* Posts by Charles 9

16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

Charles 9
FAIL

Re: Gates' problem

Well, "Because I Said So" has always seemed a valid excuse to many, especially when talking to children.

Anyway, the jury seems to be out on the subject, given there's no one auhtoritative, overriding authority regarding the English language (and any source you cite will be guaranteed to be denied by someone else, thus my point).

Charles 9

Re: We need to get the hat trick on this conspiracy theory!!

How about some info from more-reputable news sources.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/08/01/157714056/bites-from-rabid-vampire-bats-may-not-be-a-death-sentence

In this case, there are a few possibilities for this, including genetic tolerance given their long-standing proximity to the bats, not to mention the likely reduced virulence within the bats (smaller bites, possible less-virulent strain).

Charles 9

Re: Gates' problem

60's = 1960's, and last I checked an s straight after a number wasn't considered grammatically proper.

Charles 9

Re: Teach your children

To a Rapture Christian, they win either way. If they live, they're the chosen ones left to rule the purified Earth. If they die, the Rapture is coming and they get out ahead of Armageddon.

Charles 9

Re: Choice, not Charity

It's Morton's Fork. You either have a mob easily influenced by someone evil but charismatic (eg. Trump), or you disenfranchisement as people bitch about not being in control of their destiny (what the country was like at its founding and for some time afterward). And because of the human condition, no middle ground is safe (ANY test to determine eligibility can be corrupted, and as humans are emotional first and logical further down, one good crisis can swing just about any mob in an election).

Charles 9

Re: Angels are real

"How can one study a being that is allegedly superior to oneself?"

With persistence and faith. After all, we still try to understand the mind of God.

Charles 9

Re: Teach your children

It's not the plagues I'm connecting, but GOD. And once GOD is involved, all bets are off, no argument is too extreme, and no view impossible to keep.

Quite simply, you can't change the mind of someone who doesn't want to change their mind.

Charles 9

Re: Very good skeptoid podcast recently debunking this stuff

Self-defeating. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. ANY approach of that sort can be turned against you.

Charles 9

If it's THAT old, why not use DOSBOX or a VM?

Face masks hamper the spread of coronavirus. Know what else they hamper? Facial-recognition systems (except China's)

Charles 9

Re: Rules on face mask design ?

What about a face mask that looks like a face? That should provide a double-whammy of both throwing off your detection and raising that of someone else.

Infosys fires employee who Facebooked 'let's hold hands and share coronavirus'

Charles 9

Re: Valid policy

Is it? The Parthians WON the battle that made the Parthian Shot famous. That may have been because they were light cavalry and were experts at mobile hit-and-run warfare.

Here's why your Samsung Blu-ray player bricked itself: It downloaded an XML config file that broke the firmware

Charles 9

Most do to allow for BluRay persistent storage. Trouble is, the crash hits before USB turns on, so it wouldn't help.

Charles 9

Re: A Solution Exists

And even they'll just lobby the government under threat of hostile campaign ads or even rehoming (threatening tax revenues).

Charles 9

Re: Standard firmware practice ...

You're probably thinking of A/B firmware, where the firmware is partitioned in two to provide a fallback in case of a failed update. Android 11 is considering mandating A/B firmware.

Charles 9

Re: Thanks Guys

"Routers should come with all traffic blocked and you should have to open a port to allow stuff out, this take everything from these companies is disgusting."

They'll just disguise everything as web traffic. Block them, block the web and get complaints the Internet is broken.

Charles 9

Re: The Internet of break things

Secret powerline networking will take care of that especially for appliances that MUST be plugged in.

Charles 9
Joke

Re: Why downgrade to the newest garbage?

Sorry, but I've seen what's real in life, and between the smoke, toxic pollen, muggers, crazy drivers, and now this so-called Coronavirus (I mean, either it's like seasonal flu or it's Captain F'n Trips and we're all dead anyway), I think I'll take the "life-like" experience I get from a good TV, thank you very much.

Charles 9

But probably the only way you can do it since you can't rely on the player (which has been hacked and why the keys for them were revoked in the first place).

Charles 9

Re: Why...? Just Why?

