Posts by Will's

Re: I am thoroughly confused by it all

>The api is the delivery system round the back. It gets the results/feeds in raw materials. It is the simple bit.

Designing a good stable API and underlying data structures is both very difficult to get right, and often restricts the backend coding to a very specific behaviour.

An API shouldn't be "we have some function calls and we made them public", it should be stable, extensible, compatible and decipherable. The sad fact that this is so often overlooked doesn't make it any less important - the same argument is made for documentation.

I think his point is that classic OOP is reduction to absurdity until there is almost nothing left but a bunch of interfaces and some loops - if you could claim that all the function names "were the API" (which is taking things a little far!) then in the OOP world there would be little left but the obvious (which is not patentable because its obvious).

Re: " this is a remarkably ignorant comment."

Indeed, and given that the worm wasn't even meant to break containment, simply wear out the active components faster this is even less of an issue....

Except that, this hacker conference isn't about Stuxnet, it is about a class of attack like Stuxnet.

The fact that Stuxnet was effective because of its total stealth doesn't mean that the next attack might be effective because it takes out a whole gas pipeline destroying the infected machines (and the leccy of half of Europe) in the process. Now that the stealth of the concept isn't key, expect to see escalations.

Thats easy, I set up BenTasker.com, fill it with pictures of you and your personal details. I become the number one site for stalking Ben Tasker, and now, every time you fly I get notified by BA.

@Liam, Re: @Martin

Rounding errors combined with big-LITTLE notation.

Or Date-endianness issues

a kid with a .22 rifle sinking a battleship!

more like designing a space ship with an unshielded exhaust port that led directly to the core reactor.

Re: An alternative solution

No way that would work, metal thieves would have them away in no time.

And students, who could resist owning the "corby" trouser press?

6 = G

>In a non-unionised job, you get on with your job, and if you don't like the conditions, leave to find another.

In a monopoly (NHS) or effective monopoly (one mine for the whole town) this argument doesn't hold water

Well, if all you're tracking is phones asking for authentication from their home network, then no, you don't need them to /want/ to connect to you.

If you are intercepting calls then you'll have to pretend to be from the same company as the target phones contact -but that isn't what is being suggested here

An not All

An ARM licence, Intel has An ARM licence. In the same way as I have an MG, I do not own all versions of MGs - I cannot look under the bonnet of my midget and see the workings of an SV-R.

I'm sure that given enough money Intel /could/ buy an ARM licence of a suitable kind to compete - but in doing that it would verify ARMs claims and trash its high value processor line.

The problem for Intel isn't making chips that go fast, its making large amounts of money per unit - ARM trashes that market.

An interesting question. If VIA devices are in android then VIA must have an ARM licence of a reasonably recent core design - but this may be one of their "black box" designs where arm does the work and the company prints the devices.

Apple have an Architecture team (this is how we knew that they were going to use ARM in mobiles way back when) so they /may/ have designed their chips differently to the ones designed by ARM.

I doubt it though.

The more interesting question is this:

Usually when $company1 sues $ARM_licencee for infringement that happens in the ARM design (see the lawsuits following Java bytecode execution in the ARM926EJS) they take over the lawsuit and defend it for the benefit of all licensees. This prevents a medium size company from bulldozing a small one and setting a legal precedent.

This time, both companies are ARM partners so it will be interesting to see what happens.

1GHz Seriously?

What exactly do you think you'll be running on your embedded micro - SETI?

>Or tablets, which more resemble overgrown mobiles than slimmed down desktops.

If you don't need to respond to data being pushed in then the extra 5 seconds it takes to attach to a router/base station is greatly outweighed by the extra hours you'd spend tethered to a charger - even if the chips are 20x as good.

Resemble a overgrown mobile they might, but always on just isn't sensible for pull data.

>Those pay and display lots aren't really appropriate for this sort of scheme anyway.

Yup, for these you just need the ticket to say where it was brought from to guide you back close enough with no data on the car needed at all

May I introduce you to virtualization and cloud computing.

Vendors such as Citrix, Vmware an Microsoft are in on it, companies such as Rackspace and Amazon are selling it to end users.

indeed

But the reduction of 4 years to 2 years suspended and 100 hours community service will not be as vocally covered by the press, and will be some months after the frenzy has died down.

So message sent to idiots, nothing more to see here and everybody ends up happy

Is teh I in Air still intel?

I thought that Apple had suggested the next air was ARM based.

Will any design be subject to embargo by the courts as passing off though?

Police

I can quite believe that the police might be stamping on heads, but pulling off a thug at the same time. Unlikely.

Or did I parse that wrong?

Assuming that CC is real...

Who wants to take bets on this 10 year reprieve meaning that governments can get their energy policys into a state where we don't all drown when the spots come back?

Anyone? anyone? Buler?

Personally I think the good money is on "pump as much CO2 into the atmosphere until we run out of resources, then hope that the ensueing wars reduce the world population enough that there is still enough land to farm and live on between those remaining"

and who is going to write compilers.....

I bet the Intel made compiler is used /loads/ in Linux servers. Oh sorry, I remember, they use GCC....

Well, I guess they could funnel money at GCC so it totally rules that compiler that ARM uses for compiling Linux, what was that called again?

What were you doing last tuesday at 6.45pm

Nothing to hide here, move along, move along.

Of course, I doubt they keep all that data and use it to track you moving around.

Really? Not even in the logs?

Yes I know, if I had a mobile phone "they" could track me with that, and if I had a clubcard "they" could track everything I brought and correlate against known patterns of tourists. Guess what I have neither of?

Anyways, I'm off to read what my friends are up to on facebook

No user serviceable parts

>When you break down you break down, and a salvage truck will have to come;

Possibly, few of us carry toolkits. But that said, a reasonable understanding can help make sure that you don't just keep driving when the temp gauge goes into the red - it isn't that far to work, or that the oil light cam on, but it's ok it comes on 50 miles before you need to put oil in it (both of which I have been personally told)

> there are almost no user-replaceable parts left on modern engines;

> any amateur will need expensive diagnostic kit

Bollocks, although there have been advances the technology of a modern engine is pretty much the same as a 60's 'fix it on sunday' lump, true, the ECU automatically changes some variables but the things that go wrong are usually either 60's tech or the sensors that feed the ECU which are reasonably easy to diagnose if you have some basic understanding of the algorithms.

>to read error codes

a flowchart works just as well

>and tweak injection settings.

OK, you'd need an electronic gadget to do this, but if you need to tweak injection settings then you have done a lot more engine work than just breaking down.

The same mindset is behind "don't touch it, you won't understand it, very complex, give us money" in the IT industry and Automotive, building, plumbing, home electrical.

Learning on the ground

>There have been uncontrolled explosions, makeshift solutions,

>and the possibility, however remote, that something more serious

>could go wrong

I remember when a big oil depot caught fire near that there London - I think you could level the same criticisms there, except that oil polluting the ground and fire is better understood because it happens far more often.

Consider a less lightly disaster.

Deepwater Horizon.

That took months, massive environmental damage.

Experts from all over the world unable to fix the problem as the problem was out of scope.

Wildly varying estimates of oil in the sea.

Food supply destroyed.

Containment on the surface patchy.

So yes, when accidents happen bad things go wrong.

In big uncommon accidents learning happens on the ground, and is written up for others to learn from.

Bloke with the batteries:

I've got the power