Posts by Ken Hagan

In the *early* 90s, yes, but out-of-order CPUs made ISA irrelevant and Intel had more and better fabs than everyone else, so it was x86 all the way.

Very little is different now. The jury is still out on whether ARM actually has an ISA advantage over x86 when the chip designers actually aim at the same target market. Even if it does, that advantage is probably only a few month's worth of difference in fab technology, where Intel are always ahead, so it may never amount to anything as far as end-users are concerned.

The truly disruptive CPU architectures are the ones running on GPUs, and these aren't ready for non-embarrassingly-parallel workloads, so perhaps the MS guy has a point. If/When they are, x86 will rapidly become a boot-time-only phenomenon, like 16-bit real-mode. Then again, the thing that finally makes them ready might look a lot like Haswell, an instruction set that combines a traditional CPU with a (fairly) wide general purpose vector unit.

Re: Shouldn't a modern compiler flag such code?

If by modern you mean 20 years old, then certainly. Gimpel's PC Lint certainly checked that sort of thing as long ago as last century, and I'm pretty sure I used a C compiler at uni (so, 1990-ish) that checked any visible printf or scanf format strings.

If this bug is really only 22 years old, it should have been strangled at birth.

And whilst I'm posting, the hideously unsafe functions in the C standard library were known to be hazardous to health when they were added to C89, but the ANSI/ISO folks had a remit to standardise existing practice so they were forced to rubber stamp all the old shit that had picked up a following in the 1970s. Perhaps some youngsters came along too late to understand that point when they were learning the language.

Re: official standard billion

At least for economic purposes since Dennis Healey's decision in 1975. Naturally, the fact that everyone reading this thread knows what a septic billion refers to is evidence that the old usage persists, both here and in many other countries.

To be honest, I think everyone would be better off if we stopped using the word altogether and referred to thousands of millions. It would make it harder for politicians to boast about the millions they are spending on X in (by implication, proportionate) compensation for the billions wasted on Y. (To judge from the quality of public debate, most people, including the politicians themselves, only hear "illions".)

For extra brownie points, economic data should be quoted per capita. Each wasted billion in the UK is then about £15 and GDP is about £22500.

Re: one hell of a beast that needs a NAS to boot the thing

A beast codenamed "Blue", probably.

Re: "reading layout" and "the old fixed HTML layout"

Sorry? Fixed layout was a retrograde step introduced by cretinous web designers who didn't understand that not every person who viewed their web page was doing so on a similar $1000 CRT (or, for that matter, over the same Fast Ethernet direct connection to the server). *Proper* HTML, as any grumpy geriatric will tell you, has always allowed the user agent to adapt the layout to the limitations of the display device.

Still, fixed layout isn't the worst thing that these cretins have done. I still think that award goes to the benighted fool who first marked up a piece of text with a script that redirected you to another page. (This was about 15 years ago and I was surfing with scripting switched off, so it was actually less functional than an anchor tag.) When I first saw that I nearly knocked off early simply because there was little prospect of me recovering normal mental function without beer.

I assume the SD card form factor merely reflects the intentions of the three-letter-agency who funded it. The see-through case is just for journalists. Production models are opaque and also work as SD cards.

Re: [Obi Wan Kenobi Quote]

It looks like the distance isn't something that was immediately obvious. The initial reports seemed to take the trouble to mention that the distance isn't yet known and even as late as 22nd December someone felt it was worth tweeting a figure of 10,700 light-years. (https://twitter.com/johnseach/status/415023881989021696) Then Christmas happened, so the infographics may turn up later this week.

And in a sense, yes, the relative location (direction) is rather more important than the absolute location if you want to actually look at it, which astronomers probably do.

Re: hahahaha

"if a progressive democrat president wont/can't reverse the damage, then who can?"

I have no problem imagining a strong politician of any persuasion reigning in the power of the state. Remember that the Tea Party folks are all anti-"big government" and it doesn't come much bigger than the Stasi wet dream that is being described here.

Where I do have a problem is in imaging a strong politician managing to get the necessary financial backing and the necessary public support when all the money is in the hands of big business who so clearly don't want a strong politician. They want one they can steer.

