Posts by Charles 9

Re: Really?

"without liferafts, etc."

You do know those escape slides double as life rafts in the event of a water landing. The main reason you don't hear of sea rescues after aircraft crashes are because, AFAWK, none were survivable. When an aircraft loses control at high altitude, it either regains control before long and then diverts or just continues on down at such speed you might as well be crashing into a wall at that point in terms of physical ability to survive.

Re: Pointless Idea

There's also the matter of the infamous CFIT (controlled flight into terrain), where the pilots think they're flying through the air but then suddenly go CRUNCH. CFITs typically have zero warning and are already at ground level while going above takeoff speed, meaning physics dictates everyone's pretty much screwed.

Re: Reminds me of something Spike Milligan once said:

I guess this was before that one time when an aircraft suddenly depressurized in mid-flight, knocking everyone out and probably causing all aboard to die of hypoxia before the plane finally ran out of fuel and crashed into a mountain hours later.

Re: @Nifty always something else next

I was noting that. The primary reason humans are kept around is because they usually have some role to fill in the greater machine of society. Take that role away, and some difficult questions need to be answered. If we go by the well-oiled machine of Mother Nature, the cold solution is to reduce the population down (removing the unemplyables) to where those jobs that still need a human to do them remain. Trouble is that humans don't react to well to such a scenario, which is why stories like "The Cold Equations" make us uncomfortable. Sure, it sounds nice that people could do like the Federation and just have a basic income, but it all breaks down when you start asking who's going to PAY for all that.

Re: So the next logical question...

You're basically asking how to mail a letter without an address: barring telepathy, no. SOMEONE has to be able to know where the letter's going, and that alone can be exploited by the plods. About the only way you can avoid this is to go there in person using only private transportation (public will find a way to log you), and even then they may note something by your absence.

RE: "NAT at the ISP level is not widespread and not an obstacle if you are the local intelligence agency."

That's not the case in Asia, where they have billions of people and not enough addresses to go around, thus they were among the first to do carrier-grade NAT. Unless you're saying the plods were one-step ahead and mandated identifiable traces on all computer hardware before they were even sold.

Re: An old but solved problem

What kind of data would be illegal for an automated mangler to alter such that it wasn't illegal already, thus putting the onus on the uploader?

Re: Oh really

That's why, if they're REALLY interested in you, they'll spear-fish, drive-by, or use any and all means to pwn you at the endpoint: outside any encryption of obfuscation envelopes (because, at the end, the content MUST be decrypted for you to be able to employ it, seeing as we're not in Ghost in the Shell levels of technology where we keep cryptochips in our bodies as of yet.

Re: constant traffic component of OpSec

How do you reconcile that with a low bandwidth cap?

Re: An old but solved problem

Plus what if the server routinely alters uploaded pictures, potentially mangling most stego?

Re: No catch yer with Captcha

But they can still snag you when you're trying to set up that code. First Contact is always the most vulnerable phase.

Re: Eh?

With an online order, you can order it before you even arrive and have it ready for you when you walk in the door. That may be less practical for quick-turnaround stuff like beer, but for something like dinner or takeout that removes the waiting in line, saving time (and by the equation money).

Inside bars and the like, maybe you can request something at something like a Ziosk without having to signal for a bartender.

Re: There's a good and a bad side to this

Plus what if they switched to high-valued barter like gold or jewels?

Re: IBAN

Probably because they don't want to be beholden to a foreign power. They'll take their chances with Western Union and MoneyGram and PayPal, thank you, unless you can force the issue.

Re: nowt wrong with cash

They figure the money gets spent eventually (otherwise you wouldn't have taken it out, due to inflation "cash in the mattress" loses value over time) AND they figure you'll have spent it in the general area. Give time and increased facial recognition, cash serial number tracking (Where's George?) and even cash will be functionally traceable and the only way to operate completely tracelessly will be in barter of self-made perishable goods.

Re: Politics

It's a political issue because Republicans are generally of the opinion that if you want it badly enough, PAY FOR IT—and most Republicans are of a high-enough income bracket that they can. You can't afford it? Tough, better luck next life...

