Posts by handleoclast 1287 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jan 2012
Franken was (and partially still is) a comedian. A good one (meaning he can come up with material himself as well as deliver it). Which means he spots the incongruities in situations and highlights them. Previously he did it for comedic effect, now he does it to cut through bullshit.
Plato thought that philosophers ought to be in charge. I'm more of the opinion that it should be comedians. Franken for President and Gervaise for PM.
Nope, no new election. There is no constitutional provision for that.
What happens is defined (in part) by Article 2, Section 1, Clause 6 of the US Constitution:
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President [...]
So what happens is President Pence. And what happens after that is the reality-show version of A Handmaid's Tale. Unless it turns out that Pence was intimately involved and also gets impeached and convicted. If Trump goes first and Pence has a while as President before he gets kicked out, Pence gets to name his own insane VP, such as Sarah Palin. If it's a simultaneous impeachment, then Clause 6 goes on to say:
Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President [...]
However, that has been superseded by the 25th Amendment, which as well as allowing Pence and a majority of the executive office principals to remove Trump for being a fuckwit, defines the order of Presidential Succession.
If both Trump and Pence are ignobly, simultaneously removed from office, we get President Ryan. Not the President Ryan from the Tom Clancy novels who was a good guy (despite being a Republican), but the Zombie-eyed Granny Starver (a term coined by Charlie Pierce) who has orgasms when he thinks of removing healthcare from millions of people. Really. There's a clip of him on youtube telling one of his buddies how he's dreamed of doing that since he was a college student, and giggling over it.
You have to go a long way down the list of presidential succession to get one that is remotely sane. A fuck of a long way down.
So impeachment isn't going to solve all the problems. But at least none of the possible replacements for Trump are actually insane enough to think that nuking the Norks is a sensible option.
In one of Roger Stone's tweets that got him kicked off Twatter, he called somebody a "covksucker."
Perhaps this goes some way to explaining Trump's "covfefe" tweet.
Oh well, it's time to stock up on popcorn and beer then sit back to watch the show. I don't even like popcorn. In fact I detest the stuff. But it's traditional.
@Shadmeister
It is as if the author of the language decided arbitrarily what seems like a good idea.
Almost, but not quite. Larry Wall had formal training as a linguist, so designed the language based upon how humans think rather than the easiest way to write syntax parsers. He also wrote it so that it was very useful for one-liners. There's quite a bit of syntactic sugar, but that's because it makes intent clearer. All of which makes it somewhat different from other languages you encounter. But if you can make the mental leap you may find it rewarding. The syntax is more natural, but it's so different from what you're accustomed to that it's a bit of a leap to realize that it's actually better the way Perl does it.
For example, the "unless" keyword. Sometimes it's a lot clearer to write
unless (condition) {code}
than
if (!condition) {code}
You'll probably find it perverse that you can place if/unless after code as well as before it, but it can make intent clearer.
If you think about it, English works that way. (emphasis is that you're so stupid you have to think about it).
English works that way, if you think about it (emphasis is that you're bright enough that you probably don't need to be told to think about it).
And, of course, regular expressions are first-class citizens. In other languages they're grudgingly shoe-horned in. Any time I use a regex in another language I end up swearing at the hoops it forces me to jump through. Often they're not very big hoops and it's not much of a jump, but it's irritating.
There's much more I could say, But you probably won't believe that either. :)
Given what I can interpret from the diagram, Adversaries are in control of everything (they're at the top and displayed.in a different colour from everything else).
Those adversaries can be divided into two main groups:
1) Allies & Partners
2) Rest of Government.
I'm having problems deciphering it further than that. "ARMY" appears to be somebody giving the emergency semaphore signal "I've just explosively shit my pants."
It all revolves around drinking S&Ts (Smirnoff & Tonics, a vile drink).
Encryption uses "industry primes," which are presumably the commercial variant of Mersenne primes.
"Enablers" seem to be a free-fall parachutist display team, possibly not wearing parachutes.
There is a faint dotted trace of Rutherford's planetary model of the atom, so technologically bang up to date.
After that it all becomes too confusing.
I remember watching a video not so long ago (and I think it was linked to from El Reg, but my memory is a bit dodgy these days) of an VTOL F-35 landing.
