Posts by Tikimon

Reminds me of several movie plots, and equally plausible.

One of the more popular scenarios for film and book plots involves a nasty germ developed by some government as a bio-weapon. Since microorganisms can't distinguish Friend from Enema (heh) the killer bug escapes into the wild and starts killing everyone. It's entirely plausible, because we know governments really can be that myopic.

The same thing is happening for real with cyber-war. Stuxtnet thankfully can't KILL you, but it totally validates the "short-sighted government program to create indiscriminate weapons" model.

So who' going to make us a film about a future Stuxtnet that destroys the world's computing systems and brings down civilization as we know it?

Protect our stupid business model? WTF FOR?

This reminds me of telemarketers. They rang us up all day every day to push unwanted phone SPAM and made us wish we didn't have a telephone. They actively targeted dinner time, no less.

We the public pushed back hard and demanded a Do-Not-Call list to opt out of this invasive onslaught, delivered over a service WE were paying for. And what happened? Pitiful crying and wailing from the telemarketers about how their poor business model was being destroyed! WAAAAH!

This is the exact same situation. Bugger their asinine business model. It's like muggers and burglars demanding laws against such be repealed lest they lose their jobs!

Once again - generate the password FROM the passphrase!

Let's use the phrase "THese ARen't THe DRoids YOu're LOoking FOr".

Take the first two letters from each word. Capitalize the first one (it's a sentence) and add punctuation. This gives you:

Tharthdryolofo! - a 15-character near-random password that's EASY to use.

You don't have to REMEMBER it, you say the phrase as you go and simply type the relevant letters.

I teach my users this trick and it's working a charm. The least technical of them can remember a sentence. This is the best real-world compromise I've found.

Bucket accessory - removable by exposure?

I strongly suspect that the need for a bucket cannot be prevented by the system design, but CAN reliably be eliminated through exposure and training. Two examples...

Actual flight training. Many people hurl on their early flights, including the great Chuck Yeager. With some exposure, their ears figure it out and it's not a problem anymore. Same with seasickness.

Virtual exposure. I love air combat sims and have had many spectators get very queasy watching me dogfight. That's not even 3D VR, they're only looking over my shoulder. The problem is their brains trying to keep track of the perceived environment. One or two regulars have gotten over it, and even enjoyed soaring about with me like a leaf on the wind.

To summarize, I don't believe the bucket effect can be prevented through system design. However, progressive exposure-based training can probably build tolerance without losing the user. Someone needs to start thinking about that. The best VR will lose users forever otherwise.

Obligatory XKCD!

Apologies if it's been too-recently linked.

https://xkcd.com/502/

And I definitely miss her.

If you disgaree with an ideologue, you're always "misguided" or "misled"

People drunk on their own ideology never accept that anyone could possibly disagree with their shining vision for the world. This is a prime example.

It's the same with Communism, Socialism, modern Feminism, etc. If you agree with them, you're an enlightened intellectual with admirable progressive views. If you disagree, you're a misinformed bigot supporting the exploitative entrenched interests yadda yadda yadda.

India failed to make the ideologically correct choice, so they're lackeys of the elites, of course! They can't possibly have their own good reasons for rejecting Lenin's... ummm, Facebook's glorious future!

This "we know best and you don't" attitude is what ultimately justifies bloody purges and revolutions. I run like hell from anyone with these attitudes. They scare the hell out of me.

Religion: Stifling Learning for Thousands of Years!

Gosh, I hope those Hawai'ians are proud! They've joined the Catholic Church and American Evangelists in the Big Boy's Club for stonewalling scientific learning and keeping the whole bloody species mired in superstitious ignorance. Surely history will thank them for their selfless actions this day and their wonderful contribution to the future of all humanity!

The shades of Galileo and Darwin are sharing an epic facepalm with me now...

Results dependent on the Hand of the Programmer

AI will most likely reflect the attitudes and worldview of whomever or whatever is programing it. Two major cases for that which directly connect...

Human-directed. AI are all currently built by humans, and humans will fill their heads with whatever they see fit. These will closely resemble the standard "human motives and values" AI from film and stories. They will vary widely, but will be human creations and somewhat mirrors of us.

