like this, you shouldn't be sitting at a keyboard from which you can issue such commands.
Monday 18th April 2016 13:21 GMT
Re: Takes courage
To run rm -rf with parameters in a script.
First, you test for the parameters to have valid values
if [[ -z "$1" || -z "$2" ]]
then
echo "Variables not set"
else
echo "rm -rfi $1/$2"
fi
as well as turning whatever command you're trying into an echo statement. Similarly, you test for reasonable values retrieved from the database.
Then, you run this on a sacrificial environment.
Then, you run this on a sacrificial environment, capturing the output. You inspect this to contain the commands you expect.
Then, you run the captured output as a script. After you've verified that it does what you intended for the first couple of lines, you ctrl-c the script, remove the '-i' and re-run it.
Then, you verify the restorability of your backups.
Then, you verify the restorability of your backups again.
Only then you run the script on your live environment.
.
Windy Wanaka wallops NASA's Super Pressure Balloon launch
UK authorities probe 'drone hitting plane at Heathrow'
Monday 18th April 2016 10:02 GMT
Re: Kudos to the idiot responsible
I presume, then, you believe all the UFO reports made by pilots?
Kindly look up the meaning of "unidentified".
"I saw something in the air, but was unable to identify what it was". It's only the crackpot brigade that associates "unidentified".with "supernatural".
UK web host 123-Reg goes TITSUP, customer servers evaporate
I am sending pouting selfies to a robot. Its AI is well buff
US anti-encryption law is so 'braindead' it will outlaw file compression
Saturday 16th April 2016 16:21 GMT
impact on actual codes rather than ciphers?
Defining* one set of words ("Blessent mon coeur d'un langueur monotone") to mean something else entirely ("We're coming to kick Kraut ass")? Not that I can see, but maybe that'll be next. In which case they also need to ban stuff such as crossword puzzles, synonyms and doublespeak. As well as Congressional speeches and debate.
* you need to get the definition of the code to the receiving party first, securely. You'll have to find a way to do that without involving crypto.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
