* Posts by frank ly

6077 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

PCs’ PCs pwned: Irish cops probe mystery malware attack

frank ly

Re: Because?

Not at all. Some of them are called Siobhan or Clodagh.

Breaking 350 million: What's next for Windows 10?

frank ly

Re: Can't even give it away

I'm still buying Gillette Mach3 blades for my very old Mach3 handle. The entire thing works just fine and gives excellent results with no problems. Can the same be said for Windows?

Stealthy malware infects digitally-signed files without altering hashes

frank ly

Why not?

"... and is not subject to hash calculation."

Was there a 'good' reason for that, at the time the process was standardised?

Broken BitBank Bitfinex shaves 36% from all accounts

frank ly

fork it

The last time there was a cyber-heist on a crypto-currency outfit, they recovered the situation by doing a 'hard fork' of the blockchain. I'm sure I read that in The Register. Can't they do this here?

US Politicians tell DEF CON it'll take Congress ages to sort out how to regulate crypto

frank ly

Re: Simple solution...

"Congress already has the power to regulate interstate commerce, ..."

Using old laws to deal with new situations is dangerous and lazy and gives bad results. That is why they are having this 'conversation'.

AdBlock Plus blocked in China: 159m forbidden from stripping adverts

frank ly

Re: Hah Ha. Fuck off AdBlock Plus.

That one's going in the 'gold star' section.

frank ly

Re: Hah Ha. Fuck off AdBlock Plus.

No GiantKiwi, you must be new here. That's Camilla, a rare commentard but always an interesting one. She provides cynicism in a sarcastic box, wrapped in irony paper with a twisted humor ribbon as cute decoration. I copy her posts and keep them in a scrapbook.

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

frank ly

Sir Amyas

"BBC staff were able to demonstrate this to my staff in controlled conditions sufficient for us to be confident that they could detect viewing on a range of non‐TV devices."

I bet that was easy. After all, the BBC controlled the conditions. He sounds like a yes man.

"... the BBC has ruled out combing its own records of computers that have logged into the iPlayer website ... this would be an inappropriate invasion of privacy."

What?? A website owner can't use their own logs to determine which IP address has been used by site visitors, even if legal infringements are suspected? What's the reasoning behind that?

frank ly

Re: Magic?

I'm just glad that the detector crew don't ride around on white horses. Does a scythe blade make a good WiFi antenna?

Microsoft: You liked Windows 10 so much, you'll get 2 more in 2017

frank ly

"...as home users begin to potentially digest Anniversary Update."

Any more digestive system analogies?

15 million tech-fried Brits have tried giving themselves a 'digital detox'

frank ly

The way we are now

"What the hell they did during those four weeks is anyone's guess."

If they didn't tweet it then it didn't happen.

Ready for the Internet of Things big data firehose?

frank ly

Oh, the possibilities

"... the city can ... take pre-emptive action by warning people in their homes."

City announcment channel - 2am: "EVACUATE! EVACUATE!"

LulzCrew Twitter feed - 3am: "Gotcha!"

Microsoft adds new 'Enterprise Products' section to privacy policy

frank ly

Meaning?

“We may also contact you regarding third-party inquiries we receive regarding use of the Online Services, as described in your agreement. You will not be able to unsubscribe from these non-promotional communications.”

Does this mean that I (as a third party) can ask Microsoft to spam anyone who meets certain criteria?

Classic Shell, Audacity downloads infected with retro MBR nuke nasty

frank ly

A good example

"We did not have the right safeguards in place, namely, to monitor external files. We clearly have not been vigilant enough. Over the next few weeks we will be working to become a safer, more secure organization."

Admit you made mistakes, recognise your shortcomings and work like heck to put them right. It's a refreshing change and I hope it starts a trend.

Simply not credible: The extraordinary verdict against the body that hopes to run the internet

frank ly

@Mark 85

"Why it's almost as if ..."

I'd go further but wealthy organisations with expensive lawyers are dangerous. Did I say "dangerous"? I meant "formidable".

Intel's smartwatches are so hot right now – too hot: Basis Peak recalled for skin burns, blistering

frank ly

Perhaps it seemed useful/convenient/cool at the time of purchase. People often make decisions on that basis and don't consider what might happen in the future.

frank ly

Re: I protest

I don't even think you're being pedantic. (Don't get me started on the sheer ugliness of 'absent' being used as a preposition.)

