Posts by Scott Wheeler 113 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Sep 2007
RECOVER
Sounds safe, doesn't it? Just the sort of thing that should be the matching command for BACKUP under MS/DOS. What it actually does is delete any directory information, then reconstruct what files it can as FILE0000 to FILE0127 in the root directory. You had more than 128 files? Well now you haven't.
Later than most of these stories: I needed to acquire some image data in real time (photon by photon, recording the positions) from some lab equipment in the early 80's. This needed a big flat memory space on an 80386 PC, and at the time there were few ways of doing it. I ended up using OS/2 1.0. That was pretty much "half an operating system" at the time, as important stuff like the GUI were not yet supplied, but that didn't matter for me - I just wrote my own simple GUI. The problem was that I had to swap bits around in the coordinate information provided over incoming ribbon cables, and I needed to do this at about 200k events per second. There wasn't enough oomph in a 386/25, so I just used a box of wire-wrap.
That did the job fine, and I got on with the research which was the point of the exercise. The problem was that OS/2 1.0 had been designed to be compatible with an 80286 processor (ask your grandparents) and the way some of the memory handling changed when they moved to OS/2 1.1 - at least that's how I remember it. Anyway, the wire-wrap was not compatible with OS/2 1.1. Didn't matter to me - I just stuck with 1.0 and carried on taking readings. But when I left I occasionally got calls from new students proposing upgrading the operating system to something modern. I'd point them at the big box of grey spaghetti that would need to be rewired - and wait for the next generation of students to make the same call.
Lyons, the tea-shop chain, build the first commercial computers, initially to handle supply chain logistics. Even before they build the LEO machines they were using decimal pounds for internal accounting, and putting lobby money into the decimalisation campaign.
In some industrial context I use error messages like "Pink giraffe - there is a timeout on the doffer on line 3 in the gate area". Users don't always have the time or resources to write an error message down, so the conversation is something like:
"Was there an error message?"
"Yes"
"What did it say?"
"Dunno. You're the techie, figure it out."
"Was there anything about an animal?"
"Yeah, some idiot said something about a pink giraffe!"
"Ta"
There are already "monitor" apps which use the phone as the amplifier and frequency response corrector. I occasionally use them with my motorcycle helmet (fitted with speakers, or using wired earplugs) to avoid taking the helmet off in bad weather. However the problem is the latency. It's acceptable when the direct channel is blocked by ear plugs, but otherwise you hear the direct sound, followed a fraction of a second later by the amplified sound. That doesn't work for conversation.
I've used that one for recruitment. It's a simple enough protocol that you can hand someone the RFC and set them a test that requires them to read and understand. It was a while back, but I seem to remember there was a bug in the standard so you had to be careful designing the exercise so as not to use that bit of the standard.
They do exist, yes. Alternatively you might look at Unicomp keyboards. Apparently they bought the designs and tooling from IBM. I have a Model M that I bought about 15 years back. That one has a PS/2 interface, so I use a converter, but their modern ones are USB. The disadvantage as always is the sheer noise of the thing. I had to give up using it in an office because of the complaints and I prefr a Das Keyboard these days - however that is lighter and not dished, so the Unicomp keyboards would probably be better for you.
Character 10 could mean drop down to the next line at the same character position, as you say. It could also mean feed a line and return the carriage - either were permitted by the ISO standard for teletypes. IBM used character 15 to do the same two jobs. But that misses the main point: these are printer or teletype codes, and there is no particular reason why the OS should use the convention of one variety of printer internally. These days we would use device drivers to abstract that away, and even in early Unix, there were ways of removing that device dependence. Which is obvious, if you think about it, otherwise printers wouldn't have worked with Unix.
I think the flat Earth response to point 1 is that the Earth is not a planet, and planets and stars are close and small. As to point 2 - some of them don't believe in gravity, and think that the flat Earth is in uniform acceleration, so "down" is in the same direction everywhere.
I believe the theory is that 5G is used to control the virus rather than to produce it, and that the virus is produced in labs in China controlled by Bill Gates / Soros / Barack Obama / the US Democratic party / probably Prince Andrew as well by now.
No, I have no idea what "control" would constitute in this context. But I'd love to know how to fit a low-GHz aerial in to a virus.
Chef is potentially useful. I sometimes draw simple Gantt charts when I'm cooking multiple things, and they could perhaps be produced automatically from Chef specifications. Even add in a bit of blur so that you're not unloading five pots and pans at the same time.
A 50/50 mix of acetone and ATF (automatic transmission fluid) is the best I've used. You need to make a new batch every so often, as the acetone evaporates even from a chemical wash-bottle.
For soaking components, diesel is good as it's cheap and a pretty good penetrating oil.
Realistically, the Gemini does not support Linux. Yes, it's possible to install it, but some key features do not work and Planetcom's idea of "support" is that someone out there in the Linux community will get things running eventually. Very disappointing if you actually want a Linux device - it's really just an Android PDA.
You can't convert hp in to kW. These are not "bhp", i.e. brake horsepower, measured on a dynometer. They are "taxable horsepower" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_horsepower), calculated from the bore (not the stroke!) and number of cylinders of the engine according to a standard formula. My modern 1200 Triumph motorcycle would have 13.5hp according to this formula, but is claimed to develop 135bhp.
