Posts by handleoclast

Re: Have you guys read the 10 commandments

@Mark 85

Not a commandment, per se, but part of the Kosher rules for food. From what I can tell, they were to keep the multitudes from making themselves sick.

From Exodus:

34:26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

So yes, a commandment. The tenth of the ten commandments. The ones on tablets of stone and with which JHVH made his covenant with Israel. The ones which were so holy they went into the ark of the covenant, which ended up in the sanctum sanctorum, the holiest room of the holy temple. Definitely a commandment. A biggy. One of the ten most important rules of human conduct. Slavery is wonderful (detailed instructions given). Rape is OK if you marry her afterwards. Murder is wrong, but killing in war and religious execution is OK. Goat-boiling is definitely out.

You're right that some of the dietary rules seem to be an attempt to keep Jews from eating foods that rapidly go off in that climate, back in the days without refrigeration (an all-knowing God ought to have qualified those commandments with "it's unclean unless you keep it on ice"). But the kosher rule about not mixing meat with dairy is merely carrying the goat-boiling prohibition to extremes, just to make certain they don't accidentally break it.

Re: re: Richard Feynman

"Surely your're joking Mr Feynman" is well worth reading.

As I recall (almost certainly incorrectly) it was that autobiography (could have been the other one, maybe even both, and probably elsewhere, too) where he asked which direction a rotating lawn sprinkler (the type with the S-shaped arms) would rotate if you put it underwater and pressurized the water (relative to the air pressure on the sprinkler's hose. He made a convincing argument that it would go one way. Then made a convincing argument it would go the other way.

He didn't answer that one in the book (or books). Sorta like Eric Morecambe's running gag about the two old men in deckchairs and one says "It's nice out., isn't it?"

---------Spoiler Alert------------

--------------------------------------------

"It's nice out, isn't it?" "Put it away before you get arrested."

The sprinkler doesn't move in either direction. But if you're careless about the experiment, you end up flooding the basement where the tank was.

Lobster Brumiaire

@technoise

Why not change to the French Revolutionary Calendar?

You mean as suggested by Anthony Hegedus in a post he made five hours before yours? The one, at the time I write this, immediately above yours?

What puzzles me is why the French named a month after Birmingham's air. Because it was foggy in Birmingham?

Re: Wot about the mice ?

You want a better mousetrap? I'd tell you, but I'm a solitary type of person and don't want the world beating a path to my door.

I just remembered, El Reg don't know where I live. So...

You'll need a desk or table, a ruler, some cheese, and a round, metal waste bin in good condition.

Place cheese on end of ruler. Balance ruler + cheese on edge of desk (with cheese on the end that's in mid-air) then move the ruler back a bit from the balance point. Put waste bin under ruler.

Mouse wanders along, gets on the desk/table. Sees/smells the cheese. Walks along the ruler to get it. Weight of mouse causes ruler to tip, dumping mouse, ruler and cheese in waste bin. If the bin is in good condition the mouse can't climb up the sides, and being circular the mouse can't chew through it. Some people suggest a few inches of water in the bin to make it harder for the mouse to get a purchase if it tries to climb out.

It ought to work with a round plastic bucket, especially with water at the bottom, but you may not feel it safe enough from a mouse-tooth attack.

Re: Not A Backdoor

If they already have plaintexts, then this is NOT a backdoor.

You're missing the point: it's called a "known plaintext" attack. If you obtain sufficient plaintexts and corresponding ciphertexts encoded with the same key then weaknesses in the algorithm may allow you to determine the secret key using far less effort than brute force. Then the next ciphertext you see is easily deciphered, even if you don't have access to the corresponding plaintext.

The backdoor is the bit in his algorithm that makes it easy to recover the key with only a small amount of plaintext data and corresponding ciphertext. Easy if you know about the backdoor, very difficult if you don't.

Re: Black arm bands for everyone

[Edit] I see a couple of people mentioned undertakes before me. I'll leave this post up anyway.

@Bob Dole (tm)

Imagine if in the plain old telephone days that AT&T owned a share of Pizza Hut. They easily could have blocked all phone calls going to Dominos or even rerouted them to Pizza Hut.

We don't have to imagine because something very much like that happened back in the very early days of POTS.

