* Posts by RIBrsiq

364 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Nov 2009

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'Sunspots drive climate change' theory is result of ancient error

RIBrsiq

Re: @RIBrsiq

@ Chris Miller:

No need to go far. Just read some of the other comments right here. You'll find that deniers come in all shapes and sizes and don't agree on what, exactly, they are denying. Just that they deny in general.

The generic argument seems to go like this:

"Climate is not changing! But if it is, it's actually cooling, not warming! Even if it is warming, it's not our fault. However, if it is our fault, we cannot do anything about it because it would destroy our way of life. And if it is proven that climate change will destroy things even more, then it is too late to do anything now...". Etc. Etc. Ad nauseam.

RIBrsiq

Re: Deniers?

"Is there any solid, proven evidence for anthropogenic global climate change? Serious question".

Serious answer:

http://theconsensusproject.com/

Or just read anything accepted by the bulk of scientists and experts who study climate.

As for the use of the term denier: first time I noticed any link with Holocaust deniers, personally. Which's funny, because I tend to fight extended battles against *those* deniers as well, being from the Middle-East.

I just use the word to describe people who continue to deny something regardless of any evidence presented. Nothing more is intended.

RIBrsiq

Re: Deniers?

A skeptic is a person who when presented with a claim demands evidence for said claim. But when staisfactory evidence is presented, a proper skeptic accepts it and proceeds accordingly.

A denier or believer, on the other hand, will continue denying and believing regardless of any amount or type of evidence presented.

Look at the state of the climate change deniers' camp. Can you see why they are described as deniers...?

Of course not!! Because you believe and evidence will not sway you...!

LOL!

RIBrsiq

Re: Deniers?

Would you prefer the term "faithful"? Maybe "believers"...?

Because at this point in time, I cannot fathom what else can make any sane person deny anthropogenic global climate change.

What are deniers waiting for? Bangladesh under water...? Because we're headed there.

But I am sure the faithful will hand-wave that away as well: that is, after all, how faith works. Will probably claim the feared space goat pissed the sea level higher when no one was looking or something.

Interesting times up ahead. And not in a good way.

Another death in Apple's 'Mordor' – its Foxconn Chinese assembly plant

RIBrsiq

Surely it was Isengard where the fires of industry burnt...?

Moronic Time cover sets back virtual reality another 12 months

RIBrsiq

I am not sure how VR users looking silly is relevant to anything.

This should qualify for the annual Pointing Out the Extremely Obvious award, but VR is something for the user to experience, not for others to look at.

VR will stand or fall based on the users' experience, not how cool they look while using it.

Don't want Windows 10 FILTH on the company network? Step this way

RIBrsiq

Re: What version are you runnign anyway

I suspect he meant Enterprise and mixed his editions up.

RIBrsiq

Re: Silly admins. Power users don't bother joining domains

*Please* try that on my network...

RIBrsiq

Re: Piracy no longer possible

I don't know about that...

I keep an eye on developments on that front and already there seem to be updated KMS emulators out; the same method used to circumvent Windows 8 activation.

I have no idea if they work, but I haven't read anything suggesting that they wouldn't, either.

RIBrsiq

Why, exactly, would users be able to run -- much less install -- anything, let alone a new edition of Windows, without administrative approval?

Determined users with physical access to the machine can of course decide to wipe the machine or something drastic like that. But the network admin should notice a machine inexplicably dropping off of the network, no? Which should lead to disciplinary action, etc.

I'm saying: if you're running a shop where you actually need to do anything at all to stop users installing Windows 10 then you a) certainly have much bigger problems than Windows 10 and b) have absolutely no business running a network in the first place, IMNSHO.

$100m fine? How about, er, $16k? AT&T teabags FCC with its giant balls

RIBrsiq

"A once-approved network management practice is now out of favor and carries with it a $100 million penalty".

Yes, well, I suspect the English language predates any and all such network management practices:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unlimited

Windows 10 marks the end of 'pay once, use forever' software

RIBrsiq
Facepalm

'Pay once, use forever'...?

I am curious: how did the author manage to type and publish this article using MS-DOS v1.0...?

