Posts by Voland's right hand 5759 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2011
How much of the underlying software will be under Android's control, we dread to think.
Took the words out of my mouth. No buy. While I really like a well built Android based infotainment system (in fact, I retrofitted one in my car), its level of access to anything internal should be properly firewalled off an limited.
Some people do not have any choice. When the X-ray machines in the affected hospital trusts were bought using Windows XP (or even 2001) imaging software, that was state of the art. The issue is that the life of a piece of equipment like this vastly exceeds the lifespan of the OS that was used for the control system. On top of that, quite often these cannot be patched as the software is written so badly that it will work only with a specific patch-level of the core OS.
That CAN and SHOULD be mitigated by:
0. Considering each and every one of those a Typhoid Mary in potentia
1. Isolating such the Typhoid Mary in-potentia on a separate subnet
2. Preventing any communication except essential management and authentication/authorization going out
3. Providing a single controlled channel to ship out results to a location which we CAN maintain and keep up to date.
Instead of that, criminally stupid idots at NHS IT in the affected trusts as well as other enterprises which were hit:
1. Put these unpatchable and unmaintainable machines in the same flat broadcast domain with desktop equipment. There was no attempt at isolation and segmentation whatsoever.
2. In some cases allowed use of unrelated desktop applications (at ridiculously ancient patch-levels) such as Outlook or even Outlook Express.
3. Opened file sharing on the machines in question.
Each of these should be a sackable offense for the IT staff in question.
Organizations which are still on XP have much bigger issues. The expectations that they will patch anything is in the realm of Sci Fi, not in reality.
Worst part - some of them like Telefonica R&D and NHS will just reimage and we will be back to square 1.
There is at least a funny angle. I would really love to see a fly on the wall recording of the poor sod who will be reporting to Putin that the Russian ministry of the interior (their home office) got whacked as he told them (and the rest of Russian gov) to get rid of it a few years back (when he was a prime minister). Talking of "Mr Chrisophrase is very upset..." moment.
All in all, the worm author had no idea how successful it will be. They now are not going to get any money.
Also, this shows what exactly happens when 3 letters decide to sit on an exploit and hoard it. Though in this case, there is a remote possibility that they will get both sued and congressionally whacked. It is unfortunately very remote.
The most interesting aspect is the "delay evaluation until doomsday and pass a handle around" and how it has been implemented. That is the really revolutionary bit for python (and the stumbling block for most people using TF). Some other languages (f.e. Java) hav similar constructs as a part of their core libs. Python so far does not.
This just asks to be stolen and reused for other purposes.
Lots of rants, and you have been unfairly modded down.
The real story is:
1. It is the same Dyson who slept through while the tests were defined. There was an industry consultation, he could not be arsed to participate.
2. It is the same Dyson which woke up to find that some other people did not sleep through and were getting better shop floor standing than his appliances. I am with Bosch and Siemens here - if you can rig the system legally, go ahead and rig it. There are mechanisms to put it right in the end, but unless someone does that occasionally the mechanisms rot and fester which is not good for the endgame.
3. It is the same Dyson who went on a hell-bent moan on the subject instead of doing the job properly for his court case and as a result failed his first court appearance.
4. It is the same Dyson who sponsored us removing ourselves out of the jurisdiction of the court which finally put the things right instead of using the court case.
5. It is the same Dyson which will have NO F*CKING SAY in changing the regulations because his company has decided to leave the Eu together with the country ans REMOVE ourselves out of the jurisdiction of the court in question. Courtesy of him filling Leave coffers with money in rage of pet hate.
Bazooka, foot, look into the exhaust, pull trigger. Now do it again. Again. Again. And again. What a complete and utter idiot. Though with Govenokio, the hair disorganized dolt and the crook he sort of fits where he should be.
In the early middle ages people used catapults loaded with cut off heads.
In WW1 they used dirigibles and leaflets.
In WW2 they used planes and leaflets.
During the many Cold War proxy conflicts they used radio.
Now they use cell towers.
Same goal, just different technology.
So, we're going to borrow a quarter of a trillion to splurge on infrastructure because interest rates are low.
Who told you they will remain low. I do not see how they can remain low if UK credit rating starts dropping (and it will).
Any borrowing increase at the moment is first degree grand treason not for any other reason, but because we cannot predict what we will be paying on it in two years time.
