* Posts by Khaptain

4022 publicly visible posts • joined 4 May 2008

Self-driving cars? Boring. We want self driving, lizard dodging golf carts

Khaptain Silver badge

Armory

All that is required is one of the those #cough# soon to be decommissioned #cough# 30mm Gatling guns from an A10 Warthog and no damned lizard is gonna stand in your way.

Ashley Madison: ‘Our site is full of women, and members are growing’

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Re: I can believe it

Try getting a new passport without using a pen !

It's an example because I am currently in the process.. ,you still have to actually sign your name, with a real pen, without writing outside the little box... You can't use a "Nom de Plume" though....

or buy a house, or take a credit ,or a million other things outside of using Facebook and Twitter.....

Unfortunately the Yoof of today appear to be allergic to actually taking the time to write, whereas it can actually be a pleasure.. it also forces one to think before one reacts..

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Headmaster

Re: I can believe it

"nom de keys of George Clooney"

Nom de plume, Shirley.

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Re: I can believe it

Did you ever actually meet them in the flesh ? Were they in your own region and was that region a major capital... ( I presume that you don't live out in the sticks).

The reason I ask is because I presume that some of the women on AM will actually be prostitutes/escorts who simply use AM et al as online meeting spots. ( I am not, nor ever have been a member of such sites so this it purely conjecture on my behalf).

UV for being frank.. ( just don't tell Frank)

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Coffee/keyboard

Did you write for Playboy at some time in your life ?

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Coat

Re: "members are growing"

The members are growing because someone forgot to turn off the airpump....

Falcon 9 fireworks display grounds SpaceX

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Debug Question ?

How do they manage to analyse Rocket failures?

I always imagine that if they do actually manage to find the pieces, that many of them will be almost unrecognizable, they must then be pieced back together and then hopefully they can start to debug the causes.

Or are there alternative methods which they can use ? Sometimes it appears as though they find the reasons PDQ...

Drum roll, please .... Results are in for the collective noun for security vulns

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Re: Most fitting...

I must be having a slow morning, I did not see the original article and must admit to having no clue as to why "hatstand" was chosen, am I missing something completely obvious ?

If there was a "Clueless" icon I would be using it for myself.

New low for humanity: ONE BEELLION lost souls log on to Facebook in one day

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Re: We've been expecting you Mr. Zuckerberg

I think the 'M' stands for "merde", because that's what the people will be in when they start using this kind of "funtionality".....

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Not on Facebook and proud

"Personally, I get loads of useful and interesting content from it from a tech professional's perspective as well as the social stuff but YMMV"

I think the rest of internet already has a lot more available to offer technichally minded people than Facebook does.... and I would be very wary of a "techie" that chooses FB as his tech support platform.

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Coat

Re: Internet of Transactions?

Do dildo's actually exist for dogs, isn't that why they have tongues...

Apple will reveal new iPhone on Sept 9 – this is what it may look like

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Devil

Why bother

Unless one of the major manufacturers comes out with some kind of holographic, infinitely powered device, pictures of telephone and/or their enclosures should simply be thrown in the bin.

What's next : Apple managed to shave 0.001g of the weight, Samsung realese a new case with a logo made of aluminium manganese titanium alloy inserts .....ya gets the picture...

I actually thought I was going to see something that looked different from the last 6 generations.....wrong

Please stop this kind of drivel filled, utter nonsensical kind of article.... ( Samsung are just as bad)

Icon = the Spawn of the Devil called "Marketing"

More deaths linked to Ashley Madison hack as scammers move in

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Re: RE. Insane

"Belief should be an individual right"

It is an individual right but the society that that indivudal lives in, and profits from, has collective ideals, that's what make the society powerfull, it behaves as one very large entitiy, with all the up and downs that that entails . If everyone behaved according to their individual idealogies we'd end up in an Anarchy, law breaks down, public disruption and eventually all that will come from it is fuedilism....which is basically just small "societies" fighting each other over peanuts.

It's a choice, all that is required in order to live to the full, by ones very own ideals, is complete isolation... I do not like most of contemporary societies ideals but I definately realise that without them I would be in very diffirent situation.. ie a lot less comfortable than I am now. ( Have you travelled and seen how some of the rest of the world live, it's not always a pretty sight).