Back in the 1880s, an undertaker named Strowger became convinced that one of the operators of the completely manual telephone exchange was routeing calls meant for him to another undertaker (who happened to be her husband). So he invented the automatic telephone exchange.

These days a similar thing could all be done in the routeing s/w of the exchange, which is why regulations exist to prevent that happening. They're enforced by the FCC.

These days a similar thing could be done with internet routeing, and yesterday we lost the regulations to prevent that happening. They're no longer enforced by Eejit Pie.

Those who cannot remember the past are forever condemned to vote Republican. It's never worked in their interests before (I'm assuming the richest 0.1% of the planet are not amongst El Reg's readership) but that doesn't stop them believing the ideology.

To Bombastic bob and Big John, I make the following offer: buy me lots of expensive champagne and I'll give you a lesson in "trickle down." Not that it would teach you anything, because Republicans have already given you this lesson time and time again. Hint: even Bush-the-slightly-smarter condemned trickle down as "voodoo economics" but Bush-the-moron did it anyway.

Rum pirates

@Ben1892

N.B. Drinking rum before 10am makes you a pirate, not an alchoholic

At first I didn't believe you, but this video (as far as I can make any sense of it) seems to confirm your claim.

Re: DNS scales ...

@Nick Kew

Sure, there could be uses for this. But to replace regular DNS? What could possibly go wrong with so many new layers of overhead and complexity?

The one that immediately springs to mind is the need to hardwire the IP address of the web server you get your DNS from, in order that you can get DNS from it.

The one that comes to mind next is what happens when that webdns server is down.

The one that come to mind next is how does the webdns server get IP addresses (and all sorts of other DNS info)? Does it use ordinary DNS to query ordinary DNS servers, in which case you've not eliminated your trust problem, just pushed it a little further away. Or does it use webdns, where we end up with every IP address hard-wired into gazillions of webdns servers and a horrendous scaling problem?

The thought that comes next is that DNS is (well, was) a very lightweight protocol. It used a primitive compression to keep packet size down whilst not requiring excessive hardware resources. It used UDP (for ordinary queries) rather than TCP. Webdns appears to be more of a sumoweight protocol.

There are probably many other things I lack the knowledge, experience and wit to think of.

Apart from that, it seems like a wonderful idea. Even if the phrase "D'oh!" keeps going around in my head.

Re: How many battery "breakthroughs" is that this year?

@rsjaffe

And yet we drive around with even a larger bomb in our vehicles every day. Gasoline has an energy density of 45.7 MJ/kg

Oh no it doesn't. I guarantee you it doesn't.

A gasoline/air mix, where the two are intimately mixed, does indeed have that sort of energy density. Gasoline by itself, nope. Which is why a tank of petrol is relatively safe. Fill a tank, drop in a lighted match and you'll get a pretty flame in the filler pipe. Do the same with an empty tank, where there are plenty of fumes, and you'll get a bang, but not much of one because the fumes don't have a lot of gasoline.

Despite what Hollywood wants you to believe, cars don't explode unless they are first subjected to the sort of abuse that creates a fuel-air mixture.

Re: Expect better than this from the reg

@David 132

Whoooosh?

Re: Seriously?

If he doesn't like porn, he doesn't have to look at it.

He almost certainly does like to look at porn. A lot. He's in the same boat as a large number of Christian right-wing talebangelicals. There are several (not necessarily mutually-exclusive) reasons why they do this sort of thing.

1) They like looking at porn, doing drugs, homosexuality, whatever, but feel it is wrong. Therefore they need legislation to prevent them doing it. It's the same reason some ex-smokers become extreme anti-smokers. They want temptation put out of their way.

2) They like $WHATEVER and get an extra naughty thrill from an adrenalin rush if it's illegal. Several gay guys have told me they believe that's why homosexuality was illegal in the UK for so long despite quite a few MPs being gay. They also say that's why cottaging is still popular: having sex in a public toilet is illegal on decency grounds, and therefore has that extra thrill to it.

3) They like $WHATEVER and feel it ought to be exclusive to the élite and not wasted on ordinary plebs, who aren't sophisticated enough to truly enjoy it or who take it to extremes. Pretty much like prohibition in the US where many of those in power thought the masses couldn't handle alcohol properly but they, of course, could.

