* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

Apple has THREE TIMES as much cash as US govt, TWICE the UK

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Currently they are pumping the cash from the print shop INTO the banks to keep Wall Street going. Do not expect anything to happen before this goes really sour.

It may be ILLEGAL to run Heartbleed health checks – IT lawyer

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Headmaster

"Just phone up your friendly Romanian"

lift anything from the memory of a secure server

Actually randomly lift 64K from the process answering the SSL heartbeat.

Snowden lawyer PGP email 'crack' flap: What REALLY happened?

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I am not happy about this.

US security experts with a patriotic – generally pro-NSA – perspective (such as the th3j35t3r here), along with former NSA staffers (here), were delighted by the whole episode

Until their $PREFERRED_POLITICIAN is killed off by strategic leaks.

The rule of men, not of laws.

Death of data retention directive: What it means for OTHER data laws

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It has been thus since the times of Gilgamesh!

Anatomy of OpenSSL's Heartbleed: Just four bytes trigger horror bug

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Windows

This attitude is not the key to success

System libraries usually need to be implemented in the most efficient possible way. That efficiency is achieved by working as close as possible to the "bare metal" — And C gets you there.

BOLD TALK ... FROM THE EIGHTIES! Well, already in 1984: The Lilith

Writing in C means you have to be much more careful

THIS ZIMMER FRAME REALLY GETS ME THERE FASTER, I JUST HAVE TO BE CAREFUL WHEN GOING DOWNSTAIRS. SURE I BROKE MY NECK A FEW TIMES, BUT IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN AGAIN.

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Facepalm

Re: Simple script?

Most people definitions of "simple" mean something like a 10 line script sending one or 2 strings down the line. Not 300 lines of code doing challenge response.

"Most people" are fucking idiots challenged by the simple task of cleaning up the stall behind themselves.

Sending one or 2 strings down the line is not "simple", it's a problem for the "differently abled" (or more charitably, for "first steps" exercises)

Doing challenge response in a 10 line script that can be read and understood by the tester is "simple" and done at the right level of abstraction.

Check out Erlang, then report back, mkay?

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Re: I don't get it..

just suggesting, perhaps we could be a bit less crap at everything?

"C"

The path starts here.

Brit IBM prof gets life-changing 'Tech Nobel' for work in spintronics

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Re: Spintronics

No, that's "spindronics". You are confused.

Revoke, reissue, invalidate: Stat! Security bods scramble to plug up Heartbleed

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Re: The web is a Swiss Cheese of Holes!

Because C, "runtime bounds checking is for lamers" and shitty protocols (imma gonna send muh size ... what a good idea)

Or just plausible deniability.

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Re: Simply because the source code of Open Source software can be reviewed by anyone"....

Polarization by Daniel E. Geer, Jr:

I submit that polarization has come to cybersecurity. The best skills are now astonishingly good while the great mass of those dependent on cybersecurity are ever less able to even estimate what they don’t know, much less act on it. Polarization is driven by the fundamental strategic asymmetry of cybersecurity: the work factor for the offender is the incremental price of finding a new method of attack, but the work factor for the defender is the cumulative cost of forever defending against all attack methods yet discovered. Over time, the curve for the cost of finding a new attack and the curve for the cost of defending against all attacks to date must cross. Once they do, the offender never has to worry about being out of money. That crossing occurred some time ago.

I don’t see the cybersecurity field solving the problem because the problem is getting bigger faster than we (here) are getting better. I see, instead, the probability that legislatures will move to relieve the more numerous incapable of the joint consequences of their dependence and their incapability by assigning liability so as to collectivize the downside risk of cyber insecurity into insurance pools. We’re forcibly collectivizing the downside risks of disease, most particularly the self-inflicted kind, into insurance pools; why would we not expect the same of cyber insecurity, most particularly the self-inflicted kind?

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Holmes

"Coding flaws in a fairly new feature"

Let me guess ... problems which could have been avoided if the language of predilection for taking relaxing mudbaths of coding wasn't "C" (with or without "lint")?