I believe that living completely self sustaining life would mean a hell of a lot of concessions for very little, if any, gain ...You have to provide food and shelter for yourself, hail rain or snow, you must be capable of defending oneself from "deadly" foes, you must be capable of healing oneself in the event injury or ill health.. As a society these things can be accomplished far more easilly that on ones own..

Unfortunately we are not taught to defend for ourselves, we are taught consumerism, this is the price to pay for moderm comfort.. None of this stops me having my own ideals but it certainely calms down some of the wilder ones.

By the way, there are no such things as "rights", they are merely a man-made conception to make you "believe" that the powerfull and wealthy are not profiting from your labour....

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Meeow

@LucreLout

At last someone whose moral values do not appear to be egocentric.

"Were I to tell my mates wife that he is cheating on her, I can be reasonably sure neither will top themselves. "

Unfortunately that I do not imagine that that is possible to know beforehand, jealousy is a very strong emotion capable of producing some very unfortunate outcomes. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" was not invented without reason. There are a multitude of indirect consequences, children, peer pressure, religious belief, destruction of personal moral values which are less obvious which could have dire outcomes, in the short of long term. In all cases scars will remain, losing trust in or from your partner is not a positive situation for anyone to live through.

"If you tell a million peoples spouse their partner is cheating, you can be reasonably sure some of them will kill themselves or their cheating spouse. The scale of numbers involved all but guarantee it."

I would state the scale of numbers only gives us an idea of how many people might be cheating on their spouses, not on their suicidal tendencies or their capacity to commit murder.

I would also debate that people most people do not have a disposition to kill or commit suicide and that it would take a lot more than just an AM kind of sex scandal to induce them..

However, there are people who are already borderline who could easily be pushed over the edge, but as stated, they were already borderline and a multitude of reasons could have sufficed. AM is nothing more than the toppling point.

What I find most disturbing of all though is the quantity of people that must be direly unhappy enough to believe that something like AM will bring them some comfort.. In reality it is more than likely to bring them a lot more unhappiness, the truth of the situation is that AM, like most of the others sex sites is a money making scam....( with or without the hackers)...

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Suicide rates

And from the remaining 29 999 989 people, I wonder if any of them were due to the fact that they joined and paid Ashley Madison hoping for a "quick romance" only to find it that it was a scam.

Vodafone UK rocks the bloat with demands for vanilla Android

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Re: And quicker updates

Samsung still has a long way to go. Although on saying that I don't mind Samsungs overlay.

Khaptain Silver badge

I

Here in Switzerland ,no one locks or adds any bloat, it feels like paradise....

In France, Orange at least have severely cut down the bloat to removable apps, the phones are free to unlock after

6 months, which is fine. We are almost on Vanilla android except for the little Orange logo during the boot phase, which I really don't see very often. Things are getting better with every new generation.

Not sure about Sfr ( Vodafone).

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Re: I imagine...

because it's faster and has a thousand newer/more better/shinier functions and it's capable of making me look like a rock star and, and, and because Dave will be jealous.....

Alternatively, it's because we like to have new things....all the time, in any event after only a week or so we don't even see the OS/telephone anymore, we adapt and become accustomed to the "new" very, very quickly, the illness is more commonly known as "consumerism"...

'Hans free' mobe gag crowned Fringe's funniest

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Coat

It would defiantly be much better than taking your Ashley MAddison password .

Amazon to trash Flash, as browsers walk away

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Re: Hading a good time reading El Reg

The editorial team are not necessarily the London team, sometimes it is the SF team and for obvious time zone constraints the "fixes" don't appear immediately...

No-one comes to El Reg for perfect grammar.. thank fork **..

(** Don't want to use "thank deity" anymore because it would therefore presume that such a thing existed, outside of men's minds.... and "thank fork" sounds like a desired grammatical error)

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"Anyway, once we've cleaned Flash out of our lives, we can start getting shot of ***king Java."

That will be a hell of a lot more difficult..

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It's not that it's scummy, it's very insecure. Some of those Escape the Room games are very well written, albeit in Flash.....

