Posts by FrankAlphaXII

Re: Adobe Flash player bugs

39 single spaced pages or so for one of the two articles and 54 for the other, without the code.

Re: So having found a bad design pattern they then proactively looked for other copies of it.

I thought CMM was a purely Military thing? I didn't know that they'd borrowed from NASA.

Can't say that I'm too impressed either as an outsider to the world of development, I thought you were always supposed to make sure new code didn't break existing stuff, and test it before deployment in the first place. I mean you're always going to have something unexpected happen, but having new code break the part that's actually selling something like in the example sounds like a piss poor QA/testing regime.

Re: Curious Results

>>Sounds like Windows 1 0...

Sounds like Windows up until NT 4 really.

Re: Japanese programming culture

How was Fukushima recoverable?

Preventable, yes, but it was far from recoverable after the generators were destroyed and the coolant stopped flowing, even after they reconnected the coolant systems to the external power grid to get the pumps moving it was too late. About the only thing they could have done was connect them faster, that may or may not have stopped the meltdowns, but as noone's entirely sure about just how much damage there really is to the cores noone's sure about just how fast they would have had to have moved.

Now if what you mean is that it was preventable, you are absolutely correct. They could have mitigated by not building reactors on a coastline prone to earthquakes and by making damned sure electrical power would always flow to the plant's pumps no matter what, but aside from that I don't think it was a recoverable situation, unless they had ripped the vessel heads off the reactors to pull the fuel manually (a death sentence for anyone involved after about 3 to 5 minutes inside the containment building at reactor 3) which isn't realistic at all.

Re: Going to stop reading El Reg

Been here since 2004 myself, and I'm quite tired of it too. Its too bad "articles" like this dont still have ratings like they used to a few years back, because they'd probably have the dishonor of the collective lowest scores possible.

Re: Yay Capitalism!

I know for a fact that Miami-Dade also has American Theft and Thoughtlessness, who will rip you off way worse than Comcast will and play games with your billing. I had them for two months and they did their utmost to ensure I'll never do anything with AT&T again. They sure as hell aren't the old school death star anymore.

They also have a local company called Atlantic Broadband but I'm pretty sure they're limited to Miami itself, Miami Beach and Miami Shores.

Re: I would have expected...

I'm surprised they didn't mention that at all, plus the fact that you can't manually install it either

I'm late on this one, but Linux isn't UNIX. *BSD is not UNIX, even though its close. Solaris, AIX, z/OS, and HP-UX are UNIX. OS X is UNIX. If it meets the Single Unix Specification, its UNIX. If it doesn't, its not UNIX. And while POSIX compatability is part of the SUS, it is not everything in it.

Re: I use ZFS every day.....

>> FreeBSD, NAS4FREE, PC-BSD. It isn't hard.

No it really isn't. ZFS works pretty damned well too, I've used it and btrfs (as well as NTFS which there's no avoiding if you use MS products at all, and I do) and I much prefer ZFS. The only area that I'm not convinced of its utility is through lack of experience as I haven't used it with any of our SSDs yet, but it does work exceptionally well for complex drive arrangements with regular ol' HDDs.

I use ZFS every day as well. I don't use NAS4FREE but I do use FreeBSD and PC-BSD daily. While Linux chases its tail yet again because of people bitching and moaning we've been using ZFS for what, like 12 years now?

Its actually kind of sad really, ZFS is not a new technology at this point by any means but Linux still doesn't/can't ship with it. I hope Canonical does do this and gets away with it, and its immense popularity convinces other distributions to push Oracle to change the license to 3 clause BSD so everyone can use it and it'll still make GPL zealots cry themselves to sleep. Everyone wins.

Re: Do they?

Well if you really want continuity and resiliency, you're going to have multiple encrypted copies and multiple providers with a wide geographic separation and distribution in case shit happens as a matter of course, not just as leverage with your vendors come negotiation time. Disaster happens a lot more often than people seemingly would like to think.

Re: Who uses FreeBSD in preference to Linux and why?

The community for me.

The Linux community is fucking awful, especially to newcomers. It didn't get any better during the 10 years I used it daily, if anything, it got worse and I really doubt it is ever going to improve at this point.

