* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Have we learned anything from SolarWinds supply chain attacks?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: OSS

Yes, because "secure the open-source software" is actually the easiest part. It's much harder to secure the commercial code that you can't inspect, relying only on the supplier to do it for you, or inspecting the inputs and output of the "black box". If securing any FOSS you use is your responsibility, then securing the commercial software you use is the suppliers responsibility. Making the commercial supplier legally responsible if it's not secure might be a good start, starting with MS. At the very least, legally invalidating the common licence clause which basically absolves the company making the software to take no responsibility for it even working at all, let alone working properly.

Chinese surveillance balloon over US causes fearful gasbagging

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why not shoot it down ?

Yes, I did think of that as a possibility, then tried to put myself into the mindset of a "certain demographic" reading that same information and extrapolated from there :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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Re: Why not shoot it down ?

https://magazine.ieee-pes.org/september-october-2011/operation-outward/

Thanks, that was a fascinating read about something I'd not heard of before.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why not shoot it down ?

Yeah, if Trump was in charge, he'd create a new anti ANTI-JINESE DEFENCE FARCE of Lawn Chair Larrys to go up there and shoot them down. (and with snazzy new uniforms with lots of gold braid too!)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why not shoot it down ?

Frankly, I'm amazed the yanks are showing restraint. "It's coming right for us...!"

Agreed :-)

"If you're not on your lawn getting noisy shots of every speck in the sky, you're missing out."

And with comments like that, there's probably a certain demographic taking potshots at any little speck in the sky in the belief they can see a fairly small "Chinese balloon" flying higher than most aircraft can go and their little pop guns have the range to hit it :-)

No, you cannot safely run a network operations center from a corridor

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Racks in hallways

"Only issue was repeatedly answering the same questions from all the techies curious about high-end kit."

And the techies were probably quite impressed at the forethought of the organisers to put all the blinkenlights out on show instead of hiding them away. It was all part of the learning experience :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: One time

"The number of times I've seen such a light when walking by"

Yeah, I once got called out to a Compaq server with a 3 disk RAID array that had failed. I got there and there were two red lights showing two failed drives. I asked the on-site person (non-techy type), in conversation, when the two lights had come on. "Oh the second one came on yesterday, the other one has been on since I started here". Oops! Clearly their head office were not monitoring or checking to make sure someone on site was aware of how to at least keep a basic eye on things. No blame for the on-site non-techy person though. She had little knowledge about MS-DOS and none at all about Novel servers, that wasn't her job. She knew how to drive the PC to do her job.

On a similar note, an "emergency" HDD replacement on a similar vintage server, out of hours, so no one on site to query other than security, Only one failed drive in this case so I go to pull the hot-plug drive and note that there is a lit "failed" LED and the "faulty" drive has been removed already. Called over the security guy to confirm what I was looking at (Always have a witness, just in case). Phoned their IT guy and asked about the state of the drives when he left for the day. He says he pulled the faulty drive ready for me arriving. I could almost hear the "gulp" when I told him he'd pulled one of the two remaining good drives and the array was now toast.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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Re: shaggy dog story (was -- Huh?)

"Although, stranger things have happened, so what do I know?"

It has just the right level of convolution and detail to be true 'cos no one could make that up :-)

Microsoft swears it's not coming for your data with scan for old Office versions

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yes, because who better than MS themselves ought to be able to target only the specific registry keys related to not only their own apps but this very tiny sub-set of apps. Possibly just semantics, but there;s no need to "scan the system" for these 3 or 4 apps. If they don't trust their installer to have removed old and no longer used registry keys from previous versions that are no longer there, then again, who better than MS to be able to check for those very specific and unique files that should be in a certain place if the app is still installed.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Devil

Re: Strange way to respect user privacy

"pissing about with randomly broken dependencies whenever I try and roll out out any updates,"

FWIW, that's actually more rare than Windows breaking systems with their fixes these days. Other than that minor niggle, you're pretty spot on with the rest of your comment :-)

(FreeBSD user here. I can't remember the last time I had a dependency issue either from package updates, system updates or minor/major version upgrades)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Strange way to respect user privacy

"my business and none of theirs."

