* Posts by DropBear

4733 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013

Brit filmmaker plans 10hr+ Paint Drying epic

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Try this

Oooooh, there's hidden depth to this idea... Considering one man has basically f###all chance to acquire imagery of relevant diversity (random trees swaying in the wind and whatnot would not achieve the effect) and that otherwise collecting sufficient photographic variety could not possibly avoid paying astronomical royalties for licensed stock images, the only viable way to actually do that would seem to be a monumental crowd-sourced photo-project where a huge number of people agree to go out, shoot pictures and contribute them royalty-free as a frame of the movie. That, by definition, sounds like the biggest art project in motion picture history so it actually stops being a spoof and becomes a legitimate piece on its own!

EU's Paris terror response includes 'virtual currencies' crimp

DropBear

Re: Stopping movement of non-banking currencies

Not to mention that on a general-market-level, resale value of diamonds is absolutely horrifyingly bad. You need to be in the diamond business (and that's a very, very closed club) to ever hope to get a fair price selling them on, as anyone who ever tried actually selling on their shiny rock learned: normally one can only do that for peanuts compared to the purchase price...

Mostly harmless: Berlin boffins bleat post epic TrueCrypt audit feat

DropBear
Joke

Re: Tin foil

"What if you run a few thousand volts through* your tin foil"

For the love of $DEITY, don't do that, man! The unavoidable arcing creates millions of tiny punctures in the tin foil which then all proceed to diffract the incoming mind control signal right into your skull, as a tiny all new source each! It's the worst thing you could do, which is exactly why THEY create this sort of misleading rumour! Don't listen to them! Or to me! I could be one of them - just think about it...!

Rdio's collapse another nail in the coffin of the 'digital economy'

DropBear

"Moral means do not (currently) work. [...] So what is left?"

Oh, gosh, dunno... why don't we ask some lowly free-to-read webcomic artists making upper-four-digits each month on Patreon, from entirely voluntary contributions by people who could easily have the exact same thing for free...? And yes, that does mean you do need an audience of more than three people for the not-all-of-them-will-pay statistics to actually work...

DropBear

Re: "So much power has accrued to the distributors"

"The "taping from the library" analogy doesn't wash, because the scale is completely different."

No, the scale is identical. You (or anyone else) may not have copied tapes by the cartload, but I (and everyone else I knew) sure had every single song we cared to have more or less as soon as it became of popular interest. The specific distribution mechanism may or may not have been somewhat different, but ultimately we sure as hell had the tapes. ALL THE TAPES. Maybe not as zero-second convenient as it is today, but the exact same end result. So let's not go all "in the good old times..."

US 'swatting' Bill will jail crank callers for five years to life

DropBear

Re: Two birds

"some sort of investigation will follow."

Is that like the "investigation" that follows every single contested case of "your IP downloaded copyrighted material", only less imaginary...?

DropBear

Re: "systemic inability of the police to handle situations non-violently"

"It is normal for them to charge in"

Then they're clearly doing it wrong. "Some fuckwit said you were a terrorist so I shot you dead fully legally" doesn't even begin to be anywhere near in the same galaxy as an acceptable excuse.

Kids' tech skills go backwards thanks to tablets and smartmobes

DropBear

Re: SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T3

That's just because all the cool kids have a Gravis Ultrasound... ;)

Seriously though, if I never have to mess around with QMM again it will be too soon.

DropBear
Trollface

Re: As an ICT teacher I am not surprised

"digital natives - my a**se"

If you want to get fancy AND truthful, maybe you could call them "micropayment experts" (generally involving someone else's credit card)...

DropBear
WTF?

Re: Those tasks are *bullshit*

Apparently we can look forward to the expeditious demise of professions like "PR specialist", "web designer" or "animation artist" since these are now apparently common digital literacy skills...

DropBear
Joke

Re: Every cloud...

...has its thorn, and every cowboy sings a sad, sad song? Hmmm, wait, something's not quite right...

