Posts by Gianni Straniero

Zero-day vulnerability?

If it's been open for two years, doesn't that make it a minus 730 day vulnerability?

Mine's the one with the calendar in the pocket.

You've done this one

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/lhc_safe/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/lhc_cern_hawaiian_botanist_lawsuit/

Although this version has That Friday Feeling about it. As you were.

Water, water everywhere

George Monbiot will be pleased. He gives micro-wind pretty short shrift in "Heat", saying they're more likely to rip the side of your house off, or poze a hazard to light aircraft, than generate any useful power.

So now this is dead, can we have another look at mini- and micro-hydro? There are hundreds, if not thousands of sites in the UK where you can re-use existing mill estate to produce electricity. It's not as simple as hooking a generator up to the millwheel and letting the race do the rest, as these handy resources will demonstrate:

http://www.british-hydro.co.uk/index.asp

http://www.claptonmill.co.uk/mill.htm#hydro

Still, it's nice that periods of high rainfall coincide with periods of higest electricity demand, i.e. winter.

@Jay

"Studies by TFL have shown accidents involving cyclists actually drop when Motorcycles use bus lanes as other drivers are forced to take more notice."

O RLY?

"Managing Director for Surface Transport at Transport for London David Brown stated in April 2008: 'The data used in the earlier report was not considered sufficiently reliable to inform a decision on such an important issue.' Following a review of the data Mr Brown's conclusion (April 2008) was that 'there is no evidence to indicate that motorcyclists would see any significant safety benefits from being allowed to enter bus lanes but that there were potential disbenefits for both cyclists and pedestrians.'"

Although this quote was published on the London Cycling Campaign's website, TfL's Managing Director for Surface Transport should have a balanced view, no?

Peculiar

Usually these blunders are caused by the user typing something insufficiently unique into their Sat Nav box and mindlessly obeying its every subsequent command. It's difficult to imagine how these circumstances arose in these cases. I mean, who types "Staircase" into their TomTom? Do you not know how to get upstairs in your own home?

Perhaps this is why Argos have recently conflated "Home Entertainment" and "Sat Nav" into one handy category on their website.

What's the world's largest crustacean?

Kings Cross Station.

I hope they give it a good name

The identical pair of Cray T3Es the Met Office ran in Bracknell were called "Ronnie" and "Reggie". Top that.

Great news

Kudos to Google for this welcome development. Now it means that your private mail can only be read by Google, rather than Google + world + dog.

Re: isn't the ISS enough of an example?

The main thing the ISS taught its sundry space-agency collaborators is how *not* to build something in orbit, i.e. sending it up in twenty ton chunks:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=26756

Two jags

"everyone should have more than one car anyway, for different kinds of driving."

What a dolt. At most you need one car, and if you live and work in the same city, none. Get a pushbike. Then hire as many different cars as you require for all your "different kinds of driving", e.g. a dirty great van when you move house, a horrible-looking Vauxhall when you need to visit the in-laws on the other side of the country, and a bright-orange Lambo to compensate for your erectile disfunction.

@ Webster Freakout

My recollection is that the persuasive evidence for an extra-terrestrial origin of the iridium is the thinness of the deposit, and its worldwide distribution. If the iridium was spewed out in the long-term vulcanism of the Deccan eruption, you'd expect its stratigraphic distribution to be broader. Coupled with the discovery of the Chicxulub impact, it looks pretty persuasive.

I remember Stephen Jay Gould did an interesting statistical analysis of the distribution of fossils in the upper Cretaceous which ran counter to your assertion that the Dinosaurs were already in decline. I think it's one of the essays in "Dinosaur in a Haystack".

I'm prepared to believe it was a combination of both, with vulcanism contributing to environmental decline, and the impact the coup de grace that finally did for the dinosaurs.

Anyway, I only took Mesozoic v-pal as an option a good twelve years ago, so I bow to your superior knowledge in this area.

@ Mike Richards

Thanks for all that extra info. The static electricity theory is one which I will no longer be airing at the boozer. Party ballons and squeaky voices all round.

Re: Acronyms and such

Luftaufklärung sind zwei Worte? Man lernt etwas neu jeden tag.

Zzzzzzz

You are countering alarmist articles published in mass media with boring articles in a niche publication. In short, pissing upwind.

