Posts by Daniel B.
1929 posts • joined Friday 12th October 2007 19:57 GMT
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@Matthew 17
"Doesn't explain how it'' be propelled though."
Easy, slap a couple of VASIMRs on the nacelles! No warp drive, but at least we could get impulse power!
The fun thing on the nuke-powered Enterprise is that the design can actually harbor a nuclear reactor safely. Put it where the "warp core" would usually be; if it threatens to melt down, just do the separation thingy done in Star Trek Generations. Ta-da!
Even simpler
Set up an LDAP server in said separate box. Make the app auth against that, and set up all lockout policies on the LDAP server.
Poof! Done! Easy as cake.
There is a use, kinda.
It's useful for mobile banking apps; the seed will be encrypted using a key derived by a PIN given by the user. On a phone, it's harder to get malware if you're using a secure mobile OS, especially one that's got FIPS 140-2 lvl 2 certification.
But on Windows? You deserve to have your token pwned. Bad idea! Bad!
Mutation
I suppose it is easier to encode an 1/0 value that survives random mutations than trying to do more complex data on that. Every time a cell reproduces, there's a probability that mutation will happen. These boffins were able to make said value survive these mutations. That's a pretty good achievement for them...
Posted in Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Not id?
I had the distinct idea that this was an id job. Looks like it was outsourced then ....
Posted in Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Team Fortress
Team Fortress originated as a Quake1 mod. CTF started the whole modding craze on Quake1, but TF was probably the magnum opus of Q1 mods! So much that they actually managed to make up a standalone game out of that mod :)
Posted in Google in the clear on Oracle patents
Huh?
Who's this Florian Mueller guy? No, really. Never heard of him before, yet it seems he has some infamy attached to him....
Posted in VW STUNS WORLD+DOG WITH REAL HOVER-CAR!
Re: I like how in China...
Asian countries actually value good grades instead of rooting for the dumb sports dudes. Check out Jackie Chan's comments on bullying; in a stunning reversal of what happens in the average US school, you only get bullied around if you are a good-for-nothing kid. That is, the average US bully would actually find himself being bullied by *the rest of the school* if he were in a country like China.
I know they suck on other stuff like censorship, but at least their educational values seem to be right on.
Lots of reasons to love and hate Sony.
As Captain Underpants said, Bad Sony has been on the rise and the general public has noticed it. 12 years ago, my parents' home was a 100% Sony shop: Sony Stereo, Sony CD Player, Sony TV, Sony VCR, Playstation, my (still working) Walkman. Currently my home has 2 PS3s (which I'll explain later), the aforementioned stereo which I rescued from my mom's attic, a Walkman, and my probably still functional SE W300i I used back in 2007.
Sony lost the hardware edge, and then went on being dicks on the whole PS3 OtherOS issue. I was bitten by their OtherOS axing; I refused to dole out money for a new PS3 so I remained offline until I found a compromise option: buying a phat PS3 with the BC support and updating *that* one to the OtherOS-killing Firmware. They turned from the freedom-fighting Sony that fought the MAFIAA on fair use rights for VCRs to the one installing rootkits on PCs and going after people trying to re-enable OtherOS instead of simply switching OtherOS back on. Probably the only good thing to come in recent years besides the PS3 would be the BD standard, which has been superior to HDDVD since forever, and unencumbered by MS crappy tech.
Maybe Sony should get rid of its Music branch and get back to treating well their customers and doing awesome consumer products. It seems the Media stuff is the root of all Sony's evil...
Re: Storing IPs
I present to you, the 'inet' datatype in PostgreSQL. Fully IPv6 compatible.
Nice to find out that my age-old log analytics software I developed waaay back in 2006 will still work after we're all using IPv6.
