* Posts by Mephistro

2329 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2007

Measure for measure: We visit the most applied-physicist-rich building in the UK

Mephistro
Joke

Re: Peak pedantry

"I presume you used the send corrections link?"

Oh, come on! If everybody did that, poor Ed - you know, that guy who writes snarky comments inside other people's articles- would find himself unemployed, you insensitive clod!

Kids hack Canadian ATM during LUNCH HOUR

Mephistro

Re: Mephhead Not an 'hack'. (@

'So how do you distinguish between a "hack" and a "crack"?'

Firstly, I was addressing the part of MB's comment where he claimed that "(what the kids did) is not hacking". Which is totally bollocks, in my opinion.

To me, computer 'cracking' is a subset of computer 'hacking' and both can be often carried out without coding a single line. Hell, sometimes both can be carried out without even touching a computer (through 'social engineering').

Mephistro
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Mephhead Not an 'hack'.

" I thought I was rather generously ignoring your lack of insight into the technical side of hacking"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!

Your 'insight into the technical side of hacking', judging from your previous comments, comes probably from a few Hollywood flicks and TV shows. And pulling straight from your arse some 'definitions' nobody else agrees with doesn't help to raise your credibility either. As for your 'generosity' part... see icon.

Mephistro
Happy

Re: Mephhead Not an 'hack'.

From your original comment: "...is not hacking"

Please, Matt, stop moving the goalposts. It's so obvious it's not even funny.

Mephistro

Re: Not an 'hack'.

"Using the default administrator's password from a downloaded manual is not hacking, it's exploiting poor security practices"

Matt, FYI, "exploiting poor security practices" is ~90% of hacking. So yes, what they did is hacking. White Hat hacking, to be more precise.

Snowden's Big Brother isn't as Orwellian as you'd think

Mephistro

Re: @RyokuMas It's not today's government you need to worry about...(@ RyokuMas)

"Google is entirely an unelected body"

I find your argument a little bit disingenuous. Google is a private company, and the public has just two ways of putting pressure on them, which are:

- Voting with their wallets: If Google sells your privacy to a government or to the highest bidder, don't use Google services*.

- Putting pressure on the government -with votes and if that fails, with protests and demonstrations- to change the laws in such a way that these acts -by Google or whoever- are made illegal.

Seriously, if one of the parts -the American government- can order Google -or any other private company- to hand over our private data without proper judiciary oversight and then cover their requests with gag orders, the biggest culprit -quite obviously- is not Google.

*: Disclaimer: I use Gmail for routine communications with my customers and friends, i.e. anything that doesn't seriously compromise their security/privacy or mine. For more sensitive communications, I have a 'safe' and well protected account, and the data and email text are encrypted using several open source tools. My customers usually keep in a safe one of those 'computers in an usb stick', with printed instructions and passwords.

Mephistro
Stop

Re: It's not today's government you need to worry about...

Agreed. Give any government such a power without counter-balances, responsibility and accountability and wait for a few decades, and see what happens.

Now, I think that this process is similar to the one that sent the French nobility to the guillotine and put their Russian equivalents in front of firing squads -and many millions of innocents as well. At some point, the big fish always get so far removed from the consequences of their acts that forget what lots of small fish can do when they're really pissed off.

What worries me about the current developments is that, thanks to the technology currently available to governments, they may be able to escape the consequences of their acts for a long long time, bringing about the famous 'boot stomping on a human face for a thousand years'. Or a million.

And I think Mr. Mathieson is wrong/disingenious when he claims that the current situation is not 'Orwellian' because the general populace is not subject to a similar level of surveillance as in '1984'. What the NSA and pals are doing is the same thing any good sheepdog does instinctively, i.e. scrutinize 'normal sheep' very lightly, but subjecting the leader sheep to total surveillance.

Google to let Chromebookers take video content OFFLINE

Mephistro
Angel

"Google to let Chromebookers take video content OFFLINE"

At last! I'm going to buy one of these, to see if they finally take offline that video with the goat*. I was young, and I needed the money!.

* Whitey, if you're reading this comment, please come back with me! Everything is forgiven!

'THERE'S BEEN A MURRRDER!' Plod probe Street View 'slaying'

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Re: At least it wasn't the...

And after a long forensic study of the images, I reckon we can safely discard the Pint Sized Slasher as well. Unless both criminal and victim were midgets in a 1/2 scale car model expo.

Poll: Climate change now more divisive than abortion, gun control

Mephistro
Mushroom

Re: They ALL lie to keep the cash flowing (@ AC, whenever*)

"I was speaking about GASES, METHANE in particular, you simply inferred CO2"

I didn't infer shit. And what has your first paragraph to do with anything? Who said that methane hydrates ***cough*** only get "loose" -to use your expression- by means of geological activity? And "they don't have to bubble so they are not noticable"? WTF? You know your talking BS, don't you?

