* Posts by Mephistro

2329 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2007

Larry Ellison: Google is ABSOLUTELY EVIL, but NSA is ESSENTIAL

Mephistro
Happy

Is he feigning ignorance and naivete, or is he really that stupid?

Pressed to say where he would draw the line on domestic surveillance, he ventured that it would be wrong if the data were used for political ends – "In other words, if we stopped looking for terrorists and started for looking for people on the other side of the aisle."

That horse already bolted, crossed to Mexico, married there, lived a long and interesting life, died of old age and went to the big prairie in the sky. And that happened forty years ago.

Facebook's request to the flash industry: 'Make the worst flash possible'

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Re: WORN

My thoughts precisely. Read WORN's datasheet here.

Obama appoints intelligence boss to run 'independent' review of NSA

Mephistro

He has lied to Congress several times.

Isn't that a crime or an offence? Can't they at least sit his lying ass in front of a Great Jury? Or are Great Juries only for the plebs?

Beware the ad-punting crapware-laden Firefox, warn infosec bods

Mephistro
Devil

Re: Standard Malware comment

" Are we talking about Yahoo! toolbars!, McAfee scanners, Adobe Flash and the like?"

No! That would be too hardcore, even for the scammers!

Xbox 180: Microsoft scraps mandatory Kinect policy

Mephistro
Flame

Re: " cloth to elegantly drape over the Kinect camera" (@AC 13th August 2013 13:33 GMT )

"If you're interesting enough to surveil in such detail, they can just use a laser mic on your window from orbit."

You probably won't believe this :^), but there exist several funny technologies out there, like computerized voice recognition, relational databases and syntactic networks.

Every fucking body is 'interesting' to 'Them'.

And even when I know there's no way I can totally protect myself from snooping, I'll do my best to at least make the process slow and expensive for the spooks. If everybody did the same, the spooks could either select only the really interesting targets -e.g. real criminals, terrorists and spies- or they'll go bankrupt. Both outcomes would suit me, though I would prefer the first one.

Mephistro
Unhappy

MS is not getting the message, and probably never will.

There seems to be a point in the evolution of big IT companies where they start treating customers as a commodity. They don't mind cheating/robbing/insulting their customers 'cause their corporate culture says that they are abundant and easily replaceable, so the big company -MS. in this study case- screws up too often. This particular Xbox SNAFU show that u-turns aren't enough to regain customer's confidence, as the public now is aware that they can't trust MS, and that any 'good' u-turn they perform now will probably be reversed in the future, when -supposedly- the public isn't paying attention.

Also, if you edit my former paragraph and substitute 'customers' with 'talent' - i.e. techies- you get the other side of the equation, that relates closely to Windows 8 and other similar SNAFUs. As 'talent' is commoditized it loses weight in the company's technical decisions, which is a sure way to disaster.

When both circumstances apply, the company in question becomes a dying husk, that is slowly devoured by its internal parasites, the money men, the bean-counters, the lawyers and its own management. It may take many years, but it's quite obvious MS will never recover from this.

Magnets too slow for disk writes? Use lasers

Mephistro
Meh

Re: LASER not laser

The acronym 'LASER' has been in the common parlance for so long that it's used as a common word. An extreme example of this is the use of the word 'laser' in Sci-Fi novels and comics.

My Merriam-Webster -11th Edition, which is a bit outdated- already includes the all lower case 'laser'.

Mobe-slurping Wi-Fi SPY BINS banned from London's streets

Mephistro

Re: What has it got in its pocketsess?(@ Chris Miller)

" there exist (not public) directories that can link a phone number to an individual or a physical location. This is not possible for a MAC address (which, in any case, can easily be changed by the user)."

I understand that there also exist such directories for MAC addresses, at least in the telcos, so they can recognize phones. And there are probably lots of apps -IOS, Android or whatever- that slurp MAC data and link them to other personal information, e.g. mail accounts and phone numbers.

Despite Microsoft Surface RT debacle, second-gen model in the works

Mephistro
Facepalm

Re: Outlook Is The Killer App On Surface RT? (@ Don Jefe)

"Why even call it Outlook if all the good stuff is not available?"

They're playing the same trick they did with Windows and Windows RT, as it worked so well the first time.

Microsoft: learning from their own errors FAIL! :0)

Study finds online commentards easily duped, manipulated

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Good job, guys!

While I'm writing this comment, all the rest of the comments in the thread have exactly the same number of upvotes and downvotes. People seems to be divided on this subject. :0)

I've got a proposal for the ElReg forums: Votes could be hidden by default in all comments, and the readers could have a button to show the votes on a single comment, and another one to show the votes for all comments. This would lower the bias a little bit, methinks.

