Posts by Justicesays
143 posts • joined Tuesday 15th June 2010 12:19 GMT
Always the interim measure of doing neither...
But I don't recommend it
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/11572/fouryear-prison-sentence-for-san-francisco-network-administrator-/
I think the government as probably about as competent as this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agFWob0E7ns
Re: Insects?
Silkworms are apparently great
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/01/15/yum-silkworms-could-be-the-next-astronaut-food/
You can eat the worms and the silk, but you do have to eat 170 of them a day...
I guess you could deep fry them or something,
Just need to figure out some equally grim source for the oil...
Re: millionfold reduction in the global herd?
Unfortunately true. In this human dominated age, being evolutionarily successful for many animals (and plants for that matter) has become
a) Be Tasty or otherwise useful to humans
b) Be easy to raise in captivity or domesticate
It always amuses me to see PETA's attempts to drastically reduce the number of animals in the world by banning them from being used as pets, for work or for food.
A few thousand cows is about right, and add to that sheep, horses, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats etc.
without human support, these animals would have long since been extinct or present only in zoos/remote locations, as humans have taken over their natural habitat.
Google is more interested
In adding to the body of case law that makes people unable to take class action lawsuits against companies.
This is to go along with the "You cant take out a class-action lawsuit" and "You agree to arbitration with the independent Googlearbs corporation, which can only happen in a small office in remotest Alaska on the first Thursday after a full blue moon , before trying to sue us." which have been added to every contract ever recently. Pretty sure in the UK those terms would be entirely unenforceable.
Its then just easier to swamp the little guys with paperwork and legal stuff, so they can no longer afford to hire a lawyer, and if one does take it on a no-win-no-fee basis they will only be able to handle a small subset of cases. Exactly the situation a class action was intended to avoid, except these days the only people who win in class actions are the lawyers, who pay themselves huge wedges of cash while passing those who "win" a small itunes voucher or whatever.
Any right thinking Judge would not rule against a class action, as these are designed to minimize the load on the courts from cases such as these.
Re: Bad Business Model
I guess that depends,
Do the losses mean that they are unable to make money.
Or does it mean they guessed the yearly profit wrong and paid too much to the "Salesforce (Cayman Islands)" company that licenses all the IP for reasons that are not at all to do with avoiding corporation tax.
Re: But...
Depends on how the encryption is implemented I guess.
For your bog standard SSL , a stealth redirect of your DNS and IP traffic through a MITM snoop server that either fakes up the certificate, or they lean on the actual issuer to give them the private key using the same powers.
Symantec (Verisign/Noron) are US based,
Comodo? US Based
Digicert? US Based
Entrust? US Based
GlobalSign? US Based
GoDaddy? US Based
TrendMicro are Japan Based, not sure that is going to help much though.
For more serious encryption regimes, then I guess they will have to break in and put the bugs on your keyboard etc. as normal.
Re: I wish...
I think your grasp of gravity may be lacking.
The atmosphere of the Earth ends at (at most) 10,000km
In practical terms its gone by 85km
Considering the Earth as a point gravity source, its radius is ~6300km
So at 6300 km you feel around 10m/s^2 (1 g)
Adding 85km to that distance makes almost no difference in the force of gravity
Even at 10,000km above the surface (16300km from the point gravitational source), the force of Earth's gravity has only dropped to a little less than a 1/4g
An actual gravity field extends infinitely, it just drop off to a negligible amount at astronomical distances
"Escaping" a planets (or anything else's) gravity is about velocity, ie you have to have sufficient velocity that the total of the gravitational fields deceleration over infinity is not sufficient to slow your relative movement to zero ( or reverse it.)
Thus the term "Escape Velocity"
If you start off further away you do need less velocity though.
Re: Government fining itself?
Its a good excuse to increase local taxes or cut funding to local services though, while the "fines"go back into the big pool of cash that can be spent on buying a politicians mates wind turbines or whatever.
Re: Come clean on funny money
In many cases the "clean up" cost probably includes doing all that security work you should have been doing all along.
Checking active accounts against your employee database, patching those pesky web servers etc.
And also creating (or acquiring) some security processes that are to be followed from then on.
Nothing like closing the stable door and then saying it cost £65,000 to do it.
Re: Mr Nerd, you need help.
If only there were some kind of publicly funded organization that someone could go to when they have their stuff stolen , in order to get help, perhaps in detaining the perpetrator and recovering the stolen goods in question...
Re: Crime and Punishment
The US use their prisoners to in-source cheap labour , so they can compete with the other countries on an equivalent wage.
