Posts by Peter Simpson 1
490 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 14:14 GMT
Posted in ICANN rescues time zone database
It does really depend on how
If the attempted contact was by email or even regular postal mail, shame on Astrolabe! If it's this important, it should have been certified mail. That might explain why they received no response.
I have the reprint of that
Learned C and UNIX when I was at Data General. I was impressed by the apparent simplicity of the design (which is quite often a sign of carefully crafting) and its obvious power. I was lucky enough to have a co-worker who had been at MIT and returned waxing eloquently about how UNIX was the future.
All I needed to learn C was the K&R book. Later, I took a course in which I received the BSTJ reprint. Then I got a Sun workstation , discovered USENET and shortly thereafter, Linux. It was all "downhill" from there.
RIP, dmr.
//there seem to be an awful lot of coats here with a copy of K&R in the pocket...
Posted in BOFH: Where's my free fondleslab?
Register Management
should be very careful to insure that there is actually an elevator present when the doors open.
Perhaps it would be prudent to pass some of the swag on to Mr. Travaglia...who, I'm sure, would hate to hear of any unpleasant accidents...
Torvalds and Ritchie?
Does anyone know if they ever met? I'd like to hear what they had to say to each other...
RIP, dmr, and thanks for all the C!
Very sad news
RIP Dennis. The world loses another computing pioneer.
Car trouble
I understand they've been having a lot of car trouble, lately.
They drive to the site of their protest in a couple of vehicles, which they park some distance from the protest site.
When they complete their protest, they return to their vehicles, only to find all the tires flattened.
Even worse, there seem to be no tow services able to assist.
Astrolabe is the new "owner"
Apparently, Astrolabe purchased the distribution rights to the database from the original developer ACS, in 2008. This may be a case of new eyes seeing an opportunity to raise some easy money. Or, perhaps a previously agreed arrangement between the Unix tz folks and ACS has changed in some way with the change in distribution rights.
As the previous poster noted, the concern seems to be with the use of historical time zone information (which seems to be Astrolabe/ACS main product), some of which is claimed to have been derived from the ACS database. Obviously, current time zone information *is* public domain, as should be the history information, if you can show you've just been keeping records of publicly announced changes. The question seems to be whether use of historical data derived from an acknowledged third party source is fair use. And we don't know how much and for what purpose the ACS data was used...all we know is that they are acknowledged and listed as a reference.
We should probably not speculate as to whether the hand of Microsoft is in any way involved :-)
//did I leave my watch in my other coat?
Nobody's saying that
Calm down.
You must be in management.
The tz data is for covenience, not critical to system operation. And the guy who's been compiling the data has already made arrangements for IETF to take over maintaining the database.
He hasn't nicked half his data from a commercial database. He didn't need to. It's published. And the historical data generates itself if you keep at it for long enough.
Now, he may have gone to a (or many) commercial databases to *check* his data, And he may have acknowledged his sources. And one of his sources may have been sold a bill of goods by a lawyer who thought they'd found a way to make lots of money with minimal effort.
Alibaba has a long way to go
I tried using it last year for a project I was working on. The combination of the delays, language barrier and "junk replies" (i.e.: not at all what I was looking for) made it a total waste of time.
Your report of course
...has photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one?
//have actually eaten a burger at Alice's Restaurant
RF protected baseball cap
No longer does your FoaF need to remember both tinfoil *and* baseball cap.
These folks, in addition to shielded boxers or briefs, offer a shielded baseball cap at only US$29.95, item #F210: http://lessemf.com/catalog2/70.pdf
I believe there may be a discount if you're outfitting an entire team.
No need to thank me, and mine's the one with the conductive lining, thanks!
*some* performers
Those would be the performers who converted their income into white powder and sucked it up their noses, then?
Posted in Winklevoss twins: Zuck on our salty nuts
What a pair of muppets
Do they actually *do* anything productive, or do they just hang around grooming themselves?
//Paris, because...three of a kind
Cool
Well, this one was more than cool, it was stone cold dead.
//where's my tombstone icon gone?
Wrong
From the "Microsoft Windows License guide":
"Q. I have acquired a used PC with the original manufacturer’s
Windows desktop operating system COA on the computer’s case
and the matching copy of the original OEM recovery media disk
or recovery media image that came with the PC when it was new.
Is the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Windows desktop
operating system on this used PC properly licensed?
A. Yes, in this case it appears that you have the genuine OEM
Windows desktop operating system software which is designed
exclusively for computer manufacturers to preinstall on their
computers. "
//Though Linux is still a better choice for a used PC, IMHO
Loki boardroom killing spree?
Wouldn't want to be a Phones4u executive...
A great loss
He was a passionate advocate for Bletchley Park and will be missed.
RIP, Tony, and good on ya.
//mine's the one with the one time pad in the pocket
Posted in Windows 8 ribbon entangles Microsoft
Or rotate that monitor 90 degrees
as several in my office have done.
Fascinating
While the plot twists and turns in this story are better than any Dan Brown could come up with, it's just another reason to use Linux (or Mac) in place of Windows.
