Posts by jtaylor

Re: Pointless idea

create a dummy user for anything that needs automation...I wish MS would start on proper security.

Service accounts and access control are part of "proper security." What an odd rant.

Re: Fans of Dabbsy, D'oh! See?

Like the now underemployed security guard who still puts on a shirt and dark tie every morning

A Victor Meldrew reference! Today is going to be excellent.

Re: acorn vs oak ?

Contracts change whenever the situation changes. I'd be surprised if Qualcomm's license contract was never renewed or amended.

That's just a general observation. I have zero inside knowledge here.

The money on Silk Road might have been proceeds from crimes. Law enforcement are known to pursue stolen property even after it changes hands.

Re: Unchallenged acceptance of the no-transmit rule for mobile devices...

The explanation that I've seen for prohibiting mobile phone use on a forecourt is because some people get absorbed in their phone conversation and disregard their surroundings. Having the whole line wait for someone to finish chatting with their bestie is not good for business.

Re: Amazing... But also a bit stupid

You present some fascinating ideas. What struck me the most is

"because that's the design I am familiar with. It's the way I know." ...Spectrum BASIC to VAX/VMS to CP/M to RISC OS to OS/2 to Windows 95 to Windows NT to Linux...and Mac OS X.

Yes, I think we do tend to solidify our ideas based on experience. In Domain/OS, libraries were loaded globally; you didn't link to a file, you just called an OS function. In VMS, "default (current) directory" was merely a variable, not a verified location in the filesystem. Those examples make it easier to imagine OS features as independent from a file system.

1. If you have, say, a terabyte of non-volatile RAM, why do you need disks or paging at all?

Horses for courses. For example, a database runs in memory. One could argue that's the only place it really exists. If you export data to use in another program (e.g. financial reports), that might be easier as a named file rather than a memory segment.

No current OS organizes its RAM as a filesystem.

Fair point. That has advantages and disadvantages. I hope to never see another Linux OOM Killer.

I suggest that Object Storage is an example of an alternative to traditional filesystems, and might help imagine other ways to address data. I'd love to see a mail relay use Optane.

Re: Others preferred

very clever that you could have a program change behaviour if it was run from a symlink with a different name

Yes, a marvellous use of reading in the first word of a command line as an argument (arg0) to the command itself.

Re: Culture change

And this is different from $any_other_big_corp how?

This is not just business as usual. Plenty of companies value quality over crap. It's just not as visible when things work like they're supposed to.

When Mitsubishi Electric cheated, they didn't measure up. They failed.

Re: This might be a silly idea, but...

how about decreasing how many chips are needed for a car?...Do the seatwarmers' switches have to be wired to chips, or can they be connected via those newfangled "relay" thingies?

While I agree that cars include many computerish features of dubious value, it's not trivial to replace the chips. That buttwarmer switch has a thin data wire and a thin power wire. The relays are (probably under) each seat. To move the relay to the switch, you'd need to route the buttwarmer power circuit through the switch.

All those controls in the steering wheel/column are just inputs to computer chips which then transmit commands over the data bus which are received by the target devices. Anything you replace with a relay would require you to route the respective power circuit through the switch itself. Imagine rewiring every power window and lock through the driver door handle!

This is why older cars had hefty electric cables in the steering column.

Re: Imperrfect

On the VIC-20, I used HES Writer. It was a slightly horrible line editor.

Re: So now you do the testing?

The FAA warned about this 6 months ago. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/faa-has-deep-concern-about-5g-network-plan-aviation-safety-letter-2021-10-29/

They didn't sell the spectrum, the FCC did. Please keep in mind that not every country has privatized its airwaves.

"25% of our host resources to run their agent is just ridiculous."

I assume you mean their Controller VM, which uses 4 CPU cores and 32GB RAM (depending on features), per cluster node. If that's 1/4 of your virtualization farm, ouch.

The complexity is real. It helps to be familiar with Linux (especially KVM) and cloud concepts like object storage and metadata. Beneath their shiny UI, they use Hadoop for storage and OpenVSwitch for networking. I'm surprised your firmware updates were that bad. If you take one node offline at a time, even if that node breaks, your VMs should be fine.

I've been using it at work for a few years, and like it enough to use it for my VM lab at home. It sure isn't for everyone, and the "hybrid cloud" mentality isn't a perfect match for regular VM workloads, but there's a lot to like. Their REST API is great for automating cloud-like jobs.

I hope this isn't just a cover to raise their prices.