YOU don't, but most do, and sometimes even $20 can mean the difference between a Deal or No Deal. You're outvoted by everyone else's wallets, so you either go with the flow or throw up your hands and go, "Stop the world! I wanna get off!"

Charles 9

Re: Why...? Just Why?

They then point to the part of the label in the back that says, "May Require Internet Connection" and send you home no better.

Charles 9

Re: New market

BUT...

Getting people to care means requiring them to learn...but they don't WANT to learn.

Ergo, we better just prepare for our inevitable doom...soon...

Charles 9

Re: Why...? Just Why?

What about AACS key updates? With them, some newer movies won't play.

Bad news: Your Cisco switch is a fake and an update borked it. Good news: It wasn't designed to spy on you

Charles 9

Andromeda Strains and Feral Ghouls are notoriously tough to kill (last I checked, you can't kill an Andromeda Strain). Worse, nukes just make them stronger.

Charles 9

And if they turn out to be Andromeda Strains or Feral Ghouls?

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

Charles 9

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

Not in the UK, but in most states in the US, yes, primarily because of its large size and cross-jurisdiction issues. Often the first words you hear out of a traffic cop during a stop is "License and registration, please?" (I speak from firsthand experience).

Moore's Law is deader than corduroy bell bottoms. But with a bit of smart coding it's not the end of the road

Charles 9

Re: Dennard scaling

"The cosine transforms (or similar) used in video compression are easily parallelised."

Not if they're dependent on the ones BEFORE them, and the most efficient video codecs are INTER-frame, meaning you can't do the next frame until you do the one. This is why x264 didn't go multithreaded for a dog's age and even now takes approaches that appear to have tradeoffs in quality or speed.

Google to bury indicator for Extended Validation certs in Chrome because users barely took notice

Charles 9

Re: It Doesn't Seem to Help Lusers, lets Hide It!

"Why is it assumed to be a UX flaw when the user doesn't understand browser security features? Wouldn't a better solution be a campaign to educate the users?"

You assume they're willing or even able to learn, in which case, why not just require a license to use the Internet?

Thing is, most people just want to get crap done. Yesterday, if at all possible. Recall Click Fatigue.

Android 11 will let users stop device-makers from killing background apps, says Google

Charles 9

Re: Android 9 is unusable

Something tells me you're trying to squeeze blood out of a rock. Why not just get yourself a used laptop, max out its memory, put Linux or whatever on it, and have done with it? Your screen will be larger, you'll get a beefier machine under the bonnet, and you'll have more control over your destiny.

Charles 9

Re: Android 9 is unusable

"I have yet to find an Android tablet or device I can use as a professional working product. I am reluctant to upgrade, for sake for seeing what incompetent shit the next version of Android brings."

Better prepare yourself, then. The increased memory usage of even the most basic apps make even 2GB pretty much useless for everything but a one-trick pony (at which point, why use an Android phone). I was forced to abandon my Note 4 because of this and a network glitch specific to those models.

Unless you're willing to throw up your hands and say, "Stop the Internet! I wanna get off!"

Built to last: Time to dispose of the disposable, unrepairable brick

Charles 9

Re: My undead laptop and me

If it's a PATA device, I wonder if there can be some practicality to replacing it with a Compact Flash card and an adapter?

Charles 9

Re: My undead laptop and me

What about the ones designed for dashcams and other constant-use devices? Those have to be built for write endurance and temperature extremes but not necessarily for raw speed.

Charles 9

Re: Tlmlng Belt

Last I checked, ship (and locomotive) engines are build with different design specs. They can be built larger and are designed for lots of raw power given with normal work loads. That said, I don't think ship and locomotive engineers are too concerned with getting the last drop of efficiency out of their fuel, compared to, say, a light aircraft pilot. Have you seen all the knobs and switches on some of those things?

Or, to put it TL;DR, if simple really were all that, why don't rotary engines rule the road?

You may be distracted by the pandemic but FYI: US Senate panel OK's backdoors-by-the-backdoor EARN IT Act

Charles 9

Then they'll just get you for conspiracy to commit terrorism, at least until they ban encryption altogether. Until then, they can always resort to parallel construction.

Charles 9

Re: About those "weak" private ciphers......and those UK crimes.....

Look, if they REALLY want you, there's always Parallel Construction.