£2.3m ZANO nano-drone crowdfunded project crashes and burns

DropBear

Couple of problems there. First Kickstarter is most definitely not "for companies". Second, nominally it is required by the KS ToS to have a completed and fully functional prototype of your hardware before you launch your project (if your project is about hardware). It's unfortunate that nobody actually enforces that, and (as a direct consequence) very few bother to respect it. But at least officially, that's how it's supposed to work - there is not supposed to be any guesswork involved about the feasibility of what's being proposed. That does not prevent potential issues at manufacturing time of course, but in my experience that's not where most vapourware projects get into trouble.

DropBear
Facepalm

Re: Old proverb

"time to roll out a Kickstarter prospectus for a perpetual motion machine"

You're going to find the competition is absolutely vicious on KS in that field. You might have to take a number and wait in a queue - perpetual machines are a dime a dozen on KS, and I wish I were kidding...

DropBear

Re: Don't Worry

"When Star Citizen crashes..."

I think you misspelled "Elite: Dangerous" there and, oh, that already happened.

Game of Photons: Boffins make ICE with FIRE

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Title

Yes, yes, sure. But can it cool beer atoms...?

Nano-NAS market dives into the cloud

DropBear

Re: No.. Not the Cloud

Not sold on "cloud is stealing NAS clients" either - instead, I suspect cheap and small boards with SATA built-in (or with disks attached via USB) are becoming sufficiently ubiquitous to persuade many of those with the know how to maintain their own NAS to build their own from scratch instead (or just use that ageing PC for the job...).

Hold on, France and Russia. Anonymous is here to kick ISIS butt

DropBear

"The leaders of our governments are generally psychopaths."

Let me fix that for you: most anybody who's fairly well known is generally a psychopath*. A politician is just someone willing to use any means necessary to trample over other people in the pursuit of power after all; just as a successful entrepreneur / CEO is just someone willing to use any means necessary to trample over other people in the pursuit of money, and a celebrity is just someone willing to use any means necessary to trample over other people in the pursuit of fame (also money, hopefully). Arguably "sociopath" is more fitting but I'm not sure the distinction is really there. The thing is, people who think that the ends don't necessarily justify the means invariably fail to raise from the crowd - whenever interests are involved the law of the jungle rules supreme, and principles come with a cost...

*okay, there are always exceptions like, say, Gandhi or Einstein - but I believe the point is valid...

Badware in the firmware all over the place

DropBear
WTF?

Re: You get what you pay for

"When programming went offshore..."

I'm very interested to see how exactly do you intend to tie that into the fact that one of the listed "vulnerabilities" is lighttpd, which is, you know, the go-to webserver on OpenWRT for basically anything more elaborate than running LuCI, its own web admin GUI; if even that isn't secure enough, what exactly are embedded engineers supposed to do? Write their very own http server perhaps...? Yeah, that always works great, as securobods keep telling us...

Slovakians seek funds for battling drone squadron

DropBear

Re: Attractive pricing model

Let's not be unreasonable there, shall we. The $99/199 offers are "early bird" pricing and as such, limited in quantity. The unlimited offer is for $150 which seems to fit the "$600 for 4" offer just fine, unless you bemoan the lack of "quantity discounts". May not be particularly advantageous but it *is* reasonable.

Google wants to add 'not encrypted' warnings to Gmail

DropBear

"Until we get an Internet-wide public key database for every mailbox available, it will never be as easy as HTTP."

...which will always be problematic in terms of trusting that server. So, what next? Blockchain...?

Brits rattle tin for custom LCD Raspberry Pi funbox

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Early 70's Vision of the Future

...or just add a rocker switch and voila - instant Palm IIIc (only much bulkier and just a decade late or so...)

F-Secure makes SENSE of smart home IoT insecurities

DropBear

If this follows the familiar mould of generic antivirus software, it will take a full day after a power cut before you can actually turn on any lights again, it will introduce a five second delay between hitting the switch and the light turning on, it will preventively quarantine and block access to your bathroom light simply because it exhibits suspicious activity during daytime, it will helpfully protect everything from your power sockets to the elevator in the building without being asked as soon as you install it, and it will nag you every few months to register it again - or else.

Big Bang left us with a perfect random number generator

DropBear

Aren't RNGs based on de-tuned radio noise already using the Big Bang as source...? What exactly is new here?

Old tech, new battles: Inside F-Secure’s formidable Faraday cage

DropBear

Re: Love the FC (Faraday Cage)!