Or, alternatively, up and down votes could be shown only 48 hours after the original article has been posted.

NSA gets burned by a sysadmin, decides to burn 90% of its sysadmins

Mephistro
Joke

Re: Security is not just confidentiality, people!

"The NSA probably know this, so, I would hope, are taking measures to protect these people. "

Yes, they are building new housing facilities in Guantanamo.

Xbox One users will have to pay extra for Skype and gamer-gratifying DVR

Mephistro
Thumb Down

20$ for a mono headset?

I didn't even know they were still making them. And how does a mono headset fit with the 3D audio most games use today? It's a honest question, I only use a PC for gaming.

And the console itself looks ugly. It looks as if it was going to eject a VHS tape at any moment.

Geneticists resolve human dilemma of Adam's boy-toy status

Mephistro
Mushroom

Re: Creation less than 10,000 ya (@ Kyle Roberts)

You just lowered the mean IQ of this forum ten points. You are forcing us to take desperate measures:

"BEGONE FROM THIS FORUM, OH YOU FOUL SPIRIT OF A CHRISTIAN TROLL!"

If this isn't enough, we'll send you a Richard Dawkins dedicated photograph. You have been warned!

Mephistro
Facepalm

Re: The most certain are the least likely to be correct. (@ P.Lee)

Even if you put aside the question of truth, the question remains: "What are the implications of what you believe?""

I don't want to put aside the question of truth. If you put aside the question of truth, many other important concepts will suffer the consequences. Trusting someone who said that things are so and so 'cause God told me' is dangerous and just plain stupid, in my opinion.

The implications of what religious people believe are that they have to trust some guys that, basically can define as dogma whatever they want without needing to provide proof. After a while, you get people saying that adulterous women must be stoned, God forbids blood transfusions, the Pope is infallible and the Earth is ~6000 years old, just to give a few examples.

but to have morals as an atheist is irrational.

Totally wrong. If humans didn't live in societies and weren't dependent on other humans, you'd be right, but we live and evolve in societies/cultures/civilizations. And one of these without an ethical framework will last, in Historical terms- a very short time, and look to people living under them like a living hell. On the other hand, religions manipulate the morals for their own benefit, which usually ends up harming their followers.

Mephistro

(@ AC 3rd August 2013 14:25 GMT)

"I was actually talking about the classics by the Grimm brothers, Hans Christian Anderson etc..."

Yeah, but those schools don't tell children that those fairy tales are true.

Mephistro

Re: The most certain are the least likely to be correct.

"Religious and moral norms provide heuristics for calculating the optimal strategy for our near-immortal genes to continue to propagate"

This is true, but a little bit one sided. As memes, religions also evolve, and usually they end up being bad for their followers. At some moment, religions become entities capable of doing whatever they need to survive and grow, and have no problem throwing away any moral claims. Consider "Thou shalt not kill.", and the way it has been sidestepped by all the Abrahamic religions. That's where Crusades, Jihads and Inquisitions come from.

From a given moment in their development, all religions become big fat parasites that support whatever government has the power, milk/rob people for their money/resources and act like a cork that prevents the societies upon which they feed from improving.

Oh, and who said that you need a religion so you can have morals?

'Look, give us Snowden' - this Friday's top US-Russia talks revealed

Mephistro
Happy

Re: My contempt and hate of everything Obama is growing...(@ Destroy All Monsters)

"I hope some gigantic meteorite ..."

Careful there! You could be accused of Astronomical Terrorism!. And then you would be charged with 'Intent to Commit Astronomical Terrorism', 'Possession of Astronomical Terrorism Paraphernalia', 'Astronomical Terrorism on Mondays', 'Astronomical Terrorism on Tuesdays', and so on, like Manning!

Mephistro
Coat

Re: take him out (@ Scorchio!!)

"It takes a while to mount that sort of operation, especially in a police state."

Yep, see how long it took them to kill Osama.

Mmmhh... Ah, oops! You meant the Russians!...

NO, ELEPHANTS, it's we DOLPHINS who NEVER FORGET our best pals

Mephistro

"But to test whether this kind of social memory capacity is adaptive, we would need more demographic data from multiple populations in the wild to see if they experience 20-year separations"

As they have some mobility from one group to another, and the groups themselves could occasionally be separated for years, their memory could help them prevent inbreeding and genetic depletion.

