* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

Ohio voting machines have 'backdoor', lawsuit claims

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Re: Voting Machine Company ..

Yeah but so what. It's not as if an investor suddenly loads his voting code into the machine.

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Pint

Re: proprietary software the US Government isn't allowed to see

Well, it wouldn't really be the "purchasing body" that would review it in this case. It would be posted on an FTP server and IT Security departments all over the world would then have a go. A reasonable step to take.

That would only be the first step - after that you have to be sure that the operational procedures are correct and secure and reliable and traceable, that the code on the machine is the correct one, that the overall tabulation is correct etc. etc.

I remember the Diebold voting machines barfing all over themselves ... well, I fear there may be overall shameful code, possibly a shared codebase with who-knows-what (ATMs, maybe?) which the companies involved don't want to see aired. At all. Because lawsuits might fly.

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Holmes

Maybe not.

The latest "IEEE Security and Privacy" - "e-voting security edition" has this to say in the article "Electronic Voting Security 10 Years after the Help America Vote Act"

(That article is paywalled here but apparently free here. IEEE show really start to gets its act together).

"Merle S. King, executive director of the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University, and Brian Hancock, director of voting system testing and certification at the US Election Assistance Commission,

discuss e-voting security 10 years after the Help America Vote Act."

The Help America Vote Act was ratified in 2002, dumping millions of dollars into the voting system market and resulting in a major shift from mechanical to electronic voting machines. Shortly thereafter, several academic studies on the security of these e-voting systems emerged. What’s your perception of e-voting system security in the first few years after HAVA?

Merle S. King: In general terms, the e-voting security movement wrapped too much around the security issue. Don’t get me wrong; security is very important, and e-voting introduced new challenges. But if proper procedures were followed, the machines were safe—we now have a history of thousands of anomaly-free elections conducted on DREs [direct-recording electronic voting machines].

Brian Hancock: I agree. The voting systems that caused the most fuss weren’t network connected, and the attacks that succeeded and were reported happened in a laboratory environment. I would like to have seen more realistic testing conducted in operational environments, with the normal electoral protections in place. As it was, exceptional security weaknesses were portrayed as normal, and situations that rarely occur were represented as common. DRE voting systems remain in wide use, and we still don’t have any reported incidents of confirmed security breaches with them.

Mystery robot-bringing UFOs sighted by Indian troops on Tibet border

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Childcatcher

Re: Wet blanket time:

Do we have antivaxers here tonight?

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Holmes

Re: Hollywoods next big sequel

Ironman needs dumbing down?

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Trollface

Re: Wet blanket time:

Well it's definitely not what El Reg wants you to think.

But as long as we don't veer into "flu vaccine just a trick by New World Order to forcefully reduce population count" I'm ok with this.

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Devil

We come in peace --- comrade!

Except if our Space Brothers were actually Space Communists ideologically inspired by Space Hegel and an Angry Galacto-Marx!

That would crap all over American Exceptionalism, too.

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Black Helicopters

Gundams!?

Clearly, a Japanese Space Nazi invasion of the Asian Mainland is scheduled! Softening up by Hurricanes has already begun - though targeting is clearly weak. Sieg Zeon, then.

"50 m away from them."

Damn those bashful scientists. Why not approach for a snatch & grab?

CA Technologies sues New Relic over APM patents

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Holmes

"We will vigorously take all steps necessary to ensure that our intellectual property is protected."

Some variable amount of "our" may apply.

Epic FAIL: Anonymous didn't hack PayPal, managed to frighten Oz hippies

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FAIL

For their next trick...

Successfully hacked 127.0.0.1....

Meanwhile Monsieur Cameron is touring Middle Eastern dictatorships whoring British wares and he's NOT BEING HACKED AT ALL.

ARM Holdings licenses big chunk of MIPS patents

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Holmes

Re: MIPs

Well, the good stuff will probably be found in ARM implementations soon. Is the instruction set really important anymore?

> Imagination says that MIPS will have to hold back $100m of the proceeds from the sales to cover taxes and other liabilities.

This irks me. Good money thrown into the swine's trough that won't be invested in useful things ... OM NOM NOM NOM.

Apple to ditch Intel – report

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Stop

Re: Elephant, meet room

> ARM can't achieve anything remotely near the instructions-per-second ...

That doesn't make sense either from the arse or the genitals side. The instruction set should be pretty orthogonal to attainable "IPS" and indeed the ARM instruction set has been designed for speed and ease-of-implementation, I hear.

