Posts by brainbone

Re: share of moonballs

"There are idiots on both extreme ends of the spectrum, AC. Right and Left both have their share of moonbats all too willing to sacrifice all rights of a few, or a few rights of all, in exchange for the illusion of "security""

Sorry, but that's false equivalence.

First, the share of "moonbats" on the right is currently much higher, as is evident by the current President of the U.S. Second, the consequences of the right's agenda is much more severe. What would we get by following some of the currently mainstream "extreme" left views right now? A few more kids mistakenly self labeling as transgender and insisting their name is "Jace" before they're old enough to really even understand what they're talking about? More directors being fired for telling bad jokes? Both not great things -- but solvable.

Now, it is true that if you go far enough left or right, you'll end up in the chewy fascist center. But the vast majority of current "leftists" are nowhere near that extreme, where the evangelical movement in the U.S. has made "right" synonymous with "lunatic" -- unless you think policies like medicare for all, net neutrality, etc. etc, are extreme, but then you're just being foolish.

The number of leftists with truly dangerous views is relatively low -- and certainly not anywhere near the threat of the right's agenda that's currently supported by a majority of those identifying as "right". The problem we have right now is that the right has gone so far right that normally sensible ideas from the left somehow seem extreme.

Re: They can only do that if...

Unfortunately, no.

On a visit to the KAUST campus in Saudi Arabia a few years back, the network connections available there MITM'd every HTTPS request with valid/signed wild-card certificates they were able to obtain from "trusted" CAs.

HTTPS only works if you trust the CAs your browser trusts. When some of those CAs give out certificates to government agencies for domains the government has no business having certificates for, then you really can't trust HTTPS.

Re: Competition

No. Without regulation, eventually ISPs will consolidate with media conglomerates and start picking and choosing which services you get unmetered, which are metered, etc., etc. It'll fracture the net.

What good does it do you if you have a choice of, say, Centurylink, and the "Facebook + Twitter + DishNetwork" package that excludes or severely limits Netflix, or the Comcast package that does much the same but with different services?

Doubt that will happen? They already do it to some extent.

Re: Its offensive that I must treat people who claim to believe in a sky fairy...

> "I suspect from your hysteria and rudeness that you are deeply troubled by something."

Yes. I'm deeply troubled by rampant peddling of bullshit. Further, it deeply troubles me that others are not troubled by this, or worse, enthusiastically engage in it.

Re: Instructions on stopping forced updates have been online for years.

Those instructions don't work on Windows 10 since the anniversary update.

Re: Google's fault

"Google's policy for Android updates / security fixes have been known for a couple of years"

Doesn't make a 3 year life span, max, (unless you like flying by the seat of your unsecured pants) for $400 to $900+ kit any less obscene.

I blame the millennials... because they're retarded.

Re: Let's look at what's there...

> 1. There are 4 pistons, which can only engage with the 4 landing legs on the Falcon 9 core.

I suspect they engage similar to the hold-down clamps used during a launch, holding the body, not the legs.

> 3. [...] but it's wheels (or treads) aren't visible. [...]

To the left and right of center there appears to be treads.

> Add it all up, and it seems the robot's purpose is to move freshly-landed cores.

My guess is that it's to stabilize the landed booster stage during transport, possibly using electromagnets to secure the robot to the deck.

Re: About effing time -- But what about performance per watt?

It's great to see AMD finally stepping up, but what about performance per watt? I've yet to see any claim on how well it performs against Intel on a per watt basis.

Energy consumption in data centers plays a huge part in hardware selection, so it's surprising to see this left out.

Re: Espionage Act

What you're missing is "intent". You, nor anyone else, has established any criminal intent or harm in Clinton's use of a private email server -- and not for lack of trying. Was it a dumb thing to do? Yes. Did it actually cause any issues? No.

That said, Clinton should have been, and was, and length, investigated over the issue. Now, will you say the same about Trump's campaign and the potential of Russian influence, or do you believe Trump should be immune from investigation over this?

Re: What's it good for?

It's great if you want your overnight processes interrupted by forced update reboots.

Don't want your overnight processes interrupted by a reboot after Windows update? Too bad! Microsoft helpfully removed the option to disable automatic reboots in the Anniversary update.

Please, tell me how ending net neutrality will help you.

Re: cheaper providers

Much cheaper providers, like free certificates from Let's Encrypt. Save the few services that require wild card certs, we've switched everything over to free certs.

Re: no way of knowing that the person using the phone is the actual driver

A warning, like most GPS navigation systems have, that detects you're moving, warns you not to use the device while driving and has you agree before continuing, may help a few people think twice before they inevitably choose to be an idiot anyway. (I'd like to say it would also reduce the risk of litigation, but someone would likely sue Apple because they [insert incident here] while reading the warning message.)

Still, I can't imagine the pain these parents are going through, and hope I never have to. Just about lost control of my vehicle last night, with my child in the car, avoiding becoming part of a nasty pile-up on i94 that was caused by a combination of icy conditions and, allegedly, a texting driver. Had I lost concentration for split second, I likely wouldn't be typing this.

Re: an opinion that differs from yours

"Do us all a favour and stop whining, has it ever occured to you that some folk may have an opinion that differs from yours????"

I think the point is that many of those opinions were based on inaccurate information.

Re: transparency unlike unworkable limits is way to go

"If you require full transparency in donations, you enable public intimidation"

One man's "public intimidation" is another's free speech. (Unless we're talking about physical threats, which we're not.) Corporations that invest in elections should be ready for the consequences if they support a candidate that their customers don't appreciate. There should be no anonymity in political donations -- only anonymity in your vote.

