* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Gov: Smart TV bods must protect users from smut-riddled badness

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: This problem was solved in 2003

" RFC 3514"

All the virtue of a "simple" solution politicians so love to see combined with all stupidity that they display.

Priceless.

Whatever your thoughts on Mr Wales I think it's still clear he knows a damm sight more about how the internet really works than Clare Perry

Jimbo Wales: ISP smut blocking systems simply 'ridiculous'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Hard to believe an MP who bangs on about this subject can remain so f**king clueless

And yet they do.

I suspect that being an ex PSB CMD's weakness is that somehow someone's gender gives them special insight into certain subjects when a moments study would show them as about as well informed as some cider sodden dosser on the south bank.

BTW I think someone is hijacking NormNormNorm's account again.

Do not feed. :( .

Upgraded 3D printed rifle shoots 14 times before breaking

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Someone who has *no* failed to maintain his weapon.

"The 'little cylinders' are not barrel liners, they are the brass that holds the powder and the bullet head. This is the part that is ejected from the gun after the round has been fired."

The technical term for which is a "cartridge" Mr AC.

I mean the dark metal cylinders sitting on that plastic rack in the shot, not the things he seems to be pushing out the barrel after each firing.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Someone who has *no* failed to maintain his weapon.

But the off screen loading of the barrel is suspect, as are the little cylinders on the bench. Is he using a barrel liner?

Actually the obvious way to hoax this would be to use under powered re-loads (barely a cap gun) and dub the sound track, ideally with the one full power round you fired before it exploded.

Highly suspicious of this and a long way from a viable weapon.

There's a tide of unstructured data coming - start swimming

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

Re: alternatively...

"...you could delete some of that data because you.

a: don't need it and it's worthless.

b: shouldn't keep it anymore because you're not supposed to.

c: if you keep everything for ever you end up on a channel 4 documentry about obsessive hoarding."

Or d)You run a government surveillance apparatus and you have an irrational desire to collect ever more of it regardless, because you can.

In which case you are a data fetishist.

Lumpy milk and exploding yoghurt? Your fridge could be riddled with MALWARE

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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But it's the *future*

A bright new world, the Internet of Things. (TM).

Enabling and empowering home owners to tell their house how they want it to be from wherever in the world.

And..

And..

Ah bo**ocks. You're right. It's a s**t idea and the only people with any desire to do this are a)Appliance mfg, like those "smart" TVs all those people went out to (not) buy b)Marketing types expecting to micro-profile you demographically even further, enabling them to answer such eternal questions as "Do left handed lesbians buy more cucumbers than right handed lesbians, and how can we appeal to the right handed lesbian demographic if they do" c)Chip makers figuring they'll either need some new types for this or more sales of the old stuff.

Tor servers vanish as FBI swoops on kiddie-smut suspect

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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So a system that protects *privacy* is a major target for everyone.

Which kind of suggests who their real enemy is.

Individual rights.

The Old Reader drops Google refugee eviction plan

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Remember if you cannot figure out what product the company provides..

You are the product.

And servers in US.

Enjoy your privacy.

Hackers induce 'CATASTROPHIC FAILURE' in mock oil well

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: OMFG. How is this even *possible* in 2013?

"It easily possible, unfortunately. If the system was created in 1995, it'll still be running win95. Takes too much time/money to re-writing you systems every couple of years just because some new OS is out. Then by the time you realise the system is ancient the people who wrote have left the company, so it would take even more time/money to update. Hell, we're still running DOS for some critical systems. "

Which would not be a problem as it's air gaped from the rest of the world.

But then we get.

"Oh, and the system probably wasn't written with security in mind and will probably baulk at being disconnected from SAP etc., so no, you can't just unplug it."

Because you're saying a system developed when dialup was the common way for remote connections requires an always on connection, unless you're saying the system started running on a private WAN and transitioned to the general internet later?

This scenarios does not quite stand up IRL.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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" I asked the company man I was working with what was up. He said that every minute this machine was down, it cost the company $4000.-. I"

Perhaps they should have thought of that when they spec'd the hardware and made some better arrangements to localize faults.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

OMFG. How is this even *possible* in 2013?

And no "air gap" IE no permanent (wireless or cable) connection to the general internet, is the right term.

It's not even conceptuallydifficult to explain. This is a variation of Gary McKinnons DoD attack, something which I explained to a civil service friend (someone with no interest in computers but an awareness of remote admin tools) in about 2 minutes.

The only way to justify this behaviour is that it will save some money and the replacement cost (if the plant is destroyed) is never considered. I'm amazed better security is not justified by lower insurance premiums alone.

Fail because this level of compromise should simply not be possible in the second decade of the 21st century.

