* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

I cannae dae it, cap'n! Why I had to quit the madness of frontline IT

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Flame

Re: Good IT folks are very rarely good people people (and vice versa)

It's very rare to find all of these skills in the same person.

This is the CIO's role but in the end it is impossible to be on both sides of the divide. It's like being a capable, old-school general in the 3rd Reich's bonanza of power-grabbing. You will be served sooner or later.

Sane corporate management should be all about avoiding backstabbing, literal or otherwise. It is the CEO's role to suppress such behaviour and he is in dereliction of duty if the turns a blind eye or encourages this kind of bullshit. The sociopathic form of "management" is very prevalent but that doesn't make it okay. Indeed, it indicates that the company should be left to its fortunes ASAP.

If this were not the flowery epoch of historically unprecedented experiments in bailouts, free money and casino capitalism, reality would assert itself. We will have to await the supercrash to apply the bleaching. Won't be long now.

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Re: Two quotes that apply here:

and they do not appear on balance sheets

This just means that the "tool" of balance sheets is way out of whack for the applications that it is being put to. And that the insurance companies are in dereliction of duty (otherwise the premiums for "insurance against getting reamed" would hurt where it counts). And that the "industry" is totally immature ("oh we got hacked... sorryyy... here is a free credit alert for 1y" ... *wristslap*).

But immaturity in the 21st is seen as "refreshing". So there.

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A couple of goons with slavic accents persuading you to hand over the keys.

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Re: Obligatory Dilbert

PHB mashups?

US OPM boss quits after hackers stole chapter and verse on 21.5m Americans' lives

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Trollface

Getting serious

Password rules : Should I disallow “leetspeak” dictionary passwords like XKCD's Tr0ub4dor&3

Asked: Today

I am the lead developer for an upcoming government website which will expose sensitive personal information (criminal history, SSNs, etc primarily). The website will be consumed by the general public, for doing background checks on employees etc.

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Re: Sacrificial goat.

Meh!

We tried using Windows 10 for real work and ... oh, the horror

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Re: Same old

You have no chance to survive, make your time!

NASA chooses ace SPACE PILOTS who'll take the USA back into manned flight

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Trollface

Re: All very well to say

Yeah, but think of all the museums that can be built around a proudly displayed "Actual, FULLY FUNCTIONAL version of the WHITEST ELEPHANT ever! Only original pieces!". It will boost local economies!

Plus we got the Chinese to actually COPY A FULLY USELESS DESIGN AND TRY TO FLY IT!

WD silently murders Arkeia backupware

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Windows

Re: The feel when...

I checked. In the extremely detailed manual of 2000, we find:

X11 graphics user interface

This module is the interface between the backup server and the user. IIt may be installed on any machine, but is usually located on the backup server. The interface consists of an independent group of X11 client programs which can be displayed on any X11 server (R4, R5, R6) or graphics workstation. It ergonomic characteristics (colors, fonts, images...) can be fully configured interactively to provide maximum user comfort. A proprietary software display technology is implemented to prevent the slow, cumbersome features and excessive use of resources typically found in X11/Motif applications, at the same time providing unique function capabilities (animated icons, toolbar, context-sensitive menus, real-photo Vu-meters, tips, multi-language features...).

JAVA graphics user interface

This module is the interface between the backup server and the user. It may be installed on any machine, but is usually located on the backup server. The interface consists of an independent group of JAVA client programs which can be displayed on any workstation using NETSCAPE or MS Explorer. It ergonomic characteristics (colors, fonts, images...) can be fully configured interactively to provide maximum user comfort. A proprietary software display technology is implemented to prevent the slow, cumbersome features and excessive use of resources, at the same time providing unique function capabilities (animated icons, toolbar, context-sensitive menus, real-photo Vu-meters, tips, multi-language features...).

Hardware requirement

Arkeia has the following minimum hardware requirements: A computer capable of running your operating system. 32 MB RAM. SCSI tape drive. A SCSI tape drive is required for high speed positioning of the tape during restore operations. In the near future, the requirement for a SCSI tape drive will be removed and direct support of Travan and floppy based, and QIC tape drives will be implemented. This will allow high speed operation for all tape drives, SCSI and non SCSI alike.

There wasn't much focus on "rounded windows" either (in Motif/X11 an unlikely thing) but it had some weird styling indicating that the designer might have previously made games for Amiga or Atari ST:

Drivepacks: The Window!

