* Posts by Turtle

1888 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2010

Slander-as-a-service: Peeple app wants people to rate and review you – whether you like it or not

Turtle

“Why Don't You Like Me?”

"The service promises to quarantine bad reviews for two days, giving the victim a chance to contact the reviewer and ask 'why don't you like me?'"

I can answer that question right now! The answer is... "Because you didn't give me $50 to not write a vicious review about you. Now fork over the money or I'll give your number to all of my real friends and they'll slander you too."

Turtle

Re: Only "Positive" Reviews.

"if someone doesn't sign up for Peeple, only positive reviews will appear for them"

Who the fuck is going to vet all the reviews to see which are actually positive? Oh, I know! They are going to implement an easily-defeated algorithm, of the same type, no doubt, that enables Craig's List to keep children off of their prostitution pages.

Are they possibly attempting to deceive themselves, in addition to everyone else?

Turtle

@ Roq D. Kasba Re: Antisocial Media

All "social media" is, to some degree, "anti-social" media, only in this particular case it's rather more extensive and rather more overt than usual.

Solar panel spammer hit by UK’s biggest ever nuisance calls fine

Turtle

Practice Makes Perfect!

"...ethical tele-marketing practices..."

Ha-ha-ha!

Russian antivirus vendor fire bombed for research blogs

Turtle

Re: "the attacks seemed unprofessional" ?

"There are professional fire bombers?"

We have them here (the US) too. They're called "arsonists". Their services can be invaluable for speeding a process called "urban renewal", in order to displace the poor, who are often found thickly infesting neighborhoods otherwise perfectly suitable for gentrification.

'Miracle weight-loss' biz sued for trying to silence bad online reviews

Turtle

Re: It's all in how you phrase it.

"The trick is to write a review that is glowing praise when read literally but can also be read as an indictment."

That kind of "trick" is for cowards, and for fools who buy into the idea that anything written in a EULA or the T&C's has the force of law.

Grow a backbone and some spine to go along with. It could do you some good.

Spirit of the Ghost: Taking a Rolls-Royce Wraith around France

Turtle

A Long Drive...

"Indeed, we took it into the “high” vehicles section of the Eurotunnel because that doesn’t have toilets in the train and so is wider. We didn’t need the height"

...or, apparently, the toilets. Reminds me of the Rowan Atkinson line, "If you'd read your Bible, you might have seen that it was 'damnation without relief'".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut116mBuPpg

NEW ERA for HUMANITY? NASA says something 'major' FOUND ON MARS

Turtle

@Teiwaz

"Not a coincidence, the title of the Red Dwarf episode the quotes from is 'waiting for god' Series 1 episode 4."

Thanks for the info!

Before I posted, I actually googled "Lister Rimmer rock" to see where the lines were from but the search didn't seem to bring up any results that struck me as relevant.

Turtle

@Geoff Johnson Re: Reminds me of this...

The first six lines of Lister and Rimmer reminded *me* of "Waiting For Godot".

We saw the future: Apart from the bath apps it looks like the past

Turtle

Nice!

"Ever wished your metal light fittings were just that bit more rusty? Now you can get pre-rusted lighting without having to wait for it to oxidise under its own steam (see what I did there?) "

(Yup. Good one!)

Holy litigation, Batman! Custom Batmobile cars nixed by copyright

Turtle

Re: It might because because its early so I apologise

"The only reason they are shutting him down is because they want his money, not because they care about their product at all."

You are almost certainly wrong about this, twice. Whatever money they would get from him would be minuscule compared to the value of their IP and would probably not cover their legal costs. The actual reason they are doing this is *because* they care about their product - which is worth millions if not billions of dollars. How you could think otherwise is baffling.

I would expect that their actual motivation for the lawsuit is simple: they want to assert and re-affirm their rights. They do not want to be seen as having abandoned any part of the prerogatives which they have as owners of their IP - for much the same reason that Google does not want "google" to become a recognized, generic word, or they will find themselves in a situation similar to what happened to the owners of the trademark "escalator":because the trademark owners did not zealously defend their rights to it, they lost it.

And DC is not going to jeopardize their right by appearing to countenance unauthorized use - which weakens their rights. The kernel of the matter is not really that the cars are being built, but that their copyright is being used without permission.

