Posts by Mark 85

Re: And so?

This means what, exactly, in the 21st century?

Possibly that there's still a lot of really tall buildings that don't have a 13th floor. Seems to be the older ones that don't however.

Re: Rogue Engineers?

Whew.. I was worried you were going to blame Archibald "Harry" Tuttle.

Re: Obvious action, non-obvious why not?

I'd think any 'serious' site would get a respectful "...o..k..a..y, thanks" if they emailed users with "we don't want you to lose your hard-earned money/house/job, and we noticed an insecure password and would you please change that to a better password (and here's how)."

Probably 50% (ok... some % above 1% and less than 99%) of the users would see the email.. assume it's malware and dump the email. Unless of course, you promised them a nudie video of some celeb.

Re: Another lost opportunity

He might have been bright and intelligent but he wasn't smart. He got caught using his real name, etc. I can see why Department A wouldn't want him. But yeah.. there could have been a plea bargain deal and he could make something worthwhile of his life.

OTOH, the Marines are looking for a few good men with his skills.. maybe a tradeoff...?

Or prevent you from ever pushing that button.

Re: Welcome to the New Era

As one who has repeatedly run his head into the brick wall at work.... it's only fun and only feels good when you stop. Obviously the voters here haven't figured this out yet.

@joeaverage -- Re: @palpy

I think you pretty much hit the nail dead center except for one point. My tendency at one point if someone told me to "suck it up" wasn't, shall we say, gentle. I'm calmer now. Less traumatized.

The point I take issue with is that actually, people like what you mention shouldn't be in charge or even near a war-zone. They're the ones who toss lives away and do more harm to their own side. Patton to some degree, was an exception but not completely.

If you look back over the decades, this is how things work... or don't work. They get the guy they want and if he's clueless, he learns buzzwords. I suspect it's not just here in the US but other countries as well.

That's not terribly surprising, really. If you asked someone what they liked best about their car, I bet the response "it can transport me from A to B" wouldn't make the list either.

I'd be more inclined to say that many users don't do phone calls. They text only. We have many friends (for some value of "friend") and relatives that will never pick up a call but will grab every text sent and respond. Many of my business acquaintances have noticed the same thing. Perhaps one day, the phone part of the 'smartphone' will just disappear.

Re: Blockchain is the solution, now what was your problem?

I think the problem is really more simple... IBM needs to sell Watsons. Any port in the storm and all that so blockchain is a "solution". Whether it's a viable solution will remain to be seen.

Re: >Germans tanks were 5 times better

Germany did not, strangely enough, really fully go to a war economy until fairly late in the game,

The German mentality at the beginning of the war did create a lot of problems. They tied fighter production to the number of pilots that could be trained. Thus, no spares. When the air war moved to Europe and Germany, this hurt them badly as they could recover pilots but had no planes for them to use.

Re: Fingerprints have their place

The data on the phone has some value, sure, but not enough to encourage someone to commit several serious crimes in order to gain access to it (theft of the phone, hacking charges for unauthorised somputer use, fraud/extortion/other charges for misusing any information gleaned). So for me this particular security versus usability equation comes out on the usability side,

The data on your phone is pretty much useless to probably 99% of the phone thieves. They want the phone to sell on the black/gray market for cash. So your fingerprint is probably all that system needs at this point. IF the crims ever smarten up and figure out they can use your bank details, then the fun and games start.

Re: Very

Interesting question which leads me to this... If we cool down to the point that all the energy is removed, wouldn't all particles in an atom no longer be held apart? In other words, would the atom collapse upon itself and if enough do that, would or could it form a type of black hole?

Re: I'd say that the gag was unlawful

I'm a little surprised it's taken this long for someone to challenge the whole NSL

It's lawyers and government and bureaucrats. Re-reading the article gives us that Cloudfare has been fighting this for quite awhile which, given the players involved, would be normal by their standards. I just hope the courts will look at the Constitutional aspects and agree that NSL's do violate the Constitution.