And if update sizes are an issue for you, I suggest looking into the wonders of a little tool called DISM... included in every Windows edition since Vista, I believe.

Microsoft said that Windows 10 will be supported -- including all future updates of Windows -- "for the lifetime of the device", or some such.

What this exactly means, we'll have to see. But one reasonable interpretation is that the Windows license is inseparably tied to the hardware it's installed on, and while all future Windows updates will be free, there's no guarantees regarding driver availability and so on.

So almost exactly the opposite of what the article claims, assuming this interpretation is correct.

Windows 10 in head-on crash with Nvidia drivers as world watches launch

RIBrsiq

Remember the early days of Plug and Play? AKA Plug and Pray...?

Nowadays, of course, no one knows what an IRQ is or how it's supposed to be eaten (that's what you do with one, no? Or maybe it's something you'd look for in an atlas...?).

What I'm trying to say is: teething problems. The pain will pass.

Choc Factory research shows users just don't get security

RIBrsiq

Rubberhose Cryptanalysis

"No one can hack my mind", eh? We'll see about that...

https://xkcd.com/538/

PS. Applies equally well to password managers.

Behold: Pluto's huge ICE MOUNTAINS ... and signs of cryovolcanoes?

RIBrsiq

"Hmm... That's funny..."

Natural geothermal heat under Antarctic ice: 'Surprisingly high'

RIBrsiq

I find it entertaining to see how the believers will always, in the face of any number of mountains of evidence to the contrary, continue to hold their beliefs...

It is clear that most of the commentards do not have a proper science education and are thus not at all qualified to have an opinion either way. Yet they continue to have strongly-held opinions regardless.

Let me try to help with that, though I know it is in vain:

I presume that each and every one here is an accomplished professional who knows the ins-and-outs, the most tiny minutiae, of a specific field or three. Now, each of you separately please think back to that time when someone who clearly knows nothing about your field decided to open their mouth and voice their opinion that you don't know what you are talking about and that they know more than you do about the speciality you love and which you spent your life learning.

How did s/he sound to you...?

Because that is exactly how you sound when you go up against the bulk of the planet's specialists in any field.

Please trust that other specialists know their field better than you do. Defer to them in their field, as you would have them defer to you in yours.

The fact that you know everything there is to know about whatever it is you know does not mean that you know anything at all about anything else. Indeed, in this age of extreme specialization, it is more likely that the more you know about any given field, the *less* you know about everything else... The last polymath died quite a while ago.

Thinking of adding an SSD for SUPREME speed? Read this

RIBrsiq
FAIL

IO/s...?

What do I care for transfer rates?

China hacks 'everything that doesn't move' says Hilary Clinton

RIBrsiq
Black Helicopters

The NSA hacks everything regardless of its state of motion or geopolitical location. There's a big difference.

NASA's New Horizon probe rudely fires its thruster at gnome planet

RIBrsiq

1Kbps

So that's about the speed of my first modem, then...

...Ancient Ones icon...?

Amazon enrages authors as it switches to 'pay-per-page' model

RIBrsiq

Re: The Honor System

I believe authors already have to trust Amazon about how many times their book is bought. These are digital goods.

FBI: Apple and Google are helping ISIS by offering strong crypto

RIBrsiq
Facepalm

Not only them!

Very true, if you think about it. It's time we finally faced reality and did something about it, even if we don't like it.

But on the other hand, the US army are helping ISIS by offering strong weapons platforms, as well.

I forward that from this day forward, tanks should be made of papier-mâché, and guns should fire gum pellets.

Boeing 787 software bug can shut down planes' generators IN FLIGHT

RIBrsiq

This is obviously an exotic usage of the term "fail safe" that I wasn's previously aware of.

Fondleslab deaths grounded ALL of American Airlines' 737s

RIBrsiq
Trollface

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and three times is enemy action".

...So... what is it when the entire fleet experiences the same event?

But really: is it any surprise when Apple's patented Magical Thinking™ security does not work?

Disclaimer: I am assuming that American Airlines have more than 3 airplanes. It seems a fair assumption, but I have no data to back it up.