Re: On the bright side…

Or who learned not to trust any computers. Or learned that if their school district employs someone with a history of minor fraud, that person could return years later to ruin everyone's lives.

Computer backups are not easy to understand. Offline backups are not easy to perform. And often, the topic doesn't come up until after someone loses data and is upset.

Re: My only concern . . .

Well, the OBD II standard is real. Wikipedia has some good information; look up Parameter IDs. Even a cheap $50 (£50) scantool can read the faults behind any warning light on your vehicle, and get a dazzling amount of operating parameters besides.

It is just a baseline, though. Manufacturers have many more details beyond the common set, sometimes specific to a certain engine or transmission. They charge money for that info. This is one difference between the little bluetooth dongles and the $5000 scantools that mechanics use.

And yeah, it's dirty that manufacturers can software-lock components to retain control. It's basically the same thing that Apple does with iPhone parts.

Re: The two extremese of testing

At a previous job, I built some SMTP relays. They were highly tuned Linux servers with lots of disk space for mail spools. I published benchmarks, something like 1 million messages per day per server.

Years later, another team took over responsibility for email. Their tech lead made a Great Project to replace this old low-budget infrastructure with world-class appliances. He got test gear and quotes from 3 vendors, any of which utterly eclipsed the performance (and cost) of the Linux relays. Someone got me invited to help test.

My first suggestion was to list all the failure modes that each device was protected against: failed drives (RAID), redundant power supplies, battery-backed write cache, etc. Then induce every failure mode in rapid sequence. Yank a drive, wait a few minutes, re-insert it, wait until it started to rebuild the array. Then pull power from one supply, reconnect, yank the other power cord, reconnect, then pull both. Power it back on then start the performance test.

One appliance failed immediately. The others were badly impaired. Vendors got upset, and the tech lead was livid because he didn't look good either.

At a Meeting with managers and vendors, Tech Lead called me out on this BS. I was only sabotaging the project out of jealousy. He observed that the old relays had never been through that.

I showed them my original test results, where I had done exactly the same tests, but had first queued up 7 days of email on the Linux relays "because it could happen."

One appliance really shone. We bought that one. He never invited me to another project.

Re: Should mental health crisis text conversations be used to train customer service chatbots?

When I worked with a crisis line, people mostly called to connect with someone who will hear them, who "gets it." A few call for advice, but those are rarely the ones in crisis.

That human connection might offer a reason to keep being alive a little longer. The feeling that someone really does care about you. I once told someone that if they hadn't called that night, we would both have missed an excellent conversation.

Crisis counselors offer their humanity to connect with someone who might feel very far away from life. Chatbots can't.

Yup, it's all about their goals. These CEOs are often highly motivated, used to defining a goal and then seizing it.

Fictional example. If the Board at SAP set his Key Performance Indicators were (stock price), (revenue growth targets), and (year-on-year quarterly profit margin), then if he could buy another company to achieve them, he will. Slash headcount? Yes please.

Still fictional, if the Board at ServiceNow set his KPIs as (billable hours per employee), (increased revenue per customer), and (market share), he could invest in retaining staff, jigger how time is billed, push inside sales targets, and offer discounts to customers who drop a competitor.

Re: External Facing Madness

"50TB is easy if that was a film and video collection."

Indeed. Plex library, digital photos (I shoot RAW), host backups, virtual machine disks...it's amazing how quickly the TB fill up.

Re: Glad I use Alpine!

I don't care if init calls a service manager. I want the web server to start after boot, and if it depends on a database back-end, I want the database up before the web server starts, and if the database depends on an NFS mount, I want that volume mounted first. I don't want every startup task to be serialized, but get the dependencies right.

Re: Another (posssibly uninformed) view........

"I for one DO NOT WANT to see "server-initiated transactions".

Your networking world is small. There are plenty of situations where data is pushed to the client. How would you connect a telephone call without notifying the recipient? How would you update real-time financial data to a trading terminal?

Re: @Phil Opian-tube - Who Cares?

"With Linux and *BSD, the PC trusts you and you trust the PC."

Except OpenBSD. There, "trust" must be earned by studying the FAQ and Manual. In their defence, the documentation is very good.

Re: Unmothballing

Throw in a Travel Air and a Dragon Rapide, my wallet is ready!

Radio interference? Pah! Just tune to an AM station near your destination, then follow the railroad tracks into town. Ah, the good old days, when men were men and sheep were scared...of crashing airplanes.