I have replaced landlines with SIP lines partially since mid-2005 and completely in 2007. Initially with SipGate (before they decided that abusing customers is a good strategy), now with Teleppliant.
I have had 2 or 3 nuisance calls via GSM gateways in 10 years. None of the usual bulk dialing ambulance chasing variety. You get those ONLY if you have a proper landline because the dialers and the main telcos operate the scam jointly. The only reason the dialer intermediary is able to offer its scumbag customers the rate they need to run the scam, is because they GOT a reduced termination wholesale rate (quite often along with customer data) from BT, Virgin, Sky, or TalkTalk. So, in fact, these are openly complicit in the scams - they get line termination fees on them and offer special rates to companies they know are likely to need them for bulk dialing.
Due to VOIP being predominantly business service, the VOIP providers do not sell data and/or reduced termination rates needed for the scams to work. So you do not get the calls.
Yeah, but idiotic projects like "Firefox OS" produce valley buzzzzz. Something that works and serves customers does not.
All you need to know about this debacle is contained in this line: "Mailing Address. Mozilla Foundation 1981 Landings Drive Building K Mountain View, CA 94043-0801. USA."
This is called CALIFORNICATION.
I wrote half of our product at the time on flights. There was a running gag around the office that if we desperately need to deliver a new feature they will send me on a round-the-world trip via Australia.
In any case, if we go down that route, an explosive can be concealed in nearly anything. A modern laptop is actually one of the worst places to stick it - too thin and too cramped.
ROBO-Appealing to the individual voter?
It is just robocalling and cold calling banks for the 21st century. Quite effective.
IMHO, this poster is a very good fit for the referendum and the last two anglo-saxon elections: https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Robot-Movie-Poster-18/dp/B01ANZRTMS
While Comey was political through and through a large part of his political orientation directly impacted on technical matters.
1. Encryption backdooring
2. Searches of electronic equipment
3. Selective politically motivated interest in various hacking, etc cases.
All in all he signed his death warrant the day he intervened in the election. He wanted to be a Hoover, but he forgot the most important Hoover lesson - you do not do that in public. You do it quietly.
In any case, I suspect his replacement will be significantly worse. There is very little to celebrate here.
Using agile to deliver a government deliverable cannot work.
Procurement, finance, contract selection and deselection, etc are as waterfall as waterfall gets. Add to that the inevitable pre-election "what we have delivered" fixed dates and you get an environment where Agile has no logical function.
You can use agile as much as you like internally, but the actual shipment of stuff to gov (of any shape and form) and gov's side of planning the programme is not agile territory. It cannot be.
So the person to fall on its sword should not be the Agile consultancy, that should be the mandarin which decided to go all-buzzword compliant and run it as agile.
In the most recent (39-45) global conflict, there were more--and more varied-
The reason for this is that conflict quickly terminated all delusions of fighters doing close-in air support as a main day job as well as the idea of "universal" fighter. WW2 fighters were highly specialized: air superiority (Spitfire, Yak-9, La-5, Me-109), Escort (P51), night (Dorado, Mosquito), intercept (Me-262), etc.
While they often did close air support, they did not have that as a day job (except the night ones). There were Mosquitos, Stukas, Pe2, Il2 for that. They could carry more, stay over the battlefield for longer, take more punishment and do a much better job.
What is happening today is repeating one of the biggest German mistakes of WW2. Hitler delayed the deployments of Me-262 by nearly a year until it had the ability to do some rudimentary close air support retrofitted (completely unnecessary for its actual use). We just do the same to fighters now instead of having proper close air support aircraft.
it is unlikely that it carries any weapons.
Depends what are you trying to hit.
An ion drive accelerated kinetic can be as small as you wish. The size of a cubesat. If you are not in a hurry to hit the target and the target is another satellite you can send it off on a nice long journey to slingshot around the moon and whack whatever you want with 10km/s. Bonus points for doing the orbital mechanics so that it hits the target head on adding its orbital velocity to its escape velocity.
The energy released by whacking something with 15kg at 18km/s collision velocity is roughly equivalent to a kiloton of TNT. No satellite will be able to maneuver out of the path, it will be too late by the time they see it.
20-30kg kinetic with terminal velocity around 40km/s gets you into atomic weapons range. For that you will need to send it on a rather long excursion but if you want let's say an asteroid incident above the North Korean launch facilities...