4) They're fuckwits.

Obligatory amusing musical video (3.5 minutes) about the pastor of a megachurch who railed mightily against drugs and homosexuality then was found to have done crystal meth with the rent boy he was fucking. When the story first broke one of his spin doctors put out that the guy was completely heterosexual, hence the video.

Re: All the jobs were sent offshore to get it for cheap....

My kids are several years away from making a decision about whether to go to university

Tell them not to bother. Studies show that lifetime earnings for graduates are lower than lifetime earnings for apprentices. You can have more fun at uni but you earn more by doing an apprenticeship.

Yeah, I made the wrong choice. :(

Re: Gimme that old time religion

Matthew 15.

And that is your entire defence against Jesus saying that he hadn't come to change Mosaic law? That not one jot or tittle of Mosaic law would be dropped until the end times came? That's it? That's your whole justification for dropping 603 of the 613 OT commandments? Even if your argument were valid (it isn't), it wouldn't explain why the 10 commandments get an exemption.

So let's examine your (entirely predictable, BTW, I was expecting it) argument. It is possible (but not, I think, justifiable) to stretch Matthew 15 well beyond its elastic limit to negate all the dietary restrictions of Mosaic law. That in no way affects the rest of Mosaic law. Nothing about no longer having to chop off foreskins. Nothing about mixed fabrics being acceptable. Nothing about not stoning to death people who work on the Sabbath. Nothing about slavery suddenly being a bad thing. Nothing about having to marry women you rape. Etc.

And, yes, your interpretation stretches Matthew 15 well beyond reasonable limits. Jesus was comparing one thing prohibited by Mosaic law with a novel injunction of his own. I do not see any way of reasonably interpreting that as negating the dietary restrictions, let alone 603 of the 613 OT commandments.

Consider this reasoning: "Accidentally killing somebody while driving your car without due care and attention is bad, but murdering somebody by deliberately running them over is worse." Do you take that to mean that because vehicular murder is worse, negligently killing somebody is OK? Of course you do not. How about this: "Slightly exceeding the speed limit is bad, but murdering somebody by deliberately running them over is worse." Do you think that is a sensible comparison to make? Yet you insist that when Jesus compares a bad thing with a worse thing that the bad thing suddenly becomes a good thing. Not just that, but a whole slew of unrelated bad things suddenly become good things.

When Paul decided his mission was to take Judaism to the gentiles, he came up with doctrines that could be called "Judaism for Gentiles - Lite." Those gentiles were reluctant to change their diets, so Matthew 15 was trotted out to justify the eating of pork and shellfish. They were reluctant to hack their foreskins off, so that had to go, but I have yet to see any Biblical justification. There was nothing about dropping most of the rest of Mosaic law.

At most your argument would justify abandoning the dietary restrictions (although I do not agree that it does in fact justify that), not for abandoning 603 of the OT commandments. And nowhere does your argument justify retaining the 10 commandments even if I accept (and I do not) that all the rest of Mosaic law no longer applies.

Re: Despair over Brexit and Trump?

And this hate-filled religio-smurf is just as capable of evil.

Coming soon to a country near you! A Handmaid's Tale. Reality version.

Re: How bloody hard is it?

Use a monitoring system - the open monitoring plugins can do a check for pending expiry

If you're not monitoring, you're doing it wrong.

If you're not monitoring everything you can, you're doing it wrong.

If you're not monitoring SSL certs, you're a fucking idiot.

Even small, shitty hosting companies often monitor client SSL certs. Even if the client handles renewals, the hosting company monitors anyway. Just in case. It costs little to set up and bugger-all to run, yet it allows the hosting company to catch problems like this and if they do the client thinks they're wonderful. No downside, potential upside is good.

Belt. Braces. Shirt-grip in the waistband. Superglue.

Who is hosting justice.gov.uk? Oh, Squiz. Who they? Ah, their website is suffering from buzzword overload. Every bit of bullshit management-speak I've ever seen and some new ones they invented themselves.

Forward, Faster

Squiz technology enables you to deliver smarter services via the web

and

In other words, we’re all becoming more efficient, faster, more intelligent, more automated and more connected than ever before. And this represents an enormous opportunity for us.