Re: NATO? Over-protected?

Sorry, but I have to disagree.

Why is it NATO's problem if some random twerp's email system can't cope with .int? Why should NATO blow all that money? And if this email system has gone to the effort of blocking .int (presumably by white-listing the few TLDs that it's idiot-ministrator had actually heard of) then why would it be more likely to recognise .nato?

Re: A nice reading complement

If the NSA is a bureaucracy, that's rather re-assuring. It probably has dozens of groups working at cross purposes and totally ignorant of each other's existence. They may *want* to be evil, but they'll never actually get their collective shit together for long enough to achieve it.

Re: @MrXavia

"(look into the history of kettle leads to see why that changed)"

So very true. Sometimes I find myself waiting for annoyingly long periods in annoyingly uncomfortable places and to pass the time I have a look around to see just how many aspects of the built environment have their present form because we (society) learned something "the hard way". If you're not squeamish, it is surprisingly entertaining. If you have like-minded friends, you can even play it competitively. It's a bit like I-spy, but with more gore.

C' "high level" status

I beg to differ. C was created as a portable alternative to assembly language and was always considered to be lower level than even Fortran or COBOL, which were pitifully primitive compared to "proper" high-level languages like APL or Simula.

Re: unlike in the UK....

"In fact the Russians lost 20 times the number of soldiers as the US fighting the Germans"

The Russians were *only* fighting the Germans, and didn't lose significantly more soldiers than the other side. Meanwhile the UK and US were also fighting the Japanese. Indeed, Stalin's complaint that they were *only* fighting the Japanese was an understandable one even if exaggerated. The Russians also had a 1000-mile land border with the Germans whereas we had a handy stretch of water, so perhaps this was an inevitable division of labour.

Then there's the problem of looking at 1940 through the lens of 2013. It is hard to realise that the UK was still a world empire at that time whereas Russia was an agricultural backwater that had only recently discovered heavy industry (and fighting perhaps the most industrially advanced country in Europe). The war effort meant that the post-war world saw the dis-mantling of the UK's empire but the Cold War created the Soviet war machine that most of us were taught to fear during *our* childhoods.

"Who broke the enigma code? the UK did."

Well. you have a point there. On the one hand, we had the actual device to look at so it wasn't surprising that our team cracked the code first. On the other hand, the perversion of history by certain Hollywood execs is frankly tasteless when one considers the extent of losses on all sides. Enough US personnel died in WW2 that (one would have thought) the generation of Americans that came afterwards would feel obliged to simply be honest about this period.

Re: Shared houses with live out landlords

I think you'll find the answer to that question is "It's my connection, not yours, and you can look for more accommodating landlord at the end of your notice period.". But you knew that already, didn't you?

Re: "what moving to the cloud would give us"

Well if I read the article correctly...

"instant, scalable web sites with integrated application deployment built into Visual Studio"

...the MS cloud has a handy button in Visual Studio that lets a programmer who is too stupid to deploy changes through controlled procedures nevertheless hack the production servers and push "go" just before knocking off for the night.

Re: old-fashioned-English-teacher stuff

I don't think that's allowed anymore. Sarcasm in the teaching profession was banned in 1986 because it damages the little flowers' sense of self-importance.

A shame, really, since I heard some cracking put-downs when I were a lad.

"Bet you stand up when they play the music too, you patriotic goon"

I'm torn between love for my country and love for that fact that my country is predominantly populated by people who don't take their country too seriously. Merry Xmas to you both.

Re: could gain the same user rights as the current user.

"Which might be meaningful if MS themselves didn't issue a raft of programs that effectively require users with admin privileges to run."

Do they? I've been getting all my day-to-day work done with an ordinary user account for the best part of 20 years. Perhaps I'm running the wrong apps.

Re: This would actually KILL Microsoft

I have tried it myself and it works fine. It is no harder to install than your average Linux distro, which is to say you bung the CD in the drive and click on a few OK buttons and you're done.

Re: Mere tissue of a story

"Not only was it not a story, it had nothing whatever to do with IT except that most IT people take dumps. If that's the criterion for a story now, the Reg has lost its way a bit."