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Windows

The feel when...

Damn, I remember this from 2000, with backup to DAT tapes on an early Red Hat Linux. It was Java-based and a bit flaky (along the lines of "is something happening? is it stuck? why doesn't it repaint the screen??").

Wow, another NSA leak: Network security code appears on GitHub

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Holmes

Well, actually....

....this seems to be in the tradition of "SELinux" issued from "Project Flask". So there is some continuity.

One MEEELLION users download Facebook-pwning droid game

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Paris Hilton

Re: TinkerAccountLibrary.dll

Are you some kind of politician or PHB?

How many top-level domains are there now? 300? 500? No, it's 1,000

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Re: I've worked it out

Most will be grouped under .pwned

US govt now says 21.5 million people exposed by OPM hack – here's what you need to know

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Re: Richard Clarke already announced this news

Please, no Richard Clarke. This is not "cyberwar" or other heavy-breathing fantasy of the ones in need of fame and money, it's just a leisurely download action.

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Facepalm

"And I think that's a shift that all of us need to be mindful that we need to continue to make."

Is this why there are efforts to put crypto back in the box now?

GIGANTIC galaxy-chomping black hole rips boffins a new one

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Holmes

The Mario Draghi Galaxy: Enormously Holey

which is why such massive holes on normal galaxies aren't seen closer to Earth

It don't see it.

That kind of reasoning applies to evanescent objects, like early-universe hypernovas, but black holes have staying power in timeframes of a few billion years.

'I'm COMING for you, DIRTBAG!': Ex-Sony chief Smedley to Kid Lizard hacker

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Holmes

Re: Taste the salt

> CEO of a major company

> professionalism

Choose one.

These people are not in their position because they are "professional". They are there because they are ruthlessly ambitious. No skills required.

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Holmes

Re: "a cowards justice system"

Menacing tweets? I think there is a law against that. I suspect ambitious no-win, no-fee lawyers will be in touch.

Imagine a Sony Entertainment employee doing that. He would be on the street in a heartbeat.

I won't go into the fact that he comes across as a spoilt brat wearing Armani (indeed, most of management are anyway, so no surprises here).

The Empire Strikes Back: Disney tractor-beams StarWars.co.uk from Brit biz

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Paris Hilton

Darth Vader does a Death Star construction inspection

It has come to the point where "rights holders" fight their resellers and resellers are seen to unfairly profit from "rights holders"?

HEAVY BREATHING!

PLUTO: The FINAL FRONTIER – best image yet of remote, icy dwarf planet REVEALED

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Holmes

Re: Just for a laugh...

found in an abandoned temple on the lunar surface

Powerfully channeling Charles Stross, I see.

Now, imagine if that temple had still been occupied by acolytes!

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Alien

Re: Oh dear-

Actually a swastika cunningly imprinted on the methane ice.

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Re: PLUTO: the FINAL FRONTIER ???

Indeed, there is a bit to go until the Galactic Force Field is encountered.

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Thumb Up

Go to Jupiter, turn left a bit, then do what is colloquially called a "beeline"

DAT TRAJECTORY!!

UK politicos easily pwned on insecure Wi-Fi networks

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Re: Your Screen, It Lies To You

“I used to dig in the garden, and there isn’t anything fantastic or ultradimensional about crab grass…unless you are a sf writer, in which case, pretty soon you’re viewing crabgrass with suspicion. What are its real motives? And who sent it in the first place? The question I always found myself asking was, What is it really?”

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Pint

Re: No SSL/TLS?

And anyway "Dave" Cammy is gearing up to have it outlawed so that new, better, backdoored crypto from DUHMURRICA can be employed for the best of all of us.

Crap crypto crackdown coming as FBI boss testifies to US Congress

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Re: Anybody believe him?

You can have maths where 2+2=4|5

Self-consistent? Citation needed!

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Re: Anybody believe him?

Because they have become so dumb that they are unable to even count anymore.

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Mushroom

ISIS is the new HITLER and encryption is MUNICH!

ISIS doesn't even DO the US, why is used to justify dumbfucked western politicians' and bureaucratic operators' (who "don't know anything") brainfarts?

So help me $DEITY, I feel a very strong urge coming on to do $BAD_THINGS to all those disgusting trough-fed swine.

