* Posts by allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

6157 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Oct 2015

$30 webcam spun into persistent network backdoor

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Ouch.

Always use the proper tools and protective gear, kids!

NASA photos: Dawn's December deep-dive haul arrives on Earth

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Nice!

EFF wants Cisco in front of a judge over tech for China's 'Great Firewall'

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Interesting approach. However, the cynic in me says that the effect will be limited to adding some new paragraphs to T&Cs and EULAs.

BlackBerry baffled by Dutch cops' phone encryption cracked brag

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Post-it with private key stuck to the back of the phone?

Future Snowden hunt starts with audit of NSA spooks' privileges

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: incompetence or not? / RIBrsig

"What always boggled my mind about the whole Snowden episode is the incompetence it implies at the NSA if he truly were able to just copy all those files."

You've probably never worked in a really, really large organisation - doesn't really matter whether private or public sector, really. Ever heard the old joke about two guys looking at a huge office block? "I wonder how many people work in there?", muses one of them. "Oh, about half of them", answers the other. Yes, the NSA is full of smart people, but not necessarily in admin (or the department that sets the internal guidelines). A lot of them are your average garden variety 9-to-5 employees just shuffling along. But then, we can't all be like Jack Ryan, can we?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: If the CIA wanted him dead / Mike007

You've been re-reading your Tom Clancy novels again, haven't you? No, 'Gospodin Klerk' is not going to drop by.

OTAH: good premise for another conspiracy theory. If the CIA doesn't want him dead, then he must be working for them!

Citrix buys System Center control freak, sells CloudPlatform

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Yup, they'll make you pay.

Any takers that Citrix will buy something cloudy in, say, the next 18 months?

Cisco forgot its own passwords for seven weeks

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Hmm...

Mistake or practical joke?

What's going on with X.org? Desktop software body could lose domain

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Pass the Sick Bag!

Steve - thanks for the link! I will put it to good use.

Trend Micro AV gave any website command-line access to Windows PCs

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: 'Security' software is a scam

So, in short, any OS out there is a scam?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Pick your poison

"... the enemy of my enemy is my friend..."

No.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.

Source: The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries (#29)

FRITZ!Box home broadband routers' security FRITZed

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Been using AVM equipment since, uh, the early 1990ies? A long time, anyway. IIRC, at one point way back when they had the only ISDN cards that actually worked... so I just kept on using their gear. Never has been 'on the Fritz' so far. Good gear, good documentation - can't say anything about their support as so far I have never needed it.

Philae's phinal phlop: Lonely lander didn't answer wakeup signal

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Well, you can't win 'em all, can you? Still, all things considered, an amazing mission. Anyone even thinking about calling it a failure? Better keep quiet - you have no idea...

David Bowie: Musician, actor... tech admirer

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"For many, it’ll be like the passing of Elvis Presley in 1977, or Princess Diana in 1997 – you’ll remember where you were and what you were doing that moment you heard the news."

Yes. I remember exactly what I was doing - I was lstening to the news.

It's sad enough as it is - no need for syrupy pathos.

Switzerland, Spain and France are beating UK at DevOps – survey

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: B******S

It's not fear of change. Change is always an opportunity. It's the dread of yet another potentially good (although not exactly new) idea being perverted into something really unpleasant by the type of management that has heard the new buzzword, read an executive summary in a trade magazine, feels compelled to get on the bandwagon - but is utterly, totally fucking clueless about what it really means. Fun for the whole family!

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"More than 1,400 senior IT and business executives worldwide were quizzed as part of the research." (emphasis by me)

Well, that's the flaw in the survey's methodology right there. The least Freeform Dynamics (what the hell is that supposed to mean anyway) should have done is some sort of error correction based on the IT/business executive ratio.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: wayasay?!

Hey, I bet nearly 100% of them are using containers. Tupperware containers. In the break room fridge.

Discworld fans stake claim to element 117

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Mushroom

Re: periodic table

One of the 'what ifs' in Randall 'xkcd' Munroe's brilliant 'What If' explores the possibility of making a model of the periodic table out of the real stuff, i.e. putting a sample of each element in a shelve in the same arrangement as in the table of elements. Interesting. (Hint: see icon.)

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Tedium

Looks like you have discovered Downvotium...

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Petition fatigue

Is this a medical condition?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Get a life

As in "hanging out in the interwebs, posting in forums?" Riiight...

Planet-bonking rock hunt armed with humanity's cruellest weapon: bureaucracy

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: But where...

He died right at the beginning of the movie. No, wait, what?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: What kind of an acronym is that?

PlaDeCO - works for me...

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: o.O

And if that doesn't work, it's time for the t-shirts!