This isn't rocket surgery. They claim to be more intelligent and more automated but this failure shows that they're neither. Not even if some bod in gov.uk was handling the renewals directly. Squiz should have been monitoring anyway, because that would be more intelligent...

Re: Spike that

They get a spike.

A really big one thirty feet high, and they get dropped arse first onto it, and get left to rot, like a raisin on a needle.

Traditionally it was conical. And smooth. So that with a lot of effort you could stop it penetrating further but not get enough purchase to extricate yourself. As you became more exhausted, it penetrated further. You could be there for a long time before it finally killed you.

Those were the days.

Re: Diameter

RADIUS and SNMP both cause a spastic twitch at the base of my spine whenever I think about them too hard.

The thing I dislike about SNMP is that it seems to use anti-Huffman encoding. A query for a simple, common piece of functionality needs a byte string along the lines of 3.1.4.1.5.9.2.6.5.3.5.8.9.7.9.3.2.3.8.4.6.2.6.4.3.3.8.3.2.7. So much for efficiency. Security isn't much better than the efficiency, at least not until version 3.

The only good thing about SNMP is that it relies on MIBs. Amusing films, those. Then again, it's rare to encounter any equipment that doesn't ignore the public MIB and define its own, even for stuff that's already in the public MIB. Gah!

Anybody else notice that the last time the "S" in an internet protocol really meant simple was SMTP (the original, not the extended versions)? Or that the "L" in an internet protocol has never meant lightweight? LDAP, I'm looking at you. Sorta like the way "democratic" or "people's" in a country name meant that they were in no way republics. And if you ever got "democratic people's republic" it was a place to steer well clear of. I reckon if you see an internet protocol name starting "simple lightweight" you should run for the hills.

Re: I don't like them

1/10. (Low hanging fruit)

Nah, the low hanging fruit is saying that I put one down on the bench and it floated to the ceiling.

Re: 14,400 BTC?

I am wondering who is buying these up at current prices because they must feel there is still some further price increase to be had.

Like all currency manipulation and stock exchange transactions, it's a bet placed with incomplete knowledge. And, like all bets, gambling fever can take hold (the stock market pretty much runs on it). Like all the people who bet on the favourite in a horse race. they reason that it's the favourite because people know something. In actual fact it's the favourite because random disparities in betting shortened the relative odds enough that people who have no idea how to evaluate form decided to bet on it because other people already had.

It's also subject to that form of manipulation known as "pumping." Economists have learned a tiny amount about negative feedback and labelled it the "invisible hand." If they'd learned a little more about negative feedback they'd have encountered Routh's Stability Criterion and realized just one of the reasons that a free market economy doesn't scale well. God knows if they'll ever learn about Z-transforms and figure out why microtrading is inherently dangerous if you don't understand control theory. Anyway, Routh's Stability Criterion explains why oscillations occur and why pumping can happen.*

*Greatly simplified explanation. I've forgotten 99.9% of the control theory I studied, and still know more about it than any economist.

genus Bugeranus

Thrushes are also good. The Tibetan Blackbird (a thrush) always reminds me of senior manglement: Turdus maximus.

Re: Is that enough?

So, I would say two dimensional awareness isn't anywhere sufficient.

Pedant! You're almost as bad as me.

Obviously, I meant car drivers have to deal with two spatial dimensions and drone wranglers have to deal with three. You went all Einstein on me and invoked space–time. OK, three dimensions for car drivers and four for drone controllers, if you insist. It's still more complicated for a drone. Minus some complication because there's less traffic up there. Plus some complication because if you're piloting a drone heading towards you then you have to do mental co-ordinate transformation.

Thinking about it, drivers have to do similar mental transformations when reversing using only the mirror. Which some drivers are incredibly bad at and/or have to look over their shoulder rather than use the mirror.

It's going to depend to some extent how much experience you have, but I still suspect performance wrt alcohol is going to fall off more rapidly for drone controllers. If the drone has a forward camera that sends back data in real time that's probably going to be a lot closer to driving a car, except in 3 dimensions rather than 2 (or 4 rather than 3). But since I've never piloted a drone, I could well be wrong.

BTW, although I've been known to stagger around a bit when I've had a few drinks, I have always progressed through time at a uniform, steady pace no matter how drunk I am. One of these dimensions is not like the others.