Posts by heyrick 6637 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Dec 2009
To be fair, though, the average modern operating system won't fit in a 16K ROM, or a hundred pages of fanfold paper.
It's just a shame that modern fast connectivity has so quickly been translated into a "push it out the door and fix the problems later" method of software development.
The icon is appropriate.
Many many years ago, I wrote code. A specification was written for us by somebody who sort of understood the problem, but nothing about the application of that to a computer. That was supposed to be our job, to take the spec and make it code.
Only, it wasn't. Our job, it transpires, was to take the spec extremely literally and make it code. An example I remember was a set of values that were multiplied by powers of two. I forget the reason, index offset maybe? But it was basically a calculation that the sixteen bit processor could do as a simple arithmetic shift. But no. The spec said that the value had to be multiplied, so a costly multiplication routine needed to be invoked. But we couldn't write one because we already had an even costlier multiplication routine that worked with fixed point numbers. So, yes, we took a value and converted it to fixed point and multiplied it and converted it back. Hundreds of machine cycles for something that ought to have been one instruction.
Why? Because the spec said so and some asshole manager wasn't going to accept any deviation from the spec. NONE.
The project was full of stuff like that, and arguments between the programmers (I was just a junior keyboard monkey) and the manglement were common. And since the higher ups understood their sycophants and not us, we were overruled every single time. I left before the project was anywhere near finished (and already late) and it was an utter piece of shit. Bloated, slow, horrific. Nobody wanted to put their name to it. But, alas, it completely followed the spec. The spec written by somebody barely competent to use a pocket calculator.
Suffice to say, I took a completely different career path. Pays less than a developer, sure, but less stress and I got to meet some interesting people. Best discussion I ever had with somebody was working as a carer in a nursing home with this excited old lady jumping up and down about as much as possible in a wheelchair. Why? Official secrets was up, she helped bust the Enigma and had been waiting a lifetime to talk about it. And she did. Utterly fascinating how it worked and the methods used to reverse engineer something just by looking at the encoded messages.
I don't regret my decision, but I do regret that once upon a time people were valued for their skills. Writing code, running an effective ward (in a hospital), being a blacksmith... and somewhere along the line we all accepted these total and utter losers to come along, call themselves fancy titles, tell us all what to do. They don't have a bloody clue. I bet you could randomly fire at least half the management from any company and when the shock settles down, you'd realise that they weren't actually that necessary and maybe just maybe the workers would be more effective by not having people that don't understand their job telling them how to do their job, and of course (especially in high concentration jobs like programming) not having to stop everything mid morning for yet another stupid fucking "update" meeting where everybody is brought together to say where they are different to yesterday, or the day before that. It doesn't help the programmers, it doesn't help the other workers, it's only done in order to make the management feel like they are important.
They are the reason we're all screwed. People worship the guy with the big desk and the company car.
And the people that can actually do the work? Diminishing, mostly due to the actions of the aforementioned parasites.
Ideas of insurrection isn't the point.
It's ideas of insurrection egged on by the outgoing President who refuses to accept the result of a properly held election.
Note the part in italics and especially the part in bold. Any idiot can have delusions of ousting a government they see as corrupt and illegitimate (and they will, of course, fail). That the guy currently in charge is the ringleader makes it an entirely different situation.
Entirely.
Different.
"Note how much Bezos net worth has increased during this tragic outbreak"
Could that possibly be because his empire mails out stuff, which is kind of useful when places are on lockdown and most of the shops are shut?
There are two sectors that really ought to be doing spectacularly right now - internet mail order, and video conferencing.
Brick and mortar shops? Not so much. I think here (France) the restaurants that don't support takeaway have been closed more than open in the past year. We never had an "eat out to help out" policy because even the dimmest politician understood that stuffing a lot of people into enclosed spaces for lengthy durations (the average restaurant meal is what, an hour?) during an ongoing pandemic was a really dumb idea. Still, I do wonder how many will reopen when the dust settles and we can put the chaos behind us.
"What folks don't agree on is the science behind masks"
Personal sample of one here, but I've been out and about as sparingly as possible and worn a mask in all public places, plus the hand washing. Not only have I not contracted the virus (thankfully), I have also not had the winter flu or any cold. Usually the flu gets me for about a week and I have two or three rounds of cold. So, I'm not complaining about wearing a mask, nor others doing likewise.