The FreeBSD community is really helpful and much less prone to people throwing fits over bullshit. I've been using FreeBSD for about two years now and it works, solidly, with no systemd (which I didn't mind but some people seem to really hate) if you can bother to follow directions. OpenBSD is good if security is your thing. Honestly, its been years since I heard anything about NetBSD, I didnt even know they were still making releases. PC-BSD is also pretty good for a unixlike desktop, its easy to use FreeBSD for all intents and purposes, with KDE or GNOME its basically indistinguishable from Linux using one of those two DEs unless you're in the terminal.

ZFS was the reason I tried it in the first place, the community was the reason I stayed.

Re: Too little, too late in this house...

>>Yes, it works well, but I got fed up

I see what you did there, even though I think that they call it something different now with DNF.

And didn't we all? I'll never forget fighting with fedup to get F21 to install and then fighting with yum to sort out a bunch of broken bullshit. Then when F22 or 23 came out and the maintainer of the kmod for the AMD proprietary driver threw a fit and no one picked it up, which is the same sort of situation that AMD users on Ubuntu are facing now apparently.

I have no idea if anyone ever did eventually pick it up because I gave up trying to play games or do anything else graphically intense on Linux and use Windows for that, and for my servers I switched to using FreeBSD, it may not be flashy but it works.

Ancient game debugging, pt.2

Your comment reminded me of something. Awhile back I read a really good article about a guy who put himself through figuring out what was wrong with Atari's (in)famous E.T. : The Extraterrestrial game for the 2600. Since you put yourself through debugging an Oric game, you'd probably like it.

Apparently its not that hard to make the game playable, granted that you have a hex editor.

Check it out here.

Some of us still do....

Thought admittedly its a lost battle in that regard.

Re: because GCHQ et al

Since when is Law Enforcement an intelligence agency's job?

Re: Revisionist

Don't forget that networking infrastructure was straight out of BSD. I'm not a Windows hater, if anything I can't stand Linux anymore (not the Kernel, I love the Kernel, the distributions killed it for me. Been using PC-BSD and FreeBSD since early 2014 along with Windows 7 and now Windows 10 and I couldn't be happier when it comes to my UNIXlike or with Windows for that matter) but it likely wasn't Microsoft's idea, if anyone it was probably whoever was doing networking for Open, Free or NetBSD at the time.

Re: Oh, and another thing...

Quite agreed. They haven't even retargeted the Tridents yet, the Navy made a big deal when they de-targeted so I'd imagine they'd say something if they retargeted them. They're still actively downsizing the cruise missile and bomber fleets, and the B-1s haven't been re-nuclearized.

As soon as they do the opposite of any of that, we can say that its the Cold War again, til then its Russia willingly getting itself into the Middle Eastern quagmire, which isn't very Soviet like. The Soviets were never stupid enough to openly fight in the Middle East. They always had proxies do it for them. If anything, it shows the lack of political clout that Russia possesses anymore.

Re: My Seagate has excellent encryption

Two of my 2010-ish 1 TB Seagates had that same "feature". Both failed spectacularly within a matter of months.

Re: licensing

Do you work for BBC's legal department or something? You keep saying the same old shit over and over again like it makes it okay for them to do this or something. You don't address any of the issues that are raised by blocking VPNs. I live in the US and I don't pay a license fee, I shouldn't have access. But someone using a VPN from inside the UK who does pay should have access.

Re: BB death greatly exagerated

>> All Most US governmental agencies use them.

I can think of two entire departments that do not and use either Samsung handsets with KNOX instead or whatever MS calls their preferred MDM and Security solution for WinPho. The Congresscritters and Justice are still hung up on BB though, as are parts of DHS, and as I recall CIA was as well as recently as two years ago. So there's plenty of BlackBerry usage in the Federal Government still, but its by no means universal any longer.

Re: US readers still have power over ICANN for a little while

The date's been set and has been for quite awhile.

I don't know there's much anyone can do, outside of persuading the President, the JCS, Secretary of Homeland Security and DNI letting ICANN take over is a threat to National Security, which would be a tough sell.

Re: Goodness.