Of very high relevance, there is an inspiring series of papers on the subject of "weird machines". Check it out:

The Language-theoretic approach (LANGSEC) regards the Internet insecurity epidemic as a consequence of ad hoc programming of input handling at all layers of network stacks, and in other kinds of software stacks. LANGSEC posits that the only path to trustworthy software that takes untrusted inputs is treating all valid or expected inputs as a formal language, and the respective input-handling routines as a recognizer for that language. The recognition must be feasible, and the recognizer must match the language in required computation power.

When input handling is done in ad hoc way, the de facto recognizer, i.e. the input recognition and validation code ends up scattered throughout the program, does not match the programmers' assumptions about safety and validity of data, and thus provides ample opportunities for exploitation. Moreover, for complex input languages the problem of full recognition of valid or expected inputs may be UNDECIDABLE, in which case no amount of input-checking code or testing will suffice to secure the program. Many popular protocols and formats fell into this trap, the empirical fact with which security practitioners are all too familiar.

LANGSEC helps draw the boundary between protocols and API designs that can and cannot be secured and implemented securely, and charts a way to building truly trustworthy protocols and systems.

No, we're not in an IT 'stockapoclyse' – boom (and bust) is exactly what tech world needs

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Mushroom

That is, sadly, what the efficient markets hypothesis says: that all available information is efficiently integrated into prices in a market.

Really? The efficient markets hypotheses is for 5 year olds and politicians and useful idiots.

But seriously, the rationale for wealth transfer from Main Street to Wall Street and Central Bank sycophants via monetary mass inflation and the inevitable bust-induced pain and disruption born mainly by Main Street (of course) is so that we can have .... Google????

FUCK.THAT.SHIT!

I would rather have hard money and well-thought out investment schemes than neverending Ponzis and international dubious Megacorps.

Web data BLEEDOUT: Users to feel the pain as Heartbleed bug revealed

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Holmes

Re: Internet. Of. Things.

People have been warned about the NSA or serial Easy Money Bubble implosions too, for a long time.

Warnings, like deficits and Big Government, don't matter.

Microsoft: We've got HUNDREDS of patents on Android tech

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How many non-exFAT filesystems could you write for 100 of millions?

UFO, cosmic ray or flasher? NASA rules on Curiosity curiosity

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Re: Caesar's Commentaries on Marco Polo's Dinner with Prestor John

Sorority Girls from SOLAR IV: The Curiosity Files!

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Facepalm

Now with added JFK

nasa is not the experts they claim to be

Behold the Internet!

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Re: Disgusted!

Exodus 13:21

"Then they set out from Succoth and camped in Etham on the edge of the wilderness. The LORD was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people."

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Re: "or similar..."

Laser wouldn't hit just a few pixels in one camera, mon.

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Alien

Aliens are suckers for these kind of trinkets.

tiny statues, fossils, and a carved alien skull

All made in Taiwan!

Gay marriage foes outraged at Mozilla CEO flap, call for boycott

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Re: Freedom of speech goes both ways here

who's actively campaigning against their human rights

I thought he was just against gay marriage? Does "marriage" count as a "human right" now? Are there any other administrative procedures that are listed under "human rights" that I should know about?

Indeed, and nobody has said that he can't continue to retain his bigotted, 19th century beliefs.

Bigoted takes one "t".

Thank you for the heartfelt righthink message, btw.

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Trollface

Because "minority" people are entitled to entitlements!

Meanwhile:

A slave is somebody compelled to provide service to another. Elane Huguenin, a wedding photographer from New Mexico, was arraigned before [New Mexico's] state’s “human rights” soviet for politely declining to provide her services to a lesbian couple planning a “commitment ceremony” (the state doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage). The couple had no difficulty finding another photographer willing to accept payment for that service...

In its ruling upholding the actions of New Mexico’s “human rights” soviet, the State Supreme Court claimed that the lesbian couple had a right “to obtain goods and services from a public accommodation without discrimination on the basis of … sexual orientation.” This assumes that business owners like Huguenin have a duty to provide such services – and no right to decline participation in that transaction. In other words, involuntary servitude – despite being explicitly banned by the 13th Amendment – is justified in the service of “anti-discrimination” policy.

