Posts by ElReg!comments!Pierre

Reboot?

«Even zombie processes die if you reboot.»

Reboot? What are you, some kind of windows freak? I say kill -9 them. Kill -9 them with FIRE!

Well the point is

that the servers mostly belong to foreign businesses, and are, well, abroad. So they hijack the DNS, to prevent people fro Uzbekistan to access machines located in China. Because someone broke US law, uder which juridiction no-one was in the first place, but for the DNS overlords.

Which brings us to the conclusion: either US courts have to put their act together, or the rest of the world need to set up an alternate DNS authority. Preferably the latter.

Erm...

I think you'd have a stronger point if you could refrain from shouting «you dirty communist liberal socialist cultist sissy!» at everything that moves (as any non-ultra-right-wing merkin nutter knows, several of these are mutually exclusive anyway).

Other than that you raise a few interesting points (mostly, that it's now all a political debate hiding under the pretense of science).

Not exactly

«do nothing, ignore the problem and hope somebody else fixes it in the future. The human default option of passing the buck.»

Well there is also the teeny weensy question of wether there is a buck to pass in the first place, or if it's only some sensationnalist agenda-pushing by people who'd rather not solve proven problems with nowadays consequences, such as toxic waste. Cutting CO2 would also has the convenient effect of stopping asian and african developpment, which means less scary competition for «us». Convenient to say the least. Why not focus on methane, for example? Maybe because is produced in humongous quantities by industrial cattle breeding and cutting on those emissions would raise the price of meat in the US, tipping the balance towards extensive breeding (Argentina?) . And we can't have that, can we?

All that backed by a guilt-based protestant culture.

«Fighting against the hubris, greed and inertia of the entire human race was always futile.»

Indeed.

Besides, you're very wrong

«when actually in this instance, as in most instances of a Trojan, it's actually a little common sense on the user's behalf that's key, and in fact the only certain way to avoid getting stung.»

Actually in that case common sense would not have helped much. After all the spiked apps came from reputable sources. Unless of course you consider that common sense is "don't install anything that wasn't on the machine when you bought it". But let's not let facts get in the way of the Church of Jobs. Stevie said "Macs have no use for AV", so that must necessarily be the truth. Despite some of his high priests actually thinking the contrary, by the way.

I took the piss again didn't I

«Forgive me for not being wrong, but the clear inference in your previous post is that anti-virus will save us all from this terrible threat»

Ooops sorry I was wrong and you were right. Let me just hop in Ye Olde Timemachine and correct my post -perhaps by adding a footnote or something.

.........................................

There. Better?

«when actually in this instance, as in most instances of a Trojan, it's actually a little common sense on the user's behalf that's key, and in fact the only certain way to avoid getting stung.»

Well stupidity is a common trait in users, which is why the admins force awful nannying anti-virus software on them. Their main goal is not to get rid of viruses, contrarily to popular belief, it's to _prevent_ the opening or installation of malware by stupid users. In the present case 'infection' would be prevented as the malicious software would have been recognized as such and thus not allowed to install.

I am by no means a fan of anti-virus software myself, though I would definitely install one on Aunt Millie's PC (even of the Apple brand).

Once again a fanboi is wrong

This situation is the reason why lesser «wintards», as you call them, are told to check their stuff against a list of known malware. That can't hurt penguin lovers of sub-guru ranks, either. The program that does the checking is often referred to as an «anti-virus»*. Yeah, the name can be a bit misleading to the fanboi crowd, too used to chant "it's not a virus. It's not a virus" in a slow monotone manner while bowing before His Mighty Jobsiness.

Also, since you ask «what flaw needs patching?», letting a screensaver access the net to download a malicious payload is a pretty obvious, and easily avoidable, flaw. Only software that absolutely needs network access (i.e. web browser, ftp client, ...) should access the network. Otherwise, at the very least the user should be asked. Coincidentally, most «anti-virus» software let you configure alerts like «software x is trying to access the network, should we let it do that?». Now there might be a way to get OSX to do that, but if so why doesn't it do so by default? The second flaw is letting said screensaver _run_ the downloaded malware.

Thank you for your attention, you can now get back to being an ignorant smug dick.

*Note that anti-malware programs should not be considered an absolute protection either. It's only preventing lusers from doing the most blatantly stupid things. Such as installing widely known malware.

Icon

«That you are a lemming?»

I believe it's a troll icon, not a lemming icon.

I was just summarizing some of the old fanboi bullshit. But hey, at least you noticed it was bullshit. :p

Yes quite

Atmospheric pressure is required to hold the column(s) of liquid together and preventing it from collapsing, end of. The driving force is gravity.

Only column A

Sealing the reservoir would stop the flow at some point, but not until the pressure in the reservoir is significantly lower than the atmospheric pressure; that is, when the difference in pressure can counter the driving force, which is gravity.

Pressure is still required to hold the liquid together, but a watertight tubing is required too. Is the watertight tubing the driving force?

The siphon would actually work perfectly horizontally in a centrifuge, and you make a very good point. I should have thought of that.