But, but, but, how else is poor struggling MS going to work out who to target with upsell adverts on the Windows 11 start menu?

Another RAC staffer nabbed for storing, sharing car crash data

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Why the doxxing??

As someone who has spent a lot of time driving around North Yorks and had not heard of this village before, I was curious as to where it might be. According to Google Maps, there is only one village in the entire UK called Higher Whitley and it's in Cheshire, not North Yorks. That's quite a significant geographical error on the part of El Reg. Cut'n'paste of information without fact checking?

Latest Windows 11 build shares desktop real estate with, er, Spotify

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Windows 11...

Nah, they'll just make such a part of Windows that no one can do without it then change their Ts&Cs so ban apps that offer equivalent services to those provided by the OS while sneaking in the "Zune App" which will kill Spotify as they have been lured in to relying on Windows for their income stream :-)

Meta, which pays for web scraping, sues to stop web scraping

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Confused?

a message from Bright Data citing the business relationship between the two firms: "Meta has long been a valued client of our proxy and scraping services for at least the last six years."

So, in a legal filing, with the publicly accessible bit redacted in their own claim, made visible in the Facebook claims, Bright Data don't seem to be able to check the status of their client. Facebook, and definitively state when the contract started, give or take about a year? Don't they keep proper records of contracts and payments?

That doesn't bode well for Bright Datas side of the case. Although I'd be happy for this one to run on and on for years through higher and higher courts, even if it does mean the lawyers get rich since it'll be two "scum sucking bottom feeders" duking it out at their own expense.

Fossil brain undoes 350 million years of scientific understanding

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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...and eventually reached the pinnacle of evolution when they invented digital watches :-)

System76 teases features coming in homegrown Rust-based desktop COSMIC

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"It's also almost grotesquely overcomplicated and cluttered with options to twiddle."

That sounds odd. Most people I know using Windows moan about the lack of configurability offered there, and it's spreading to other desktops. Our way or the highway seems to be the motto, especially in the commercial world, and seemingly moving in to the FOSS world too. Can you have too many configurable settings? Just don't touch the ones you don't understand or care about. In my book, that's far better than NOT being able to change something that I DO want to change :-)

helloSystem 0.8: A friendly, all-graphical FreeBSD

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: ...Meanwhile, the Linux world has a profusion of rival distros, desktops, and packaging formats

"Perhaps there's a market for a Linux/BSD desktop which does all the setup via questions on installation? But wait... perhaps too many choices."

I've occasionaly seen moves to make a fully scripted install of FreeBSD, but rarely to those efforts go as far as scripting an install of a GUI desktop. I'd have though that would be a worthwhile project for someone and far simpler than creating a whole new "distro" I get the feeling that's pretty much all that most Linux disrtos are anyway, "Under the hood", it's still pretty much the "parent" linux with a fresh lick of paint and some aditional scripts/small programmes to specifici features.

Beijing grants permit to 'flying car' that can handle 'roads and low altitude'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Flame

Re: That looks pleasingly lethal

I thought it started centuries ago when that Emporer tried to take off on his throne with lots and lots of firewaorks attched to it.

Renewables are cheaper than coal in all but one US location

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sloppy

"Things like coal stack chimneys are especially expensive to demolish and cart off. I didn't see anything."

Not to mention the cost of cleaning the land, especially the land under the coal stockpiles. I would imagine the US solution would be to fence off the land, place signs stating the land is contamintaed, and then build the solar farm diectly on it.

There does seem to be a constants stream of pollution and contamination scandals coming from various places in the US over many decades with supposedly respectable companys allowing or not checking for runoff into farming land or the water table.

