He may be right
I am sure he will be more than willing to stick the original source files on gitHub so we can make up our own mind
Posts by hammarbtyp
1385 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2007
ReactOS 'a ripoff of the Windows Research Kernel', claims Microsoft kernel engineer
14 sailors die aboard Russian cable spy, er, ocean research nuke sub after fire breaks out
Wednesday 3rd July 2019 09:24 GMT
Re: Nightmarish stuff
There are even worse in operation because pretty much every usable space is filled with spares and supplies.
Had a tour round an Oberon class boat in the 90's and the most sobering moment was being shown the emergency escape hatch, which was basically a vessel big enough for one man, where the idea was you got in, water filled up, you opened the hatch and then escaped remembering to close the hatch as you go. We were informed that if we were onboard as civilians we would be last to go, since if anyone panicked you basically blocked the escape route for the rest of the crew.
Don't think I would last 10 minutes on one
IVE HAD ENOUGH! iQuit. Jobs done. Jony cashes out at Apple to run his own design biz
DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web
Dundee Satellite Receiving Station: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
You're not Boeing to believe this, but... Another deadly 737 Max control bug found
Thursday 27th June 2019 10:14 GMT
For safety critical, you are probably right. The waterfall model is much maligned, partly because it was badly implemented and explained, and for safety critical systems it is more appropriate.
The truth is the biggest danger is adopting methodologies in blind faith with a poor understanding of the background and reasoning behind them.
Thursday 27th June 2019 08:28 GMT
True, but ever since digital computers have been added to planes at some point the analog inputs have had to be somewhere converted to digital.
and modern planes are very,very safe. The fact we are talking about the 737 max is that it is such an outlier. If this happened in the 60's and 70's it would of been lost in the noise
No the problem is not the digital nature of the control system but the fact that Boeing tried to add too large engines to a aircraft unsuitable to take them, and Boeing trying to fob the airlines off that this was a minor upgrade that did not require extra training or safety measures rather than a new aircraft which had systems added to correct some severe potential safety issues. Or to summarize, Boeing tried to save money
Brexit: Digital border possible for Irish backstop woes, UK MPs told
Thursday 27th June 2019 08:57 GMT
Re: An alternative border is obvious
Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine, bona fide
Digified, certified blockchain
What'd I say?
blockchain
What's it called?
blockchain
That's right!
blockchain
blockchain
blockchain
blockchain
I hear that thing has a high processing load?
You can always do it on the cloud
Is there a chance the processing could end?
Not on your life, my Hindu friend
What about us brain-dead slobs?
You'll be given cushy jobs
Were you sent here by the Devil?
No, good sir, I'm on the level
The ring came off my pudding can
Take my pen knife, my good man
I swear it's UK's only choice
Throw up your hands and raise your voice
blockchain
What's it called?
blockchain
Once again
blockchain
But Main Street's still all cracked and broken
Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken
blockchain!
blockchain!
blockchain!
blockchain!
Block, d'oh!
There's Huawei too many vulns in Chinese giant's firmware: Bug hunters slam pisspoor code
Thursday 27th June 2019 08:13 GMT
In many ways this goes against the idea that Huawei is some sort of nefarious organisation in league with the Chinese state. Any backdoor that can be discovered through simple scans, is not a backdoor, its a sign of poor security standards and lackluster programming control.
That is not to say that there could not be true backdoors hidden in the code, however its hard to to balance the idea that somehow Huawei are these super programmers capable of stealing all of the Wests IP traffic with basically pretty awful coding methods.
Also the vulnerabilities (not backdoors) are only potential issues. It does not actually go to the issue of what someone could do with the vulnerability. It could alolow root control, but juts as easily it could just allow access to low level log files
Bill G on Microsoft's biggest blunder... Was it Bing, Internet Explorer, Vista, the antitrust row?
Monday 24th June 2019 16:01 GMT
While I agree with you on most. MS did miss the internet, because it was not in there culture to understand a system in which the PC was not central and therefore could not be controlled by them.
