This won’t take long

(only your weekend)

After numerous installs since the Windows 3.11 era I should have known better and not tried the upgrade from Windows 7 to 10. But I do not have a spare machine for a clean install and therefore when the popup assured me that I could upgrade the laptop, I broke my rule:

You never change (upgrade or downgrade) the operating system that came with your laptop. If you do, at least make sure you have a spare machine to do actual work.

That is because laptops come with hardware that is not necessarily recognised by anything else other than drivers supplied by the manufacturer. So if you do change the OS, or even install a “clean” version of it (without all the bloatware that manufacturers package with it) be prepared for stuff not working. Yes, that fingerprint sensor, that 3G modem, the winmodem in the old days and before the linuxant drivers for example.

So anyway I felt brave and went along and tried it. It seemed to go fine. But at 76% the process stalled. And then it failed with DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. Following the suggestion of a friend, I tried the online downloading tool that Microsoft gives to download and / or start the upgrade. It failed to even start. I run it again and built an ISO DVD to have around just in case. But still I was facing the same problem.

I gave it some thought after browsing the Net for a bit and thought that it could be the speed setting switch which I almost always have set to “stamina” and not “speed”. Again at 76% the procedure stalled like forever. I shut down the machine and when I powered it up again the procedure continued. And finished. Yes!

So I browsed around to get a feeling of the system. And then Skype was not working. Fair I thought since my login account was not linked to a Hotmail.com account and maybe after the upgrade this is a mandatory requirement. In the mean time OneDrive installed and update. So let’s reboot and see what happens. And it never rebooted. It stuck on the Windows 10 logo with the balls doing their circles.

So I shut down the machine again. I power it on and it is OK. I backup my data, shut down the VAIO and press the magic “assist” button. Windows 7 with all the bloat that Sony has chosen gets installed on the machine again. About 1h later I start uninstalling stuff. Adobe, McAfee, Office (Trial), SQL Server, Norton go by. SP1 gets installed. 214 updates after SP1 too.

Like the upgrade procedure said: This won’t take long

SysAdmin Day today!

A day in the life of your sysadmin
A day in the life of your sysadmin

Well it is SysAdmin Day today and there will be lots of cheerful happy posts of appreciation. But me, I will be a fun spoiler today and will point you to the most powerful posts that I’ve read this year:

There’s a reason we have these days and it is not necessarily light or funny.

And one more essay for fun and thought.

The Varouhacker

[ Update: Well it is true: Varoufakis OMFIF briefing. ]

I will suspend my belief for a while and will assume that half of this plan is partially true. With regards to hacking his own ministry in order to get data we see that:

[The plan] would allow the creation of a parallel system that could operate if banks were forced to close and which would allow payments to be made between third parties and the state and could eventually lead to the creation of a parallel banking system

I strongly believe that if true, then Varoufakis has read the “Flash Boys” where a bunch of guys set out and created a fair stock market platform. But you know, Flash Boys writes nothing about the implementation details of this. They are left out because they would make the story boring (and would genuinely interest less than 10% of the readers). Which means he cannot even begin to understand the pain of building anything close to this, let alone the effort to direct user support.

The man may be able to capture an audience but understands nothing about implementation.

Wolfgang Pauli: This is to prove that I can paint like Titian. Only the technical details are missing
Wolfgang Pauli: This is to show the world that I can paint like Titian. Only the technical details are missing

But here is another thing:

“You know what? I control the machines, I control the hardware but I do not control the software. The software belongs to the troika controlled General Secretary of Public Revenues. What do I do?”

Whether you read this as having legitimate or illegitimate access to the system (the article is poorly written on this and implies at first that the systems were hacked and they gained control, but the second time it mentions hardware control it reads as legitimate access) I take it that nobody around Varoufakis knew anything about Oracle.

I also take it that Varoufakis and OPSEC are a recipe for disaster.

At the risk of being pedantic I find this to be very poor reporting because of a detail: I can never understand whether said control of the systems was legitimate or a result of the hack; neither V’s words nor the reporter’s make it clear whether unauthorised access has been committed. This is a crucial detail for me. It makes the difference between having people prosecuted or not. However by making the assumption of who the Columbia technologist is, this is legitimate access to the systems, hence no hack.

My SICP story

A cousin from downunder is visiting these days, so I want to talk about a gift he once gave me.

20+ years ago I had to pass a course named “Programming Languages”. One of the languages to learn was Lisp and for that the professor handed us all a copy of David Betz’s XLISP for DOS (he later focused only on XScheme and even later XLISPs by Betz are Schemes). However I did not have a PC at the time and when I told my Professor that he did two things: First he gave me a copy from the library of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (because we had MIT-Scheme at the lab). Second I gave the test in Scheme instead of Lisp.