Even 'super hackers' leave entries in logs, so prepare to drown in data

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Agreed and it appears that Chuvakin is not a frequent member if the Budget/Project decision committee meetings.

Security is obviously a balance of Cost vs Risk... The questions are always the same "Can the risks be mitigated, if so how much will it cost?" What's that you say, we "must " have at least 3 data centres to host or our Exchange server..... HOW MUCH......

High-heeled hacker builds pen-test kit into her skyscraper shoes

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What pen-test kit

What shoes, ah now I see them, I was busy looking at the rest of the kit for a moment or two...

Mon dieu, that brightened me up from what was otherwise a very grey, damp and dull tram ride into work.

Does Linux need a new file system? Ex-Google engineer thinks so

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Advantages for the Average Joe

Not being very up to date on the "fors" and "againsts" of filesystems, what advantages would bcachef bring to the avergage Lamda type user.

[Serious question]

Ashley Madison hack – Tory MP Green denies registering account

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Re: Excellent.

I wonder if Bill Clinton used AM to recrute his personal staff ?

Second Ashley Madison dump prompts more inside-job speculation

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Re: What theft?

"Erm, when you take an illegitimate copy of someone's music/film/art isn't that "copyright theft"?"

Wouldn't that depend on how that music/film/art/database was used thereafter ?

FAO EVERYBODY: From the Legal Outreach Team at Bong Ventures LLC

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Re: I'm sorry I misconstrued it for comedy

Stuart, you did understand that it was satirical didn't you ?

The subtitle is usually the giveaway.. "From: Steven P Bong, Founder and Chief Disruption Officer. "

OK CDO's actually exist do but not formally...

The Ashley Madison files – are people really this stupid?

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Re: Framed?

"The numbers would certainly suggest so, unless you reckon that a sizable portion of the male population is sexually desparate"

35 Million accounts would relate to a lot of people making a lot of jokes with their friends email accounts, somehow I doubt it.

From what I glanced over in the DB, the age groups were definalty that of middle aged men, which would appear to correlate with the group most likely to use these kinds of services.

On top of that how many "jokers" would also accept to the pay the bills by credit card....

I imagine that in reality there were a lot of fake accounts, probably generated by AM themselves in order to build up the stats. 35 Million**** definately does not sound realistic though as it would require about 60% of all middle aged North American to signing up... I had never even heard of AM before the scandals started.

****Matchbook maths : North America = approx 350million people = 175million men = slightly less than 2/7 of which in the 40 to 60 year old group = 50 million men...

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Re: A few thoughts come to mind

@Strum

Then please define your definition of a society or a culture if is not something that is based upon common values.

"Poppycock. I'm old enough (and it's not that long ago) when blokes with mistresses were thought of as 'a bit of a lad'."

From what I remember being called "a bit of a lad" was not something to be proud of, it was generally given to the foolish kind of person.

If you think that fucking around on your spouse is fine, then great for you, that's your perogative.. If marriage vows mean nothing to you, then fine, again that's your perogative.. Trust does not appear to be very high up on your list of moral values.

For the record, any moral judgments that I make are made for myself not for others as you stated.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Moral Readjustment

"Time to change our culture so people don't feel they have to resort to deceit to get what they really want."

@Keith : How on earth do you imagine that that is even remotely possible.

Today's culture, at least as the media portrays it, is based upon, "I want it all and I want it now", "I deserve everything", "I have the right to everything".."me, me , me ,me ".

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: A few thoughts come to mind

@Nigel

Most cultures are based on shared values. One of the shared values that our society has always held in esteem is that of fidelity. If someone chooses, knowingly, to use an "infidelity" website in the hope of cheating on their spouse then it is very difficult to treat that person as anything other that what they are, infidel and/or untrustworthy.

Again, I won't become involved in a Pro/Anti gay debate other than to say that for a large percentage of the population, probably in the majority, over 50 years old, it is another of those moral issue which will never be resolved by the media shoving the idea that being gay is acceptable down their throats. Whether you want to or not that issue will not simply disappear. In any event societies acceptance of homosexuality has been on a sinusoidal wave for many thousands of years... What's OK today will be taboo tomorrow.

Porn is not illegal nor particularly frowned upon, at least not on the left side of the pond. A list of Porn Users would probably equate to a couple of Billion names, ie most adults have at some time looked at some porn..