Just hearing "Feinstein" (D-Surveillance) makes me barf. That dumb bitch who never found the courage to whine about anything during the Bush era because it could damage her career or some redneck might beat her up is like a caricature out of a class B movie.

Fsck, now they just need get the "liberals" aboard because the rainbow-colored multi-cultural black guy who can Do No Wrong currently in charge is all for listening in and it's GAME OVER, MAN, GAME OVER!

Sorry, say boffins, the LHC still hasn't sucked us into a black hole

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Re: Never mind more than a curiosity...

Surely you'd just get the mass out that you put in? After all, Hawkwing radiation is just a fancy phrase for Pair Production at the Event Horizon boundary isn't it?

This is correct. That black hole is white-ish and evaporating. Alternatively, the vacuum is trying to heal itself around the nasty "trouser leg from the future".

Conversely if it's small enough to be radiating away at a decent rate, then won't it be too small to make an efficient waste disposal unit anyway?

Also correct.

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Holmes

On the contrary.

Nature says: NO MORE TOYS FOR TODAY! AND EAT YOUR BROCCOLI!

We will not get magic Hollywood tech or flying cars (actually this is sad, as I always wanted to build a silently hovering UFO and then stick multicolored lights on it to buzz unsupecting cops on highway patrol), but at least the math is likely to look nice.

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Re: I understood that tiny blackholes were very unstable.

Large black holes form by forming from masses that are larger than for small black holes.

They just need enough mass to be stacked inside a small enough volume. Then a large black hole will inevitably form.

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Holmes

Re: How would we know?

According to my understanding of Max Tegmark's book, "Our Mathematical Universe", we may exist in an infinite universe where the wave-function does not collapse - a multiverse.

Unfortunately for MAX TEGMARK!!, a showman of high capabilities -- indeed, who can claim to have named META-UNIVERSES using one's IMPRESSIVE FAMILY NAME, which happens to not even be one's original family name, but then "Shapiro" sounds rather humdrum --, these are just words strung end-to-end. They have no meaning. And they are not science.

More at: Our Mathematical Universe

Tegmark’s innovation is to postulate a new, even more extravagant, “Level IV” multiverse. With the string landscape, you explain any observed physical law as a random solution of the equations of M-theory (whatever they might be…). Tegmark’s idea is to take the same non-explanation explanation, and apply it to explain the equations of M-theory. According to him, all mathematical structures exist, and the equations of M-theory or whatever else governs Level II are just some random mathematical structure, complicated enough to provide something for us to live in. Yes, this really is as spectacularly empty an idea as it seems. Tegmark likes to claim that it has the virtue of no free parameters.

Hacking Team: Oh great, good job, guys ... now the TERRORISTS have our zero-day exploits

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Holmes

These guys are a hoot. They are using the newspeak definition of "ethical"

"Whatever I do to get ahead, is ethical"

Hacking Team had not responded to a request for comment on this story at time of publication. On Tuesday, a spokesman for the company told the International Business Times: “We don’t have anything to hide about what we are doing and we don’t think that there is any evidence in this 400GB of data that we have violated any laws and I would even go so far as to argue that there is no evidence that we have behaved in anything but a completely ethical way.”

That kind of culture is totally like seen at the HBGary outfit. These are just collections of "any goes" sociopaths with some technical skills. The worst.

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Mushroom

Wow, these disgusting fucks are disgusting.

These guys sure sound like they are getting serious help from various governmental P.R. departments. Freshly flown in from various repressive regimes, the Cameron outfit and the Hopey-Changey Snake Oil show. Their lobby must be a multicultural event!

"Blame it on Snowden" bullshit emission starting in 3...2...

US Homeland Security boss wants nationwide law for reporting network break-ins

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Re: Mr. Jeh Johnson: How about a clear law about whistle blowers?

Yes. Next question?

(Laughter from the assembled "reporters")

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Windows

All this talk would make sense in a saner world...

...maybe in Carter's America? At least one in which an outfit with the stylish nazi name "US Homeland Security" didn't exist.

Apply a dose of cynicism and the wallpaper falls off...

"require organizations to report computer security attacks to Uncle Sam" ... how about those by Uncle Sam?