There are plenty of places in the Arctic that are ice-free: they're called "polynyas", and they're essential for the survival of marine mammals like Beluga whales and narwhals. They'd drown without them. If a polynya shows up at the North Pole, big deal. Santa's a big boy and can take care of himself.

And why is anyone surprised that when there's less ice in the Arctic, there's more in the Antarctic? Has everyone suddenly forgot that June 21st in Antarctica is mid-fucking-winter?

Wait until you read that there is NO ICE AT ALL in the Arctic. Then, if you're not standing in a pool of seawater, find out where it's all gone. My money's on South.

Have we learned nothing?

Look what happens when you mix beer and robots:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMGxUSjbqBk

Crisp-munchin' dog

Well, he's not very handsome to look at:

He's shaggy and eats like a hog

And he's always killin' my neighbours

That dirty old crisp-munchin' dog.

Crisp-munchin' dog

I'm gonna stomp your head in the ground

If you don't stay out of my snack foods

You dirty old crisp-munchin' hound.

Now if he don't stop eatin' my crisps up

Though I'm not a real bad guy

I'm goin' to get my rifle and send him

To that great food-and-wine in the sky.

Crisp-munchin' dog

You're always a-hangin around

But you'd better stay out of my snack foods

You dirty old crisp-munchin' hound.

'Reprehensible and disrespectful'

Quite. Very paw taste, if you ask me.

"Bootnotes" indeed

"We are certainly not discounting the possibility that this may be linked to the other recovered feet"

One of the other feet at most, surely.

"... why the coastline of British Columbia has grown five feet since last year"

Sea levels falling in this part of the world?

It's OK, I'm leaving.

References

What consenting neuroscientists get up to behind closed doors is their business, just as long as they don't do it in public.

Anyway, here are the references for all you picky swine who don't like the size of the sample, or are otherwise upset about the quality of the science:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14146

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0801566105

Pedantry

God forbid I should actually comment on the substance of your article, but the original Saatchi and Saatchi slogan was "Labour's not working", which is a much better double entendre.

PH, because she once asked me for a double entendre. So I gave her one.

Real names

I went to school with a Richard Head. Swear to God.

I for one ...

... welcome our new space-faring umbrella overlord.

Re: Beware applying the patch on remote servers!

> Is anyone keeping track of which SSL issuing authorities are providing instructions and free (zero-cost) certificate re-issues for affected certificates which need new CSRs?

I got a nice email from GlobalSign this morning:

"One of the advantages of being a GlobalSign customer and having the GlobalSign Certificate Center (Formally known as the Global Agent System) is the ability to re-issue a certificate in the event of private key loss, or in this case a possible weakness in the keys.

"If you do wish to re-issue your certificate, then please follow these simple instructions:-

"(1) Address the vulnerability by patching the affected operating system to the latest level.

"(2) Create a new CSR remembering to use exactly the same information that you used last time. (The information can be seen within your account area or within the certificate itself.)

"(3) Log into your GlobalSign Certificate Center account and click on the 'Certificate Application History' menu option and select the appropriate certificate that you wish to replace.

"(4) Click on the 'Re-Issue' button and enter your new CSR.

"(5) The new certificate, based on your new CSR and new private keys, will be issued and available for you to download in moments.

"Many thanks for choosing GlobalSign. We hope you see the benefit today and every day."

Elvis McGonagall

By George! by Elvis Mcgonagall

Once more unto the breach, dear Morris Dancers

once more

Jingle your bells, thwack sticks, raise flagons

Cry “God for Harry and Saint George!”

Gallant knight and slayer of dragons

Patron saint of merry England –

And Georgia, and Catalonia, and Portugal, Beirut, Moscow

Istanbul, Germany, Greece

Archers, farmers, boy scouts, butchers and sufferers of

syphilis

Multicultural icon with sword and codpiece

On, on you bullet-headed saxon sons

Fly flags from white van and cab

But remember stout yeomen, your champion was Turkish

So – get drunk and have a kebab

You'll never take me alive

"The initial posture of the Iranian personnel was friendly and the IRGCN Captain shook hands with OCRM and told him he was in Iranian waters, which OCRM refuted. The Iranians then adopted an aggressive stance, bringing their weapons to bear and physically blocking in the RHIBs. Due to the speed of change in posture and the overwhelming firepower available to the IRGCN, the boarding team took the decision to lower their own weapons in order to try and de-escalate the situation."

