Posts by Richard Pennington

Ever heard of testing using sanitised data?

Testing using live data?? - "it was was being used as a database for development, training and performance testing".

Idiots.

One of my friends suffered from identity theft

... or at least I thought he was my friend...

I'll get my coat ... I think it's mine ...

Biometric evasion technology

Biometrics from photographs only work if the picture actually includes a few biometric reference points. For me, most of the reference points in the lower half of my face are hidden by my Biometric Entropy And Randomness Device ... which I have been wearing, in various configurations, since 1979.

Simple process for upgrading without getting into too much trouble...

I was always taught not to get myself into anything I couldn't get myself out of ... i.e. don't do anything irreversible. With that in mind...

You will need a new hard drive and a hard drive enclosure. It is also assumed that you don't mind opening up the machine.

Step 1: Open up the machine and remove the existing hard drive.

Step 2: Put the new (empty) hard drive into the space thus vacated.

Step 3: Perform the (clean) install of Windows 7 onto the empty drive.

Step 4: While waiting for step 3 to complete, put the old hard drive into the disk enclosure, setting it up as an external drive.

Step 5: Boot up in Windows 7, and use the old disk - with all of your data - as the external drive.

Step 6: If you don't like how Windows 7 operates, you can always reverse the procedure to get back to XP (which at step 5 is still intact on the external drive).

Orbital period is miscalculated!

The parent star is a dwarf of spectral class G5, a little less massive than the Sun. The orbital period is listed as 111.78 days (plus or minus 0.21 days): see http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/HD80606.html

If the orbital period was less than a day, the orbit ... all of it ... would have to be much closer to the star.

Cassini car-wash

How much do the Enceladans charge for their car-wash?