NAT problems
NAT breaks a lot of shit; the reason everything hasn't broken down yet is because a lot of current applications have the patchwork to wade through the problems caused by NAT. What is really happening is that NAT endpoints are processing a lot of crap they wouldn't usually be doing, while building up a generation of IT folks that think NAT = security. It isn't. If your firewall is badly configured, its just a matter of time before someone manages to get traffic routed *into* your NATting device and you'll be screwed.
NAT is also causing problems in other areas; some residential ISPs now give you a 10.0.0.0/8 NATted IP, and will charge 10x or 100x the regular cost for your broadband if you want the "privilege" of having a publicly routeable IP. This practice will increase, pimping off power users until IPv6 gets fully deployed. Hopefully, the fallacy of NAT will die by then. Now, if the site-scope addy space were to be re-implemented, that would be nice...
Andrew Ryan's dream lives on
SWAT + dog execution
There was this one case in the US where an idiot cop thought the cracking sound of a door (which was being RAMMED down) was a gunshot sound went on and shot a teenager kid who has stolen a PS3. Er, shot and KILLED the kid... and while you might argue that a SixAxis control looks like a gun, you'd expect a cop to say "drop your weapon" wouldn't you?
Oh, and when the dead kid's dog went on to attack the cop, he shot said dog dead as well. So there you go.
Posted in Microsoft kills Windows Live brand
Hotmail
They almost killed the brand back in 2005. Of course, someone realized that Hotmail had much more brand recognition than "live mail" so they left it with a midway name change: Windows Live Hotmail.
Posted in Microsoft kills Windows Live brand
The Neverending Name Change
Oh yeah, we also still call it MSN Messenger. Though they did a worse job with their Spaces thingy, which at some point ended up being called:
"MSN Live Spaces" and the URL for my space would be something like "http://myself.live.spaces.msn.com" huh?
BTW, now that they're killing "Live", can they pleeease allow us to put nicknames on our MSN Messenger accounts? Currently we're forced into having our full real name put as the handle, instead of a nickname.
Car Rental
The last time I rented a car, they used the click-clack machine to make an "open voucher". This is, they clack the card, then use the phone method to pre-authorize a charge (about $700 USD) and store the voucher.
When I brought back the car 3 days later, they again use the phone to turn the "preauthorized" charge into an actual charge for the real amount (which was $100). Then the amount and auth code is put on the click-clacked voucher along with the amount.
So the system is sometimes used with the same lifecycle as the electronic POS, but done by phone.
Re: Not everywhere
Even the credit cards? A lot of bankcards over here don't have embossed numbers (Mexico) but most of the credit cards do have the embossed numbers.
Re: Ill buy that
You got it backwards. In Aussie, the carriers aren't calling non-4G shit 4G; Apple is trying to push the same BS done in the US and Mexico that HSPA+ is "4G". Them using this argument shows off how the ITU shouldn't have backed down on their hard stance, and that carriers selling HSPA+ as 4G are liars.
Posted in Battlefield Earth ruled worst film EVER
Manos
I'm guessing that Manos: The Hands of Fate didn't win the #1 spot basically because nobody has seen it.
Heading straight down, more likely.
Elop's decision to act as MS mole and ram WP7 on Nokia seems to have turned a slow profit descent into a nosedive. If shareholders were smart, they would be voting for Elop to get sacked and put up someone who can either ressurrect Symbian (with Belle) or push out an Android stopgap while they get their shit together.
Switching to WinMo killed Palm, it seems that the same is happening to Nokia so they should get rid of it while they still can pull themselves out of that mess.
oooh
PWRs are indeed old, but not as old as BWRs. Which is what Fukushima had. Um... you can read that on Wikipedia.
Reading failure
Prof. Stephen Thomas is talking about LWRs. That's only one type of reactor. PWR? Thorium? Pebble-bed? CANDU? Those have safeguards against LOCA.
Someone made a doo-doo
If the cert is valid since 25 March, 2012 ... someone didn't do their job. You should be replacing the cert as soon as you get the new one (and it's valid) instead of waiting 'till the very last moment.