I would expect that DC would be perfectly fine with them continuing to build expensive, eye-catching replicas, but not without their permission. Which is perfectly understandable.

Google makes admen pay for fake YouTube views, claims research

Turtle

Misread. Or Not.

At first, I had thought that the headline read "Google makes admen pay for fake YouTube views, claims research. But ad-flinger has spent more than most to stop such dicks". Which is a pity, really, because my misreading was better than the original, in every possible way.

Chinese ad firm pwns Android users, creates hijackable global botnet

Turtle

@dogged

No, in keeping with the theme of the story, it's pretty standard Engrish.

Today's Groupon offer to its sacked employees: 100% off your salary

Turtle

Re: Small Business Killer

"Small Business Killer".

Exactly right.

We used to buy groupons when they first started but we pretty soon found out how it works "behind the scenes". It's fair to say that the businesses that got screwed by Groupon often bear some of the culpability for not thinking things through and for being, shall we say, overoptimistic. But they apparently also often very naively relied on Groupon sales-rep dishonesty. For example, the Groupon sales rep might say that (and I'm making up a number here) 90% of all Groupon customers buy goods for more than the voucher is worth, but they won't say that they overspend their vouchers by pennies, not dollars - and that's an actual fact.

So we stopped using them except in cases where the business wouldn't really get hurt. For example, we bought tickets to a river cruise. The marginal cost to the business of our going on the cruise was zero - the cruise line's cost and expenses didn't increase by a single cent and the income they got from us was, for them, pure profit, which they would not have gotten if they hadn't offered the discounts in the first place.

But very businesses that offered Groupons had comparable economics.

Cesspool 4chan sold … to former owner of Japanese cesspool 2ch

Turtle

True Value.

"4chan's attempt to raise money from its users through a $20 annual 'pass' that lets them post on the site without having to use a Captcha has been predictably weak."

4chan's 20 million users value free speech - at less than $20 per year.

All in all, it's just another hit in the stalls: Roger Waters The Wall

Turtle

Riddle.

If he's so anti-authoritarian, then why does the whole production remind of me a Nuremberg Rally?

Ahmed's clock wasn't a bomb, but it blew up the 'net and Zuckerberg, Obama want to meet him

Turtle

@Bota Re: I hope..

"This kid sues the living fuck out of all involved. Amazing though, how the media can pump fear scaremongering shit about muslims all day and then act shocked when this sort of thing happens. That kid had a short glimpse into modern America. A cesspool of shit and filth."

So what you're saying is that America looks at Muslims pretty much the same way that you look at America?

Did you almost prang a 737 jet with a drone over Dallas? The FAA would like a word

Turtle

Re: Could a drone hurt a 737?

" 'it wouldn't be worse than a bird strike?' Do you realise how stupid that comment is? " - @x 7

"@x 7, well said... and $DEITY knows who downvoted you. They were obviously not pilots." - Small Furry Animal

Well the original question was probably not asked by a pilot, which kinda makes it not such a stupid question. Although not my question (because I know that Israel may have lost more fighters to bird strikes than to Arabs) I nonetheless thought that the question was perfectly valid. (Even leaving aside the vastly different characteristics of a soft body like a bird compared to a relatively hard and brittle body like a drone.)

The snide reaction to the question well deserved a downvote. Even a pilot could downvote an answer like that.

Fed-up sysadmins beg Microsoft to improve pisspoor Windows 10 update notes

Turtle

@rtfazeberdee Re: Your confidentiality or your applicaitons … time to decide.

"you forget, you don;t own your windows operating system. check you EULA - it belongs to microsoft and you only lease it."

You own a license to use it. Don't think that your license can be easily revoked. And for pity's sake, don't be one of those fools who thinks that all the terms and conditions in a EULA are legally enforceable.

Storage device reported stolen from insurer RSA's data centre

Turtle

@JayBizzle Re: Weasel words from those looking to evade culpability

"If this keeps happening then I'm afraid there will be pressure to legislate against this and make the companies take full responsbility for their (lack of) actions."

To me, personally, such an outcome is not something of which to be "afraid". Actually, the phrase "fervently to be desired" comes to mind.

