* Posts by Robin 1

29 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Nov 2009

Wanna run someone over in your next Ford? No dice, it won't let you

Robin 1

This strikes me a lot like the "traction control" feature, which nearly ever Canadian turns off the instant the snow hits. I have no interest in losing control over my vehicle during an emergency situation.

Researcher hacks aircraft controls with Android smartphone

Robin 1

Re: Sky's the limit

I think we all agree that something should be done. Very typical for this sort of thing to be ignored.

And, don't call me Shirley.

LARGEST BELCH EVER SEEN devastates gassy GIANT Saturn

Robin 1
Happy

Must be global warming...

Hopefully the fine folks on Saturn will smarten up and enact a global emissions reduction policy...

US ecosystems basically unaffected by global warming, studies show

Robin 1

Call me crazy but...

They still can't get a local 14 day weather report right and I'm supposed to get my panties in a knot about what these very same people think about weather that may or may not happen for decades and occur over the entire planet?

I don't think so.

Harry Potter director takes on Doctor Who movie

Robin 1

Worrisome

"He praised Davies' and Moffat's concepts, but said: "[W]e have to put that aside and start from scratch"."

Can't agree with that. The new series has been brilliant and drawn a lot of new fans to the show. Seems to me he just wants to have his own way rather than produce what's worked so far.

RIM faces legal action following service outages

Robin 1

Good luck

This won't last long. He needs to stop watching American tv. These lawsuits gain no traction in our courts.

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

Robin 1

Meh

Anyone who says "it has to" without data to back it up should shampoo my crotch.

Can clouds ever be fully secure?

Robin 1
Pirate

Cloud Security?

I don't think there's much question, cloud services are going to be the dominant force in computing for the next 10 years. The cost/benefit ratio will continue to improve and eventually outweigh the security concerns for most business.

The interesting thing here will be to see what happens when a major breach of security does occur with one of the large cloud vendors.

You may remember attempts to sue Microsoft back in 2003 for security breaches caused by vulnerabilities in their operating system. I'm not aware of anyone who was ultimately successful in those attempts, which begs the question of whether how blame will be partitioned out if (when!) a cloud vendor is hacked.

The easy answer would be to hold the collector of the data responsible, not the cloud provider. But imagine that ACS gets hacked and data from 30% of the F500 companies are affected. The number and size of lawsuits to spawn from that would be insane.

Right now, hackers have to work for their supper. Pick a target, find vulnerabilities, break in, learn the internal system, find the data, extract the data, profit, repeat. Putting it all in one place will change it from a grind to a footrace to see who can get there first. And they will line up -- oh how they will line up...

French bloke fined for failing to shag missus

Robin 1

Meh.

One simple answer. Outsource.

Hey dumbo, Facebook isn't sharing telephone numbers

Robin 1

Not so...

@Wize

Reread the article. Your friends can upload your phone number to Facebook as well simply by syncing their phone. Unfortunately, Facebook isn't just about what you put up there. If you have idiot friends who upload your information and don't work through the maze of privacy settings to protect it, your info is out there.

And before you say it, yes, the only winning move is not to play.

CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

Robin 1
Pirate

Dude!

I googled Project Blue Beam and now I'm stuck spending the next two hours reading the 'educate yourself' website. I'll probably spend the next two days laughing incessantly, randomly throughout the day, freaking out my co-workers and finally spending months purging the useless data from my brain.

Thanks for nothing. For the love of God, next time, post a warning! :)

Robin 1

Ya never know....

Strangely, the leeches thing turned out to have a few useful actual applications... ;)

Doctor Who to marry Doctor Who's daughter

Robin 1

Dashed hopes...

My wife is gonna be unhappy to hear this news. I think she hoped for a chance with him someday... :)

10-year-old girl becomes youngest ever supernova discoverer

Robin 1

downvote

Although I agree with what you've written, I'm giving you a downvote for naming your daughter Manley. Kinda like naming a boy "Sue". :)

Is cloud data secure?

Robin 1

A late addition...

Read an article that made me think of this today:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/data-centers-ra/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+wired%252Findex+%2528Wired%253A+Index+3+%2528Top+Stories+2%2529%2529&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Considering how we are moving to centralized storage, this is becoming a more likely event every day. If company A has data pertaining to a crime stored on a SAN with my data, what are the authorities likely to do? Wait for some nice administrator to pull that data off for them? I don't think so. It will all go into the truck and they'll sort it out later.

Robin 1

Only clear skies for me...

Moving to the cloud has several concerns for me. In no particular order:

1. Requires network/Internet access is required to get at the data. We're fairly centralized here, so putting the data across even a private network entails additional risk of both inaccessibility during a network outage and interception on the wire as it travels through my ISP or the Internet.

2. The laws in the area where my data is stored are the laws that will determine how it is treated.

3. I have little or no control over what physical location (which country) my data is stored in. This may violate legislated controls as required by my own country.

4. Inability to share data between different "clouds". If I decide that I want gmail to be my email "cloud" provider, but want Oracle to be my database "cloud" provider, I have a limited ability to make the two systems share data - largely controlled by how each company feels about the other.

5. Exporting the data if I should decide to leave my provider is almost certainly going to be hideously complex and expensive.

6. Usage rules. Nearly all of these cloud providers has rules around how you store and use your data. If you go outside of those rules, you pay extra, usually through the nose.