Machine-directed (self or external). At some point, design and programing of AI may be partly or wholly passed to other machines. AI may become self-directed learning things and program themselves (like we do). When that happens, all bets are off and no predictions can be made. Such entities will have a strange and incomprehensible (to us meat monkeys) psychology. There's just no way to even guess.

Come back in a century and maybe we'll know...

Picking is probably quicker than the key-creation process

Pin locks are pathetically weak. After improvising with paperclips and such for years, I recently got myself a decent set of picking tools. I opened my house door in 20 seconds, a padlock in 30 seconds. And I'm not even that good. My record for opening secure filing cabinets with a bent paperclip and nail (rake and wrench) is 10 seconds. When I used the picks on the filing cabinets, I accidentally removed the lock cylinder, lol. I don't know or use "bump keys", but I gather they're easy and reliable.

Pin locks are pathetic. Like gun laws, they're a polite request for the law-abiding, not anything that remotely stops criminals.

Lo Fasz!

'Nuff said!

Death Stars et al - due to the Hollywood Effect

You folks are over-thinking the problem here. It's a Hollywood movie, yes? As such, it's going to have a simple, non-technical plot (the film industry is not filled with science majors). That way, ONE good guy/gal can find ONE weakness to totally overcome the ONE Big Bad Threat that otherwise will wipe out all humanity/the rebel base/the Wankdoodle's civilization/ Etc. Simple plots from simple minds! It's that simple.

I wish we COULD get some rich, complex stories from the myriad of better sci-fi out there than the children's stories of the Star Wars franchise. Niven's Known Space would provide years of movies and TV all on its own, and there are dozens more.

Shuttle vs Falcon comparison - politics not involved!

The Shuttle was a NASA project. As such, it was subject to interference and demands from many parties, each pushing their agenda or chasing their selfish wants. The US Congress, the Air Force, politicians with contractors in their states, the list goes on. It took years of everyone putting their finger in before anything ever got done. As such, the Shuttle was a Frankenproject with a hundred argumentative parents. It was NOT a lean, finely tuned engineering project focused on simple, reasonable goals.

Space-X is ultimately driven by the vision of Elon Musk. He's got the cash and independence to make it happen his way, and not be at the mercy of appropriations committees or other politically-driven bodies.

This has everything to do with the rapid success of Space-X, and will go a long way toward reaching the goal of reliable reusable rockets. When a change is needed, they DO IT. No Congress-creep is going to block the change to protect a contractor in his state. No teachers will be forced into the crew for dubious PR stunts. It's all about engineering the best rockets humans can make.

So it's not useful to compare the expense of the Shuttle to the Falcon project. Worlds apart in conception, execution, and outcome. My money is on Space-X (and others!) to make reusable, affordable rockets a reality. SOON!

Slow change to technology? OH YEAH???

It's easy to say "aircraft carriers look the same after 50 years", but less so to make that claim for destroyers. Hull and superstructure totally changed, the weapons systems are totally different.

How about telephones? Those are changing so fast "The Matrix" didn't use the now-obvious idea of having the rebels carry smartphones with falling-text live feeds on them. Aircraft have changed radically since 1970. Tanks and artillery are near-obsolete. Ground troops are traveling tech demos now. Most military tech has moved along rather nicely, even if exceptions exist.

How about this for a hypothesis? Lucas isn't as creative as he gets credit for, and his artists are constrained by his lack of imagination and micromanagement. The data appear to fit...

There IS a "SCIENCE" heading yanno...

I don't have a problem with this article being here. If you're not interested in Science as a general category, don't bloody read it. One of the reasons I read the Reg is the broad coverage of all kinds of geek topics. As a polymath, I would find computer-nerd-only news boring. If that is what you crave, there are other sites to suit.

Did the "Geniuses" suggest a quick backup? Why not?

Granted a user should back up their data. Granted also that the average man in the street knows nothing about it. This was so-called "GENIUS" Customer Service. Providing good service to the customer includes suggesting a quick backup before a factory reset. A Genius Geek will have ways to do it.

You lot saying "he got what he deserved" are what give IT folks a bad name. Sitting in your ivory tower of Know-It-All, mocking those less knowledgeable. You were an ignorant git too once, or have you forgotten that? Instead politely inform people of what they should know and steer them to solutions. A good CS geek would have headed this problem off. I would have.

Also granted the techs might have been under time constraints to get it done quick and not fool around waiting for a backup. Tech support shops are often like that, in which case Apple policy blew it. I can only speculate.

