Posts by Stoneshop

Re: Denuding scare quotes leaves you an illegal bareward token

Bareward?

Apple?

http://toastytech.com/guis/banana-fritos.gif

Re: Search

and they've obviously made a hash of this which seems really odd to me.

AIUI making a hash of the search terms is kind of the way a search can be done over a number of (similarly hashed) tags.

Re: You want WHAT?

I guess there's at least two of us

Three.

Re: Let's create a Venn diagram...

- Places that have the rocket, but don't allow you to launch them you - the US

- Places that don't have the rocket, but would allow you to launch them - the EU

So you tie the rocket to a balloon (which you were going to do anyway), check the winds for a couple of days that will cause it to drift from the US to the UK, launch the balloon, then once LOHAN is over the UK fire the rocket.

By the time I'm ready to change it again who knows where MS will be.

Under a bridge, with a cardboard box for shelter.

"Pilots have forgotten how to fly".

It'll get ugly when they, like the kakapo, have forgotten they've forgotten how to fly.

(can we have a Douglas Adams icon?)

One tends to notice

are you sure that your car hasn't worked out that if it jumps up the wall and bashes the thermostat

Unless it's a very smart car.

Re: Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux,

I think I have one too.

I will name him George

Close.

And you know that they don't know?

Trottel.

Re: Big hammer

some fantastic bots with spinning, weighted discs

Hypnodisk's first couple of matches were [redacted] [redacted] [censored] amazing.

Re: When

But I've never called a computer Sadly ... so.

I had one called Scrapheap. Because it was.

Almost two decades ago, I wanted to get broadband, with the only option at that moment being cable. This required the provisioning of a W98 system ("If you don't have W98 or a Mac, we won't even consider you") with at least 64M memory, a P90, 100M free disk space, a 16x CD-ROM drive and obviously a network interface. Rummaging in my junkpileextensive and exotic spare parts storage, I cooked up a box containing a 486 Overdrive ([x] close enough) with 48M memory ([x] close enough) and 150M free space ([x] too much, maybe?). Never mind that the free space was spread over three harddisks (hah, they didn't specify that) and that W98 was installed on E: because neither C: or D: were large enough (the controller didn't agree with any other ordering), I resubmitted my request to get connected. This time they were satisfied ("Does your PC meet our requirements?" "Sure") and sent a technician.

Who tried for nearly an hour to get the cablemodem working, in the end asking me to call a particular number "if that orange LED is still blinking at the end of the afternoon", handed me the install CD and the cheat sheet with the IP settings, thanked me for the coffee, and left, never having touched Scrapheap.

Re: yeah, that'll work..

Though You can get (and have been able to for some time) petrol powered remote control helicopters that can easily lift 30-40kg so why the focus is on drones is beyond me...

Well, there's just been an announcement (introduction?) of a drone that can lift 100 kilos. Sure, it'll cost 10k barrels of crude a pop (at Daesh Dastardly Discount prices), but given their monthly trade, hardly an insurmountable price. Either 100kg of your favourite high explosive, or a bit less and some extra batteries for more range. And the first few times there will be some reluctance to shoot them down because there might be an innocent* rich bastard inside it.

* as innocent as a rich bastard can be, anyway.

Re: Solves only the easy problem

Even if it works, can you lay your hands on a working interface?

It's just ones and zeroes, at a signal level of 5V. Anything that can twiddle the control lines and read back the resulting bitstream coming in can be made into a floppy interface, modulo some programming and maybe soldering. With a RasPi and some level shifters you could build a floppy drive with Ethernet and USB interfacs.

Re: Until you don't need to pull up the command line for anything slightly administrative

Like I said, I wanted to check something and for me it was easiest to let her open a shell and type one or two commands. I probably could have done without had I been familiar with Cinnamon, but given that I've been working with CLI environments since about forever, I probably would have used the shell anyway.

And having a newbie ask things maybe five times over three months? Did your friends/family score that low when they started using Windows?

Re: Cherry Picking Works All Ways

But most people don't chose to consume soy sauce instead of wine just for the health benefits...

So where does the expression "being totally sauced" come from then?

Video driver clearing memory

Usually, a driver has routines for 'change video mode' and 'clear screen' (== zero framebuffer); the most obvious thing to do is clearing after mode change, but it depends on the application writers to do both in sequence. Zeroing a large buffer might take a while, and if the next thing you do is loading a full-screen bitmap anyway, clearing the screen first might be considered a waste of time. You could even figure out the new framebuffer first, load the bitmap and then switch modes, in which case you obviously don't want to clear after switching. Or it's simply a bug in the application.

IMO in this case the bug lies squarely with Chrome: if you go out of private mode, you erase ALL of the stuff you did until then.

@Charles 9

There. Is. No. Robust. Solution.

There is only correct encryption, requiring a disproportionate amount of time* to decrypt without the key, and broken encryption. If it's broken, not only the ones who wanted it broken can decrypt it. Also, as mentioned already, anyone knowing what's up is going to stay clear of that robust solution, sticking with the correct solutions already available.

* getting encrypted messages deciphered before the terrorist actions they might describe are executed is kind of crucial in this respect, isn't it?

Re: I think it *will* be a ghastly mess

in order for smart pricing to work all the devices in our home will need to be smart

Nope. They just need to be plugged in to a "smart" outlet. Which have been around as long as dual-tariff metering. Low tariff -> outlet gets powered -> washing machine starts running, boiler heats up, etc. With more smarts you can do a bit more than blunt on/off, such as "once you've powered this outlet, do not switch off for at least $duration" so that the machine ran run its full cycle uninterrupted, but the machine does not need to be smart itself.

And when you switch the Teasmade to "Tea Now" it had better not be on a smart outlet, or even (for tomorrow's version) be smart itself because just making tea now is exactly the smart thing to do.

Re: How did he obtained the former employee password?

Of course the Astros have issues if they don't force password changes,

Not only that, when they suspected the intrusion they apparently had some but not all users change passwords. Or the guy who came from the Cardinals changed his password back because he was used to using that one (which he probably also used for facetwitcetera).

Re: Pen testing fail?

The firmware file as present on the toy maker's servers is freely accessible and copyable (which is not quite the same as 'public information' though), but given the possibility of a MITM attack, can you be sure that the firmware on the toy is the file you downloaded? Whether that can only result in farty noises every few seconds because it's lacking sensors with which to spy on you is not the point; it being possible is, and now the makers are aware of it.

Re: @Stoneshop

Explaining why Euclidian and not Cartesian would be putting Descartes before the horse.

(not all of them are square)