"he determined that copper screening had holes that were under the wavelengths of the radiation he wanted to stop"

He and everyone else who has ever known anything about electromagnetic radiation and happened to ever see a microwave oven. The front "window" of each and every one of those is not actually a bunch of small holes by accident you know...

Identifying terrorists: Let's find a value for needle in haystack

DropBear

Re: I think you all have hit it on the head !

I have a small issue with c), as these things go usually nobody (of the public) gets asked whether they wish to "let it happen" or not. Actually the only way to make your dissenting point known seems to be with a hockey mask and a chainsaw, but that apparently gets frowned upon, so do it at your own risk...

Roamers rejoice! Google Maps gets offline regional navigation

DropBear
Happy

Or you could use MapFactor Navigator with OpenStreetMap maps for free, offline, turn-by-turn, any number of countries on-board - the entire UK is 300MB...

DC judge rips into the NSA over mass surveillance

DropBear

Re: Klayman versus Obama

Oh, that guy. He entered the witness protection program and assumed a new identity as "Tommynaut" - last I heard he was working as a pilot...

What the Investigatory Powers Bill will mean for your internet use

DropBear

Re: Can anyone* see my web requests if I use HTTPS?

" I nearly added "or on your smartphone" then I laughed at myself."

Why? After all, there is an off switch for WiFi on most of them... and if they can legally get your 3G browsing history, they can also get your home one...

DropBear
Trollface

"If you want to do a Wikipedia search use !w"

Wait, wait, I'm confused. If I want a Yahoo! result, do I use !y, y! or !y! ?

Einstein's brain to be picked by satellites

DropBear

Re: Wait. What the ....

...and a great many more are not alive anymore either a) because the relevant medical advances were either somehow not made at all (and don't seem to be forthcoming in the foreseeable future either in spite of many decades of "study"), b) because they could not afford to pay for it or c) because ultimately you're just disposable meat to any doctor and none of them will lose a second of sleep whether you live or die. </rant> Sorry, pet peeve triggered... the rest of your argument is quite valid.

Let's get to the bottom of in-app purchases that go titsup

DropBear
IT Angle

Re: Sacrebleu

...insert obligatory joke made by Niklaus Wirth himself about Europeans calling him by name and Americans by worth...

Cryptowall 4.0: Update makes world's worst ransomware worse still

DropBear
Joke

Re: Hunt the bastards down and publicly execute them

And their fathers! And their father's fathers! And their father's father's fa... ouch... ouch... owww... *runs away*

NASA photo gallery: How to blow $200m of rocket in seconds

DropBear

Re: Ultimate goal

"I question that cats are intelligent. Who did they choose for servants?"

Of course they are. Why else would they hunt mice...? They know who is responsible for this version of Earth...

AMD sued: Number of Bulldozer cores in its chips is a lie, allegedly

DropBear

Re: This smells like an Intel financed taxtic

Wrong. I always knew Intel hyperthreaded "CPUs" showing up under windows as "half as many actual cores" while AMD was always "as many actual, physical cores as show up / claimed". This development certainly blurs the line, but what it also does is shatter my confidence that at least I actually get what it says on the tin with AMD. As a rabid lifelong AMD supporter, this might just be the point where I turn my back and no longer care - something they might have done well to consider before going down this route...

Google engineer names and shames dodgy USB Type-C cable makers

DropBear

Re: Depend on a cable?

"Why would anyone in the right mind depend on a cable from an unknown supplier to protect their expensive kit."

So what should happen when your exquisitely crafted $500 3A-capable power brick and equally exquisitely crafted $500 3A-guzzling USB device get hooked together with the first USB cable you can get your hands on, possibly originally sold with a self- and / or micro-powered gadget slurping not even 100mA, with its power leads sized accordingly...? Attach device -> "I need moar power!" -> "Roger, I'm fine with that!" -> "Bleurghhargfraggh... braaaaains..."

DropBear
Trollface

Re: If I had a nickel

Sorry, that nickel (per device) was had by them instead, and it's safe to assume they sold a lot of them...

DropBear

Re: No more 99p shop cables for me

"The cable is re-assuringly thick"

If it's really cheap and you really give a #### buy two and section one somewhere. Then potentially marvel at the 0.01mm thick copper ($$$$$) wires inside the 5mm thick plastic ($0.001) - at least, if car jumper cables are anything to go by considering it's rare to gaze upon the thickness of the actual wire underneath the lavishly thick rubber without getting the heebeejeebees with most of them...

