Posts by Robert Helpmann??

Re: Sympathy...

This didn't seem to concern him when he started hacking things left, right, and centre. So why should it concern anyone else.

Short answer: Because that is what decent people should do.

Long answer: I do not know the facts in this case and I would guess neither do you. The fact that the judge expressed sympathy says a lot about his character and the situation as it came out during trial. I had to sit on the jury for someone who was eventually found guilty on multiple accounts of using, dealing and manufacturing drugs. Yes, data point of one, but please bear with me. The defendant made terrible choices that affected himself and his family. It was truly tragic on a number of levels. He deserved the sentence he got, but we all felt he deserved the help he reached out for prior to what he did and was denied. If the justice system lacks in sympathy, it can be completely automated and the people who are involved with it dehumanized. I fail to see how that would be a good thing.

Re: So what's Putin afraid of?

"Russia has taken the unusual step of posting a proposal for a new information security collaboration with the United States of America, including a no-hack pact applied to electoral affairs."

This is nothing new. The US has attempted to work on security matters with Russia in the past, doing information sharing and similar. What happened then is the Russians got all the info they wanted and provided nothing in return. Still, some folks will fall far the same thing over and over...

Q: What are they risking, apart from other people's money?

A: Other people's lives.

...they certainly don't care about their face plastered over the web.

Why restrict that comment to just their faces?

Re: How can we be sure

COMPUTER, END PROGRAM!

Computer says "No".

Re: There's a simple solution

Other similar companies are usually not philantropists either, but the way Amazon brings "productivity" and "efficiency" to extreme levels in such a brutally industrial fashion makes them clearly stand out, at least to me. Other retailers, as big as they can be, look like corner shops in comparison.

I worked at a JCPenney distribution center for 8 years and know a number of people who work or have worked at Amazon. Not much difference in working conditions, mindset or much else beyond the efficiency with which Amazon works versus that with which Penny's doesn't. Other retailers are almost certainly on the same page. I think it just comes down to scale, nothing more.

Re: It's only money...

You do know that the migrant policy with children being separated from adults at the Mexico border was started under Obama ?

Nope. You do know that this is an intentionally misleading statement? While there were some separations under previous administrations (plural, as in prior to Obama), there was no policy intended to separate children from parents as a form of retaliation.

Also the reason they are separated is that a huge chunk of those kids aren't travelling with relatives and they are taken from them until this is confirmed and then moved back.

This is clearly not the reason for nor the intent of the policy. In order to return children to parents under the circumstances, the administration would have had to keep track of all of the individuals involved, even and especially if released from care and custody. If there was a concern for the children, they would be put in the care of people actually qualified to care for them.

Icon, because both name and irony.

REF:

https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/did-the-obama-administration-separate-families/

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/29/us/immigration-refugee-child-missing-hhs-obama-photo-trnd/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/us/migrant-children-hotels-coronavirus.html

Re: clown-based fast-food

Odd, the food doesn't taste funny? Just tastes bad...

It's neither fast nor food, so what else should we expect? I think Melpomene is more appropriate than Thalia if you've had the misfortune of eating such.

Re: Pi and the mathematics of social distancing

Why is nobody using ⅓ and ⅔ of π distance?

In this case, ⅓π Basil Fawlty is a bit much, but only a bit.

Re: Exposed by Snowden?

I... understood almost all of that. I'm going to check Hell for temperature and pigs for wings. Have an upvote.

Re: "We have robust processes"

How do you decide what the cleaner contributes? Or the filing clerk?

Do without them for a while?

...one possible reason for using Windows ... System Center Configuration manager makes it almost as easy to manage a fleet of 1,000,000 Windows devices as it is to manage 1.

More likely a case of familiarity and availability. "I know this hammer and it will allow me to hit the screw on the head." It will get the job done, but is probably not the best tool for this particular job.

Also, I am stealing the phrase "blancmange-like stability" and using it often. It manages to combine my enjoyment of medieval cooking and my professional life in a pithy manner.

In Virginia ... the DMV ... is the absolute worst of anywhere I have lived or visited across four continents and dozens of countries.

Sorry, but some slight editing was in order to make the statement a bit more clear.

Re: However, they DO promise to do better in other areas

...I am 100% for every single terrorist act that's foiled but not at the expense of my own security and privacy.

