* Posts by Notas Badoff

1059 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2009

Making us pay tax will DESTROY EUROPE, roars Apple's Tim Cook

Notas Badoff
Unhappy

Sorry

When I saw your message shortly after posting, I thought to myself "maybe I should post asking why there's no icon for "Don't kill the messenger!"" Now I'm sorry I didn't. Some people are so instantly angry they splat the 'splainer.

Having offended everyone else in the world, Linus Torvalds calls own lawyers a 'nasty festering disease'

Notas Badoff

Barbs?

_Where_ lawyers often get their hooks into you tends to make one really rather testy. As do certain 'contributers' who end up commenting more than contributing. Sweet words can yet be nasty.

Baltimore cops: We flew high-res camera planes to film your every move

Notas Badoff
Flame

Re: Don't worry... But paranoia is quite justified.

All you need is continuous access to the dozen cameras that every autonomous driverless car will have recording everything that happens anywhere that cars can go. Who needs to pay for the extra gas for a police plane/helicopter when Joe Public's car will easily rat out Jill Public's getaway from that bank robbery. Or whatever is the crime du heure, three weeks later.

We *really* need to get into the mode of starting with every dystopian scifi misanthropy ever imagined, and ask "how are we going to stop that from happening?" Because the current method of attempting to react belatedly to the "who knew they would do that?" just isn't going to work. All those bad things will become true unless we actively, oh damn, *proactively*, guard against them.

Your wget is broken and should DIE, dev tells Microsoft

Notas Badoff

Relating to the outside world

It is when Microsoft's world and the real world interact that we find out how narrow and small is Microsoft's understanding of, or experience with, the real world. Way back when it was considered by them a negative if you had any experience with other operating systems or non-native toolsets. I think that must still be true. This is self-inflicted, just like stack ranking. Very sad. Very predictable.

Das ist empörend: Microsoft slams umlaut for email depth charge

Notas Badoff

Re: English is schön

Ah yes, the 'automatic' workarounds to compensate for the knowledge-impaired knowledge workers. I automatically replace the umlauts with their by-ASCII-convention equivalents, because of numerous past hassles. 'oe', 'ae', 'ue', usw. Hey, longer passwords are supposed to be better, yes?

( Hmm, dictionary.com says 'hassle' has "unknown origin"? Really? Not 'hässlich' ? )

Microsoft can't tell North from South on Bing Maps

Notas Badoff

Re: already fixed

You mean Melbourne is a Heisenburb?

Shopped in an Eddie Bauer store recently? Your card's probably gone. It's just gone

Notas Badoff

Re: Could be useful...

The phone operators will love being able to report you saying that. It ensures their jobs. Much like the reversing ebb tide as local-lish-speaking phone service centers are picking up employees as customers ask for someone they can understand and be understood by.

Outsourcing: the kuru of the modern business world.

Researchers crack homomorphic encryption

Notas Badoff

Re: Interesting: the orginal, now-worthless paper describing the scheme is is paywalled..

The 'capture' of academic papers by the various nefarious institutions has been reviewed extensively here in these pages.

In the meantime, may I suggest an orientation at Wikipedia? Unfortunately there was insufficient computational resources available for me to decrypt the scheme used therein...

#Censusfail aftermath: Here's what's happening inside Australia's board rooms this morning

Notas Badoff

Re: just asking

If the BBQ sauce is really good they just keep licking your fingers and asking for more.

AdBlock Plus blocked in China: 159m forbidden from stripping adverts

Notas Badoff

Re: Cats and bags

We want the ability to shove any code we wish onto your PCs/phones without interference. Soon we will restrict the security updates you receive until we are assured we have "equal access" via newer exploits.

We don't need government-mandated backdoors installed, we're just going to make sure we have all the 'unofficial' backdoors enabled.

Very peed off: Ohio urologists stay zipped after embarrassing leak

Notas Badoff

Soothing explanations

"The Central Ohio Urology Group says it will take several weeks before its investigation will be complete and the full scope of the incident known."

Oh yeah, the "that stone will soon progress down the ureter all by itself, and we don't have to hurry things up..."

