Posts by Richard 26

Re: CVE-2022-29972

CVE numbers aren't sequential, starting at 1. Big outfits like Microsoft are authorized to issue their own CVE numbers and have a range allocated to them.

Re: Yay for the link to the article.

"That's the first rookie error - second is not suing for defamation in the UK. That's where the big bucks are, and our lawyers will take anyone's money as they've been keen to demonstrate over the previous decades."

That used to be true; however the Defamation Act 2013 moved the balance more in favour of the defendant, making 'libel tourism' harder (amongst other things).

And in 2015 the US passed a law making UK libel judgements unenforceable.

Re: Ethernet turned out to become the network winner

Ethernet does not scale is largely IBM FUD, trying to persuade people that there were good reasons to prefer their more expensive 4Mb/s system to 10Mb/s Ethernet.

Words like 'deterministic' get tossed around, conveniently ignoring the fact that it is only achievable on a LAN with a BER of 0. As soon as you accept the possibility of random noise corrupting a bit, determinism goes out the window.

Some theoretical studies of ALOHA have the performance tending to 1/e, which at 37% is remarkably convenient for token-pushers. However, ALOHA isn't CSMA/CD.

It's true to some extent that in ridiculously worst-case scenarios e.g. 1000s of nodes on the same collision domain, all constantly sending minimum size packets Ethernet starts to break down.

(Digression: For Gigabit Ethernet 802.3 specified a somewhat complex half-duplex mode because the idea of publishing an Ethernet standard without it was too contentious). When (I think) precisely nobody developed a half-duplex 'repeater' later standards dropped it entirely)

So what I am going to do is what I usually do at this point, which is to refer you to the classic WRL paper - Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality (Boggs et al). RIP David.

Re: Ursula Le Guin

"Why do people keep leaving out the K ?"

Probably because her publishers often do.

Re: it's 2020

Well yes, because they committed the offence before GDPR came in. You don't apply laws retrospectively, it's a serious abuse of power.

Re: Six Earthsea books

I would recommend leaving a gap of twenty or so years after reading the first three Earthsea books, before reading the rest of the series. It doesn't pay to rush things.

Re: Prescient

I thought it was more like CA: a residential home where you can pay premium prices for your aging software to be mistreated by indifferent support staff.

'IT, for a bank, should not be regarded as a cost centre, but rather as their core business asset.'

The thing to do is to not let the beancounters take over in the first place; then you don't have to waste your time arguing you're a special case.

Re: Read your links much?

...or even the SMT problems we talked about with Skylake last month: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/25/intel_skylake_kaby_lake_hyperthreading/

Chips have bugs, film at 11. Might be worth seeing if AMD can patch this bug in microcode (assuming it is their fault). You'll be a long time waiting for a faultless chip of this complexity though.

Re: Underscore?

They are legal in general in DNS, just not in hostnames. It's a hostname, therefore not legal; although probably not a client's job to reject them (be liberal in what you accept, and all that).

Re: Umm...

No extra cost because the outsourced suppliers just aren't the kind of people who do the minimum their contract will let them get away with.

Re: "pushing LGBTQI"

LGBTQIA, do keep up! I think the A was for Alien.

‘Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.’ is a saying by Napoleon Bonaparte.

It's a saying often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte but it's doubtful whether he actually said it.

Re: I first met him at Stanford ...

@ Graham Cunningham

jake is the Register's version of Forrest Gump. Whatever it was, he was there. This story is more plausible than most though.

Re: Such a pessimistic bunch

OTOH, there was a few times when I engaged the docking computer after a long mission, gone for a break, and found it making a hopeless mess of the final approach. Even in Elite, the docking computer wasn't foolproof.

Re: There is a simple solution

"and that is go and get the stuff for youself. Even go to other supermarkets. It isn't the end of the world."

It isn't the end of the world but it is annoying to be stuck in waiting for a delivery that doesn't arrive. And your delivery is probably out on the road somewhere, so you can't cancel it. Twitter is a useful tool, not because your groceries are terribly important in the great scheme of things but because it's a good way to get corporates' attention when they don'thave enough staff to answer the damn phone.

Re: Price googing?

Going through the filing a bit: they have 40 000 students, and what Microsoft are saying is effectively "feel free to renew for another year". That works out at about $60 p.a. each, which is about what an Office 365 subscription costs. You would have thought they would have got a better discount but OTOH there are other unspecified items.

Re: "far right" is a misnoma

"It seems being unable to spell misnomer is the least of your worries."

I'm sure it comes after "trying to reproduce the transporter accident that brought him here from the mirror universe".