"Even simple diffusion eventually brings them to the surface, they don't have to bubble so they are not noticable"

This assertion is so orthogonal to reality that I won't even bother to refute it.

"Add Nitrogen and Sulphur oxides (also greenhouse gases)"

That was what they believed a decade or so ago. Until several studies proved that Nitrogen and Sulphur oxides in the athmosphere turn really fast into nitric and sulphuric acids, that form droplets that raise the albedo. A lot.

"Once you are trained to "believe" what you are told, you can't learn anything new."

Irony?Sarcasm? Your unconscious mind sending you signals? :-)

Mephistro

Re: Consensus & Modelling (@greasemonkey)

There seems to be a popular misconception about the scope and use of weather/climate simulations. Due to the Butterfly Effect, We lack -and We will always lack - the ability to make a model that can exactly predict the weather in a longer than a few weeks period, as we don't have the processing power nor the accurate enough and abundant enough sensors to make such precise predictions.

What these models are really useful for is for identifying trends, or more technically, attractors. E.g., they find a big discrepancy -in any direction- between a model's predictions and the real climate and they know their model probably is missing an important element. They research the subject and come with some explanation, e.g. oceans absorbing carbon, the importance of seashells, or how does the climate react to volcanic eruptions, or how methane acts as a greenhouse gas, or .... . Then they go on and refine their model and compare again.

It's not an error free process, unfortunately, and I'd bet they sometimes screw up, take a wrong turn and have to go back several links in the chain of model versions. But the system at least looks to have the potential to eventually reach something very close to reality. Asking for totally accurate and precise long term predictions is disingenuous, in my opinion. On the other hand, asking for information on attractors (e.g. rising levels of CO2 produce warming, etcetera) seems the sensible thing to do. This way you know you mustn't accidentally burn down the Amazonian rainforests, or start all those oil and mining operations inside or near the North Polar Circle. Oh, wait...

So yes, if after all those years models still agree that AGW is real, I'd rather trust these models than accept the uninformed beliefs of some of my fellow commentards.

And yes, there can be bias, but there are many groups of intelligent and well prepared experts trying to find out any bias and remove it. Because finding one of these biases could well cause one of these groups to win a Nobel prize or many other prestigious scientific awards.

Mephistro

Re: They ALL lie to keep the cash flowing (@ AC, whenever*)

"The real source of most these gasses is volcanic or oceanic"

The 'volcanic origin' has been quite thoroughly addressed in a recent study about the carbon produced during the Eyjafjallajokull (take or give a few umlauts:-) eruption and other recent eruptions. In short: a volcano eruption produces very little CO2 when compared with total human CO2 production and it also produces lots of things that raise the albedo, so things tend to get even.

The fact that you named the 'oceanic origin' of atmospheric CO2 implies you don't know what you're talking about. The oceans work as carbon sinks, and if you saw an increased production of CO2 from the oceans -or more likely a decreased CO2 absorbtion rate- that would be a warning that the shit is about to hit the fan. Huge shit, huge fan.

Note*: Please, Elreg, what was wrong with the old date system?

Mephistro
Alert

(@ codejunky) (Re: @ aidanstevens)

aidanstevens wrote: "If you look at climate change from a purely scientific viewpoint the consensus is undeniable."

codejunky answered: "Actually if you look from a scientific point of view we still dont know"

Perhaps you should ponder carefully the meaning of 'scientific consensus'. What aidanstevens wrote means that a majority of scientists working in climate related areas believe AGW exists, and that's quite undeniable. You read that as if the conclusions that the actual consensus believe true are undeniable.

'oh, it must be hiding somewhere'

FYI we know pretty damn well where it's hiding. In the Oceans, whose temperatures have risen very noticeably in the last decade or so, and whose acidity (read CO2) has been also rising over the same period. And no, they don't know exactly when or how these heat sinks and carbon sinks will fail, but most of the bets are on it being quite catastrophic.

And if you think that a (more or less) stable system can withstand and survive a continuously growing amount of pressure in one direction, you should think again.

Seriously, I can understand people finding it difficult to believe that we, tiny puny human beings can affect climate, but that fact was proved back in the seventies, when climate scientists discovered a precipitation/temperature cycle affecting the USA , a cycle whose length didn't correspond to any known natural cycle. Namely, a weekly cycle.

Mephistro
Boffin

Re: No science

"Not exactly... Science does need to provide a smoking gun to prove the "A" in AGW."