Scientists conclude cats only have three personalities after YouTube clip binge

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Happy

You married The Old Cat Lady up the street? Wow!

BOFH and the case of the Zoom call that never was

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Article Incorrectly categorised

Hmmm....On Call to set it up, Who, Me? to cause the mayhem and finally The BOFH to clean up the mess while making a profit out of it :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: We have some of the old projectors still hanging there..

Not everyone is a builder! :-p

User was told three times 'Do Not Reboot This PC' – then unplugged it anyway

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Content

"Computer is running an update process that cannot be interrupted by you ..."

Challenge accepted!

User: Sorry, got board reading such a big and complex message and just reacted to the bit I understood :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

They must've been bloody high quality fridge magnets. Most are barely strong enough to hold more than on sheet of paper to a fridge. I'd be quite shocked to find one strong enough to affect a computers operation.

Have we hit a climate tipping point? Green power attracts big money

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Still not good enough

"So the UK's 'invested' in around 65GW of windmills."

Oh, I didn't realise they were multi-purpose. They mill grain too? Good oh!

(Or is that just your bias showing?)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

As someone mentioned the other day, established and more wealthy economies can afford to "go green" while emerging economies such as much of Africa, large parts of Asia and South America can't, so are still investing heavily in the "cheaper" fossil fuels. Obviously there's still a level of hypocrisy in the 1st world governments, but not as much as you imply.

Musk: Tesla's doing great. I mean, have you seen my Twitter follower count?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Weirdly angular aesthetic of Cybertruck makes me nostalgic for...

Ooooooh, of course. I'm glad you posted that! Here on the right side of the pond, a truck is something used for heavy haulage. The "Cybertruck" is that over-sized car thing. I had completely the wrong image in my head. I thought that was about the big heavy haulage truck he's also developing.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: EV Smugmobiles

"I'd stick with the diesel for now thanks."

Good for you! I'd bet most EV owners, other than maybe the most ardent greenies, would agree with you. I single long haul flight probably outweighs your annual emissions :-)

Just Googled it. A fully occupied 747 emits less pollution , but in the comparison that was a diesel car with a single occupant. So for your holiday trip will all the family, probably much less pollution than flying the same distance. I can't be arsed to work the numbers, but a flight is generally far, far further than a 200-300 mile caravan trip. And not all flights are filled. many are empty or near empty return flights at night just to get the plane at the right airport for start of day.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hyper Truck

Yeah, saw that reported on the Beeb the other. It surprised me that it even existed and I was a bit disappointed. Then I considered where SpaceX is now with Falcon9, Heavy and soon-to-be Starship compared with where they started with Grasshopper. The economics and demand are very different though. We shall see.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: That decrease in gross profit margin....

I see them on the motorways daily and any time I pull into a motorway services, the number charging on the "special" Tesla charges is significant. Just a couple of years ago it was rare to a tesla charger in use. There's definitely a lot more of them on the roads now. The upside is that the motorway service usually have more Tesla chargers than they do generic ones. I've seen people waiting for generic ones to become available, but never seen so many Teslas there that there isn't at least a few spares ones. No idea how that maps to the rest of the country, but Tesla seem to have the right idea when it comes to motorway chargers. 8-10 or more compared to 2-4 generic ones,

Smart ovens do really dumb stuff to check for Wi-Fi

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I must admit, I've never been comfortable with oven timers in particular. Leaving food in the oven at room temperature for many hours before the oven turns on and slowly comes up to temp. Never used the feature on either my current oven with electronic timer or the previous 30 year old one which had an electromechanical timer.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Being over built for the purpose used to be norm."

Like coal fired AGA's :-)

Space mining startup prepping to launch 'demo' refinery... this April

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

That kinda "dates" the story a bit. The greens wouldn't stand for importing even more oil from off planet. We're currently trying to burn less, not only because there may be less of it, but because of the results of burning it :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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Re: Thanks for the update!

