Posts by handleoclast

Yes, it is too much to ask

@Prst. V.Jeltz

A little common sense isnt too much to ask surely?

The thing about civil service (I use the term broadly) procedures is that they are designed to achieve consistent results. Consistent in that no matter which civil servant (or plod) deals with you, you get the same results. So that if something goes wrong, you complain, the way your case was dealt with is checked against procedures and, in the case of a procedural error, is fixed. Theoretically.

The same process also stifles common sense. Because you may get somebody who uses initiative and gives you a better result than if you'd been dealt with by a different civil servant/plod. Which causes envy and complaints by others. So the common-sensical civil servant/plod is punished for not following procedures.

It's above the pay grade of those in the trenches to question strategy. That might lead people to conclude that the generals are fuckwits.

So yes, common sense is too much to ask.

Hmmm, what's the opposite of /s? I need something to show that although the above may read like it was sarcasm it's actually serious.

Re: How to get rid of fleas on your dog

@ Michael Thibault

You pour scorn on the idea that Trump has any influence whatsover, concluding with:

Trump is not a god. He's not an emperor. He's not a king. He's not a dictator. He's just the President of the United States.

The thing is that Trump has fired up a significant proportion of the Republican party. His "base." The approximately 30% of the population that are mouth-breathers who feel under attack by a mysterious "them" and fear the "other." And that presents problems for Republicans in Congress. The base determines the outcome of primaries whilst the population as a whole determine the outcome of an election. Any Republican who fails to support Trump completely might do better in an election but would never get past the primary. Any Republican who whole-heartedly support Trump will win the primary but may well lose the election. Rock and a hard place. Most have chosen Trump and are hoping for a hail Mary pass, a significant number have thrown in the towel and aren't seeking re-election.

Tony Blair once exerted a similar thrall on Labour MPs. They believed that without Tony they'd lose the next election so fell in line with his every moronic whim (such as the Millennium Dome and invading Iraq).

So yes, Trump does have the power to coerce idiots like Nunes to lick the dog shit off the soles of his shoes. Those who do not comply will lose their primaries. Even though Bannon is (mostly) off the scene, the fear remains.

I'm trying to remember another populist politician who exerted similar power over the 30% of the population that feared the "other." As I recall, that didn't end well, but he was very popular right up to the very end when he shot himself in his bunker.

Re: Armor Gummiwaren

Not to be confused with this.

Re: My eyes are the age of that slab...

This doesn't upset the 5000-year-old-earth believers since they think it's all fake

Only some of them think that. The Answers In Genitals crowd, led by Ken Ham, have a rather more "creative" explanation. Noah took some dinosaurs with him on the Ark. The rest of the dinosaurs perished in the Noachian flood (which deposited all sedimentary rock at the same time). After the deluge, the animals (representatives of each "kind") mutated into the many species we see today (reducing the number of species required on the Ark). So "microevolution" is possible and occurred at a very much faster rate than we see today. For example, one pair of cats evolved into all the feliforms we now have, but "macroevolution" (dinosaurs evolving into birds) is impossible because reasons. Oh, in that digression I forgot about the dinosaurs carried on the Ark. They died out, because it was important Noah carry them on the Ark so they could survive the flood in order to die out (again, because reasons).

I'm not making any of this up. Ken Ham built a theme park (mostly at taxpayer expense) called The Ark Encounter and now keeps pulling dodgy tricks to avoid having to pay resulting taxes.

Noted creationist fucktard and convicted tax evader Kent Hovind has Dinosaur Adventure Land pushing similar Noachiosaurian bullshit where kiddies can ride dinosaurs just like Jesus did. Every time I think of Kent Hovind I end up watching this.

Re: Cost saving

If they're doing it properly, then they're feeding the GPS timing pulses into ntpd (or equivalent). If they're doing it properly, then ntpd is configured to record how much the system clock is drifting from UTC (as supplied by GPS). If they're doing it properly, then ntpd will be configured to also use networked references (some of which will also be GPS, some of which will derive from atomic time standards). If they're doing it properly, then ntpd will be configured to use the system clock, as compensated by the recorded drift, as a last resort.

With a sensible set up, you'll know the time with less than one second of error for days after GPS fails and all the networked time sources also fail.

It's neither hard nor expensive to get right.