Errmmmm... Quite often, crimes are solved based in 'fractional evidence', as long as there's lots of it and doesn't contradict other available data. Smoking guns aren't always the norm in real life police investigations.

Of course, in an 'ideal justice system', a sentence based on this kind of evidence should be continuously reviewed, new data should be researched and added to -or subtracted from- the body of evidence, and the sentencing changed.

Luckily for us, that's precisely the way Science works. Otherwise we'd be teaching the phlogiston theory and going around in rickshaws pulled by hungry peasants (Caution: swap peasant every ten kilometres). So for the time being we must consider AGW as 'fact' unless contrary evidence surfaces.

Office website hacked: Passwords, addresses, phone numbers slurped

Mephistro
Devil

I need some clarification

"only accounts created before August 2013"

So they have pwned Office 2013?

.

.

.

;-)

Spy platform zero day exposes cops' wiretapped calls

Mephistro
Angel

"He did not respond by the time of publication to El Reg's request to explain how the platform was not accessible outside organisations."

Because the computers are inside police buildings! With cops and guard dogs and cameras and stuff!!!

Cheesus, Elreg, this is basic stuff!!! ;-)

US DoJ to appeals court: Haha, no, seriously – Apple totally inflated ebook prices

Mephistro
Devil

“Apple’s efforts to dismember the conspiracy by attacking a few isolated pieces of evidence... "

IANAL, but shouldn't that be “Apple’s efforts to dismember the conspiracy accusation..."?

On the other hand, I'd bet my left nut on Apple being guilty as sin! ;-)

Come with me if you want a lid: Apple bags Terminator-esque LiquidMetal mobe patent

Mephistro
Happy

It's a LiquidMetal frame we're discussing here, isn't it?

I'm asking this because AFAIK LiquidMetal is supposed to revert to its normal, poly-crystalline state in two or three years, due to very small thermal stresses. I see this as a very clever way for Apple to 'hard code the warranty time' in their products.

And I'm curious as to what will be the price for replacing this bezel+screen after the warranty period/insurance period/extended warranty/whatever. If I could choose, I'd like to keep at least one of my eyes, thank you, Apple. :-)

That Snowden chap was SPOT ON says China

Mephistro
Happy

(@ Pascal Monett)

Subtleties you don't get, young padawan.

Mephistro
Devil

"...pompous language in the report..."

A question from a non-native English speaker. Is 'pompous' a synonym for 'true'? Inquiring minds want to know, etcetera.

On the other hand, the irony of the Chinese govt making these claims...

Congress divorces NIST and NSA

Mephistro
Flame

Too little, ...

... too late.

The cynic in me reckons this as another -not too effective- damage limitation exercise, to give the false impression that the USA govt is doing something to clip NSA's wings and give American citizens, allies and foreign IT customers the wrong impression that the issues are being fixed. Because, as Sanctimonious Prick said, this changes nothing.

They still can subvert the NIST and/or the companies that are implementing these crypto standards. As long as they have secret laws, secret courts and NSLs, nothing the Congress does makes any fucking difference.

Privacy at the Donmar Warehouse: All your data are belong to THEM

Mephistro
Unhappy

It's a lost battle anyway

Most people doesn't want to be educated. Most of those who can be bothered to watch the play will get a very nebulous idea of what it's all about, and most memes acquired while watching it will be forgotten in a few weeks at most, or set aside in exchange for some shiny shiny.

As usual, people won't understand the consequences of losing their privacy until said consequences bite them in their arses*. Things will get a lot worse before improving. If they ever improve, that is.

* Which seems to be the moral of this play.

Senate decides patent reform is just too much work, waves white flag

Mephistro
Facepalm

The issue will fix itself in a few years...

... when they discover exactly what removing the ability to innovate and compete from small companies and startups does to the American economy.

It won't be pretty, though.

Cisco's Chambers to Obama: Stop fiddling with our routers

Mephistro

What a surprise!!!

In this interesting link provided by fellow commentard Mother Hubbard a few months ago, we can read:

"The industry is facing a year-end deadline to add a government-approved back door into network gear. Vendors that don't provide this access risk losing export privileges."

The whole article deserves a detailed read, even if it was written in 1998!

I mean, come on! The only explanation that makes sense is that a 'normal customer' gets a unit backdoored at the Cisco factory, and 'special targets' get units 'tuned up' at these NSA facilities.

A pox on all of them!

Latest Snowden leak claims NSA bugged ALL mobile calls in the Bahamas

Mephistro
Happy

The guy only spoke the truth!

"the implication that NSA's foreign intelligence collection is arbitrary AND unconstrained is false,"

Obviously, it's not arbitrary. Their final target is spying on everyone, always.

