* Posts by Decius

56 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Oct 2009

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REVEALED: Titsup flight plan mainframe borks UK air traffic control

Decius

I'm sure that the people who were controlling traffic at ICT and DFW during the strike will be surprised to hear that your pilot didn't contact them.

You gotta fight for your copyright ... Beastie Boys sue toymaker over TV ad

Decius

Re: I hope GoldieBlox get rich

Make the GoldieBloxes better, it isn't too hard. There's no such thing as a good, cheap, science toy.

Decius

How to do it right:

First, get BB permission to remix Girls, and write and produce !Girls. They probably won't have a problem with that, since the irony of the original isn't very obvious to begin with.

!Girls is now yours, and you can use it in your advertisements without further reference to the BB, so they can't deny use based on the non-advert rules.

All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters

Decius
Boffin

Re: All about the revenue...

What's the difficulty with implementing IP based filtering instead of DNS based filtering? It could even use the same blacklist (or whitelist!).

Toshiba reveals spin transfer RAM

Decius
Trollface

I thought Jobs WAS God?

'Google can do whatever it wants with the data once it gets it'

Decius
Flame

Re: 'Google can do whatever it wants with the data once it gets it'

"Can" means one thing, and "May" means another. Don't correct someone who is using them correctly.

VW STUNS WORLD+DOG WITH REAL HOVER-CAR!

Decius

Re: @jake (was: spinny!)

Why can't a monowheel brake just as fast as any other vehicle with the same traction and total rotational inertia of the wheels? Put in a counter rotating wheel inside the drive wheel, and brake them against each other. For traction issues, use a wider wheel.

DARPA overjoyed that its hypersonic glider came apart, blew up

Decius

Re: Shuttle speeds in similar position?

Hard to tell- what version of speed are you using? True air speed is hard to calculate, ground speed isn't really the most relevant to AEROdynamics, and mach speed varies with air pressure and other factors.

Mach speed is the most relevant to the physics involved, but Indicated Air Speed would be best. It's just impossible to measure without a pitot tube, which itself breaks hypersonic aerodynamics.

Indiana cops arrest violent 6-year-old

Decius

Re: Bad position

@AC:

What's the other half of that particular situation? The victim didn't understand the reasons behind the violence directed at him, and didn't know any way to resist the violence except using violence. What was the root cause, and how does the punishment address it?

Swedish men ordered to present cervices in database flub

Decius

by gender?

Surely they should sort by sex and then exclude the males, rather than including trans women but excluding trans men.

Printers SMASHED to bits in Office Space copycat revenge vid

Decius

You'd think that geeks would have hammer and ax proficiency already. Or at least favoured enemy: printer.

BOFH: Dawn raid on Fort BOFH

Decius
Trollface

Re: 8 1.5" floppies.

Security violation! That visitor isn't wearing his badge!

More evidence that neutrinos are NOT faster than light

Decius

What is the momentum of the neutrinos at the newly measured speed? If, as said, they arrived at the speed of light (to within experimental error) their momentum is infinite (within experimental error). Since the detector did not explode, either the neutrino was not traveling at the speed of light, or the neutrino did not change speed, and therefore was not detected.

NASA lost 'full control' to hackers, pwned 13 times last year

Decius
WTF?

Why do mission-critical systems have Internet access?

Playboy, Virgin Galactic tout zero-grav nookie in spaaaaace!

Decius
Flame

Re: Re: Bah!

A partial pressure of ~3 PSI of oxygen burns equally well regardless of the partial pressure of nitrogen. A partial pressure of about 18 PSI oxygen (what you would get if you added pure oxygen to test the seals on Apollo 1) is toxic, while the fact that the door opens inward (to make it possible to open the door in the ocean if it is partially submerged) means that it is impossible to open while pressurized or in space. The fact that the door can't open also makes the capsule a deathtrap if it catches fire while pressurized.

IT guy answers daughter's Facebook rant by shooting her laptop

Decius
Flame

@jean-luc

There's a huge difference between the lesson "You have no property rights and if you don't submit to me your toys will be thrown away" and "You have no property rights and if you don't submit to and respect me at all times I will use firearms to reinforce my authority".

I disagree with you on the 'minors have no property rights' portion of the discussion, but acknowledge that a reasonable person can disagree with me on that issue. I disagree strongly on the point that '"I will use firearms to reinforce my authority" is an acceptable part of parenting', and I claim that no person who believes "using firearms in anger and acceptable parenting are compatible" is reasonable.

Millions face Megaupload data deletion by Thursday

Decius

Introversion won that argument and lawsuit after the FBI called Shadowrun books a "handbook for computer crime".