SpaceX in MONEY RING shot, no spare juice for tail backdown this time

RIBrsiq

Re: Elon's Tweet...

Spooky is about right.

And I don't know about your smartphone, but mine has satnav as well... :-)

It's a quad-core powerhorse with 2GiBs of RAM, 16GiB of internal non-volatile storage, etc.

And the spookiest thing is that it wasn't the most powerful model I could have bought at the time; even without breaking the budget!

No. Scratch that: the spookiest thing is that most people use these supercomputers to play Angry Birds or whatever...

RIBrsiq

Re: Elon's Tweet...

Every morning, I wake up and turn on my mobile.

If you think about it, what happens at that point borders on magic and would have caused one to be burnt for a witch, a couple of centuries back.

Yet, it is normal. I am not excited and nervous when I press that power button. I am not even fully awake, to be honest.

This same situation applying to space operations is, I believe, what Musk is looking forward to. And I, for one, am right there with him!

Welcome to the FUTURE: Maine cops pay Bitcoin ransom to end office hostage drama

RIBrsiq

Re: GPO

Users can use whatever they need to use, in a properly administered and controlled environment.

The basic policy is simple: users should not be able to execute anything from any parts of the filesystem they can write to (including optical discs and all sorts of removable storage), and should not be able to write to anywhere where executables reside.

There may be a need to layer some exceptions on top of this for known-good files. And there's probably a good case to be made for additionally enforcing a digital signature policy, in a slightly-more-secure environment such as law enforcement.

New Xen vuln triggers Amazon, Rackspace reboot panic redux

RIBrsiq
WTF?

So a vulnerability in Xen -- an excellent FOSS -- causes massive panic, reboots and disruption of service and by the fourth comment, we are getting snide remarks on the quality of *Microsoft* software...?

Most fascinating, indeed!

Your hard drives were riddled with NSA spyware for years

RIBrsiq
Black Helicopters

Reading the comments, I can only think one thing:

When did the tin-foil hat brigade take over this place...?

Show some scepticism, you lot: does what's being claimed seem feasible?

M0n0wall comes tumbling down as dev throws in the trowel

RIBrsiq

Re: Financial models matter

The article is about the demise of a FreeBSD-based OSS project and your first thought is to bring up Microsoft...?

Since you mentioned it, if Microsoft's software is so awful, what does that say of the alternatives that people (and businesses) refuse to use even for free...? And it's *not* that Microsoft are entrenched: times were when there was nary a Microsoft server serving pages on the 'net. Now look at things...

I know Microsoft bashing is popular, with some factions of the IT society. But I just wish people would grow up beyond that phase, already!

Space Commanders lock missiles on Elite's Frontier Devs

RIBrsiq

I did not back this, so I personally am not invested in it. I was interested, but they did not explicitly state it was DRM-free -- at least not that I could find -- so I decided to wait and see.

A good decision, as it turned out.

Anyway, it seems to me that the developers do indeed have a communication problem, but not in the sense those defending them are trying to imply:

* Clearly, they promised an offline mode: Else why would they announce that they will not be able to deliver it?

* Clearly, they knew relatively early on that it will not happen: Tying everything in your game into data that must be retrieved from central servers in real time is not the kind of thing that crops up on you in the last minute nor the kind of thing you might not notice.

* Clearly, they knew it would not be a popular decision: Else why did they delay announcing it until practically the last second?

So, fundamentally an evil thing to do.

Now, I'm not keeping a list or anything, nor would I boycott anyone over this, but I will certainly not believe any promises from any of the principle developers involved, myself: show me the goods, and I'll buy if I like them.

How you decide to handle it is, of course, entirely up to you.

Microsoft remote code exec killjoys to dump seven fixes next week

RIBrsiq

Re: Surprise!

[sigh...]

Look here, please:

https://secunia.com/community/advisories/

Notice anything...?

Additionally, to point at recent, spectacular examples:

* Heartbleed.

* "goto fail".

All software is complex and has bugs. But if it makes you feel all tingly and superior to laugh at Microsoft software, go ahead and knock yourself out! I'm glad it takes so little to make you happy.