I agree, the bitching about Windows 10 out of the writers here is getting very old. I've been using it for two months and have had no problems. The one thing I'll agree with is Mozilla's complaint about changing default programs, it is kind of a pain in the ass and its not just for browsers.

And keep in mind what they're not telling you about Matt Asay's background, he's a FOSS evangelist, which they used to make very clear on his articles when he was a regular writer here. So much for disclosure anymore, eh?

Just like HP right?

That kind of thinking reminds me of the Army. To quote Colonel Charles Alvin Beckwith, the man who fought with the US Army for years after he'd been with the SAS on an exchange program to create something like the SAS here, which eventually became Delta Force (or whatever you wanna call em, Delta, Task Force Green, 1SFOD-D, CAG, The Fort Bragg Bicycle club, etc. It must be nice to not exist.): "The problem with officers is that they worry about pissants while elephants are stomping them into the ground". And its true.

Save a sinking ship with a tie and jacket, yeah right.

Re: not possible

Creative Commons has something like this. CC-BY-NC.

You spend a lot of time here, Destroy All Monsters, so you surely know about xkcd, whether you like Randall's artwork or not. He licenses his stuff under it, and his description of it is pretty good, you're free to use it and share it, but not sell it.

Since Hacking Team were selling this guy's product, which they're free to do as long as they follow the terms of the GPL and include the source, he could license it under CC-BY-NC to prevent anyone from selling it. It might dissuade people from wanting to use your software in other projects, but it does prevent someone fucked up from selling your code at least.

Re: The Problem With This

>> Else, what's next? USB drivers showing advertising every time you plug your phone in? Your printer driver printing a full-page American Express ad at the start of every document? The BIOS message reading "Drink Coca-Cola"?

For the love of all that is good and holy, do not give them any ideas or else we'll be seeing that fairly soon.

Given that Dammam is basically Aramco country, and they can charge whatever they want to them and get away with it, its probably far too expensive to mail them from there or the Saudi Postal service will only give the company a bulk rate if you mail it from an agreed upon facility.

The same kind of thing exists in the West, if you're American have you ever wondered why Del Rio and Plano, Texas always seem to be where junk mail originates or goes to?

Re: Sometimes, it's management

>>I never imagined I'd be happy to get fired from somewhere before then.

You were either rather young at the time or you've been rather fortunate to have worked a very small number of shitty jobs if you can say that and aren't lying.

Re: Wait, you don't have a preservation act to go in-hand with FOI...?

I'm amazed to see that myself. They probably torch records they want torched left and right. It must be great if you're up to something fucked up.

I dunno about the Federal government's requirements, but the parts I've worked around or in seem to save everything even if its really pointless (at least the Army saves [in triplicate, mind you] damned near everything, especially if it relates to money. Yet keep in mind that they say DoD, which the Army is part of, can't be audited as its too big so draw your own conclusions there) but I do know for a fact that my state has a really strict law about that, we call it Government in the Sunshine, and everyone from the State level down is subject to it, even some services that aren't "government" technically but use public funds are responsible for storing their data for auditing.

I suspect your State or equivalent government or maybe even your central government does as well judging by your reaction.

It is strange to see a government have something like FOIA, but at the same time be able to burn its archives so FOIA doesn't really matter. And what gets me is that no civil liberties lawyers existed that were able to see through that arrangement. The UK needs something like the ACLU to keep these people a little more honest because it's really outrageous that they can basically burn or shred what pleases them.

Re: The reason why cuts work...

Well the first experiments with central banking were ended by a congress under a war-monger that manged to get most of Washington burned to the ground after having untrained rabble serving as militia attack civilians and civilian grain stores in Canada, and a jackass* that let the second attempt's term expire.

But no, it didn't work at all. Bank runs and financial crisis were both fairly normal over here. People got sick of it after the 1907 Bank Run, which followed bank runs in 1873, 20 years later in 1893, and again in 1907, but congress shammed something together and Wilson signed it.

Y'know, Its pretty sad when your country's had enough bank runs that they get titles like they're military campaigns.

