Not sure I buy it, but...

"Scans" of my servers are overrepresented by ip addresses in .ru and .cn.

So what does one conclude?

1) Server admins in .ru and .cn are significantly more incompetent than the rest of the world?

2) People in .ru and .cn are more apt to be criminals than anywhere else?

3) The governments of .ru and .cn have bones to pick with the .us, and sponsor these attacks in covert post-cold-war shenanegans?

I'm not liking any of my choices.

But in the absence of any other kind of explanation, one tends to gravitate toward one of these or another, with #3 being the very most exciting of all of them.

Beast with ?2? backs?

I thought the primary benefit of dating twins was making the beast with *3* backs.

Mostly just clueless

"How would you feel about “registering” with every bricks-and-mortar shop you buy something from?"

It used to be the case (okay, years ago), that whenever you purchased anything from Radio Shack, they'd write out a receipt by hand, asking for your mailing address so they could send you junk flyers in the mail. Sometimes the sales people would be particularly belligerent about demanding your information.

It isn't just merchants, either. I recently had an extended stay in the hospital, during which an organization made occasional visits with dogs. It was very nice. I wrote to thank them. Big mistake. Had to write an email filter against them in the end.

Ultimately, though, I'm still of the opinion that many organizations are simply clueless, rather than mean-spirited. Radio Shack stopped demanding personal information some time ago. The animal folks I still believe are more stricken with overzealousness than with any kind of evil mercenary attitude.

Am I a bad person...?

Am I the only one who thought of the Bob Hope movie, "Road to Hong Kong?"

The part I'm thinking of is here, about 8 minutes in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpDSCN1WCcw

The rhyme

Is this equally bizarre in the original Turkish, or is this an automated-translation artifact?

If it's still nonsensical in the original language, I'm going to have to conclude that this is an attack from a self-aware AI that has yet to grasp the syntax of human language. There can be no other explanation.

Wow! I'm more important than I thought

I've noticed for some time that IP addresses registered to China are...overrepresented in attacks on servers I manage. Even my home computer.

I had no idea that the Chinese government itself was interested in me. Wow.

But I guess that's probably the most respectful presumption I can come up with.

Surprised

I'm surprised El Reg missed an opportunity for a headline like "Iffy image said to signify incoming Google 10-incher."

So Confused

The word "theft" didn't appear in the article. The word "apartment" did. It would be cuckoo-bananas to assume her own WiFi router wasn't INSIDE her apartment, so why was she moving her laptop FARTHER AWAY from it in order to get a better signal?

Maybe I'd understand better if I didn't drink so much.

Ooh ooh! I spot a regional spelling!

Somebody summon a policeman!

(Besides, everybody knows "Math" was a king of Gwynedd who needed to rest his feet in the lap of a virgin or else he would die, and "Maths" would refer to him, together with the famous wise-woman of the Andre Norton collection).

MacAfee, some years ago....

I remember some years ago already, I got a new laptop which had MacAfee pre-installed.

The first thing I did was create a limited account for daily use.

Surprise. MacAfee started throwing errors. It seemed that MacAfee wouldn't run unless you were running as a user with Administrative access.

So I uninstalled it and forgot about it.

I'm sure they've improved their product since then (though I guess they've failed to produced a passing grade in this most recent test), but I still remember my astonishment at the program's reaction to a garden-variety first-tier approach to securing one's computer.

Thought I'd share....

Right. I'll get my coat.

VERY confused

Didn't some pundit note that in order to match pre-IPO earnings estimates, that Facebook would need a whole extra PLANET of new subscribers?

That's even taking the now-debunked items at face value.

I find high finance absolutely mystifying. This is why I will almost certainly die poor, I guess.

Simple Test

Did the offending sites vanish from Bing? If not, I'd assume something else was at work besides a simple "software error."

Appropriate consequences

Hmm. Perhaps this warning is the God's truth.

But if it's NOT, I want some ancient-Egyptian-esque consequences.

If a doomsayer is WRONG, I think he should be forced to live in the world he predicted (e.g.: if it was end-of-the-world stuff, he should be put to death. In this case, he would be required to pay outlandish prices for very tiny portions of fish).

This would be applicable both for the scientist who did the prediction as well as the journalist who repeated him.

Just a TAD confused

I understand the FIRST explosion, but not the subsequent ones.

Also, where was Mr. Moose during all of this?

You know...? Mr. Moose...? Ping-pong balls...?

Crud.

SNI

One thing I don't see mentioned...

No version of IE on Windows XP supports SNI. So if you want an SSL website viewable on Windows, you EITHER have to require a newer Windows operating system, or else still use XP, but with a browser with its own SSL implementation built-in (like anything BUT IE on XP).

That's what I hear when Google says it's not "supporting" IE8. I hear somebody's finally rolling out SNI in a big way.