Said to the friend who'd already quite convinced them of the need for morphine due to the extreme pain involved (and which produces distinctive recognizable reactions because *every* nerve in your body is on fire!)

Shut 'em up, bliss 'em out, and stick 'em in a corner - they're too busy preparing the bill.

Don't want to vote for Clinton or Trump? How about this woman who says Wi-Fi melts kids' brains?

Notas Badoff

Known risks with quantifiable outcomes

Ralph Nader and his advocates still claim they did not influence the 2000 election results, Bush winning. Bush then killed 4500 US troops and countless other people unsuccessfully working out his oedipal flaws.

The US election system stinks but that's the voting landscape to be negotiated. Don't step in the dog turds. A vote for Stein, Johnson, or Harambe *is* a vote for Trump.

And as for the repeated claims that congress/senate/DOD/states would obstruct any Trump stupidity, so that it doesn't matter what idiot gets elected president, see Bush et al. Oh, and the recent wailing "I didn't think my vote would count!"

Windows 10 Anniversary Update: This design needs a dictator

Notas Badoff

Re: My only wish

Interesting, "bill", "steve", "satya". Wow, talk about limited horizons, they really have gotten the big corporate mentality. "Does the CEO's name fit? Okay, it's a go!"

Give .gay to the gays, roars exiting ombudsman

Notas Badoff

Re: It doesn't matter...

They wanted to - "No, Google you still can't have dotless, one-word domains" - but ICANN didn't like it.

Hmm, for improving one's reputation it can be *useful* to have ICANN around, as they seem to be "the worst", and opposing/finagling them should make your reputation rise.

Free Windows 10 upgrade: Time is running out – should you do it?

Notas Badoff

No, just don't

"They will be missing out on seven years of Microsoft's efforts to improve security and performance, but the extra risk is hard to quantify."

I was reminded just yesterday how much I loathe the MS attitude.

"We have to update with fixes, choose a convenient time." Mmm, kay, I'm real busy so how about 2 days from now. "We tried to install fixes, but the update didn't work. Reschedule?" ?!?!, kay, but I'm still real busy, so how about... WHY are the date and time controls grayed out? I can't pick when? You're going to reboot in an hour no matter what the owner of the PC wants?

It's the attitude, people. Microsoft has _earned_ the undying hatred of millions. And they just don't understand why. Think about that last part. They have lost that there is a relationship between customer and vendor. I didn't leave them, they left me.

Los Desaparecidos di Disruption: The Final Days of Conservative 2.0

Notas Badoff

Promoted?

Promethean!

How to scam $750,000 out of Microsoft Office: Two-factor auth calls to premium-rate numbers

Notas Badoff

Re: Totally irresponsible disclosure

According to his notes, he started submitting the vulnerabilities to vendors in September 2015. Others in February this year. He also pinged them repeatedly until they *really* understood how much moola was extractable even after their original sets of responses. He waited until all these had been addressed before publishing his notes.

He was totally being responsible. 10 months of notification time, multiple communications. And you won't even take the time to read about it to understand that much?

15-year-old security hole HTTPoxy returns to menace websites – it has a name, logo too

Notas Badoff
Flame

Perl? Perl!

So this is at least the second vulnerability in the last year or so, spread across multiple libraries, that could have been avoided if there was such as a thing as "institutional memory". But no, Perl is sooo passé, we don't need to remember what the Internet's first language experienced when exposed to the real world and malefactors. All those fixes ignored...

Santayana: "... and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. ..."

McCain: Come to my encryption hearing. Tim Cook: No, I'm good. McCain: I hate you, I hate you, I hate you

Notas Badoff

Off script?

"By refusing to talk with them Cook is literally inviting the politicians to reach their own conclusions."

In theatres they do these things called plays. Those have scripts. And most everybody knows that the actors are _not_ ad-libbing. The script for this particular play was written long ago to agree with the 'conclusions' decided long ago.

Tim declined to show up for the role of Bottom. And that frustrates McPuck? Applause all around!

Next month's Firefox 48 is looking Rusty – and that's a very good thing

Notas Badoff

How fast can you rewrite?