1) Anti-abortionists are by default conservatives, in the sense that they do not tolerate any kind of abortion at all. Those who think about it as a human-rights issue have more leeway; support for first-trimester abortion exists among this people.
2) Something I realized after posting. Yes, anyone can claim 'I am anonymous! hahaha!!' but most of the big cases have usually been related on either anti-corporativism (attacks against RIAA/MPAA or the DDoSers from India, ACS:Law) or anti-conservatives (Tea Party, BNP, Fox News) so it does seem weird to see someone with opposing views to claim that. In fact, it would be interesting to see what the collective Anonymous thinks about that. They're not too keen on their image being used for random stuff.
Conservatards
I thought the Anonymous bunch were free from these kind of idiots. I actually like how they've gone against racists (BNP), wannabe fascists, islamophobes and more recently ultrarightwinger trolls in Mexico, but this is something I'd see more as a rightwingnutter action.
FAIL.
Valve hardware
It won't have a power cord. It won't need it, because it will be powerd by Steam!
Smells like Steve Jobs
Given that Jobs hated Java's guts during his last years, this smells like Apple's version of Pearl Harbor. Delay the fix, then get OSX infected, then push out the fix and say that Java will be disabled "for your protection" in a very Norsefire way. Hm...
um...
Java is mostly secure, though the recent vuln cracks have been quite shameful. It wouldn't have bit OSX at all if they had patched up the vuln earlier.
JavaScript, however, is a craptastic attack vector and should die a horrible death. Agreed on that!
Posted in So what's the worst movie NEVER made?
Green Lantern
No, not the one that actually got made.
I refer to the one that didn't make it... the one with Jack Black. Which would've been the kind of movie you'd see Jack Black in.
Also, any of the Seuss books that hasn't been made a movie ... starring Mike Myers.
Posted in So what's the worst movie NEVER made?
Re: Titanic II
Too late, The Asylum already did that one. It involves a *literal* Titanic II, which gets smashed by an iceberg traveling at supersonic speeds.
No, I didn't pull that script out of my ass, I actually watched it. They ripped off not only Titanic, but also Poseidon (the crappy remake that is) and The Abyss...
Posted in Laptop computers are crap
Screen Size
I guess that the true problem is all this widescreen craze that has infested the recent batch of laptops. Now you got wide-ass screens that are too short to read stuff. Somehow laptop mfgs think everyone uses laptops to watch 16:9 movies instead of actually working. This is worse on netbooks, where some stuff won't even show up thanks to the height restriction.
Also, there's something weird with Vista and win7, I swear that I can't make the letters small enough anymore. I've seen XP on the same screens and it's noticeable, so much that win7 looks like a Fischer Price "my first PC" baby UI compared even to XP's candy theme.
Oh well
At least they aren't trying to push iCrap to the military. Though the NSA seems to be smart enough to know that putting iThingys as "secure" smartphones is a bad idea.
Though if the feds REALLY want secure smartphones, why don't they simply get the Sectera Edge? Come on dudes!
Dumping
That can be done if someone charges dumping violations (selling at a loss). If Apple/other e-tailers haven't done so, that isn't the DoJ's problem.
Or maybe most if not all books aren't being sold like that.
Madden?
Seriously, when will people stop buying DLC packaged as "new games"? FIFA 12! FIFA 13! MADDEN 12! MADDEN 13! WITH NEW PLAYER SWAPS!
Miffed that BioShock Infinite is so low on both lists. At least Resident Evil 6 seems to be up there in the top spots.
Re: What is Apple (supposedly) guilty of?
"If Apple had acted to control the prices Amazon charges then the DoJ would have case."
They did, by colluding with publishers and by their "most favoured nation" clause.
Bad if they are.
A device using a 4-digit PIN to "secure" any kind of crypto key? Not unless there's something else protecting stuff. Androids have got FIPS 140-2 according to this article, I'd think that those handsets are closer to certification.