"It's key even among the most sophisticated actors – you can't be out there alone, and should partner with the federal government" ... who will hack you or otherwise make you feel serious economic pain and possibly feed you to the prison-industrial complex for cheap lulz.

"Terrorism can't prevail if people refuse to be terrorized" ... we weren't even talking about terrorism and the terrorists have prevailed some time ago.

"Americans come back even stronger from these things; that’s part of who we are as Americans" ... American's been getting "weaker" for about 20 years now. Oh wait, it's just the usual macho shit. How about getting cleverer?

Don't touch this! Seven types of open source to dance away from

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Paris Hilton

Re: Long-term stewardship

"we believe that empathy is a core engineering value"

That's seriously retarded. Sounds like something coming from the femaled hipster part of the marketing department.

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Re: "Potemkin villages"

What?

Welkom in Nederland: Laid-back, chilled, and MONITORING everything

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Re: Anyone with a clue...

NO! BAD TROLL, BAD!!

DOUGHNUT (donut?) and whale FOUND ON PLUTO

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To me it looks suspiciously like Arrakis. Just shop in Princess Irulan and you are set.

"A flyby is a very difficult time. Know then that it is E-minus seven days and counting...."

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Re: Ralph wanted to send Alice to the moon...

> unbridled capitalism

Where? I would like to go to that country, it would not be on the way to socio-fascist perdition. Please.

Apple and MS attackers Wild Neutron return with fresh run of attacks

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Trollface

The Russian firm offered no theories about who is behind the attacks, beyond noting the presence of Romanian and Russian artefacts.

"GypsyMusic.mp3" and "glorious_lenin.jpg"?

Office 365 prices 'to rise by up to 13 per cent'

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Windows

Microsoft is adding significant value to our products

Translation: It starts to work, just about.

Frankly Exchange Online's web-based admin interface is a crippling disaster (So are the basic concepts of that Exchange thing, frankly; users not identified by a UUID but by an arbitrary e-mail address? Please!! Renaming users yields mysterious error messages? I need PowerShell to debug and fix it? Whatever!) and Azure is a fat blob hurtling far being AWS on a mall scooter, yelling that it will FUCK IT UP!! Note that I have only used the classical interface, I haven't even dared touch the metronized one.

There is a loooong way to go still.

“we baked more in so you should pay more”

Well, at least it's more honest than the usual "you paid more to Intel for a more cor-y CPU so you should give us more for an unchanged product running on that same CPU" argument. It's just extortion, but then again they need the money to fuel their write-offs.

Microsoft SLASHES 7,800 bods, BURNS $7.6bn off books in Nokia adjustment

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Facepalm

How can so many lives be destroyed

This is not ISIS, you know. "Letting go" just means "you are now free to exchange your time for $$$ elsewhere", nothing else.

Oh, you mean "investors"? Well, play in a thoroughly rigged casino, be ready to take the heat etc.

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Gimp

Re: I'm starting to lose track of this

Hopefully they'll do a last run of WP Lumia's in tastefully silk lined, coffin shaped boxes with little brass handles on the side, so that Microsofties can buy and treasure the memory.

Frankly this is cult-of-Jobs levels of tasteless.

Russia campaigns to stop SUICIDALLY STUPID selfies

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Windows

Re: Sure it was the selfie stick?

When did we all decide to use baby-talk?

This kind of trend started after the OId Bush, IIRC.

It went downhill since. At one point, we were talking about what the definition of the word "is" is, now we are down to scraping hope & change from the bottom of barrels and detecting HITLER every week, if not THE ECONOMY IS IMPROVING and RAAH KIM KARDASHIAN'S ARSE.

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Coat

"post most slavic image you have got"

Finally a new one!

Security gurus deliver coup de grace to US govt's encryption backdoor demands

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Mushroom

"I am appealing to the emotions of dumb fucks, which is you!"

But my job is to try to keep people safe.

No, arsehole, your job is to run a governmental law enforcement agency. Which means tackling people breaking the law (now, apparently that also means setting poor sods up for terrorist charges via agents provocateurs for rank publicity and lying in court about it and in my book is a firing offense, Chinese version, but let's not go there)

Keep people safe "proactively" and with no particularity is NOT your job description. It is the job description if a nanny.

Ginormous HIDDEN BLACK HOLES flood the universe – boffins

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If we could do that, we wouldn't be talking about "renewable energies" like dumb children that have playdoo all over everything.