As for the utility of masks, try an official source and not whatever shit turns up on social media: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html
"lockdowns and other draconian measures supported by politicians"
I doubt that politicians would trash their own country's economies, risk huge unemployment, and likely make their party unelectable for decades without a damn good reason behind it. Here in France we came out of second lockdown into a country wide curfew (was 8pm-6am, is now 6pm-6am in parts over in the east) because it was obvious that the full liberation after the first lockdown meant that the infection rates, that were under control, shot right back up again. So they're trying something different to try to keep things contained without diving straight into another lockdown. In this way we can all attempt to have some semblance of a life while this problem continues.
Of course, it isn't helped by fuckwits having a booze filled rave, or the devout deciding to defy proximity restrictions and pack themselves into churches...
When all British citizens of majority age have the right and ability to vote, it is democratic.
When you start cherry picking who can and cannot vote, for whatever reason, it's no longer democratic.
The referendum was the latter, not the former. Repeating the "democratic vote" mantra does not make it so, any more than the orange idiot over the way saying the election was "stolen" makes it so.
While that is true, there's a big difference between "here's a book with twenty thousand people indexed by name, good luck"...
...and "This young brunette is Jessica, she's out for her morning run, this is her route. She lives at 6 Skylark Lane. She's single, has two cats, and plays the cello" (the additional details easily gleaned by following links to social media profiles, etc).
I can understand not allowing new .EU registrations or renewals to Brits, but to revoke something paid for and set up like this just seems like throwing toys out of prams. Plus the fact that they have unilaterally changed the rules three times now must surely make one wonder about the validity of anything that has been agreed to (and paid for).
Frankly, this shames EURid.
(written by a Brit living in France who moved to a .eu domain following the clusterfuck that is Brexit)
I'm a heavy touchpad user, to the point where I feel I can do more, quicker, with a touchpad than a regular mouse. It does need setting up correctly though.
Never got on with the nipple, the pointer seemed to go everywhere except where I actually wanted it to.
I have a friend that hates all of that and uses a roller ball.
I guess pointing devices are like pens. Different types to suit different people. As long as the nipple/touchpad can be disabled as appropriate, then at least here you have a choice...
iOS users far lower risk, specifically compared to Samsung mobile owners
I kind of understand why they favour Apple owners, but what's with Samsung? As opposed to, say, somebody with a lower end phone or Huawei or something?
Users with their full or partial name in their email address and/or business name are consistently lower risk (free and crap email providers are a bad sign, it specifically mentions Yahoo accounts as a bad indicator)
Oh dear. They get my Yahoo address specifically because it's easy to set up (and remove) disposable addresses. Oh, wait, you think I'm going to be handing out my private email address? Did that when the web was young, got burned when the autospam came along. Now my private address is exactly that, private.
Customers who arrived at the bank website via searching on a price comparison site are lower risk Customers who arrived at the bank website via clicking on paid ads are higher risk
Says all you need to know about the value of advertising there, doesn't it? How about arriving at the site by looking it up on Google?
Users with high qty of spelling mistakes and ALL CAPS in loan applications are bad news for risk
Yeh. Oi kun unnerstan dat.
People who buy things online 11am-6pm are lower risk than people who buy things 11pm to 6am
What about 6pm to 11pm? Because, you know, some of us have to go to work. But, sure, buying something at 5am does rather scream of "tail end of a late night gaming session at 'my place'" (translation: basement of parents house).
It's utterly pointless. In another forum in another place, somebody gave a "friend of a friend" quote to make a clone of the RISC OS UI running under FreeDOS (why? long story) of 3000 hours at $125 per hour. Quick calculation puts that at a little under two years full time and a third of a million dollars. Which is obviously bullshit for something that can't actually work and will just lookee-likee.
So I'm having a crack at writing a copy of the Arthur desktop pretty much for the hell of it. Never written a WindowManager before, and doing it from the ground up is insane, but it's an interesting exercise in discovering solutions to stuff that I've never really considered before. Only spent a few hours on it, but it can draw basic windows and move them around the screen with the mouse dragging either the title bar or the resize button. So, it's coming along.
I'll be honest though, I've cloned the necessary parts of the BGI library so I can write the code under RISC OS, then just build the DOS version from that with DOSbox.
Still, it's something to do that keeps me away from Netflix and a large tub of chocolates...
Primary device - older Firefox on Android (with paranoid blocking).
Secondary device - NetSurf on RISC OS.
Tertiary device - even older Firefox on XP (it's a rescued box for when I need Windows, never saw the point of upgrading to anything newer).
Search history? I'm playing about with something in TurboC right now "for the hell of it" so various searches related to nerdy crap like DOS int calls and which port to fiddle with to detect VSync.