Either that or they use they 'names' as part of a mechanism used in signalling an abundance of resources and/or a request for collaboration for hunting said resources to other groups. As chances are that neighbouring groups are genetically related, a mechanism like this would be very useful for aiding a group's genes to propagate.

If the last hypothesis was true, that would mean that -at least in a limited sense- dolphins are more intelligent than (most) humans.

Disclaimer: I'm not an ethologist so everything I wrote above could be catastrophically wrong. But thanks for your patience. :^)

Limbaugh: If you hate Apple then you're a lefty blog-o-twat hipster

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Re: Apple-bashers can take a break. (@ John Browne 1)

My apologies. I just wrote a comment saying exactly the same thing, several hours after you published yours. I know I should have read all the older comments before posting, but I was short on time, I was befuddled, I was young and I needed the cash, [list of common excuses] ...

Mephistro

Regarding Limbaugh:

With friends like Limbaugh, Apple doesn't need any enemies.

And I'd like to ask fellow commentards a personal favour:

Please if any of you has access to a working time machine, please give a copy of this video-before Limby's birth date- to his parents, back in the Middle Ages, The Jurassic or whenever they lived. Thank you.

Jimbo Wales: ISP smut blocking systems simply 'ridiculous'

Mephistro
Thumb Up

@ NomNomNom

"We also have to deal with the problems of internet trolls"

ROFLMAO++. Good job!

Poe's Law: "Without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism."

Child porn hidden in legit hacked websites: 100s redirected to sick images

Mephistro

Paranoid, moi?

This could also be a ruse designed to raise public acceptance of PRISM and PRISM-like schemes, and perpetrated by the usual subjects, i.e. spooks. This could be one of those 'damage limitation' jobs they usually perform after some big SNAFU.

Not the only explanation, but this one seems quite likely.

Mephistro
Happy

Re: Gosh could someone have been hoarding a stack of nasty CP and a zero day exploit (@ Tom 38)

In the mind of Claire Perry, there are no legal porn sites.

I guess there's not enough space nor processing power for them. From what I've read about her she probably has to keep her family members first names 'in the cloud'.

South Korea: We're 'concerned' that Obama saved Apple from ban

Mephistro
Flame

Re: Typical American behaviour (@ Psyx)

"It's not ethical, but I can't think of many nations who don't favour their own interests over other's."

They are nor defending American interests, they are defending Apple. A company that outsources all of its production AND evades most of its taxes. If they were really protecting American interests this would be the last company they should help, for very obvious reasons.

SAP boss cops jail time plea after Lego barcode bust

Mephistro

Re: It's a pity for SAP

And probably more ethical too. ;0)

Mephistro
Devil

It's a pity for SAP

The guy was good management material!

Personally I'd be surprised if less than a 50 % of big companies high executives are mugging ancient ladies for their monthly pay checks, or indulging in other similar hobbies. Just to keep themselves sharp, you know.

Tick-tock, Apple: Obama has just days to stop US iPhone iPad sales ban

Mephistro

"Foreign companies can cry foul all they want but there is no appeal process"

Not inside the USA, but the WTO may have something to say about this. Not the first time the USA has been fined for, basically, wiping their collective arse with the WTO agreements they signed.

And if that fails, some sort of trade war would be the next step. If Obama 'bans the ban', it might cost the American Economy more than the ban itself.

Latvian foreign minister speaks out against giving up alleged Gozi writer to US

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Re: Extradition? (@ crayon)

^This!

Mephistro

Re: Sorry America (@ AC Friday 2nd August 2013 14:55 GMT )

"and the implication is that this is false patriotism, rather than a genuine emotion for one's country "

In my book, true patriots want the best for their country and its people. Such true American patriots should be fighting hard to get back all the rights the American people have lost in the last decades, and force the government to treat the rest of the world in such a way that the rest of the world don't have so many reasons to hate the USA. A good first step would be signing -and committing to- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I know of some true American patriots, but from where I'm looking, there doesn't seem to be so many of them. What I see is lots of muppets saying that anything the Government does it's OK, that all foreigners are stupid and evil, that whatever American soldiers do overseas is OK, etc. And I call this kind of people 'nationalists'.

"How many EU countries have de-criminalised cannabis?"

Most of them have decriminalised cannabis possession -in small amounts- or at most fine the offenders. You should check the number of people incarcerated in the USA and Europe for cannabis related crimes. Not even in the same league.

And it doesn't matter how many states have decriminalised cannabis, if the consumers can still be harassed by the FBI and sued at federal courts. This situation, it seems to me, totally opposes the American Constitution, but then, I'm only an ignorant foreigner, so what do I know?.