I was thinking some new contractor to replace the FTE's tripped in the server room. But I like your reason as it seems more realistic.

Re: Other solutions

RATO/JATO bottles have their own set of headaches. Might work, but there's the instant impulse thing when the rocket fires which might be a lot more than the airframe could handle. Aircraft like the C130 (and others) were built for this system and as such the airframe is properly reinforced for those stresses.

Re: not got much spam in it

That's one of my biggest gripes with Win10... ads in the OS. That should be just "no. not now. not ever"... If malvertising gets through.. you're screwed. But at more basic level... I buy the OS, so ad should not even be an option or available. Sadly, MS is so greedy, they don't care.

Maybe some of us will do a startup for something like AdBlock for the OS?

Re: Now THAT is worth hacking

Uh.. Bob... you realize these are Repubs trying to push this, right?

Re: I'll bet the email the Reg received was automated

Certainly they don't have a person reading all the Reg articles looking for ones applicable to their customers.

Maybe not knowingly... but the site developer might and possible he forwarded it as a gag... or it's just another round of Stupid Human Tricks*.

*Apologies for David Letterman.

Re: Signed.

This country All countries become more vile every day. :-(

FTFY. Sadly, being on the west coast of the USA.. too late for me to sign.

Re: The time has come .......

I don't know how much of this stuff is true, but I'm quite certain some stupid cases like this have been brought, and won, with silly payouts given.

More than a few it seems. One can't put a deadfall on a window that's been used repeatedly for breakins. Homeowners/businesses have been sued because the burglar climbed in through a skylight and the beam/lightfixture/whatever broke and he fell and was hurt. It makes for sad and sometimes mind-boggling reading about some these lawsuits.

Seems to me there was website that carried these some years ago, but I don't know if it's still around.

Re: What an incredibly simplistic mathematical model.

More and more people seem to be infected by Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is worse than Bush Derangement Syndrome or Obama Rainbow Pony Syndrome. Hopefully this will burn itself out or will have to activate the FEMA trailers.

I wouldn't count on it dying out. Both the previous two Syndromes are still running amok... and it seems that the same people are behind them. Hell.. we also still have the Clinton Is Perfect Syndrome* types running around.

*Take your pick on which Clinton is involved.. there's overlap.

That is possible since the TLA's had a large hand it designing it. Originally, it was to provide secure comms for the government. If I were a tin-foil hat wearer, I'd believe that there's two TOR's... the one everyone uses and another that the government uses.

Possibly.. and also the makers' marketing and PR departments.

If you're in the States and an "employee".. you pay half the social security tax and the employer pays half. If you're a contractor... you pay the full amount. There's is an upper limit on the amount of wages taxed however.

Re: We've got four years of this?

Well... he is pretty pissed off about the new guy running "his" show on TV. Apparently the ratings have dropped and he blames Arnold. I would think that as President-Elect that he has more pressing issues to sort out than a TV show.

What the hell have we got ourselves into... two equally miserable candidates for President and no matter who won, we'd all be irritated as hell with them.

Re: 15 days jail time ?

I'll bet his lawyer plea-bargained the hell out of this... or.. he gave the LEA some info on something else someone did. Just seems too light a sentence when you consider if he flashed an aircraft.

Re: Just use Firefox

I do use Firefox as well as Chrome. Seems Firefox is having "issues" with memory and slowness. I'm hoping for a new build release (I'm using the current one) soon... very soon.

IE is the pits for some of the forums I use as there's a few bugs in IE 11 that won't let it play nice with them.

No age, race, religion, disability, etc. on a W-2. True, they could somehow get the IRS to fill in some of the details but not all. Given it's the government... they want a PowerPoint, basically so they don't have to do the digging themselves.

As others point out.. it's a government contract and Google knew what was expected going in. No BS excuses from them can change that.

Re: the committee received a letter this week

It could all just be BS on Cook's/Apple's part. Maybe he has no interest in visiting Ireland... doesn't like the beer?