The unconstrained part, on the other hand...

It should have been an OR instead of an AND.

Software 'appointed to board' of venture capital firm

Mephistro
Happy

I guess the only way to bribe VITAL will be with...

..." robo-sluts, and booze".

Just like human directors.

Urinating teen polluted 57 Olympic-sized swimming pools - cops

Mephistro

@ Nigel 11 (was Re: Some one else needs to be charged ...(@ Evil Auditor))

"Commonly in a flat in a Victorian building, the other taps are fed from a header tank in the loft"

I'm fine with that, as the nearest Victorian building is ~1,000 km north of my position.

:-)

Mephistro
Happy

Re: Shallow pools (@ Bloakey1 & AC)

To Bloakey:

"All a bit homo erotic what!"

If you think that a cartoon depicting people -guys&gals- in a swimming pool is 'homoerotic', perhaps the problem is not in the cartoon. Just saying.

To AC:

Give me a fucking Tom & Jerry or Roadrunner any day.

Aaaaaaamen!!!

To both:

I didn't post the video because its technical excellence, nor because I like people clad in those ridiculous swimsuits*. I posted it because it was side-splitting and spot on the subject of shallow swimming pools. To notice that though you'll need to watch the whole video. ;-)

*Note: I've hated those Speedo style swimsuits since the seventies, and I'll hate them till my last breath.

Mephistro
Joke

Re: Shallow pools

"...will be an average of 2.02 m deep..."

For safety reasons, I prefer this kind of swimming pools.

Mephistro
Happy

Re: Some one else needs to be charged ...(@ Evil Auditor)

"Why does it matter when the water is chlorinated, doesn't the chlorine simply stay in there?"

When you add chlorine to water, it combines with biological matter and destroys it, by by transforming it into salts, chlorides and stuff, and also part of it out gasses into the air. If more biological contaminants are added after the chlorine, some of those contaminants may reach the taps.

Now some thicko peeing on the water reservoir doesn't worry me much*, but dead animals and bird droppings added AFTER the chlorine... that really would freak me out. This set up also would facilitate a biologic attack on said reservoir.

Hey, the City Council could have played it smart, spent some money on a publicity campaign and turned Portland into the Golden Shower City.

*: Though I think said thicko deserves to be gobsmacked till his eyes pop out. Not because I consider him a big risk for people's health or anything, but because of... reasons. ;-)

Apple, Google: WE SURRENDER ... to each other in patent war truce

Mephistro

Re: eh

"But they did get a few billion last year"

The 120 millions is all that's left of that billion. :-)

Kaspersky warns of imposter mobile security apps

Mephistro
Holmes

Today's Capitan Obvious comment:

If an an app store accepts an app called Kaspersky*** that wasn't made by Kaspersky, we can safely conclude that said store's filtering & approval process is shit.

My next phone will probably use a Firefox OS . Or at least Cyanogenmod + a permissions control app.

How exec snatched $6m budget from his infosec team because he couldn't see ROI

Mephistro

Re: Sales Proficiencies (@ Don Jefe)

"IT folk hate to hear it, but their continued refusal to adopt sales skills holds the entire industry back. "

Sorry to disagree, but we could say something similar about execs "holding the industry back" by not learning IT skills -and by IT skills I don't mean been able to use Excel and Word to some extent. Or heart surgeons and anaesthesiologists, or...

My point is that in this complex world, specialization is mandatory. If you hire the most convincing IT guy, chances are you're discarding the most experienced an knowledgeable, and that's a recipe for disaster.

As for the risk assessments cited in the article, and given their sources, I'd say they're a bit on the optimistic side, as they don't seem to account for the potential PR backlash in case of a security breach.

Hey sailor, fancy putting your hands all over a NeRD fondleslab?

Mephistro
Thumb Up

"...aims to stimulate seamen with secure reading platform"

I see what you did there.

Look out, sysadmins - HOT FOREIGN SPIES are targeting you

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Re: They'd never get me

"I will never be bribed by the offer of hot sex, fine wines, good meals and holidays in the Carribean "

Hmmm... How about "a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French porn. "?

Danger, Will Robinson! Beware the hidden perils of BYOD

Mephistro
Facepalm

For me, BYOD means...

... bring your own device (and leave it here in this safe while you're at work, and never ever use it to access company resources, though we'll make sure of that last part by allowing only authorized devices and users to access our company's data and apps).

In my opinion, the other meaning of BYOD (The one that everybody else uses, i.e. bring any mobile device you fancy, so we can save X Euros in hardware purchases, and expend 10X Euros more in software, security and support) is utter madness, a clear indicator that management, more often than not, doesn't have a clue, and a recursive security nightmare.