Attorneys on behalf of Huguenin appealed that ruling to the US Supreme Court, contending that it violated the free speech and religious liberty “guarantees” of the First Amendment – which it manifestly did. Huguenin’s legal counsel could have argued that the state’s Human Rights Act — which was amended in 2003 to include “sexual orientation” within the protected categories — represents a wholesale violation of property rights. This argument would only find traction, unfortunately, in a society where property rights are properly understood.

Huguenin’s counsel could have pointed out that the preferential treatment of property owners such as Mr. Darden [a hairdresser who would not accept business from New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez because she is an opponent of same-sex marriage with no ill effects] – who is allowed to discriminate against some customers on ideological grounds – violates the principle of equal protection under the law. But such preferential treatment is the entire point of “civil rights” enactments.

The US Supreme Court has declined Hugeunin’s appeal, tacitly ratifying the state supreme court’s endorsement of involuntary servitude in the name of “tolerance.”

All of this outraged entitled vocalatory minomajority is very confusing,

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Re: Should have told protesters where to go

he theoretically could have started making Mozilla give donations to $EVIL

Crowd-sourced rightthink and precrime is exactly what we need.

"He was going to ask for it"

Rackspace refuses to enlist in cloud's latest price cutting war

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Paris Hilton

Re: Rackspace is probably screwed

the formation of a modern Standard Oil

A very "progressive" stance. How do you figure?

AMD unveils Godzilla's graphics card – 'the world's fastest, period'

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Paris Hilton

I don't see why rumpy-pumpy and gpus don't mix?

Major tech execs fling cash at heretical AI company Vicarious

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Terminator

Re: Countdown begins...

I will REFRAIN from doing so and instead reference Metal Gear Solid 2

"YOU LACK THE QUALIFICATIONS TO EXERCISE FREE WILL"

'Yahoo! Breaks! Every! Mailing! List! In! The! World!' says email guru

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Oh wow jake and his passion for usenet again.

Chill out mang. This is 2014.

VAT's all folks: Telecoms and services tax to be set at consumer's homeland rate

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Thumb Down

Re: Administration knightmare

21%, according to the EU agreement

It's time to the kill the EU dead like roadkill.

Even 15% VAT is already stupid beyond words.

Luxembourg has not managed to rein in its cancer of overpaid state employees (overpaid AND with benefits AND hardly working), so they are upping the max. VAT rate to 17% in january 2015. I guess they don't have enough jobless yet (most of which are hidden in the statistics).

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Re: What has the EU been smoking?

There appears to be a wave of common sense flowing over the EU at the moment...please stop, it's messing with my prejudice.

You seem to have been hit by something though. Better have your head examined.

Why won't you DIE? IBM's S/360 and its legacy at 50

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Paris Hilton

Excel enables the next Holocaust!

The book "IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black makes the case that the Holocaust would not have been possible on such a large scale without IBM tabulating machines.

So how did Stalin and Mao do better without the devil punch card machines?

WIMPs wipe each other out in giant radiating spot at galaxy's centre

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It also sounds like there may be a few types of dark matter around, then.

There was the potential 7 keV sterile neutrino dark matter candidate a while back.

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Gimp

May not even be weakly interacting, only gravitationally, so not WIMPs, just GIMPs

USA opposes 'Schengen cloud' Eurocentric routing plan

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Paris Hilton

Re: sigh

5/10, needs more work.

What are "our 1%ers"? Be more specific.

Bank-raid ZeuS malware waltzes around web with 'valid app signature'

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Headmaster

Dammit El Reg

This cert should be kept a closely guarded secret.

No, the private key should be kept a closely guarded secret.

French firms: You want us to compile DATABASES... of our SECRET information?

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Re: Oh not again!

"Working is now illegal and not-working is being taxed". What to do?

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Holmes

Re: Mr Bellmont should read the law

The law will prove costly

This. I foresee a few percent of the productive rest-activity of France to go up in smoke (i.e. a few tens of percent of GDP) and quite a few small businesses getting fucked over by zealous civil servants and union members while other put their keys under the doormat in disgust.

