* Posts by Marshalltown

744 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2011

UK government bans all Russian anti-virus software from Secret-rated systems

Marshalltown

Re: Jet Engine

Far, far too late. The UK literally sold the USSR the technology for the early MIG engine. There was an "agreement" signed and sealed, that promised sincerely that the USSR would never, ever use the engines for anything warlike. Then the first MIG captured showed they had replicated the engines. So, technically they might not have broken the promise, but ...

Russia tweaks Telegram with tiny fine for decryption denial

Marshalltown

Re: But..

"Village court..."

Not sure where you are from, but plainly you never served on a jury in the US. There is no such entity as a "village court." In fact searching the term would lead you lead to real estate ads. US law follows the common law system inherited from Britain. A defense lawyer might try to nullify a jury using constitutional arguments, but the judge will instruct a jury according to law and statute. Any constitutional issue would be settled in a federal court or potentially the Supreme Court.

BOFH: The trouble with, er, windows installs

Marshalltown

"Simon's taking inspiration from George R R Martin..."

Not all. BOFH was around long before GoT.

http://bofh.bjash.com/bofh/genesis1.html

Wait, did Oracle tip off world to Google's creepy always-on location tracking in Android?

Marshalltown

Getting the location of the cell tower?

When a cell tower is planned the desired location is fixed to a high degree of precision - less than a meter IIRC. That location is fixed with an accuracy of about 1.3 mm in latitude, but the longitudinal distance will vary with distance from the poles. The locations are public knowledge (at least in the US).

Let's make the coppers wear cameras! That'll make the ba... Oh. No sodding difference

Marshalltown

Re: Try obeying the law - won't always work

Never getting hassled simply means you aren't a "modal" figure. I've been stopped and searched more than anyone of any human variation in appearance I know. I spent about six years - or maybe a couple more - not scaring the guys with guns at least once a month and occasionally twice a week. Never ticketed, never cited, never arrested. Asking "why" they stopped me, the answer's gist is that the police DO profile - and not just racially. If you are the right build, you may match the modal description for a possible "perp" - their words - of whatever race you belong to. So, the BOLO says "white, dark hair and beard, six foot, athletic build, blue jeans and boots, military jacket," and you match that, they stop and question you at the very least. Small, white Toyota pickups were apparently also popular with the criminal set. By the time it happened about 20 times, I knew the routine. That actually made some of them more suspicious. Some would get twitchier because I followed directions carefully.

Marshalltown

Re: Better justice is the difference

By and large police are pretty well behaved. But they are dealing with individuals who frequently have an exaggerated idea of what they are entitled to. I gave the bum's rush to a former in-law one evening following a death in family. He tried to start some sort of counseling session in my house. No one wanted to hear it and when we asked him to postpone it until a better time. Instead of changing the topic he started in on his constitutional rights under the First Amendment. I hustled him out the door and down the walk, one hand on his collar and the other helping him along by his belt pulled up high and tight at the small of his back, explaining that the First guarantees freedom of speech, but not an audience nor a venue. He called the police outside the gate. They came, explained the same thing to him, and that trying to return after being told to leave was trespass. Then they told me that it might be better to let them handle the riff raff. If he'ld been injured when I chucked him out the gate I would have been at fault, but I had their sympathy since he would not shut up about his rights. So they escorted him off to his car and nodded good night to me.

So, tell us again how tech giants are more important than US govt...

Marshalltown

Re: the big media fallacy

There's little evidence advanced that any agency other than Russia interfered. What is interesting though is that the evidence made available indicates that the purpose of the interference was not to get the Duck elected but instead to aggravate existing rifts in the US social structure.