"Yet when you merely want voters to have to prove who they are (to insure against voter fraud)"

Bullshit. It's well documented that these are not to "to insure against voter fraud" but to disenfranchise minority voters. Please tell me where this rampant voter fraud is? Yes, that's right: "Redistricting".

So, let's see... We have dark money that has a proven negative effect on the quality of elected officials and policy. Then there's a claim of "voter fraud" having zero credible evidence to show it's actually a problem (unless allowing those with lower income to vote is a problem for you), but plenty of evidence showing that these voter IDs laws have placed an undue burden on those with lower income, reducing voter turnout for that group. Knowing this, you're all for dark money and voter ID laws?

Re: Wow

"Watch them try"

I'm sure you'll eventually hear: We didn't tamper with evidence, we accidentally deleted the video while reviewing evidence. The interwebs are hard, don'tchaknow.

Re: Even if you don't lock your house it's still not OK

However, since a search engine had indexed data on this open FTP server, this is more analogous to leaving your door open AND putting up an "Open House, please come in" sign.

Please read the more complete account at:

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/justin-shafer-fbi-raid/

Re: Much as I hate Comcast

"The coaxial line DOES NOT connect to the Internet but to the corporate INTRAnet"

The Ethernet cable coming out of that modem, and the IP service on it, is what we're talking about.

Re: Er, what?

Weak use and poor implementations of Diffie Hellman can be cracked -- not Diffie Hellman in its entirety.

Diffie Hellman is still in very wide use. Like every time you access an HTTPS resource.

Re: Clarity

What part of arbitrary, non-universal, zero-rating are you having trouble understanding? Do you not get that it favors one service over another? Do you not get that practice will spread to other ISPs? Are you really that naive?

It doesn't matter that consumers want it. You can convince consumers that Homeopathy works and should be paid for by their insurance -- doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Re: Blow, blow thou winter wind

Google has answered that in detail:

https://www.google.com/loon/how/

Basically, they use data about atmospheric conditions that they collect themselves from their balloon swarm, combined with other sources like NOAA. That data is used when adjusting altitudes to catch different wind-streams, allowing them reasonable accuracy when moving the balloons where they'd like. With enough balloons, they can keep an area well covered.

Re: Loophole Schmoophole

"If Comcast is carving specific DOCSIS bands"

They are not. They are simply zero-rating data delivered over the same DOCSIS bands used for all the other content you're receiving. It's all on the same IP network.

What this does is allow Comcast to claw back cash they've been loosing from cord cutters. What will happen next is that Comcast will set bandwidth caps on their cheapest internet offering to the lowest amount (least amount of data) the market will bear. This will force price conscious customers to think about the data they're consuming -- limiting use of services like Netflix, Amazon prime video, etc., instead choosing to use Comcast's video offering because it doesn't count against their data.

It's anti-competitive and NOT a very good thing for the consumer, nor does it bode well for the future of the internet as we've come to know it. What we want as consumers is cheap, plentiful, bandwidth. What Comcast has available is cheap, plentiful, bandwidth, and Comcast doesn't like that -- they want to artificially increase the value of that bandwidth by making it appear like a scarce commodity.

I rip them to MP4 or MKV [...] I don't share them

Yet, if you do this in the US, you're violating the DMCA. (Not sure what applicable laws you're violating outside the US, though I'm sure there are plenty.)

Re: Which religion?

Yes, all Abrahamic (and many other) religions are deeply flawed. We all know the Abrahamic God was a vindictive little shit. But you only need to compare the figureheads of Christianity and Islam, Jesus vs. Muhammad, to see the stark differences in how these religions shape its followers.

Please find me a verse in the new testament, or in any other text from the era, where Jesus goes around killing those that don't believe he is the son of god. Just one.

Muhammad, on the other hand, is all about dispatching pesky non-believers. Next to abusing young girls and subjugating women, it seems to be his favorite hobby.

There is simply no comparison. Islam is by far the most violent and bigoted religion [that's widely practiced] in our modern world.

Re: It's a crisis?

"You do realise that multimedia educational sites exist now?"

Where's the evidence that sitting children in front of PCs and/or tablets result in better education?

I selected the school my child goes to specifically because the students don't use PCs/tablets in the classroom. It happens to be the top performing public school in the city, out-performs most of the more desirable private schools, has a waiting list larger than the student body -- and all on a shoe-string budget.

$1.5bn should be directed to training and hiring better teachers, creating a better curriculum, and to support staff that can properly manage problem students so they don't interfere with the education of others.

Re: Time to speak up

"Unfortunately you get no benefit from the traffic and its costing you money. "

Your customers are paying you for internet connectivity, and they expect to be able to access services, like Netflix. Is that payment of "no benefit" to you? Did you expect them not to use the service they are paying for?

"all of this traffic from Netflix going across your pipes to another peering partner"

Netflix will offer you free caching proxies to alleviate that traffic. They will even offer direct peering in some cases. The question is, should you be able to throttle Netflix to force them into a separate peering arrangement, then charge Netflix for that f#ckery?

Re: Providers pay too

Re: "because they haven't been paid once"

Er, yes they have -- or does my $80 per month to my ISP not count as a payment in your book?

Re: "direct peering arrangement"...

That's simply another way of saying: "We'll throttle traffic on your current transit provider unless you pony up for a 'direct peering arrangement'" -- and that's _exactly_ what happens.