Reddit's ousted Ellen Pao abandons Silicon Valley sexism sueball

Turtle

Irrespective of anything else...

"Pao maintains [...] : 'To be clear, Kleiner and I have not reached any agreement to settle this matter. Settlement might have provided me with financial benefits, but only at the great cost of silence.'"

Irrespective of anything else, I have to have great respect for someone who takes such a stand.

PRIMITIVE TOOLS found near MICROSOFT headquarters

Turtle

@moiety re "Roast Bear"

"They'd have to wait 10,000 years for the internet connection. The roast bear would be well cold by then."

Roast bear, like revenge, is best served cold.

Japan 'charges MtGox baron Mark Karpeles with BTC embezzlement'

Turtle

Re: Assassination Markets.

"You've just invented assassination markets."

I seem to recall that it was some sort of market that DARPA was running which was actually meant to predict the future by getting the opinions of experts on a subject to put their expertise where their mouths are and put some money on their expected outcome.

When the project became public knowledge (not that it was a secret project in the first place) DARPA had to shut it down.

Turtle

Another Speculative Venture.

Enjoyed the Bitcoin speculations? Here's something else suitable for speculation: how long before Karpeles is murdered on the orders of one of the defrauded Bitcoin owners?

MYSTERIES of remote ICE WORLD PLUTO: New pics BAMBOOZLE boffins

Turtle

One Caveat To Keep In Mind

That Pluto - a planet that is, galactically speaking, a very close neighbor - holds surprises should not be all that surprising. But it really should make one wonder about the the accuracy of the claims made for exoplanets located many light years away. Less is actually known, and the uncertainties are greater, than some people seem to realize.

Turtle

Re: Dear {deity}

"There is so much really interesting stuff coming up."

When wasn't there, though?

Samsung’s consumer IoT vision – stupid, desperate, creepy

Turtle

Re: Why....just why?

"your microwave will no longer talk to your hairdryer"

Oh, the conversations they would have had!

Wikipedia’s biggest scandal: Industrial-scale blackmail

Turtle

When Wales Can Fly.

I recall reading that Wales was involved with a scheme in which he charged companies $5000 to delete unfavorable articles. So you know what you can expect from him in the way of change.

Tree hugger? Your wooden harem is much bigger than thought

Turtle

The Leafy Peril: Very, Very Worrying.

"a new study just published says that there are no fewer than three trillion huggable woody trunks alive on the planet today... it's now clear that there are approximately 422 trees for every human being, rather than a comparatively paltry 61."

If we don't immediately take forceful and energetic measures, they are going to take over the entire planet!

Nexenta, SanDisk hop into bed, one thing leads to another – now they've got a 512TB flash brat

Turtle

It's Stories Like This...

Although I've read many stories here about supercomputers and so forth, for some reason it's stories like this that make me realize the vast gulf between home users and enterprise users. I'm not even sure why that is, though.

The most tragic thing about the Ashley Madison hack? It was really 1% actual women

Turtle

@Michael Wojcik

"Alas, sociobiology is alive and well. It's a convenient refuge for a particular type of sophomoric thinker who wants to ascribe simple, foundational causes to human behavior and sweep both complexity and ethical responsibility under the rug."

Your caricature of sociobiology (and, more than likely, evolutionary psychology) is also an example of "sophomoric thinking" - the kind that can not tolerate the idea that there might be any impediments to achievement of human perfection by political means. Because how could anything be true if Michael Wojcik (or Gould, or Lewontin, or anyone else) doesn't like its political implications and if it might prevent his preferred version of Utopia from becoming a reality?

Moreover your strident denial of the influence of genetically-programmed behavioral predispositions and its corollary that human behavior is freely manipulable forms the basis for the excesses of Communist Russia, Mao's China, Khmer Rouge - these being not unique but merely among the most excessive of many efforts by many governments (of many ostensible political tendencies) to regulate too many facets of individual and societal life.

And in the way that it posits an extreme hiatus between human beings and all other animal life, it's on a level with creationism.

Turtle

Re: Dating sites

"What I will say is that I did set up a fake female ID 'to see what would happen', and within minutes of setting up the account, without a photo, the ID was bombarded by other men, the number of messages went into multiples of 10 within an hour. That certainly did not happen the other way 'round!"