It's an orchestrated campaign by Russia to disrupt its enemies.
Cannot really blame them. After all we invested tens of Billions after the fall of the wall into THEIR enemies around them after the fall of the wall and the end of the cold war.
It is a classic case of "cannot stand the heat - get out of the kitchen" by all accounts. This includes the online aspect as in this case.
The unnamed CIA staffer which facilitated the Panama leaks specially timed to last Russia elections and decided it is a good idea to filter out of all American content has a lot to answer for.
You do not lob a small hand grenade at someone who can and WILL respond with a nuclear salvo. While they always had an order of magnitude higher attack capability (by having better STEM and being able to "draft in" from the criminal contingent), they restrained from attack until the Panama leak. That was considered by them as openly hostile, an open attempt to interfere in their last elections (that was voiced even by their opposition) and a form of "information warfare".
We now reap what we saw and we are utterly unprepared for it - the information security of most political parties and other potential targets on our side is completely inexistent. There will be many more Macrons and DNCs going forward and very little for us to answer with.
"far right" is a misnoma
"There is no left or right. There is no enemies." - quote is from one of the best movies on politics ever made and probably the best french movie about french politicians and politics: "Mort d'un pourri".
It took 30+ years for English subtitles to be finally added to this gem and it to be put on sale in the UK (the rest of the world has been watching it in the meantime).
I suggest grabbing a copy of Amazon. It is definitely worth it.
The notice is for ALL visa applicants. Not just immigrants. When I read it, all I can say they are out of their frigging mind.
Travel history during the past fifteen years, including source of funding for travel.
For the last 15 years, my per-annum travel has been as much as 125k miles business, 15k miles personal with the family via air and up to 5-8k on top of that international travel by car. 40+ trips in a really bad year. For 15 years that is 600+ trips, some of which with 5+ countries to transit.
That is nothing - I know people who clock 80+ trips a year in a really bad year.
So if I one of us runs into issues with the stupid visa waiver and has to apply for a visa the application will be 15+ pages just for the trips. The only ones who are even more deluded in their data collection are the 1d10ts in the Home Office which ask for the same information from the date you came to the UK in order to issue permanent residency.
I do not see what is the purpose for the collection of this information. It serves no purpose whatsoever.
"... preferred to send their own children downstairs ..."
You never know. There was a running gag in my previous job that my children are trained to enter the Hunger games and win them (*). So they may actually enjoy the experience (the intruder will not). They will definitely perform better than me too - I am getting slow proportionally to my beard going white.
Each of them does 2+ martial arts, at least one "force" sport like Water Polo and have been able to do half of an adult Triathlon since the age of 8. It has been many years since anyone has even considered the idea to lay a finger on them in school.
At least it was lightweight modern media.
The comp sci dept in my University kept as a relic and never fixed all the years I was there the fragments from a drive off an old VAX or IBM clone (not sure which one - we had both) embedded in the door.
Some idiot during one of the many repairs throughout the hungry post-fall-of-wall years disabled the safety on the drive case. Another idiot tried to open it while it was spinning at full throttle. Both got very lucky after the drive disintegrated - the frags were embedded all the way through a 1 inch thick wooden door and sticking on the outside. There was quite a bit of damage around the server room too. But somehow, miraculously, the idiot whoddunit was unscathed. There is a slavic proverb: "God looks after the drunks, little kids and the feeble of mind". Definitely applies in this case.
She should really stop shaving her mustache. A small rectangular mustache can do wonders to your look. A set of handlebars and a military headgear look stunning too.
On a more serious note she is pressing all the buttons to advance towards a fascist dictatorship.
Declaring barely won refernda sacred and inviolate by any normal democratic process - exactly like Hitler and the referendum on changing the Weimar republic constitution, quoting straight out of his and Geobels rants just doing s/Jew/European/g. Having her lapdog quote out of the Law for the restoration of the Professional German Civil Service while applying the same regexp. And now trying for a quick war. Nothing to advance a dictatorship like putting the country on a war footing.
Interesting anecdote.
Not anecdote. Fact - at least as far as several wine making regions I frequent 5+ times annually are concerned.