Mephistro

Re: Sorry America (@ AC Friday 2nd August 2013 12:28 GMT )

"Nationalistic? No, patriotic, rather different."

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”

(Samuel Johnson.)

"Extremely right wing? No, still centre right."

That's an error in the translation. In USAian, 'centre right' means the same as the expression "Extremely right wing" means to the rest of the world.

One good thing I have to say about the USA is that they aren't goosewalking over their neighbours. Not in the last one hundred years or so. Hmmm... except for Granada, and Panama, and all those Contra operations and proxy wars. And Vietnam, Irak and Afghanistan aren't USA's neighbours, so they don't count...

Mephistro
Stop

Re: Both, perhaps? (@ Turtle)

" I do have my own reasons to vote against the extradition of Dennis Calovskis for trial in the United States"

Perhaps the reason is that he considers that the USA justice/prisons system is barbaric/stupid/cruel and that sending one of your citizens into that is ethically reprehensible.

Or perhaps the Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs thinks that the guy should be tried under the laws -and with the guarantees- of the country in which he was when he committed the crime.

Or it's just that he thinks that approving this request from the USA would leave him out of logical arguments if his country ever receives an extradition request so some petty thief must be sent to the Middle East so he can have his hands chopped off.

If the reason was one of these three, we can all imagine why he'd prefer not to make them public.

Anyway, kudos for Mr. Edgars Rinkēvičs! I know of too many politicos who would have happily sent him to the USA, no questions asked.

Win XP alive and kicking despite 2014 kill switch (Don't ask about Win 8)

Mephistro

Re: Why are we throwing this away? (@ stuff and nonesense)

" (PuTTy is my friend though not as friendly as Hyperterm)"

You can install the Hyperterm program by just copying two files from an XP install -or decompressing them from an installation disk. The process is explained here.

FBI spooks use MALWARE to spy on suspects' Android mobes - report

Mephistro

" It's not just for the bad guys"

So others, aside from the FBI are using this kind of attack?

;-)

Mystery object falls from sky, area sealed off by military: 'Weather balloon', say officials

Mephistro

Re: My theory.

" I imagine an RTG could be made quite compact if you left all the shielding off."

I don't think that an unshielded RTG fits well with advanced electronics, not for long periods, anyway.

Mephistro
Joke

(@ murph)

"there are about a thousand things it is more likely to be than a UFO"

FYI, UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. This means that it's still an UFO for most of the public.

At some moment in the future, the military will produce an statement making public the true nature of said object, e.g. "a weather balloon". That will automatically transform the artefact in a WIFO, that is, a Wrongly Identified Flying Object, as nobody ever believes a word of the official version in this kind of incidents.

A tracking device for anal probes? A wide angular lens spy camera , able to spy on a whole city and it's inhabitants simultaneously? An automatic interstellar probe from Alpha Centaury? A party balloon from a high level government official? We'll never know for sure. But the truth is out there! :0)

Murdoch machinations mean Microsoft must rename SkyDrive

Mephistro

Re: A.Y.D.B.T.U.S

"All Your Data ARE belong to us", surely?

No, that's a different meme. :^)

Mephistro
Angel

A.Y.D.B.T.U.S

All Your Data Belongs To US

No fondleslabs please, says Microsoft as Office 365 hits Android

Mephistro
Happy

Deja vu, all over again!

So, they sacrificed their desktop OS in order to push people towards their tablets, and seeing that it wasn't enough, they are now sacrificing Office. They just left open the door for competition to enter the tablet market. Add that to all the good will that Office 365 is collecting everywhere ;-). The LibreOffice guys must be rubbing their hands non stop since they knew of this.

We should make a betting pool on what is the next MS product they'r gonna totally screw and make irrelevant while they try to carve a niche for themselves in the cloud, fondleslabs, phones and the rest. My bet is on the Windows Server, because... Oh, wait! That one is already taken!

:0)

Comrade! If you dare f$%^ing swear on the internet, WE'LL SHOOT

Mephistro
Joke

Re: Hmmm

I read somewhere, long ago, that women are like the seas,

but this Yelena Mizulina looks more like a beach.

<rimshot>

Mephistro
Thumb Up

Re: WEEEEEELL (@ wowfood)

"...Aw... fuck!"

Mephistro
Happy

Re: Dear Ms. Mizulina (@ James Hughes 1)

'Form' also carries information. And after all the brouhaha we've been seeing lately regarding concepts like Freedom, Privacy, Censorship, Snooping and the like, it's no wonder some fellow commentards despair when reading news like this and, in a moment of weakness, resort to foul language. I'm well known myself for having behaved in a similar manner on occassions.

