* Posts by Wzrd1

2260 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2012

Senate slams ad servers for security failings

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Better yet

Yeah, because it *always* requires a click.

There never, ever, ever, ever, existed a drive by.

Fucking moron.

Note to self, add to blacklisted idiot list.

Boffins debunk red wine miracle antioxidant myth

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Obvious nonsense

"Dietary and Medical advice oscillates from one peer-reviewed, journal-published finding to the EXACT OPPOSITE peer-reviewed, journal-publish finding with a period of about ten years. This is a disappointing truth."

Strange, the original study that found benefits of *some* of the chemicals in wine also mentioned that consumption of wine at levels that would have therapeutic impact would also incur levels of alcohol that would erase all of the benefits, excessively so.

Research that is now around(ish) a decade old, but those few words ignored by the sensationalistic press.

Space Station in CRISIS: Furious Russia threatens to BAN US from ISS

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Space Race?

Regrettably, the far right complains about *any* scientific research under the complaint "we can't afford it", while trumpeting for defense expenditures and demands to invade pretty much every "offending" nation on Earth (while also being utterly incapable of locating the "offending" nation of the week on a map).

The more fun thing is, the US GPS constellation is aging, with no replacement plans in sight.

Scariest NSA revelation yet: Spooks are RUBBISH at CIPHERS

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"Keep an eye out for black helicopters, black SUVs with dark windows and tracking devices on your car."

Funny, I've posted encrypted messages and routinely send encrypted e-mails to my wife and some friends.

The only helicopters I see are either news, cargo service and the occasional OD green ones being built down the road from me.

No black SUV's with dark windows.

As for tracking devices on my car, they'd get bored to death.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: How to become at least a millionaire/billionaire/gazillionaire, overnight.

"One cannot protect any kind of system..."

As an information security professional, I disagree with you. Systems can be protected by isolation, disabling non-essential services, proper monitoring, proper security measures overall, protective technologies that are properly implemented and monitored and proper policies enforced.

In every major breach, either policies were not adhered to or protective technologies and isolation of networks was not applied/monitored.

A further case in point, name one classified US information network that was above FOUO that has been successfully breached and exfiltrated data.

Name a NATO classified network that was successfully breached and exfiltrated data.

Name any Russian classified network that was successfully breached and exfiltrated data.

Name any PRC classified network that was successfully breached and exfiltrated data.

No?

Perhaps the The Bank of England?

No?

Wzrd1 Silver badge

"You know who is not protecting your nation? The NSA."

First, the NSA is part of the US DoD. As such, they follow orders given by their lawful superiors.

Second, go tell that to two of my friends and one cousin who died in the WTC on 9-11.

You'll need a shovel and your pleas will fall upon literally dead ears for one, for the rest, upon an empty grave.

So, with no due respect, sod off. You have absolutely no clue as to what are real risks in this world.

I happen to know of those risks from first hand experience.

Now, if you want to debate the finer details of what is and is not acceptable, do learn those risks firsthand yourself and we can have an intelligent conversation.

Assuming you don't end up with an RPG removing a sizable part of your anatomy first.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: what it takes?

"Low morals. Gentlemen don't read other people's mail."

In that case, the UK had the lowest of morals and ungentlemanly behavior (OK, for you Brits, behaviour) in WWII.

It was quite routine and intrusive.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

"So they're happy for foreign nationals to apply?"

You'd be surprised.

I'll just suggest that the investigation is exhaustive and far beyond intrusive.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Errr...

The last time I looked, employees were still discouraged from admitting that they worked for the NSA.

With pressure, they were encouraged to say that they worked for the DoD. With a lot of questioning, rather than raise suspicions, they could admit to working for the NSA.

For the handful I had reveal their affiliation, I simply remarked to the agency affiliation, "Ah, so most of your work is incredibly boring and extremely rarely interesting."

To which I got a nod, smile and appreciating the sensitivity of their agency.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

"Personally, I don't know what I find more disturbing : the fact that the NSA publishes a job recruitment pitch on Twitter, or the fact that the NSA has a Twitter account in the first place."

And so, you betrayed your ignorance to the entire planet. The NSA has long had a Twitter account.

Indeed, far, far longer than I have. But then, I'm not recruiting code monkeys or mathematicians.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Errr...

I remember back when they were called "No Such Agency" and quite proud to remain rather obscure.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: So to get the job

Well, to royally piss everyone off, they've long had my resume.

I've not bothered to apply to work for them though. They just know me from testing DoD networks I was responsible for, my documentation and my networks repelling multiple known problem sets.

What's that PARASITE wriggling inside my browser?

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Danger!

That's OK. The NSA put a backdoor into the Matrix.