Re: No.

Closed on January 29, 2016 apparently.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritas_Technologies

Carlyle Group: https://www.carlyle.com/media-room/news-release-archive/carlyle-group-closes-veritas-acquisition

Veritas: https://www.veritas.com/news-releases/2015-12-21-symantec-and-the-carlyle-group-plan-to-close

Re: Quarantined *signed* files?

You have a good point but it's not as if compromised certificates and signed malware doesn't happen.

Re: Is an Australian even allowed to run for Parliament?

According to the parliament site: "A citizen of a commonwealth country who does not require leave to enter or remain in the UK, or has indefinite leave to remain in the UK".

So he might be eligible but more likely he is on a visa, which would have expired by now.

Re: All the cost of a juicer at considerably more of the price (HP printer business model)

In the HP model, a firmware update would make third-party fruit go mouldy.

Re: Its all in the interpretation

"in pursuance of maintaining public safety or the peace" is so vague, that this and almost anything else can be justified by it.

Perhaps. It's still a private company though and despite the italicization, no reasonable person would parse the sentence that way.

Re: Considered Harmful

Niklaus Wirth, actually. That's editors for you ;)

Re: NI number? Why?

It is a requirement that your lifetime dose records are taken. Yes, theoretically you could do it by assigning a separate unique lifetime number that all employers and providers of dosimetry service agree on. In practice, the NI number is it: http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/irp2.pdf

Yes, mine too. Also innumerable henchmen who work in secret underground bases in a volcano will also doubtless have had their name and address disclosed.

"It always has been "innocent until proven guilty", and it has to stay that way, whatever you think of the offence or the people perpetrating it."

Sorry, but your argument is completely misguided. Innocent until proven guilty does not mean the burden of proof is on the prosecution on every point. Plenty of laws operate this way: for example, if the police stop you and ask to see your licence, you don't get to say "prove I don't have one". Likewise if you are speeding and claim it was because of an emergency, the police don't have to prove no emergency existed.

At least it's a real ship and not a fixed installation. Otherwise it would be "Who's on Forth base?"

Re: Alterangular

"To think about it from the other angle, what kind of Doctor would you need to try and counter the Trump/Brexit age?."

Michelle Obama, obvs.

Re: Hmmm

If I paid that much for a horse, I'd expect it to be an invisible one. They are very popular in Korea, or so I'm told.

Re: Kingpin and man-in-the-middle attacks

" I thought 'money laundering' was taking the proceeds of someone elses drug business..."

That is the conventional meaning: however, you are pretty much committing a money laundering offence when you are a) a criminal, and b) using a bank. Or on a bad day just b).

In this case when you are have mules to withdraw the cash it's not even a stretch to add that as a charge.

Re: Ethernet fan out

It's probably ever so slightly late in the day to make this observation but there aren't actually magic spots on the cable where you are allowed to make taps. They are merely there so you don't put them too close together.

They probably have less formal processes in Oz, instead of a full CAB, they just need to get Bruce, Bruce, Bruce and Bruce to sign it off.

Re: Back in September

It's really strange to see Brexiters posting about how much they love EU organizations and how unfair it is that they will no longer be members.

Re: Two years?

"He'd have received a shorter sentence if he had actually beaten up the guy"

He'd have received a shorter sentence if he hadn't been a serial offender and committed further offences whilst on bail.

Re: It did not need "reply all"

"Gets Croydon on the map I suppose."

Sadly, Croydon is already on the map at the moment.

Re: Is it just me?

That is more or less what a framework is in procurement speak. Except that the supplier will commit to sell at 25% off list or whatever, and various other terms up front. Google "framework agreement".

Re: Though there is no English crime of "spoofing"

Lawyers for the US argued that whilst there isn't an exact equivalent under UK law, what he did amounted to fraud. The CPS probably couldn't make that stick but that isn't (legally speaking) reason enough not to extradite him.

Extradition ruling here:

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/sarao_extradition_judgment.pdf

"Now we are gonna let heavy machines hurtle along within a few feet or cm of kids walking to school."

They do that already.

It's not such a dumb question. The answer is it really depends whether you what you have now is an ancient VAX from the 80s, or a pile of Itanium blade servers with a few TB of RAM. If the former, you could probably replace it with emulation on a Raspberry Pi, the latter not so much.

The money, such as it is, is with the people who have ported from VAX to Alpha to Itanium and would prefer to move to x64 next, and forget the whole sorry Itanium business. I wish VSI luck - insourcing a product from India, and rehiring the senior engineers that HP laid off to give it some love deserves it.