Re: Dishwashers v Washing by hand
Great choice of comparison:
http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/built-in-dishwashers-vs-hand-washing-which-is-greener.html
I guess it costs energy to make that dish washer, but to be honest, what is holding us back is not the energy use, but the complete lack of a coherent energy policy is most countries worldwide.
The whole scene is dominated by (financially) vested interests, wilfully ignorant "Greens" and bumbling, popularity seeking politicians far too willing to court both of them.
And it wouldn't surprise me if the latter two categories also turned out to be financially vested in many cases.
The only coherent response I can see is a drastic creep in police and surveillance powers , probably so the governments can work to repress the inevitable riots when we can no longer eat, drive, stay up after dusk, wash in hot water or get our garbage removed.
Re: Crime and Punishment
So what level of crime does merit the attention of the police?
Should we just take all the theft and burglary crimes off the books? They are essentially going unpoliced, as even the low hanging "we know exactly who did it,and where they are" crimes of this nature are being ignored.
This is simply going to open up the doors to community based punishment actions, acts of the nature described in this article are just the start. Shortly there will be a "Scum in your area" website, which will name and shame people for their crimes (rightly or wrongly). Oh wait, the UK justice system is designed to prevent that from happening by not making truth a valid defence in a libel case.
I guess the site needs to be run from some offshore location , anonymously.
Shouldn't be too hard to get advertising revenue from Security, Alarm and personal defence companies.
Re: The obvious solution
Was I the only person who read the articles about how the "social game networks" are actually funded by essentially con men, spammers and rip off merchants ?
http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/
This is the same ecosystem that is moving to FTP apps on your mobile phones.
Enjoy.
Re: Can you no longer cap your call balance?
Apparently "Capping" is (somehow) not as firm as you would think.
There is (or certainly used to be) a delay of up to a couple of days before the cap kicked in if you went over it.
This is what I like to think of as the mobile phone companies profit margin.
Of course, if you are on PAYG they can instantly detect how much you have used and stop outgoing calls straight away...
Re: bad example
Well,
In the "old days" you would give handwritten stuff to the typing pool to type out neatly.
If you had your own typewriter what you typed would be full of overstrikes, spelling mistakes and would take you many times longer. Only the "many times longer" applies with a desktop PC, and that is mitigated by the amount we have to type, we naturally get fast at it (generally), and can copy stuff from the internet ;p!
Now the only time I hand write stuff is a few scribbled notes before browsing the server room or in a meeting.
The cost, ease of editing of the desktop PC meant there was no future in the typing pool.
I'm not sure however that we should (or even could) keep on obsolete jobs roles that are replaced by technology.
In a free market economy, company 1 , which adopts (say) cargo loading robots for cost reasons (faster, no vacations , no accident claims) will outperform company 2 (that uses traditional manpower and thus pays more for it). This is assuming the new technology actually works as advertised,
Eventually company 2 will be undercut by company 1, and unless it moves to some niche role where docker robots cant do the job, it goes under.
The only way to avoid that is a) Banning docker robots b) Nationalizing the manual docker company and operating it at a tax-payer subsidised loss
Company 2 refusing to adopt the robots does not save the jobs, it simply costs the company its existence.
Re: Perfectly Normal for this to be taxed
Erm,
No, here is how HMRC actually handle it
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM21671.htm
They don't tax it, at all, assuming is is provided completely free of charge (and not via some kind of opt in , salary sacrifice scheme) and is available to all employees, and not some kind of banqueting club.
I do like the special exemption for directors to have better meals and wine while the plebs get bread and stew
Re: No suprises in any of that.
I own a tremendous amount of PC games due to Steams nefarious sales.
I've even finished some of them.
There is however a large shift in gaming time from single player "pay and play" style games, where you can expect someone to buy a game for £30 and play it for 27 hours then buy a new one, to games where people will quite happily play co-op or pvp multiplayer for weeks, months, even years (including MMO's in this).
People playing these games don't have the same motivation to buy a new game every few weeks.
Re: Chances are ...
And you think that's surprising?
How many people in the UK do you think can tell you how many counties there are and name them all, without looking them up. Oh, and then name all the crown dependencies and overseas territories.
Re: SSH scans?
Moved my ssh to a different port, plus I put an ipchains wrapper around that port to block incoming ips for 5 mins on three consecutive failed ssh logins, which nicely honeypots anyone trying a brute force attack that finds the port in the first place. Haven't seen anything in the logs since I moved the port, so your average random attack doesn't bother with a port scan, just looking for low hanging fruit.
You could also use a port knock sequence if you felt inclined, or only use shared keys for access.
Leaving it unprotected on the standard port does expose you to spammy attacks,
Re: I love steam
"however...
downloading your entire steam library after something goes horribly pear shaped with the machine... not cool!"