They spent a lot of money making the least compatible browser out there (something we still paying for) and trying to make the PC the portal of choice, as the world started to move to online services
The internet is based around co-operative open standard. Foe long time these were just a anathema to MS, who did trust what it could not control
They were so blinkered on the PC it meant that they were slow to offer internet services, so allowed Google to grow, cloud services allowing AWS to take the market, and even mobile phones where they seen as some sort as add on to the PC and not a device in itself
'Bulls%^t! Complete bull$h*t!' Reset the clock on the last time woke Linus Torvalds exploded at a Linux kernel dev
Monday 24th June 2019 11:05 GMT
Re: Why?
Same reason why there is still a cult of St Jobs (who also wasn't a particularly nice man). Because they were incredible important in the creation of the modern world.
In truth nice people rarely have the drive and push to overcome the hurdles to really create a new industry.
You don't have to like the guy to respect what he achieved.
Monday 24th June 2019 10:59 GMT
Re: If not for Linus being rude and dictatorial, the kernel would be dead by now
the only reason he can shout and get away with it is because he is respected by his fellow coders. He has done the hard yards. Anyone with fewer qualifications would be ignored.
More importantly (and often rare in mere "coders") is that he has a clear vision on where Linux should go. Often on a project that is critical otherwise everyone is throwing in their ideas and the code becomes a conflicting mass of Dingo poo. I would rather have a shouty manager who knows what he is talking about and is clear on the product priorities than a manger who believes that democracy and everyone getting on is more important than product quality
To be honest these rants are thrown out of all proportion. There have been time when I have shouting matches with my colleagues to the point someone has to intervene and separate us. Normally we cool down, re-evaluate everyone's position and come to some sort of compromise or solution and just get on with life. Difference is I am not as high profile as Linus and I do not do it on a public forum. Not only that, but it can be easy to misconstrue a comment or email, especially is when cutting across cultural barriers.
Go fourth and multi-Pi: Raspberry Pi 4 lands today with quad 1.5GHz Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, up to 4GB RAM...
Monday 24th June 2019 08:12 GMT
I am sure at some point some commentator will say something like "This is not as good as <insert Raspberry Pi clone name here>" and totally miss the point of the Pi. It is not designed to be cutting edge, but part of a education infrastructure system. There may be faster/cheaper/more memory systems out there, but none have the community/peripheral/add on support of the Pi
While I am a little irritated by the move to new connectors, I understand why they have done it and it looks like a great upgrade. Despite its educational background, we are finding loads of use for Pi's in industry, especially for those one off jobs which turn up.
Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity
Friday 21st June 2019 12:01 GMT
Re: "What on Earth the GE engineers thought they were doing..."
No, were probably sofware developers. In my experience Software developers create solutions that work for them, and bugger the rest of the world because they assume everyone is like them
"Just download Python 2.2.2, install any dependencies, edit 4 scripts using vi, adding these 16 random characters generated from this 256 character URL and you're good to go
....
what do you mean 'what is a python? '"
Tech jocks tell Trump: Tariff tiff with China will not achieve what you think it will achieve
Friday 21st June 2019 11:35 GMT
Tax Cuts - Yes that's very nice for you, but you do realise the money has to come from somewhere don't you? For example the budget deficit has increased with the Trump administration with no plan how to bring it under control. Its like living on credit cards, at some point you will have to pay for your excesses. Of course Trump in the past managed situation like that by declaring chapter 11, I wonder what the equivalent is in a country? In the meantime the US infrastructure is slowing reverting to 3rd world standards
H1B - Again good for you, on the other hand have you ever wondered how much of the US technological dominance was through the ability to attract the brightest and best? With increased restrictions, increased fear of immigrants and greater restrictions on non-citizens I wonder how many of those would prefer to take there skills elsewhere?