I tried to use Alibaba once
Total waste of time; between the language issues, spam and inaccurate product descriptions, I ended up with nothing usable. Thankfully, it seems to have fallen lower in the returns from my Google searches recently.
So the angle of the dangle is key
How appropriate.
// and a very happy Sysadmin Day to all the BOFHs out there.
Do they have any tech people on staff?
Or is LightSquared just a collection of "big idea guys" and lobbyists?
// at some point, reality will intrude on their dreams of greatness (and greater profits)
Posted in Koreans produce $3m glow-in-the-dark dog
Maybe a mistranslation
The dog in question actually *grows* when bathed in UV light.
// it's the one with the fluorescent lining, thanks
Not *currently* true
but may become true, shortly.
Political ads
Sadly, here in the US, we don't have this kind of political ad (perhaps it would put some life back into a boring electoral process here).
However, if I lived in Moscow, this is one political rally I would attend.
Posted in X2 triplex super-chopper in final flight
Oh, good: more moving parts!
Which can then fail and cause this over-rotored abomination to fall out of the sky.
Helicopters are wonderful when all the parts remain attached and work as designed.
KT
There's only one KT worth listening to:
Ken Thompson.
Folks missing the obvious
Lester's
Outgassing
High
Altitude
Nosecone
If I can find my keys...
...we can both drive out of here!
Chlorinated *before* the (open) reservoirs?
Sounds to me like this muppet should lose his job. You should purify the water right before it goes into the sealed system, methinks. If it needs to sit, it should be sitting in a covered storage tank.
Posted in A sysadmin's top ten tales of woe
That would be...
...the self-destruct switch. That's why it's recessed and needs to be operated with a tool.
//idiot-proof design only serves to create smarter idiots
Posted in A sysadmin's top ten tales of woe
The real WTF is...
The damn UPS manufacturer "thought outside the box" and used a DB-9 connector with a non-standard pinout for a "serial port". Connecting a standard cable causes Bad Things to happen.
Poor design doesn't even begin to cover it.
Posted in A sysadmin's top ten tales of woe
It's usually the boss
or his relative.
//you can't even yell at them
Good for them
Now, maybe they can turn their attention to making sure the malware authors can't submit bogus ads containing malware into their ad serving networks.
Training mission
Next time, it might be a human. Good to know the pilot has some experience pulling loads off cliff faces.
Posted in BOFH: Ready for the Judgment Day
Embraces diversity
is one of the categories on our reviews. When reviewing my subordinate, who is of Hispanic (and other) extraction, I, of course, gave him full marks.
//only a once yearly event, thank goodness.
So does burial alive
(although it kills all other cells as well)
Triple Chaser/Triple Chanber?
Easy mistake to make, they simply pressed the wrong button...
//where's the grenade icon when you need it?
I remember when
the tech showed us which relay to pull out on the 402 accounting machine to make it run twice as fast. We were cautioned to replace it after finishing whatever rush job, because the motor in that unit wasn't as hefty as the one used in the 403 (which was the same machine, minus a relay and plus a heftier motor)
Counterfeit gear or unauthorized upgrades?
"JDC Networking Inc altered Cisco products by using pirated software, and created labels and packaging in order to mislead consumers into believing the products it sold were genuine Cisco products."
So, they performed unauthorized upgrades? Article makes it sound like the hardware was genuine, they just messed with the firmware. Probably still not kosher, and Cisco wouldn't like it, but not exactly selling counterfeit hardware.
a new and flamboyant abbot...Father Simone Fioraso
For those of us who remember the old, classic, Saturday Night Live...perhaps this is where Father Guido Sarducci finally landed?
Trumpets?
He must not be from around here. In NYC, that would be the sound of taxi horns.
//choir of angels?
//yelling very un-angelic things
Third time lucky?
More like 3 strikes and you're out!
There's a guestbook on his website
If he were a real Christian, he'd feel pretty awful about all the suffering he's caused with his silly prediction. Selling his media empire and doing something charitably worthwhile with the profits would go a long way towards balancing out all the bad karma he has accumulated.
// I bet he won't do that.
// I'd be very happy to be wrong.
Posted in Gates defends Ballmer's Skype gamble
Why Microsoft bought Skype?
Because NetMeeting never worked worth s#!t and people keep asking MS why, as the #1 business desktop software provider, they don't have a decent conferencing app.
If *I* were doing it...
I'd add some kind of cryptographic hash to the coupons. That way, you'd need to know the key to make anything but a copy of coupon that's already been legitimately created. So you could make as many "5-cent off a bag of Doritos" coupons as you want, but you'd be very hard pressed to come up with a "95 cent off a bag of Doritos" coupon without knowing the crypto secret.
//Anyone want a coupon for a free pint?
If I was to scan an image of a bank note
Allow me to draw your attention to this fine article which indicates why your cunning plan is doomed to fail:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/15/adobe_anticounterfeiting_code_trips_up/
Now we know
They're not black...they're SILVER!
