Posts by Stoneshop 5954 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009
So, sort of a mini-Harrier? I doubt that would fly, because
- a jet engine is a bit more complicated than a bunch of electric motors, and requires regular and specialised maintenance.
- you have to be aware of the resistance to hot jet exhaust of the landing/takeoff area. You could try paving them with marketing professionals, but I don't think that's a feasible option in all locations.
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.
Once everyone is forced onto Windows 10, Microsoft will have us all by the bollocks.
For rather tolerant (and increasingly so) definitions of 'everyone' and 'all'.
Pay your monthly ransom or lose access to your computer entirely.
I suggested something along these lines some time ago and collected a noticeable number of downvotes. Apparently the MS fanbois have now buggered off elsewhere, considering us irredeemable.
Switching to alternate tools is impractical. having a 1:1 replacement for windows that can run EXISTING windows programs would be the solution ( including all the hardware support and existing drivers)
And you think that would be an easier task than building alternate tools?
Windows is an indescribable piece of bloated horror, with hidden interactions that I doubt even the Windows coders at MS completely understand. Building a fully compatible work-alike would be a) a Herculean task that includes rebuilding Augias' stables with every piece of shit duplicated exactly, b) something that would still not pass the common PHB sniff-test of "is it Windows, including the support from MS", and c) a barn-sized copyright infringement target with a correctly aimed and loaded cruise missile at ten paces (as seen by MS and its hordes of already-drooling landsharks)
And that I could think at or wiggle my eyes to make it do things, or something easier than what we have
"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program. "
Try reading and comprehending this sentence, present in the article you are labelling as garbage: Flaws affect various systems including mobile communication and interlocking platforms that control braking and help prevent collisions.
They are NOT ONLY dealing with rolling stock control systems. And even if they were, would you like to be in one where a black hat had access to the ATP/Indusi/Integra/whatever, making it ignore the next red signal?
Lots of interlock and signalling systems, from Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens as well as dozens of smaller system vendors are controlled via IP now. Stuff that used to use serial comms over dedicated copper or fiber is now fitted with Westermo's and connected via some flavour of IP network. An RFC1918 network most likely, but get into a control node via your exploit of choice and you can fsck up the lot quite a bit
1: To be able to remote control the alarm system remotely...
I blinked at this several times before remembering that we were advised that El Reg staff were going to have a break to, er, celebrate the New Year.
Yes. I'm sure they intended to write "To be able to remotely control the alarm system's remote control remotely.", but then festivities happened.
Given that a decent alarm system usually has the capability to send alarm notifications by phone (which tends to get replaced with "over Da Intarwebz" though), SMS should be a viable option for most of the requirements you list:
[x] * Check that I set it after I've left home.
[x] * Enable it if I find I need to later on (e.g. if I did forget).
[x] * Disable it if I need to (e.g. my partner returns when I'm not around / I want my neighbour to check on something for me / I have a delivery or service person I want to enter my home whilst I'm at work)
Limit control for this option to phone numbers registered with the control unit, and add a one-time code (copied from the control unit before you leave) if you're worried about number spoofing.
[x] * Be notified immediately on my phone that it has been triggered and take appropriate actions such as calling the police / turning the alarm off if it's a false alarm or it's done it's job and I want to stop driving the neighbours crazy / logging into cameras in the home to see what's happened)
[x/ ] * Have more than a rudimentary All or Nothing approach to my home security. (E.g. different access levels for different people / ability to amend these on the fly as needed).
Amending on the fly is explicitely something I wouldn't want. Security, including access modes and zones, is something I'd design and set up beforehand. If I then need to grant access in a way that doesn't match those predefined modes, then it's "tough shit, come back tomorrow".
I want my home control system (which an alarm can be considered part of, although not necessarily integrated with) to offer a limited number of predefined states, such as "I'll be home in half an hour, set the living room thermostat to $preset(comfortable)" unless you have direct physical access. And controlling the system from outside the house can only select the applicable subset of those predefined states.
For me, the performance difference is real because the startup time of Libre office is much longer than MS office.
Could this be because, like the case was/is with IE ("loading" much faster than other browsers), Windows has a lot of the libraries required by MSO already open, where LO needs to load a large number of them that aren't?
Also, don't confuse "time to show screen ready for input" with "time to ready for input".
http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story
He lists a couple of similarities between VMS and NT, but he doesn't list how different these superficial similarities are under the hood (e.g. VMS has four process modes, NT just two) or whether the concepts behind these similarities are also present in other OSes of that time, just implemented more or less differently. In other words, common OS design concepts.
And just like there is stuff from RSX and other DEC OSes in VMS, PRISM will have had a recognisable VMS hallmark, with NT again being PRISM-influenced.
Hey, fake DEC employee when you read something on Wikipedia better read it the right way.