IP Theft - this is a two way street and product counterfeits occur in the US as well as China. I don't think Trumps policies will make any difference to this, because in the end only the Chinese government can actually stop it, and they are not going to want to show loss of face by what could be seen as kowtowing to trumps demands. The global supply economy is so integrated, you could not isolate China, without huge knock on effects to your economy. Big IT companies know this which is why they are lobbying for the tariffs to end
Trump is an ass - Well we agree there, although I am not willing to look over for his xenophobic, narcissistic personality for a one off wage rise bribe, because I have seen where eventually that leads to.
Economy - well if you look at the figures the economy started rising during the Obama administration, this after the biggest financial crises in the 21st century, so i think you give Obama too little credit. It could be said that Trump is just riding on the coat tails of the economic improvement bought in by the Obama administration. The best you can say is that he has not managed to bugger it up yet. On the other hand, economies are like super tankers , they take a long time to change course, so it is likely we have not seen the effects of this administrations policies yet
Reagan - In many ways the crash of 2000's was a result of the Reagan boom and boost policies. It is easy to boost an economy short term, long term steady growth is far harder and most Republican policies fall down here, unless you are the very rich. Clinton managed growth and a balanced budget, something that eluded most other residents of the white house.
Sure vote for Trump, but be aware that history has shown with people like Trump in charge, when things start going bad, they go very bad
Black Hat USA axes anti-abortion congressman as keynote speaker after outcry – and more news from infosec land
Monday 17th June 2019 09:53 GMT
Re: There are now answers to this that will make everyone happy.
"PP’s founder Margaret Sanger was an outright racist who saw abortion as a tool for exterminating blacks."
No she wasn't, however she was closely associated with some who held those views. As Ellen Chesler put it
"Margaret Sanger was never herself a racist, but she lived in a profoundly bigoted society, and her failure to repudiate prejudice – especially when it was manifest among proponents of her cause – has haunted her ever since"
Yes she was a flawed women (she also did not believe in abortion), but there is also a danger in viewing people outside the times she lived (For example George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners). Before the horrors of WWII and the Nazi's use of eugenics there were many who saw it as a method to provide huge social change. It is is easy in hindsight to blame people for their views.
None of this however diminishes PP and the work they do that allow women of all social classes to have control over there own lives and bodies
IT pro screwed out of unused vacation pay, bonus by HPE after judge rules: The law is a mess but it's still the law
Friday 14th June 2019 11:02 GMT
Re: Beware spinoffs; they allow HR policy changes
While useful (and thanks for providing the links), such stats like this can be misleading. Firstly averages only tell part of the story. What is the spread of wages. For example a few very high earners can skew averages compared to an economy where the wealth is more widely spread.
Secondly health care costs. One important point is that in Europe, health care insurance through taxes travel with the person and are guaranteed. US healthcare tends to be connected to the employment. This has a great affect on the level of control an employer has on a employee, because removal of medical insurance through redundancy is a big thing especially to those with families or older workers. That in turn restricts the ability of employees to unionise etc
Also it does not cover pensions, which again tend to be connected with the employer rather than through a social tax
In the end it is complicated and you cannot just make black and white comparisons
Get this: Mad King Leo wanted HP to slurp two other firms alongside ill-fated Autonomy buyout
Thursday 13th June 2019 13:32 GMT
I think the angle of attack is that rather than the value of Autonomy being overpriced based on dodgy accounting practices from Lynch and co, it was due to HP's dysfunctional company culture and a desire to move into a high margin area, whatever the cost. Interestingly it appears that HP thought they were in a bidding war with Oracle. True or not, such things tend to push the price up and it must be remembered that it wasn't unusual at the time for so called Web 2.0 companies to be bought with stupid money, despite having no visible assets.
How much Autonomy is to blame in this is still to be decided, but if someone comes to you and offers 10 times the value of your house, are you going to ask questions? It is the equivalent of HP doing this then finding the expected gold seam they had expected in your garden was not there and therefore blame you for not putting it there
It also feels that there was open warfare at the top, and as with any such conflict, those involved on the losing side will try and rewrite history to put themselves in a better light.