I'm a lucky bastard, and know it!

I and another chap are the all-purpose IT department for a small-ish non-profit. We handle everything from jammed printers to SQL development and security. The company pays us well, trusts our word and opinions, and supports us totally. We're technically not on call after regular hours, but we do it anyway out of gratitude and loyalty.

Our users love us, we're their heroes, they DO think we're minor gods. They are our customers, we visibly bust our butts and they appreciate that. They approach me with "I know this is a stupid question" and I reply "why should you know that? None of us are born knowing computers, which are badly programmed and twitchy things anyway". We never pretend to knowledge we don't have, I frequently admit I don't have a clue but will figure it out. They trust I'll be back with an answer as soon as I can.

The article examples sound surreal in the general IT world, but such places do exist, and I'm lucky as hell to be here. Especially given the Charlie Fox companies I worked for previously!

And there's the phone, printer offline, gotta go!

Keeping the doctor away?

"An apple a day will keep anyone away if you throw it hard enough."

Don't know where I saw it, but I'll never forget it.

Attack from the air - cannot be entirely stopped

I can think of several ways to stop multi-rotor UAV deliveries. I can also think of a few other ways to drop things into guarded environments that would be even harder to stop. I second the trebuchet idea (and other ballistic projectile launchers) although precise aiming would be a challenge.

R/C Gliders. They would be very stealthy, making no noise when the engine was off. They're cheap, you can crash them one-way for good cost, or drop payloads from a decent height if you want to recover the plane.

TV-guided rockets. I know of a group of rocket hobbyists who were shut down years ago by the US government for making such rockets, this would be easy nowadays. Fly over, deploy parachute, bulls-eye the drop zone. If your payload is reasonably robust or padded, omit the descent parachute and nose-plant it. Hard to imagine stopping that.

Trained monkeys and such I will leave for others to speculate on.

Divert some FBI/NSA/etc TOR and encryption-busting effort to this!

Hey FBI wankers! Why don't you and the rest of the anti-privacy gang divert some of the resources you're using to break encryption, HTTPS, and TOR to this problem? You've got billions budgeted to rape away our Constitutional protections, but can't spare a few processor cycles to break Ransomware for the public benefit? Instead you shake your head sorrowfully and say "just pay up"?!?! Do you puling bastards do ANYTHING for the citizen anymore, or are you simply the New Stasi?

Bazdmeg az anyad kurvapicsajat, lo fasz a seggedbe! (grrrr...)

"regularly updated to make them better..." NO THEY ARE NOT

"Smart phones are regularly updated to make them better than when they were purchased."

I beg to differ. Randomly moving standard features around is not making anything better, only different. I have to help my users change their e-mail passwords on their (company issued) phones because every stupid update changes that setting again. Every. Stinking. Time. It used to be four levels deep under Settings, then EIGHT levels down a different path (better?), now it's four levels down in the Mail app itself, not under Settings anymore. NO, NOT BETTER.

Drivers need to learn and reliably know where functions are. Moving them around is a recipe for a crash.

YESSSS!!!!

This is exactly what's needed to MAYBE get some useful change happening.

Until now, US business has been the beneficiary of the "steal whatever you want" regime. More data = more profit, so it's all good and screw those pesky individuals. Well, now this behavior will begin to LOSE business for them. That's the only thing that will force a change, and as an American citizen I'm thrilled to see it beginning. Because yanno wot? I don't want to be spied on and data-raped either. The rollback has to start somewhere.

MORE EU OUTRAGE PLEASE!!!

Is an independent "app store" possible?

One of the main sticking points against any Other phone system is the lack of access to Google or Apple's hoard. Seems that someone could figure a way to set up an independent toy store, then license access without onerous and intrusive demands.

I own a Toyota, but I don't have to use Toyota's dealerships to buy things for my truck. There's no good reason our phones or computers should be so limited.

"Carbine Williams" comes to mind

Keeping one's mind off the misery by working out tough design problems, and emerging with a new invention.

Granted, Williams was rightfully imprisoned for murder, but you get the idea.

Waiting for the lemon-soaked paper napkins?

See you in five centuries or so!