"Time to get those StarCops episodes out again..."

...and the full cast audio drama sequels from Big Finish

(and yes, original actors playing Nathan, Devis and Kenzy :-))

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: How does this work?

"The end-game, which is still very much in speculative sci-fi land, is presumably to be able to refine materials to sufficient purity for them to be useful, and then to use those materials to produce goods in situ for other uses in space."

That may be the end result and with current tech the only viable option, but the stated aim in the article is "preserving Earth's declining resources" which strongly implies space mining for use on Earth. And to be fair, I think it might be a while before there's any actual manufacturing in space from raw materials.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: How does this work?

"bring back tonnes of rare earth metals"

Yeah, "tonnes". I can't wait to the plans for landing that safely on Earth.

A bit of Googling tells me that a SpaceX Dragon capsule can bring 3 tonnes of payload back. Is that enough capacity or will they need to develop a stripped down "one shot" capsule for larger payloads?

Lockheed Martin demos 50kW anti-aircraft frickin' laser beam

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Must contain a pew-pew sound generator!"

And don't forget the huge barrel with a "heavy mass" recoil motion each time it fires. All the best SF pulse lasers do that!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

and that is easily countered with Counter Offensive Nuclear Detonation Oodnance & Munitions

Microsoft shells out for 2.5GW of solar. Not that it'll make a big dent in its emissions

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Eh, what???

"What goods or services are Microsoft producing and shipping that are nor part of it's core software business?? Are they still selling Zunes in unimaginable quantities??"

Mice, keyboards, X-Boxes, Surface devices amongst others.

James Webb Space Telescope suffers another hitch: Instrument down

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"but I wonder if ANYONE has a credit card limit of about $10 billion ??"

Elon Musk? Although I think he may have already maxxed his out at $13B :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Well...

Jeff Tracy?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: R2 Unit

He needs a LOGO and a website :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

The Reg would be on a hiding to nothing if they tried to make everything SFS[*] across their entire international readership. I often hear words and phrases seemingly in everyday use on US based TV shows and films that just "aren't the done thing" any more here in Blighty. Words if used in a UK TV show might raise complaints. And since the Reg still has a level of irreverence in it's reporting, it's something certain people either have to get used to or choose a different source for their IT news, just as you would any "red top" news paper.

* SFS - Safe For Snowflakes :-))))

Tesla's Autopilot is losing out to Ford, GM in self-driving tech

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"I'm shocked, shocked I tell you."

The disruptor being disrupted by the traditional incumbents?

Amazon warehouse workers 'make history' with first official UK strike

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Not afraid to strike?

Some of us lived through them. It's not propaganda, although both sides currently do like to refer back to them with their own spin on it.

NASA, DARPA to go nuclear in hopes of putting boots on Mars

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Project Orion

I would assume that the 1st and 2nd stages would be a tried and tested rocket with the nuclear bit just being "payload" until it's out the atmosphere. Maybe a couple of launches to get the engine bit up there to dock with the people bit.

Space dust reveals Earth-killer asteroids tough to destroy

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

"Let’s hit Earth with a cubic mile of hot fudge sundae.”

...which falls on a Tuesdae this year :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Alien

Yeah, but then you need a team of wildcat drillers in spaaaaace!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Mushroom

You want to test that by being close to one going off? :-)

British monarchy goes after Twitter, alleges rent not paid for UK base

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Head of Commonwealth

"Speaking as a (British) republican I wish that we had the same choice."

"Oh, they held an election for party leader and he won. (became Prime Minister)"

Umm, let's a play a game of spot the difference, shall we?

Some people voted for Liz Truss to be an MP, but the rest us us didn't get to vote her in as PM. Some difference, but when it comes to the "top job", the people don't get a vote in the UK. I feel as though I'm repeating myself here. You being a republican doesn't change the facts, whether you like them or not.

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