Posts by Robert Helpmann??

Re: Speaking of Pigeons...

Parakeets usually live in tropical climes...

There used to be Carolina parakeets in the US, but they are now, alas, extinct. Pigeons, on the other hand, are non-native to this range, so if these southern parakeets push them out, I look at it as restoring the natural order.

Re: Thank f#ck for that

... the fact it was voted down at least restores some faith that elected representatives actually represent the people who vote for them, not the people who pay them.

The bill failed to get a super-majority though it did have a simple majority. It didn't even fail on the merits of the issues that I feel strongly about (see the note concerning copyright). To me, at least, this is more a case that a small number of elected officials' interests happened to align with those of some of their constituents... Well, perhaps that is how a representative democracy works after all.

Re: Statute of Limitations

While I am not sure how the statute of limitations would be applied under Swedish law, I am curious as to whether he could be charged and tried in absentia. At least in a generic sense, the limitation is on the time between the crime and a person being charged with it. If he has been charged, I would think there would no longer be a ticking clock in that sense.

Re: Yes they are beyond douchy but..

So enlighten me, what are these other two "hate crimes" you speak of?

I suspect the reference was to the millions of people killed under Stalin and Mao, 23 and 78 million respectively versus 17 million under Hitler's regime.

Re: Get patching. ®

But how can they patch when it's an unknown Vuln...

By migrating away from WordPress?

Re: OK... teased us with the scenario and methods..

Teased? Downright misled! This is what the source article states:

"Over 85% of the cyber intrusions ASD responds to could be prevented by following the Top 4 mitigation strategies..."

And this is what the paraphrasing gave us:

"The Australian Government Department of Defence found that operating system and application patching could have stopped 85 per cent of all security incidents it experienced,"

A cyber intrusion is a subset of security incident. Patching will do little or nothing to address insider threats, poor system management practices, or sloppy handling of sensitive materials on the part of employees. Patching is important and can be difficult, but it is not 85% of the puzzle pieces needed to make up the whole picture.

Re: @ Stuart Longland

Today, not so sure. I would not be surprised to see a mandatory school and education use mandate. That is a few million units on its own.

They have created the Volga of the computing world. It only "works" if you have a captive market. Perhaps they should code name the next chipset in development Чёрная Молния (Black Lightning).

It's also said to be capable of x86 emulation, and to run Linux natively, after one performs binary translation.

Sorry, the first thing that got stuck in my head was "What? They need to be rewritten using Cyrillic?"

Re: Off to the pet store!!

If you've got a hammer, there's no need for a knife....

In my experience, it's a lot easier to skin an animal with a knife. To each their own, I suppose.

Collective Nouns

'Internet' is now the collective noun for things

Yes! Like a cluster of computers, a tangle of cables, a bank an elephant of RAM or a spaghetti of code.

Re: Needs more Cloverfield

...thankfully they've resisted the urge to make such a travesty of a movie...

I felt the same about the recent Hobbit videogame movies. I really wanted not to watch it after the LotR's missing the Scouring of the Shire from its ending, but was forced into attending a marathon viewing which sadly did not involve alcohol. Why anyone would take a kid's story and turn it into a torture device for kids is... well.. brilliant, but I still wish I could forget the hours I wasted watching this trilogy.

Re: Slow "news" day?

See the bit in the article concerning the "new profession of in-game journalist" and understand that there is enough interest to make a living from reporting in-game activity. Welcome to the new normal.

Re: @Remy

Something I would love to see and nobody will be able to compute the outcome of.

I would think this is exactly the sort of thing anyone contemplating the creation of such a structure would want to work out. As well, they would want to create contingency plans based on the modelling of such a catastrophe.

Re: Too late

Acrobat Reader is but a memory

I am quite happy to have done the same some time back. Anecdotally, many home users have too, at least among my friends and family. I suspect that this mostly affects business and government organizations, so it is still likely to have a large impact.

Re: Where did he learn his use of analogies?