Having just yesterday come across a bug report 15 years old, I have to ask: how far do their intentions go? Security... or relevancy?

The defining comment (Hixie(!) from 2002) in that bug was that, umm, paraphrasing, "all this was designed with the relevant C++ code so deep as to make the needed flexibility impossible." In other words, we can't fix the problem (can't respond to changes in CSS) "because C++".

So how far do their ambitions go? Will they use their new sparkly language facility to rewrite all the rotten guts that have caused bugs to be stuck on "this sucks, but we can't do anything about it" for years?

As it is, desertions proceed as people keep coming up against "can't fix", "won't fix", and "who gives a shit?" situations. Firefox has become the "sick man of browsers".

But... if they would use their new Rust as a catalyst, a spark to initiate change and rework/replace the underlying grunge, they could actually get people interested in helping them, new people! After all, everyone likes pyrotechnics, and with Rust they're halfway to some serious fireworks!

IBM scraps loyal staffer gifts in favour of... a congratulatory social page

Notas Badoff

Re: "consumer grade IBMer experiences"

I'm surprised nobody mentioned that until now. "consumer grade" At that very point in the first sentence I registered 'oh fuck', and the rest of the message was only confirmation.

The H in HR is a clue. It's a "forked tongue" both coming and going.

In mourning for Nano, chap crafts 1k-loc text editor

Notas Badoff
Unhappy

Libre liver bile

"No, you're not Libre enough!"

"No, *you're* not Libre enough!"

"No, _you're_ not !Libré! enough!!1!"

...

I've repeatedly been left with the impression that FSF and kin are like bleeding-heart misanthropes. Their written pronouncements have everything good in them. Poke'em a bit though and they seem to bleed bile and legalisms, shouting that no one else's terms/ideas/feelings are near good enough for them.

Oh well, we're now educated to route around damage ...

Farewell to Microsoft's Sun Tzu: Thanks for all the cheese, Kevin Turner

Notas Badoff

A sense of lost

Maybe I read too quickly, but I came away with a feeling of "poor sot, just didn't catch on, did he?" What happens when there is a near complete, continual mismatch between one's own perception of 'now' and actual reality? And that seems to describe Microsoft's recent history (last 2 decades?)

Will they confuse "being liked" with the reality of everyone just feeling sorry for them?

Ad agency swipes 'unnamed bloggers' for calling out its cynically fake 'save a refugee' app

Notas Badoff
Facepalm

I Whee

Is there any level or direction in which their actions then or now make any business sense? Will any company/group ever contract with these 'people'? Associate themselves with the lying puling refugee drowning divas of pretense?

Give it up, rename it Grey Goo, and change your CVs to say you were shuttling water bottles (Saint Géron?) across the Turkish border to Syria refugees for the last two years.

What, since 1917? Still claiming you're Helping the Migrant Crisis? F! FFFF!

The Great Brain Scan Scandal: It isn’t just boffins who should be ashamed

Notas Badoff
Megaphone

Re: All fMRI studies are not created equal

I'll second the reference to John Ioannidis. Please do read some of the articles about him.

In addition to the publicized (in the popular press) larger review of "the most referenced medical articles" that found serious problems with many of them, I believe it was he that long ago, as an exercise in statistics and medical referencing, had a class look back to the most referenced foundational assertions of modern medical science (thus 1800's thru early 1900's). I don't remember the numbers, but a few fundamental assertions had never been verified/duplicated, others were accidentally contradicted, and others more than subtly modified in experimental results.

In medical practice, you (the patient) hope that treatments are evidence-based and results-checked. In medical research, you (the researcher) hope the studies are and continue to be funded. Too careful adherence to the factually medically beneficial is often not 'rewarding' to the researcher.

Australia's ABC suspends presenter over 'Wi-Fi is dangerous' claims

Notas Badoff
Joke

Would that be mammatus or dramatus?

"..., the review could well put the entire Catalyst program under a cloud."

Chemtrails?

Microsoft: Give us better staff

Notas Badoff
Unhappy

Re: Cost of Education versus Return through Employment

Thank you. Yes, it is a public policy problem, the wrong goal.