PayPal dispute ends in 'violin destruction'

Decius

Contracts:

The buyer contracted to purchase an item. He received the item, didn't pay for it, and destroyed it. So far, only a civil matter.

Sue the buyer for the agreed purchase amount+costs. Since he bought from you, he "does business" in your area, and is subject to the jurisdiction of your local courts. File service, which he will ignore, and get a judgement, which he will also ignore.

Sell that judgement to the worst collection agency you can find- the one with the most complaints about their illegal collections behavior. It isn't about making yourself whole at this point, it's about discouraging this behavior in the future.

Carrier IQ VP: App on millions of phones not a privacy risk

Decius
Black Helicopters

Logging?

If you can't get the information after power cycling the phone, it hasn't been logged.

Guess what else has to monitor every key press? Every active program. The browser also has to see the URL, by the way. I wonder how paranoid these people get about the logging done by car computers.

Bloke claims ex swiped his sperm to make twins

Decius
Facepalm

They do have the DNA of the guy. That's what it's about!

Decius
Trollface

Why should any actions of the mother affect payments made (theoretically) on behalf of the child?

BOFH: We don't need no stinkin' upgrade

Decius
Joke

I checked all the pockets, and none of them have a phone in them.

Anymore.

New plastic telescope ammo machine gun is light as a rifle

Decius
Go

Can't wait for the pistol and bullpup.

Once we get a LMG that weighs as much as a current-gen AR, then we need to look at an Assault Rifle that weighs as much as a current-gen pistol. overall length can be brought down by bringing the chamber back towards the stock. (Current rifles have a large amount of space and weight that simply serves as a way to brace the weapon against the shoulder.) With a little work, I think that rifles can be brought down to the weight of current submachine guns, without losing any effectiveness. Apply the new concepts to SMGs, and they become the new sidearms, and sidearms become the new holdouts.

Then I want the weapon that takes advantage of all the new refinements, but has the heft of the current LMGs.

Also, "Caseless" might be better understood as "Self-propelled sabot".

Secret US 'Jedi' ghost-copters kept out of bin Laden raid

Decius
Black Helicopters

Really?

"No electromagnetic radiation" would mean that the chopper maintained a temperature of 0K. It would not appear on radar of any kind, but would be very visible to visible and infrared sensors as a hole in the universe.

If they meant "emits electromagnetic radiation in a manner indistinguishable from background noise", then they should have said so. Terrain radar can be low-powered and focused enough to be undetectable by anything outside of the area affected by rotor wash.

Based on the reports, the choppers used were stealthy enough-they got in and got out before anybody noticed. Maybe the other choppers were performing operations that haven't been admitted to yet.

Anonymous shuts down hidden child abuse hub

Decius
Facepalm

They own the network...

How many entrance nodes to TOR are run by members of anonymous?

It wouldn't surprise me if at least some TOR onions are entirely inside the control of one or more people who would cooperate to track down rapists.

If hackers can get a virus into a nuclear fuel enrichment control computer, then they can certainly get one into the system of someone who downloads files from anonymous people. (Pun intended)

Decius

What about other people who link?

Clearly you support The Pirate Bay, since they only provide links to people. And the contact points of mob gangsters- they just pass information and money from one person to another, they don't commit crimes themselves. Even the Kommandants of concentration camps were /only/ interpreting orders and passing them along to other people.

At some point, aiding an immoral act by providing information becomes an immoral act. As to if vigilantism is justified, that is a question that you have to ask yourself, and anonymous had to ask itself. The (il)legality of the actions here is actually pretty clear on every side.

If they were a pay-for-content system, then they need to keep CC details associated with a user, to prevent chargeback abuse (If you don't keep CC numbers, you can't ID repeat chargebacks). In that case, identifying the people who can withdraw money from the merchant account associated with the site would be the top priority. After that would come the trawl for anyone who had made a purchase from that merchant account.

And with a username and logon times, the TOR entrance nodes could check their logs for IP addresses which started sessions at the right time, and result in a list of likely IP addresses. I doubt that TOR entrance node admins will ever send their logs or the private key to their logs to anyone else, so the information needs to be distributed to them somehow. Making it public seems to be the best way...

'Occupy Wherever' movement goes transgalactic

Decius
Stop

We reject your arguements...

You are wrong. To enumerate all of the things you are wrong about would require a bigger wall-o-text than your ramblings.

Art is a recreation of reality through the value system of the artist. By recreating reality, however imperfectly, you have joined the ranks of artists. Now you need to pull yourself out of the 95% of artists that are complete crap and write something worth reading.

iPad baby baffled by paper magazine

Decius
Flame

Re: Sheep

Of course they are a waste of money, along with the roads. You don't need the roads to get to where you want to walk, and the fact that there are other people who have different needs is lost on you. As is the concept of minimizing the total of the squares of delays.

