Posts by Vic

This is why proprietary protocols rather than using standard such as SIP are sometimes a bad idea

Sometimes??

Vic.

Re: First desk troll job

Then there were the fixed IP addresses and DNS tables to manage

At the risk of going all Yorkshire on you - bloody luxury!

We used to have kit flown in late one evening, and I'd have to have it ready for customer demo the following morning. It all ran RARP, which meant that the first thing was to map MAC to IP address in /etc/ethers, then IP to hostname in /etc/hosts. And all that was so much easier if they'd actually labelled the kit with its MAC address.

And then I'd have to write the customer demo...

Vic.

Re: We need another NSA leaker

I still occasionally wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare involving editing sendmail.cf. Totally agree.

See, sendmail is my MTA of choice - I know it well, and I like it.

But then I never, ever edit sendmail.cf directly; I always use the sendmail.mc route. Which is easy, even for a bear of little brain like myself...

Vic.

Re: Why do I get the sinking feeling that...

All these 'cost savings' will be subsequently eaten up by executive bonuses, pay raises and golden parachutes

They won't. I can guarantee that.

What will happen is that employees will feel screwed over, so will become less reasonable about their expenses; they will take everything due, rather than just what they thought was a good idea.

It's always the same - a company tightens its expense policy, and the actual expenses go up. I've seen it way too many times...

Vic.

Re: More than one ...

Or, is the plural of homo sapiens actually homos sapiens?

If a plural were to exist, it would be homines sapientes. But I'm not so sure it makes much sense...

Vic.

Re: drugs usable for voluntary euthenasia

Or we just stop removing CO2 from the air. My understanding, I have no first-hand experience mind you, is this is a relatively painless way to go.

God, no. That's about as wrong as wrong can get.

CO₂ drives the urge to breathe; mounting CO₂ causes an increased breathing rate and the feeling of suffocation. Under some circumstances - such as under pressure[1] - it has been shown to create feelings of doom, despondency and panic[2]. It's a truly dreadful way to die.

If you want to do this, what you do is to maintain the removal of CO₂, but remove the resupply of O₂. This means that the breathing urge is not over-stimulated, but the body becomes hypoxic. Hardly anyone - certainly not anyone healthy enough for such a mission - can detect impending hypoxia, so the subject simply goes to sleep peacefully and never wakes up.

And isn't that a nice subject for this time of the morning?

Vic.

[1] That's where I encountered hypercapnia; I was diving, and I'd screwed up my preparation.

[2] Those were the symptoms I experienced.

Re: How rude?

I've been told that my writtten communication is 'curt'

I've been told my responses on fora are "rude and unhelpful", because I gave people the man pages to read rather than just giving them the keypresses to use.

Vic.

Re: Are Jeeps that expensive?

If you can take a $ 37k vehicle apart and sell its stolen, used parts on the black market for a profit of $ 30k, then either you are a Trump-like sales genius, or the buyers are 100% mugs.

It's quite normal for a vehicle to be worth more as parts than as a whole; this is why scrapyards exist...

Vic.

Re: Not monitoring - not smart

Never underestimate the importance of monitoring data centre performance

That's twice you've posted that exact same message - and those are your only two posts here.

Do you have a commercial interest in such things, perchance?

Vic.

Re: Not a Chartered/Certifies Engineer or engineer but

Now, fire away and tell me how I don't know anythiing about explosives, airplanes, cabin pressurisation, price of tea in China.

Right you are.

The hold is pressurised. Must be, if you think about it - both to prevent things exploding in there, and also because it's very much harder to create a non-elliptical pressure structure, and the cabin floor would tend to bulge into the hold...

The hold is typically unheated, unless the aircraft is carrying live animals. But it is most assuredly pressurised.

Vic.

Re: What else has BA poorly maintained?

If BA have got their IT wrong this basd, whats to say they've got their aircraft maintenance correct?