Cutting taxes to make up for current prosperity problems, and then ensuring worse future prosperity problems by dissuading the young from furthering their education by the crushing debt load they'd incur, well, short-sighted is the politest term for that. My near retirement is not going to be comfortable when the economy is collapsing around me.

'I urge everyone to fight back' – woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

Notas Badoff
Trollface

Re: Let the lawsuits begin

"Windows 10 is a virus and needs to be stomped out without delay."

It's more like a fungus. I let my main PC out of sight for a few moments and it came back with a truly grody screen. Now it just bitches all day and keeps requiring me to scratch its privates here there and everywhere. Oh I do wish I'd realized there was a limited time to treat it effectively, as now it has a long-term infection.

Ah well, now I maintain a no touching policy, keep the other PCs a minimum of 6 inches away, and I think I've got the necessary prophylactics applied to the rest of them. Oh I do wish I'd listened to the parents talk of not associating with a bad gene pool.

Bees with numberplates will soon be buzzing around London. Why?

Notas Badoff

Re: Is that 2 bee?

Is this "To bee two bee shoo da" day?

Ransomware scum build weapon from JavaScript

Notas Badoff
Flame

Re: How exactly does this execute?

This kind of non-informative CRAP ARTICLE really pisses me off! The two linked articles don't say diddly either as to just how this Javascript code runs.

Is this running via Windows Script Host using the association ".js=JSFile" ??

Could one de-associate .js using "assoc .js=" from the command line to disable the threat?

(Oh, gee, now I get message "Windows Script Host: There is no script engine for file extension ".js"" Done fixed perchance?)

Is this too fucking hard for someone "in the know" to accidentally blab to the rest of us? Security researchers my ass - attention hungry security obfuscaters more like it. Wank it good fellas!

Charter halts TWC upgrades

Notas Badoff

Improvements? On you??

When their first definitive action after the merger is to 'temporarily' stop improvements for customers while they 'review', they send a very definite signal to those customers. Profits should not be wasted on you.

Voter registration site collapse proves genius of GDS, says minister

Notas Badoff

To err, is human. To really mess things up requires a quantum computer and a government.

FTFY.

They can then claim that the correct answers were already in the computer, it's just that the wrong answers were publicized at first.

As for how the government will best employ the quantum superpositions and entanglement, well that shows they've been ahead of the technology all along, doesn't it?

Chinese space station 'out of control', will do best firework impression

Notas Badoff
Facepalm

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

It's never that clear. Seems the US didn't like a guy cuz of "communist sympathies", so they deported him in the '50s. Look up Qian Xuesen, the father of the Chinese space program. The US _forced_ him to go to the PRC. It takes a really stupid government to do a "foot-rocket" !

Latest Windows 10 build loves up cloud, banishes 'strange grey bar'

Notas Badoff
Gimp

Re: All well and good, but

Wow, someone(s) went to the trouble of creating several ids just so they could downvote MS-dismissive comments several times? What mindset would consider that a 'good' idea ... oh, yes ... nevermind.

Sophos U-turns on lack of .bat file blocking after El Reg intervenes

Notas Badoff
FAIL

Re: Indian offshoring

Consider first that a large proportion of questions on answers.microsoft.com are from "regular folk". You know, the "Where's the anykey?" crowd.

Now reflect on the situation that in about half of those 'discussions' a response by Microsoft's people has been replied to with the equivalent of "What drugs are you people on?" or "Don't you know your own products?" or "Can't you read/understand/write/grok English?" That is, the 'idiots' are questioning the intelligence of Microsoft's people, and rightly so.

Microsoft has done itself a disservice by moving its customer contact outlet to India. But... that is just another permutation of "anybody could do that job!".

'We accidentally hit wrong button on Dell buyout – here's $194m for the cockup'

Notas Badoff
WTF?

History revised...

As an aside: I'm confused. I thought I'd understood that Michael Dell had been saying for years that the stock was undervalued, but few enough agreed. So then he and a bunch of his friends said they'd buy out the stock, at that undervalued price, with a bit of a sweetener. Done. Then pop up these people saying whoa, that stock was grabbed at an undervaluation! We want the 'real' valuation - moar monay! Is this why I'm glad I didn't get into economics?