You also have the option of not signing up for the discount card or simply shopping somewhere else. How exactly does one opt out of the NSA's program?

Re: Inappropriate image in more than one sense

Would you mind explaining the connection between web security and the picture you have chosen to accompany the article[?]

I don't like the banners at all, no matter how appropriate, but consider the phrase "web app security" and compare its likely existence to that of the "unicorn" in the image... I'm only guessing, but I think that might be the direction we are meant to head.

Trumped Up

I suspect the laws on whistleblowing trump the DCMA,

The problem in this is that in order to make that determination the case would still have to go through the legal system which costs money even for the wrongly-accused.

Clipboard Firewall

I was hoping for a bigger jump in security, with a greater range of tools for corporate admins. This bit is like MS took a look at a Qubes whitepaper and had a single takeaway. Too, the manageability of updates is a big concern, so it is nice to see tweaks to that. Of course, the OS is still in testing, but I would be a lot more impressed if they had built-in white-listing tools for apps or device control or any number of security measures that currently require a complex set of third party tools. In fact, what I really want is for them to build a robust security framework first and then put all the rest together around it.

Re: Off-topic

This is how every article should look...

Now you've done it! The editors read these comments, and will be moving to screw this one up too fix it shortly. Then again, maybe they think the very annoying drop-down menus are distracting enough in this instance and will leave it alone. What are the odds?

Re: Anyone have specs on the Powerpack?

Powerpack probably consists only of made-to-order systems. When I went to the product page, I found a link allowing businesses a chance to inquire about their commercial version. Alternatively, it might be vaporware.

Re: Understandable

The tattoo-sleeved folk can wear the watch...around their ankle

I'm pretty sure that Apple's target demographic doesn't include too many people under house arrest, though it may offer them a growth market.

Re: Apple iWatch

I have to hand it to Apple: when they polished a turd, they came out with a gold-plated, $5K turd. Well done!

Re: Wordpress.

WordPress : Servers :: Acrobat : Workstations

Just keep patching, just keep patching...

Re: "We lost out to the manager at the local store, no cheap meat today"

I don't know what hours your store is open, but one of the unexpected benefits of working nights is that I often get meat on sale. On the other hand, my dad told me that his family often only got meat for dinner when they managed to bag a rabbit walking home from school.

Re: If you squint...

The planets are invisible to the well-accoutred eye, as well, given they were only detected through indirect methods.

Re: Mmmmm, foraging.

I also live in the UK's answer to deliverance country so could have happily supplemented my diet with roast pheasant roadkill but again I didn't feel it was comparable to what someone genuienly on the poverty line would be able to do.

I disagree. Hunger will make all sorts of things palatable that previously were not. In fact, I believe this explains a good deal of the world's cuisine, but I digress... Hunt, fish or forage: as long as it can put food on the table and in the belly, it ought to be considered fair. It should be noted that the season during which this challenge is conducted plays a large role in the outcome. Try running this during the winter while also factoring in heating costs and you will have a very real and very difficult challenge.

Kudos to the kids, by the way. Well done.

Re: US politicians want Silicon Valley to create unbreakable encryption?

This is what happens when someone in upper management watches The Expert and uses it as a template for how a project should be planned.

Microsoft didn't really "get" the idea

The only reason I've posted these comments is to point out a factual inaccuracy in the article.

And there are others... I get the impression the author doesn't use Windows command line much except for PowerShell, if that. Too, there were other MS scripting possibilities not mentioned in the article (e.g. cscript/wscript, VBScript, JScript). I've had the... joy? of working with one incarnation of MS-DOS AKA CMD or another for 30 years now. While I think that it PowerShell is interesting in the way it does things and am pleased with the return to using command line as the default in MS OS administration, I find the change from CMD to PS as jarring as moving from anything else to Windows 8. I've written scripts to be run on a variety of *NIXes and am having a harder time shifting to PS than learning any of these from scratch. Maybe I have just gone from getting to being old.