Reminds me of this: A guy in an irc channel I would sometimes go to, to told me he had changed his nick, logged on to a channel for lesbians, and was immediately inundated with private messages.

Sort of an interesting parallel.

Turtle

Re: "Women can use the site for free"

"What a failure."

That depends on your definitions.

Perhaps it was a success in that it enlivened the lives of some men with an apparently-plausible fantasy. This really needs to be taken into account, I am sorry to have to say.

One might well think that for at least some of the men using the site, this was about as close as they're going to get to a real woman and they were certainly under the impression that there were many desirable women on the site - because that's what the internet is; and that's what human imagination does.

(Example: note that for all the stories on this site, the pictures which accompanied the stories were all of young, well-maintained people - as opposed, for example and contrast, to grossly overweight people with questionable hygiene. Which do you think would be closer to the underlying reality?)

Or one might think that the website was a success - for the people who ran it - in that it made quite a bit of money: even the paid deletions earned them a good $4 million (rounding off to 200,000 deletions at $20 per.). It would appear that the website was a goldmine, but that might change depending on the legal fallout.

(In spite of the T&C's stating that some of the profiles were "created for amusement" I think that the fact that nearly all of the supposed women were non-existent goes far far beyond what such a disclaimer should allow them to get away with. Hopefully they will be made to disgorge, at the very least. This is a separate question from their culpability for letting the user data end up plastered all over the internet - such cases need to be punishable by imprisonment.)

Depending on one's point of view and definitions, the site might or might not have been a "success" but it certainly was a fraud. Even for me, having a very low opinion of the internet, the reality was astonishing.

As someone once put it: No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.

Spaniard claims WWII WAR HERO pigeon code crack. Explain please

Turtle

IP over Avian Carriers RFC 1149

"IP over Avian Carriers (RFC 1149) is an Internet protocol for the transmission of messages via homing pigeon." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon also the following:)

"In September 2009, a South African IT company based in Durban pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a data packed 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest internet service provider, Telkom. The pigeon, Winston, took an hour and eight minutes to carry the data 80 km (50 miles). In all, the data transfer took two hours, six minutes, and fifty-seven seconds—the same amount of time it took to transfer 4% of the data over the ADSL." (ibid)

Manchester skeptics annexed in hostile digital power grab

Turtle

Rather More Than A "Fault".

"Our fault was being naive enough to believe that no-one in our membership would behave in such a way"

This is a very telling remark. Indicative of profound self-complacency. It's the sort of remark that one would hear from a member of any cult-like sect in the same situation. Also the basis for any number of affinity frauds. Expect it to occasion no serious self-examination at all.

FireEye intern VXer pleads guilty for Darkode droid RAT ruse

Turtle

@Bloakey1 Re: admin known as Sp3cal1st

"Might be tipping hat to military, SP3 used to be equivalent to E4 and was a master specialist as for Cal and 1st that could be unit stuff."

Naaah. He's tipping his hat to the version of Win XP that he's using: SP3.

Facebook profiles? They're not 'personal data' Mr Putin

Turtle

A Truck. A Big One. A KAMAZ 5490, For Example.

"Facebook said it would not comment on the speculations, adding 'we regularly meet with government officials and have nothing more to share at this time.'”

That's the problem right there - and the solution is so easy! They only need to take a truckload of cash to one of those meetings, and then it would all work out the way they want.

Scrapheap challenge: How Amazon and Google are dumbing down the gogglebox

Turtle

Vengeance Is Theirs.

"Looking at the list of supported devices, there are now no Samsung TVs or BluRays from before 2012, and no LG BluRay players listed at all."

Planned obsolescence - with a vengeance!

Why is the smart home insecure? Because almost nobody cares

Turtle

*I* Care. And In My Home, That's All That Matters.

"Why is the smart home insecure? Because almost nobody cares"

Well, *I* care. And that's why I won't be buying any "smart" appliances at all. Insecurity problem solved!

Krebs: I know who hacked Ashley Madison

Turtle

@Anonymous Coward: Nearly 100% Fraudulent.

"the ultimate sausage party: This article explains everything with the data anyway. http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-women-in-the-ashley-madison-database-1725558944"

/speechless

Prof Hawking cracks riddle of black holes – which may be portals to other universes

Turtle

@gerdesj Re: Cite

"If this is important enough then s/he who publishes first gets to claim willy waving rights."