Are the hackers too blame, yes and no. Yes, they did hack into a website and take the data , definitely guilty. Were they responsible for people connecting and creating accounts on a extra-conjugal affair website, definitely not. Those that created accounts should have known better than publishing their sexual desires on a "public" website..

AM et al are not data security firms, they make money from suckering people into believing that they are going to get laid without effort... Those that got/will get bitten are/were playing with a rabid dog, what else did they expect.

Just my 2cts worth.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Lets look at this

Just had a quick look through the members details dump, judging by the birth-dates it appears that the majority were middle aged men. 1955 -1977 seems to be a very popular group....

I only downloaded the smallest dump 700mb as it expands to almost 3Gb.. but it is easy to presume that the bad guys have all the space and server power that they require in order to exploit the data without any problem.....

Nothing interesting for me other than to see how easy the data can actually be exploited.... delete torrent, delete files, drop DB, now that I have seen what is possible..

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Lets look at this

1 : 9gb , quite large but only really equates to a couple of HD movies. At the time of writing there are currently 6134 seeds and 5221 leeches. So it's already proving to be popular. Most teenagers are also well versed in torrenting.

The torrent contains about a dozen files which have gz, 7z + .asc extensions.. The files are named coherently for example CreditCardTransactions.7z..

It took me around 5mins to get 700mb of that file. ( having selected 4 of the files within to test the download speeds...its about as fast as my line can take)

2 : Anyone that has 7zip, PeaZip etc on their machine will be able to open the files.

3 : Agreed that without DB experience .dump will pose an initial problem. Although the number of people using MYSQL is large and it's relatively easy to import the dumps.. Google would allow most "technically minded people to find the details of how to load a dump quite quickly.

4 : That's not going to worry the spammers/hackers/script kiddies. From the 35 Million names, even a small percentage, let's say 10% would be fine.

I would agree that the average user won't be able to use these files but it doesn't take very much for them to be useable by someone with a modicum of knowledge.

What will pose a problem is having the capacity to load a DB with several GBs of data...

The dumps are just plain ascii dumps, there is no encryption and even Windows 10 Wordpad is able to open a 2Gb dump file... ( notepad++ failed,,, ggggggrrrrr)

By the way the torrent holds quite a few other files which are not DB related, floor layouts, Paypal account details etc....

I wouldn't like to be one of those that actually used this site in the hope of scoring a quick fling... I can only presume that they are currently biting their nails....

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Stupidity statistic alert

"Half the population if of below average intelligence..." and they are easy to spot due to their poor grammar!

Khaptain Silver badge

Vlad, I also agree with Peter, anyone that signs up to any of these extra marital affaires Web sites is just asking for trouble. These sites are prime targets, especially when the tabloid press can get their hands on the lists.

Honestly though, if I was going to cheat my wife I doubt very much that this would be the way that I would do it. Keep private affairs private don't publish them on public websites.

Publishing your intentions on a site like this is like announcing that your going to commit a crime and then hoping that it remains secret...

Your infidel analogy was also flawed, I very much doubt that the infidels in question ever agreed beforehand not to be infidels. ie: got married and took an oath about remaining faithfull.

Unless your set of moral standards is very different..

Mumsnet founder 'swatted by misogynist griefers'

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Coat

Re: is that Justine in the photo?

"It's Muriel Cleese, with a young John"

Isn't there a legal age for that kind of thing ?

French say 'non' to Netflix, reveals entertainment report

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Some missing info here

Why was there no mention of Canal Plus, it is subscription based channel that has been providing services for the last 20 years or so..

Canal Plus have their own offering "Canal Play" which is in direct competition with the Netflix offering.

I am not saying that either is better but it should have least been mentioned in this "incomplete" article..

PS : I know this and yet I don't even have a television....

Microsoft pushes us closer to the Edge: Test new web browser now in free Windows 10 VMs

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Re: Stepped back

@Gis Bunt

I will ask you a question in return, if the difference had been so small do you really honestly believe that I would have written anything ?

I use one of my own sites as my home page, as I have done for several years and I become very accustomed to the speed at which it typically opens up on IE, Chrome and now Edge.