Jovian moon Io loses its atmosphere every day

frank ly

Re: err, subs...

I love the way that the commentardiat can start from just about anywhere and then hop, skip and jump its way to the truth. The journey is just as entertaining as the destination.

Bee queens are Notch-blocking their minions, say boffins

frank ly

Re: Well,it works for them

Your body has mechanisms with similar principles that prevent arms growing on your chest and teeth growing on your fingertips. For bees and other 'hive' insects, it's the entire hive that is the 'organism', not the individual insects.

The queen bee isn't 'in charge' of growing the hive's population, she is the reproductive function of the hive and she performs her function for the long term benefit of the hive organism.

Going! going! pwned? 200! million! Yahoo! logins! leaked! allegedly!

frank ly

If only

"... and we always encourage our users to ... "

... lie about their DOB and any other personal identity related information.

Windows 10: Happy with Anniversary Update?

frank ly

Memories

"... when you consider all the other ways to launch applications, such as taskbar pinning, desktop shortcuts, and Search."

I prefer to put 'toolbars' labelled Programs, Utilities, Whatever, ... on the system panel for a quick and simple popup menu showing the list of shortcuts that I've put in the toolbar folders, as I did in Win 7.

These are pitiful compared to the pop-out panels that Win XP provided.

Luckily for me, the Linux MATE desktop has all singing, all dancing customisable pop-out panels that you can put just about anything on as customised icons. I'm sorry, I'm going off-topic.

'The box' Bones uses to fix any ailment on the Enterprise? Yup, it's real

frank ly

If I was stuck in a remote place, I'd program the yeast to produce something 'relaxing'.

Pass the hash for peace, love and security in the quantum computing age

frank ly

If quantum computing advances so much that it's a 'problem' in this way then quantum communication channels would also be quite easily available. I thought that one of the characteristics of a quantum entangled (quantangled?) channel was that you could tell if it had been intercepted,but it is relatively slow. So, they could send the secret symmetric key via a quantum-secure channel?

Boffins shrink light-twister to silicon scale, multiply bandwidth 10x

frank ly

light beam me up

"... the researchers reckon since OAM is a quantum property that can undergo “teleportation”, ..."

I assume they mean it can be quantum entangled with another light beam?

Google-backed Thread, OCF form alliance for Internet of Things sanity

frank ly

"In order for consumers to put their faith in the connected home, their experience must be simple, reliable, and effortless."

Just like it is with PCs nowadays.

All roads lead to Rome as Irish seminary gripped by Grindr scandal

frank ly

re. "seminary"

I kept misreading that, (and you kept writing it).

Dark scientists' LUX-ZEPLIN doubles down on WIMP hunt

frank ly

It's complicated

"Hundreds and thousands of WIMPs are probably streaming through every cubic centimetre of space, ..."

Where from? Where to? At what speed?

From Wikipedia:

" Because of their large mass, they would be relatively slow moving and therefore "cold".[7] Their relatively low velocities would be insufficient to overcome the mutual gravitational attraction, and as a result WIMPs would tend to clump together."

Intel's Crosswalk open source dev library has serious SSL bug

frank ly

A theme?

"All three branches of Crosswalk for Android – stable, beta and “canary” ..."

You've just told us about Mickey Mouse security. Is this one Tweety Pie security?

Give .gay to the gays, roars exiting ombudsman

frank ly

Modern times

"... ICANN is worried about being sued by the other applicants, ..."

This is the thing nowadays, for large and wealthy organisations. Anyway, on what grounds could they be sued; what are their legally defined responsibilities?

Kaspersky so very sorry after suggesting its antivirus will get you laid

frank ly

Re: God damn I hate SJW bullshit

"... I might need to a build a wall of some sort or something...I already live in the woods"

You could ask some of the male bears to help you, when they're not busy doing whatever it is they do there.

Fork YOU! Sure, take the code. Then what?

frank ly

Re: ownCloud vs Nextcloud

I think a better name would be SkyCloud. Oh, wait a minute....

Bot-herders fire fake GPS co-ords at Niantic to collect Pokémon

frank ly

Damn

"... if the bot moves too fast, the game will notice and kick a player out."

There goes my idea to develop an autonomous drone to play the game quickly. Hmmmm, does anyone know the 'speed limit' for a ban?

Airbus doesn't just make aircraft – now it designs drone killers

frank ly

Citation?