Bulgaria in the 90-es. Mavrud used to be a classic relic hit-and-miss wine. Extremely year dependent. Fantastic in a good year, undrinkable in a bad one. Usually > 16 and around the 18 mark. All the wineries which made it either bought into Aussie tech or had Aussie investment between 1992 and 1997. The BVA went down immediately after the event. Every single one of them.
Tinto Negramol and Malvasia. When I first went to La Palma in 1999 you cut literally "cut" either one of them. They poured out of the bottle like oil. Next year - new Australian equipment at Teneguia and wine that is now no longer left to mature to its natural rocket fuel form. Diluted to mark and at 13.5 f*** BVA. That for Malvasia is undrinkable. A Malvasia which is under 15 is sweetened horsepiss, not wine. Ditto for Negramol.
And so on.
French red wine to be 11.5% alcohol. Now, normal would be 13.5%
Lightweight horsepiss for spoilsports.
Malvasia, Mavrud, whatever was the name of that Greek Island Rocket Fuel, Tempranillo, Negramol have all gone from 16-18 down to... Guess where... Thirteen point F**** Five. It is the australization of the wine making. It is industrialized and outside France traditional wine making regions winemakers have either adopted Aussie tech or are outright owned by Aussies (Eastern Europe).
You need to get some stuff directly from the growers ( I bring ~ 50l in the truck each summer) to get proper quality rocket fuel nowdays. Even that is 15. Classic relic wines which used to hit more like Mavrud are not available any more.
So whatever you get your choice will be 13.5 or 13.5.
For now I do not need a walking frame. I occasionally need wrist, back, ankle or knee support, but it is not because my beard is gray (which it is). It is because I have done something stupid playing sports or working on a DIY project.
Now, on the subject at hand - there are plenty of other gray (and not so gray) bears like me who can do Fortran and are not in need of a walking frame. The distinction is that we have NOT graduated with CS. Fortran was a necessary evil in doing the numerical methods courses in Chemistry and Physics up to as recent as 10 years ago (maybe still is). Some of this code is now in use in banking, computation of prices for airlines and god knows what else so it is fairly well maintained too.
However, as far 55k goes - you gotta be kidding, right?
Services (including the App Store and Apple Pay) accounted for $7.04bn on the quarter, an 18 per cent increase.
Not any more. They have retargeted quite successfully to fleece the punters from services:
Services (including the App Store and Apple Pay) accounted for $7.04bn on the quarter, an 18 per cent increase.
That is where the growth is. They can continue to produce flat (or even reduced) sales in hardware for decades. As long as that keeps the punters locked in into their services model that particular line in the balance sheet will continue to increase. It is already pulling in about the same amount of money as the iPad and the Mac combined.
My first thought was 'how many w*nkers on Linked in have called themselves something along the lines "visionary cloud architectural enabler"' The quality of data for human consumption is god-awful.
That however would not stop a machine. In fact, statistical analysis of w*nking can produce perfect targeting information for selling more w*nking and w*nk assistance goods and services. It is the perfect data source for that - you can target w*nkers with a confidence ratio of 99% by running Bayes stats on their profiles and connections and sell pyramid marketing scams, self-improvement and motivational courseware, etc.
So if Oracle is successful things will sort themselves - Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B will remove itself out of the business population pool by being constantly fleeced.
This shows that it is extremely useful when filtering CVs.
First pass is the bulshit bingo filtering - any bulshit bingo in the profile is an immediate rounded folder filing. Under the desk.
You compare CV and LinkedIn profile. People usually do not lie in a CV - they consider it too risky.
So second filter is anyone and everyone who has obviously exaggerated versus their CV. File in the rounder folder under the desk.
Third stage is to ask all the relevant questions based on their CV/Profile - if they claim to have managed 10K people they should be able to describe responsibilties, processes, etc. File in the rounded folder under the desk.
Rinse repeat.
So it is actually quite useful, you just do not see its usefulness :)
Flexibility is not a desirable feature in an educational environment with the exception of CS (even that only from a particular point onwards).
You want it to do exactly what it says on the tin and you do not want any work on it to be lost if the student sits on it, it is hit by a ball because the bag where it is was being used as a football goalpoast or is plain forgotten somewhere. From the teachers' perspective a stripped down cloud-backed device has considerable educational appeal. They will prefer it to a "proper OS" every time and it is difficult to blame them for that.
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