Latin-quoting Linus Torvalds plays God by not abusing mortals

Notas Badoff
Joke

Veni, vidi, ...

Anybody up to seeing how close to "Veni, vidi, vici" one can get starting from "It came, I saw, I patched" ?

Bonus if the last is anything like 'giti' ...

Capitalize 'Internet'? AP says no – Vint Cerf says yes

Notas Badoff
Headmaster

Guidelines? m'EH?

As for the BBC establishing guidelines for the rest of us to follow, well, the idea of guidelines seems to be rather loose with them.

Got an invitation to take a survey on satisfaction with the BBC news site, after having already read a couple articles with embedded misspellings and oddities. The first page of the survey used the word 'seperate'.

Nowhere _within_ the survey did they ask questions about quality or other matters. They were mainly concerned with how often I viewed videos. Could there be some correlation there?

Lenovo cries 'dump our support app' after 'critical' hole found

Notas Badoff

Re: Funny how Chinese products keep ending up with backdoors!

" I find it all rather hard to believe that these Chinese software developers are such incompetent developers,..."

Chinese, French, Mauritanian, Indian, c'mon, *all* new eager developers with stars in their eyes and with no supervision crank out holey hell. Consider the recency of the software industry in China and the naiveté is more understandable (not defensible).

Now if you want to rail against the equally young and obviously reckless software/hardware companies there, go for it. All this can so easily be explained - and should've been expected - by the previous reckless history of the software industry in <insert your country>.

Hanlon's razor - it's the comforting (!) explanation when you worry about Baba Yaga stealing your toes.

Windows 7, Server 2008 'Convenience' update is anything but – it breaks VMware networking

Notas Badoff

Re: So is this rollup intended to resolve

They do seem to be quietly working at making Win7 more and more annoying, like you mentioned and I see on mine. Perhaps this is a secondary method - slowly slowly approach - at making people upgrade to "something better"? (Un)fortunately, the single box I'd upgraded to Win10 sits next to a Win7 box. I can have no such illusions that tomorrow will bring a better OS than Win 7. (sigh)

Rats revive phones-and-cancer scares

Notas Badoff

Live longer with cellphones? (or boffin mafia?)

The bit that got my attention was the controls (as a group) dying earlier than the test subjects (as a group). And the female rats not having a problem. And other oddities, like the dosing regimen being so much/long.

Is this a variation on the usual summarization for studies:

"These results are intriguing and introduce many questions which should be studied further in following studies."

Which I always read as a plea for additional funding. But here, with this study, it comes across more as

"Pay us to do the study again correctly, or this stranded result due to poor planning and protocols will haunt you for forever."

Surface Book nightmare: Microsoft won't fix 'Sleep of Death' bug

Notas Badoff
Joke

You need a ...

You need a new drug

One that won't make you sick

One that won't make you crash your slab

Or make you feel three feet thick

.

You need a new drug

One that does what it should

One that won't make you feel too bad

One that won't make you feel too good

.

One that won't make you nervous

Wondering what to do

. . . . .

More than half of people on UK counter-terror biometrics databases are innocent

Notas Badoff

Bullies and sociopaths need to be weeded out, not promoted.

I kinda have a verbal presentation mapped out where I liken the problem that the police agencies have with that of the petroleum refining industry: workplace safety. For much of my life I lived within rumbling distance of refinery explosions, so the very real increase in observation of safety consciousness at refineries was noticeable over time.

As everywhere, the chief problem was continued employment of (or management by) people who either couldn't understand safe operating or who couldn't give a damn. The realization that one of the main threats to employment was the plant being erased along with a dozen or three of the local membership even got unions interested in working with management on safety, though under the guise of cooperating with EPA/etc. enforcement against the companies. Move a couple hopeless fools out of the plant and everyone else doesn't have 6-month furloughs for rebuilding and memorials.