What immediately sprang to mind were the interminable Thunderbird launch sequences of the various vehicles. The re-usable filler that was used to pad the episode out when there wasn't enough plot to fill the time slot. On episodes with little plot you got the full sequence of going through the picture-entrance, sliding along the tunnels, the vehicle slowly getting to launch position, etc. On episodes with more plot much of the launch sequence was edited out.
And that's what the VTOL F-35 landing reminded me of. Ths bit opens. Then that bit opens. Then the first bit opens some more. Then a third bit changes angle. Then... After about 5 minutes the damned thing managed to descend to a landing. Yeah, very good when enemy planes are around trying to take out your airfield. Really fantastic when the carrier launched an extended sortie and they're all coming home at the same time running on fumes.
Worst of all, if that's what they have to go through for landing, they'll be fuck-all use at VIFing. Remember that from the Falklands news reports? The Harriers did so well because they could Vector In Flight. With a bandit on their tail they could pull a manoeuvre that took them above and behind the bandit without changing direction of flight. As game-changing as the Immelman Loop was in WWI, except any aeroplane could do an Immelman if the pilot knew how.
As far as I can see, a VTOL F-35 would lose out to a Harrier. Badly.
@soulrideruk
Your understanding of reality is wrong. Two different ways.
Firstly, I can make a prototype. And then, if I need to, I can make an exact duplicate. Why would I need to? I might damage the first one. Or I might wish to speed up testing and development by allowing more than one team to have a prototype to investigate. Since they're identical, and even you agree that one of them is a prototype, by all the laws of logic and English the second must also be a prototype.
Secondly, I can make a prototype. And then I can make something which is similar to that prototype but which differs in significant ways. Call them A and B. "A" may have been a prototype for "B." But "B" may be a prototype for "C." And perhaps further down the alphabet until we get to a pre-production model (which can still be regarded as a prototype): we've proved the concept, now we're trying to optimize how we make it. Until finally we get to a production model. Production items are not prototypes, but that which precedes the production item is a prototype.
Yes, they both provide a means of consuming nicotine. Both are inhaled. But only cigarettes are smoked.
It's not mere pedantry. Smoke a cigarette and you get a shitload of noxious chemicals along with the nicotine. Use a vape and you get some harmless (or nearly so) glycerine and/or propylene glycol along with the nicotine. People who vape are still nicotine addicts (unless they're using nicotine-free fluids just for the visual effect), but they're not inhaling the products of combustion. As in "there's no smoke without fire."
As for more powerful vapes being more harmful, maybe. What matters is overheating the fluid, not how much vapour is produced. The more powerful models tend to have clever temperature control whereas the cheap ones have no control excep a timer and hope the heater doesn't get too hot.
Health service professionals do make a distinction between smoking and vaping because smoking is far more harmful. Nicotine addiction is not much worse than caffeine addiction, if at all. As the saying goes: people smoke for the nicotine and get killed by the tar.
So I don't see an issue with promoting vapes as an alternative to smoking rather than as a way of quitting nicotine completely. It's certainly more honest. Mechanisms of addiction mean that vapes and gum (which give alternating highs and lows) are a lot more addictive than the patch (which keeps nicotine level constant). If you want to quit nicotine then try the patch (it may or may not help). If you want a safer alternative to smoking then vape (which has helped some people to quit, but not many).
In the UK, regulations forbid audible crossing alerts in that situation. I.e., two independent crossings in proximity. However, I think they're experimenting with a new audible alerts that people can more precisely determine the location (memory is vague on this one). In the UK, where audible alerts are prohibited then rotating cones must be fitted (they're at the discretion of the local authority otherwise).
I've just given people a few things to google for to keep them amused. :)
You're right.
They should draft new legislation that exempts motorists from any legal charges if they accidentally, or otherwise, mow down some twat crossing the road while looking at a mobile.
I'm probably joking. Maybe. Because the longer I think about it, the more sense it makes.
Such a browser exists. It's a bit minimalist, though. It's called Lynx.
Lynx doesn't do JavaScript or DOM fiddling. But that's probably what you want to keep your soul safe.
One good thing about Lynx is it's a great content filter. If a website is incomprehensible in Lynx the chances are it's not worth looking at (for small values of "not worth looking at").
Yeah, machines can't handle paper. It's nigh-on impossible.
Strange, that. Because in the early 60s I was given a tour of the works of a jobbing printer. All the machinery was old, probably most of it second-hand. I could hear the constant chuffing of the pneumatics as the Heidelberg and the two Thompsons effortlessly and flawlessy picked up sheets of paper from the feed stack, moved them to the platen for impressing, then moved the paper to the output stack.