RIBrsiq

Re: All software has Security issues

While true that if one's updating an RTM Windows release that's a couple of years old then the process is long and several reboots are needed, why would anyone do that...?

Look into the wonders of DISM and be amazed!

Hot, horny bees swerve planet-saving duties as climate warms

RIBrsiq

Everyone would benefit from knowing more math. You won't get any argument from me on that! Especially statistics: tricky stuff, that!!

For example, here's an interesting statistic: "97% of published climate papers with a position on human-caused global warming agree: Global Warming is happening -- and we are the cause". From http://theconsensusproject.com/

Now the question becomes: who knows more math? The publishers of those 97% mentioned, or the average Internet commentator?

RIBrsiq

Re: Except...

Interesting that you should bring up the flat Earth belief, actually.

Because the very earliest writings we have from philosophers -- what one might consider a scientist of yore -- speak of the Earth being spherical. Indeed, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth with surprising accuracy using very primitive tools sometime in the 3rd century BC.

This of course did not stop people who knew better from keeping right on believing that the Earth was flat. After all, it stood to reason that if the Earth were anything but flat stuff would fall off of the bottom of it, or something!

Can you, kind AC, being the enlightened Citizen of the Internet you obviously are, see which part of the analogy applies to you...?

RIBrsiq
Stop

Let me try and answer all the "they don't know what they're talking about!" arguments in one fell swoop:

They made it their live's work to know. If you, with a couple of documentaries or Reader's Digest articles or whatever under your belt, think you know better then, well, there really isn't a "nice" way to say this, I guess: you're probably mistaken.

As cool-dude Hank Green put it: "Scientists are not stupid!".

Link to video. It's well worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF9LNuH3IpU

SanDisk's record-busting 512GB SD CARD will fit perfectly in your empty wallet

RIBrsiq
Coat

ln[1000]/ln[2]=9.9657842846620870436109582884682

"Barely a decade after releasing its first 512MB SD card, SanDisk has unveiled a card capable of storing 512GB of digital material".

Not to be pedantic, but that's about a doubling of capacity every year, on average, no...? ;-)

Apple, FBI: YES we're, er, looking into the NAKED CELEBRITY PICS. Aren't you?

RIBrsiq

Re: Isn't that what makes their products so intuitive to use?

There's a lot that can be done to make brute-force attacks useless before locking an account. Wait timers are good and simple. A lousy one minute delay between attempts would completely kill a brute force attack, while it would be just an inconvenience to the user. So:

0- Enforce password complexity. Should be simple when you already know everything about your user: "No, you cannot use that password because it was the name of your 3rd grade teacher's pet gerbil"... ;)

1- Start with a one second wait and double it with every failure. Cap at 128 seconds or something, to keep things sane. Else you'll very quickly effectively lock the account.

2- Lock the account only when hundreds of attempts are made in a single day or some such.

The details will vary and some fine-tuning will definitely be required based on the type of data, users, actual usage experience and whatever other attack vectors might exist (brute force attacks vs. denial of service, for example), but you see the basics. Not complex.

RIBrsiq

"...it is not your fault if you are using bad passwords because you are celebrities, not nerds".

That's not how security works. "Nerds" may elect to use full-disk encryption or some other less-used/more-complex security, true. But *everyone* needs to use secure passwords. At least for stuff they care to keep secure. It's not a complex concept, really.

Speaking of security: Apple doesn't have brute-force mitigation in place...? Excuse me while I clean the floor before I ROFLOL... :-)

No, pesky lawyers, particle colliders WON'T destroy the Earth

RIBrsiq

Re: Aren't these couple of loons...

"My point isn't a debate on climate change, my point is using events that fall outside the norm as 'proof' of an event that papers on climate change state regularly *not to use independent weather events as evidence of climate change*"

You are technically correct. Of course any single weather event cannot be tied directly to climate change. Weather, after all, is not climate.

But my point is that there's a difference between a paper intended to be published in a peer-reviewed publication and comments on a non-specialized Internet forum. The standard of evidence is different, certainly. Or should be, at any rate.