Geneticists resolve human dilemma of Adam's boy-toy status

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

My this has bought the $deity bothers out in force.

Let me suggest a position everyone could live with.

1)1 second after you die everyone gets to find out wheather their positions was correct.

2)If someone asks what your position is by all means feel free to explain it to them, but if they don't, don't. They will take their chances with their PoV, as will you when the time comes.

Might I also point out the implication of the "Mitochondrial" Eve is that the phrase "All men are brothers," is a literal statement of fact, not a charming philosophical position.

All wars are civil, and all conflict is internecine.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Re: plz tell me where 10k yrs came from in the bible ?

"Really Usher was practically making it up"

Not like the rest of the book which is gospel true.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: plz tell me where 10k yrs came from in the bible ?

", rather than disproving the whole book as the myths and ramblings of some desert tribesmen and farmers."

You might also include some of them sounding like the ramblings of someone with syphilis eating their brain.

Big blue Avatar movie spawns THREE SEQUELS

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Jar sodding Jar sodding Binks?

Was I alone in thinking he would have looked good with a really long stripey woolen hat for the ears to be tucked into?

Perhaps at the wheel of a Yellow cab?

Just a thought.

Terror cops swoop on couple who Googled 'backpacks' and 'pressure cooker'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Browsing is just not as safe as it used to be..

"So recently someone wishes to take an elderly relative up to some mountain range, I point out that the air is quite thin and not good for him, and the air pressure is lower than it is in an aircraft, said relative having ruled out air travel. So I'm busy googling aircraft cabin pressures to get the figures right (yes I was right), but in the back of my mind there was a worry over which spook/program would be sitting there monitoring what I was googling..."

It's called a "false positive."

And you can bet there will be plenty of them.

Some think that's a bug. Some think it's a feature.

Depends what you want to do. a) Catch actual terrorists b) Scare the s**t out of the population forever.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

@Vince Lewis 1

"People must be made to fear their government its only through fear can they have control."

No, elements of the government want to create fear so that the people will accept their control.

Perhaps you should view " The Power of Nightmares "?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Ah, America.../Yay for that DHS funding.

"and not enough funding for safety inspectors in texas to stop ammonia nitrate explosions in fertiliser plants."

No. It's a fertilizer, not an explosive.

Now if you were to reclassify it as an explosive then the BATFE would be all over them like a rash.

Of course the American farming system would go down the pan as every farmer had to get an explosives license and secure storage facility for this explosive.

Funny how 15 dead and 160 injured (for an industrial "accident") is an "acceptable" loss and 3 dead in the Chicago Marathon bombing is not.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

Re: Backpack? Pressure cooker? I own both!

"Should I turn myself in?"

Of course not.

Your surveillance and interrogation have already been scheduled.

Turning yourself in now will play havoc with the carefully planned (and costed) staffing chart.

But your thoughtfulness has been noted and is appreciated, citizen.

Of course, it would get you any actual leniency....

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Heartening story

"It's good to know their budget doesn't run to that for everyone."

Yet.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: who in the hell

"If nothing else I think all this reflects very poorly on the US education system. Basic primary school science teaches you (or used to anyway) everything you need to know about doing this of you wanted. The fact so many people think it takes supervillain levels of knowledge and resources means there are a lot of idiots with poor educations in charge of the news and Congress."

Indeed. The quality of the US domestic terrorist has gone through the floor since the Oklahoma City bomb and the apprehension of the unibomber.

It's not like there aren't enough expatriot Ulsterman with the necessary skills wondering around the land of the free to improve education in the pyrotechnic field should that be necessary.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Suffolk

"The black SUV's are everywhere man, everywhere. You may not see them driving around but they are parked nearby somewhere."

Now I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist...

Well the the US govt has had to fail out all the big auto makers (Is Chrysler on it's 3rd)?

What better way to kick start their next years sales than a bulk order for some American automotive icons?

Thus the Federal departments of Treasury, Prisons and Homeland Security work together to keep employment high and the prison business filled.

Whoopee for investing in America's future (as a police state).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Ah, America...

"Surely the authorities have their hands full with things more dangerous than pressure cookers. "

Of course not.

With their newly expanded funding there is always enough staff available to send a mob round to scare the crap out of someone.

Yay for that DHS funding.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

“I’m scared. And not of the right things.”

Because you've seen that in a climate of government induced paranoia the slightest thing would cause people to inform on you and trigger an extreme response from the same government?

Do the math.

Chance of being involved in a terrorist incident. Practically zero.

Chance of being involved in a federal "questioning" where some twitchy Fed yells "gun" and it all kicks off. Quite high.

I'd say she's just starting to realize who she should be scared of.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: People are like golden retrievers!