Re: I still don't understand

@phuzz

There's already transaction fees for Bitcoins,

That just makes it seem even less workable when new shitcoins are no longer issued. Transaction fees will slowly, but surely, bleed all shitcoin into the hands of those who process the blockchain until nobody else has any shitcoin.

This doesn't happen with "real" fiat money, mainly because of inflation. But when shitcoins hit their mining limit there cannot be any inflation.

So what am I still missing?

Re: Glad to have jumped off the Mozilla Firefox train wreck long ago.

@AC

What kept me lingering on with Firefox was the Downloadhelper add-on. It's no longer necessary as you can easily download a Youtube, Facebook or Twitter video via special websites e.g. Keepvid.

I got fed up with Keepvid trying various methods to get me to pay for the improved version (usually not letting me download at the highest res). And of it regularly stopping working with various sites for a few days. And various other annoyances.

Eventually I installed youtube-dl, and I'm very pleased with it. It's a command-line tool, but available in Linux, Mac OS X and Windows flavours. Works with most of the popular video sites. I've heard it even works with PornHub (not that I'd know).

There's also a cross-platform GUI for it, but I've never tried it.

Musical chairs

@Stuart Halliday

Every couple of years, the Government reassess the situation and so far the experts say leave it alone again.

Translation...

Expert: We could try to remove the munitions, but that has a serious risk of setting it off.

Minister: And if we leave it alone?

Expert: It could go off anyway, but there's far less chance of that.

Minister: So we could do something with a small chance of success, and if it works we'd probably not gain much in public approval. Or we could do something with a small chance of success and it all goes horribly wrong, then we lose the next few elections. Or we could ignore it and hope nothing happens until the other lot are in power. It's a no-brainer.

Bonus video: Tom Scott's summary of the situation.

Bonus bonus video: Tom Scott explaiing what happened when a large amount of explosives went off by accident..

Re: OpenStreetMap

This leaves no place where OpenStreetMap has value to me

It's a good job you have no desire to visit my neck of the woods. There are streets around here where one side of the street has house numbers (some houses may also have names) and the other side has house names with no numbers (as far as I can tell, numbers have never been assigned). Which is a bit of a problem with Google Maps, which only has numbers (and sometimes gets those completely wrong). Also a problem with OS (but a lesser problem) which has some (but not all) official house names and doesn't map unofficial house names (which the owner may have put up without registering it and then uses the name rather than the number to refer to the house). If a mapper has put the effort in, OSM will display whatever house name is visible from the street, be it an official, registered name or an unofficial, unregistered one.

OS doesn't show most types of shop or office (pubs and banks are some of the few exceptions). Google Maps, like OSM, shows shops and offices that people have bothered to map. Around my area, Google Maps is far less complete than OSM with regard to shops and offices (a year ago, before I started mapping, the situation was reversed).

OS doesn't show opening hours, telephone numbers or URLs of businesses. Google Maps and OSM can show these things, but only if some mapper has added the info.

OS and Google Maps don't show listed buildings or scheduled monuments. OSM can show these if a mapper has added them.

OS and Google Maps can't show hygiene certificate ratings, or types of beer sold, OSM can (if somebody has bothered to map them).

All three have good points and bad points. I see them as complimentary not competitors. In some situtations one is preferable to the others; in some situations it may be worthwhile consulting all three. There is a place for all three. Writing off OSM seems somewhat short-sighted.

Re: Not as good as claimed

Even simple open source projects generate video (generally horses and zebra for some reason) that are essentially undetectable to regular viewers.

Your regular viewers are not very discerning, are they?

Apart from the fact that zebras and horses have subtle differences around the head and that fixing those would be harder...

First problem is that the stripes seem to be suffering from Moiré fringes. That could be an artifact of the small size of the image and GIF compression. Maybe.

Second problem is a bigger one. When the zorse? hebra? turns to move right-to-left. As it faces us the stripes on its face slide and swirl. It's a rather disconcerting effect. Especially when a stripe momentarily covers its left eye.

It might fool machine vision, though. :)

Re: Radical Suggestion...@Doctor Syntax

Go look up HM Gov data on re-offending rates. Those released from custodial sentences have higher re-offending rates (49.2% reoffend within 12 months) than for non-custodial sentences (33.9%).

Hypothesis:

Stupid criminals get caught doing things (e.g., mugging) that earn them custodial sentences rather than non-custodial sentences. Because they're stupid, they get caught most of the time they re-offend. The brighter ones get caught less often.

