Posts by DropBear

Re: Deeper thought

Exactly. An amazing number of people these days seem to gloss over the fact that what we need is not better security (well, that too) but responsibly designed appliances that interlock out locally (and in hardware, without any ability to override it) things that are "not supposed to ever happen or else". That would still not account for wrong _combinations_ of otherwise unrelated stuff ending up doing some damage, but it would be a damn good start.

Re: A very well done

Considering I'm pretty sure more or less every single viewer of the launch was there to see the landing, not the launch, I find people getting annoyed at the total lack of any coverage of it hardly surprising. As exciting and formidable a thing rocketry is, you have to remember that by Apollo 13, people only got interested after the tanks blew up - this is no different.

It seems I have to get into the habit of "DVR-watching" space exploration too - apparently staying civil when something gets postponed for the umpteenth time is not my strong suit. Thanks for the info though, I was looking for that but their site just hangs at 0:0:0:0 for now...

Re: TLDR - properly.

Yeah ok, if that's true, my respect is back to normal levels or less... :) The original point remains though.

"Subtle errors are easy to make in cryptographic code, so if they wrote their own implementation, even with a weakness like this, it hardly suggests no requirement [...] to know anything about coding."

I'm assuming that refers to the users who just buy the "make-a-crypto-virus" kit sold by the guys who implemented that crypto (in this case, poorly) in the first place.

Re: Plenty of old code out there

I'm not disagreeing (heck, I do the same thing with similar results), but I'd like to point out that these 'things' are meant to be static and not change once they're installed - DARPA seems to want something that can keep up with the obligatory changes in time that right now force an upgrade every now and then. To be honest, never to have to uproot every custom setting I ever did just to raze everything and start all over again would be nothing short of heaven for me too - I'm already clinging to scary old versions of things way past of what's reasonable, but something invariably comes along that forces me to move on or lose functionality that used to work before.

I wasn't aware you could get pre-video ads. Although to be fair this may also be due to there being a lot less ads targeted towards (= paid for by entities interested in) my geographic location. Well, either that or ABP.

Re: Automated mouse catcher.

Ah, but imagine an RC-on-wheels, sensor-driven mousetrap that could go follow those pesky rodents! If the mere thought of a mobile trap constantly following them always keeping a respectful distance doesn't kill those mice either by sheer spookiness or by ludicrousness factor alone, nothing can...

Re: The punishment

"You know, _Punishment_."

Which may or may not be effective, if only it weren't taken as being the price of getting caught (as opposed to stealing - since everyone knows stealing is the way to street-cred and fortune, how can it possibly be wrong...?). As it is, it will only be perceived as a lame lesson to hide your tracks better whenever you feast on your rightful prey - all those not-quite-human suckaz less awesome and cunning than you... (TL;DR: as long as successfully relieving other people of their possessions is a thing certain kinds of people look up to, nothing will change anything, full stop).

Re: Bored of Battery "Breakthroughs"

"...and I want them now."'

Well, I can get you holograms and supercapacitors - those actually do exist already. Will that do for the moment? Because by the looks of it we'll have to wait a few centuries at the very least for anything else on that list, if ever (and yes, that includes better batteries).

Re: Abandoned their work?

"F**k this! Can't be arsed anymore!"

Uhhh no, the proper procedure for that is having a note at the top of your website promising the next new version of your software "really soon", dated three years ago.

Re: Buried Lede

Do keep in mind that these are just labels. They may well have had someone tasked with the equivalent of the job and called it something else or nothing in particular - and I'm certainly not impressed by the act itself of sticking labels on things. That said, I have obviously no idea how much of that job was being done (or not) before by anyone at Uber.

Re: Finally replacing it at work

"Without ClassicShell, I wouldn't be doing it now."

Right you are, it's the first thing I installed on Win7 to make it bearable (only just - when it's impossible to avoid using it; the rest is XP all the way).

Re: Not quite as hacker-friendly as I want

I actually tried to look this up and failed - do you have a link for those claims...?