Posts by handleoclast

Re: YABCSP

@kain preacher

That's getting of stupid not fixing stupid.

How else would you fix stupid? If you manage to educate the person, the stupid is no longer there. If you remove the person from situations where the stupid is not a problem, the stupid is no longer there (in the place where it caused you problems). I just gave you a quicker, and more certain, way of removing the problem, which fixes the problem.

Re: Welcome to 21st Century USA - How about an unbiased source?

@Big John

This video appears to have been made with you in mind.

Re: No car tax?

Thats where the tax disc was brilliant as it was a visual reminder. Now we don't have it.

How hard would it be to cut out a paper disc of the same size, write a date on it, and slip it into a tax disc holder glued to your windscreen?

If you need a reminder and don't have a mobile phone with a calendar app on it, that low-tech trick would work.

Re: Modified Newtonian Dynamics

@michael cadoux

Same question. How do you know they're accurate?

You can demonstrate precision. You can even demonstrate they show relativistic effects (probably, unless they're sensitive to air pressure). Accuracy? Nope. Because to determine accuracy you have to compare them to a known standard or to a reference of greater or equal accuracy.

Re: so what if

it would need to be quite strong HCl, weak stuff like CH3COOH shouldn't be enough

Depends how concentrated the HCl needs to be, because it's quite easy to make what is effectively contaminated, dilute HCl.

Take vinegar and add salt. The result is a mixture of sodium, acetate, hydrogen and chloride ions in water.

Fun trick. Take a tarnished coin. Dip your thumb in some of the mixture from above and rub the coin with your thumb. Note: do not do this with a valuable rare coin unless you want to make it a less-valuable rare coin.

Re: Zwicky thought of it first

spherical bastards" . . . i might find a use for that

Have another one I picked up years ago (can't remember where, may have been an SF story, may have been Dilbert). Coprolite. Often applicable to manglement. It means a fossilized turd.

Re: WTF?

@Lost all faith...

bob, the meds must be working

But not yet to the extent that he is capable of noticing that he has a silver badge and figuring out that he can therefore abuse italics and bold.

Re: Even using third parties, there are issues

Oh yeah. Big time.

Somewhere on Jewson's site is a link to the payment handler. Doesn't matter if it takes you to the payment handler's page decked out in Jewson finery, if it's an iFrame or some Web 2.0 thingummyjig. Somewhere there's a link. So if you hack into the Jewson site you can change that link and mount a MITM attack.

Which means you can't offload your security problems onto the third-party payment handler. You must ensure that your own site is secure. And periodically monitor that the link hasn't been tampered with (details left as an exercise for the reader, because a clever attacker will take steps to fool such monitoring, like detecting the IP address requests come from).

Re: Gah!

Both sides deserved to lose.

The way it's turned out, both sides did lose (one way or another). Sadly, so did the rest of the country.

Re: Hacked?

@wolfetone

They have the transmission rates which could only be attained via local access.

If you make four assumptions:

1) An office with many people in a big city had only a crappy ADSL connection and not something better. This can be checked, but the analysis you quote did not do so.

2) Both machines were set to the same timezone. This cannot be checked.

3) Both machines had their timezones set correctly for their physical location. This can be checked for only the target machine, but the analysis you quote did not do so.

4) Both machines had their clocks set correctly. This can be checked only for the target machine, but the analysis you quote did not do so.

In any case, the guy didn't do a forensic analysis, because he was not part of any law-enforcement organization. He did a technical analysis and, to my mind, a rather sloppy one. I'm not saying his conclusions were wrong but that they cannot be guaranteed to be correct.

But let's assume it was purely a local hack by an insider. You still have not shown anything to exclude the guy doing it at the behest of the Russians. Or even that he did it for other reasons and later decided to give it to the Russians (so the Russians wouldn't have instigated it but still benefited from it).

The most you have in favour of saying Russia wasn't behind it is that the NSA won't commit to being absolutely certain it was Russia.

Oh, and if rsync was installed on the target machine (it's standard with good OSes and a bolt-on with Windows), then any estimate of transmission rate could be wildly off if this was a lengthy attack and the data in the analysis applies to a final catch-up rsync.

As I have said twice already, I remain unconvinced either way. But if somebody put a gun to my head and forced me to make a bet, my money would be on Russia.

Re: So basically, management are admiting IBM's failed as a company?

When firing people is a company's core competency, it's doomed.

Re: Shower of shites!

@Big John

You have just committed a tu quoque fallacy (and no, it's not Latin for "you cuck").

If there are grounds for investigating Hillary/Podesta/etc (I'm not convinced there are) then go for it. And if any of them have broken the law, throw the book at them. I don't want corrupt politicians of any flavour because they only encourage other politicians of both sides to do the same.

But going after Hillary (if there are grounds to do so, and I'm still not convinced of that) is no fucking excuse for ignoring Trump's behaviour. That's the tu quoque fallacy.: saying "Hillary did something bad so ignore the fact Trump did something bad." Go after both of the fuckers.

Your response to that is predictable: "But they're ignoring Hillary." The Congressional investigations didn't ignore her (they just couldn't prove anything). Republican congresscritters are now asking the justice department to go after her with a special prosecutor, and I'm fine with that. But she's not that important because Hillary is not the fucking president. Hillary cannot launch nuclear missiles. Hillary cannot crash the economy. Hillary can, but doesn't, make the US a laughingstock around the world. Deal with Trump first because Hillary can wait. Go after both of them, but Trump first because he can do more damage (and is doing so).

