Category Archives: informatique

Western Digital Green, c’est fini

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Bon, un autre disque dur qui rend l’ame. J’ai eu des disques durs qui ont montre des signes de fatigue (nouveau bad sector).

J’etais passe par leur service d’echange la derniere fois, mais cette fois-ci, je change de modele et/ou compagnie.

Est-ce que vous avez des suggestions de disques durs que vous jugez ou savez plus fiables? J’hesite vraiment a retourner avec Western Digital, meme pour des modeles plus haut de gamme. Ca sera peut-etre du Seagate a moins que quelqu’un me raconte une histoire d’horreur a leur sujet.

P.S. Heureusement que j’avais rendu plus robuste ma routine de backups!!!! Si tout va bien, je ne perdrai rien.

IPV6 desactive

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J’ai upgrade dernierement Linux. J’ai installe OpenSuse 11.4. En plus du ridicule Adobe Flash qui vient avec Firefox 4 et n’est meme pas capable de montrer un video sans “flicker”, j’avais des temps de connection parfois tres longs dans Firefox. J’ai installe dnsmasq, change mes serveurs dns, etc. Mais rien ne semblait ameliorer les choses. Firefox continuait d’inscrire dans le bas “Looking up www….” dans le bas de la fenetre.

J’ai fini par trouver la reponse dans un forum sur le net.
Thread: internet connection slow in certain applications

En gros, c’est IPV6 qui causait le probleme dans KDE et/ou OpenSuse et/ou Firefox. Je l’ai desactive dans Firefox et Yast (configuration systeme). Il ne faut pas oublier de mettre a jour /etc/hosts pour enlever les references a IPV6. Apres, tout est beaucoup plus rapide.

The seesaw magic book: the computational power of DNA molecules

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Via: Cosmic Variance: DNA Takes Square Roots

Caltech researchers Lulu Qian and Erik Winfree have managed to coax 130 strands of DNA into performing what is unquestionably a calculation: taking the square root of a number. (Ars Technica post; Science paper behind paywall; open-access background paper.) Not a big number: we’re talking about four-digit binary numbers, so 15 at the biggest. And not very efficiently: with prodding, the calculation took eight hours. Moore’s Law isn’t really in danger here.

Polynomial Time Code For 3-SAT Released, P==NP

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slashdot.org: Polynomial Time Code For 3-SAT Released, P==NP

“Vladimir Romanov has released what he claims is a polynomial-time algorithm for solving 3-SAT. Because 3-SAT is NP-complete, this would imply that P==NP. While there’s still good reason to be skeptical that this is, in fact, true, he’s made source code available and appears decidedly more serious than most of the people attempting to prove that P==NP or P!=NP. Even though this is probably wrong, just based on the sheer number of prior failures, it seems more likely to lead to new discoveries than most.

Beaucoup de commentaires sur slashdot semblent indiquer que le probleme a ete simplifie et que meme si le code fonctionnait en P, ceci n’impliquerait pas que P==NP.

Major Security Flaws Discovered In Internet HDTVs

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C’est evidemment juste pour rire un peu que j’ecris a ce sujet. Qui, avec des connaissances minimales et du gros bon sens, pourrait bien s’imaginer que ces produits sont securises correctement 😉 C’est quand meme interessant de penser que la facon d’entrer chez-vous pour hacker le reseau sera la TV ou le lecteur Blu-Ray. La seule facon de se proteger serait-elle d’avoir un firewall/router interne dedie aux cochonneries electroniques comme les TV/Blu-Ray? Remarquez que le probleme existait deja avec les consoles de jeu qui utilisent encore WEP!

“Security researchers have discovered several security flaws in one of the best-selling brands of Internet-connected HDTVs, and believe it’s likely that similar security flaws exist in other Internet TVs. The security researchers were able to demonstrate how an attacker could intercept transmissions from the television to the network using common ‘rogue DNS,’ ‘rogue DHCP server,’ or TCP session hijacking techniques. Mocana was able to demonstrate that JavaScript could then be injected into the normal datastream, allowing attackers to obtain total control over the device’s Internet functionality.”

Un commentaire sur slashdot pointait sur xkcd.com:

Hehe.

On est pas les seuls jambons

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informationweek.com: Social Security Data Center Approaching Collapse

Via: slashdot.org: Social Security Information Systems Near Collapse

J’aurais pu ecrire qu’on etait aussi jambon que les autres, mais il me semble que notre perception est qu’au Quebec et/ou Canada, les couts de developpements informatiques sont astronomiques, pour ne pas dire ridicules/insenses/criminels/demoralisants/etc.

Mais on peut se consoler en regardant ailleurs, a defaut de se prendre en main et de regler les problemes! Bonne nouvelle, non? 😉

One of the biggest problems is the agency’s transition to a new data center, according to the report. The IG has characterized the replacement of the SSA’s National Computer Center (NCC) — built in 1979 — as the SSA’s “primary IT investment” in the next few years.

The agency has received more than $500 million so far to replace the outdated center, which is now so severely strained by an expanded workload over its time of operation that it may not be able to function by 2012, according to the report.

Mais bon, avec notre registre des armes a feu de 2G$, et le fait qu’on est 10 fois moins, ils ont encore des croutes a manger ces americains pour nous battre!

P.S. Mon estimation est que mon ordi a la maison pourrait gerer le registre des armes a feu sans probleme, mais aller dire ca aux compagnies qui ont empoche les 2G$….

Farewell, Pioneer Anomaly?

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Cosmic Variance : Farewell, Pioneer Anomaly?

Five years have passed. Using the telemetry data, the two scientists created an extremely elaborate “finite element” 3-D computer model of each Pioneer spacecraft, in which the thermal properties of 100,000 positions on their surfaces are independently tracked for the duration of the 30-year mission.

But according to Toth, “You can take it to the bank that whatever remains of the anomaly after accounting for that thermal acceleration, it will at most be much less than the canonical value of 8.74 x 10-10 m/s2, and then, mind you, all those wonderful numerical coincidences people talk about are destroyed.”