Posts by Charles 9

Re: Rigged

They CAN'T be rigged, unless you're saying the ENTIRE STAFF, including the independent accounting firm required by federal gaming law is on the take. Look, allegations of lottery rigging have been around since the modern age of lotteries. I recall a big new story of the sort blowing up around 1987. That's why the machines are set up the way they are: they make ball tampering exceedingly difficult.

PS. You math's rather off. Given 1 billion tickets, the odds are actually quite good for at least one of them to hit since there are now about four times more tickets than combinations, meaning the Law of Averages will favor a hit. That's why the likelihood of a hit goes up with the jackpot as more tickets are put into play. The $1.5B Powerball one was a pretty wild case of the odds beating everyone.

PPS. Going back to the fraud bit, the system shouldn't even be telling the retailers if a ticket's a winner or not. That's how it works in Virginia. You see a ticket number on the display, that's all, with no knowledge of whether or not it's a winner.

Re: Idiots...

Then you lose the predictability.

Including serious web browsing? Because I tried with Mint and found it chugging regardless of the OS until I got things up to 4GB at least. Web browsing these days can be a real memory hog, regardless of the graphical browser you use.

Re: Feed this into MS' Agile development methodology...

A lot? The Linux catalog is barely 20% that of the Windows catalog, and plenty of headliners like Fallout 4 are still missing.

Re: Not a violation of net neutrality

"It looks like they're now going to offer the ability to make the choice yourself, so that's that part sorted. If you want to boycott them for being dishonest by omission, go for it, but I don't see this as hypocrisy myself."

OK. Better. Defaulting to conserving mobile bandwidth is all right as long as there's an opt out. The quote you give is pretty accurate as Sprint and T-Mobile are the underdogs of the mobile market and tend to have more aggressive offers (such as what I have now, with two completely unmetered LTE lines). Try getting that at a reasonable price with Verizon or AT&T.

Re: Guvmint Work

Anything you can do, a determined adversary can copy unless you go straight to the chip level, and even then there may be bad actors in the manufacturing stage which nothing can prevent or mitigate given the sophistication of sleepers.

Re: Examples

If USB is broken,then hardware in general is broken because there is absolutely nothing being done that cannot be done another way by another bad actor posing as a good one. It's full on DTA mode with no alternative. You either get nothing done or run the risk of a backstab. No third option.

"I occasionally check Task Manager to see what's running & any 'Trojan' app is going to grab my attention pretty quickly."

NOT if it's a trojan running ON TOP of an existing legitimate app. That's how this thing works. It hitches a ride on a genuine portable app making them part and parcel.

Re: Guvmint Work

Many desktop computers don't carry built-in flash card readers (that's mainly the realm of laptops). So how do you trust the card reader you're going to need to install to make them readable?

Re: Stating the Obvious

"Until I have time to sort out a spare machine, install a suitable Linux variant on it, and either find suitable equivalents of all the software I need, or ensure I can get existing stuff running."

You'll be in for a long wait, I reckon. Too much software is WINE-unfriendly and has no Linux counterpart, which is why I had to come back to Windows.

Re: If Datamining worked

Well, since sports betting adjusts to the bets being made before the event, Diminishing Returns eventually kicks in.

As for the stock market, since unpredictable humans and insider hijinks are involved, the data set will always be inadequate to make a truly accurate prediction.

"Most people are able to overcome the 'natural instincts' to go around trying to have sex with anything that moves, defecate wherever they like, and grab hold of anything that takes their fancy."

We're NOT "overcoming" them. We're merely repressing them. Thing is, it builds up like water behind a dam, and the dam doesn't have very solid foundations. Or perhaps a better analogy, a forest that keeps getting tinder built up. Sooner or later, the dam's going to break down or the forest is going to flash into a blaze. Why do you think we see so much scandal these days? We LIKE to think we're creatures who can control our emotions, but when crisis hits, what do we turn to? Not the brain, the gut, and like I said we do it practically on a reflex, without even thinking so we don't even have time to consider our actions until it's too damn late.

Re: 3 points

"Finally, I would like the opportunity, as a responsible citizen, providing I do no intentional harm to others, the right to do whatever the fuck i like in private, with consenting adults of my choice. This may include unwise or immoral or simply depraved activities, not least of which might be the consumption of illicit substances."