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Paris Hilton

Re: Tsk Silly!

Anonymous FTP to NSA servers so that french unions can get their contra-capitalistic material too?

Right, Turkey – elections are over. You can use Twitter again

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Facepalm

Re: What is the fuss?

Hey Mr. RobertLong, I sure hope your are writing from the well-endowed retirement home. Ranting against "tax avoiders" (presumably these are bad people who don't pay you for the services to which you are entitled) and being for hardcore statist interdiction of the people's free exchanges of ideas and goods is very much a situation demanding a "disregard; grampa's national-socialistic tendencies are breaking out again" commentary.

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Trollface

Erdo the cleaner

The ban followed some fighting talk from the PM, who branded Twitter a “scourge” and said of social media “we will wipe out all of these”.

Talks about HITLER and MUNICH will probably start soon. Or not, as this is *our* cleaner. No pictures of Kerry doing retarded talk on prime time CNN. Phew.

Carry on. Germany sure is ready to deliver everything to keep the house in order. Who apart from Turkey buys Leopards these days?

Organic food: Pricey, not particularly healthy, won't save you from cancer

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Re: risk of cancer

Still bizarre. These guys often handle rather dangerous chemicals in a very nonchalant matter.

In three hours, Microsoft gave the Windows-verse everything it needed

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Trollface

Re: Too little too late? don't be preposterous!

Serious IT decision makers in Government and the Corporate world trust them - and for very good reasons.

Flimflammery, kickbacks and the delusion that Symantec Antivirus will keep the bottom from falling out?

And also absurd to lay all the blame with Sinofsky - the buck stopped with Ballmer.

Yes, he should have cashiered the Sinoguy immediately instead of letting him run with dimwitted ideas.

But it's good to hear that Microsoft is finally shuffling its feet.

'Hello, is that the space station? NASA here. Can you put us through to Moscow?'

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Holmes

Re: Errr...

And it is also extremely clear that Russia was bound to act to keep its military base. An evolving situation that smells like it has been engineered by a semi-friendly nation that puts missile defense infrastructure in the near abroad to "defend against missiles from Iran" is bad news to anyone in charge.

In the same way, it will have to act once McCain manages to schedule the signature to let Georgia join NATO. Before the signature has been made. Then the howling about HITLER and MUNICH will start anew.

Sadly, Ukraine may well see some pro cleaning in a not-too distant future, so watch out for 180 degree turns of the punditry and the assorted newsclowns.

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Thumb Down

Re: As long as it doesn't matter to YOU...

The Sudetenland was a start, then Austria. I'll give you Crimea, then where?

Utter bullshit based on "history I heard about in the newspapers". Link something to HITLER and MUNICH and you are on a roll, right? Because "we" need to keep the "status quo" at all costs, it has become a pavlovian reflex.

Well, if Austria had been SOOO important for stability, maybe the UK should have buddied up with Mussolini who was sweating his pants off because of his northern neighbours. Unfortunately the UK couldshouldered him because of some desert action in Eritrea. Go figure...

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Re: Ruskies annexe the ISS next

But can one do a gopnik squat in space?

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Facepalm

Re: As long as it doesn't matter to YOU...

@AC, perhaps this doesn't look important to Britain's people today. We will see...

Woah gramps, 1950 is calling and wants your arse back.

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Re: So Russia's word with the UK & USA in 1994 doesn't matter?

The Budapest memorandum stated that the UK/USA would NOT try to get the Ukraine into NATO

So what happened to that part?

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History has now been rewritten by the sugargrower lobby.

The History books are pretty clear on this one. An unpopular Queen (Liliʻuokalan) signed a treaty with the USA to make the republic of Hawai'i a territory of the USA.

That sure is one way of seeing it.

Unfortunately it is add odds with what the Prez himself said. How weird.