Marshalltown

Re: So much bullshit

The difference is "in house" versus "out of house." With Republicans and Democrats we know they are both lying their ***** off, but the issues are clear cut enough to decide which side you are leaning toward. The Russian ads are not directed in support of some specific candidate but toward disrupting social coherency. They take explicit points being argued within US society (gun control, police shooting, racism, etc.) and amplify them into outright conflicts. The evidence resides in the fact that once Trump won the election, the campaign did not stop. The "liberal" protests following the election were actively "supported" by the very same Russian sources that targeted Clinton. The purpose is social decohesion in the US that would limit our productivity and ability to respond coherently to common threats.

Marshalltown

Your opinion is is nice to see ...

... but, being American (USian) I have to say that the sad truth is that there are loads of people with barely room-temperature IQs out there that definitely would jump at the chance to "text" their vote, rather than mustering at a polling place. Every year the IRS reminds everybody that will pay attention that they do not contact someone over the phone for the purposes of informing them of an audit or other action. Yet every year people receive phone messages explaining that the caller if from "the IRS" and that to avoid further action the individual receiving the call can send check, money order or use their credit card to pay the delinquent amount.

Marshalltown

Re: I'm confused

As others have already said, "both." The ads collectively don't target some specific candidate and support another. Instead they are directed at social fault lines in the US and the political process. Were I to speculate, and I am, then I would not be surprised of the attack reaches back much farther in time. Consider the crop of candidates available by the time of the election. How many were really good choices? What the US ballot needs is a "none of the above" as a choice for president. It would require some sort of interim "caretaker" system - possibly carrying over the incumbent for one year or something similar, while the parties take in the message and look for genuinely qualified candidates.

BOFH: But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

Marshalltown

I

"...And his fingerprints on the window key as more evidence...."

Reread the bit when the Boss returns the key. He wiped it before dropping in the drawer. One to watch closely.

BOFH: Do I smell burning toes, I mean burning toast?

Marshalltown

Ah - museums

One of the great problems of the hoarder mind set - and all decent museums are run by hoarders - is the inability to accept that there are limits on available space, and especially available space with appropriate climate control for fragile items (old texts, woven material, organic material, etc.). Dealing as they often do with bean-counting, penny pinching, space grabbing types, decisions are frequently made that resort to make shift lodging for critical collections. Occasionally the decision makers did not bother to inform the curators of the decision to relocate (or even OF the relocation). The school I went stored some collections in a structure know fondly as the "rat house" thanks to the large population of a hybrid wild/lab rat mix. Same school, after it was determined that the rat house needed to be razed for ?, the collection vanished to be relocated months later under the music building in an area contaminated by PCBs from the transformer. The engineer screamed aloud when he saw that "someone" had piled cardboard boxes full of flammable materials next to the transformer. My professor was unhappy as well and told the engineer that as soon as we could negotiate new storage space with university, the materials would certainly be moved. While negotiations were going on the collection once more vanished and was rediscovered several miles away at "the aquatic center" where the rowing team kept their shells and oars. Before it could be rescued, a winter storm came through removing the roof, dowsing the collection, doing massive damage to original paper work, and requiring hazmat operations - mold don't y'know - to rescue what could be rescued. Since the collection actually belonged to the US government we were able to point to the school administration and explain, "they did it!"

At another major university, the museum, renamed from a prominent anthropologist to a cranky 19th century, very wealthy woman who bequested an endowment to the school, relocated a large part of the collection to a space under the women's pool. The area was constantly exposed to chlorine gas. The consequences for the collection when constantly exposed to chlorine gas were unhappy.

BOFH: Oh dear. Did someone get lost on the Audit Trail?

Marshalltown

Re: Ah!!Ah!!

Nope, not from Texas. Grew up on a ranch though. We and our neighbors mostly used either gasoline or horses for herding. Gasoline in ATVs, hay in horses.

Marshalltown

Ah!!

Thanks for that. As a USian, I've run across the term "red diesel" in British literature but never could figure out what it meant.

BOFH: We're only here because they said there would be biscuits

Marshalltown
Pint

Re: More spying?