That guy that can't keep his mouth or fists under control? Say hello to Torrance the Torquer who just couldn't help giving every bolt an extra turn or two, on every inspection. "Eh, those nuts are tough enough for another twist!", he'd always say, having no understanding of hydrogen embrittlement or other non-ideal conditions. A couple more twists and little temperature or pressure change, and boom, though not necessarily on his shift. Afterwards the investigators say, "well of course those nuts cracked! Look at the tension!"

The tension, the disrespect and obstruction, the mounting willingness to disbelieve any blameshifting explanation, hey, even the gunshots in their direction, just might motivate the policing 'industry' to remove the small number of makers of trouble in their ranks. It is their own interest to clean up their 'workplace'. Hell, even the unions should figure it out and stop the hair-trigger-shotgun union spokesmen parroting "it's someone else's fault!" *every* *single* time.

Reviewing accurately and getting rid of the bottom 2-5% will greatly improve the lives of all the other officers. Oh, and "the plebs" too.

Sweden decides Julian Assange™ 'remains detained in absentia'

Notas Badoff

Re: @Mark...

But @Mark did use the absolutely correct icon originally. How you get Ecuador mixed up with Argentina I don't know. BBC has an article today on the need for "global skills". Yes.

Google to kill passwords on Android, replace 'em with 'trust scores'

Notas Badoff

Re: The end of passwords?

"I wouldn't even mind but it's almost always said by people who massively overestimate their own knowledge and experience. Presumably earned from years supporting users."

@Zilla ! Oh thank you. That is the perfect description of a lot of people. And not necessarily from the tech sphere. After interacting with a few dozen 'normal' people in a day, most everyone comes away with undeservingly inflated egos.

Hacker rescues Hollywood house from URL scam squatters

Notas Badoff

And some say "Meh I?"

Years ago tried to get the local "big city" newspaper to react to someone having a domain that combined "local city name" plus the paper's "locally used shortname". They just didn't care. Buying up likely domain names just ain't their style. So nameking.com is the registrar and someone gets paid for splatting 20 text ads each time somebody experimentally attempts a wrongly guessed name.

But... if you use Google (or Bing or DDG) you only see results for the newspaper's site, at least for the first 5 pages or so.

So... Isn't this a case where intermediation by the search engines is actually repairing the problem of squatting? (The 'net routes around damage, right?) The linked article does _not_ mention the exploited site's name, so I can't check with searches. But I betcha Google and the rest have the correct site when asked.

So... You may groan and laugh at people thinking Google & kin are "the internet", but that might be the safer way to 'surf'?

Help! We're being crushed, cry billionaire cable giants

Notas Badoff

Provocation

""What has been so distressing is that much of this regulatory ordinance has been launched without provocation,"

Ah, from *their* point-of-view. From my POV, I receive a grating provocation monthly on top of progressively slower network speeds and near weekly interruptions in service. They can't be thinking of the customers when they declare an absence of 'provocation'.

Aside: how many chairs are left in a game of musical chairs before it's obvious there's no competition happening anymore?

Russia poised to unleash 'Son of Satan' ICBM

Notas Badoff

Re: Wonderful

@DAM "Funny how these things always happen during Olympic Games, too."

Check the notes again. Unfolded just *after* the Olympic Games, when Russia no longer needed to 'pretend' it was a modern forward-thinking freedom-loving non-ursine. Can't be shooting down passenger jets before they've arrived at Sochi, right?

'Charred Weasel' Linux

Notas Badoff

Re: Wrong mustelinae

So it should have been "microwaved marten" instead of "warmed weasel"?

Comcast Com-templates Com-trashing Com-crap Com-pact Com-caps

Notas Badoff

Yay Capitalism!

Um, so which of those trial markets have other broadband companies directly competing with Comcast for customers? Thought so. Less is more when the choices are some of any or none at all.

Oooo, ooo, I know, I betcha Google Fiber is competing in those cities! Hmm, no mention of Galax, Virginia, or many others. Louisville is "potential". Huntsville is "upcoming". Oooo, Atlanta and Nashville are "current"!

Direct head-to-head competition in 2 out of 26 markets. Yay Capitalism!

Shall we take it as given that if every mother's child in Atlanta and Nashville suddenly starts enquiring when GFiber will be available in their neighborhood, that Comcast might quietly shelve this whole thing?