* Posts by Danny van der Weide

37 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Feb 2008

ALIS in Blunderland: Lockheed says F-35 Block 3F software to be done by year's end

Danny van der Weide

About big .gov IT projects

"After all, since when did any Big Government IT Project run on time and within budget?"

You might as well remove the word "Government" from this sentence. And maybe the word "Big" also!

Tip for darknet drug lords: Don't wear latex gloves to the post office

Danny van der Weide

Another tip

Having a dedicated fully encrypted system, (or just a TAILS thumb drive) used exclusively for your darknet activity is really elementary for your own and your clients' security and privacy.

GNU cryptocurrency aims at 'the mainstream economy not the black market'

Danny van der Weide

Taxes?

The goverment can levy taxes, but why?

Who wants to pay taxes anyway?

The hoarder's dilemma: 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

Danny van der Weide

Re: Athlon XP 2400 PC

Nice familiar configuration!

It's almost exactly like my previous file server i decommissioned about a year ago...

I changed it only to save (a lot!) of electricity, it was working perfectly and more than powerful enough.

All parts were sold on ebay, mind you!

NASA to programmers: Save the Earth and fatten your wallet

Danny van der Weide

Saving the Earth from a civilization-crippling asteroid impact: How exactly?

So, suppose that someone finds this civilization-crippling rock...

What is humanity supposed to do about it? Send up Bruce Willis and his crack team with a nuke under their arms?

As far as I've understood, all 'solutions' are theoretical at best.

The best you can do is spend your $1400 in beer, laying at the pool and watch the world go to pieces.

MEP: Google's SECRET deal will cause crisis of trust for Europe

Danny van der Weide
Mushroom

This makes me think that nuclear weapons might be useful after all.

Nuke them all, the bloody assholes

Harvard kid, 20, emailed uni bomb threat via Tor to avoid final exam, says FBI

Danny van der Weide

To me it seems the fact you used Tor at the time of the transmission of the email, doesn't actually prove that it was you who sent it. At most it proofs that coincidence exists.

Just like a broken clock that indicates the right time twice a day, doesn't prove that it's working every now and then.

The real proof in this case is probably that he cracked in front of police pressure, and has admitted to committing the fact.

Fed up with Windows? Linux too easy? Get weird, go ALTERNATIVE

Danny van der Weide
Trollface

Re: Screw portabilty, gimmi speed!

Dope sucks, my friend!

Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite: 13.3-inch slimline notebook with a secret

Danny van der Weide

Re: Screen Tilt is good!

This kind of problems can be sold with a good stick...

But don't apply it to your laptop!

ROBOT COW teaches Saudi kids where milk comes from

Danny van der Weide
Trollface

Real cows...

... will kick you in the face if you milk them in an unpleasant way, or or if you are lucky, they'll just topple you bucket.

Does the robot cow has a similar function implemented?

Google activates half million Androids a day

Danny van der Weide
Boffin

Phones, tablets, whatever... It's just maths, really!

You make it sound like these numbers sound unrealistic, and therefore they must have scraped all possible Andriod devices together to make an interesting number.

Since growth is 4.4% a week, and december 2010 is about half a year ago, which is 26 weeks, the sum goes something like this:

1.044^26 - 1 = 2.06

And 300000 * 2.06 makes about 619040... which is 'slightly' above 500000.

Apparently the growth rate is still accelerating...

So, there's no need for tables or googleTV boxes to reach these numbers.

Crematorium to heat council swimming pool

Danny van der Weide
Dead Vulture

So, when the water is too cold...

... just go out and kill some people?

Hmmm, dunno.

Vatican confirms Simpsons as Catholics

Danny van der Weide
WTF?

Anticompetitive behavior

"It's the wild-eyed evangelicals it has a problem"

Yep, the Catholic church never had much up with competition in general.

Go ask the Cathars and the Protestants, or the Muslims during the cruisades.

But really, who gives a f*ck anyway.

They are an anachronistic leftover.

Black helicopters circle 'Welsh Roswell'

Danny van der Weide
Alien

Has she been abucted?

Well, who knows what happened exactly that evening...

The impact might have been mistaken for a tremor, for example.

Actually, the really interesting part comes a the end of the movie, where she tells about "the first time" (she makes it sound like it happened more often) she saw a triangular UFO from the window.

The next thing she remembers is that she was laying on top of the bed, clearly indicating that she doesn't have memory of the time in between.

This is called "missing time", and is one of the important signs of abduction.

Satnav leaves family stranded in Outback for three days

Danny van der Weide
FAIL

The price of stupidity

Well, that's what you get when you refuse to think!

Especially sleeping in a car with your family *AND THE BLOODY DOG* !?!?!?

They didn't even think of booting out the panting shit factory...