*Andrew Jackson got called a Jackass by the Adams campaign, it became his symbol and eventually the entire Democratic party started using it and still uses it to a degree, though nowadays their official logo really sucks, it looks like a DC Metro line more than a political party's logo.

Re: Coffee --> Screen

I don't believe in security. Only idealists and fools do.

Edward Snowden stole how many files off NSAnet and JWICS and didn't get caught? He knew noone was paying attention and exploited that lapse in security to create a conversation the world should have been having at the end of the Cold War. Aside from the National Command Authority's emergency action messaging system, JWICS alone is supposed to be the most secure communications network there is by design, and even they're vulnerable to an insider launching an attack.

I do believe in layers of security, that old defense in depth maxim. It costs more (whether its actual money or just time) but if you believe in keeping people who don't belong away from looking at your stuff it is well worth it. As long as it actually works correctly. But its hard to tell what works and what doesn't, especially not in the early days of an Arms race.

There will always be a way to counter any sort of defensive measures somehow anyway. Best you can do is make yourself so difficult a target and make your garbage look so interesting that A.) no one bothers because the problem looks too difficult, and B.) if they do manage to succeed, they don't get anything of value other than maybe some plaintexts which will have nothing to do with the real keys but are there to drive opposing forces cryptographers insaner and waste their time.

Re: SSL Check

One of them must be that they're using actual SSL instead of TLS. I'd not use them for anything I could avoid it.

I can't get any https pages from them to load at all, and the only reason I can think of is that I have old-school SSL completely disabled in both Firefox and Windows.

Re: Why is this 'news'...

No, it isn't. The Circus Kernel constantly is outside of Kernel development, especially at the distribution level (even though software packaging is pretty bad too) and why that is I have no idea, but its not like that everywhere.

Re: Easy enough

I've spent the past 30 minutes trying to make heads or tails of what you wrote and how it relates to the IANA/ICANN debacle. I don't get it, and it is quite simply not happening. Not without copious amounts of psychoactive intoxicants that aren't suitable for a Tuesday during a four day work week.

At least I can't find a way to relate the supposed "Agnostic Farmer" (which I've heard before from a Jewish Chaplain while damned near in the geographic center of a very Muslim country, so go figure) toward internet governance.

Re: Special Forces

Keep in mind, the Special Forces only recruit men that are Specialists who are promotable (E-4P) or Sergeants (E-5) with one exception that I'm not at all sure that the Army's doing anymore, where you enlist as an 18X Special Forces Candidate, go to Fort Benning for Infantry OSUT or Fort Leonard Wood for Combat Engineer OSUT, do Airborne School at Fort Benning, and then go to Fort Bragg for Special Forces Assessment and Selection and the Q Course. It takes two years of very specialized classroom training at the DLIFLC in California after you pass selection and the Q course also, and thats the part that kept me out of SF. I have a very hard time learning to speak foreign languages.

The attrition rate is like 70% overall for them. Other Special Operations Forces (this is a distinct thing from Special Forces, in the Army SOF is everything from 1SFOD-D to Orange to Det-A/39th Special Forces Detachment, the 75th Ranger Regiment, to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment to Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations, but also includes the Special Forces Command) have higher washout rates actually. I've heard of Delta not selecting anyone in the past for instance.

Special Forces and most SOF also get several other types of pay and allowances that DFAS isn't listing on the basic pay chart, like Hazardous Duty/forward area pay, Airborne Pay, Language pay, Basic Allowance for Subsistence, Basic Allowance for Housing, and some others.

Content recognition, and contextual/cultural analysis is extremely difficult for a computer to do on its own. Sometimes you really have to have someone fluent or from the culture in question to pick up on what's really being said.

But shifting all of the translation and some analysis work to a computer, even if it was possible (which it isn't, at least not yet) would be a nightmare for everyone involved. It'd just add another layer of Male Bovine Feces to work through but one that's completely unresponsive. I can tell you with near 100% certainty that it would also seriously piss off the voice and non-voice collectors who are hanging their asses out in some very hot places a lot of times to get the linguists and analysts their product. You have to be able to talk to the analysts if they or you have questions, and you can't do that with some dumb-ass computer. And I can see that kind of extra bullshit getting people killed.