As I dimly recall, the poster machines did it purely mechanically without the aid of pneumatics, but I only saw them operating briefly.
Whether or not such mechanisms would be economically feasible in a robot, it's not impossible.
@TRT
I know there are more attackers than just script kiddies. Nevertheless, the OP mentioned them and you inserted a little political correctness with an implied referent of the aforementioned skiddies.
I have no objection to political correctness as such, but the statistics show the skiddies are overwhelmingly adolescent males. Let's not insult women by implying they are equally likely to indulge in such stupidity because the stats say they're not.
As for the more technical attacks, usually for financial or political gain, I haven't seen any stats. It could be that women are equally likely to play in this arena, but I suspect cultural influences discourage it. I don't know how organized crime views women these days but I suspect Islamists tend to see women as inferior beings best suited to be suicide bombers rather than elite programmers. I could be wildly wrong about that, but if they're not competent to drive a car...
@TRT
Except skiddies tend to almost always be male.
In fact, mostly adolescent males.
Probably because they can't impress women any other way than by pretending to be 1337 h4x0rs.
Fortunately, women seem largely immune to thinking with their dicks (for reasons you may care to speculate upon) so are less prone to becoming skiddies.
In this case affirmative action to increase the number of female skiddies to parity with male skiddies is probably not a good idea, no matter what your views upon equality of the sexes. Reducing the number of male skiddies to achieve parity is probably a better solution.
I could love you, but why begin it
'Cause there ain't any future in it
She's got me, but I'm not free, so
Bye bye HP, HP goodbye
(Bye HP, HP bye bye)
Bye bye HP, don't make me cry
(Bye HP, HP bye bye)
Yeah, it's HPE not HP, but that doesn't scan. Anyway, she'll wreck HP as well, soon enough.
From what I read somewhere, the varying results depended on prior rates of police misbehaviour of the forces in question.
They didn't make much difference for one force because the cops on that force behaved professionally even before the BWCs. They made a big difference on another force because those cops were a bunch of bullying arseholes and figured out they had to behave better if they had BWCs.
BTW, I remember a video on youtube some months ago where some cops were too stupid to turn their cams off soon enough before planting some drugs in a hiding place so they could "discover" them. Some cops really are bastards, and they're the ones the BWCs protect us against.
This is almost available from many sellers on eBay.
You want a 128GB SD card that appears to be a 64GB one. Right now it's dead easy to buy SD cards that show as 128GB but are actually 64GB (usually a lot less).
So they've got the principle right, they've just screwed up the ratio.
@Snorlax
Contempt of court was the way the UK used to do it and the way the US still does it.
1) Arrestee refuses to hand over crypto keys (claiming he/she forgot, never had them, whatever).
2) Arrestee is brought before a judge who instructs arrestee to hand over crypto keys.
3) Arrestee repeats excuse.
4) Judge sentences arrestee to 3 months in prison for contempt of court.
5) After 3 months, arrestee is released from prison into the arms of the police who haul arrestee in front of Judge. Because whatever the crime the person was arrested for, even if subsequent evidence shows the person to be innocent, that person is guilty of contempt of court until he/she hands over the keys (even if they no longer matter).*
6) GOTO 3.
Yes, people like Gary Glitter (had he been bright enough to encrypt his stash of kiddy porn) would claim to have forgotten their key. As would terraists. So I can see the temptation for the courts to do this.
But, that does mean that you're seriously fucked if you forget a crypto key and the police ever have cause to investigate the encrypted device.
It also means, as I've said before, be careful about encryption with hidden volumes (like TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt). If you use them you must use the hidden volume. Because if you don't, when the police ask you for the key to the hidden volume and you say you're not using one, you're fucked. They can't prove you are, but you can't prove you aren't, so hand over the keys you don't have because you never had them.
Except for TrueCrypt (and therefore probably VeraCrypt) there was a patch that allowed nesting of hidden volumes to any arbitrary depth. So there's no way you can prove you're not using a hidden volume beneath the ones you've handed over the keys for. So you are fucked if you use those two systems (and possibly others) at all.