Unlikely. Aircraft maintenance is fully-licenced. Those doing the work face loss of licence (and therefore job) if they screw up at all, and a prison sentence if anyone is injured as a result of and shoddy work. They generally do stuff properly.

Vic.

Crapita eats the shit sandwich again.

As the old saying goes, "The more bread you've got, the less you taste the filling"...

Vic.

Re: civilian Intercept

And a teeny tiny fuel tank that would be empty in 15 minutes at full engine power with afterburners on.

That depends on which aircraft you ere flying; the Mark 6, for example, had a big belly pan which could be used as an additional fuel tank.

I know a few Lightning pilots :-)

Vic.

Re: Good writeup, I guess

And really, does anyone who isn't self-loathing call himself a hippie?

Yep.

Vic.

Re: Extended support?

So the IT Director of the Trust takes the fall. What good does that do in ensuring the department pulls it's socks up and we don't get a repeat?

Maybe - just maybe - the next IT Director might actually take some interest in directing the department?

Directors claim large salaries because they "take the risks", they "have responsibility". This is what responsibility means - if you took the cash when things were going easy, you take the fall when they're going hard.

Vic.

Re: Fun with statistics

I will have to go through Atos's fitness-for-work exam sometime in the future

The first time through, they will declare you fit for work. Do not take this. Keep appealing - they are financially-motivated to get you to give up in despair.

My missus spent two years after her operation being told that she was fit to work. When - eventually - we got in front of a doctor to assess her, his comment was simply "I have no idea why you are here - there is no doubt as to your inability to work". She got her early retirement.

Vic.

Re: Policing websites

Should Cloudfare boot El Reg because they posted nasty articles against Santa Cruz Operation (SCO)?

I don't think ElReg has ever posted a nasty article about the Santa Cruz Operation.

The SCO that everyone railed against was a different company - formerly Caldera. The confusion appears to be deliberate.

Vic.

At which the users gaze in desperation because there's no documentation on how to use it.

Then it wasn't Agile.

Agile prefers working software over complete documentation, not over any documentation.

Vic.

Re: Linked-In?

But what really pisses me off is getting e-mails from linked in from someone I've never heard of, saying they want to join my network

I get quite a few of those to addresses I've never given to LinkedIn[1].

It's quite apparent that there are LI spammers, who just target every email address they get hold of...

Vic.

[1] I have a *lot* of email addresses. Each new contact gets a unique address for me, so I can tell who's leaking what.

Re: Power tends to Corrupt...

Sorry, but you have that completely backwards

No, the OP is correct.

The whole point of continually exaggerating the risks of terrorism and lying about the causes of it is to give governments plausible justifications for restricting personal freedoms and dismantling personal privacy

That's a different point - and also true. So we have the situation where authoritarian governments and terrorists feed each other's agenda.

There's only one way that ends...

Vic.

I think Edge gets a bad rap just because it's an MS browser. It works, it doesn't do anything flashy, it just shows web pages

I crashes frequently[1], it changes focus at random when closing windows[2], it ignores certificate decisions I've already taken[3], it doesn't respect the settings I've given it[4], ...

I'm hoping the boss will let me change this machine quite markedly. W10 is bad enough, Edge is appalling.

Vic.

[1] Usually when I try to open a new tab or window with a few PDFs already open - but not normally from the "open in new tab/window" option on a link

[2] When closing a maximised window, I would expect to see the window underneath it - the one I was using previously. But over the last few days, Edge seems to want to give me something else I'd been using at another time...

[3] I deliberately have an invalid certificate on my server. Edge will accept this for some time - occasionally, even for days - and then will suddenly throw up a certificate warning. The certificate hasn't changed...

[4] The BBC site is the worst for this at the moment: it wants my location. I don't want to give it my location, and have explicitly disabled that in Settings. But Edge insists on telling me every single bloody time that the BBC wants my location, and I'll have to enable that in Settings....

Re: qulaity

MPEG has blocky artefacts

All Digital TV has blocky artefacts. It's a lossy encoder system based on a block structure.