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Holmes

Re: Rosetta

Whatever happened to .... Transmeta's Crusoe?

Apple's anti-Googorola patent lawsuit tossed by US court

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Trollface

Re: Did I blink and miss the alien invasion?

FRAND through Zeta Retiulcians?

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Holmes

Re: Argh!

No that's not necessary. Delisting FLOSSMUELLER is enough.

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Holmes

Kerching!

"And if you have a patent, every move by your competition looks like a lawsuit."

Totally, completely wrong saying.

Here we rather have the case of the legal caste strategically leaving loaded shotguns lying around to be found by the ego-blowupdolls and retarded babbys from the management layers, who then proceed to shoot each others and their own feet off.

Each shot, however, transforms overall value (for shareholders and the economy-at-large) magically into cashouts for the legal caste.

"Merchants of death", indeed.

UN internet talkshop to meet, blue helmets still not poised to invade USA

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FAIL

What is this shit?

> Content filtering is a prime example; few companies subscribe the to the US model of unlimited free speech.

Unlimited free speech in the US? Just a political talking point. For one, there are legal limits [hell, you may go to prison for publishing lewd comics in Pennsylvania] and then there are "things you just don't say" unless you want several TLAs on your ass. Foreigner bashing and outright National-Socialism, even from the Prez and Prez hopefuls, is A-OK, I will grant that.

> Many countries worry what unrestricted access to knowledge will do to their population.

I would say that many countries worry what unrestricted access to knowledge will do to their STATE APPARATUS. Remember the shitstorm about Wikileaks and its pretty mild exposure of the nest of craven idiots that are in the bureaucracy? Yes, that kind of worry.

> demonstrates how citizen journalism can go wrong

Unfortunately the last ten years of unlimited warfare and clueless economic policy and the next four years which to all indication will be far worse, possibly with a few nukes being popped off [and not by Iran because it doesn't have any] show how mainstream journalism is consistently wrong in its message or assessments. Does anyone discuss that? Should we ban the Neocon Post and the War Street Journal from the Internets?

This looks like another discussion round of wankers who know they want more statist control but don't yet know how to sell this program. Or maybe they just want a nice holiday in Baku.

Army patents neural chip design for quantum internet

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Mushroom

What is this shit?

That was a contentless technobabble article, with the obligatory "quantum" thrown in. Also "non-Lipschitz function" because it sounds good. That might designate a Lipschitz-Continuous function, which is basically a function that doesn't do arbitrarily strong jumps or decays into disconnected points.

Is this the bridge of the Enterprise?

Microsoft's 32GB Surface RT has 16GB of free storage

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Windows

Like the good old times

1) Buy a computer with "64 Kilobyte RAM"

2) Switch on

3) ????

4) "32450 Bytes Free"

Martian atmosphere pristine, totally free of fart gas, reports Curiosity

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Paris Hilton

Is there something in the coffee?

How the hell do they manage to be excited searching for something?

Naughty-step Apple buries court-ordered apology with JavaScript

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Trollface

The Theory of Relativity!

I don't know. From inside the Reality Distortion Field everything looks fine.

Mexican Zetas ENSLAVING engineers to run crimelords' radio net

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Big Brother

Re: The Libertarian paradise

Clearly, we currently have the anti-libertarian paradise. No surprises here.

In other news:

Charles Bowden, who has written several books about Mexico and drug trafficking, said policy failures have exacerbated the problems. “The war on drugs is over,” he said. “There are more drugs in the U.S. of higher quality and at a lower price." (...) “In the U.S., murder is bad for their drug business,” he said. “In Mexico, it is business.”

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FAIL

Re: The Libertarian paradise

Well, maybe you should actually read up on Ayn Rand and "property rights" and stuff instead of beaming in from some leftist mind launderette. Thank you for your understanding.

KDE 'annoys the hell of' Linus Torvalds

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Windows

Isn't there a difference:

Apple users : Buy the stuff, then whine about others not liking it

Linux users: Build the stuff, then whine about how it's not yet perfect

Windows users: Dunno, probably fall down stairs

Files aren’t property, says US government

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Thumb Up

A slight correction:

If the US Gov files are not the property of the US Gov, then the US Gov, naturally, can not give them to you, if indeed such files would, indeed, exist.