I wouldn't bet on an iPhone as a secure device. If I were the US Government, I'd use the Sectera Edge instead; they developed a truly secure smartphone. This already came to light when Obama got elected.
Re: LOAD"*",8,1
First used to fire up Test Drive, the day my dad bought the 1541-II disk drive.
I never really knew what LOAD "*",8,1 meant though. I did save stuff with SAVE "BLAH",8 and load 'em in a similar manner though. :)
Doubt on the Hispanic.
Given the Spaniglish words on that, I doubt it was an actual Hispanic d00d. It reads more like stereotypical stuff more than what someone who was actually from Mexico would write, at least. ("Puñeta" gives it away. The only time I've heard that in the last 2 years referring to a person has been while watching Machete.)
Maybe he's channeling Cheech & Chong?
Oh that dream sounds nice, but it wouldn't really work like that given that Jobs was for all the ugly things we hate Hollywood for (inane copyright extensions, DRM, "IP protection", stupid patents) so it would be more like the Rise of the Empire.
Of course, Jobs is no more, Cook might just stray away from that nonsense. Time will tell..
Posted in Samsung forging ARM server chips?
Go for it!
The sooner we get out of the garbage x86 arch, the better!
Posted in IPv6 networking: Bad news for small biz
The author hasn't really checked out IPv6.
link-local and other types of address remove the need for NAT, which used to be "I need private addys to connect to my junk w/o being ISP dependant".
The mandatory 64-bit host segment removes the need for NAT in consumer networks, as you have 2^64 IP addys to use from your ISP, and it'll work automagically.
The only thing you don't have with IPv6 is the "hide my public IP address", which is mostly security theater. The real protection you have with "NAT" is actually the fact that all NAT implementing devices will also have firewall rules by default that block outside traffic from the inside.
Posted in IPv6 networking: Bad news for small biz
You fail at IPv6.
By definition, end-users will get a 64-bit host segment with IPv6, which means you will always have at least a 2^64 address range, eliminating the need for NAT in most consumer markets. Consumer routers can simply implement the same firewall rules they do today, but they'll get a load off their back on preserving state for NATted connections.
Local connectivity can be done with link-local addresses or the site-local ones if you really need to subnet the local IPv6 addys.
And contrary to what this article's poster said, you *can* set up static addresses on IPv6.
Um... @Just Thinking
You didn't quite read the article, did you?
- Mall A puts up banners in its own property
- Mall B sends "security" goons to Mall A's banners
- Mall A's security lines up to protect banners
- Mall B's goons don't give a shit and tear down the banners, all gangster-style.
No tearing down for security reasons, this was squarely lawlessness showing up. I do wonder why the hell didn't Parkland Mall call the cops?
Yet Another Stupid Patent
IMVU
Wii/Mii
Second Life
All of these allow you to do these avatars, and the patenty stuff e ven looks like something ripped off from the Wii's Mii. This is getting stupid!
Cracking that passphrase will make the cracker insane!
Wonder how this'll work over here. Most bankcards (debit, that is) don't even bother putting our name on the card. Whenever I swipe one of those, I end up being called "EL CLIENTE". Oooh!!
not just small towns
Get into a specialist niche market, you'll find that even in a big sprawling megacity, the IT industry is extremely well connected. That dude who was a code monkey at your previous employer? He might be the one offering you a good job 3 years from now!
The only ones that would benefit from SIMless handsets are the operators. Try using your Sprint phone on Verizon? Mexico's Iusacell? Can't? That's because unlike the SIM-toting handsets, the phone itself has all the identity stuff and thus can be thoroughly gimped by the operator.
I ditched Iusacell because they went down the CDMA SIMless route. SIMless phones are for me a relic of the 20th century.
Yanks beat y'all on that
The US beat schools on that, given that DST begins at the beginning of March instead of "right after Spring", so maybe that's why schools are teaching the stuff like that. DST before the equinox does sound daft, doesn't it?
