* Posts by Mark 85

12880 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Nov 2012

Half of Facebook's Free Basics users ditch the freebie web-lite service for the paid-for real deal

Mark 85

I agree but perhaps Zuck's freebee is one of the reasons they spring for the paid data plan? They see what "might be" and also I imagine that many of those sites aren't relevant to them and they want something local. If they're still using the data plan in a year, then it could be called successful. I guess it will come down to how much the local Telco's gouge the customers.

It is a pity in many ways that the Internet has become so commercial and such a cess-pit of scam artists and miscreants. I really feel sorry for anyone coming in cold to it.

Zuck: You're still using non-Facebook websites ... I'll put an end to that

Mark 85

Re: Walls, not bridges

You don't need all that. Just don't do FB. Ever. Even a fictitious name/account. Nada. Nothing. If they don't know you're there, they can't get to you.

OTOH, there's something about the whisky side of the wall that I like.

How to not get pwned on Windows: Don't run any virtual machines, open any web pages, Office docs, hyperlinks ...

Mark 85

Re: Happy Tuesday!

Go update!! (after testing it doesn't impact your prior pipe/infrastructure)

Or maybe just wait a few days until all the hidden and disguised updates are found and exposed? I've learned not to be to quick to do the updates...

Uber hands over info on 12m passengers, drivers to US officials, cops

Mark 85

So why is Uber upset when they have to share the data?

There's no profit in "share". Now if it were "sell" there might be a different emotion...

US bus passenger cracks one off for three hours

Mark 85
Coat

Some folks are just too damn dense to be allowed to reproduce.

Which is probably why a) he was on bus in Iowa, and b) why he was cranking one off on a bus.

Icon --------> appropriate attire for bus travel.

UK cops trial £250k drone squadron

Mark 85

Re: Lewes?

with a bit of tactical air support thrown in.

Air superiority or ground attack? F-18 or A-10?

Hey, tech industry, have you noticed Amazon in the rearview?

Mark 85

Excellent article/rant that points out the obvious. Some companies and their sales droids are so full of themselves that they have forgot one important thing... serve the customer. If I need a part for say my car, I need it now. Not in two months after listening to sales pitches, finding a "partner" (what the hell?) or jumping through their hoops. Sell me what I want or need now and then leave me a number in case I need some help.

I see that a bunch of commenters have totally missed the point which is: you want my money, make it easy for me with no BS. You want to feed your ego? Go find another sucker.

Old saying comes to mind: The sign of a dying business is one that tells their customers: "We've never done that way before and we won't do it now.".

Graphene solar panels harvest energy from rain

Mark 85

Re: lightbulb moment...

Fail to do so, Life in Prison.

That should fill up any unused prison space pretty quickly. While you're at it, why not give them a treadmill or stationary bike with a generator on it. Then they can put power into the grid for x hours a day. Oh wait.. that might be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" or even "slave labor".

Russian boffins want to nuke asteroids

Mark 85

One small problem....

Galushina reckons a near-Earth rock that poses a future threat could be smithereened by a nuclear weapon when it's moving away from us.

If it's moving away from us.. it missed. So it wouldn't be a "killer asteroid". Methinks someone just wants to get nukes in space.

Windows 10 debuts Blue QR Code of Death – and why malware will love it

Mark 85
Thumb Down

So the infamous BSOD without any useful information returns again.... like there will be any useful info to the Joe Average User by following the QR code. For someone very tech savvy, yes. For everyone else... all we techies will get is "I got a BSOD, now what?".

Half of people plug in USB drives they find in the parking lot

Mark 85

Better than a poster. Just fill each USB port with epoxy except for the mouse and keyboard plug-ins. Then again, there's idiots who would unplug the keyboard and put the stick in there.

Short of explosives, we can educate all we want but humans are curious and that is the problem.

America's Intelligence Transparency Council to meet for the first time … behind closed doors

Mark 85

Re: Careful what you ask for

But, there are restrictions on felons as far as ownership of guns, voting.... Hmm.. much like what some politicians want for the rest of us...

Mark 85

Re: Who serves whom?

Nah... they got it right. We, the people, are being served by the intelligence services to whoever they decide to serve us to. And somehow I don't think we'll be put on a silver platter. Condiments are optional.

Microsoft Privacy Shield

Mark 85

Microsoft and privacy... hahahahaha.... might as well be Google and FB signing on also....

NASA gives blacked-out Kepler space 'scope the kiss of life

Mark 85

Or maybe a minor timeout while the computers "upgraded" to Win10 followed by an "oops, something went wrong"????

We're not in Kansas City anymore, Toto ... Google axes free fiber internet

Mark 85

Re: Classic scam model

Still.. for the bandwidth, the pricing isn't bad. If the other cable companies decide to drop their prices for their offerings, Google/Alphabet/whatever will have some competition. I'm paying $60 a month for 20, $50 for 100 would be a treat. But, we're not on Google's short or long list or any list to my knowledge.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina buys a Huawei superdupercomputer

Mark 85

Hmm... a repository of knowledge in Egypt. Pardon my cynicism but this is country with a fairly large portion of the population holding the same beliefs as a certain group who's made a large mess of historical sites, museums, etc. in the name of their deity. At what point will they decide that this library must be destroyed?