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Holmes

Re: @NomNomNom -- If files are not property...

> No, but you can give them the data within the file

That would mean that there is something called "data" that can be within a "file" but is not, actually, the "file" in and of itself (i.e. the bytestream - one shall abstract from problems of how that bytestream is internally represented or even coded on the disk or in RAM or on tape).

That seems nonsensical.

You could go all marketing hog and say that within the "data" there is "knowledge" that is not, in and of itself, the "data". And within the "knowledge" there is "wisdom", which is not, in and of itself the "knowledge". All equally bizarre statements that have no grounding whatsoever.

Ultimately it comes to down to the similarity of these situations:

"I want access to the bytestream on the server in front of which you put armed goons. I put it there when access to the server was permitted. Give it to me!"

and

"I want access to the notebook in the locker in front of which you put armed goons. I put it there when access to the locker was permitted. Give it to me!"

Big Data's big issue: Where are all the data scientists coming from?

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Which means you won't find any.

Fluff and more fluff.

I hope someone invents brain pills soon.

Greek journo who published list of Swiss bank account holders cleared

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Big Brother

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Wise Investment is Tax Evasion

"Tax evasion is widely seen as an important factor in Greek's economic malaise"

So-called "Tax evasion" is *always* an important factor in an "economic malaise", if not in reality then at least in the political showroom full of noise and thunder.

There are always those that think that State Owns Everything does not actually need to restrict its means and can indeed spend more than comes in. This leads to the conclusion that someone, somewhere, hasn't paid enough if the chicken comes home to roost.

Perfected doublethink then blends out the fact that the enormous public debt was politically easy to accumulate because of preferential EUR rates, that there is no money left in pension schemes and social security and that everything went to make-work schemes, public amusements, public *servant* amusements, military adventures, special projects for cronies and well-connected cousins and that now there is no way out any longer.

It may be that the "tax evaders" are the aforementioned "cronies", so they should get what they deserve - but not because of tax evasion but because of cronyism. And the politicians should be hung alongside.

Businessweek: 'It's Global Warming, Stupid'

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Go

Can't disagree, so more nuclear and solar collectors in orbit then?

An no green moaning!

British judge: Say you're sorry Apple... this time like you MEAN it

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Black Helicopters

Not sure whether Troll

> Suddenly, your legal department becomes a major cost centre and that's bad for business.

Seriously, have you just discovered that?

> Apple didn't start this tit-for-tat cycle of litigation. They could easily have settled out of court (or even just bought the plaintiff outright); they certainly have the money.

Wait, what? Apple buys Samsung what. The hell?

> This isn't business. It's politics.

You mean Apple selflessly highlights problems with the current IP regime? Well, some people believe there are aliens in US army fridges, so who knows?

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Pint

Re: Apple FOLLOWED judges ruling

> Apple did what I expected of them.

I may seem, however, that's totally irrelevant to the case on hand because no-one cares what you expect of Apple.

NEXT!

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WTF?

Hold on --- if real, could someone at Apple actually think that kind of trickery will pass without eliciting a powerful level-20 nastygram from the court?

Genius. Leaning out of a rolling train.

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Thumb Up

Re: El Reg gets a name check...

I like it how the most important part of El Reg are considered the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS HEADLINES and the forums.

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Facepalm

We Kpop now!

> gambling is forbidden in SouthKoera

Passing over the spelling, an asian country in which gambling is forbidden? C'est contre nature. No, gambling is not forbidden in South Korea.

"South Korea airport plans $3 billion casino resort"

No, it sure is not.

FTC shuts down five US robocall operations

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Big Brother

Ok, now....

Can the FTC also cut the comms between Treasury, the Federal Reserve Management Board and Goldman Sachs for example? Or better yet, put them all in fully autistic mode? More people would be saved than the ones targeted by robocalls.

New York tech firms form 'bucket brigade' to fuel flagging servers

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Holmes

Re: Joining forces?

That kind of drama place only exists in Progressive's hindbrains, which is why they are hellbent on forcing everyone to help each other all the time.

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WTF?

Re: wow

Well, as long as you don't breath it in and keep it off your skin, you should be good. It's not classified as a carcinogen either (though diesel burn products are):

PDF

"In a multi-site, case-control study, there was evidence for an increased risk of prostate cancer and squamous cell carcinoma of the lung [36] but this effect could not be attributed to any particular chemical. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have evaluated diesel fuels as being “not classifiable as to their carcinogenicity to humans (Group 3)” [9]: there is “inadequate evidence” to classify diesel as a human carcinogen and “limited evidence” for the carcinogenicity of diesel to experimental animals.