Until you catch the webcam popping out of the lid to watch the key board as you type in your passwords, your biggest worries are mainly about being caught napping or someone noticing how often you seem to be AWOL. And, just for laughs you can make faces at the camera, rude gestures, and if the spy can read lips, more fun. Now the lass attending meetings from her bedroom, well either she should worry about her webcam more, or she has alternate income streams.

This episode really makes me appreciate my old boss. He was odd, left pr0n up on other people's pc's and forgot an at least quadruple-X magazine in the [female] office manager's scanner once, started an inhouse plague international computer viruses until we destroyed his infected floppy disk, but by and large, really kept out of the way.

US judges say you can Google Google, but you can't google Google

Marshalltown

Ah - Alta Vista

It had a vastly superior search syntax to G*****. Among other things you could make a soft criteria for related terms within a certain proximity (number or words) in a document with none of the "Did you mean ...." crud. With ads priotized the usefulness of the big G is even more limited.

BOFH: Oh go on. Strap me to your Hell Desk, PFY

Marshalltown

Re: Benedict?

Stephen was one name, but if you read over BOFH it seems probable that there have been several PFYs over time. Some went on to become BOFH themselve's; others came to a bad end. The BOFH reserves his true disappointment for PFYs.

Marshalltown

Re: I have a computer cart in my spare room...

There's no pillow on it?

Marshalltown
Pint

Depends entirely on prioritization

Saftey calls for never crossing (which might include not being so naive as to reveal a potentially profitable line at work in front of the BOFH and certainly never to the boss who is as trustworthy as that moldy stuff in the jar in the back of the fridge). Continued decent working relations require a cut in the action, but that has to be handled very cautiously because clearly the BOFH is no more trustworthy that the boss might be.

GoDaddy gives white supremacist site its marching orders after Charlottesville slur

Marshalltown

Re: Brown plague

No, you don't want to defend Nazis, but you do want to know who they are, along with all the other --ists with extreme ambitions. So, let them talk. The labels they create are what they themselves are wearing.

Marshalltown
Facepalm

Re: 'scum in the shadows'

The MSM doesn't inform any more, if it ever did. At best it is an entertainment enterprise. At worst it continues to operate in the William "You get me the pictures, I will provide the war" Randolph Hearst mode.

Marshalltown
Alien

Re: 'scum in the shadows'

...Brexit and Trump did make it more acceptable to be openly racist in the UK and US....

In fact, the ones who "caused" this were the lazy twits that stayed home and didn't bother to vote because they couldn't believe the issue was as close as it was. In the US a minority voted, and a bare minority won thanks to the peculiarities of the Electoral College. In the US one advantage of the First Amendment is that we can always watch the idiots slat the "I'm an idiot" label on their foreheads when they open their mouths. Unfortunately, there are other idiots who think know what someone else thinks is a bad thing, especially if they don't like what other thinks. The Right and Left are both like that and aren't about to sit down and talk about substantive issues since both sides run on faith in their convictions.

Marshalltown

Stopped clock moments

Yep. I thought Trump's remarks were on of his stopped clock moments (depending on the stopped clock and the country it's in, the clock will show the right time once or twice a day).

Surfacegate: Microsoft execs 'misled Nadella', claims report

Marshalltown

Re: I would guess MS is to blame

"...Could it just be that Intel's documentation was wrong? ..."

Nah. The chipset has been in use fairly widely with no issues on the radar. MS has always been a crew that "know better." It has bitten them before. It will again. I am still at loss about the point of using a "fondle slab." I like my desktop.

Revealed: The naughty tricks used by web ads to bypass blockers

Marshalltown

\dev\null

I've always wondered - but never very much - why not simply redirect ad content to \dev\null. Don't let the server know the ad is blocked. Just lie. I don't mind the well behaved ads, but any that asks for a new window, new tab in front, autoplay video or audio, "sure, you can have anything you want. Right this way."