If you've been playing a die game for a while and certain numbers seem to be coming up more often, at some point you're entitled to wonder if the dice are loaded. *Especially* if virtually every die expert is jumping up and down screaming that they are. Even though it's still perfectly correct to state that if you throw a pair of dice often enough, an unbroken run of a million pairs of sixes is bound to come up. And nothing says that this run will not occur at the beginning of the die throwing experiment, either.

"It makes proper scientific review in the public more difficult with half-cocked cliches and ideas being bandied about".

I sincerely do hope that the future will prove me wrong (and believe me the wronger I am proven on this point the happier I would be), but I believe that a proper scientific review in public is all but impossible. The public simply does not understand science. Else no one would be "debating" evolution. Or anthropogenic global climate change, for that matter.

And don't forget that the actual scientist whose job it is to study climate are virtually unanimous that climate change is real and that we are causing it (the last count was more than 97% agreeing, I believe). They're done studying the evidence at the standard required by science and the verdict is in. It's just Joe and Jane Public that remain "skeptical" because they do not, I presume, understand what the big words mean or something. Sticking with the same big words and the nuance is not going to help explain things to them.

RIBrsiq

Re: Aren't these couple of loons...

"Are you insinuating that the flooding and weather we are experiencing right now is attributable to anthropogenic global warming?"

Are you assuring us that they're not...?

I mean, not being a working scientist with a reputation to worry about, it seems obvious to me: all kinds of records are being broken, which's what one would expect with global climate change. More energy in the atmosphere means a more energetic atmosphere. Higher average temperatures mean more evaporation which in turn, since what goes up must come down, means higher precipitation.

Some samples:

"Parts of England have had their wettest January since records began more than 100 years ago, figures show".

"Israel experienced its driest January since records have been kept, with Jerusalem seeing almost no rainfall at all for the entire month". That's this past January. And that's about 70 years of records, I believe.

"The 2003 European heat wave was the hottest summer on record in Europe since at least 1540".

"France's [2003] summer heatwave killed a total of 14,800 people".

"Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been in the 21st century".

"[Typhoon Haiyan] is the deadliest Philippine typhoon on record. Haiyan is also the strongest storm recorded at landfall, and unofficially the strongest typhoon ever recorded in terms of wind speed".

"Atlantic tropical cyclones are getting stronger on average, with a 30-year trend that has been related to an increase in ocean temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere."

...and so on. As I said: just watch the news.

Sure, it could all be a coincidence, but that seems unlikely to me, at this point.

RIBrsiq

Re: Aren't these couple of loons...

"Perceived global warming"...?

Right... ignore the very real and tangible threat (I mean, have you watched the news, lately?) scientists warn us about and concentrate on the totally imaginary threat some sci-fi author needed as a plot device which the scientists assure us is impossible. Got it.

Until we have colliders that can exceed, or at least approach, the energy levels nature likes to throw around, we should be safe: everything we do, has already been done repeatedly before in the grand lab that is the universe. This, of course, is not very likely to happen because that "perceived global warming" will probably get us first...

Boffins: Antarctic glacier in irreversible decline, will raise sea levels by 1cm

RIBrsiq

Re: Appeal to authority

That's not how it works.

No one gets Nobels, or any other recognition in science, for regurgitating old facts. Well, I'm too harsh: a B.Sc. and maybe a M.Sc. can be had this way. So any number of scientists would clamor to turn *any* accepted theory on its head if they could. Because that way they would at least ensure immediate recognition by their peers and, if lucky, their name(s) might be printed in textbooks hundreds of years in the future. Assuming there is one.

As to the severity of the consequences of climate change and whether we can afford to wait to "verify" them, well: they will indeed be quite severe, and I understand it's accepted that we're now past the point of no return as far as some of the milder consequences, so we will be seeing *something* -- I personally would argue that we are, right now, seeing quite a few somethings, in fact.

The argument now is whether humanity can afford to stick to its denial until the more severe consequences become inevitable as well.

Right now, the collapse (or at least the radical transformation, and not in a positive way) of human civilization in a few hundred years is tentatively on the table, I believe.

Care to raise, Sir...?