Copernicus reburied with full Catholic honours

Danny van der Weide
Alert

Smelly

After 467 years of burning and/or rotting in hell, he will now be allowed to pass the gates of Heaven.

I can't help but think that he won't receive a very 'warm' welcome from his new co-inhabitants.

I certainly hope they sell smelling-salt up there too!

An academic take on Santa

Danny van der Weide
Coat

And how to brake?

And what kind of brakes would he need to have?

I ask this because (according to wolfram-alpha) an object of 321300 metric tons travelling at a speed of 650 miles/second contains about 1.758e20 joule of kinetic energy.

Thats 48,83 Pw/h (peta watt hour!!!)

Anyway, the escape velocity of earth is 11km/s. Flying 100 times faster and still stay in the neighborhood of earth must be very difficult, indeed.

Google suggests Islam is nothing

Danny van der Weide
Grenade

Mohammed makes up for Islam

The query "mohammed is" gives correct suggestions, just like "cristianity is".

But look at "jesus is", and you will notice that the suggestions are clearly dead wrong!

You better work on this one, Google!

Danny van der Weide
FAIL

And the same problem for Xenu...

"xenu is" only comes up with... my homeboy !?

This is sick, really very sick!

Scientist proposes quantum über-battery

Danny van der Weide
Megaphone

0800-CALLINTEL

Well, Mr. Alfred Hubler, what are you waiting for?

To refresh your memory, look at the following Reg article of about a year ago.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/12/intel_car_batteries/

Sunday night is Geminid night

Danny van der Weide
Coffee/keyboard

Be happy...

...you won't be able to see them!

Do you remember what happened at The day of the Triffids?

US to export riot-roasting raygun

Danny van der Weide
Coat

And which US ally would that be...

Let's see. We are looking for:

- a country that's concidered a 'very good ally', since this is top-notch technology

- a country that's heavily troubled

- a country that may have a record for use of questionable weapons

- a country that has to cope with large groups of scarsely armed/unarmed angry people

I'll put my money on ISRAEL, for use against the Palestinese population.

Mine's the bullet-proof vest with the slingshot in the pocket.

Office 2010 to come loaded with WGA's bastard child

Danny van der Weide
WTF?

Pirating Microsoft Office is a non-issue...

... as by far most illegal copies can be found on home PC's and small businesses where every buck/pound/euro counts. If they don't use macro's, and i bet 99.99% doesn't, they can all move on to OpenOffice.

Ukraine slaps ban on all porn

Danny van der Weide
Grenade

So what could be the hidden agenda behind this wave of puritanity?

The thing with hidden agenda's is that they are, well, hidden. So it's difficult to say from the taken measures itselves. So, let's go one step further, and look at the possible EFFECTS of these prohibitions.

If one prohibits pornography, or extreme porn as in the UK, you will want to block the distribution of this illegal stuff. Once the main distribution channels of porn were magazines and VHS tapes. These have been on sale since the invention of these media, and nobody objected.

Let's not forget that in the 80's the best videotape technology was called Philips Video 2000. It lost the battle agains Betamax and VHS in an early stage thanks to the scarse availablility of porn titles!

Today, what is the main distribution channel of pornography these days? It's most definitly the Internet!

So, if you want to block the distribution of (extreme) pornography today, you'll have to apply some kind of filtering of the internet! Interesting, isn't it?

Look around you right now and tell me, what is one of the most worrying developments on the Internet right now? If you think like me, you will say 'internet filtering'.

Can't it be that the powers in place are simply looking for excuses to apply internet filtering?

Many have come by. Let's take a look, shall we?

- Australia, the most well known issue, wants to block any kind of content that's unsuitable for chilldren. Above all, that includes pornography. How can a parent be against something noble like that?

- Germany wants to block childporn sites. I don't think anyone in it's right mind can argue against that.

- Several countries would like to block access to The Pirate Bay and/or file sharing. The reasons we all know. People are 'stealing' stuff, you know, like bloody shoplifters!

I know there are other countries, but they don't spring to mind at the moment.

Also, i'm not going to talk about China, Iran, North Korea and the likes, as the reasons for their blocking are clearly political and out in the open.

Anyway, maybe all the 'goals' and the 'measures' should be turned around?

The GOAL is to put deep packet inspection filters on the internet, and the MEASURE is to forbid and block the distribution of (extreme/child) pornography and stop file sharing networks.

Once filtering is in place, it can be used to block all kinds of undesired material. Just like many suspect it will be used eventually.

Apparently the powers in place are Afraid as Hell of the free and uncontrolled/uncontrollable flow of information. Newspapers and TV/Radio stations can be put under control, but hundreds of thousends of politically engaged blogs can only be filtered.

Time will tell, but let's see what happens next in Ukrain.

I bet it will demand some kind of filtering from it's local ISP's.