Senators want FBI to vet FCC's 'cyberattack' claims

Marshalltown

Re: The same old story

With Trump acting as Trump, no one has to "work" to do him damage. One of the scariest things about the Republican Party is its steadfast appeal to the lowest common denominator in voters and the apparent search for the worst candidate it can get elected. Dan Quayle who happily never had a chance. Bush #2 who argued with unseen "voices" in public, recorded live on public TV. And now, a specimen of "reality TV" narcissism who was actually elected! We might not like Hillary, but Trump and his administration appear to aiming at beating her record on triggering investigations. And there were more investigations of Hillary than she served years in office. The Trump administration is achieving a new investigation on a monthly basis! Hillary was a terrible choice, but Trump? Really? It's getting so you can't do anything but laugh every time you hear about Trump "tweeting." "I t'o't I taw a puddy tat!"

Marshalltown

As one US citizen who posted my personal beliefs ...

As one US citizen to another, where precisely did you post them? And why, as a US citizen, would you parade your ignorance of British slang on a UK website?

Marshalltown

Re: I wouldn't be surprised if it was either the system getting flooded with comments or foul play

Making the system for commenting readily accessible would surely constitute foul play from the FCC's view point.

US voter info stored on wide-open cloud box, thanks to bungling Republican contractor

Marshalltown

Re: 50 cases in the last 25 years

"... it surely reflects poor detection rather than the actual level of fraud."

Not necessarily. Fraudulent voting would mean much more in local elections than in national elections. With the exception - possibly - of California, the states with the highest numbers of "illegals" all voted for Trump. By and large, they have better things to with their time than trying to alter an election outcome. Beside which, when you look at the demographics of the 2016 election, it appears that "liberal" - in the US sense - basically stayed home or refused to vote for Clinton. Not getting Bernie, they apparently said "**** it" and either didn't vote for president or didn't vote at all. Also, as the Democratic campaign demonstrated, it is far easier to rig voting rules in the primaries than in the actual election. The Dems did precisely that and lost. Apparently, the Republicans were nearly as bad. I know many and less than half will admit casting a vote for president. They walked into the polls, voted on the issues that were important to them, but could not choke down voting for Trump or crossing party lines and voting for Clinton.

Fraudulent votes are important in things like city council elections, venues where the out comes are of trivial significance except locally.

Marshalltown

Re: Police State

NO to mention the page is IN French.

Marshalltown

Re: Voter registration data is not confidential

You didn't read the article did you. If it were ONLY voter info, that would be marginally less sloppy. But the data on each consisted of a short dossier including speculations by the analysts. There are some serious privacy issues tied to that.

Marshalltown

Re: Hey, don't blame the repuglicans - they're new at acting responsible

According to the story, Deep Root Analytics is a "Republican" firm. Their webpage is most impressive in what it doesn't say and the manner in which it redefines "audience." So, yes, Republicans are to blame. And given the obvious behaviour of DT, quite plainly "responsibility" in far-right mores has a special place too.

Marshalltown

Re: 200 million people in the DB?

Excel is THE classical program to misuse as a DBMS. My most common task when it comes to computers is explaining users why their "database" choked and has started giving them nonsense results, or shall I say results they finally recognized as nonsense. Loads of people "who have better things to do" jump into "databases" using Excel. After all, it counts, it sums, it has statistical routines. . I usally spend loads of time "sane-ifying" their data into useful, analyzable computer chow. Quite often they are shocked to discover that "all this time" what ever they thought their data was telling them was wrong. I get their data converted over to a DBMS, usually Access, which is pretty decent for a MS product, and then get called back several times before the differences between a spreadsheet and a DBMS finally sink in.

Marshalltown

Re: Data mining?

SSNs are not a guaranteed fix. When my dad retired he had to through numerous hoops because someone else had been using his SSN in a different part of the state. You very rarely need to present your Social Security Card.

Marshalltown

Re: 200 million people in the DB?

"Each entry is a small .jpg of a printout."