Australia to issue passports for males, females and... X

Decius

Sex, or gender?

In English, male and female and intersex refer to sex, which is a biological phenomenon. Man and woman distinguish on the basis of gender, which is a social phenomenon.

And yes, if an intersex person has the right to be searched by a "person of the same biological sex", they can certainly stand on their right to do so. Standing on your rights in cases where you are being strip-searched results in getting tased, beaten, and arrested.

Seven Dwarfs password gag declared Fringe's best

Decius

Plural of dwarf

is Dwarfes.

Paintball round pops Bulgarian airbag

Decius
Unhappy

Energy:

A shot to a testicle WILL take a man out. For some reason shots to the shaft aren't nearly so painful. It's not uncommon for the gelatin spheres to draw blood, bruise, and otherwise hurt, but I wouldn't want to handle any breast that they would break.

Woman in strop strip for Bermuda airport customs

Decius

So...

Get a passport under a new name. It doesn't even really have to be yours.

Afghan coppers trained with Playmobil

Decius

Not training...

Clearly they are using the figures to play some variant of Warhammer. The one in front is a lone standard bearer, who appears to be the sole survivor of a unit of Dwarves backed up by tanks proxied by police cars...

Google+ bans real name under ‘Real Names’ policy

Decius

Perfectly legal.

It has never been the case that private companies cannot use the SSN. Only recently have there been privacy laws requiring notification of people whose SSNs have been disclosed.

Employers, debt collectors, and anyone who handles your money is required, by law, to use your SSN for tax reporting purposes. It makes sense, given a value that is already guaranteed to be unique to an individual, to use it in a database. If you can guarantee that each individual has only one entry, you can even use it as a key. What you can't reasonably do is use knowledge of SSN as proof of identity, which doesn't stop a lot of companies from doing it anyway...

Utah cops baffled in case of mysterious anonymous cuffee

Decius

Espresso

After further research, the make-it-go-faster machine was junked and an espresso machine was purchased. The motor oil that the previous machine produced was still found better than Starbucks.

Decius

Do the crime, do the time...

How, exactly, can you justify setting bail for someone who refuses to identify himself? The absolute highest you could set bail would be the the cash he had on him... and no way to issue a bench warrant if he skipped.

No, this guy is either proving a point, pulling a prank, or an investigative reporter.

Hacking Baseball

Decius
Boffin

Ass of you and me...

The exact location of a hit might not be predictable, but a good fielder can know roughly where the ball might go by reading the batter and the pitch.

A good home plate umpire will have a good idea of the pitch, if the batter will swing, and if the batter will hit as soon as the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. Fielders have a slightly worse view of the batter, but can see the pitch that the catcher called much better.

Dropbox security fubar infuriates customers

Decius
Boffin

1% of what?

If 99% of the programs I write compile and work correctly the first time, that's pretty good. If my typist has a 1% chance of making a mistake on any given day, that's outstanding. If my engine blows up once every 10 million rotations, that's still better than six-sigma performance.

Check your context before you start spouting nonsense.

BOFH: CSI Haxploitation Cube Farm Apocalypse

Decius

@anon

You aren't taking full advantage of read-caching from the hard drive, nor overclocking the USB slot. As for the corruption, that's why you use .jpeg compression: You run it through the image enhancement software back at the lab, and get more detailed evidence than was originally present!

I can't explain why the .zip step, though. I recommend .lha instead.

BOFH: Ready for the Judgment Day

Decius

Recompiled browser...

Why would you trust that the browser would tell you who signed the certificate?

Also, the proxy will detect when you try to download a compiler, and instead send you a modified version of said compiler. When you compile the source for your browser, the compiler will detect that you are trying to compile a browser and insert the desired anti-privacy features.

You cannot create a trusted environment in an untrusted one.

Alabama sex shop owner swaps 'Guns for Toys'

Decius

Educational?

If the customer says "I didn't know that was possible.", does it qualify as educational?

Sounds like a pretty big loophole to me...

Starbucks' iPhone barcode app easily scammed by screengrab

Decius

Unreasonable security:

The cost to Starbucks is negative.

The cost to the customer is the price of the coffee.

If Starbucks has a method to provide refunds, then the cost to them is the cost of administering the program plus the cost of fraudulent refunds processed.

The solution would be to make each barcode single-use, and develop crypto to generate a large number of possible barcodes. If someone gets your phone and grabs a code, they can buy one drink with it, just like if they walked to the counter and bought it there. Optionally, the codes could be time-limited.