This might have ended differently if the Revolutionary Guard had brought their weapons to bear on the British personnel when they were aboard their RHIBs, rather than aboard the MV HANIN. I bow to your superior knowledge in these matters, but isn't boarding a merchant vessel in Iranian territorial waters (as they claimed) an act of piracy, or aggression, or both?

However, the next paragraph makes the blood boil:

"The RHIBs were then piloted by IRGCN personnel back into Iranian TTWs where they were joined by several other IRGCN vessels containing flag-waving IRGCN personnel including a cameraman who videoed the events."

Not only did the Iranians capture our personnel, but they took our inflatables as prizes. This the appropriate moment to start waving a cutlass around, before scuttling the boat and going straight to Davy Jones' Locker. As attributed to Ned Teach:

"Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters, or take any from you!"

You're all just jealous

Google's been indexing my site like this for weeks. I keep seeing googlebot requests logged for things like this:

/search.php?search=not

/search.php?search=conflict

/search.php?search=competitions

/search.php?search=broaden

/search.php?search=colonial

/search.php?search=justify

/search.php?search=kantian

Also, somewhat disturbingly

/search.php?search=oral

and the weirdest

/search.php?search=yoou

How many times?

Interesting to note that there's been a rash of these stories recently. They're obviously newsworthy since the Revenooers lost all the Child Benefit data last November, but considering the number of times these disks have gone missing since, we must presume this sort of stuff happens all the time.

Version control

No idea why all these people are using Terminal 5. I myself am waiting until Terminal 5.1 is built.

Mines the ski jacket in the suitcase on its way to Botswana.

Re: If that were my neighbour

A 1 kHz square wave is indeed incredibly annoying. Try one for yourself here:

http://binkster.net/extras.shtml

Astronomy

Amateur astronomers sometimes use green lasers as a coarse aiming device for their 'scopes, and to point out areas of interest. They're particularly good because, for a given power, green is perceived as brighter than any other colour: the human eye is most sensitive to 550nm wavelength radiation.

UK law and HSE guidance should prevent the sale of all but <1mW Class 2 lasers for general-purpose applications, including amateur astronomy. Perhaps the Australians should look to issue similar guidance before sending a volley of Hellfire missiles down on some unsuspecting stargazers.

@Alexander Hanff

Look, there's no point in messing about with online petitions. If you are a BT customer and believe your traffic may have been intercepted, contact the Computer Crime Unit of your local police force. For example, if you live in London:

http://www.met.police.uk/computercrime/index.htm#hacking

Of course you will first need to provide evidence that your traffic has indeed been intercepted.

New Reg illustration policy

Excellent. Can we expect all future NASA stories to be illustrated with Space Lego? And how about Weebles for Govt IT projects?

Hooray for the Prof

I was never sure why we were seriously considering biofuels anyway. Note that the government's own figures show the energy supply sector generated 1.8 times as much CO2 as the transport sector between 1990 and 2005:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/ukccp/

Now that Sarko & his tasty wife are visiting, maybe we can get some advice on how to generate electricity from nuclear power stations without screwing it up Ukrainian/Cumbrian style. Then we can plug our electric cars in to the grid like the Danes plan to do, and cut emissions from both sectors.

As has been said above, running aircraft on biofuels is a red herring. We simply have to make the airlines more efficient. Consider that short-haul flights routinely run at 62% occupancy, while long-haul flights aren't much better at 75%. Arseing about in holding patterns waiting for a free runway wastes huge quantities of fuel as well. There are plans for improved routing software that advises pilots to slow down or speed up so they arrive just in time (there's your IT angle).

And maybe we should consider flying a little less frequently. Although having just looked out the window, emigration suddenly seems rather appealing.

Mind-blindness

I'm sure those dorks at Google like nothing better than spending the nicest part of the year locked in their basements waiting for compiler runs to finish. And I'm equally sure they're baffled why nobody else wants to. How about Google's Winter of Code? Or are the students too busy getting wrecked over Christmas/Hannukah to churn out some lines?