Truck-sized asteroid slips silently between Moon and Earth

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: A request to Science...

Just as long as it misses Fort Meade. ;)

Voters pick luminous tech spacesuit as NASA's off-world fashion statement

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: transport

Because, NASA actually *determines* the US budget, right?

Idiot savant, or just mere idiot.

You decide.

I know my own decision.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Oh dear....

Pity that you never noticed the program or the idiocy of the reporting.

The program wanted a suit that could be noticed if an astronaut was in distress and find reference points to know where and how the body was situated to administer aid.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Awful

Name *one* body in this solar system or in space where that blue would not be visible *and position noticeable.

OK, fail on you. Only on Earth, in sparse conditions, would that suit not be noticed if the owner were in distress.

AOL confirms security breach from spam attack

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Be where of thee spell chequers

I'm both weary *and* wary of those mails.

It isn't the spell checkers that are at fault, it's the lack of proofreading and quality editors.

Oh GREAT: Your factory can Heartbleed out

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Head Scratcher, this one is...

I'm guessing you've never heard of an insider threat.

Polymer droplets turn smartmobes into microscopes

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Now, increase the power just a little and poor villages can have basic labs for microscopic study operate from a smartphone and lab in the city read the results.

Space station astronauts pop outside to replace crippled computer

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Solid Design

Ah, so you're the guy with the little bunker!

I got a real steal on my larger complex. You can see the secondary cooling system purge periodically. It took years of inserting fiction in various texts, but people now buy "Old Faithful" as a regular geyser.

When some geologists came along poking about, we started turning on and off the secondary and tertiary systems, now they think that it's a really big caldera! LOL!

If you want, we can link side tunnels, I have a tramway not too far from the Smokies. We're installing one of the new Hitachi super trains soon, can't be late for a weekend on the beach! We can divert one of them your way and you can pop by some evening.

Maybe we can think of some more deviltry to disturb those silly geologists.

Boffins brew graphene in kitchen blender

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Don't try this at home, folks!

"...and 20 to 50 grams of graphite powder (found in pencil leads)”

Personally, I'll use the graphite in a bottle that is 8 inches tall. Graphite is far, far, far cheaper that way than bonded with clay and then clad with cheap wood.

As for the rest, true enough. It *would* make one potentially divorce making mess and bollocks the blender.

Wouldn't stop me from trying with a spare or newly purchased blender.

It's not like the damned things are expensive!

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Dangerous Stuff

No, send the missus down it. :)

Or up it without oxygen.

Asteroids as powerful as NUCLEAR BOMBS strike Earth TWICE YEARLY

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Here's something to think about when you go to bed

Most of the asteroids detonated, for that *is* what they did, in the upper atmosphere over an ocean.

Think of idiots on the ground, fingers near buttons, fear guiding their movements. Figure Russia and the US over the Ukraine, figure India and Pakistan, figure any of the usual nonsense that gets nations tense.

Now, think of one of those asteroids popping off over Washington, D.C., Moscow, London, pick anywhere in India or Pakistan when tensions are high at a level between Chelyabinsk and Tunguska.

A few years back, Pakistan and India *had* mobilized nuclear forces due to tensions between the two nations. Along came an asteroid that blew and set off these detectors globally.

Thankfully, it blew apart over the Med, with chunks landing largely around Libya.

That gave some pause and the nuclear forces of both sides stood down, for it'd have been only a short time later that that asteroid could've blown over their heads and a premature decision to launch could have triggered irretrievable actions.

As one who grew up during the Cold War, served in the military under Reagan, actually watched a real nuclear countdown be initiated and thankfully cancelled after the realization that things weren't at a war footing, but something else happened, I know how quickly things can go unimaginably wrong.

Something that occasionally does wake me up at night remembering programming flowing into a missile that was within seconds of launch.

But, nobody is watching for these. One launch on warn is all we'd need to join the dodo.

STEALTHY NANOROBOTS dress up as viruses, prepare to sneak into YOUR BODY

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Hehe, more like Ben Franklin rapping his knuckles on a key hanging from a string of a kite before the leading edge of a thunderstorm.

This science is in its most fetal stages. The "machine" can't do anything but sit there stupidly. The lipid membrane protecting the non-functional device.

Give it a half century, it might actually go somewhere.

Pity, it'd be *great* to have something workable within my lifetime.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: Great changes, but sssh don't mention the...

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: The narcissism of small differences

Blather.

It worked quite well for me with 12.04, it's working quite well for me on my test environment. I might update the rest of the systems at home in the late summer to early fall, after the version bump comes out.

Upsides: newer kernel tree level. Enhancements of that which was a bit functional to be more functional.