What is amazing is that generators are on the upper floors. I seriously doubt that is a good idea. What if a fuel line breaks?

Apple axed Brit retail boss for doing his job well - TOO well, perhaps

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Holmes

So, a backhanded way to usher in the 30-hour week ahead of the french, is it? Obama, you sly fox, you!

A history of personal computing in 20 objects part 1

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Windows

You want "personal"?

Maintenance manual for the mechanical targeting computer onboard Navy Ships:

http://hnsa.org/doc/op1140a/index.htm

Babbage would approve.

Ailing Comet at last prayers: Cawing of accountants and VCs fills air

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Alien

Re: look at the reasons

Quite so. But in order to have all those "positive shop experiences" (in particular, well informed staff - a PDF or a point-by-point comparison from the Internet is very hard to beat by a human), and the risk of customers then turning around and "buying off the net" anyway, I can't imagine the shop can make any money competing against a well-stocked, well-done and reputable online shop. Checkmate for this kind of economical actor?

Wrinkled mummified zombie icon, then.

Huawei reaches out to critical German hacker over router flaws

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Devil

"It remains to be seen whether improving the security and reliability of its products will convince governments such as the US and Australia that Huawei doesn’t pose a national security risk, however."

Don't make me laugh. This is like expecting "governments" (scare quotes mandatory) such as the US to agree that Iran doesn't actually pose a nuclear threat - it's very inconclusive, after all it's just its own intelligence assessments, its generals, and the IAEA (the latter under a lather of sexed-up scary cat innuendos, to be sure) which say so.

Point is, political decision is political.

El Reg acquires wildly dangerous laser cannon (with lightsabre option)

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Holmes

She's not a real Jedi

The pajama pants give it away.

'We invented Windows 8 Tiles in the 1990s', says firm suing Microsoft

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Holmes

Actually, when software patents were discussed, I think I remember Microsoft basically sitting in the corner and saying neither Nay nor Aye. The lawyer types however, were salivating everywhere while dire predictions came from the technical press. I would need to dig up some old IEEE magazines for that though.

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Unhappy

Thanks for all the memories

Those headlines. If a time traveler had executed the whole upper political US crust including the retarded reporters and the Prez with a zap gun set to "max pain disintegration", all of this could have been avoided.

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Thumb Down

Re: Oh FFS - patent - ideas

"And getting VC funding pretty much requires a patent"

This is not an argument for patents. It just means VCs are chicken and want to have a guarantee. Well, FUCK THEM. If they want a guarantee, they can buy a toaster.

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Meh

Tiled? Updating? Selectable?

I'm so tiled, I mean tired.

Oberon Operating System circa 1985, maybe. MAYBE?

Also the ACME text editor...

Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI

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Holmes

Exactly comrade. I would even say more...

"The Microsoft design principles are the overall set of principles that are driving the Windows 8 Store applications."

A more bizarre and meaningless phrase couldn't be uttered by a lifelong scholar of Hegelian Dialectic Materialism As Applied To Marxism/Leninism who needs to say exactly what needs to be said lest he be put on the passenger list of a train to a re-education institution.

Quarter of Eastern cell towers BLOWN down BY SANDY - FCC

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Alien

Still no Zombies?

I am so disappoint.

The only good side is that the Keynesian Delusionalists à la Krugman will now be held up to their words: After this, the economy should rebound swiftly, right? No I don't believe so either. The broken window fallacy applies. But I'm sure we will soon hear moans that Sandy didn't destroy ENOUGH for a sustainable rebound.

One million Facebook users' names and email addresses: $5

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Trollface

Re: Ominous feeling about this

You don't like?

FBI cuffs 14 over $1m 'Gone in 60 Seconds' casino scam

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WTF?

" conspiracy to illegally structure financial transactions to avoid reporting requirements"

What the hell is that? Would I be going to club fed if I withdrew USD 9000 twice in a row (even though I know nothing about any "reporting requirements" and haven't signed anything about any "reporting requirements" that I can remember)? Even though several three-letter agencies-cum-gestapo-outfits have the records anyway? What kind of downtrodden people accepts this sh*t without storming Venerable Places Of High Discourse with sharpened showels and lead pipes?