Just a thought.

Re: Lots of fun aside. Two things to note about Rocket Labs achievement

Make that three things.

3D-printed engine.

The idea is sound though.

Upvoted for the pun.

Re: It's a common problem

They all force us to change passwords regularly

This was a good idea when computers were big, very expensive, and the only reason you'd be using one was because it was handling stuff that was classified. Things like computers for designing nuclear weapons back in the 60s.

These days it's a bad idea. See this advice from CESG (which is a division.of NCSC, which is a division of GCHQ).

Re: I'm in favor of net neutrality, but

@DougS

How can they sue claiming the FCC doesn't have authority to use an administrative action to reverse an administrative action the FCC did a couple years ago?

Because that first administrative action complied with all the rules about the procedures that had to be followed between proposing an action and implementing it. Like consulting with those who would be affected. Things like that.

The second administrative action ignored all those rules and procedures and just implemented the decision. The FCCs decision to make, but only after it had correctly followed all the mandated processes. It didn't.

There are rules to prevent Federal organizations implementing stuff at whim. They have to follow a process designed to stop some corrupt fucktard fiddling with things, for example, to give his covert paymasters an advantage over everyone else.

That is why there is potential for legal action here.

Re: WTF???

He got off on the stabbing of Ms. Wall, not raping her?

Call me pedantic, but I just don't see that as sexual assault. Just assault. What matters, it seems to me, is the effects upon the victim, not the motivations of the perpetrator.

It's entirely possible Donald Trump gets off by screwing people out of money (reneging on contracts, etc). I wouldn't class that as sexual fraud even if I saw him creaming his jeans as he ripped people off.

Thinking about it, maybe he stabbed her more in sexual areas than other places. But whether even that constituted sexual assault would depend to some extent on whether it was pre- or post-mortem.

As far as I can see it's murder and all lesser charges are irrelevant. Maybe, with good lawyers, he could plead it down to sexual assault resulting in accidental death. For some reason I hope he wouldn't get away with that.

Re: The other big firework display

Nobody likes finding random butts on their screen.

A lot of people who use PornHub would disagree with you.

Re: iFrame

The implicit suggestion that the iFrame method is superior stems from the idea that whoever hosts the iFrame (be it a bank or a payment processing intermediary) will have done a better job of securing their systems, rather than purely technical reasons.

Doesn't matter if you hand off the transaction processing in an iFrame or redirect to the payment processor's URL, you still must secure your own site.

Otherwise, I hack into your site and amend the relevant URL (the iFrame or the redirect) to point to my server. Job done.

Oh, and after you've secured your site (a never-ending job) you really ought to monitor the payment stuff frequently with a full test to make sure the URL hasn't been tampered with, despite you thinking you'd secured your site.

Oh, and then you ought to regularly inspect the code itself, to make sure I haven't hacked in a test to see if the transaction is being initiated from your monitoring address and in that case send out the correct URL.

These are the things most admins avoid thinking about, lest those thoughts give them sleepless nights.

Re: Oh the irony

On the other hand, I learned something : it costs $50 to make a Bitcoin transaction. Well if it cost me that much to use my Visa I'd be using cash all the time.

KFC could switch to only accepting payment in Bitcoin and the Bitcoin transaction fee could rise to £1,000,000 and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the amount of KFC I consume.

Re: PIR

A capacitive dropper. Very common in cheap crap. OK as long as it's done well. Sounds like yours wasn't.

There should be two resistors. One in series with the capacitor (or the input side of the bridge) to limit inrush current in case it gets switched on at a mains peak. Otherwise the zener could get overwhelmed, leading to a bangy-bangy situtation. The other should be across the capacitor, to discharge it. Otherwise you can get a belt if you unplug it at a mains peak then accidentally touch the mains pins, leading to a cursey-cursey situation.

Of course, there can be other, more serious implementation errors. Although the capacitor/zener drops the voltage down to the (say) 5V the circuit uses, one side of the circuit is still half-live (live on alternate halves of the mains cycle) or even full live. Not a problem if the thing is double insulated. There is a potential [groan] problem if the thing is only single insulated and suffers a little damage. And a big fucking problem if your circuitry is like this Double-death gay Dalek camping light (courtesy Big Clive).