Charles 9

Re: Let the Games begin & may the odds be ever in your favour :P

You assume Joe Stupid understands all this. Recall 2016...

Charles 9

Re: Let the Games begin & may the odds be ever in your favour :P

And if the government replies that Facebook and the like are trying to play the Big Brother card when in fact THEY'RE the Big Brother?

LibreOffice community protests at promotion of paid-for editions, board says: 'LibreOffice will always be free software'

Charles 9

Re: In effect

But the OTHER risk and fear is that, without SOME kind of revenue stream, the money dries up and the whole works gets left in the dirt. It's a dilemma of lack of funds where not enough people are willing to give, full stop. So, do you come begging or do you just let it go?

Linux Mint 20 isn't exactly bursting with freshness but, hey, there's kernel 5.4 and it's a long-term support release

Charles 9

Re: Well, no

Oh? What about spearmint versus peppermint? Both are minty, but you wouldn't call them one flavor.

Facebook accused of trying to bypass GDPR, slurp domain owners' personal Whois info via an obscure process

Charles 9

Good luck. Gibson's Sprawl is already happening. Soon Facebook will be powerful enough to put governments under their heel and become sovereign unto itself.

Charles 9

Which is why I also mentioned "degrees of separation". If legislators have gotten wise, corporate lawyers have gotten wisER in the meantime.

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

Charles 9

Re: such priorities

Actually, it's REgress, as "re" in this case repesents REVERSAL. "Pro" and "con" only work in the "for" and "against" context. "-gress" uses a "forward" and "backward" context.

Charles 9

Re: If this ever happens....

The Internet still depends on means of communication. All the US has to do is control all the endpoints. Granted, there are more than usual, but they're still finite and likely well-known.

Balkanization of the Internet has been in consideration for some time.

Charles 9

Re: So once the Government gets its way....

But some would say that it made sense to give the most populous places like Philly then and say New York now. Why are individuals not considered so highly in this kind of system? Are they no less important than the areas in which they live?

Frankly, perhaps what's needed is some kind of Connecticut Compromise in which votes are counted more than once: say by person, by district, and by state, best two out of three. That way there is much less room to complain as three different political units are considered at once. Also reduces the power of swing states (which will exist in any single system, simply due to uneven population distribution).

Charles 9

And if they DO put up...and litter the stash with "disgusting" stuff like granny porn (or worse, gramps porn)?

Apple to keep Intel at Arm's length: macOS shifts from x86 to homegrown common CPU arch, will run iOS apps

Charles 9

Re: Dec Rainbow

But I'd have to wonder about the price tag. I still remember observing those computers in the late 80's/early 90's but also recalled the price listings. Plus the fact that PC tech had moved on by then.

Charles 9

"People lost their damn minds when the iMac came without a floppy drive and was all USB. "Madness!" they cried from behind their Windows PC. "Apple is going to destroy itself!""

Apple may have been a little ahead of the curve there, but not by much. By the turn USB sticks in sizes of 8MB and more showed the way forward, given they weren't as restrained by physics as magnetic disks and later optical discs.

Charles 9

Re: Cock of the walk one week, feather duster the next

Well, what's the state of the art of video editing on both platforms these days? I know professional video studios commonly swore by Apple machines in the past.

Charles 9

Re: Then you "should" be okay with just a recompile

Renting can refer to both directions. For Adobe's side, it's usually termed "renting out".

Charles 9

Re: Keyword here is "maintained"

If the software is THAT old, it was probably built against the old PowerMacs and so on and should be put in a virtual machine in any event. There's no way to run 90's DOS programs and 16-bit Windows apps natively in a modern Windows machine given the lack of things like ports and so on, so why can't virtualization be used, unless we're talking custom hardware like that lathe I read about here years back (that HAD to be XP because the custom controller board was ISA and ISA was dropped in Vista).

Charles 9

Re: Compatibility is gonna be a problem.

"I would sometimes prefer old stuff on Windows to break and fail. There are so many lazy software companies that still say "requires Internet Explorer x" or even Windows 7. Even under support contracts (niche software usually)."

Sometimes, it's a matter of the software company not existing anymore, meaning they're kinda stuck with it and lack the budget to contract a replacement.