My 5 year old+ systems are working fine, thank you, have zero clue what the author was blithering nonsense about, it's a matter of choosing frills you want or do not want.

But then, the vast and overwhelming majority of work that I do on the machines is on the command line. The only time I use the GUI is to write a formal letter, print it and post it or when I have to write a formal letter and, ugh, fax it.

What matters is this:

It works. It does the job. Other distros could as well, but this one works reasonably well with only modest tweaking *and* has an LTS version.

Out of five test machines, only one had a problem and that was an HD that was positively ancient failed hard. As much of my home environment is enterprise level servers and switches and the rest is older workstations, it's a "big shit", order a new HD and move on.

Had one bit of annoyance with one test netbook, with a massive 8 gig SSD, not quite enough space for a basic office system. Did an apt-get clear and life was good again. SSD tuning wasn't necessary, but I'll probably play with it to see what I can break, erm, improve. OK, don't see improvement in the cards.

One broken thing on that miniscule antique system is overlayfs, which has some brokeness inherited from debian. But, if I boot without the overlay, the base OS is up and can update without fudging by adding chances to the overlay on flash card and instead update the base OS on SSD.

As for it overall, it's an updated version of a solid distro. It isn't like we're talking about the difference between a Vic-20 and the GSV Grey Area.

Despite your fancy-schmancy security tech, passwords still weakest link in IT defences

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Kettles, meet the pot

OK, a hint. Petrol is across the pond from Verizon. Verizon is what was once Bell Telephone (OK, a bit more complicated than that, but close enough for government work).

Here, where Verizon is a company to contend with (my voice, data and internet provider is Verizon, as they offered the sweetest deal *and* fiberoptic to my home), we use gasoline. Same deal, different name, courtesy of English being a foreign language to the US. ;)

Still, one ponders the fact that Verizon figured out what every *other* study has figured out.

Next week, a new study on how the sky is brighter in the day and it gets dark in the night (a second study).

A third study will tell us that PASSWORD is a bad password.

A fourth study will tell us that ASSWORD is a bad password.

Few to no studies will offer a workable solution.

Opportunity selfie: Martian winds have given the spunky ol' rover a spring cleaning

Wzrd1 Silver badge

It goes to prove, the astronomers were right.

Mars blows.

KILLER ROBOTS, DNA TAMPERING and PEEPING CYBORGS: the future looks bright!

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: How about?

Second upvote.

"...though the study found that personal flying craft..."

Damn! But, they can barely drive on the ground, now they want to play rush hour bumper cars in the air too?!

@Mark, better the family tree that is a straight line than those whose family tree is lousy with tight circles.

Win gorgeous strap-on, enter whole new world with Reg compo

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: How can I be the first one to say that another sort of strap-on

Fair enough.

Such excellent and groundbreaking news!

I still have two sets of MyVu units here. Company came up, made noise and sales, then went tits up.

Arts and crafts store Michaels says 3 million credit cards exposed in breach

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: They should offer money.

Gee, we know that we caught your house on fire, burning it to the ground. Here's a fire extinguisher.

Bloody hell, *over* a year of breach and it went utterly unnoticed until fraudulent activities were reported.

I guess Helen Keller was dug up and made CIO.

Astronomers spot hint of first EXOMOON, possibly

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Exomoons are as unlikely as exoplanets.

If you have enough debris to make a planet, either impacts or capture is inevitable.

Honeybee boffin stings own wedding tackle... for science

Wzrd1 Silver badge

"If he takes a bullet ant sting to the balls in the name of science, I'll buy him a beer."

I'll buy him a room at the mental hospital. For after he recovers enough to be released from the emergency department.

'Yahoo! Breaks! Every! Mailing! List! In! The! World!' says email guru

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: DKIM abuse

"Mail admin FAIL I think."

Well, hire the incompetent! They work cheaper.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: The Good thing about Yahoo

Haven't had that issue here and I'm on some fairly high volume mailing lists.

Perhaps it's restricted to the web client? I use imap.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Yahoo shmahoo YES THIS

"So folks like jake who in their ignorance think certain domains should be discriminated against really rub me the wrong way."

I disagree. But, on the basis of performance and annoyances, such as spam.

If one domain leads the pack in distributing spam, it *should* be discriminated against until they get their act together.

Otherwise, one is constantly playing with the filter to let the spam leading domain traffic through, then catching merry hell for the spam coming in.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Yahoo shmahoo

"Have they come to the conclusion that email just doesn't pay?"

Yep! Right after they *finally* followed Google and let users use imap.

Can't push those adverts through imap.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

"Err, so isn't the fix that MailMan etc. need to rewrite the DMARC/SPF headers ?"

So, let me get this straight.

*Every* mailing list in the world must comply to Yahoo's changes.