Re: Are those CableCARD ports

The VESA Feature Connector. That was intended for the likes of MPEG-2 decoder cards (that were needed in the late 90's to let computers watch DVDs at a watchable rate) and 3D Accelerator cards. The Feature Connector meant they could hook up to the graphics memory without having to go through the computer bus. I think that faded because bus standard kept changing and it became easier to just use the VGA piggyback method. Some like the 3dfx Voodoos simply switched between the base card and it, others (usually DVD decoders) used chroma-keying.

Re: Interesting

The only difference in the US being that baseline channels, for historical reasons, are sent in analog in the clear, meaning cable-ready analog TVs didn't need the box at all. It's only when you get to digital cable that the boxes are a necessity, and the cable companies played it cagey by making sure, except for the local channels until recently, again for historical reasons, all the channels were encrypted. In other words, it's closer to your situation now but there are still legacy traces.

Re: A First Step

Actually, there's a roadblock to that. They proposed something like that called the Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS). Only problem was the FCC had already demanded that the control module be transportable, meaning it can't be part of a TV for fear of lock-in. So it was CableCARD or bust.

Meanwhile, the FCC is trying to work on a successor to CableCARD called AllVid. I believe Cox's Contour system is at least partially based on AllVid.

CableCARD's been on a bumpy ride, plus there's the matter of finding a third-party box capable of using it, particularly the V2 cards that allow you to do Video On Demand.

Re: Death to cable(and sat) box

Unless like me you're in a bad reception area. All the local channels break up in my area, so it's another supplier or no TV, period.

Re: This is LONG overdue but they missed one thing.

The reason the cable companies were able to lobby to turn off ClearQAM is because they can (fair enough) claim unfair treatment versus digital satellite (DirectTV and Dish), who HAVE to encrypt their channels due to their signals transmitting nationwide yet not every channel is allowed nationwide due to local network restrictions which are actually mandated by the FCC (due to them originating in OTA broadcast which the FCC regulates). Unlike satellite, cable companies, being capable of operating in local clusters, are capable of tailoring their channel lineups per area to deal with the local channels without too much interference.

So you see, it's kind of a no-win situation unless the FCC takes the bold step to declare that cable and satellite are too different to be seen as subject to the same regulations.

PS. Even before the ClearQAM shutoff, ONLY local channels were transmitted in the clear; fair enough, as all the other channels are paywalled while the local channels were being sent in the clear OTA anyway. I loved that capability since it let me record NBC during the Olympics (I have an alternate system set up in time for Rio).

Thing is, since the cable companies settled on DOCSIS, cable internet has seen steady progress, and with DOCSIS 3.1 1Gbps over copper coax is tantalizingly close. So that's saying something. I think most of the push for DOCSIS came from the likes of Motorola and company (IOW, the cable modem makers) who weren't too pleased with having to tune their cable modems for different ISPs.

Now, there is a CableCARD standard out there to allow for a third-party STB to interact with a cable company. Look at the back of a cable STB and you just may find the CableCARD slot secured with a CARD in it. Problem is, for whatever reason, those boxes aren't available to the average consumer. Then there's the matter of the rental fees for those CARDs: usually almost as high as the boxen: at those rates, why bother?

Re: Forth

So what happens when you get caught between a reliability requirement and necessary complexity? Does it become a case of A Bridge Too Far?

Re: I assume...

I think that's what some of the commenters are saying: that in a containerized/virtualized environment, there's still a degree of separation in play: in this case between the guest and the host. And this degree of separation is more significant than the one between kernelland and userland; there's more abstraction between host and guest, which is why VMs can transport.

I do since the tape deck is worn out, there's no AUX port, and it's the stock 6-CD changer deck and I can't be asked to plunk down the few hundred it'll take to replace it as it's double-height.

Re: Open Source FTW

"The best way to improve IoT security is to name, shame, and fine offenders. Source code is nice, but it's irrelevant without strong consumer protection."

What's to stop unscrupulous dealers then from seeing this coming, vanishing, and reappearing under some new cover in a game of Whack-A-Mole?

Re: We need another Underwriters Labs!

Nothing can really test for resistance to sabotage for the simple reason there's always an ultimate saboteur that no system can defeat: the one who PUT IN the anti-sabotage system in the first place. Even if you attempt to use multiple layers, you can just replace the single saboteur with a team: each member having put up one of the layers. And given the stakes involved in governmental elections, you can't count out such a scenario.