Answer me something honestly, John. Assume that Hillary won the election. Oh, wait, she did. So assume she won the electoral college. If Hillary had been accused (without evidence) of even a fraction of what Trump has done (and for which there is evidence) would you have ignored it (as you're ignoring the Trump evidence) or would you have gone apeshit?

I'm left-wing but I want Hillary prosecuted if she has done wrong. I'm left-wing but I really want to see Tony Blair on war crimes charges. Can you honestly say you're just as impartial, or are you merely exhibiting the blind tribalism common to most of Trump's base? It's an easy question to answer, if you're honest about it: swap Hillary for Donald and say if you'd be defending her as you are Trump or going totally apeshit.

Re: Folks stealing their stuff?

@vagobondo

This is analogous to Red Hat being tolerant of Centos recompiling their source code and making it available under the original licences

Red Hat were so tolerant of CentOS they did a Victor Kiam and bought the company. Well, they actively support the CentOS project. I think I recall they actually hired the key CentOS developers to continue developing CentOS full time. Which takes "tolerance" to new levels.

Re: handleoclast Changing Climate

@Jonathan Schwatrz

Yep, a hockey stick with zero demonstration of causation. It wasn't intended to demonstrate causation. It was intended to demonstrate a different point: rate and extent of fluctuation.

Your wealth, like mine, fluctuates. It increases when money is paid into your bank; it decreases when you purchase something. One day, somebody steals your identity, opens multiple bank accounts in your name, applies for multiple credit cards in your name and runs up tens, maybe even hundreds, of thousands in debt, and everybody is pounding on your door demanding payment. Oh, and for good measure the same guy burned your house down. You're bankrupt. You're worse than bankrupt. But don't worry about it, because your wealth has always fluctuated and this is just another fluctuation. Right?

The point the chart made is that previous fluctuations were neither as extreme nor as rapid. Therefore we ought to be worried whatever the cause.

As for causation, Svante Arrhenius showed that 120 years ago. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. This is a fact. Global average temperature is rising faster than it ever has. This is a fact. Global average temperature is higher than it has ever been (excluding the Hadean and Archeon periods). This is a fact. If global average temperature rises much higher, we will be in deep shit. This is a fact.

We can debate about the extent to which global warming is anthropogenic, although not to the degree you probably think (because most of the go-to arguments of the deniers have been debunked). We can debate about as-yet unknown feedback effects (both positive and negative) but, because they're unknown we can't draw reliable conclusions from hypothesising about them. But even if anthropogenic effects are not the main driver of global warming (all the evidence says they are), it's still a major fucking problem. Even if anthropogenic effects are not the main driver of global warming, minimising them will reduce the damage of global warming.

Re: Hope the engineering is checked better than the marketing

The error could have originated in engineering. Or at least in the drawing office.

I remember the design spec for a piece of avionics that incorporated a "backwoods power detector." It was for use in the Multi Roll Combat Aircraft (obviously capable interestingly ineffective evasive manoeuvres).

Re: IT happens

@JeffyPoooh

reliable as a wood burning stove

You mean they need a lot of preventive maintenance or they burn your house down? You have to clean the chimney very regularly if you burn wood or the build-up of creosote in the chimney leads to a chimney fire.

@downvoted AC

The reason I downvoted you is because you ignored what was stated in the article. Or maybe you just didn't understand it. So I'll clarify it for you.

If an illegal immigrant catches some highly infectious, serious disease, do you want that person to see a doctor and be cured (or perhaps quarantined) or do you want that person wandering around spreading the disease because that person is scared a doctor would pass details to law enforcement?

It's a simple question. I invite you to ponder it for a while before responding. You may find it useful to read this first (she wasn't an illegal immigrant but did try to evade law enforcement).

Re: 'image persistence' or 'burn-in'

@Ejit

I'm old enough (just) to remember my parents having a car with a foot-operated headlight dip switch.

But if you want to bring in old tech, how about the spark advance/retard lever? :)

Re: More likely...

@Maventi

Even if Microsoft released flawless products every time (they come nowhere near) the lock-in is still the biggest problem. Lock-in is deep within Microsoft's genome. I'm not saying Google is better, just that Microsoft has been doing it longer.

Yes, Microsoft has open-sourced some development tools. But they sold them at a loss anyway, because without development tools nobody would use the associated product. And giving away the dev tools helps lock people in to the platform..

Everything Microsoft has ever done has had an eye on lock-in. Because the only alternative to lock-in would be to keep customers by producing good s/w, which is apparently an option they find financially undesirable. I don't see this changing in the future, except changing for the worse.

So even on those rare occasions when a Microsoft product is better than any alternative, I'd be a lot more likely to take an alternative. The alternative might improve, but Microsoft will never stop lock-in. If the team behind the alternative throw in the towel somebody else might take it on, but if Microsoft drop a product you're completely screwed.

Re: Yawn

The app is fraudulent. That alone makes it malicious.

The app takes something without adverts and adds advertising. Those adverts are annoying, eat into data limits (however slightly) and make the app more awkward to use. That is malicious

Yeah, the guy didn't have harm as his primary intention, his primary intention was to get money. The harm is a side-effect. But a predictable and obvious side-effect, so he would have known that the app would do harm and therefore he intended that harm to happen.

I wonder why I should bother reading comments from people with no grasp of reality or logic.

Re: Scaremongering

@SkippyBing

You make my point. It was operated from Boscombe Down. Then they realized how dodgy it was so they relocated to somewhere it couldn't do much damage. If they ever manage to get it to work properly, it can go back to Boscombe Down.