Here in the UK people realized it was an abuse of contempt of court powers to do this. What if the judge ordered you to ride a unicycle over a tightrope while juggling running chainsaws? So now we have a law that specifically states it is a criminal offence not to hand over crypto keys when the police request them. That's a big improvement. /s
*The naive amongst you are going to say that if the police find out you're innocent while you're serving time in prison for not handing over your keys, you'll be released. Hahahahahahahahahaha.
All your computer equipment will have been confiscated for detailed analysis. As will all the computers at your place of employment you potentially had access to. That sort of detailed analysis takes days, if not weeks. By the time you're released, your employer will be out of business so you won't have a job to go back to. There will be nagging doubts about whether or not you really did something wrong, so you'll be unemployable.
So when you're released, you're going to go to court for compensation for your losses. Your former employers will want money too. Big money. That will generate very bad publicity for the legal system and the government. Maybe the Home Secretary gets replaced. Maybe even the PM.
So the government will want to settle out of court on condition of no publicity. So your lawyer will scent blood in the water and go for the kill. There's big money to be had for a promise not to topple the Home Sec/PM. Or is there?
It's much cheaper to ignore the fact that you didn't commit the crime you were arrested for. Because you're still guilty of not handing over your crypto keys. And always will be (if you really did forget them). So no messy/expensive court case where you demand compensation. Because you're a vile criminal. A recidivist who has been given many chances (every 3 months) to reform and hand over his/her crypto keys yet continues to refuse to do so.
@foxyshadis
I don't see trampolines helping. What's the obvious point to attack? The trampoline.
So even if you trampoline the trampolines, all you've done is given an attacker the easy way in.
Hint: randomising where you leave a spare front door key may help, but not if you always leave a note under the door mat saying where you've hidden the key today.
@ravenviz
Your comment and another comment in the thread made me think. Since the cowherder got everything about me (apart from the fact I thought Tron was a bad film, and I'd already made that obvious) completely wrong, I'll return the favour.
My guess (probably as wrong as the cowherder's) is that those people who thought Tron was wonderful were under 30 when they first saw it, and at the time they saw it hadn't seen many films with better effects made after it.
In fact, I'd guess the majority were under 25 when they first saw it.
In fact, I'd be surprised if many of those who think Tron was great were over 20 when they saw it.
I'll make another guess. If they watched the original now they'd think it as flawed as they say the remake is.
@Amorous Cowherder
Good comment, apart from one minor error: you're completely wrong about me in every fucking way.
I'm in my 60s. I watched the original Tron and haven't seen the remake. I generally prefer books to films because films are always distorted, abbreviated versions of the book and therefore always disappoint to some extent.
Even though I prefer books, I can enjoy films despite crappy special effects, as long as they have a good plot. I can forgive poor special effects, poor characterization and even bad acting, as long as the plot is coherent, consistent and does not contain contradictions. When the plot is a pile of steaming crap then special effects, characterization and acting cannot rescue a film, as far as I am concerned.
The plot of Tron was just fucking idiotic. Crappy as the special effects might have been compared to what can be done today, they far outshone the plot.
Subtracting the downthumbs I got from Big John and bombastic bob for attacking Trump, that means at least four other people thought Tron was a good movie. *sheesh* What is wrong with you people?
Some bastards have put LSD in the water supply. Again.
I read the article and came away with the impression that Tron was a good film instead of a boring pile of steaming shite. I hope the LSD stays in the water supply for the next 3 years. I need it so that Trump looks good.
This is a truly great idea.
1) I write an app and join the scheme saying I'm committed to reducing bugs.
2) I upgrade the app after deliberately introducing a subtle bug.
3) After a suitable length of time, I tell a confederate to report the bug.
4) I and my confederate split the $1,000 reward.
5) Rinse, wash, repeat.
I love it.
HP(E) seems to have figured out the strategy GEC (remember them?) used so successfully (/s) back at the turn of the century.
1) Our shareholders want bigger dividends.
2) So let's sell off all the stuff we know how to do, because the rate of return is rather low.
3) Then we take all that money and buy into speculative technologies we don't know how to do but which seem to promise high returns (because they're so fucking risky and/or fucking stupid).
What could possibly go wrong?
Ummm, probably not.
What you actually need is strong, sane leadership with an adequate budget.
And, thinking about it, if you have strong, sane leadership then an adequate budget is likely to follow.
It's only the fact that Trump's insane leadership isn't strong enough to get much done that is preventing the US being in a far worse situation than it currently is. Imagine how bad it would be if Trump could actually get things (other than getting wingnut judges in place) done.