The DEC Alpha version of VMS was the one that WindowsNT originated from.
And everything you read on the Internet (including Wackypedia) is true.
In that case there's this bridge for you to buy. Low mileage, first owner, well maintained.
Windows NT WAS NOT based on VMS. There's stuff I recognise as being kind of inspired by VMS, IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED by my right hand impacting my forehead to understrike the exhortation "And if they actually copied this, why the bloody hell have they left out ... " followed by a lengthy list of useful features related to it.
DEC #201462
You clearly have no clue what you are talking about.
WindowsNT is VMS. The VMS OS created to run on Dec Alpha CPUs. It was even better than most UNIXes.
And you have no clue either.
VMS was created for the (32 bit) VAX processor. Then, with the development of the Alpha processor, VMS was ported to that architecture and extended to 64 bit.
Cutler did some work on VMS, but his group's main focus was PRISM/MICA, and when that was cancelled he took his toys and went to MS
NT is DEFINITELY NOT VMS, and anyone who's worked with both will acknowledge that.
Can't you insert a lawyer up Microsoft's bottom, for taking bytes without your permission?
Probably not. The phrase "By setting your update option to 'automatically download' and/or keeping it thusly set" (or words to that effect) will appear somewhere in the landshark's missive to Mr. Pott, Esq. It will, however, be accompanied by a bill for legal services rendered, amounting to another couple hundred dollars.
My question is how long does glue outgassing continue? Sure, it does a lot at the beginning when it's applied but after a certain amount of time it's got to be pretty well depleted.
And then you hide the drive in a cavity behind the closet where you store the paint and household chemicals.
With spinning disks there's usually a sealant along the edge of the enclosure, and if it's not a helium-filled drive, a breather to equalise the inside pressure with the environment. The breather might be assembled using glue (Digital RA81 drives had a spate of the glue used on the breathers becoming brittle and contaminating the upper platter, causing failures on head 13), and I can well imagine the sealant being called glue.
Helium-filled drives will be indicated by the dog doing a squeaky high-pitched bark.
A colleague went to fix a customer's harddisk, back when they were physically large and storage-wise small. After getting the drive going again, he asked for the backup, and was presented with three 8" floppies.
Figuring that this was insufficient to hold even a small part of what had been on the disk, he asked if that was all or maybe just the latest incremental, and when was it made? Yes, that was all, and it was last week's one. That last bit sounded good, the first did not, because even back then harddisks tended to hold at least several hundred floppies' worth of data. So he inquired how they were actually making those backups?
"Like the manual says, @SYS$UPDATE:STABACKIT, and then we just follow the prompts"
They had made a floppy set for their VAX to boot off so that a backup of their system disk could be made without having all kinds of files open. And had done so faithfully every week for the past couple of years. Unfortunately they didn't do the actual backup bit.
Could El Reg bring this example to the attention of some of the politicians promoting back-doors in encryption products and ask them (a) if they are aware of this fact of life;
They wouldn't be even if this fact would be the size of a dozen doubledecker buses, rammed home with several MegaNorrises. Unless it negatively affected their voter count; their sensitivity* for that is unequalled. Alas, it doesn't.
and (b) how they would propose to overcome it?
Now you're asking the impossible.
* best expressed in mGF.**
** milliGnatsFart
With Linux, if there's an impopular change to a GUI, the next thing that will happen is a fork, and the appearance of a "$distro-gui-classic". It also has a fair separation of system settings (in /etc) and user settings (in ~/.dotfiles) so there's little penalty even when changing major parts of the OS for a different distro.
With Windows, you're just a slave to MS's rhythm.
In the long term, businesses will not tolerate paying a monthly or yearly fee to use a computer
Depends on the computer, and depends on the OS (and the applications).
Try using serious OSes professionally* like zOS, VMS or Solaris and asking the salescritter for a perpetual license, to be paid just once. Red Hat and SLES require a support license, which is an ongoing cost, but also offer options that the free versions don't . Oracle also squeezes their customershostages for a yearly Danegeld, as do most other professional middleware and application software houses.
It's not unheard of even with Personal Computers. Smaller businesses that lease their PCs may not be paying a yearly Windows licensing fee now (let's ignore support licenses for the moment, they're usually per seat and per year), but once MS decides that way, having it included in the lease price isn't really that far-fetched.
* VMS has a hobbyist license program, which is essentially free.
As for the interface changes, well, if you work in IT and can't adapt to a new GUI, perhaps you're in the wrong line of work?
Changing the interface? You mean needlessly shuffling around programs and options, rearranging hierarchies and views.
It's easy enough switching from KDE to something Gnomish like Cinnamon to W7, because they're sufficiently different. It's deckchair shuffling like between XP and W7 that essentially changes nothing but the location of options, inciting exclamations of "What the Belguim have they called it this time and where the zarking fardwarks have they hid it?"
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