Posts by Chris Miller

Why open port 9100?

Even the cheapest routers don't expose port 9100 by default, so people must have made a decision to do so and have the technical smarts (hardly difficult, but beyond 90% of the population) to implement it. I would have thought (clearly incorrectly) that anyone capable of doing this deliberately would consider the consequences - rather like walking around with a large 'kick me' notice pinned to your back.

It goes to show that, no matter how dumb the security vulnerability, you can always find thousands of examples with a simple Internet search.

Weirdly, while my OneDrive was stuck on 'Signing on' most of the morning (now back to normal), downstairs the missus (using the same public IP, obvs) was fine.

I know folks in the US who live in a rural community where no-one locks their doors - theirs isn't the sort of place where you get many 'strangers'. Not everyone lives in large cities.

My gaff, my rules

Which bit are you not understanding, Jules? The door's over there, BTW.

Mark Zuckerberg spending months “wooing” the Lib Dem has-been

Did this 'wooing' involve waving increasingly thick bundles of currency under his nose? Out here in the real world, there's quite a varied vocabulary to cover this type of 'wooing' and for the individuals involved in it.

I can imagine that in 20 years there could be largely autonomous drones. But replacing the grunts on the ground with machines will require some currently unimagined breakthrough in energy storage (or micro-generation). A T-3000 trailing a power cord a kilometre in length ain't going to win the next war.

"People want free apps that help them do what they want and need to do – without spying on them,"

FTFY

'Free' stuff comes with a price. If you're lucky it will just be the occasional advert popping up; if you're unlucky, it will involve selling information about your usage of the app to an unknown third party. Most people seem fairly happy with such arrangements, but if you think there's a massive pent-up demand for paid-for stuff without these drawbacks, emulate Sir Tim and get coding. Maybe this time next year you'll be a billionaire ... but A hae ma doots.

Having glanced at the report, it's not clear what it's measuring. What happened to AMSIX, for instance?

The reverse problem exists, too

Languages with only two genders (e.g. French) may be mistranslated into English using a gendered pronoun - he or she, when a native English speaker would use 'it'. I come across this both in Google translate and in use by native French speakers. It makes it obvious that the person or machine doing the translation isn't fully fluent, but it hardly gets in the way of making sense of what is being said.

Even if some security guru comes up with a magic way to make internet voting 100% secure, it will still be a very bad idea, because (unlike making an X in the privacy of the voting booth) there's no way to stop someone from standing behind the voter with either a baseball bat or a big wad of cash to ensure they vote the 'right' way. For the same reason, postal votes should be permitted only for very good reasons, not just as a way of increasing turnout figures.

Where did all those Emergent Trends go? Have they passed through the Plateau, or just passed on?

I reckon they've just Sublimed.

August 1990 broke all sorts of UK records for high temperatures. I was responsible for mainframe systems across two locations, both with well-specified (we thought) aircon units. We started getting over temperature alarms from the backup system, and when we checked we found that temperatures in the sun on the roof (the computer room was in the basement of a multistory office block) were pushing 50C. As a result the heat exchangers were actually heating the water coming from the machine room rather than cooling it.

Fortunately this was on a Friday afternoon, and though we had a hectic weekend sourcing additional aircon (like hens' teeth, because of the high temps across the country), but the weather had broken by Monday. (We sunsequently replaced the 'dry' heat exchangers on the roof with 'wet' ones that use water evaporation to provide additional cooling.)

Also notable was Ellison’s 1969 novella A Boy and his Dog, about a mind-reading hound and his human buddy in an post-apocalyptic cannibal future after World War 4. In 1975 it was made into a film with Don Johnson playing the lead role - worth watching if you’re entertained watching an actor trying to emote.

It's an unmemorable film, but I thought the point of the novella is the emotionless 'boy', who [spoiler alert] asked to choose between his dog and his new girlfriend chooses the dog (it doesn't end well for the girlfriend).

"O2 customers are the slowest to upgrade their phones, despite being the first to decouple the hire purchase of the phone from the airtime."

I'm with O2, paying only for airtime because I don't need (or want to pay for) a new phone every 24 months.

Testing?

We've heard of it!

Gosh

You mean legislators have no understanding of the technology they're legislating about?

#sayitaintso

AFAIK, the 'stopping distances' chart in the UK 'Highway Code' hasn't changed since the first edition* - when a typical family saloon had drum brakes, operating on cross-ply tires a few inches wide.. There's no reason for the 'thinking distance' to change, but the braking distance really ought to be around half (or, more accurately, the assumed rate of deceleration should be doubled).

* It certainly hasn't changed since I took my test nearly 50 years ago.

Back in the day, our Supreme Head of Information Technology arrived from the States, but forgot to bring the power brick for her laptop. Instead of ringing the helpdesk, she decided to borrow a lead from hotel reception. Luckily it fitted; unluckily it was for a hairdryer and delivered 240V AC rather than 6V DC. I'd never seen a component physically blown off the motherboard before!

Obligatory Dilbert. (From more than 20 years ago, nothing changes!)

In case anyone's wondering why they chose Bucks, Westcott was (until the mid-90s) a secret government rocket development site with all sorts of test-stands and control rooms. The venture park now occupying the former WW2 airfield is already home to several developers of private sector rocket engines, including SABRE.

Our French friends need to get with the programme - we're building a United States of Europe, whether its people want it or not. No-one in California protests against a business incorporating in Delaware, a choice normally made for financial reasons rather than for the beautiful weather in Dover. This is a dispute as to whether the democratically elected government of a country is allowed to set its own taxes. And, if you don't like the answer 'no', then you can always leave.

The only purpose of an oil pressure gauge was to let you know you were running out. This was in the good old days when all cars leaked oil, some in copious quantity others less so. But when did you last see a modern car with an oil leak*?

* No, Land Rover Defenders don't leak oil, they just like to mark their territory.

The DP manager's secretary complained that erroneous characters kept appearing in her documents. She was a well-endowed young lady, and we deduced that the keyboard was being depressed by parts of her anatomy that nature had not intended for such a purpose ...

I thought transportation to NSW ended in the 1860s ... oh, sorry, misread the headline.