Likewise. I do not want to be terrorized by anyone or any group, foreign or domestic, government or private. Rights are not a one-or-the-other affair. The loss of any is to be feared.

Re: Short but available

In asia the masks are there to protecting others, not the wearer.

Pretty sure that is how it works everywhere. The US CDC recommends masks for patients to prevent their spreading the disease and also lays out when they should and shouldn't be worn by healthcare workers, et cetera.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use-faq.html

Re: Inspirational message

Or here:

https://despair.com/collections/demotivators

Re: Is this any surprise?

On the other hand, I predict a jump in births around the November to December time frame. Just as obvious as the increase in recreational chemical use, I know...

Re: Not new

Nothing new in this. Sean Connery and Harrison Ford during shooting of parts of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Just goes to show that with telework, we can all dress like movie stars.

Re: Scratch Marriott off the list

Because the internet has all the answers...

https://www.marriott.com/marriott-brands.mi

Re: ESA have been working on urine recyc for years on the ISS

I would think that it would only be used as mortar to hold cut blocks in place or to shore up tunnels. I can't imagine it would be particularly efficient to build entire structures out of the stuff.

At least is isn't "Esa".

Re: I disagree

It can be hoped, however, that people will have learned to properly wash their hands.

This flies in the face of your other observations, unfortunately. It's remarkably difficult to get the majority of people to do this, even at the risk of endangering themselves and everyone they come in contact with.

Re: You solved the problem, goodbye

When you find yourself in a bind and someone comes along to dig you out, you're supposed to gain experience and learn how not to get yourself in such a situation again.

It may be what he learned was that if he called the number and talked to this individual, his problem would be solved. Besides, you seem to be asking a lot of someone whose job description seems to have been "Open this spreadsheet".

Re: Huh?

Or maybe content providers could cut back on the ads. If there is actual concern about bandwidth, declaring an ad holiday would go a long way toward opening things up.

It doesn't work like that.

I think what was being referred to by this comment was your tenuous grasp of capitalization and punctuation. At the risk of appearing purely antagonistic, I offer you one plea: stop that.

Re: attack or incompetence masked as attack?

...any government, especially the ones that have lied time and again...

So all of them? What you have there is a bit redundant, though I agree with the sentiment.

A number of businesses I have dealt with recently require you to submit your resume/CV through a web form often with an option to drag a document into it and let the site parse out everything for you. While this does present some surface area to attack, it is nowhere near as bad as the send email attachment route.

Re: Cell phones in prison

Set up mini cell towers throughout the facility. Easy to monitor and control but difficult to avoid.

Re: enforce MFA - base level security policy

Hardware tokens and phone have a cost. Tokens may cost less, but people have to carry (all of) them around, and if they forget it they can't work. ... Sure, they strengthen security but not all companies and users are still ready to pay the price...

Most companies, when able to do a cost-benefits analysis with realist information concerning costs of implementation vs cost of breaches opt to pay the lesser of the two. This is typically cost of implementation.

Maersk is losing its maidenhead...

And I thought it was the employees who were getting screwed!

Re: A Strange Admission to Make ..... for Does it Not Reek of a Ponzi Zombie on the Take ‽ ‽ ‽

...is the firm surely both ... things, ..... a patent troll farm and a beanfeast for IP lawyers?

Well spotted! My first thought when I read that was what were they in addition to those things? Schemers and scammers? I wonder if they would consider changing their corporate name to "Dewey, Cheatem & Howe"... or perhaps that is already claimed by Apple's patent team.

Peter Sellers Lives!

I'd rather have Inspector Clouseau guarding my Linux servers.

I can just hear his voice...

Clouseau: Could you sudo and run these Microsoft tools on your server?

PFY: Yes.

Clouseau: Well then, what are you waiting for?

PFY: This is not my server.

Mine comes with a slightly foxed fedora.

Re: Hmmm

May not be a case of setting things up this way from day one as industrial systems of this nature often predate the widespread internet connectivity of most business networks of today. Once it became possible to monitor and control remotely, people did it for ease of use and accessibility without thinking through any security considerations. After that, it becomes a case of budget and not properly understanding the risks involved. Doctor Syntax's point illustrates this; the risk analysis was probably based on incorrect costs and likelihood of such an event. Once the actual information was made horribly clear, funds are made available because there is no way to avoid the knowledge.