Posts by FrankAlphaXII

Re: Okay, honest question...

I think its Chinese after reading the Kaspersky technical paper on it, since none of the C&C servers they've seen are in China, but there is one in Taiwan, one in Brussels, and two in India. It makes it easy to claim NATO's doing it, especially with samples coming from Afghanistan and Iran. A little too easy I'd figure. Especially since there are no known samples from anywhere China may want to fuck with a little, like Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the DPRK government, the US and the vast majority of NATO, etc. Its a little too convenient for my liking.

It could also be France, all of the countries that submitted samples are of an interest of France, and one country is very noticeably absent from the list, Iraq. France gives fuck all about Iraq. It was never their problem except when they were selling Saddam Hussein nuclear technology and nerve gas. I'd be interested to know if any of the European microstates have infections, especially Monaco.

However, it might be five eyes and with Fiji and Kiribati being targeted its sort of easy to believe (I believe New Zealand has responsibility for them) but then again, its a little too obvious for anyone involved with UKUSA, especially with cryptonyms in the Virtual File Systems. NSA/CSS and I'm presuming GCHQ would strip it out. Also whoever it is isn't very familiar with UKUSA classification levels, because one of them looks like it is labeled as Unclassified just before a supposed cryptonym.

Re: Bah!

Yeah, the Commander's notes got shredded around the time Rickover got fired. Plus, they were about the arctic anyway if you may recall.

Joking aside though, there's less uncertainty and less error when they're directly observing it as opposed to scanning it with a Synthetic Aperture Radar system like a few scientific instruments on polar orbiting meteorological and climate satellites and some Intelligence birds up there do (or can).

Fanbois and Sons

Classic. A masterwork. My wife actually believed me when I told her your story here, then she realized what she was saying and threw a can at my head.

You, Sir, get an upvote.

>>The answer is quite obvious: Of course they do. Ref. last week's any election

FTFY

Re: Security questions...

You're much better off not doing anything with Bank of America. Stick with someone local, or at least regional, Fairwinds and SunTrust are pretty good companies for financial services. And if you're eligible, Navy Federal is a pretty good choice also.

However, I wonder how Bank of America having branches in a place that doesn't exist according to them works out. Bank of America is a pretty stupid company, so I wonder how they have it figured out. I'm assuming they have branches in Ocala anyway.

Regardless of all that I've noticed that systems that are designed for nationwide use tend to fall over on Floridian names, or the operators can't figure out how to spell how we say things, usually Seminole/Bastardized Creek and Timucua words (for a dead culture we sure as hell use their names for things).

Anyway, I know how this kind of thing goes a little too well. One of my schools, the place I started higher education at actually, is on Econolockhatchee. That's always a fun one to try to get people to spell correctly.

Re: Simple arse-covering by Apple

Unless it winds up being a Nintendo iPhone, don't hold your breath. Nintendo does not do third party licensing, and if you have ever had the misfortune of playing the CD-i Zelda and Mario games, you know why that is. Thank the Dutch for fucking that one up for everyone else.

Re: If that's really him in the photo...

He was a field officer. Its kind of different that what you're I think you're imagining. They run assets, issue orders, set targets, recruit new assets and such. He probably never left Kabul or whatever FOB he was at though. Even if he was having to deal with local assets as long as he can grow a beard and sort of speak the language, he'd be fine. Keep in mind that in Afghanistan, there are a bunch of light skinned and light haired people in other ethnic groups than the Pashtuns.

Well if you have networking infrastructure, like a cable modem or router that uses Linux and for some stupid reason uses bash as its shell (why they'd do that is beyond me, but I know a few products that do) you may not ever get an update for it because the manufacturers for the most part are pretty piss poor about firmware updates as it is.

Re: Any comment from NASA?

That might be because its the middle of the night over here and no US Government employees besides the Military and some specific emergency response people are at work.

RE: Logical Fallacy

Name calling would be argumentum ad hominem, as it is an insult to one's character with no real substance behind it. Its not really a logical fallacy, its an intentional fallacy to provoke a reaction out of people.

Re: Somewhat confused...

And Oracle isn't an odd company, how exactly? I'd figure people used to watching them would expect them to do counterintuitive and downright strange things. I mean who else would have hired Mark Hurd after being CEO of HP? I wouldn't want that on my resume.

Not to mention the sexual harassment issue.

But really, what other Database company do you know of that would still design its own non-ARM processor architecture while making no profits from it, coming up on five years after purchasing its originator?

