Posts by Frumious Bandersnatch

Re: Alternatively...

Oi! My car resembles that comment!

And that joke is way older than your Beetle. Not that it's a bad one, mind.

Re: Just goes to show

The downvotes you collected are further proof, should it be needed, that your thesis is correct.

Re: Working for them since 1976

Wanting him to jump ship before they have to give him retirement or redundancy.

That was apparently a bit of a thing in Japan for a while. Employers wanted to axe older staff, but couldn't do it directly, so they gave them a "window seat" job. That is, given nothing to do all day but look out the window or do some patently useless tasks as making an inventory of paper clips or somesuch. I guess a western version would involving writing TPS reports about TPS reports.

A short article about the “window ledge tribe” (madogiwazoku – 窓際族) phenomenon is here

Re: I put passwords all over my monitor on post-its

re: P4m$lp23

Although I can't speak for their security(*), there are plenty of random password generators out there that produce (somewhat) phonetic passwords like 'rotranott', 'eblinecs' or whatever. A lot easier to remember and type than those with lots of meaningless punctuation, caps, etc. Might be worth a shot in lots of cases.

* They're obviously less secure, but the question is whether they're so predictable or have such a small key space as to make a dictionary attack with them feasible. Assuming you know (or can guess) what generator is being used, of course. Obviously, using any online generators is as bad as not having passwords at all.

Re: WARNING: Executable code may execute code

Well yeah, but no, but yeah.

It all depends on whether the routine to display the sfx text is only called when running the output exe program or if it's called in the normal run of displaying the archive contents. Both the article and the vulnerability description just mention "opening" the archive and it's ambiguous what's meant by this.

Re: US T&C strikes again

Whether or not your rights can be taken by T&C in product "contracts" is a matter of State law. Some allow it, some don't.

Yeah, I was going to write something similar. The state of California knocked back an increasing trend of companies to include "no jury trial" waivers in contracts by declaring them invalid. I just happened to be reading about it a while ago. See, eg, this link about a "landmark" case in 2005.

the same penalty for accepting even the smallest bribe.

Ugh, I don't think I agree. When I hear "zero tolerance", I just have to shake my head. How have zero tolerance fared in areas like drug policy, sex education (or rather, forgoing it and replacing it with "abstinence" policies) or places with extreme capital punishment (stonings, beheadings and other forms of execution, chopping off an arm, flogging, etc.) and mandatory minimum sentencing? Under such regimes, the policy makers have nowhere to go except become even more extreme in their views. Because they're never going to admit that they might have been even the slightest bit wrong in their convictions. Not even for exceptional cases.

Zero tolerance simply breeds corruption, venality and extremism, IMO. So yeah, sure ZT on corruption might net a few high-profile cases and leaders will appear to be doing something, but the real crooks will still get off scott-free by virtue of being too big to take down while those lower down the ladder just get more shit rained down on them. ZT makes most people's lives a misery.