It's not important, it's string theory, which some people confuse with physics. But it isn't physics, it's a failed research program culminating in the "multiverse" - a device to explain away the failure of the research program that spawned it. It represents a vast waste of intellectual and scientific energy.

NHS site defaced with screed protesting Syrian conflict

Turtle

@Ralph B Re: Well, I see their point ...

"I mean, why hasn't the UK's National Health Service website ever spoken up against the three years of massacres that occur in Syria?"

Yes, but now that the website's been defaced, the whole world is going to sit up and take notice!

Směrť Špionam! BAN Windows 10, it SPIES too much, exclaim Russians

Turtle

@Dave 15 Re: They are probably right

"That the Russians and Chinese spy on their folk does NOT make it more acceptable that the UK spies on its people or the US spies on everybody"

If you think that the US is the only one attempting to spy on everyone or that the other countries only spy on their own citizens and residents of their own countries, then you are deluding yourself. They are all engaged in as much surveillance as they can manage.

Turtle

Re: Death To Spies!

"'Smert' Shpionam 'I think"

You are correct. I am not sure what the inverted caret over the "e" signifies but I have never seen it used to transliterate Russian. An unadorned "e" would have been both sufficient and correct.

The inverted caret over the second "s" however is commonly used to denote an "sh" but not commonly used in transliterating Russian; I have mostly seen it used in Eastern European Slavic languages written in the Latin alphabet where the letter with caret is native to the language. In other words, it gets the correct sound across, but in this case it's an eccentric and little-used way of conveying it.

The first word, "Smert'", (death) is one of those Russian words that can be written using characters from the Latin alphabet solely, like so: CMEPTb.

Second Ashley Madison dump prompts more inside-job speculation

Turtle

Re: An ALM self-driving CEO?

"And why is 'a former commander of Unit 8200' commenting? If there is one thing I fear it's Israel-spook-affiliated things in the network. In bad cases, the PFY will be found having emitted a suicide note all of a sudden. NOPE!"

Maybe someone asked him. His opinions on matters like this would seem to have value. Of course, if you want to use this as more "evidence" of what you read in "The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion" and Henry Ford's "The International Jew" then nothing's going to stop you.

Spotify now officially even worse than the NSA

Turtle

@ Steve Crook - A Great Quote!

"Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"

An outstanding line from an outstanding movie! In fact I'd have to list it as one of the all-time great movie quotes. (I have read the play too but don't recall if that line was in it.)

Turtle

Candor.

"Spotify is constantly innovating and evolving its service to deliver the best possible experience for our users."

And by "their users" they mean those corporate entities who pay to "use" the information that Spotify extracts from their subscribers.

Ashley Madison wide open to UK privacy lawsuits, claim lawyers

Turtle

Here's What I Was Hoping To Find Out.

How about explaining the means by which the statement "anyone suing for breach of privacy could expose themselves to greater risk of divorce proceedings" implies that "ALM customers are dirty, dirty cheaters". 'Cause that's some bizarre logic there.

And as for your statement "I don't think that married men on the site are going to step forward at all." - I'd like to hear why married men wouldn't step forward, because I expect that your answer would be something along the lines of "anyone suing for breach of privacy could expose themselves to greater risk of divorce proceedings". But you can prove me wrong.

Turtle

Users And What They're Using.

"With all the extra publicity, Ashley Madison is only going to be getting more users.."

I'll tell you what kind of "users" they're going to be getting: drug users. Because any man who will sign up with a sleaze site having that kind of track record, and whose clientele is 90% male, just has to be on drugs.

Turtle

Re: Wait a minute

"'anyone suing for breach of privacy could expose themselves to greater risk of divorce proceedings.' Ok, ok, the clear editorial stance on this issue is that ALM customers are dirty, dirty cheaters."

You don't think that stating that a person attempting to sue ALM and therefore publicly admitting to having used the site in order to have an adulterous affair would be risking the wrath and resentment of their spouse - both for the adulterous intentions and the subsequent public humiliation? To me, the statement that you criticize seems like a very straightforward statement of fact, as opposed to a moral judgement.