SpaceX's Musk: We'll reuse today's Falcon 9 rocket within 2 months

Mark 85

Re: "Merlin engines"?

Dragsters blowing blue flames out the pipes are fueled by nitromethane. Because of the fuel, the engines run really rich and the blue flame is from the excess raw fuel igniting. Yellow or orange would be traditional petrol (gasoline) and again.. running rich.

WWII a/c will put out flames but usually only on takeoff when the "carb" setting would be at "rich". At altitude they were adjusted from "rich" to "lean" for economy.

Picture this: An exabyte of cat pix in the space of a sugar cube of DNA

Mark 85

Ok.... maybe that's code for what we really need.. an exobyte of porn.

Mark 85

Re: Re:OTOH: having a backup of the entire human race in a sugar cube is an interesting idea :-)

From an SF point of view... they will have "interesting" offspring.

Saturn spacecraft immune to mysterious Planet 9's charms

Mark 85

Re: Plan 9 from outer space

Only if the master control panel of your equipment for detecting this consists of old oscilloscopes, waveform generators and some flashing lights and all of it sits on a rickety kitchen table.

Former Microsoft HoloLens man: It's NOT about gaming

Mark 85
Devil

Call centers?

I can almost visualize issuing these to call center personnel. They can walk around, go to the restroom, snack bar and continue working since a PC screen could be floating right in front of them at all times. </sarc or maybe not>

Mindless Flash masses saved as exploit kit devs go astray with 0day

Mark 85

MS and Flash

It comes as Microsoft announced its Edge browser would nix "non-central" Flash content in webpages by default and recommending content creators move to non-fatal alternatives including HTML5.

Since Flash can't be removed from Win10, then this is meaningless. Flash will continue since every Win10 machine will have it. If MS were serious, they would just kill it at the source and not allow it into the system.

'Fart detector' wins Chinese Physics prize

Mark 85

Re: @Mark 85

We get that also, Jake. There's a large farm across the road from us. Even worse is when a skunk gets hit during fertilizer time....

Mark 85

Well, there goes blaming the dog....

Watch: SpaceX finally lands Falcon rocket on robo-barge in one piece

Mark 85
Pint

Just the kind of great news needed to make Friday even better. Looking at the video and ocean chop and wave action, I wasn't sure it was going to happen.

Space X deserves several cold ones each for this.

FBI, Apple continue cat-and-mouse game over iPhones in New York

Mark 85

Well.. at least some lawyers will be gainfully employed for a long time. I don't see Congress being able to do much given that it's election season and it will take some time to get one of these to the Supreme Court. The choice we techies have is to sit back and watch.... popcorn anyone?

Dear Windows, OS X folks: Update Flash now. Or kill it. Killing it works

Mark 85

Re: Get the content^H^H^H^H^H^H^H producers to kill it

I wonder why Adobe hasn't come clean and globally recommended that everyone uninstall Flash and wait until a secure version is released. Anyone have any ideas?

It wouldn't be until the heat death of the universe before that POS is secure... so they'll loose out on monies from the likes of McAfee and Yahoo....

Read America's insane draft crypto-borking law that no one's willing to admit they wrote

Mark 85

Re: Dumb and dumber

Maybe they're sending up a trial balloon to see who shoots at it while May, et al, watch and see if it might work for you in Blighty. There's too much back and forth across the pond similarity anymore. Once one of us passes something like this, the other will too.

Microsoft drives an Edge between Adobe and the web: Flash ads blocked

Mark 85

Re: Best budds

What changed? Probably the money. Can Flash be removed from Win10?

Cyber-underworld price list revealed: $500 for company email inbox, $1,200 passports, etc

Mark 85

Re: Find a need and fill it.

An old bad joke, indeed but have an upvote anyway as it points out the pricing part. We see this same philosophy in the comments about certain agencies hiring (not enough money) and corporate salaries for the c-suite (too much money). But... too often, it's about the money.

IBM's tops sales staff face long haul...to Hawaii

Mark 85

Re: I "won" - but I sure as hell am not going

You actually may get to "keep" your job by not going. I worked at one place that sponsored a junket and those that went were deemed "disposable" since they had time to go on it. Those us who were working at deadlines and didn't go kept our jobs. Hindsight, I'm not sure who got the better deal.....

ISS to host space truck rally

Mark 85

Just amazing.... watching that barge bounce about a bit had to have added a "pucker moment" to things.

GCHQ is having problems meeting Osborne's 2020 recruitment target

Mark 85
Black Helicopters

Re: Ethics

I didn't think El Reg had a warrant canary. Or if they did, it was for about a day or so.

Mark 85

Re: Spook feel bite of general lack of cyber talent in UK – sources

Is it still an offense to carry a camera and occasionally point it at something?

Dropping 1,000 cats from 32km: How practical is that?