PS has a few neat tricks like being able to specify output types that are native to MS Office formats, but I have been able to do that more generically using CSV and RTF for years. Except for things that were designed and created with PS as the default scripting language, I haven't run into anything that I couldn't do previously with CMD.

Essentially, MS has done to admins what they have been doing to all their other users: changing everything, telling us it is for our own good, and forcing us to relearn things that we have been able to do just fine for years. Not much of a production boost as far as I can see, but it is the Microsoft way.

Re: Security!=privacy

FF22, your point about the difference between security and privacy is well taken (and well said, by the way), but I think both you and the analyst both make a fundamental error in attribution: why is PayPal gathering the info they do? Yes, they might be pulling it to compare against past transactions as a fraud prevention method. Conversely, they might have some legacy code from the beta testing phase of app development. The why of it is important for a number of reasons as it has implications for where weaknesses might be in the app itself (flaws might be left in simply because no-one is paying attention to the code) or what kind of data might be leaked in the event of a successful attack (PayPal is a prime target). While I would not expect my fellow commentards to dig through EULA of these apps or to contact the app publishers, it would seem the researcher had an missed opportunity there. The flaws mentioned in the other apps were certainly that: flaws.

At the very least, one take-away should be that apps should only gather and transmit the data needed to do what they are intended to do. The more bloat that is added in, the greater the chances of flaws creeping into the mix. Also the more power the app will use, which in a mobile device can add up. The people who run the app (customers, for want of a better term) should know what info is collected, sent and retained by the app maker and have a reason of why this is done. Finally, the owner of the device on which an app is run should be able to control access rights for the app. This last should be pinned on the OS makers. Google's offering is particularly bad in this area, but I notice that the only hint as to what manufacturer's device was looked at by the analysis seemed to be Apple.

Re: >> removed one of the scientific instruments and installed the corrective device

For how long?

As long as it continues to produce useful scientific data that costs less to obtain than that of replacing it with something else. To be sure keeping something like this requires a budget, most of which is getting the thing into place to begin with, followed on by repairing it when needed. As far as the ground support costs, well that is rather implied in the use of the equipment. In fact, one might argue that having all that data to analyze and store and all of those people involved in doing so is rather the point of the project. As Dr McCarthy was quoted in the article, there may be other options.

Re: But how many Titanics would it fill?

Comparing X to something you've actually stood next to is about as concrete as it gets.

Well said! Especially given that it was defined as having a volume of 1,000 cubic miles which should have been good enough for those that were looking for something a little more abstract¹.

1 Fine! It comes to about 18,653,228,928.7794 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Re: Neurolaw, neurotics, and the old frontal cortex excuse...

I find his his frontal cortex guilty as charged, and order that it shall be confiscated, taken from this place to another place, and thoroughly minced until it promises not to do it again...

Is the Judge's name in this tale Shylock by any chance?

Re: maglev is the way to go

Trains on stilts are still subject to flooding, even if they are completely enclosed, as their foundations may be undercut by erosion. Traditional railways currently have service cars to check the safety of their infrastructure. I have no idea what is involved in similar efforts for maglev trains, but they have been around long enough that there is certainly an equivalent for them.

Re: Roll Your Own

...it gets out of proportion when true dumb panels get recommended and you end up with a separate panel, TV tuner, amplifier, media player etc with half a dozen plugs, half a dozen things to turn on and off, and half a dozen remotes.

You make some good points, and by its nature the implementation of something like this is going to be unique or close to it for each instance, but I do not see why you would need to worry about multiple controls or power management. I run my "remote" off an app installed on my phone. In my case, I store my media files on my NAS, so it is not powered down. I use a Pi, so leaving it on is not a big deal, but there are power solutions out there that allow for similar control via smart phone if you want to go that route.

As for the Smart TV idea, I look at them as similar to all-in-one devices of any sort. If one part goes out, you can effectively lose the package. and you are almost always paying for more functionality than you will ever use.