Whatever happens, HP does not come out looking good in all this
UK's internet registry prepares a £100m windfall for its board members – and everyone else will pay for it
IEEE says it may have gone about things the wrong Huawei, lifts ban after US govt clearance
Monday 3rd June 2019 15:52 GMT
Re: Security concerns?
You are quite right @steve 1234, you should boycott any device made, manufactured, associated or even gone with in 100 miles of China and its allies.
.
.
.
.
Good, now he's living in a technology free slum of his own devising, that's one more nut job we will never hear from again
IEEE tells contributors with links to Chinese corp: Don't let the door hit you on Huawei out
Thursday 30th May 2019 10:56 GMT
Re: Presitator for life
If he were to attempt to stay, that freedom to bear arms suddenly makes sense (although I really doubt even Trump would be stupid enough to try and stay in power).
Trump has so far managed to confound those who underestimated his stupidity. Unfortunately narcissism has no upper limits. Trumps problem (well one of his many problems) is that he cannot conceive of someone not voting for him, therefore if anyone does it is down to fraud, fake news etc.
stupid is as stupid does
Thursday 30th May 2019 09:21 GMT
Re: Presitator for life
Unfortunately as Trevor Noah on the daily show pointed out, Trump is the blacklight on the US constitution.
i.e He is is showing the areas where everyone assumed there was well defined law on the limits of presidential power, were in fact based on the assumption of acceptance of political good manners, and in fact had never actually been tested in court.
Could Trump refuse to accept a election loss or add a 3rd term? In theory yes. For example he could try and get the election declared null and void due to supposed voting irregularities or declare a national emergency, manufactured or not. Whether the Senate or Courts would go for this, is unsure, but certainly the former has been remarkable quiet about the stretch of presidential authority in the past.
The real question is what would happen if he refused to go? What legal recourse are there to remove a president who refuses to play ball? In the end democracy depends on people assuming that people will play by the rules , when you get people like Trump who believe in there own self-given right to make the rules, you can only hope that there are enough people in the system whose loyalty is to the concept of democracy, rather than the mockery that it could become
No Huawei out: Prez Trump's game of chicken with China has serious consequences
Thursday 23rd May 2019 22:28 GMT
Here's the problem. Lets say the sake of argument Huawei is not guilty of putting spyware in their 5G stuff. How would they prove it? They basically given out there source code, and apart from such slack security features nothing was found, but that was apparently no enough.
Apart from proving a negative there is nothing they can do. I'm not saying that China is not a repressive regime, but to be honest I don't think they have the resources to filter out the juicy bits of the 5G traffic, and have enough on their hands just monitoring their internal massive population without having to take on the US as well. And why should they, since the NSA is already doing such a great job of it already.
The problem is that the great Orange one and is motley collection of right wing hawks are thinking that is what i would do in China's place and getting themselves lathered up in a right wing frenzy where they see reds under every bed.
If China was smart (and they are), what they should do is announce that all Apple phones are banned in China and all Chinese companies are not allowed to do business with Apple, until Apple can prove they do not provide back doors for the US government in their equipment. I wonder what effect a 10% drop in apple share price and all those pension funds that depend on them will have
Thursday 23rd May 2019 13:05 GMT
Re: Are you US bashing guys all mad ?.
Unless people like a dictatorship that: Puts people in jail based on religion, still carries out the death penalty, implements a tracking system with 400,000,000 camera's, forbids people to appear on TV because of tattoos, shields the country off from the internet, is bullying neighboring countries with aggressive territorial claims and is pirating on issues like intellectual property and acceptable trade policies.
You mean like Saudi Arabia?
This has nothing to do with human rights, etc. If the US only traded with countries where there internal policy aligned with theirs, basically they would only sell to themselves (and i'm not even sure California wouldn't be on the blacklist).