Mark 85

Re: I'm disappointed.

It's not? Then then where does catgut come from? I thought the two were related.

Mark 85

Better to drop cats then to drop dropbears.

Mark 85
Headmaster

Re: Acceleration pedantry

Knots is a distance originally used by navies. It did involve a knotted rope. So, technically "rate of knots" is correct. There is however the speed "knots" which is "Knots per Hour" or in the "duldrums".. Knots-per-Fortnight".

Thank <$Deity> that no-one used the term "parsecs"....

Mark 85

Re: Laser Guided

Of course, now it becomes clear. All these years we've had the relationship between the evil genius in his volcano lair and the white Persian he's stroking entirely backwards...

Since cats only have staff, I always thought that was obvious to even the most casual of observers. The guy stroking the cat is merely the leader of the rest of the cat staff.

That naked picture on my PC? Not mine. The IT guy put it there

Mark 85

Re: What ?

My Porn would have been too obvious.

Not always.. sometimes it's self expression. I had a "My Porn" folder for HR stuff. I used "Piled Shit" for manglement stuff. Then there was "NSFW" folder for all IT work stuff. Being creative can be fun... One of the guys I worked with even more creative to the point that if he hadn't been in IT and managing himself, he might have been in serious trouble for his labels.

Man pleads guilty for serving white hat with DoS, swearbot, sex toys

Mark 85

Re: Am I the only one

I don't think you are. I reported it last night and haven't heard anything back yet.

I also questioned the defining of "script kiddie".... I found that a bit condescending here.

Panama Papers hack: Unpatched WordPress, Drupal bugs to blame?

Mark 85

Re: re: US connections, relative lack of

Excellent link. Thanks for posting it. It does explain a lot.

Mark 85

Various sources are reporting that the Icelandic PM hasn't resigned but stepped aside for some time off. Other sources are reporting Cameron will resign or at the other extreme there's a grass roots movement calling for him to resign. China has locked things down tighter and reports indicate that certain political types are "unavailable". No word on the Russian/Ukraine types... all's mum there also.

All things considered, there's ton of crap flying from the rotary air movement device and some people are getting covered and there's supposedly lots more to be released from the journalists looking at it.

Meanwhile, here in the States, all seems to be calm. I daresay that there's enough loopholes around that anyone who might have used MF didn't need to. Then again MF is in Panama and certain agencies have been known to track what flows through that country in terms of money.

If a release comes from banks in the Caymans, all bets are off on how many US types would get caught up the mess that would make.

Oculus, why do you need to record our every move? Al Franken asks

Mark 85

Good on him...

Even if he gets stonewalled or BS answers, it will hopefully make enough headlines that people might (slim chance, I know), just might, start thinking about all the info being collected on them.

FBI Director defends iPhone 5C unlock tool that's obviously going to leak into wrong hands

Mark 85

I'm not sure if the Hacking Team were doing tools for phones. There's that Israeli company that offered to break it, though.

Mark 85

Re: Leakage?

Uh... have you ever heard of any agency in the Federal Government taking responsibility for damages? Even if they wanted to, there's a law that says the Government has the right to decline to be sued. So... not gonna' happen in our lifetime.

Hubble spies supermassive black hole in surprising spot

Mark 85

Re: Or dark matter is other universes

The expansion of space means exactly that - it is not that distant objects are moving away from each other (an expansion in space), rather it is the space itself between the two objects that is getting bigger. That isn't movement in a conventional sense and not subject to the constraints relativity imposes on moving objects. If the distance between two objects is great enough the expansion of space between them can indeed be greater than the speed of light. This isn't at odds with relativity simply because the theory doesn't apply

I dimly recall hearing that postulated some time ago and it makes sense. If the speed of two galaxes (say ours and another one) are moving away from each other when the speeds are added to together and are greater than the speed of light, we'll never see them.

Microsoft rethinks the Windows application platform one more time

Mark 85

Re: I may be old fashioned

When I buy something I like to think that,,,, I own it, if you don't buy a house you rent one, if you buy it you own it.Right?

You do, but if it's in a Home Owner's Association, then you have to abide by their rules (think EULA and T&C) and many can be quite harsh. So before Win10, it was like a house in the country. Now with Win10 it's like a Home Owner's Association run by dweebs who don't live within 100 miles of you.

Mark 85

Re: Microsoft made it clear that security has taken a back seat

Nothing new to see here except a new (for some value of "new") OS with new holes to be patched. Let's not even get into anything else like the deployment process, the OS as a Service, telemetry, etc. There is no trust. If possible, it's a negative trust now. We know that "back seat" is PR speak for "oh... there isn't but we'll get to later... maybe".

This from them in an age where people are wanting a secure OS with minimal holes. An age where many of us are worried not just about attackers, but state actors, etc. If the security is in the back seat, then what's the point besides new headaches?

Megabreach: 55 MILLION voters' details leaked in Philippines

Mark 85

I swear that I've read the links and the article a few times and I'm of the belief that the late Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf has been re-incarnated.