Cheers, Danny

Safety wonks condemn digital TV satnav

Danny van der Weide
Grenade

RoSPA = Toad

I'd like to inform everybody that the word 'ROSPA' in Italian indicates a female toad.

Just to let you know where the whining is coming from...

Obama declares war on Ireland over tech tax avoidance

Danny van der Weide

Holland a low-tax country ?!?!?!?!

You must be joking, right?

Maybe it is for the big bad multinationals, but certainly not for its mere-mortal inhabitants.

Spy boss damns government's culture of fear

Danny van der Weide
Flame

Side effects or a goal in itself?

Taken into account that the 9/11 attacks were very probably inside jobs, and the UK underground attack has a very similar signature (that is, an exercise scenario that turned reality during the exercise) , one might be forgiven to think that the mentioned side-effects, (e.g. restriction of privacy and a culture of fear) where the real ultimate goal of the whole operation!

GM Volt to get regular software-style updates

Danny van der Weide
Stop

Weight savings ?

[quote]The Volt will also see the début of a Bose sound system that's also heralded as "energy efficient" and said to be 30 per cent smaller, 40 per cent lighter and to use half as much energy as conventional Bose sound systems do.[/quote]

That's all nice and good!

Too bad that the rest of the car is made of traditional and heavy.... STEEL!!!!

So someone can explain me what saving 3kg on an audio system is going to change on a 1000+kg car anyway.

And then the energy savings: I don't know how much leccy an average car system consumes, but i'm sure its absolutely peanuts compared to a 100KW engine.

Yeah, all nice and good but utterly insignificant.

Feds: IT admin plotted to erase Fannie Mae

Danny van der Weide
Boffin

Lessons to learn

So, what lessons can we learn from this event?

1. Get yourselve a SECURE way of access, without leaving traces. Difficult but very possible with full root access.

2. Make sure you don''t depend on one single script. Avoid this single point of failure. Spread the payload to several scripts.

3. Take your time. Three months is too short and the link with a sacked sysadmin is easily made.

4. The damage is still recoverable from backups. First the backup procedure has to be corrupted for a considerable amount of time.

5. Afterwards, securely delete and overwrite all scripts and restore corrupted configuration files.

For the rest, eccelent hacking, buddy! ;-)

Flanders demands its own top-level domain

Danny van der Weide
Thumb Up

Oh! I love .vla ...

www.hopjes.vla

www.chocolade.vla

www.bananen.vla

www.vaniglie.vla

... etc. etc.

Dollar surge helps software vendors soak customers

Danny van der Weide
Black Helicopters

Americans export their inflation

This is just a way to export their inflation.

Apparently, they are unable to raise their prices on the internal market.

Robotic hand relief

Danny van der Weide
Boffin

The iTenga...

... is about 6.5 iInches.

And an iInch is about 256 milimeters, as one would expect!

Boffins: Roadrunner hypercomputer could drive a car

Danny van der Weide
Paris Hilton

10 *or* 100 times...

If humans are 10 or 100 times more intelligent than a mouse, this magnitude difference depending on the mouse or the human you choose?

I'd like to know this, because if it depends on the chosen human this explains an awfull lot of things to me!

Paris... the bleeding obvious

Ofcom slaps MTV with £255k fine

Danny van der Weide
Coat

Sensitive souls

The Brittish have such sensitive souls, haven't they?

Ok, i'm off... Mine's the one with the pink knickers hanging out of the inner pocket.

Microsoft to punt pensioner-proof PC

Danny van der Weide
Pirate

Beefy speakers included...

...and altered default volume settings, ready to break the sound barrier.

... WHAT WERE YOU SAYING, BOY !!!!

Auch, earpiercing offer, ain't it?

Skull&bones, 'cause the end has never been so close.

EU wants data sharing network for driving offences

Danny van der Weide
Flame

What side of the road are you on?

"The past five years have seen a 47 per cent rise in the number of foreign drivers involved in accidents in Britain, while foreign lorry drivers are three times more likely to be involved in collisions in this country than their British counterparts."

So, what could possibly be the reason of this?

Maybe it's just that curious fact that in Brittain the people tend to use the left side of the road, while in the whole of Europe people tend to use the right side!

The conclusion might be simply that: YOU'RE DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD, MAN !!!

Cheers, :D

Danny

Inventor promises bottle-o-wind car in a year. Again

Danny van der Weide
Stop

Freezing cold engines

While compressing the air makes it become hot, be sure that decompressing it (inside the engine) will make it become freezing cold!

It will surely need some heath/cold distribution system with liquid and a radiator.

In the summer this shouldn't be too much of a problem (in France, at least), as can absorb enough heath energy from the air. It could also used the heat inside the car, doubling as a natural airconditioning.

But in winter time it will freeze your nuts off!