Option two would be to make the barcode animated, or otherwise interactive. It would then require a slightly more sophisticated attack. Slightly.

With a little editing-fu, a video of the previous customer's barcode could be used to create the static image.

Sony PS3 rootkit rumours rubbished

Decius

I own the hardware...

I can run any software that I own, or own a license to run, on my hardware. If I run Linux on my hardware, I am allowed to connect to the Internet, provided that my ISP allows me to connect to the Internet. I'm allowed to run games on my Linux PS3, provided I have bought the license to run the game. I'm allowed to run my legal backup copy of said games as well.

I don't have any right to play online games on PSN using my Linux PS3. That's because of the TOS of PSN, and that is still slightly dodgy.

Decius
Paris Hilton

How to mass hack PS3s

First, use the known issue to generate your own code, signed by Sony.

Then, execute a DNS attack to change the domain that the PS3 looks for to point to your own server.

Finally, when the PS3 'phones home', it reaches your server. 'Update' it with your code. For bonus points, after you subvert the PS3, redirect the traffic to the correct server, or to a suitably functional pirate server.

On a smaller scale, if you could compromise, say, a university dorm router, or any other piece of network backbone that serves a large number of PS3s, you could subvert those units when they called home.

Paris, because she subverts units.

Hacker admits stealing $12m worth of chips from Zynga

Decius

No cash value

Why does he have to 'repay' anything? Zynga has not been impoverished at all by the issuing of non-cash-value virtual non-currency.

Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down

Decius

What about where the feds have no mandate whatsoever?

I chose not to exercise my rights recently when making an INTRAstate (not crossing state lines) flight. A TSA agent stole a personal hygiene object from my carry-on luggage, using intimidation and his position of authority to deprive me of my property for his benefit. There is no constitutional basis for the federal government to regulate any commerce that does not cross state lines.

If they weren't so effective at being intimidating, I'd have directly challenged them long ago. I am literally afraid that I would lose my job for exercising my civil liberties. (Not in the least because my immediate supervisor has repeated the phrase "Fuck civil rights!" in discussions of similar events.)

Assange: Text messages show rape allegations were 'set up'

Decius
FAIL

So you don't read the charges, either.

Assange is charged in one instance with having sex without a condom when consent for sex without a condom was never given. In the other case, it is alleged that consent was withdrawn, and Assange continued to have sex after consent was withdrawn.

In both instances, he is accused of having sex in a nonconsensual manner.

I agree that the prosecution seems shaky, because I believe that if it were somebody of no note, there would be no prosecution.

How many other alleged rapists have had Interpol warrants issued, and what was the nature of their allegations?

RIAA and Anonymous sites both downed by DDoS assaults

Decius
Stop

Re: M.A.D.

You mean you're ENCOURAGING the RIAA and pirate groups to resort to non-internet measures?

My money is that before it escalates into warfare, a pirate group sets themselves up a bomb. Once it becomes clear that "Unknown parties" attacked a pirate group, the public outrage against the "Obvious" attacker will force a reasonable compromise. Or maybe just an outright war.

The longer we can keep this conflcit in court and cyberspace, the more likely a conclusion is reached before it escalates into meatspace.

Murder victim-mocking troll jailed

Decius
Grenade

Chilling...

Now that we've established that posting on the internet can result in prison time, we are left with the question: Who decides if a given comment is prison-worthy?

I'm of mixed opinions, here on the west side of the pond in the cuntry (intentional) known by its acronym. For one, I'd like to see people who say that they support suicide jailed. "The only way im wearin it for them [gays] is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid." (sic) http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gXonR9vkbvy798_taWkrWfoXivaw?docId=4955473

Then again, I'd like to see police officers prosecuted, or at least not permitted to resign without disgrace, for performing baseless strip searches of teenage females, or for harrasing others for personal gain. (All three of the above are either elected officials or currently running for office.)

I don't trust the people who make laws. I don't trust the people who enforce laws. Why should I trust laws?

Canada prostitution laws pulverised: politicians apoplectic

Decius
FAIL

Usually, when you charge for something, it it's because you wouldn't do it otherwise

Have you ever noticed that most people that dig ditches get paid for it? And most people who dig ditches make a profit for someone else?

Despite a generally PC attitude that ditch digging is ok "as long as he wants to", how many parents would want their sons to enter this industry?

Banning ditch-digging isn't about wagging the finger at ditch-diggers, it's about protecting those who would otherwise feel obligated to dig ditches.

Some people think that work is so special that you shouldn't have to do it you really don't want to. Some people think that profiting from other people working when they don't want to, might also be wrong.

So, ban manual labour, and criminalize manual labourours!

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