Not likely. Jpegs would be analytically useless without conversion to actual data. It would mean the contractor was even more stupid than it already looks like. Though, perhaps the company was really owned by Trump.

Slapping crap bosses just got cheaper: Blighty's Supreme Court nixes tribunal fees

Marshalltown

Re: Setting a good example

DT lacks the psychological profile necessary to internalize such things. He wants loyalty for example but doesn't offer it. The sole objection he could have to Session's recusal would have to be that he expected Sessions to run interference for him with the investigations. Why would he need that? The behaviour makes him look like a Nixon.

Marshalltown

Re: Judicial independence

Ideally, the courts *can't* do anything about abuses unless they are brought to the attention of the court by either law enforcement or the public (well some other agencies too, I suppose). The lack of action is not a failure, but a maintenance of separation. Laws are ham-handed and tend to be inherently unjust at times. Theoretically, some civil problems can be better handled on a person-to-person or small numbers of persons to small numbers of persons. Hopefully without mortal combat. Only if the offense is irremediable in fashion, and can't be dealt with common-sensically by those involved should the courts actually become involved. Once they are, they are bound by the letter rather than the spirit of the law, and that "letter" is only as good as the oaf who wrote it and the other oafs who edited it, before a majority of oafs passed it into law.

Marshalltown

Politicians and judges

The fiasco here in the US with Trump, Sessions and the other crony crowd should also be regarded as what happens when the separation is not maintained as carefully as it should be.

Find your happy place: Fedora 26 has landed

Marshalltown

KDE spin

I had a major catastrophe of some form with OpenSuSE LEAP 42.2. Initially I suspected a drive failure, that proved not be the problem. I was never able to track down the real problem - KDE, LEAP, ?, ? But the upshot was the system would not boot. It would hang consistently somewhere between the initial boot and the launch of KDE. No amount of tweasling would recover the system. So, I downloaded Fedora 25 KDE spin (on Windows alas), burned a bootable USB stick and installed Fedora 25. Plasma's idiosyncrasies are still irritating - no differentiating virtual desktops with different wall papers - but the system is snappy, runs everything I use, and wonder of wonders, I had actually recently backed up everything but three data files. Now running 26, by and large my impression is that it is solid, and less quirky than OpenSuSE.

Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? Get this – It's just hit the US appeals courts

Marshalltown

Re: Devil's Advocate

It also reveals how ethically challenged PETA is.

Marshalltown
Thumb Down

Corporations - meh

The court decision declaring corporations to have the same rights as people simply demonstrated that even judges can have off days or be on the take. It has since been the grounds for any number of additional stupid decisions.

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

Marshalltown

Re: "it doesn't work"

We had an office manager whose machine really would go on the fritz for her. She was extremely Christian and the more difficult the machine became, the harder she had to work not utter basic Anglo Saxon descriptions of the machine's ancestral line. She would call me in, say "it's doing it again," which meant it was "not doing it again," what "it" was. I would sit down at her desk, move the mouse, and then tap a key, any key, and it would be perfectly fine. That would lead to the sound of teeth grinding behind me and occasionally sniffles linked to tears of frustration. I told her she had to be less impatient. The electrons didn't like being around upset people. Naturally that would drive her into a rage - sentient electrons?? Anyway, she quit when the world didn't end, divorced her husband and headed for the Caribbean.

Marshalltown

Happily

My time on Hell Desk was limited. My employer concluded I was missing a diplomatic gene. Apparently a fellow caught my muttered remark over the phone when I finally dragged out of him the real problem, which was that he really, really could not put his hand on something called a "mouse." I choked I think. He was dealing with his very first Windows machine. Then I muttered something about a "rat."

Fresh cotton underpants fix series of mysterious mainframe crashes

Marshalltown
Pint

Re: Humidity control

Heh. That reminds me of a job on an archaeological expedition in Israel in the late 1990s. The project laboratory and analytical facility was headquartered at a kibbutz. The older kibbutz architecture was big on windows and really weak on staying actually cool. We had a computer room with a window mounted air conditioner which we kept set to "Arctic." The locals asked why we kept the room so cold and we just said the computers couldn't take the heat.