1) It doesn't get updated when you're not looking at it, thereby forcing you to learn a new way of reading it.
2) It doesn't slurp your private data.
3) In the long term, it works out cheaper than Ambien if you have difficulty sleeping.
4) If you keep it in the bog, in an emergency you can wipe your arse with it (try doing that with a laptop).
It's buying Microsoft software products that I have difficulty justifying.
@Gordon 10
You pay £25/month for 30G SIM on Three?
I got mine for £15/month. And, after the first three months they gave me the next three months free. I think you got a bum deal there, or you mis-typed.
Mind you, my contract was for a year and there's not long left. And it was a special offer. I'll have to find out what they propose to charge me next.
@boltar
This is not apocryphal, I witnessed it happen. I still have one of their pre-launch publicity mouse mats.
Yes, they were not very computer literate. The company that provided the web server for their startup was the one I was employed by. That company was run by a fuckwit, albeit a fraudulently criminal one (if I ever meet him in a dark alley he's going to end up in hospital because of how he ripped me off). I wasn't involved in the Windows side of things, so I watched it all happen from relative safety.
The start-up was going to be an on-line hardware store with everything on offer. Down to small screwdrivers and up to pneumatic drills and road rollers. They worked out it was feasible because stuff like a road-roller is dispatched to the retailer when a customer orders one from the retailer, so they could have the manufacturer deliver direct to the customer. For the smaller stuff they had an arrangement with a distributor. So gazillions of products. Think of a cross between Amazon, Screwfix and eBay before any of those had arrived on the scene (or at least impinged on public awareness, because I wasn't aware of them at the time).
My idiot, crooked arshole of a boss set things up so the start-up updated their product list locally on Access, then painfully slowly uploaded the whole db to our server (over 56K dial-up), which spent six or seven hours importing it into SQL server so it could serve up product pages. A very, very, stupid way of doing it, but the only time I became aware of the technicalities was when it all went badly wrong and the start-up was blaming us for the problem. In a way it was our problem because we should have had them use Access as a front-end to our SQL Server (did I mention the boss was an idiot?) Even so, Access's internal db was borked, had been borked for years before that, and continued to be borked for years thereafter.
So yes, had my boss not been a fuckwit they wouldn't have gone under. But had Access's internal db not been a buggy pile of shit, they wouldn't have gone under (at least not for that reason).
Option 3: It has a data loss bug and they've temporarily pulled it until they can fix it.
That is implausible, given past behaviour.
Anyone remember the Access-corrupts-its-own-database bug? Something (may have been db too large, may have been multiple network access combined with race hazards and a non-ACID db, may have been the phase of the moon) caused it to randomly scramble data. That one was present for years.
I watched (from a safe distance) a 2-man start-up go under because of that one. They'd sunk their life savings into it, and were hit by it shortly before they were due to launch (and shortly before they were due to run out of savings). Ever seen two middle-aged men cry? Microsoft support's answer (paraphrased): "Access is a toy. It's not for serious use. If you want a serious db you have to buy SQL Server."
Anyone remember the Word self-corrupting documents bug? I ran into that one in 2006(ish) when somebody persuaded me to try Word to produce a complex document (footnotes, bibliographic references, cross-references, etc.) rather than the tool I'd normally use because Word had "improved so much." All went well enough, although I found it tedious and time-consuming to use Word's UI compared with LaTeX's embedded mark-up. All went well until I'd done 7 or 8 hours' work. I scrolled up to check something I'd written earlier and noticed a paragraph-sized hole in the text. Thought it was a redraw bug, scrolled up and down to find it was now two paragraph-sized holes. More investigation showed the document was melting away as I scrolled through it.
I figured Word had got itself into a knot. Saved and shutdown. Re-opened the document and there were the missing paragraphs. Which vanished on me when I scrolled. OK, go to an earlier backup. Same problem. OK, go to an even earlier backup (what's a few hours' work here or there?) Same problem. Gave up on the whole idea.
A year or so ago, El Reg linked to a sample chapter of a book describing this. It was mainly to do with "Master Documents." Master documents were very bad for provoking this bug, but it had 9 or 10 rules you had to follow to minimize the risk of it happening. Only minimize, because even if you followed the rules religiously, it could still happen. And not just with Master Documents, it could even happen with ordinary documents.