Re: Plot For A Film

Crooks kidnapping art and then waiting for the Statue of Limitations to run out?

Box office gold! My favorite part will be the climactic scene where the Statue, still gripping the mangled body of one of the art thieves, is confronted by FBI attack helicopters, police in tanks, and our small band of superheroes who just escaped from prison after being wrongly convicted of the heists.

Re: Who HR's HR

I worked at a company when they outsourced their HR.

It sucked. I had a confidential "what if" question (related to a medical test) and instead of walking over to talk with someone who knew me and whom I knew would not take unnecessary notes, I had to call a number, identify myself by name and employee ID, and they were required to log the conversation in my file. Since everything was "on the record" there was no honest advice, only avoiding liability.

That gave me a new appreciation for the many HR people who find ways to genuinely help employees (within the limits of their job). And yes, termination is part of their job, just as automating manual tasks is part of mine. The job comes with a sword, and doesn't require that you enjoy swinging it.

Re: As ever, fully autonomous cars

I can think of quite a few cases where self-driving would be useful.

People with disabilities need to travel for work and shopping. Lots of disabled people who could work are unemployed because of a disability that limits their ability to drive, and public transit is often not a viable alternative.

Old folks. In the US, driving is often a key part of being independent. As people get too old to drive capably, there's no great transition for them. Self-driving cars could fill that gap.

Fatigue. I've read some studies that e.g. nurses have a higher risk commuting home after a 24-hour shift. A self-driving car could save lives.

Re: I can't remember ever being told off for fixing something

I've been told off for doing work that was...better than desired

Most recently, we had to configure a lot of desktop PCs. The schedule was 5 each day, for several weeks. Life is short. I set up 14 at once and went back to my desk, RDP in occasionally while I do my regular job. 3 days of installs each afternoon.

The project manager got upset at me for screwing up his schedule. I told him to piss at my boss, because I've never been written up for delivering early. Thus ended the matter.

"is aware of a /potential concern/ related to the clock display...,"

That phrase really gets on my wick. "Potential" indicates that it's not realized. Hint: you're replying to an expressed concern. It's more than a concern, too: it's actually happening.

"any distress that might have been caused"

Double-ugh! "People told us about the problem, but we don't believe them."

Ghost was fabulous! Soon after buying it, Symantec screwed it up so you could no longer run it off a boot floppy. Fortunately, we had bought it from Binary Research, and kept using that simple and efficient version.

Re: There is always a price

"At least with paid for software there is someone to sue..."

Is there? License agreements usually state that the product is sold "as is" and explicitly disclaim all liability. I'm not aware of any (US) statute that would support a lawsuit of the type you mention.

Have you heard of any lawsuits against suppliers over software vulns? Were they successful?

Re: POV

I'd certainly like to hear a Windows or Macintosh user's experience trying Elementary Linux. Unfortunately, I don't know any such person who would be interested. They just run whatever programs on their PC; the desktop is (literally) background, and the underlying OS is invisible.

The highlights of our conversation would probably be "Where do I install Zoom?" "Can I sync photos from my phone?" and "What keys do I press for the screen reader?"

Re: oh...

"Two tangled-up leads have four ends, and no matter how carefully you followed them, the two that you've plugged in may not belong to the same lead..."

A desktop PC fell off the network at mid-day. I walked over and learned that someone had just moved it to a desk with 3 other PCs already. The Ethernet cables were tangled, but fortunately they were each a different color so it wasn't too bad. One end was a little loose. I plugged it into the switch until the "click." People in adjacent rooms started shouting.

A moment later, the eager young shipping clerk showed me the third end of that orange Ethernet cable.... Yup, I had just looped 2 ports in the switch.

I severely distrust network cables with an odd number of ends.

In the moment, spend $200,000 to defend assets worth many times that.

If the cost of each incident is too asymmetric, it might become indefensible (pun intended.)

Re: The People ARE The System.

"it seems the FAA and EASA is a bunch of useless whimps."

The only failure of EASA that I know of was they trusted the FAA's oversight. This trust in the FAA was earned over many years of hard work. EASA, JAA, etc no longer implicitly trust FAA oversight.

Re: Supreme head of information technology

About 10 years ago, a new head of computer security came in and decided to clean house. He re-branded the dept to <RedactedCo> Information Security, or ISIS. He had shirts made with the new name. His staff tried to stop him because of Da'esh, but he didn't listen to stupid people.

He changed his mind after a trip to Israel. Apparently Mossad had pulled him aside to discuss his shirt.