MPEG 2 can't cope with colour gradients

Yes it can.

All these issues are simply down to the trade-off between bandwidth and quality - different encoders get a different trade-off, usually at the cost of processing power. If your display is poor, that usually means that someone's wound the Q up to deal with a smaller bit budget...

Vic.

Re: Flying nightmare

Uber will of course claim they have no need to take heed of any aviation regulations such as licences, flight plans, or safety.

They seem to be ignoring a number of laws - including that of Gravity, Conservation of Energy, ...

VTOL aircraft are extremely power-hungry, for reasons I hope are obvious. Battery-powered VTOL passenger aircraft are quite remarkably unlikely.

Vic.

Re: A built-in password list

memorable passwords may not be as obscure as I think they are. Where can I check?

John is your friend...

Vic.

Re: I thought we needed to encourage new developers ...

The only way to teach JavaScript (like PHP) is to have a huge list of things which are labelled "DO NOT USE AT ALL" or "DO NOT DO IT THIS WAY, DO IT THE OTHER WAY".

This image says it all...

Vic.

Re: Honest inquiry

But what if you're pressed on the other side of the coin: It's a "five nine's" service that's gone down, and because it's a holiday or whatever, no one's around to verify its state if it goes down, so you're caught in a dilemma

SysV always gave you a very simple way of causing services to respawn if you wanted them to. Systemd has not solved any problems in that[1] area.

Vic.

[1] Or any other, AFAICT...

Re: How times change..

In Mint 18.1 KDE, GIMP is shown in the application menu as "GIMP Image Editor"

On Centos7, it's "GNU Image Manipulation Program".

Vic.

Re: Sorted.

advertisers know that they can ignore the bottom 16 bits and the rest is basically fixed by your ISP and not CG-NAT'd or anything

s/16/64/ ...

Vic.

Re: Actually not -illegal-

<blockquiote>File sharing is copyright infringement, a civil matter</blockquiote>

That depends on your jurisdiction.

In the UK, for example, Section 107 of CDPA88 makes copyright infringement a criminal offence if it's performed in a commercial situation.

We have some crap laws...

Vic.

Re: But the real issue is

I present Hersheys kisses

I'd rather you didn't...

Vic.

Re: get off that computer and go outside and play with your friends

But the computer /is/ my friend.

It isn't. It's plotting against you. It told me so...

Vic.

Re: The point in trading

So I think the bit your missing is understanding what it is they are trading - shares and bonds are ways of injecting cash into a company, which allow the company to invest in new projects that they otherwise wouldn't have the capital for.

That's long-term investors, and it's a good thing that we have a few of them left.

What does it benefit a company for a trader to own some stock for a fraction of a second, creaming off a profit by exploiting moment-to-moment fluctuations in the share price?

Vic.

Re: Thank goodness.

It could be the spouse with a sudden medical condition you're worried about

If it's a genuine medical emergency, pretty much all aircraft are fitted with radio that will work at any stage of the flight that a phone will.

If it's not sufficiently important to use the aircraft radio systems - it's probably not a real emergency after all...

Vic.

Not only am I a techie, but a (student) private pilot

Good luck!

The *only* downside of getting your licence is the kicking you give yourself for not having done it ten years earlier :-)

Vic.

Re: Reality check time?

I think if you did the math, solar energy at ANY altitude [vs the weight of the panels to collect it] would be a net LOSS if you tried to implement it on an aircraft.

You'll note that I said it was the "most viable" idea, not that it had any merit :-)

There have been solar-only aircraft. It can work if the plane is designed for that sort of flight. But getting any passengers aboard is, AFAIK, non-viable, as is getting a choice in where/when you fly...

Vic.

Re: Pssst

I think we underestimate their capacity for appreciation of Properly Funny Stuff!

Indeed.

It's often said that the Germans have no sense of humour.

I put some lighting systems into a shop in Berlin a few months back; whoever designed the cabling system there had a particularly dry and wicked one...

Vic.