I read The Register, The Guardian, and xkcd.
I'm not employed in IT. I do this for amusement (so don't bother telling me TurboC is a billion years out of date, I'm aware of that, but for something to run on 16 bit DOS, it's just the ticket).
And my credit rating is: FAIL, get a life.
The thing is, control can always rest with the user. I run blocking, because there's no way in hell I'm going to let random sites pull in random scripts and rubbish from elsewhere.
The rule is quite simple. Sometimes (rarely) I see a little textual advert from Google. I can ignore it. But those sites that scream about how much harm I'm causing by not allowing them to get third parties touting junk? Well, I'm about to harm them even more. Goodbye.
When advertisers think it is okay to toss random APKs at me, and attempt to debit my phone bill internet purchasing (there's a good reason that is disabled), it is malware and theft. Are the site owners who provided links to this going to step up and compensate me (and everybody else)? Or are they going to deny responsibility because third party...?
Yeah. Exactly. So they can all fuck right off. When I no longer have the choice to block, I'll take a third option, I just won't visit those sites.
If the service user sets up a spending limit, then that limit is to be respected. Automatic upgrades and email notifications of such should only be possible by explicit opt-in, because there's a hell of a difference between seven and seventy thousand.
The way it is currently set up (heavily benefiting the service provider, note) just sounds like a scam, like the sort of crap mobile operators used to pull (here's your free data allocation, going over will cost you €10 per megabyte and we will notify you by SMS at some random time afterwards). Or the infamous roaming charges. The law put a stop to that nonsense. As it should automatic service upgrading as demonstrated by this article
"Also, I'm vehemently against it."
Twat.
So the virus that we could have stood a chance at dealing with will linger on and on in places that don't have the resources to cough up money for a large populace or refuse to send for bullshit political reasons, until the point where it mutates (again) and comes and bites us all on the arse.
How does that help anybody? The virus doesn't care about the colour of your skin, how you vote, or what religion you believe in.
Make the vaccine available to everybody and then we'll only need to worry about those bloody anti-vaxxers.
"Demands for payment, threats of court and bailiff action?"
I've received a few over the years. Hit delete after the first sentence. Same for emails from the bank. Anything important must come by post on headed paper. Any such crap by email will be ignored, which considering I didn't owe money in another country or have an account at HSBC is exactly what all those emails were - crap.
You say that in 2020?
Frankly, all little green men crawling out of the megalith would do is ignite a long and bitter argument as to whether or not we were "right" to depict aliens as humanoid shape.
The aliens themselves would be uninteresting...after this year...
"I am starting to think that I need to try and avoid bying anything chinese."
This ridiculous pantomime glosses over the fact that China is the world's warehouse. Most of the PPE doing the rounds, all the fruity shininess, actually most things with a plug attached, a lot of clothing that isn't from Bangladesh...
Good luck avoiding "Made in China", and to be honest, can we say that America is actually any better?
"what methods did the British have to hide their communication from the Germans during the war"
Obfuscation and contradictory messages. Those in the know would know which was valid, to others it would look like nobody was in charge.
Subtle non verbal message passing, as has already been mentioned, playing certain pieces of music at certain times of the day.
Then the Americans brought in the ultimate encryption device - a dude that spoke Navajo.
Over here in France, not only is their no obligation to provide any guaranteed access to emergency services via VoIP lines, the average DSL box takes several minutes to boot up (should the power be interrupted).
And, guess what, they want to get rid of all of the traditional phones and push everything through VoIP.
Yup. In a month or so my current contract runs out and will need renewal. That's the time I can pick up a reasonable phone discounted.
I'm currently looking at a Samsung S10, after hitting gsmarena and looking at the specs. No 3.5mm jack? Next!
On rainy weekends, I listen to music and/or watch movies. The battery in my Bluetooth headphones runs for the 3ish hours it takes to do the mowing. It's not up to a Sunday of doing Sweet Fanny Adams. Or listening in bed when I can't sleep (ear buds so I can lie on my side). The jack socket is non negotiable. No socket, no interest, end of discussion.
"What the argument being made in the article assumes is that authorisation is a binary condition - i.e. it must either be absent or it must be unconditional."
Yeah, I was reading that and thought of Edward Snowden. I mean, the "you gave me access so I can do whatever the hell I like" angle really wouldn't fly, so why should it be any different just because the guy is a cop?
He has been given access. Part of that is being trusted to use that access (and information) correctly within the necessary capacities of performing his job. Hawking off info for a bit of cash on the side is neither part of the job or making legitimate access to the information.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