> Shouldn't be anyone who is not experienced or at least not willing/eager to dive deeper into linux using something like Debian. For those folks anyway this specific thing mentioned in the article is a non issue to begin with.
No - this presumably affects Ubuntu and other distros downstream of Debian.
apt supports HTTPS (by changing the URLs in /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*). However that doesn't mean that the web servers ("apt data sources") that those URLs point to actually implement HTTPS. Certainly the default servers for Ubuntu for a UK user do not support HTTPS.
I haven't heard of it either. Also the version numbers for BIND are odd. The latest number that ISC offers for download (https://www.isc.org/downloads/bind/) is 9.12.3-P1 - earlier than this article speaks of. I run an Ubuntu server (version 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu is current), so I looked at the Ubuntu packages that ISC offers. Again, the latest version is 9.12.3.P1.
I am not familiar with https://dnsflagday.net, or whether they are actually authoritative. However announcing a flag day two weeks out for which the sw they say is mandatory has not yet been released seems very strange.
If APIs can be patented, there is no obvious reason why this would be restricted to application libraries, rather than including things like the API or ABI of operating systems. Linux was designed as a work-alike for Unix, and this could imply that the entity holding the copyright for Unix would be able to shut Linux down. It is not entirely clear who that is at the moment - either Micro Focus International, or our old friends SCO.
> I've heard of people asking for a bigger mouse mat because with their
> small one their pointer can't reach the whole screen.
Well what's wrong with that? Would you want to spend all day lifting your mouse and re-placing it under the circumstances? Yes, you know that it's possible to "gear up" the mouse movements. They don't, so a larger mouse mat is a reasonable solution from their point of view. And since it would actually work, what's the problem?
> As a bonus, there is a summary of the privacy considerations contained in the technical document above.
Thanks - this is exactly what we needed to see. So to summarise the document: the device is not registered with any network until an accident occurs. This is more stringent than not having a data connection open: the device will not have a way to receive incoming calls, data or SMS. [This should preclude its use for bugging or tracking, including use by insurance or road-use based taxes]. The device will not retain more data than is necessary to establish the current position and the direction of travel - older data will be discarded. All of this being subject to possible change in the final requirement.
In summary, it seems to be designed with privacy in mind, and to be resistant to abuse by state agencies. While I would rather not have one, this appears to be a Germanic product - safety conscious, and also very cautious about the potential for mis-use.
> You would simply find that an Apple device is all but unusable if you deny it the chance to phone home with a far more comprehensive set of personal data.
No it isn't - that's exactly what I do, using Little Snitch. In any case, Macs don't do MITM attacks on HTTPS sessions. They are far from perfect, but on both Windows and Mac it's still usually possible to prevent sw phoning home.
However I do agree with you that a Mac will attempt to phone home much more than I am happy with.
> Wrestling a V10 down a motorway seems an utterly pointless exercise, and on a racetrack it would be doubly so due to bends.
The bike was build by Adam Millyard a few years back. As with all his bikes, it's a real road-going bike, not a design freak. I've seen him ride it down single track road to the West Hagbourne bike night. It's a lot more practical than the donor Viper car. The fact that it does 207mph is neither here not there.
You'd probably prefer his latest creation, the Flying Millyard, a 5L V-twin minimally based on a big aircraft radial. It's hard-tailed, has manual mixture and advance/retard, and requires kick-starting - which I've seen him do. Or is that removing too much complication and weight for your taste?
Al fazed:
The computer is a Mac (i.e. Macintosh) not a MAC. The company is Apple, not MAC. Given this level of knowledge, perhaps you'll understand if I ask for a source for your assertion that:
> thousands of users and administrators contacting MAC tech support asking for help with, what turned out to be .... a virus.
Are you perhaps thinking of other forms of malware, such as a Trojan?
As far as I know, RIPA was not justified on the basis of counter-terrorism. It's simply there to define which authorities can require interception, and what authorisation they require for it - and this has always included use for criminal investigation. A RIPA-type law was clearly needed as prior to that it was ambiguous who had the right to intercepts, which could lead to abuse. Of course it's possible to argue that it permits interception too easily (and I would agree with this), but that doesn't argue against the need to define the legal framework for interception.
You have to use Microsoft's Skydrive on the Mac version - no way avoid your content going on to their servers. I can't use it for this reason. While I prefer OneNote on the PC to Evernote, at least Evernote allows local storage.
Mac OneNote also missing a significant amount of other stuff which I happen to use - for instance the "Print to OneNote" function has gone. On a PC I'm in the habit of printing large docs to OneNote, putting the image in the background, then writing notes over the top. This won't be used by everyone, but it was important to me.
> Basic nukes aren't hard. They require zero engineering experience (for a gun-type nuke.)
Ok, that means you need U235. Do you know of an easy way to get that?
Do you need an initiator for your design? What will you make it of, and how large is it?
What is your critical mass? What amount of explosive do you need in the gun to avoid a squib explosion? Is there any danger of the explosive shattering the uranium that it is propelling?
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