Re: "That's not a typo. 10,000GB on spinning platters in helium"

There was a time the entire nuclear arsenal's tracking system ran on 131K per SAGE installation. And that's if I'm converting correctly, which I don't think I am as that seems awful high.

Re: kinda cool...

I'd think about that statement a little bit first.

Yes it means we can communicate quickly. But the reason is that it was communicated so quickly was because it was at a location near a large military facility, the Air Force base in Managua, which is also the Capital's Airport and probably the busiest in the country. I'm amazed no one saw it.

Had this occurred in the middle of nowhere in Nicaragua (what I'd refer to as "Bum Fuck Egypt", or BFE for short), nobody would ever know but some farmers who are to a decent degree ex-Sandinistas and Contras that both know big explosions tend to mean trouble, and maybe some drug mules here and there. The world would find out, but much less quickly.

It shows we pay attention to our military facilities and their industrial support much faster than we do to our general population. Chelyabinsk also kind of proved this, it occurred in a place not located 40 miles from a gigantic nuclear weapons laboratory and a populated area, and people knew worldwide within seconds if you count a bunch of VK posts along the lines of WTF is happening? Had it happened in the middle of nowhere near the Northern Lena River in the Sakha Republic in Russia, noone would have known for weeks. Or maybe ever, if the object was undetected by scientists and the Ballistic missile warning systems.

Re: 23 Years

>>I think SteamOS Is the best chance of *nix breaking through to mainstream desktops

Well if its a UNIXlike that you're looking for, Apple's pretty much got OS X in the mainstream even though I believe you could consider it a true blood UNIX and get away with it. As far as Linux goes, for the desktop SteamOS may wind up being pretty good, but Valve has its work cut for them. Going from game development to developing an OS is a pretty big leap.

Re: must be a Europe thing?

>>US airports have free Wi-Fi, only showing a ToS page to click through and you're in

Not all of them, though more do have it than do not. Obviously you've never had the "joy" of flying through Atlanta, which is surprising if you've traveled in the US. I usually have to fly through that hellhole at least twice a year and sometimes more than that if I have to go to an Advanced school or if I'm helping out units that are deploying or coming back from a deployment at Camp Shelby.

Atlanta's airport wants like 7 to 10 bucks for an exceedingly slow connection, so much so that the API that flightaware uses timed out, every single time I tried to see where the fuck my connecting flight's aircraft physically was because it was late and I wasn't gonna hang around the gate twiddling my thumbs when I could be drinking, eating or smoking and since I rarely travel in uniform . I paid them once, and I'll never pay them again.

However, you're correct that most hotels almost always charge way more than a connection is worth, and even if they don't the connection's so slow that you probably aren't going to be able to use skype, netflix, pandora or anything else that requires streaming. Basically, the 3G or LTE connection from your wireless provider is almost guaranteed to be better. However, in my case I usually wind up paying them and having Defense Travel Service reimburse me, but the catch there is that I actually have to prove that what I'm doing with the paid access is For Official Use Only, file a reimbursement form and wait the "3 to 5 weeks" (translation: 4 to 6 months) to get my money back. I wouldn't pay for it out of pocket though.

In case you aren't joking

Try USA Jobs and search for Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Be warned that its an OPM system though and they've had some security issues of their own as of late.

Re: Meanwhile...

The Army had better damned well not let a convicted felon engage in "treatment" on my fucking dime, especially while Tricare won't pay for it for people who should be entitled to it if they so choose, even if it is considered medically necessary. For a convict to get it, and the Army to pay for it with our medical appropriations is ludicrous when there are people who deserve decent medical treatment and aren't getting it. Convicts should be the very last priority for AMEDD when medical care for Soldiers who don't go around breaking laws sucks shit.

You keep saying torture, but I really don't think you know what it actually means. Being degraded and verbally abused isn't right, but its pretty fucking far from being waterboarded, walled, beaten with bamboo rods, mock executed, electrocuted, lashed with electrical cable, etc.

Re: Faux Police at it again

You might not want to wake up the sheeple, seriously.

It might not be a good idea

Re: can't wait to upgrade..

Just curious, but why in the world would you keep yourself on an ancient version of the kernel? I mean really, this December that version will be five years old. While I sometimes agree with the "not broke, don't fix" mindset, I can't call not upgrading for that long anywhere near a best or safe practice.

Re: It's nothing to do with rural!

If you want a laugh, go down to All American (or the office on Semoran) and ask those morons when they plan to have IPv6. The blank stares and blinking says it all.