"At that moment people should engage with their AR-15s.

Because if these guys happen to be cartel, then shit's gonna hit the fan. You better take down a few ASAP."

You need to have added the joke icon

People thought you were serious

MPs get secret squirrel dossier of 'lawyers, megabiz hiring hackers'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Rouge and conslutant

"You know, you two are a prime example of why I prefer to read my news here :)"

Credit where its due jake coined the word "conslutant"

But I'm sure there are many more of them and it does deserve a wider audience.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Report Title

"Well, I like my new title better than the original anyway."

True.

But you'll have to go a long way to beat "conslutant."

SAP boss cops jail time plea after Lego barcode bust

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

WTF?

I definitely think this guy needs to play the mental health card.

Now if somebody did this and paid with a cloned credit card that would be neat.

But that does not look like what happened.

The hammer falls: Feds propose drastic controls on Apple's iTunes Store

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

""Apple's lawyers called the DoJ's remedy... wildly out of proportion to any adjudicated wrongdoing or potential harm."

Different laywers

One group for IP, one for copyright.

When you try to control what they want to sell stuff for that's monopolies and copyright.

When they want to charge people for stuff they claim to have invented that's IP.

US sales rebound for Teradata as customers run out of capacity

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Wot? All that new business from the NSA not helping?

"Fast processing of complex queries"

Ken Brill, 'the father of data centers', powers down at 69

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Too bad

That personality description sounds like someone you either feel passionately loyal too or absolutely loath.

Especially when he's right.

Personally I've always wondered how come whenever people boasted about how many more transistors they put on this years chips they didn't mention the power supply was still the same size. It turns out in fact they could not even manage that level of efficiency.

BTW according to NASA power faults and design cockups are the #1 cause of on orbit failures of satellites and probes. People trust that the PSU "just works." But that is a very naive PoV.

Sadly missed.

NASA's cloud strategy panned by NASA auditors

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

*no* minimum SLA?

And no policies dealing with the life cycle of data within the organisation.

This is from an organisation whose contract sizes (1000s of pages under FAR25 and cost plus) are legendary.

NASA has lot a of diverse systems and the ability to migrate them onto (mostly) a single scaleable platform with memory and processing on demand makes a good case for a lot of their functions.

In theory it's an excellent fit for cloud services.

In practice, less so.

Carmack blows 'crazy money' on hibernating Armadillo

John Smith 19 Gold badge
IT Angle

Too bad

I've always enjoyed John's presentations and I suspect he did a lot for getting Linux in shape to do real time control. And for those thinking John's other half has not been too supportive she did buy him a 5-axis machining centre for his birthday. :) .

IT Angle is Armadillo used the same core code for both their control systems and their vehicle simulations (through a viewing module) so how you though it would fly would be how it would fly.

I hope the blog notes and teeshirts will still be available through the web site. They make fascinating reading for anyone looking to learn what happens when people do rocket engineering, not talk about it. Armadillos are rather cute (like a sort of passive aggressive hedgehog)

Perhaps they should have hit up Top Gear for funding for The Stieg after all?

I'll hope he and the team re-fund and re-group and return to the challenge.

US Republican enviro-vets: 'Climate change is real. Deal with it'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Especialy surprising given Shrubs fondness for never-go-to-jail-cards for the Clean Air & Water acts

Which partly explain the hostility to fracking in the US.

Interestingly they agree that a "carbon tax" would be the best way to get companies thinking about moving away from CO2 producing systems.

But note once again the US political system is not the solution it's the problem

Google scientists rebel over company's support for 'climate-hoax' Senator

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: @DanceMan

"That most certainly was not implied. Humans have existed (briefly) on the moon, and that didn't help with population pressure on the Earth in the slightest."

That's exactly what is implied.

That the Earth is the only place that support any reasonable size of population and the only energy sources are those that can be found on planet Earth.

The energy cost to LEO is about the same as the round trip energy cost of London to Sydney (a fact known by Philip Bono since the late 1960s). An LH2/LO2 system would deposit most of its exhaust back into the atmosphere for recycling. So yes mass migration even using rather pedestrian means (no space elevators or tethers) is possible.

As for the Earths energy consumption the Earth covers a disk of roughly 127 million square kilometres. That is roughly 1/2.19x 10^9 of the sphere around the Sun at 1 AU.

Assuming the current Earths energy consumption is about 150 peta watt hours That a sphere at the Earths radius at 10% efficiency would collect 50x more energy than the entire worlds energy consumption.

The issue is not wheather those resources exist, because they do. The question is can be find a way to exploit them economically?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

@DanceMan

" it's population and the ideal of never-ending 3% annual economic growth. If this planet were expanding 3% annually, this might not be an issue. "

Which implies that Earth is the only body that humans can, will or ever exist on.