Pretty sure they'll just rewrite laws to "legalize" illegal behavior again

Not one government I've heard of even bothers to address privacy or justice in these discussions. They natter on about "well, it's perfectly LEGAL so everything's fine, then!" Oh yah, legal according to the secret treaty worked out in secret and which makes sure nobody can talk about it.

Hey, government dickheads (US and otherwise). It's about privacy and not data-raping everyone who uses a computer/phone/tablet. If you have to hide it, it's WRONG, okay?

Maybe the true ruler's voice will be heard now... MONEY!

I'm actually being hopeful here that good things might actually happen. Plenty of us believe that cash drives it all, yes? Well, consider all that lost business when EU companies stop dealing with US outfits or sharing data with them. When Faceborg et. al. have to store EU data on EU soil and protect it by EU standards. OMG nightmare! What will American business demand from our legislators then?

When the monetary losses are severe and widespread enough, perhaps then Something Will Be Done to end the sociopathic data harvesting by all parties. I'm not terribly confident, but face it... None of this will change based on privacy or consumer/citizen rights. Greed and self-interest might do the job.

Attempts to prevent debate ALWAYS show a lack of solid ground

If one side of a debate tries to silence or demonize their opponents, it raises a red flag to me. if your facts are so strong, let them stand up to honest scrutiny. Shaming and demonizing and calling people lunatics are the tactics of biased ideologues. The climate and its history are nowhere near enough well-understood for anyone to claim authority, much less demand their opponents be silenced.

Science works by promoting free investigation and debate. The current understanding may be wrong in small or large ways. Gor bless Lewis and his ilk for keeping the debate alive.

Don't sell what you can't deliver! Increase capacity, DUUUH!

If they have to slow down everyone so the network doesn't collapse under the load, they've sold more than they can support. It's their fault, and they should be punitively fined and sued until they stop selling what they cannot deliver.

I saw this every January when I was with AOL in the dial-up days. Christmas saw many new computers going online with AOL preinstalled, which boosted their subscriber rolls (as planned). The network would crawl for MONTHS while we endured mealy-mouthed apologies and promises to upgrade capacity. It's part of why I left them finally.

THEY NEVER LEARN, so let's sue them and jog their memory!

Intent is EVERYTHING, no free passes for being duped

I happen to know of at least three cheating spouses who did in fact go online looking for playmates (don't know about AM specifically). As far as I know, they didn't successfully get laid through the online sites.

They DID however hang out in bars trolling for playmates, scope prospects at the health club, etc. sometimes successfully managing a hookup and shag. They engaged the services of prostitutes. All without permission from their ignored spouses (not frigid or ugly old hags) and in violation of the marriage agreement.

Let's stop whitewashing the ones who tried on AM and didn't succeed. Their intent was to cheat, and had AM been for real they most likely would have. They're lying scum, and deserve some hard scrutiny from their partner.

Married folks with permission to play around are called swingers, not cheaters. They're on the swing sites, not AM or its ilk. (I know some of them too)

Acceptable error range!

I mountain bike weekly, and the GPS tracking (saves the map route, yo) always shorts us on everything. It's only so good, and will never improve much.

First, GPS does not track paths, it records points in time. Inevitably, some turning and climbing is lost to straight lines between points. It would seem that more data points wold be more accurate, but then each point has a a certain inaccuracy. More points equals more combined error (noted above how GPS wanders when sitting still).

GPS tracking is marvelously accurate, but has limits that cannot be currently overcome. As such, it should not be used for competition. Just like home scales that say "not legal for commerce".

Invisibility cloak prototype?

Think about it. Each phone broadcasts the live camera view to its counterpart on the other side of the guy. You always see what's behind him, so Voila! Invisibility cloak.

Granted, not a very GOOD one...

Terminate their funding NOW

What so-called excuse for a scientist approved this study method? 20 meters is far too close to have ANYTHING shadowing a bear. A whining, flying thing that visibly tracks their every move? Of course it's going to stress the bears! Any graduate student should know better.

I suggest immediate withdrawal of the grant funding this crowd of twats. They clearly know little about wildlife to choose such an invasive, disruptive observation method.

It's a big thumbs-up, of course...

If you include the "cliff face" you'll see it's a six-fingered left hand giving a big thumbs-up. Perhaps an ancient, eroded advertisement for something. Or the entrance of an underground gladiatorial arena. Either are more likely than any sort of woman standing in the freezing cold flashing her ta-tas.

Obvious icon!