That book was written in 2001, about Word 2000. I encountered the problem in 2006(ish). The problem was present for years.
Those are the reasons I never use Microsoft stuff for anything personal. Well, I don't have a Microsoft system at home, so that's another reason. But if somebody gave me a fully-licensed Microsoft box with fully-licensed Office, I wouldn't use it for anything other than trivial, transient stuff like a shopping list or a note to the milkman (not that I ever produce either of those, anyway). Because Microsoft can take years to fix bugs they don't even admit to.
I only use Microsoft stuff if I'm paid to, and even then I warn the employer about the dangers and suggest switching to alternatives if feasible. At home, you couldn't provide a bargepole long enough for me to use Microsoft stuff for anything remotely important to me. Or even anything unimportant to me. I would only use it for one-off, trivial stuff and not even then because I'd have to wait for the system to boot up.
So your option 3 of Microsoft pulling it so they can fix a data-loss bug doesn't ring true. Not unless the EULA forgot the standard "Microsoft takes no liability for anything. If it all goes wrong, you're fucked" clause. Because they are either incapable of fixing bugs as soon as they are reported or they just don't care as long as it doesn't significantly affect revenue.
His observation was that this isn't what happens, so why are we proceeding on that basis?
Fundamental theorem of computing: any problem that can be solved using multiple CPUs can be solved by a single CPU using context switching. It's just slower.
So yes, you can emulate millions of neurons with a single CPU, it's just slower. Even when the CPU is clocked in the Gigahertz it's still a lot slower than a million neurons, because the CPU has a lot of extra complexity to allow it to perform general computing problems. The architecture isn't optimized for emulating neurons, it's optimized for being able to handle many different types of problem programmatically. The same CPU could run a game, or let you browse the internet, or compile some code, or...
Long ago I realized that neurons have some similarities to how overflow-rate multipliers were used in the early days of CNC machines. Not identical, but maybe enough to point the way to an optimized neuron emulator. Or maybe I'm talking bollocks, there. Then again, the earliest hardware emulations of neural nets used even simpler circuitry and managed primitive optical recognition. Plessey, I seem to recall, had something to do with that research.
Anyway, using a CPU is almost certainly the wrong way to emulate neurons in bulk and at speed. The architecture is completely wrong. But it's very configurable, which is what you want at this stage of the game. If you came up with a better hardware architecture it would require custom chips at great expense, and when you put enough of them together you'd probably find your architecture had problems. CPUs let you research the problem enough that one day you'll be able to figure out what you want well enough to go to a completely different hardware architecture with a degree of confidence.
@bombastic bob
IANAL. Even so, I think what he's doing is using his contributions to the codebase to show that he has standing. He's not some disinterested third party complaining, he has legitimate grounds to complain because it's some of his code that is being violated. His code is a very minor part of Linux, but it is a part, therefore he has been wronged.
I don't understand enough law to comment on the rest of it. I don't know enough about his motivation (but it appears to be personal enrichment) to comment on the morality of it. Some companies are violating the GPL and he's giving them a bollocking for doing that because he has the legal standing to do so.
I think he's on solid ground when he says those companies are misbehaving. I think he's on legally solid ground because he has standing. I also think whatever good he's doing is outweighed by the negative side-effects (raising so much uncertainty about hundreds like him popping up) and that if it's done at all it needs to be done by an umbrella organization. OTOH, nobody else seems to be doing it, and it probably needs to be done sooner rather than later otherwise future attempts to enforce the GPL may be met with "You didn't bother before" arguments.
I particularly like the bit where shornofhissenses claimed that Reddit deliberately under-report their user base so they appear to have half a million users when actually they have 26 million. That's so plausible.
Reddit can appeal to advertisers by saying "Yeah, we only have half a million users, but their click-through rate is 50 times higher than for other platforms. Just think how good we'll be when we grow a bit."
All the wannabes who want to hang out with the kewl krowd will obviously go for the platform with the least number of users, so Reddit is guaranteeing rapid growth (which will stunf the rapid growth once it becomes more popular, so they'll have to tell even bigger lies about the number of users).
I suspect Shorn writes the scripts for Alex Jones.
@Doctor Syntax
For most of my life, I too, thought it necessary to disinfect a site where an injection was given or phleb taken (it's taken by phlebotomists, so it must be phleb they're taking). I was told that it was necessary to kill commensal micro-organisms so they wouldn't get into the bloodstream. They might be OK when they're on the surface of your skin but they can be little buggers if they get into your blood.
