Posts by Mike Mitchell

1) Message boards : Projects : News on Project Outages (Message 103029) Posted 16 Feb 2021 by Mike Mitchell Post: Asteroids@home is back up after a 12-week outage. Asteroids seems to be back up and running. My outstanding results have uploaded and validated or are waiting validation. Let's hope Cosmology joins back in shortly.
2) Message boards : Projects : QuantumFIRE (Message 39540) Posted 9 Aug 2011 by Mike Mitchell Post: I can drop Martin a line. I know he's quite busy. Hello Kathryn, Is Martin busy with Quantum Fire or other things? Cheers, Mike
3) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11717) Posted 19 Jul 2007 by Mike Mitchell Post: I don't think even the DOA would be able to do something like that... this is the stuff of MOVIES. No windows or unix? no TCP/IP? Custom OS'? Special custom intruder software? A staff of IT's constantly monitoring the system? I mean come on, this is ludicrous. I am certain it will be extremely secure, it also would not be practical. and by the way, I never saw the point of the whole "staff looking over the system". ... [school stuff removed] ... Oh, I just noticed that we were cracked with my ITelepathy. Never mind that we are talking about billions of packets going through computers that runs billions of cycles per second, I can FEEL it. And I am gonna encrypt the genetic dimeticulous proactive firewall to stop it... OH NO, they are cracking the FIREWALL. I must sit here at the screen and type furiously to stop it, because I am THAT GOOD! What?! Have you not worked for a bank, a federal monetary organisation or an airline????? Intruder software has been running on production (and school) systems since the early 1980's that I know of and I made no mention of custom made OS'es. I just explained several real world environments I've worked in. E-mail Northwest Airlines and ask them a few questions about IT security, including what their WAN uses for a protocol (particularly the one they share with other airlines around the world). Try a one of your national banks or the central bank. If you like, e-mail dsd.gov.au and ask for a copy of their brief summary of guidelines for Internet security for commercial suppliers. What custom OS'es, that still has me stumped. You don't mean VMS do you? That has been around for years, nearly as many as me.
4) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11635) Posted 15 Jul 2007 by Mike Mitchell Post: I never got into phone phreaking, probably because the whole tone over wire thing never worked here. If we're going back that far, perhaps we should say "crackers" instead of "hackers"? ;-) Getting into systems pre-MS was very difficult but not impossible. More recently I've seen an unattended modem on its own line hooked up to a SCO box with no root password that was networked to four mainframes. Some people are just born dumb and get worse! Root privilege on the SCO box gave high privilege to the whole system. In that same environment, all PC's (about 10,000 globally) were seen as vulnerable and protected from each other (every node on the network was protected if it could be). If it weren't for that SCO box, I would have said that business was uncrackable and IT security included terrorist contingencies pre 11 September 2001. It was also hardened against stupidity. :-) Chasing up audited idiots was one of my jobs (big brother). I also managed to bring a mainframe to a standstill for 90 minutes while it finished a job for me! ;-) I only used 200 virtual computers, I didn't see the problem. We got more complaints from France @ 3:00AM than Australia @ 3:00PM - the broadcast message was in English. Cracking a good site is going to be hard. It wont use Windows or Unix. It may not even use TCP/IP. They will use intruder software (fun to watch), firewalls, gateway boxes just to present a different OS to crackers. Proper IT staff, with proper jobs including people who just monitor security. Getting into the system may not be impossible but it would be extremely difficult. But when all is said and done internal security is more of a problem than someone cracking the system. The Central Army Records Office had a breach and they used 32 character user id's and 32 character passwords. One of their staff borrowed a workmates ID to print out a friends details. Best laid plans...
5) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11632) Posted 15 Jul 2007 by Mike Mitchell Post: I would agree with everything you've written, except this bit: If you want stability run a highly limiting open source OS. Just don't expect any software for it. Mac's don't seem to have the problems Windows have, and Linux applications are written by all sorts. Good programming doesn't limit software to MS (I would have thought quite the opposite actually). Good programming should be the aim of all designers, testers and developers. Unfortunately somewhere of the last 15 to 20 years everyone seems to have stopped designing before coding. I think IBM worked it all out in th 1950's. Then MS came along, viruses appeared, hackers were created, systems vulnerabilities started appearing and most of all, "users expectations dropped dramatically, which is MS's biggest success". I wish that last quote were mine, but it was written by a Tech Jurno for the Herald/Sun. Just looking around my room, I wonder how many Linux applications you are running. I have two router and a multifunction printer, they all run on Linux, how about you?
6) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11623) Posted 14 Jul 2007 by Mike Mitchell Post: .. as I understand it, in this case Boinc improperly implemented a call to kill the child processes. So, what happened, is that all running programs including explorer.exe which handles the displayed screen where exited. That's what I'd call a very serious bug, the OS should not accept an illegal call from an application. Not sure if by mentioning you were a programmer is indication of qualification. If so, I've also been a programmer. I'm a Senior Technical Business Analyst now and in the past did alpha, beta and benchmark testing of VAX OSes and boxes. If an application bringing down OpenVMS wasn't reported as a major OS bug, jobs would have been axed. Think back to when you were in Uni, if someone could have issued a call to shut-down the main box during an exam, it would have been done. The only box other than a DOS/Windows box, that I could "bring down" was a Micro VAX II but that was because I had too much systems access and new how to trigger the OS into letting all the running applications go. Even then the OS kept going. It just went a bit faster after all the other developers garbage had been kicked off. The admin was from a Unix background and thought computers did strange things like that as a matter of course. :-)
7) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11613) Posted 14 Jul 2007 by Mike Mitchell Post: I am actually impressed at how well MS handles crappy applications... Windows is just the most popular, so any half assed attempt at writing crappy software always ends up on it. But often times it is a bug in windows thats to blame... Here though, it is clearly a boinc bug. You can't blame MS for EVERYTHING. How can a bug in BOINC affect an Operating System (OS) so badly it falls over? While I understand the answer to my own question in many cases, such as a program incorrectly using memory set aside for the OS, the OS should protect itself from "illegal" calls from applications. I would expect that as fairly basic error or exception handling. The OS (any OS) should force the application to fall over, not fall over itself. MS Windows seems to suffer from panic attacks. ;-)
8) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11608) Posted 13 Jul 2007 by Mike Mitchell Post: G'day Ageless, Yeah, I thought about that about 12 hours after I posted! What I should have said is, "who could write an Operating System (any version of Windows) that would allow an application to bring itself down? Only Microsoft!" But then I remembered Primos, man that really sucked. Then I struggled to recall any others. :) Pity Bill and his mates didn't steal stability and robustness from DEC's VAX/VMS PDP 11 (or 8?) they ripped off most the DOS commands from. I miss VMS sooooo much! :-(
9) Message boards : BOINC Manager : 5.10.12 (both vista64bit and xp32bit) have defective manager on service install (Message 11602) Posted 13 Jul 2007 by Mike Mitchell Post: whoa! you mean BOINC is the culprit for the disappearing desktop problem? and here I was blaming MS! That's a fair guess, normally it is Microsoft that screw up! Who wrote the language the BOINC Manager is written in?
10) Message boards : BOINC Manager : A few feature requests (Message 4914) Posted 4 Jul 2006 by Mike Mitchell Post: Well, you could also lower your "connect to network" if it is high, as reporting is done at: 1) The next work request from a project. 2) 24 hours before the deadline. 3) Immediately if the work is completed later than 24 hours before the deadline. 4) Connect every X days after the work is completed. 5) With the next trickle (CPDN only at this point). 6) When the user clicks update. 7) Connect every X days before the report is due. (new with 5.4). Thanks Ageless that's terific, I didn't know that, with the exception of the "Connect every". I'll keep a copy of that and I'll drop my "Connect every.." down a bit. I've got it at 1.00 Days at the moment, so I probably missed any 24 hour triggers :-( my bad.
11) Message boards : BOINC Manager : A few feature requests (Message 4912) Posted 4 Jul 2006 by Mike Mitchell Post: Is there any other way to trigger all the results waiting to report? Select the project, press Update. Yeah, I knew about that one, I was kind of hoping for a one button soloution. :) Oh well, I'll see what I can do, I've got quite a few projects. Thanks Ageless
12) Message boards : BOINC Manager : A few feature requests (Message 4910) Posted 4 Jul 2006 by Mike Mitchell Post: Oh, okay. I liked that bug. You know if Microsoft had a bug like that they'd charge you for it and call it "Microsoft BOINC Enhanced 2009" ;-) Is there any other way to trigger all the results waiting to report?
13) Message boards : BOINC Manager : A few feature requests (Message 4901) Posted 3 Jul 2006 by Mike Mitchell Post: I have a few requests for features for BOINC. 5. Add an "Update All Projects" command, or restore the effect that selecting "Retry Communications" would cause all projects to update. What was the reason for changing the "Retry Communications" option for 5.4.x? Any chance of getting it back?
14) Message boards : Web interfaces : Team Recruitment Thread (Message 4716) Posted 14 Jun 2006 by Mike Mitchell Post: I invite all Australians to join a team involved in all BOINC projects, become part of the Australian Alliance and help compete with large teams from other countries. We have an active web site, forum and great team members. If you're interested please click on the link in my signature. Why start a new team at the bottom of the pack, when we are already within striking distance of the top 30? We are already ranked 33 out of almost 48,000 teams in the world for combined BOINC projects. We're the number 1 Aussie team, with almost 27 Million credits. Australian name, for ALL Aussie crunchers. Team website and forum, and infrastructure available to grow it. The team is active in all current BOINC projects. We have members all over the country and quite a few expats overseas. Your existing individual credits will not be lost. Future credits from all projects will help build a powerful alliance. Together we could not only be the top Australian team, but well up in the world stats. Were always open to new suggestions and new members. Come and look us over - You can check out our web site by clicking on the team logo below and also have a look around our forum. You can ask for assistance in the forum too.

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