Meltdown and Spectre website

[Jason]

Didn't realize these nasties had their own website!

https://meltdownattack.com/

Most of it is technical but the Q & A is more accessible to everybody and I found this interesting tidbit:

Why is it called Spectre?

The name is based on the root cause, speculative execution. As it is not easy to fix, it will haunt us for quite some time.

I'm guessing every program that was ever written that used speculative execution has to have those lines fixed or at least run through a compiler that removes those instructions. But that's just a guess.

[buster]

From the James Bonds novels we know that Spectre means

SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

Of course, those of us who were in the Secret Service know this from the first week of our training.

[Jason]

I didn't think you could mention that you were in the secret service if you were in the secret service.

[ssfc72]

This banter reminds me of the comedian George Carlin.  :-)

[buster]

BANTER: "Supple term used to describe activities or chat that is playful, intelligent and original. Banter is something you either posses or lack, there is no middle ground. It is also something inherently English, stemming as it does from traditional hi-jinks and tomfoolery of British yesteryear."    ( From the Urban Dictionary. )

Banter is not a word thrown about much anymore more.

[Jason]

Though it might be somewhat accurate in this case, Urban Dictionary isn't meant to be taken seriously. But then again, neither is banter, so I guess it's totally appropriate.

It's like Wikipedia without the quality control. For example, this can be found in Urban Dictionary. Pardon the language, but I think we're adults here:

Okay, bad example, admittedly, in that it's true, but you'd never find that in a real dictionary

[Jason]

This banter reminds me of the comedian George Carlin.  :-)

Btw, love that you compared us to George Carlin. One of the greats!

[buster]

I mostly wished to point out that the word 'banter' is rarely used anymore in Canada, and is in fact written or spoken in North America only once every 22.5 hours. (However in England it is used 412 times every single day, on average of course.)

[Jason]

Sorry for my belated response, but you are quite the wordsmith, Buster! Thanks for that tidbit. It's quite interesting even if you took over the thread with it.