However, for the past few years, when I've had a flu jab or phleb taken, they've not done this. Last year I asked why not and was told they don't do that any more because it causes some people discomfort.
Better to have your arm drop off than have an injection sting, eh?
It used to be said (and perhaps still is) that Rolls Royce (back when it was a car maker and an aero engine maker) went bust the first time because it was run by engineers who had no business skills or knowledge. And that it went bust the second time because it was run by businessmen who had no engineering skills or knowledge.
For all I know it might even be true. It certainly seems plausible enough.
I made some money, now it's your problem
It's what economists call a "negative externality." It basically means that if you farm pigs intensively you can reduce your costs by dumping their shit (which is nasty stuff) in the nearby river (just take care that you dump it downstream of where you draw your water). You're happy. Your customers are happy. Your pigs are happy. People living downstream of you aren't so happy, but so fucking what?
This is just one reason why the "free market economy" doesn't scale well. If you try something like that in a rural community, the people whose water you contaminate will stop buying your product, ostracise you, and maybe even give you a good kicking if you show up at the local pub. But when you scale up to large corporations, local feedbacks have very little effect. Which is why legislation is required to stop unscrupulous companies (most large ones are) from inflicting negative externalities on people.
Over in Trumpistan, they're busy removing legislation that prevented (at least to some extent) negative externalities being exploited. Because, as the fucktards at the Chicago School of Economics insist, the reason deregulation failed disastrously every time it's been tried before is because we didn't deregulate enough.
It's enough to make you bang your head against a brick wall. The reason doing so doesn't fix your headache is because you're not banging it hard enough.
I started reading up on this on wikipedia
Try this alternative explanation. And this variation on the same theme.
@bombastic bob
it's been done before
The only thing I can think of remotely similar to your account, in that timeframe, was Clifford Stoll and he wrote a book about it called Cuckoo's Egg.
It was in 1986 rather than the 90s. And he was monitoring dial-up modems not routers. My increasingly-unreliable memory tells me people were tromboning dial-up systems to get to his, not using the nascent Internet. And the on-line world was a much smaller place back then. And he was lucky. And his opponents weren't too clever. Apart from all that, it's a perfect match.
Oh, and Stoll is very, very clever. Even if his youtube videos give a completely different impression (like the one where he accidentally started a fire in his kitchen).
It's not as easy as you imply to track these people down and retaliate. If only because they're using botnets so all you're likely to do is trash thousands of computers belonging to innocent people without ever hitting the person responsible (other than by diminishing the size of his botnet).
Dramatization of Stoll's story (probably uploaded in violation of copyright, so don't watch if you're squeamish about that sort of thing) here.
I came up with an analogy to explain to the politicians why this is such a very bad idea. It goes like this...
The Las Vegas mass shooting was terrible.
Maybe everyone should be armed.
And legally permitted to shoot back in retaliation.
That way, when a crazed gunman starts firing, everyone will fire back at him.
Problem solved.
Of course, a moment's thought shows this to be an astoundingly bad idea. Most people are very bad at handling guns. Couldn't hit the side of a barn at two paces. There will be bullets flying everywhere. Somebody is going to get hit accidentally, causing his friends to return fire at somebody who was trying to hit the crazed gunman but instead hit a spectator. His friends are going to retaliate. Pretty soon everybody is shooting at everybody else, and the crazed gunman shits himself from laughter.
That, privileged white gentlemen, is exactly how your cyber-retaliation will play out. It isn't just ineffective, it actually makes matters a lot worse.
To which the response is "I cain't see nothing wrong with arming everywun like the saycond amendmunt sayes. Freedumb!" and they pass the cyber-retaliation bill too.
@Nick Kew
Funny video. Makes sense even though I don't speak Norwegian.
Made even more sense because I had the type of mindset that pays attention to minor details and allows me to figure things out. Did you link to that particular upload of that sketch to see how many people had that sort of mindset? Or did you just not notice the version with English subtitles?
Our occupational nurse advised that the mouse should be used with the opposite hand to that which is your dominant keyboard hand. There was some RSI reason I think
More likely it's a pornhub reason. If you're using your dominant hand on the joystick then the other hand has to operate the mouse.
YMMV. (your masturbation may vary)
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