Isn't that what Microsoft said when they bungled TCP/IP, Kerberos, well, pretty much every protocol that they didn't originate or steal?

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: usenet

"We need to handle spam somehow as it, and its variants in the form of ads etc., will kill a lot more of the net eventually, I fear."

Well, the US and pretty much every other nation has plenty of drones now... ;)

UFO, cosmic ray or flasher? NASA rules on Curiosity curiosity

Wzrd1 Silver badge

"Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy fame has posted an animated gif..."

Not really. I've known Phil for ages and am quite familiar with his blog.

He's really good at showing how some notions are wrong, but some people suffer from fixation.

They have their own view of what is and it borders on, or even crosses deeply into the realm of delusion.

And worse, they're not shy about sharing their delusions with anyone unfortunate to come across them.

"Either or both of these caveats argue for Curiosity to live up to her name, and to get the hell over there and check it out. But this is NASA, so they won't."

OK, I'll bite. *Precisely* where is "over there"? Can you provide precise direction and range?

That said, if it's repeated and the location of "flash" corresponds to the same area, it *would* give a decent range and bearing. I know of a lot of geologists who would *love* to know what mineral could withstand Martian sandblasting and still remain reflective.

I'd pay real money for it, get my glasses made of it so they won't scratch or chip.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Caesar's Commentaries on Marco Polo's Dinner with Prestor John

Wow, reading that took me from the bar scene in Total Recall to Earth Girls are Easy. ;)

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Backlit dust devil?

"I thought it could be a backlit dust devil..."

The fact that it was front lit rather rules it out as well. Look at the hills and see what is better lit.

Now, if they kept getting something like that, it'd be worthwhile to see what reflective mineral survives being sand blasted, yet can still reflect.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Too bad

"As it plainly states somewhere in the first half of the Bible/Koran/DSM IV..."

Ah, but in DSM XVVIVXXI, it plainly states that lifeforms are all over the bloody place and that the intelligent ones are blithering idiots.

Got my copy from a Doctor, when I popped into the wrong Turdis that turned out to be a TARDIS.

Next time, I'll check the sign more closely. Can't get those pepper pot guys ichor out of my sand shoes!

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: "or similar..."

"Now back to NASA spokesperson, Captain Black, in Mission Control."

If we're going to play that show, I vote for an investigation by Captain Scarlett. Johansson. ;)

Damn, but did I give my age away in knowing what show that was.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: "or similar..."

"Laser wouldn't hit just a few pixels in one camera, mon."

Unless the rover itself had the laser and that was the scintillation return.

As the rover doesn't have a ranging laser that I'm aware of, NASA would know if the thing was on and a lot more should be scintillating, we'll say that a laser is flat out wrong.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Now with added JFK

True enough. Everyone is more of an expert than the experts who work with the equipment that they designed and sent through space to another planet to explore is.

Even money, it's just a piece of schist.

Excuse the lousy pun, but it could as well be a flash reflection off of a rock. Some people forget that some rocks are shiny.

'Graceful' solar flare erupts from surface of Sun – NASA vid

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: I did like

Something we both slept through?

Hence, the inability to recall its name.

Internet is a tool of Satan that destroys belief, study claims

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Choose your poison

Here, here!

I'll pass on the scotch, but will take a fine Irish whiskey.

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: So access to information

I'll side with the author's opinion.

Nobody wants to admit being affiliated with a bunch of assholes that are foaming at the mouth of a lot of nothing.

Microsoft spells out new rules for exiling .EXEs

Wzrd1 Silver badge

Re: Pot meet Kettle..

"When I got there, I found 30 instances of 5 differrent click-jackers on the machine! It seems many came over from his old XP machine, which had around 200 instances of malware on it!"

Well, I had a brand new XP box and deployed to the Middle East.

Within a minute of *modem* connection, I saw connection to my $C.

I terminated connection and examined what Gateway sold me, software wise, in rather a bit of detail.

When I reconnected, I had already ascertained no rootkit nonsense, no new connections to C$ and admin$ was long gone (thank the Gods of careless Computing for letting me miss that!).

One burst of intracranial flatulence is all that it takes.

As for Microsoft, my wife had a Vista64 box that was incorrigibly slow. *Nothing* this old BOFH could do could make it run reasonably.

I upgraded to Linux.

The 64 bit system operates as advertised. Even her Facebook bullshit games work far, far, far, far better. Which means attempts at consuming 100% memory, but failing to and still operating.

Even better, it plays moving pictures of our grandchildren quite well!*

*Intentional use of a relatively ancient term. I'm equally comfortable in a low tech, no tech or high tech environment, operationally. I far prefer high tech for comfort. ;)