This is a petty trade dispute, dressed up as a national security issue, because the orange one has as much understanding of global trade as a slug has of the milky way.
In the short term I expect US to get some win, but one thing that China has shown itself is that its a fast learner and a long memory, and in the longer term the US will suffer as it flexes its increasing economic muscles.
Why telcos 'handed over' people's GPS coords to a bounty hunter: He just had to ask nicely
Programmers' Question Time: Tiptoe through the tuples
Bring it on, Chipzilla! Nvidia swipes back at Intel in CPU-GPU AI performance brouhaha
UK's planned Espionage Act will crack down on Snowden-style Brit whistleblowers, suspected backdoored gear (cough, Huawei)
Tangled in .NET: Will 5.0 really unify Microsoft's development stack?
Thursday 16th May 2019 07:43 GMT
With apologies to Tolkein
Three Frameworks for the Mobile kings under the sky,
Seven for the Open source developers in their halls of stone,
Nine for windows developers doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Microsoft where the Shadows lie.
One Framework to rule them all, One Framework to find them,
One Framework to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Microsoft where the Shadows lie.
Banhammer Republic: Trump declares national emergency, starts ball rolling to boot Huawei out of ALL US networks
Amazon’s Away Teams laid bare: How AWS's hivemind of engineers develop and maintain their internal tech
Japan on track to start testing Alfa-X, fastest train in the world with top speed of 400kph
Tuesday 14th May 2019 08:20 GMT
If you happen to be in York, I recommend you visit the National Rail museum
One of the exhibits is Japan Shinkansen bullet train, circa 1964. Ironically it is situated next to British steam engines of virtually the same vintage (the last UK steam passenger service stopped in 1968).
As a symbol of how far the UK has fallen in terms of rail technology I can think of no better example. It is like visiting a rocket ship compared to a model T ford and remember this is 54 years old, by Shinkansen would still hold up well in terms of design and performance to the majority of the UK's so-called high speed trains.
There are a legion of reasons for this, mis-management and betting on the wrong technologies, government ambivalence to public transport, privatization starving the industry of the ability to long term plan and invest. But one reason which I always find inexplicable is a nostalgic reverence for the past. I don't think their is any country in the world which seems to hold such a love of steam trains. There are some who would love instead of HS2 to see steam trains brought back into service, of course ignoring the fact steam trains were generally labour intensive, dirty and actually quite dangerous forms of transport which the actual drivers found pretty awful due to the huge amount of time spent cleaning out, starting up and the open dirty cabs they were forced to work in. While Japan highlights their high speed network, Germans the ICE etc, the UK train enthusiast will wax lyrically on the Mallard and how it was the fastest steam train in the world, ignoring the fact that it was a technological dead end, being superseded by diesel and electric trains in other parts of the world.
Even building a simple relatively high speed rail route between two of the UK most populous cities has caused so much debate that their is still a chance it may not happen. In so many ways this is a symbol of a country that is increasingly retreating into its past , and failing to face up to modern realities.
Timely Trump tariffs tax tech totally: 25 per cent levy on modems, fiber optics, networking gear, semiconductors…
Sunday 12th May 2019 06:52 GMT
Tariffs are a blunt instrument that can be effective in the medium to long-term but cause significant problems in the short-term, especially if they change repeatedly, as has happened in recent months.
I disagree. Tariffs can have good short term impact but only if it allows the affected industries to re-invest and modernise. Long term they encourage firms to rely on them and become less competitive on a global market because they insulate them from the economic realities. When tariffs are lifted they find themselves outclassed by the parts of the world which were not hooked on the protectionism drug
'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco
Wednesday 8th May 2019 09:46 GMT
Re: Beginning of end of the 737?
I think the main reason was that the engineers were given the target of 95 percent commonality with the rest of the 737 MAX family. That makes sense from a business point of view. It would allow them to sell the aircraft to legacy 737 customers as an upgrade with minimal spares and maintenance overhead.