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Why 140 m,

I wonderd. In El Reg units this is exactly 1,000 linguini. Coincidence?

Imation sells off the family jewels

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Strippers!

As 'assets' are young female donkeys - hullo, hullo, hullo - what's all this, then?

Samsung turns to smart home, wearables chips as mobile declines

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: At CES, Samsung showed off some of the innovations

A dirty mind is like a never ending party.

It's replicant Roy Batty's birthday – but hey, where's my killer robot?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: if robot CPU requirement is too large, 'mini-cloud' it

In short: something like SIRI in a robot.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Deckard

Also, if Deckard was an android, he wouldn't have been kicked around by Roy that much. He doesn't win the confrontation - Roy choses to let him live. (Talking about the film version here, obviously.)

Vaguely related tangent: last year I saw some posters announcing some sort of event and thought the guy on it was Rutger Hauer. When I looked closer he turned out to be Herman van Veen. Oh my.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"At the time Blade Runner was made, computing was in its infancy."

What?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Nightmare

H R Giger did some designs based around that idea.

Exploit kits throw Flash bash party, invite Crypt0l0cker, spam bots

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Is he relly that fast? Impressive.

Time to worry about container standard's AWOL dates?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

A clearly defined set of international standards, that are adhered to as well - a mad, fevered dream in the world of software.

Boozing is unsafe at ‘any level’, thunders chief UK.gov quack

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Then there is Prohibition... / statistics

Studies have shown that 57,8 % of statistics used to make a point in a discussion are made up on the spot.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Hands up who didn't see this coming?

"...unlike tobacco, its easy enough to make your own beer/wine/spirits..."

Tobacco is a plant. You can grow it in your garden or in a box on the windowsill or indoors. (If you live in northern Scandinavia or similar, you'd need some sort f greenhouse anyway.) Even the bit after the harvest isn't that complicated and about on par with makein wine or beer, distilling is a bit more tricky. Source: my grandparents did this for a while, way back when.

Nvidia GPUs give smut viewed incognito a second coming

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

My gripe with this is the private mode of Chrome not being private. It's not just used for viewing porn, you now.

General Motors turns key on bug bounty program

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Time to roll out the classics...

Intel admits Skylakes can ... ... ... freeze in the middle of work

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: A 'bug' involving prime number maths eh?

Naw, this is just a fuckup. You give 'them' too much credit - if they were the evil geniuses you seem to think 'they' are, 'they' would have made damn sure anything involving prime numbers wouln't trip anything undesired.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: P's and Q's (or P's and S's)

Had similar problems around the same time - profs from the math faculty teaching would-be engineers. When worlds collide... However, my Casio somethinsomething (replaced by a HP48sx as soon as possible) and comrades Bronstein / Semendajew / Musiol / Mühlig helped a lot to get me through this.

Philae's phinal phling: Germans made weekend spin-up attempt

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Probably an estimate.

Going on a date, and it's just the two of you? How ... quaint. OkCupid's setting up threesomes

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"The company claims that the change is more than just an effort to get randy 20-somethings over to its platform, saying it has noticed an increase in the number of users who are "seriously interested in group sex." Apparently 24 per cent of its users are, although we wonder what their definition of "seriously interested" is."

I also wonder what their definition of "group sex" is.

Juniper resets 'days since last rogue code incident' clock

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

I have said it before and I'll say it again: if it comes out of a machine it ain't random - see xkcd for alternatives.

UK energy minister rejects 'waste of money' smart meters claim

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"But interested to know what exactly you think is so special about the UK electricity supply sector that makes you think it is so different from others like Australia and NZ?"

I was going to comment along the lines that as the cars in the UK drive on the wrong side of the road, maybe the electrons were travelling through the wrong wires - but then I remembered that in NZ and Australia are driving on the left as well. So, sorry, no idea.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Seems to me that the main disingenuity here is that many non tech aware people will think that a smart meter will automatically save them money."

Exactly. No, wait, I'd like to tweak it a bit:

1) Replace 'many' with 'nearly all'.

2) Take into account that nearly all of the people making the decisions are 'non technical people', too.

Wait again - I've just had a brilliant idea! If a smart meter saves me money, I'll have them install two! I'll save twice as much!

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Just how big is this thing???"

Yeah, well, there has to be enough room inside for the little man that takes the readings and pulls the levers and stuff, see?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: I think it *will* be a ghastly mess

Looks good on paper. Also, paper is from 2009.

Chinese unleash autonomous airborne taxi

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: 100kg limit

Yup, that's me out right now (dammit, X-mas!)

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Wheels

As long as you can walk away from it, it qualifies as a "landing". If you can't, it's a crash.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Blade Runner / what would it sound like?

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