After a while I had to return the copy of SICP at the library. But the book grew on me. I could not find it at the local bookstores and Amazon was not even a glimpse in Bezos’s mind (and even if it was, I could not have a credit card at the time thanks to how our banking system worked, but that is another story). So what my father does is he sends a letter to my cousin with the book title (bad phone lines and bad pronunciation were not helping) and I think three months later the CS book that mostly shaped my thought arrived!

Thank you George for the wonderful present!

PS: Some years later, in 1996 the second edition came out. That I bought from MIT Press directly via email along with a T-shirt of the book.

“Έχω σκέδιο λέμε”

Το μεταφέρω από ανάρτηση στο Facebook:

Βουλευτής κυβερνώντος κόμματος (Λεουτσάκος) λέει πριν μέρες στην τηλεόραση πως υπάρχει άλλη λύση. Δεν σου λέει ποια, σου λέει πως θα την καταθέσει στα όργανα του κόμματος. Όχι δημόσια, ούτε στη Βουλή. Λες και όσοι τον σταυρώσανε είναι μόνο μέλη του κόμματος και άρα δεν έχει υποχρέωση να μιλήσει στην Βουλή για την εναλλακτική λύση.

Βουλευτής κυβερνώντος κόμματος (Λαφαζάνης) λέει πως υπάρχει άλλη λύση. Δεν σου λέει ποια και έχεις μείνει με κάτι αστεία ρεπορτάζ για ριφιφί και γελοιότητες. Δεν υπερασπίζεται τον εαυτό του και κρατάει την άλλη λύση που θα σώσει τον λαό μακριά από τον λαό. Προφανώς ο λαός δεν μπορεί να κρίνει πέρα από το να βάλει το σταυρό του.

Υπερευφυής βουλευτής κυβερνώντος κόμματος μας λέει πως είχε σχέδιο. Ποιο μπορεί να είναι αυτό μόνο να μαντέψουμε μπορούμε γιατί μας δίνει ψήγματα ανά συνέντευξη. Φαντάζομαι χάλασε ο σκληρός δίσκος στο MBPro και δεν μπορεί να το ανακτήσει και μας λέει όσα θυμάται.

Γερμανός υπουργός, Λουξεμβούργιος επίτροπος: Παιδιά το σχέδιο κάπου εδώ το έχουμε, αλλά είναι κλειδωμένο.

Είστε όλοι για κλωτσιές. Σχέδιο και risk analysis από όλους σας, αλλιώς ο λόγος σας δεν αξίζει μία μπροστά στου τυχαίου περαστικού.

Deterrence theory και καλά

Έγραψε ο Γιάνης μας πως:

Τα καλύτερα όπλα είναι αυτά που δεν σκοπεύεις να χρησιμοποιήσεις. Αυτά σχεδιάζαμε όταν μας απείλησαν με Grexit ώστε για να μην μας επιβληθεί

Ο Γιάνης μας όμως δεν τα ξέρει καλά. Μπορεί να είναι expert game theorist κατά τον Hans-Werner Sinn, αλλά από deterrence theory όχι και τόσο. Διασώζω σχόλιο μου από το facebook:

Όπως του απάντησα, αυτό είναι deterrence theory διαβασμένο στραβά. Γιατί ναι οι υπερδυνάμεις τα πυρηνικά τους όπλα δεν σκόπευαν να τα χρησιμοποιήσουν η μία κόντρα στην άλλη ποτέ, αλλά:

1. Είχαν ήδη χρησιμοποιηθεί εναντίον ανθρωπίνων στόχων τα ατομικά (και άρα το αποτέλεσμα το ξέραμε) και

2. Από καιρό σε καιρό είχαμε και μια δοκιμούλα να θυμίζει τι μπορεί να κάνει το όπλο.

Στη δικιά μας περίπτωση δεν είχες πουθενά χώρο για δοκιμές για κανένα οικονομικό όπλο. Θα μπορούσε να τους απειλεί το ίδιο και με το στρίψιμο ενός νομίσματος.

Θα μου πεις και πως στο διάολο ξέρεις εσύ από deterrence theory; Σωστά. Απλά είχα την ευτυχία όταν ξεκίναγε το πεδίο του cyberwarfare να διαβάσω όποιον τύπο έκανε το άλμα από deterrence προς cyberwar μέχρι το πεδίο να αρχίσει να σχηματίζει το δικό του pool θεωρητικών του πολέμου. I am just saying.