Posts by Allan George Dyer 2547 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
@Nick Kew - "the printer is/was in a forbidden area? Or simply a completely unknown location"
Let me ask the stupid question... if you aren't allowed near the printer, or don't know where it is, how do you collect the output? If you don't collect the output, is it necessary to print it?
And who installed the printer in the reactor core?
Why didn't they announce it as a 10 day experiment? Just land, germinate cotton, declare success and end at nightfall.
Unfortunately, now it looks like incompetent planning leading to an inevitable failure. The SCMP article even mentions "a small but powerful control system to keep the interior at around 25 degrees Celsius" - did they inform the designer of the portable heater of the expected working conditions?
Including fruit flies seems over-ambitious, the plants are going to take a while to produce any food for them. Perhaps they could have planned it in 3 phases: prepare by flash-freezing the fruit fly eggs and yeast in liquid nitrogen. Phase 1: seeds germinate, die at nightfall; Phase 2: thaw the fruit fly eggs at dawn and let them feed on the dead plants, die at nightfall; Phase 3: thaw the yeast at dawn, let it grow in whatever is left.
"The biz is also offering to cover a year of identity-theft monitoring service."
But I'm already getting Experian's service* from Cathay, because of their data-breach. Just pay me the service fee as compensation instead.
*I'm not entirely convinced that handing my sensitive data to an organisation that has had its own data-breach so that they can "monitor" where else ut has been seen is a good idea.
"If it was one of the Mirror(Reach) group then there is a button - I was wrong about measurement it is called information and storage."
Ah, I understand. The information is: Beware of the Leopard
The storage, of course, is locked, in a disused lavatory, in the basement. There are no stairs. Or lights.
The one with the electronic thumb in the pocket, of course.
Sure, you have the right to know who or why someone us at your door, but you shouldn't assume the right to tell Amazon, the Police or anyone else not in your home. If the gasman calls to read your meter, it's reasonable to confirm they are a genuine gas company employee, but you don't need their full name and home address.
The competing rights and situations are complex, just letting a commercial company slurp the video and assume they'll do the right thing is dangerous.
@AC- "but one has to admit that if anyone can track, block and prosecute originators of nastyograms within their border, they probably can"
They aren't suceeding in eliminating 'nastyograms', so either they aren't trying, or complete traceabilty is not the solution.
I doubt whether complete traceability is a solution... as you said, you just find a botnet victim. Tracing the next layer requires exponential resources, against an attacker who will always be erasing the evidence. You spend ever more resources chasing an elusive goal. Time to look for a different approach.
@ICPurvis47 - No, the head is a waxwork, the rest is him. It's not just period clothing, it's his clothing. He asked for his body to be preserved and displayed as an auto-icon. Unfortunately, the process went badly wrong for his head, so that is kept in a box elsewhere.
Glad to see someone twigged what I was on about.
I don’t believe in the paranormal either, but, true story, at my old college, if you walked through the cloisters at the right time, you would see one of the founders sitting in his chair, with his book and glasses on the small table next to him without his head. I saw him with my own eyes.
Rumour was that his head still attended college council meetings, where he was recorded as "present, but not voting".
@John Brown (no body), @Solo Owl - I once saved a student's thesis by combining those techniques. Student's husband spills coffee on 5.25" floppy, desperate student brings it to tech support (me) for help. Carefully slice open floppy, remove disc, wash gently with distilled water then alcohol, allow to dry, slice open a new floppy, insert washed disc in new case, copy data (it survived!) to another new floppy, return to grateful student with a reminder to keep multiple backups.
I'm not a geologist, but if you'll accept Extra History as a source (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-CW0B4YeBQ), Mary Anning disputed the claims of established scientists and was proved right. She went beyond collecting, carefully studying her finds, and was noteworthy for being good at it.
@Volands's right hand - "Papers by end of the week prole"
I recall being told that too... but I've never worked out, if you don't turn up and identify yourself, how do the police know who they want to arrest? It probably only works in villages where everyone knows each other, where it isn't needed.
@Mycho - If you're interested in the matching set of obsidian carvings (I used to think they were, somehow, disturbing, but now they seem quite friendly, almost like they are beckoning), and the black, leather-bound book I found in the ruined library, I'm taking them to the clearing in the old forest tonight. Meet me there.
@Big John - "These allegedly-intriguing legal issues aren't really specific to the Potterverse. Any universe with magic will do."
I disagree. In Middle Earth, the legal system is largely feudal: the local lord decides. The Shire does seem to have some code of law, but it doesn't seem to be consistently enforced; Bilbo had a lot of trouble re-acquiring his possessions after been declared dead.
Conversely, in the Potterverse, the legal structures are frequently referenced: the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts law, the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, there's two trials at the Wizengamot shown, characters are imprisoned, released and escape from Azkaban, 28 Education Decrees, the list goes on. There is also a lot about how law, society and a free press (well, a slightly beetle-napped Rita Skeeter, anyway) interact in the rise is extremism. It's easy to see the influence of JK's time with Amnesty International.
The difference is the security. When you use the same password on a dozen sites, any one of those sites could have poor security, allowing your credentials to be stolen and used on the other 11. With a central authentication service, only one place has your credentials. That place can* be given maximum protection.
*But it could just be outsourced to a bunch of muppets.
Also, with a single user experience across the services, you could educate users about what to expect in "security messages", and therefore make it less likely that people fall for phishing emails.
@Walter Bishop - "c. How did your sources come by the codename of this hacking group?"
I assume the investigators gave the group the codename, it's a lot easier than referring to them as, "the group we detected at... and...". Surely the GRU would use a Russian codename, google tells me that песчаный червь is Russian for sandworm.
At least it wasn't 2:18am.
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