Mozilla asks FCC to unleash the nuclear option on net neutrality

Mephistro
WTF?

"...petitions the FCC to reclassify internet traffic as a telecommunications service..."

How is the Internet classified now? A floating brothel?

Australian government apps access smartmobe cams but 'don't film you'

Mephistro

Re: "Its specific responses to permissions sought"...

"...both have legitimate uses and both need ths camera."

True, but this could be accomplished with two different apps with limited rights, instead of a single app to which you MUST give the Kingdom's keys.

Mephistro
Devil

"Its specific responses to permissions sought"...

... don't even name the camera. I guess that one was too difficult to explain.

Microsoft's Azure cloud goes a bit wobbly in West Europe

Mephistro

Re: Well, it *is* "International Workers' Day"

In the US, this day is called either "Law Day", "Americanization Day" or "Loyalty Day". WTF?

I think that could be one of the side effects of McCarthyism . Apparently, "Labour Day" sounds too commie for America.

Security guru: You can't blame EDWARD SNOWDEN for making US clouds LOOK leaky

Mephistro

Re: Fiduciary Responsibility (@ Don Jefe)

"what non US companies stepped up to provide cloud services 'safe' from US surveillance? Nobody"

The Snowden revelations are not a year old yet, so you should wait a bit longer before saying this. And there already are companies that have started to offer secure mail.

Any hopes of competitive alternatives died the moment Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace and Google decided to make price a primary selling point

Until European lawmakers get the hint and begin considering the implications of American cloud services in the context of European privacy laws. And in the context of industrial espionage also.

So before you go completely missing the point and making this anti US issue

No. The point in my comment was that in your circumstances your approach may be considered wise. But in slightly different circumstances -i.e. Being European and working in Europe- you'd seriously consider never using American cloud providers. Or Chinese ones, for that matter.

The IP issue is precisely why we don't do anything in the cloud

Totally agreed.

Mephistro

Re: Fiduciary Responsibility

"It could be a career ending deal for staff and management if they came to me and suggested changing vendors just because of the Snowden material"

That's because you're American. You can't opt out from surveillance, no matter where you cloud service is located. If you were a European customer, and if your company was creating original IP, or making big sales to business or government, you'd probably think differently.

Mephistro

@ 2StrokeRider

Two points:

- The costs for the spooks will skyrocket, perhaps even making mass surveillance economically unfeasible.

- The risk of discovery and prison for the spooks and their collaborators will go from about zero to quite high indeed, giving the Yanks a strong incentive to abandon mass surveillance in the area, and resorting to dirty tricks only when they're going after the really big fish.

So yes, having the data in Europe and protected by European laws can be extremely beneficial.

Trolls and victims watch Supremes for definition of meaningless patents

Mephistro
Coat

Re: x+delta

I thought it meant "The midgets don't fix a Lexus"

;-)

LOHAN spaceplane's budget minicam punches well above its weight

Mephistro
Thumb Up

I wonder...

... whether a few layers of thin and light insulator -e.g. Mylar- around the camera enclosure would do the job. I mean that the camera produces some heat itself, so if you improve the insulation, it may be enough to keep the batteries warm for all the trip.

You could try this with an el cheapo experiment, in a freezer at -20 ºC, with the camera recording its surroundings through a hole in the insulating layers. You recover the camera and check for how long it has been recording. Then, recharge the battery and repeat, minus the insulation.

And dear Sirs at the SPB, you rock! At the pace you're going, you´ll be putting a human being in orbit inside this decade! ;-)

Really? Sigh. Really? Apple's lawsuit against Google is REVIVED

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Re: Consultation fees (@ pepper)

You probably have outlined what would be the most successful reality show ever made!.

Mephistro
Flame

I've just read the patent's abstract

And is so 'generic' that it could probably describe parts of most programs created in the last fifty years.

IMO, if the USPTO has approved this crapatent they are beyond salvation.

Polymer droplets turn smartmobes into microscopes

Mephistro

Re: Foldscope excites me more (@ Sandpit)

Even if the forums don't show the whole URL, you can still select&copy it, using the "shift"+"end" keys*.

*: for Linux and Windows users, at least.

Startup CEO Chahal fired for domestic violence incident

Mephistro
Devil

Anyway, he was poor management material

Any big company's CEO , when discovering his partenaire was having unprotected sex with other people for money, would just ask for his cut of the earnings. ;-)

El Reg posse prepares for quid-a-day nosh challenge

Mephistro

Re: There is an error in the spreadsheet

Using hidden columns is cheating! ;-)