DropBear
Joke

...but but but I want to take and then hold them there!

Yay, more 'STEM' grads! You're using your maths degree to do ... what?

DropBear
WTF?

Re: "Before Current Era arithmetic is useless"

"...says someone who only pays for anything by card or with exact money."

Do please show me someone who knows his total-to-pay (beyond a rather vague range) before being told at the supermarket checkout, so I can show you a bloody liar...

DropBear
Devil

Re: If you can't calculate the angles on a 50-cent coin...

"The idea that these skills are only relevant to a small number of professional scientists is utterly ridiculous." [Citation needed. Badly.]

I'd like to hear how and where does any sort of math (past bog-basic addition / multiplication etc. and even that with small numbers only) get used in the daily course of a mundane job like 99% of us have (like a plumber / clerk / supermarket drone / cab driver / insurance salesman / bouncer / hair dresser / car mechanic / cook or waitress in a restaurant / any number of paper shuffling bureaucratic administration / etc. you name it). Even where geometry might seem to apply, it's actually just a measuring tape and a straight edge and / or sheer learned numeric experience ("you need that size there"). And please do try to refrain from contrived "examples" like "well if you see a brick falling from the roof you need to be able to predict the parabola before it hits you..." (and no, a driver doesn't "calculate" anything about how he drives his car) or else I won't be responsible for my actions...

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Right livelihood?

"What's a bloke to do for a living?"

Pinpoint the goldrush-du-jour, resist temptation to participate at all costs, and start selling shovels, pickaxes and booze.

DropBear

Re: Bah!

"The problem isn't that the country (any country) doesn't need STEM types, it is that those countries cannot remunerate them in the industries that do need them to a level commensurate with the cost of the education required in any other job than salesman or burger flipper." TFTFY...

DropBear

"...were expected to be able to handle..."

Not that they have actually ever used them during their entire adult lives, within or without the activity of creating said "internet age", mind you. But sure, they were expected to be able to...

Startup founder taken hostage by laid-off workers

DropBear
Devil

Re: Sir

"face the people themselves took guts"

Oh, those poor, poor guilt-ridden executives seeing themselves having to say "Yo' ass is fired!" one by one to all those fearsome, vicious soon-to-be-ex-employees! Personally offering to safeguard the last vestiges of the company's cash in their own personal bank accounts, cleverly camouflaged as bonuses, exit payments and other assorted golden parachutes! Ready to heroically go down with the ship - always last to leave, even if that means they have to fire absolutely everyone doing any actual work first! My heart truly bleeds for them all - I propose a moment of silence to honour the fallen ones...

Linus Torvalds targeted by honeytraps, claims Eric S. Raymond

DropBear

Re: Hang on a mo, Eric

Saying that 'concern about being the target of a terrorist or of baseless but serious accusations is equally misguided' is a bit disingenuous in the same way as saying "set someone on fire and you'll keep them warm for the rest of their life" is...

DropBear
Trollface

Looks like a prime market for the Google Glass - maybe they missed their niche...? Hard to think of a better way to proclaim "I'm recording this shit. Go ahead, make my day, punk!".

PC sales will rise again, predicts Intel, but tablets are toast

DropBear
Trollface

Re: "Skaugen said the new cameras make this impossible"

What he meant is that now you actually have to wrap that photo onto a pot of moderately fresh coffee...

DropBear

Re: Get real!

I'd quote the well-known "It's not paranoia if they're really after you", but I don't think there's any point - the broken babelfish in the ears of those with their head in the sand translates anything they hear as "you're right you're safe you're right you're safe you're right..."

Is the world ready for a bare-metal OS/2 rebirth?

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Major niche OS

"COPS printing"

Reboots are popular these days - "CHiPs - patrolling the Information Superhighway on Light Cycles", anyone?

Now VW air-pollution cheatware 'found in Audis and Porsches'

DropBear

Re: ... 'a couple of rogue software engineers'

"rogue software engineers" - Oh, they should be exceedingly easy to find - they'll be the only ones stroking white fluffy cats, surely...