"... as criminals discovered this technology for smuggling, espionage and terrorist attacks,"

I've read about smuggling by drones (contraband into prisons as an example) but didn't know they'd been used for espionage and terrorist attacks. Anyway, I thought that espionage was performed quite legally by government agencies, as so far have terrorist attacks by drone..

Australian maps and GPS will align by 2020

frank ly

Re: The earth moved

No need to do anything. The earth moved for all of you, so you should all be happy.

Microsoft adds useful feature to PowerPoint. Seriously

frank ly

Some years ago ....

.... when I 'played' with PowerPoint, it had a simple scripting control language and you could have 'active' buttons on the slide to do stuff like go to another slide. Hence, I thought, you could make contents, chapter, section, slide no., previous, next, etc links. Do I have some kind of false memory syndrome or could all this be done since ages ago?

Washed out summer? Fear ye not: DVDs for DevOps droogs

frank ly

"... assembly language routines in lipstick on the mirror in the lavatory ..."

Can I use a chinagraph pencil instead? It's important that my colleagues still talk with me, even though I don't enjoy it when they do.

Microsoft stops to smell the roses, creates the Shazam of flowers

frank ly

You missed out ....

.... hybridisation and grafting (and probably a few more) for future development. Well done though :)

The very latest on the DNC email conspiracy. Which conspiracy? All of them, of course!

frank ly

"Except of course it's all just made up."

I was enjoying it and getting quite excited until I read that.

Cryptography vs. bigotry: The debate Australia needs to have

frank ly

Re: Idiot rant

It would be interesting to compare the numbers of non-muslims who are members of the Australian (or any western) police force with the number of non-muslims who have committed a crime. This might allow us to draw conclusions about the criminal tendencies of non-muslims. Then again, it might just be ranting idiocy.

Free Windows 10 upgrade: Time is running out – should you do it?

frank ly

Re: Just like to say . . . .

You're not supposed to eat it!

World religions stake out positions on Pokemon Go

frank ly

Are there a total of ....

.... six hundred and sixty six different Pokemon entities? Gotta catch 'em all, or else!!

Seagate in 10TB drive brand brainstorm

frank ly

I have a 2TB WD 'green' drive sitting in an adaptor and connected to my small NAS interface. It spins down if you don't access it for about ten minutes. If you do access it then you only have about a six second wait until it spins up and delivers. This is great for my use for it which is as a media library drive.

Does anyone know if WD or anyone else have an equivalent for it?

Stack Overflow takes on technical documentation

frank ly

"Good documentation is hard, ..."

It certainly is. After you've gone through all the effort, paying close attention to previous documentation as a model and consulting your technical peers, you then have to get it past all the 'stakeholder' mangers, none of whom have shown the slightest interest in it for all the time you've been working on it, even if you begged them to have a quick look to see if it's heading in the right direction.

If there are five stakeholder managers, there will be at least seven different opinions about where you went wrong and how poor the structure is. After that, you'll spend two weeks acting as their typist until a higher level manager demands to know why it isn't ready yet. At that point it will, magically, be 'good enough'.

(There are certain trigger words and phrases that cause me to go on a rant.....)

All you need for quantum computing at room temperature is some mothballs

frank ly

Re: Interesting

If you had two qbits, you could theoretically solve 3 - 2 (=1) but how does the superposition of all states (0,1,2,3) collapse to the correct answer? That is the part that I don't understand.

Nitwit has fit over twit hit: Troll takes timeless termination terribly

frank ly

My selfie stick isn't long enough for that.

Schrödinger's cat explained with neutrinos

frank ly

Re: Neutrons change flavor but Leggett cannot contain fewer gs

Are they all the same flavour?

Africa's MeerKAT looks at the sky, surprises boffins with 1,300 galaxies

frank ly

CMB

Is that evenly distributed faint texture the CMB radiation or some other artifact?

McCain: Come to my encryption hearing. Tim Cook: No, I'm good. McCain: I hate you, I hate you, I hate you

frank ly

They have subpoena powers

That means they can compel Tim cook to attend. If they do, can he can bring his Apple legal team to represent him and tie them all up in procedural tape?

Empty your free 30GB OneDrive space today – before Microsoft deletes your files for you

frank ly

Re: Owncloud

If you have likeminded friends or relatives, you can have cloudy personal storage in each others homes to give geographical separation.

Google quietly takes gag off Mississippi AG after wrecking ads probe

frank ly

Money talks

It also silences people.