RIBrsiq
Boffin

I like how many climate-change denial "arguments" seem to boil down to "[X] is cold, right now. Therefore, there is no global warming!".

That's not how it works, people. Unless you think "global warming" means Earth will turn into Venus overnight.

Let me point anyone interested in reality at a nice resource to help:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/01/14/climate_change_another_study_shows_they_don_t_publish_actual_papers.html

TL;DR: out of 9136 authors who published articles in peer-reviewed literature during the last 13 months, only one denies anthropogenic global climate change. There really should be no need to say anything else.

First China banned Bitcoin. Now its crooks are using malware to steal traders' wallets

RIBrsiq
FAIL

Re: I am interested how Bitcoin isnt being dealt with on the various pyramid scheme laws

What *I* am interested in is how much you know about BitCoin (and most other crypto currencies).

Not much, is my guess, since if you did you'd see that whatever else it might be, a pyramid scheme it ain't: all crypto currencies I've looked at have a limited release volume planned. Off the top of my head, about 21 million BTC in the case of BitCoin.

So, you see, if anything BTC is less of a pyramid scheme than, say, USD... ;-)

OCZ successfully sells self to Toshiba

RIBrsiq

I am not exactly sure where this notion that OCZ SSDs are less reliable than average comes from. Most SSDs I owned were OCZ and they're all still... well... not purring along, exactly, SSDs famously not making any sound, but are certainly fully functional. The same for about 5 other at work. Only one OCZ SSD in my vicinity has failed, in fact.

Admittedly, 10 SSDs a statistic do not make. But then I doubt the forum doom-and-gloomers each bought a thousand drives before coming to their conclusions. And if failure rates were really as high as some would have you believe, OCZ would have folded long before now. And no one would have been buying the pieces.

Facts of the matter are that the OCZ Vector is the best performing SSD around by any metric and that the Vector 150's 50GB/day for 5 years rating is the highest by far at its price-point. The only reason I am not buying a few right now for a storage server I am building is price and that Intel SSDs are good enough for what I need -- especially at 2/3's the price. Dammit, OCZ! Meet me half-way, here!! But a 50% markup on a mostly comparable drive...? And holiday sales mean you *decrease* the price, not increase it... Oh well...

How God and übergeek Ron Crane saved 3Com's bacon

RIBrsiq
Happy

Re: A fair analysis

I hope you were in a building with a well-grounded copper roof as you wrote that...

Climate scientists link global warming to extreme weather

RIBrsiq
Trollface

Re: A fair analysis

I completely agree! Because everyone knows that human population density is highest in the ocean.

Wait just one second...!

UK climate expert warns of 3-5 degree warmer world by 2100

RIBrsiq
WTF?

I think some of you have it wrong

There seems to be a number of people who apparently think global warming is akin to turning up the thermostat on their central heating system.

It is not.

Global warming means, among other things, that there is (not "will be", note) increasingly more energy in the global weather system. This means that global weather is increasingly more... well, energetic, I guess. Meaning more extreme weather events: more rain here, more drought there, less ice elsewhere, etc. Think "major climate change", over time. It should be obvious that this is not good, to say the least.

And BTW, "we survived this long" is a poor argument to make when discussing future prospects of humanity as a whole, let alone our civilization. For one thing "this long" is not, in fact, that long at all: a few million years out of even the 550 million since the Cambrian Explosion is nothing, really. For another thing, look up the word "change" in a dictionary...

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

RIBrsiq
Facepalm

"Research" carried out by MISPWOSO, right?

Cats are predators (albeit small and adorable one). If someone doesn't know what that means, they should buy a dictionary.

I expect my cats to ideally be self-reliant. Such that if I stumbled into a freak wormhole while walking across my living room one day and died horribly in the vacuum of space several lightyears away, they would only be minimally inconvenienced.

Wish you were here? NASA rover beams postcard from Mars

RIBrsiq
Boffin

"NASA's machines have been on the planet since Pathfinder landed on 4 July, 1997".

Actually, Viking 1 has been on Mars since August 20th, 1975CE. Unless it got bored and wandered off to some other place, of course!

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