If I stated that Edge takes twice as long, I think it would be reasonable to assume that we are not timing in 10ths or 100ths of a second. The difference is so blatant that even the pedantic and mentally challenged would have no problem stating the difference.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Big Deal

Personally I do not use the "cloudy" feautures but I presume that the great unwashed will :

a : be very unaware of just how much cloudy stuff that will actually be using without knowing it.

b : have no idea how to switch it all off, ( there are a lot of tucked away switches to switch off)...

c : simply get used to it and accept it.

The Apple crowd already use a lot of iCloud , I can only presume that the MS crowd will also become accustomed to it. although not by choice more by attrition.

I am very much for the cloud IF and only IF I can see what is being held, in a readable/modifiable format.....unlike the dark unreachable box solution that is currently in use... I loke that fact that my contacts et al follow me around when I change phones but I do not like the fact that I cannot see how much other information is currently being held or that I have any real control over it ( other than to remain disconnected)...

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Stepped back

@Gareth

UV = Up Vote

DV = Down Vote

Khaptain Silver badge

Stepped back

After two weeks of Edge I have now stepped back, or to the side at least, and made Chrome my default browser.

I have no idea why certain reviews state that Edge is fast, for me it is not, Chrome is at least twice as fast when opening any page. I have absolutely no "widgets", plugins or whatever to disturb the process.

My install was an upgrade rather than a clean install, shoudl that make a difference I do not knwo, I have also ensured that no cache is being trailed from anywhere.

But if one things distrubs me more than any other, it is that damned hidden address/search bar because it uses the same color scheme as the title bar, before it is clicked, it essentially remains invisible and one has to force oneself to know where to click.....aaaaagggghhhhh..... Visual is everything in a GUI....

There are also a lot of other PITAs, such as saving a page, I dont want a share button, I don't want to annotate, I would like a status bar....I do not like the way detach a tab.....

Grumble grumble, so now I have defaulted to Chrome ... Horses for courses and all that

'Marshmallow' picked as moniker for Android 6.0

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: I'm trying to think of a sweet beginning with Z.

There are a few "Zombie" variants available

http://www.niftycandy.com/weirdcandy.html

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Coat

Re: Well, it could have been worse....

What kind of sweets do you eat that are "Mackerel" flavoured ? I'll make a small wager that they are not very popular...

Microsoft replaces Windows 10 patch update, isn't saying why

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: What I want to know ..

"If you swear in French, what is that called?"

Malpoli

Khaptain Silver badge

Pascal,

Honestly, would it make any difference, they can spout off any old crap about what they are supposedly doing and then proceed to do the exact opposite.

Oracle to certify its database v.12c for Windows 10

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Coat

It could then be classified as a fully compliant malware machine.

Have an iPhone? Mac? Just about anything else Apple flogs? Patch now

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Coat

Re: I patched my MacBook Air...

I've never tried rubbing my laptops with herbs and spices but if you confirm that it will help with protection..

Two weeks of Windows 10: Just how is Microsoft doing?

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Re: I am happy with it

I have it running on 2 machines and everything seems fine, I don't like Edge because of the "semi-invisible " URL window.

There are already quite a few articles on the web into how to turn off the MS Spyware . I don't use a Live account, nor Onedrive etc... It also installs IIS which is a pain but easily resolved..

I don't like that Quick Access thing in the explorer but it is easy to point to "This PC" rather than quick access.. There are also some pointless file copy dialogs, on the whole it's pretty much BAU.

It's not quite as finished as Windows 7, but that will change with time, I like that it displays a taskbar on both screens. No major bugs, I don't find myself reaching for ctrl-alt-delete which is already a good thing.

Some things have been juggled about, some things are hidden but can eventually be found, not a major paradigm shift, it's kind of a bland update really...

I don't care about boot up speeds as my machines are on 24/24 with only a very occasional reboot.

I'm keeping it, I have now deleted the "windows.old" directory although I did clone my drive before upgrading, I will keep the clone for a month or so and then we'll see.

Monster Scalextric Formula 1 circuit to go under the hammer

Khaptain Silver badge

Jean Alessi was renowned for his gravel exploits.... he knew every gravel pit by heart