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Comment been there done that, educate yourself (Score 2) 79

I've spent time on the difficult end of black-boxing a BINARY file format. You jokers with your XML and LABELS have it faaaaaar too easy. Here, I'll tell you my secret:

Gather as many saved files as you can, from as diverse of a group as possible. (there is NO upper limit, literally grab as many as you can) Write a short little test script to import and then export every single one. Then compare the export with the original. Refer the mismatches to the dev. I had over 1,000 test files in my suite, and in the initial release only a SINGLE flag was missed, because of all those test files, nobody implemented that feature and the dev guessed the storage would be the same as EVERY other one. (it turned out to be quite unique)

Oh and as for XML depth.... it's RECURSION. It literally does not care if it's 5 levels or 200 levels deep. (unless your IDE has a truly pathetic stack size)

So it's not difficult. QYB.

Comment that is of course complete BS (Score 4, Insightful) 60

Unfortunately, since the coding technology that was used in the previous app version is different from what is used in the new app, it is not possible to recover word lists.

Oh it's most definitely possible, but they have no convenient place to put them since users can't login anymore, and so they're just going to label it as "impossible" to get people off their back. (data conversion is relatively easy to do, I do it occasionally)
And if they honestly are saying they think it's "impossible", some PHB is being lied to or there's some severe incompetence afoot.

We might see a class-action for this. It's always risky just "deleting" a "lifetime" service without at least re-branding.

Comment spinning black holes (Score 2, Interesting) 29

Since black holes are considered points in space, and a point can't spin, are they still considering spinning black holes (which is essentially all of them) "ringularities"?

And it would seem that angular momentum is likely to increase with each merger, since they're going to tend to orbit each other in the plane of their spinning? And when they merge, that will add to their angular momentum in that plane?

Lastly, I haven't read any discussions regarding "theoretical limits" to how fast a black hole can spin. Would anyone care to elaborate on that? Are we talking about the event horizon dragging approaching the speed of light? I thought there was nothing that said that SPACE can't move faster than c? (or was that the *expansion* of space?) And wouldn't it just be getting closer and closer to c and not ever getting there anyway? (a problem of limits)

Comment please stop mixing units (Score 1) 74

project off the coast of Scotland has four 1.5-megawatt turbines - enough to power 7,000 homes for a year,

megawatts is a unit of power

powering homes for a year is a unit of ENERGY. (describing megawatt-hours)

If you're comparing those units directly, you don't understand electricity. Like, "your car gets 25 miles per gallon, but I drove MY car 200 miles last week". The comparison doesn't make sense, and you can't draw any conclusions from it.

Comment not really exciting news (Score 2) 21

Apple has been steadily moving their hardware into Vintage and Obsolete over the last SEVERAL decades. When a device hits 5 years old, it turns Vintage, which basically means they don't promise to have all parts available anymore, and some may be restricted to "repairs only, not stocking". At 7 years they turn Obsolete, and Apple sells off their entire inventory of parts. In both cases, Apple retains a small number of parts for repairs in places like California, where manufacturers are legally required to carry parts for longer. (10 years in cali?)

So I don't know if I'd classify this as "news", more like a minor update in an ongoing process. "City fixes another pothole, news at 10." I assume most manufacturers have similar policies, but a lot of them are either secretive or aren't so consistently applied. If anything, Apple's doing a much better job for the consumer, with their very public and consistent policy. Now go and try to find out how long Whirlpool is going to carry parts for your dish washer.

Sidenote: I recall a few rare cases where someone REALLY wanted their old mac repaired, and I asked "do you know anyone in California?" I suggested they ship it to their friend and have them take it to a local apple store to get it fixed. AFAIK that plan worked.

I was also known to, from time to time, order a bunch of a part that was prone to failure just before it crossed into Vintage territory. That way we had parts on-hand to repair a common issue when nobody else did. There were a few parts we never ended up selling, but there were also a few that were like gold, with people driving klong distances to come pick up a part not even Apple had anymore. It was a bit of a guessing game. My manager questioned my stocking the last 23 iMac G5 power supplies Apple was willing to sell us, and it took several years, but we sold our last two to an APPLE STORE 100 miles south of here. We probably should have started marking them up, but we never did.

Comment "It's secure because I said so." (Score 2) 37

The first rule of security is usually "don't make your own". In other words, use existing, tested, verified, trusted code, protocols, and processes. Now if your INTENT is to roll your own, you really do need a lot of peer review. Even if you have a Ph.D in cyber-security and secure coding, you really still need others to take a look at it to see if you missed something. Because EVERYBODY misses something. The attack surface is just too broad to catch every subtle thing on the first run though.

And if some 3rd party hops in and IMMEDIATELY finds a hole (without the benefit of the source to look through) it's virtually guaranteed to have a lot more holes in it just waiting to be zero-day'd.

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