I do believe the landing gear is 9 inches longer and is extended after it leaves the wheel well, but it just goes to show the design compromises that had to be met to meet the business case
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/boeing-737-max-10-landing-gear/
Tuesday 7th May 2019 15:14 GMT
Beginning of end of the 737?
It seems to me that the problem is more fundamental than that. The 1st 737 rolled of f the line in 1967. If you look at it, the engines are very low to the ground compared to modern jets. This means that unlike the 320, they had far less room to fit new high bypass turbofans.
They had two choices. Total redesign or a fudge. The fudge involved moving the engines forward, and then fix the design compromise with a software to maintain stability. A new design would of been expensive, take far to long and virtually given the short haul market to airbus so they went with plan B. To cut costs and design time even more they short cut certification by pretending it was a minor upgrade when in fact the redesign had vastly changed the flight characteristics, hidden by the safety software which introduced a single point of failure.
However Boeing want to spin it, the fact is the Boeing 737 design is reaching the end of its life. Yes the present 737's have virtually nothing in common with the original models in terms of control, construction, and engines, but it still shares a basically common wing and engine layout and basically you have gone as far as you can with that
NASA fingers the cause of two bungled satellite launches, $700m in losses, years of science crashing and burning...
Friday 3rd May 2019 10:24 GMT
Its not so much the bad actors - any system can be gamed. However if you go to the extremes in any system this is what you get.
The problem is there is always a push to reduce government oversight. The libertarians will spout the Ayn Rand shit and say the government has to get out of the way of the market. However without the checks and balances that government provides this, Enron , 737 max is what results because eventually someone will realise that without someone providing neutral oversight they can do anything they want and nobody will stop them
Behold, the insides of Samsung's Galaxy Fold: The phone that tears down all on its own
Thursday 25th April 2019 08:29 GMT
Re: Two screens with an infinitesimally-precise and tiny mating junction
On the other hand the "notch" was universally accepted.
This shows two things
1. Apple can get away with most things
2. People adapt. For example I've had a crack on my phone for about a year now. Initially it was annoying, but now I hardly notice it
I think the mechanical issues on folding phones will be insurmountable without some major material science advances. However the desire to have a larger screen, in a small form factor is undeniable, so a compromise solution with two screens that butt together maybe the best solytion
Microsoft fans celebrate the Easter weekend with some Sets-based upsets
Tuesday 23rd April 2019 14:13 GMT
I can remember a long time ago, the chief developer of IE responding to requests from users for tabs in IE like firefox and chrome with the response that he couldn't see why anyone would want tabs when you you could spawn multiple windows of IE.
Roll forward to 2019, and MS are still desperately trying to be relevant, when all people want is some of the features that virtually all the other OS take for granted
Surprising absolutely no one at all, Samsung's folding-screen phones knackered within days
Microsoft debuts Bosque – a new programming language with no loops, inspired by TypeScript
I've had it with these mother-fscking slaps on this mother-fscking plane: Flight fight sparks legal brouhaha over mid-air co-ords
Thursday 18th April 2019 08:32 GMT
Re: Stand your air
Well that's just Lefty Pinko thinking.
If federal marshals are allowed to be armed, well so am I just in case I feel the need to form a well armed militia at 40,000 ft.
I didn't notice anything in the US constitution which provided a altitude limit. If they had meant to limit it to ground based citizens they would of said so when they wrote it, goddammit.
I am going to complain to my NRA sponsored congressmen right now
Wednesday 17th April 2019 11:14 GMT
Here have a can of worms...
On this basis of this, what jurisdiction would cover this if the plane was in international airspace? Was the international terrorist (played by David Suchet, presumably Poirot was only a cover) in Executive decision breaking a law if the crime was committed outside the bounds of law jurisdiction?
Increasingly the law of common sense seems to be missing in US law
Biting the hand that feeds IT