Marshalltown

Re: @wolfetone

Reply Icon

Re: @wolfetone

"What kind of sysop is that???"

A sysop that gets laid.

Yeah, but WHAT KIND OF SYSOP get's laid?

Everything you need to know about the Petya, er, NotPetya nasty trashing PCs worldwide

Marshalltown

Re: The real blame goes to..

"... all it would have done is meant us having this discussion X years ago ..."

In fact the discussion WAS being held years ago. As early as the early '90s at least. Many pointed out the hazards of monocultures, systems where a single "organism" is the primary foundation for a complex overstory. Attack that foundation and and the entire system can be brought down. Mathematically the internet and an ecosystem are very similar. The opposition offered the lame argument that computers and operating systems are not biological. There were Engineers at the helm; Great Geniuses were protecting us all; immense multinational corporations "knew" what they were doing. Besides, open source or some means of auditing critical code bases would risk trade secrets and patents. Besides, all us peons were just consumers (cash cows).

BOFH: Putting the commitment into committee

Marshalltown

Re: A Question of style

Ah - Stardock. I first became acquainted with them when - IIRC - Galactic Civilizations was their few products and the only decent game that ran in OS/2. They also came up with a few really nice utilities for OS/2 that took excellent advantage of things OS/2 did that no other OS did at the time. Sadly, they drifted toward Windows while I was settling into Linux.

Donald Trumped: Comey says Prez is a liar – and admits he's a leaker

Marshalltown

Re: Impeachment?

Pay attention to you own arguments. The president as chief executive is responsible for running the government - yes. However, ALL law enforcement agencies of the US government are part of either Justice Department, or some other of the departments that comprise the executive branch. While he "might" have a leg to stand on concerning most Departments, interfering with the DOJ is to all public appearances also interfering with the courts and with due process, which doesn't simply apply to an accused, but also to the nation as a whole where the nation's interests may have been affected by the accused's actions. Trump to all appearances was attempting to prevent Flynn and the citizenry of the US from having their day in court. Presidential interference in ANY law enforcement investigation coul lead to a constitutional crisis. Go back and read the SC decision in favor of the Cherokee and then consider Jackon's inaction regarding enforcement of the court decision. I know Cherokee who, to this day, will not accept a twenty-dollar bill because Jackson's failure to enforce a court descision lead to the deaths of thousands. The presidential right to interfere is a "check" in the "checks and balances," but unless it is applied "judiciously" the "balances" of the courts and congress can turn on the president - impeachment for instance. So, a sane reading of the constitution tells you no president should interfere with the DOJ without very serious reasons having to do with national interest. It was quite plain from the start that there were no national interests being protected by going easy on Flynn.

Marshalltown

Re: I'd fire Comey too

For what cause? If Trump had even an inkling of his responsilities and limits under the constitution he would have kept out of the affair. As it is, he has practically labeled himself a criminal, even if "all" he did was try to ease things for a friend - show loyalty in shotrt. Loyalty to a criminal is criminal and where is approaches attempting to influence a criminal investigation, becomes obstruction of justice, even if the word "hope" is substituted for "want" or "I am telling you". Comey would be criminal himself if he was "loyal" to a person rather than the office, and he knew full well the office had no business saying what the person said.

Marshalltown

Re: @ Sparty...

"...(You can google it.)..."

Ah, but if you do, will you find it? Clinton and Obama actively supported an independent Ukraine - which is not Russia. Some of Trump's campaign staff were actively supporting pro-Russian politicos inside the Ukraine during an election. Meddling with the internal affairs of another government, which was marginally acceptable as long as they don't receive favors from their clients in return, when they turn to US politics. World leaders preferred Trump to Clinton because Trump is just what we see, a political idiot who can't keep his fingers away from the twit pad or his mouth shut.