Problem is, doing UNINTENTIONAL harm to others is STILL a crime: negligence, and things you do in private can have knock-on effects in public, such as getting too drunk to work, leaving your boss understaffed on the day of a surprise inspection, and so on. So no, you cannot do whatever the F you like in private because no man lives in complete isolation.

"What we really need is a cultural change towards acceptance of violence of all sorts in our society, be it the public brawl on the high street on a Friday night, or the more insidious violence that happens behind closed doors, and this is an area where predictive policing could really help."

I doubt it'll work. Violence is damn near instinctive, probably even biological. That's why it feels so damn GOOD to vent steam, to shoot guns at nothing in particular, to unload on a punching bag, and so on. I would say getting rid of violence is going to be a tall order when our bodies are against us in that regard.

Re: click-to-play won't protect against trojan smut!

Then as the comedian once said, "You can't fix Stupid." At some point, you just have to give up the hopeless idiot as a lost cause.

Re: Play installs firmware?

Overlays have been around since Lollipop, but they're only now getting carrier and manufacturer attention.

As for separating the drivers and the rest of the OS, Android N should be a start to this if Google's word is accurate. Drivers can get tricky since they're usually tied to the kernel (due to the architecture; hardware on ARM is usually static rather than dynamic like it is on x86), and if the kernel itself has a problem, this can create a cascade effect.

And then there's the matter of the manufacturers working in cartel to keep a captive market. Especially now with Android apps increasingly root- and custom-aware.

And as for choosing Nexus, the main reasons I don't like them are lack of a removable battery (probably the least graceful part of the device to age) and lack of an SD slot.

Re: 850 million at risk

Because they're all UNOFFICIAL upgrades, and Android apps are increasingly becoming root-aware and custom-aware, meaning upgrading now entails a serious tradeoff.

Re: Too risky to use Android browsing the web.

NoScript IIRC ALSO safeguards media tags, making them click-to-play.

Re: My brain has already drained

Because if you expect to have any customers for your goods, you better make sure people get paid.

Re: Translating to:

"were you kidnapped and held at gunpoint and forced to work?"

Being told to work or starve amounts to the same thing. We may pray to be given this day our daily bread, but reality demands we sing for our supper. The problem is that jobs can be considered a resource just like everything else. And when there are twelve people on the island but only six coconuts, no matter how much you try to divide it, things can only get ugly.

Re: "Shared ownership is hell"

"Gifts, favors, BSD-style licenses -- that's the way to do it: no-strings-attached sharing."

Betrayals, backstabs, behind-the-back fingers-crossed double-crosses. That's why they're not considered prudent in most of today's society.

Re: Timing

" it's more about perceived good will in the brand and whether the brands could be confused."

Classic example I put up. The name "Cracker Barrel" has at least TWO non-conflicting registered trademarks (meaning the government has looked at them and agreed they're non-conflicting): one belongs to Kraft for a brand line of cheeses, the other belongs to a restaurant chain with an old-town theme appropriate for the name.

Re: taxi

Then you reply that the cash you have he can't readily handle. I was about to say the smallest you have is a hundred, but a Jersey cabbie would probably be able to handle it, so perhaps say you have foreign cash. Now you force the cabbie to declare he lied and that his card reader works or force him to waste time (and lose perhaps another fare) driving you back.

Re: precedent

"That can't be. They changed the iCloud password, then for the phone to sync the password has to be entered again from the phone. Can't change the iCloud password back and make the iPhone happy."

Are you sure? If the iCloud account's password is changed back to the original password, the one the phone itself is synced against, how will it be able to tell the difference?

Re: The tinfoil hats are strong with these ones.

"Yes, they do want a legal back door. But they want it because access is (1) physically impossible, (2) prohibitively expensive or, if you're ultra paranoid, (3) they don't want to reveal the technique they are using."

Well, the article says that, according to these researchers, (1) doesn't apply (it's proven possible), (2) is unlikely (though it takes state-class resources, it's unlikely to be too costly for a state), and (3) is moot (the secret's already out).

Re: Nation-state?

Just because you discover it's possible doesn't mean you have the resources to actually pull it off. Think "Traveling Salesman Problem". Simple to describe, utter nightmare to implement.