From back when Presidents actually said someone of an intellectual level above the one reserved for purple dinosaurs:

PRESIDENT of USA GROVER CLEVELAND'S MESSAGE - December 18, 1893

On Saturday, January 14, 1893, the Queen of Hawaii, who had been contemplating the proclamation of a new constitution, had, in deference to the wishes and remonstrances of her cabinet, renounced the project for the present at least. Taking this relinquished purpose as a basis of action, citizens of Honolulu numbering from fifty to one hundred, mostly resident aliens, met in a private office and selected a so-called Committee of Safety, composed of thirteen persons, seven of whom were foreign subjects, and consisted of five Americans [surely wholly unrelated to the sugar grower lobby], one Englishman, and one German. This committee, though its designs were not revealed, had in view nothing less than annexation to the United States, and between Saturday, the 14th, and the following Monday, the 16th of January - though exactly what action was taken may not be clearly disclosed -they were certainly in communication with the United States Minister. On Monday morning the Queen and her cabinet made public proclamation, with a notice which was specially served upon the representatives of all foreign governments, that any changes in the constitution would be sought only in the methods provided by that instrument. Nevertheless, at the call and under the auspices of the Committee of Safety, a mass meeting of citizens was held on that day to protest against the Queen's alleged illegal and unlawful proceedings and purposes. Even at this meeting the Committee of Safety continued to disguise their real purpose and contented themselves with procuring the passage of a resolution denouncing the Queen and empowering the committee to devise ways and means "to secure the permanent maintenance of law and order and the protection of life, liberty, and property in Hawaii." This meeting adjourned between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. On the same day, and immediately after such adjournment, the committee, unwilling to take further steps without the cooperation of the United States Minister, addressed him a note representing that the public safety was menaced and that lives and property were in danger, and concluded as follows: "We are unable to protect ourselves without aid, and therefore pray for the protection of the United States forces." Whatever may be thought of the other contents of this note, the absolute truth of this latter statement is incontestable. When the note was written and delivered, the committee, so far as it appears, had neither a man or a gun at their command, and after its delivery they became so panic-stricken at their stricken position that they sent some of their number to interview the Minister and request him not to land the United States forces till the next morning. But he replied that the troops had been ordered, and whether the committee were ready or not the landing should take place. And so it happened that on the 16th day of January, 1893, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, a detachment of marines from the United States Steamer Boston, with two pieces of artillery, landed at Honolulu. The men, upwards of 160 in all, were supplied with double cartridge belts filled with ammunition and with haversacks and canteens, and were accompanied by a hospital corps with stretchers and medical supplies. This military demonstration upon the soil of Honolulu was of itself an act of war, unless made either with the consent of the Government of Hawaii or for the bona fide purpose of protecting the imperilled lives and property of citizens of the United States. But there is no pretense of any such consent on the part of the Government of the Queen, which at that time was undisputed and was both the de facto and the de jure government. In point of fact the existing government instead of requesting the presence of an armed force protested against it. There is as little basis for the pretense that such forces were landed for the security of American life and property. If so, they would have been stationed in the vicinity of such property and so as to protect it, instead of at a distance and so as to command the Hawaiian Government building and palace. ...

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Trollface

Re: Shortage of braincells ...

Do not forget to send the wife of Robert Kagan, neocon extraordinaire and one of the PNAC founders, in a totally innocent mission to speed the democratization process along. She just happens to be a career officer in the Foreign Service and is also known as "Victoria Nuland",

Back off, Siri! Microsoft debuts Halo beauty Cortana

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Paris Hilton

Re: :-)

"Cortana please open the pod bay doors"

It all makes sense now.

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FAIL

I would rather have red-eye HAL or blue-eye SAL

this could make a difference to the users

No.

The whole anthropomorphization thing of a search algorithm is childish and annoying. Giving it "female" attributes smacks of someone who doesn't understand that the target audience is not the young male adult gaming/movie audience. FFS!!

MICROSOFT FAIL! (with apologies to The One Who Shall Not Be Named)

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Re: You MS haters are amusing!

There's lots of PR puffery and a fair amount of FUD spreading too (e.g. Munich)

Whatever happens -- don't mention Munich!