Re: Best reason to avoid using the FB app...

Easier said than done. Damned near every manufacturer and provider has it preinstalled. I'd imagine Firefox OS and Sailfish phones are probably immune, but they're a definite minority.

And by the way, linking to Alex Jones and his patented brand of batshit craziness here probably isn't the smartest idea if you're not seeking imperial tons of downvotes, just a bit of friendly advice. Then again, you can link to solid mathematics or scientific fact and still get it too, just a matter of commentards and their moods on a given day.

Re: Will the NSA tender thru a proxy party ?

The FSB is the internal security intelligence service, similar to MI5, the FBI's Counterintelligence function and Israel's Shin Bet.

The SVR and GRU handle foreign and military intelligence respectively, and there's an organization inside of the Federal Protective Service called the Spetssvyaz, or "Special Communications and Information Service of the Federal Protective Service of the Russian Federation" that handles signals intelligence like the NSA/CSS and GCHQ.

Edward Snowden managed to get Putin to lie about the Spetssvyaz on camera during that Q&A session awhile back as you may recall.

Re: They (and really everyone else) don't get it

I think they understand full well that propaganda isn't very effective against a determined adversary. This, like most of Hamas' propaganda plays to the Arab echo chamber because they know full well that Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya will pick it up and run with it. Israelis won't care and it won't stop them.

I say cut off Israel and cut off the PA. None of them deserve our backing as both sides have repeatedly demonstrated they aren't willing to bargain in good faith. Let them suck China in and continue to kill each other.

Re: The 21st century version

Patent Law isnt really like MAD. Deterrence though, yes.

The consequences for deterrence failing in patent law are a fuck of a lot smaller than under a Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear doctrine. Interestingly enough, noone's ever really used that doctrine. You don't have bunkers and civil defense organizations if you truly adhere to MAD, because there should be nothing left if there's an attack.

The very concept of survivability contradicts the orthodox Mutually Assured Destruction ideal, which is unrealistic. People will survive. We're a pain in the ass to kill off. Civilization's basically done, but the species will continue unless the survivors don't breed.

Re: insulting reference to Amazon as Microsoft-like in this reference

You're using semantics.

Wouldn't you call making your business dependent on AWS, even in part, a strategic partnership or business arrangement with Amazon? I know I would. If it isn't, then what words would you use to describe a contracted arrangement where Amazon provides a service that you depend on for a fee then? Because that sounds an awful lot like a business arrangement and a strategic partnership to me. The same would be true if it were on Azure or Google's offering.

Personally, I say making your business beholden to a third-party who does not give a shit about you aside from their paycheck and may decide to compete is a stupid idea, but then again, the "cloud" and the hypegasm surrounding it has eroded my opinion of quite a number of otherwise intelligent people's common sense, and that's before I even get into the privacy issues.

Amazon is behaving exactly as Microsoft has in the past and continues to to an extent, there's no difference at all except presumably you have a positive opinion of Amazon and a negative opinion of Microsoft, so you excuse one's behavior while condemning the other's. Correct me if I'm wrong but thats how it reads to me anyway.

Re: No attack necessary

Same with the US really.

Instead of trying to bust open a system they'll probably never get into, they could have just trawled facebook and linkedin looking for people with 35 series MOS if they're Army and the IS or CTI/CTR/CTT rating in the Navy as well as the Air Force and Marine Corps equivalents. They all at least possess a secret clearance. Hell, even a regular line Infantryman holds a Secret clearance now (which is ridiculous, but Army stupid is Army stupid).

I have a feeling they were trying to find civilian employees or possibly contractors with Chinese names that they could try to influence (which is how they usually go about getting scientists at the National Labs to sell information to them), with a TS though. If they're looking for contractors with clearances, hitting OPM is kind of stupid. DSS does the clearance process for them, while OPM is only for Government employees, including Military Personnel.

Re: Flash on Linux

Shumway, Mozilla's flash clone, also generally falls over if you throw something that Mozilla didn't make themselves as well. The thing is that its pre-alpha or just went into alpha, the only way to get it is by sideloading it from Mozilla's Github. I don't think the Nightlies or Aurora even ship with it yet though its a fairly important project going on over there.

But Gnash is like a damned Greek tragedy to me. It should work fairly well at this point but it still doesn't which is kind a shame, Id rather use code that I could audit if I so choose as opposed to whatever Adobe's shipping.

I'd still figure Java was a bigger problem than Flash though.