On a side note: This lass Mizzulina looks to me like Louella Parsons reincarnation on steroids. Who, in the FSM's name, chose/elected/supported her for her role at the Committee for Family, Women, and Children?

And regarding the honorable Chairman of the Moscow Regional Bar Association, Professor Sergei Smirnov...

These Russian baristas are really brilliant! And they choose their chairmen based on his surname!* ;^)

*Note: They don't choose them for their brains, as is made obvious by his declaration. “Obscene language offends both children and adults”.

When I was a young child, I don't remember being offended by foul language, except for brief moments, that were usually followed by bursts of laughter and sometimes even some note-taking. And everyone else seemed to be doing more or less the same. The tricky part for children was knowing when and where they could and couldn't use profanity. A little bit more difficult than potty training. And it also needs, you know... training.

NSA headman: 'Don't worry, our watchful analysts TAKE EXAMS'

Mephistro
Black Helicopters

The cheek!

"... NSA's data-slurping programs should "be something we put forward as an example to the rest of the world," due to the oversight afforded by the courts, Congress, and the administration."

The bloody cheek!

Secret Congress Committees, secret budgets, a secret court, secret laws and gag orders. Yeah! A fucking huge load of horseshit oversight, there.

Now, I totally agree that this should serve as an example to the rest of the World, but IMHO it should be a negative example.

I've been scoffing at conspiranoics for decades, and now it turns that they were understating the situation!

I'll go quietly and perform Seppuku now...

Bipartisan senator group goes to bat for Apple in Samsung dispute

Mephistro
Happy

This confirms that Apple...

... is having serious financial problems. I mean, they only bribed four senators, for Chrissake!

Robot cop called in after MAD BONGER blown up in LIQUID MARIJUANA EXPLOSION

Mephistro

Re: Not so much stoners but thieves (@ Loyal Commenter)

"previous studies found an increased proportion of mental health issues amongst cannabis users of 1.41, with a 95% confidence."

Other studies have suggested that cannabis is not causing the mental issues, but that people with a tendency to mental issues are attracted to the stuff as a means of self medicating, as it calms them and temporarily improves their social skills.

Another interesting point would be whether the increase in mental cases among cannabis users is caused by cannabis itself or by contaminants added to cannabis to make it stronger, more difficult to detect, easier to consume... If this was the case, then it would be the Cannabis Prohibition -and not cannabis itself- indirectly causing mental health issues.

On a side note, cannabis was perfectly legal in my country - sold by drug stores over the counter and kept in hospital pharmacies- till the beginning of the fifties. It was used to alleviate PMS and chronic pain and it was cheaper than Aspirin, and with less secondary effects, and nobody saw a problem with that. And then Uncle Sam began its War On Drugs Crusade and Franco's government duly obeyed its masters. Sigh...

WikiLeaks: Manning guilty verdict sets 'dangerous precedent'

Mephistro
Devil

Re: UK has history for this to...

I agree with your comment, but I find the last sentence -"... and closed the case."- distasteful, given the context. ;0)

Dutch banks get nod to inhale Amazon cloud

Mephistro
Facepalm

Re: "It's not what you've got, its what you do with it"

" The banks are still required to meet all the existing regulations, and will therefore be required to suitably encrypt and secure the data in exactly the same way as they do today."

If the data processing is performed 'in the cloud', then the data has to be decrypted, and can be snooped. No promise from the cloud service provider, no software audit and no certificate given by the American authorities (tee hee hee) will protect your data from this. If they were going to use "the cloud" only as a backup system, and heavily encrypt the data before storing it there, you would probably be right, but that is not the case.

Mephistro
Holmes

Is it criminal incompetence?

Or they have something big to gain and are convinced they can get away with anything*? Is the Dutch also in this 'Screwing Citizens Privacy Wholesale for Fun and Profit' game?

Or is it the case that nobody explained to them that they can't protect their data in the cloud from the same people that runs the cloud service?

Difficult to believe, ain't it?

* Which is quite probably true :^(

Selfridges dreaming of a snot-themed Christmas

Mephistro
Coat

Re: "Every object is original and unique,"

These guys may have managed to be sued simultaneously by Blizzard and DC Comics. The only way to make things worse would be to attract another lawsuit from Disney.

Mmmhh... That cape... Where have I seen that cape before?... Yes! Snow White ! ... Oh shit!...

Mephistro
Devil

"Every object is original and unique,"

Except the sword, that looks remarkably like Frostmourne.