Erm, this is vs digging out the physical media for your entire gaming collection, installing each from (multiple) CD/DVD's , dealing with any additional DRM they have (registration codes etc), and then, PATCHING the whole lot to the non-broken versions, with the patches for older games only being available from third party sites full of crapware and adverts?
Oh, and then losing all the save games (unless you actually back those up unlike your game installs)
Yeah, Steam makes recovering from a borked PC a real hardship, what with avoiding almost all of that ,apart from the occasional GFWL or "home grown" and generally shitty DRM or multiplayer login system .
Oh, and Steamcloud saves.
Re: No...
Compression Algorithms are math
H.264 is not patentable , period
Oh wait...
Was it just me or
Did anyone else read this as
"Man who doesn't like to lose arguments goes as far as to submit a paper to support tenuous position in argument"
Frankly, the theory strikes me as a bit barmy.
Evolution of thumbs specifically to increase punching power vs. adoption of behaviour that prevents breaking of fingers when hitting people using already available bodily appendages.
I guess he proposes some time lag between when our ancestors were capable of picking up sticks and wielding them as weapons and when we actually started doing it.
That first hominid with the stick must been all "Don't bring a thumb buttressed fist to a club fight" as he became king of punching land.
Clearly getting a handle
On how the impartial Texan patent court works....
Not sure there is much point in a Quantum Kilogram
After all, if you know exactly how much it weighs you won't know where it is!
Re: Still flogging that horse I see
"yet there's no chance of similar penalties and restrictions applying to gun ownership?"
To be fair, this case, the killer stole semi-automatic weapons from his 52 year old mothers house.
So I don't think a ban on automatic weapons, age restricted ownership of guns, or only restricting guns to homes would have made any difference in this case.
If there is almost one gun per-person in a country, then a person will have no trouble getting hold of a gun.
You also have FA chance of getting them all back if you decided to ban guns outright.
I imagine the result of trying an outright ban would be riots, with the rioters having (obviously) guns, due to the amount of gun nuts, which might well lead to civil war, at least on a small scale.
Once you have made your ultra-violent bed ,feathered with Guns 'n' Ammo, you pretty much have to lie in it.
Re: AltaVista.digital.com
After the porn sites started dropping whole dictionaries in their meta tags to show up on search results it became a lot easier to avoid them in search results.
I think I started adding
-aardvark -xylophone
to all of my none-aardvark-and-xylophone related searches
Re: Bad law
Or worse, your social status, who you know, who you insulted, your religion or skin colour.
If the decision to prosecute is rather arbitrary then you open yourself up to all kind of abuses (or accusations of abuse)
Well, you dont.
Based on the article, turns out its quite hard to sell $18m of maple syrup when
a) The police and maple syrup industry know someone has stolen it
b) You don't actually have a legitimate source of maple syrup to show to buyers.
Unlike drugs or something, its not like users of maple syrup need to avoid police attention.
They would probably much rather avoid a charge of receiving stolen goods.
So you get caught when one of them reports it.
They have just taken the easy way out
Which is to do nothing about the VAT on ebooks, while giving excuses like:
Well, only rich people can afford ebooks readers.
Its impossible to tell the difference between an ebook and computer software, especially if the ebook has pictures or music in it.
etc,
Then eventually dead tree books will become a luxury item , due to the small number sold/high prices, and be re-classifed as such, and subject to VAT as well.
But there will still be VAT on ebooks as "Well, its too late to do anything about it now".
And another VAT exception will have been entirely eliminated.
Re: Simple
You Fools!
Clearly these are images of the rover reflected in the shiny hull of the flying saucer it is currently investigating.
That explains the distorted image, AND the announcement NASA were going to make and then pretended was just about clay or whatever.
Re: "stalled by asterisk"
Wait until they get around to discussing if # should be called "hash" or "pound".
Posted in Linux kernel dumps 386 chip support
What he should have said
Is that if the 386 lot don't like it, they can fork off. (the previous linux kernel)
Re: ReVuln seem like nice people
You can also turn off your telly or other device.
Neither might be convenient however (you might live along the A127 for instance)
I wonder what they do if they find a critical vuln. in say, airplane flight systems,air traffic control or life support?
Does the CAA/whoever have to bid against Al Qaeda ?
Re: ReVuln seem like nice people
No, you appear to be thinking of security researchers who publish vulns in their entirety without seeking payment (with or without privately informing the vendor).
These are people publishing the fact that they know there are vulnerabilities in a device , and will sell the knowledge of that to the highest bidder, be it crims, governments or the (now pressured) device owner.