Lost its way? Certainly. Back in the day you'd have had the Moderatrix explaining the meaning of the word "Bootnotes" with a verbal clue-by-four and the rest of us laughing and ducking for cover.

Re: "They're just [not] in _your_ server."

They bloody are, mate! No way am I swapping a SATA bus for BT's wet string.

Re: probably a .NET problem

"If they really must browser sniff to support old clients like IE6, then at least assume by default that any unknown device is upscale and should be served the full monty."

This, lots. It has *always* been the case that if you are going to browser sniff then your default option for "unknown" browsers should be to presume full compliance. This article explains why.

Re: I'm conflicted

You encourage both sides to hire expensive lawyers.

Re: those HUGE red and blue arrows ...

...did at least make it clear that the upper and lower surfaces weren't counting as edges in this context.

A bit of a shame that, since it probably makes it much harder to produce a macroscopic "wire" carrying an appreciable current, which quite by co-incidence answers the question just below this sub-thread.

Re: "So 80% can be stored in the cloud"

Two problems. Firstly, you are relying on researchers and assistants to decide whether the topic under discussion falls in the 80% or the 20%. Secondly, in the latter case you are relying on them to know where the pigeon hole is for the secure stuff.

It sounds to me like the IT department has just punted responsibility for data security over to the end-users. Just as well that Parliament doesn't do anything important.

Re: AutoDesk

"They are only moving to 7 as software houses, like AutoDesk, have said they have no immediate plans to support 8 (although that may have changed...)"

Software houses may be more willing to support 8.1 once they no longer have to support XP. For similar reasons (basically cost), they may also be unwilling to support 8.0 ever, simply because 8.1 is a free (and fairly minor) upgrade and why should they add 50% to their testing costs just to save you the download?

Re: Mint and Minecraft

"You'll need a reasonable video card and a reasonable CPU though, my 256Mb integrated intel video is certainly not enough."

That may be more of an issue than the OS. There was a minecraft update a few months ago that mean it no longer runs on one of our older laptops.

"So, you don't have a mobile phone?"

I'm not the OP, but it sounds like a pay-as-you-go deal, which for limited actual use might easily be ten times cheaper than any contract.

First they came for Eadon and I said nothing because, well, he was Eadon.

Then they came for the single issue loons and I said nothing because I have *several* hobby horses.

Then they came for folks who take the piss out of Godwin's Law and I was well stuffed, I can tell you.

Re: LAN of Things?

OK, I was about to ask the same question and I get the big data part of the answer, but...

Isn't this still a LAN of things, talking to a *conventional* (not especially low-powered) computer that aggregates the data for your house and then itself takes that data onto the internet. The difference, as I see it, is that the aggregating "PC" has some chance of being beefy enough to include appropriate security in its software stack, whereas a device that is powered by microscopic fuel cell breathing passing farts has no such chance.

It is going to be important that the internet does *not* see all the things in your house, but only the aggregated view that you choose to provide. An internet of things is as much of a design error as was (say) ActiveX controls in the 1990s.

@skelband (Re: Here's an idea)

Here's another thought, whilst you are collecting them. Perhaps *only* it could be blocked, rather than also taking out every other site using the same IP address, like the FA's court order did a month or two back.

Back with the original article:

“A specific blocking measure concerning a specific website is not disproportionate, in principle," the advocate general added.

In principle, "in principle" implies that it is possible. In practice, history teaches us that we need harder evidence than that. Even the supporters of this idea should be cautious at this point in time.

Re: Lovely

Not necessarily. In fact, this might be part of the solution.

At present, designs tend to put all the cores in one package and then join them to memory elsewhere. The package with the cores has a heat problem. The package with the memory is generally uncooled. Mixing the two is unlikely to increase the amount of heat produced overall and it could mean that the heat production is less concentrated.

@Rusty (Re: Edit & Continue)

I cannot upvote this enough. Twenty minutes is enough time to rebuild several hundred thousand lines of code. (And that's *your* code, not someone's header file.) If your project structure means that you are doing that on a regular basis then you need to restructure the project's source code.

Edit & Continue is such a marginally useful feature that I'm surprised they ever developed it.