Yeah, IE8 has its own rendering problems, SOME of which are fixed in IE9, but I don't see that as a hairy deal.

Also, the issue that you can't use YouTube at some place of employment or other because of some restriction of Google's is a complete red herring. To such people I say GET BACK TO WORK.

Am I the only one....

The only press I want to see on the Winklevoss twins is that they've released a porno.

And not an ordinary one. I mean, one that's really TWISTED and makes you feel dirty inside just hearing ABOUT it.

Anything less (e.g.: their business ventures) are just wasted on me.

Does nobody know how to administer a site anymore?

Oh geez: Bitch, moan, whine.

You program your site like this:

A visitor either has do-not-track ON, in which case he needs to buy a subscription for the content, OR he has do-not-track OFF, in which case he is selling his use patterns in exchange for the content.

Totally fair. Totally compliant with the standards. Totally doesn't matter which setting is on or off by default.

Either way, the content provider is getting paid a fair value for his content.

Why is this hard?

Already Disabled?

I disabled Java in Firefox long ago, since whenever I hit a page with a Java applet, my browser pauses for a good 30-45 seconds, and then typically just crashes entirely.

I remember trying to report it, and ending up with a lot of finger pointing (bad applet design, bad sandboxing, whatever), but no substantial remedies from my standpoint.

Luckily, it was never a Thing for me to have it off.

[Beer, because it helps me have it off]

Getting YOUNGER

The only data I have on "normal" social behavior is what I see on TV. I figure TV's as scientific as it gets.

In 1936, the ages of the stars of "Romeo and Juliet"--that is, society's view of what the ages of star-crossed "young" lovers would be--were 34 and 43.

In 1996, this was reduced to 17 and 22.

Now, granted, Shakespeare's idea was that they were about 14 or so. But that's ANTIQUITY. I have hard proof--HARD PROOF--that "young" couples are obviously younger today than they were in the 1st half of the 20th century.

HARD proof, I say.

"whether Twitter itself has even an inkling of why it's popular"

Aw, give 'em a break.

I don't have an inkling why it's popular, either.

But I thought...

I thought that using Facebook was something that CATALIZED farting, not INHIBITED farting.

Doesn't really matter

It doesn't really matter what the processes are, or what the data show.

As long as we admit to being TERRIFIED, it's all okay.

Keep coolie cool, boy

Am I the only showtune queen to think of "Cool" from West Side Story?

I live in the desert; I'll get my shoes.

Maybe not "Vampire," but "It"

It sounds a little like "It" from A Wrinkle in Time which FREAKED ME THE HELL OUT when I was 8 years old.

At least SOME of the problem

...isn't JUST the cost of upgrading n copies of Windows XP (which, as has been noted, can be very significant).

It's the problem that there are sometimes n licenses of Windows XP, but m installations, where m > n (sometimes m >> n). Windows XP let you do this fairly easily. It was much more difficult to do starting with Vista.

And maybe there really ARE m licenses, but the same activation key was used every time for "simplicity."

So on top of the upgrade cost, there's the cost of becoming compliant.

Sounds like a good job for "next month."

Segue

Oh, you nasty skeptics, you.

It wasn't so long ago that we were all pooh-poohing the Segway.

But look at us now--in our re-thought cities--zooming around in our two-wheeled wonder-crafts, with our legs de-evolving beneath us before our very eyes.

@naked as a JaylikeBird

The problem here is that if the current Native Americans actually conquered and displaced ANOTHER people who were in the Americas before THEM, then any moral superiority in the face of Europeans who did the same thing kind of evaporates.

"biologically accurate (if somewhat jerky)"

I've dated guys who were biologically accurate. If somewhat jerky.

Just saying.

I had an idea, too

I thought it would be cool if there was some kind of device (like a back scratcher) where I could apply suntan lotion to my own back.

I asked at my local Walgreens about such a thing.

The saleswoman at the drug store thought the whole concept was preposterous.

Eventually I did find the thing at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, months later.

I suppose I COULD sue, since I had the idea before the product was available. It DOES look a lot like a back scratcher, just as I described.

But what kind of self-absorbed megalomaniac would I have to be to believe that this idea was so unique nobody else could have come up with it independently?

Not me

All I get is a bunch of thumbnails warning me that I need to be 18 to proceed.

Peeping tommery

Lois: He's the one who owesmean apology. He was watching me go to the bathroom!

Peter: Well, clearly he thinks you're attractive, Lois. It's a positive thing.

Thank you, Glenn, for complimenting our family.

What's "tat," and how do I exchange it for the other thing?

There aren't enough people going into science, male OR female, so I want to see the beefcake edition of this commercial.

I'm thinking shirtless musclemen, a football, and a bunsen burner.