In your analogy they announce there are crash causing potholes somewhere on the A127 and offer to sell a map to the highest bidder, be that highwaymen bent on robbing crashed or stopped cars or the highways agency - they don't really care.
USAians, Your elected representatives
Working for you Google.
Re: Hey microsoft!
They probably made a copy of the hard drive for evidence purposes.
That's copyright infringement right there!
Unfortunately there is probably some kind of "Fair use" term for law enforcement
Posted in Flash memory made immortal by fiery heat
Re: I Think Wear Leveling Will Still be Needed
wear levelling seems like a lot of overhead for general use in this case.
Swapping some blocks out when they look likely to fail after three years constant use would just require a bad block/relocation table like regular hdds have.
Whereas an "old" SSD block would fail in a couple of hours in the same situation, so wear levelling makes alot more sense.
They are getting him out of there, this is part of the plan,
And the "chronic lung illness" is part of it.
Here's the scene, policemen standing around outside the embassy when a doctor and an EMT come through carrying a stretcher.
Minutes later a thin blond man comes out of the embassy on the stretcher, wearing a oxygen mask.
Police run over, much commotion, arrest blond man there and then, doctor objects to mask being lifted etc.
Police get in ambulance and all concerned driven to hospital.
When they get there, EMT breaks off , goes to a quiet place and removes "Mission impossible" style mask, revealing The Assange, with dyed black hair, dark fake tan and a goatee.
Quickly jumps in a waiting vehicle and speeds off to a beach where a zodiac/speed boat/french fishing boat crewed by Argentinian special forces is waiting.
Boat whisks him out to sea where they meet up with a container ship bound for South America.
The Assange is inserted into a pre-prepared container with living quarters / septic tank / water etc. all self contained, and seals are affixed showing it was consigned in Spain 2 weeks earlier.
A month later he appears in Ecuador.
The "doctor" mingles with the hospital staff and disappears.
The man with pneumonia (the real EMT sans disguise) turns out to be a disposable foreign national with a now much enlarged bank account to make up for the time he will serve.
Precipitous , I do not think that means what you think it means...
"the precipitous nature of doing business in China"
Should this be "precarious" by any chance.
Unless doing business in China was a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse of course.
Re: Because...
"Talking about settling Mars is about as plausible as talking about using wormholes to travel to distant galaxies."
No its not.
Wormholes are a purely theoretical idea that humanity has no concept of how we could generate or make practical use of , vs rockets which have been in use for over 60 years, and have already demonstrated the ability to send stuff to Mars successfully. I would have to say there is a huge qualitative difference in those two endeavours.
Humanity could give a good go at colonising Mars if we dedicated a considerable proportion of our resources to it, using only existing technology.
Whereas opening "wormholes to distant galaxies" is total sci-fi bullshit
Re: To be fair, at least one point they make is valid
"meant that the end users, and the ISP's were paying part of the cost of people watching iplayer instead of the BBC paying the entire upload cost.
If my understanding is correct, one can see why the ISP's thought the BBC were taking the piss and wanted to charge the BBC for bandwidth transferred P2P."
And then of course the users would pay less?
No?
Thought not.
Re: It doesn't look like the most efficient use of space.
code monkeys
Re: Form over function.. again
I'm hoping they have a little tram system at the least.
Ideally turbolifts of course.
Posted in Ten... PC games you may have missed
Re: PC Games?
A Demo?
Given how short the game is, the demo must be only a couple of minutes!
Solve two problems at once, with H2O
"But that still leaves a lot of potential for explorers to be hit by harmful radiation during solar storms and so on. Shielding materials would necessarily be heavy, and thus probably impractical to send along on an interplanetary trip."
Water is a pretty good radiation shielding material, esp. against high energy cosmic rays (compared to metals which generally emit showers of secondary particles should a cosmic ray hit them).
And it doesn't tend to become long term radioactive either.
Plus, presumably astronauts will be bringing along water in any case (what with all the drinking and so on).
which would save on special purpose shielding, certainly for a storm shelter.
Long flat tanks under the skin for general travel, then pump the water to a smaller centre shelter area with much deeper tanks when a storm is due.
Pretty standard sci-fi concept.
Re: Species specific rat poison.
Blue apples?
Re: Peters principle, can't do your job? Get promoted out of it.
You realize that in the UK, if you pass your driving test in an automatic car, you are only qualified to drive an automatic, and have to pass again in a manual to be able to drive one.
Those that pass in a manual are however licensed to drive an automatic without a further test.
So I guess it is exactly like saying that, pity its also true.
Re: Impartiality and scientific theories
On the other hard, if it turned out the seminar was run by David Ike and the Church of Scientology, you would like to know, right?