That we already harvest most of the power output of biggest fusion reactor within 100 million miles of Earth.

Neither of those statement is true. When the human race has exhausted those options then I'll start to worry.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: Conspiracy Trifecta

"We've got the UN and the Democrats already, who will he pick to round out his axis of evil?

-Satan

-The Illuminati

-Mexicans

-Sol (our Sun)

-Planned Parenthood

Windows close at midnight. Wager now!"

Thumbs up for a nice selection. You really know your SEL's

It's a tough call but I'll go with Satan by a nose. I've got him pegged as a pro-lifer but I suspect he sees PP as merely a front organisation for "The Beast"

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"dangerous fundamentalist nonsense.." ".. US government in the 21st Century is insane."

Not all the fundamentalists are in Tehran.

Something to keep in mind.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@Grikath

"All of the Above, most likely. "

Inhofe has my vote.

For Swivel Eyed Loon of the year (so far).

BTW Isn't "OK" Oaklahoma, part of "Tornado Alley" ?

No signs of extreme weather events there?

Hundreds of UK CSC staff face chop, told to train Indian replacements

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Tricky question. Will they give you a rubbish reference if you tell them to get stuffed?

Just a thought.

Corporations spout on endlessly about "loyalty," "development" and "opportunities."

Don't believe a f**king word of it. Money talks, bu****it walks.

FBI spooks use MALWARE to spy on suspects' Android mobes - report

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So it can't listen in on your calls, just the room sounds where you are. But it's not a wiretap.

Oh really?

I've been on cattle farms.

I know BS when I smell it.

Step into the BREACH: HTTPS encrypted web cracked in 30 seconds

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

"post cryptography?"

Do you mean through botched key management or an actual breakthrough in number theory proving what is NP or NP complete?

So the question is Sky Digital with it's 2048 bits of RSA encryption likely to be broken anytime soon?

Somehow I kind of doubt it.

SMBs are tumbling into the cloud? Oh get real

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

You say "cloud" I say "Bureaux Service."

May I suggest people raid the old book services for books about buying bureaux services written in the late 60s and 1970s.

Obviously the prices will be grossly out of date but the principles should still work.

Question is how will you know a cloud solution is better than your current systems if you don't how much the current systems cost already?

Question you need to ask is how much of your data you want to share with the Americans?

Micron buys Apple supplier Elpida for $2bn, becomes world's No 2 DRAM baker

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

I think AMSTRAD once had a stake in Micron

Hard to believe now.

But it's impressive that they have stayed in the game all this time.

Thumbs up for sticking to something and not "refocussing around our core competencies" IE selling everything in site and trying to live off licensing their IP.

Facebook: 'Don't worry, your posts are SECURE with us'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So what. US company with most servers in US. *All* data accessible to US government.

It'll give trouble to anyone between you and their servers so any gang (of Russian/Chinese/Israeli/Pakistani/India/computer crime capital du jour) identity thieves will have to work a bit harder for their money.

No doubt I'll get the irritating whine of "You don't have to use the internet you know" from various assorted idiots.

Security breach at Opscode as attackers download databases

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Better handled than how RSA did it?

Yes

Climate change even worse than you thought: It causes war and murder

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Go

Didn't the Houston police department find killings rise with temperature up to 26c

then start falling

But the loss of resources caused by climate change is going to cause more competition.

Note. This research applies to any climate change, regardless of cause.

Being able to quantify these effects can help future planning, but this is a first attempt.

So go for them to continue to refine this work.

Weekend project: Mulch your old PC to save the world

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

"synthetic aluminosilicate"

That would be the glass in the fibre glass of FR4 boards.

Note however that cheap and nasty PCB are made of paper and a bunch of nasty organics.

Of course if you could recover those metals (economically) that would be even better.

But thumbs up for doing something about this problem.

New NSA tool exposed: XKeyscore sees 'nearly EVERYTHING you do online'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

Re: "xkeyscore sees nearly everything"

"This is good news, IMO. Keep up the fine work folks. It's nice to know that at least a few people have a clue on national security."

Funny how those who support mass surveillance and the elimination of all online privacy do so from the anonymity of the AC?

Do you get the idea of irony?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: No one cares about you.

"Who defines what 'dangerous' is? "

And that is the point.

As a citizen of a representative democracy or "free" society going about their law abiding business I should have the right to expect the government to not spy on me because I have done nothing.

IE I have to have done something to warrant surveillance in the first place.

Understand this. The storage and processing so cheap that everyone can be watched basically because they can. No justification is needed and no actual evidence is needed either.