Just what I can think of off the top of my head. While security is certainly a part of why I don't want my data in the cloud, there are a host of other solid reasons not to put it there that are more practical than anything else.

Default judgement FAIL: ACS:Law muffs up in court

Robin 1
Grenade

Smart judge, but it's only a matter of time...

before these clowns either find one who isn't, or corner the court into accepting the petitions.

Essentially the judge took a look at the claim and decided this wasn't the right place for it. It had little (or nothing) to do with what was or wasn't filled out properly -- he used that as an excuse to toss the cases.

The next step here will be when one of these goes through -- and sooner or later, one will. Then we'll see what happens...

WTF is... up with e-book pricing?

Robin 1
FAIL

So let's see if we can work that out...

Ooooh. Here's fun. Follow the link that shows the publisher's costs. If you don't have time, here is the simplified version:

From the publisher's perspective:

Step 1. Sit around waiting for someone to write a book. Total man hours: 0

Step 2. Continue to do nothing while waiting for the writer to send us a copy. Total man hours: 0

Step 3. Actually read the damned thing. Total man hours: 6

Step 4. Hire someone to market it. Finally we hit some actual costs and work. Total cost: 5% of revenue from book.

Step 5. Have someone decide if we can make more at Christmas or in summer with the book. Total man hours: 2

Step 6. Read the damned thing again and look for errors. With a good spell and grammar checker, total man hours: 40

Step 7. Wait for the author to double check our work. Total man hours: 0

Step 8. Send an intern down to Kinkos to run off a couple dozen advanced copies for friends and family -- maybe the odd reviewer. Total man hours: 4

Step 9. Design and produce a cover. Total man hours: 40

Step 10. Have someone else redo what you did in step 6. total man hours: 40

Step 11. Have a meeting to convince your sales staff to get off their collective ass and sell the damned thing. Total man hours: 2 (possible women hours involved here in extremely unmotivated sales teams)

Step 12. Covert the document to pdf format and repeat what you did in step 6 and step 10 again. total man hours: 40

Step 13. Put together a spreadsheet that shows how many books you've sold and order them. total man hours: 40

Step 14. Have someone print them. Ooooh! More actual work! Total cost: Conveniently Unavailable.

Step 15. This is not a step, but a complaint.

Step 16. Pay some minimum wage worker to ship the damned things. Total cost: Also conveniently unavailable.

Step 17. Count your profits!

So looking at this, the only steps that actually involve any real costs are steps 4, 14 and 16. The rest take a single person a week or less to perform, if there is any actual cost to the publisher at all. Let's not even talk about the two steps that are repeated by other people just to cover the incompetence of your own staff.

Yeah. Someone want to try running this by me again? What a pile of.... oh wait. My typesetter says he's run out of the letter B. Ah well...

Anti-piracy lawyers 'knowingly targeted the innocent', says law body

Robin 1
Coffee/keyboard

Um...

Duh?

US may disable all in-car mobile phones

Robin 1
Alert

To hell with cellphone use in the car...

what about blowjobs? The Mrs. always indulges me on those long car trips with a highway hummer. I suppose that's considered "too distracting" now as well!

Bloody politicians...

Co-op cashier's breasts overcharged for fruit and veg

Robin 1
Paris Hilton

Second time even funnier...

Had a very similar situation about 15 years ago. Girl complained of random spaces showing up in her work as she typed.

We replaced the keyboard twice before someone finally figured it out.

Google's Street View broke Canadian privacy laws

Robin 1
Stop

Right, right, right!

Sorry, IP, but I can't agree with your analogy at all.

Leaving your wireless unprotected is exactly like leaving your house unlocked.

Private data from an unsecured wireless setup can only be obtained if you choose to connect to and/or set up a sniffer to read from the unsecured network. This doesn't happen by accident. You make a choice to do it. It is the rough equivalent of walking through the doorway of an unlocked house. The door may be unlocked, but you chose to turn the knob and walk in. Your computer didn't just suddenly start collecting this stuff -- you had to configure it to.

Ladies and gentlemen. This issue is remarkably simple. You may not take advantage of your neighbours' technological inexperience to use their Internet connection or rummage through their data -- regardless of how easy they may make that for you.

If you choose to do this, you cannot defend this behaviour by saying they "gave" it away. They did no such thing. They simply didn't do anything to prevent someone from taking it. There is a difference.

IP address-tracing software breached data protection law

Robin 1
Thumb Up

Finally!

Finally the complete ignorance of technology by court officers works in our favour! ;)

Google scores major victory in copyright fight with Viacom

Robin 1
Thumb Up

Today's world

I was going to post about the issue directly, but I have to say that while reading all of this one thought occurred to me.

What an exciting time to be alive.

That is all.

Googlegate: Mapping a scandal of global proportions

Robin 1
WTF?

What a waste of time...

Anyone who is concerned with privacy and doesn't bother to encrypt his wireless gets what he deserves. It's like going to a nude beach and then bitching that people are walking around checking out naked people...

Confessions of a sysadmin

Robin 1
Grenade

NAT

"Flames, because I will soon be covered in them after this post."

Yup, probably. A little deservedly so though...

I won't flame you, but in truth, NAT does break things, especially in the IPTel world.

I was a network guy before I became a security guy. From that perspective I can see both sides of the argument. While I understand what NAT does to simplify security (especially for home users), the benefits to simplifying networking outweigh it. And, to be fair, there really are some solid security benefits to eliminating NAT too. (transparency at the very least!)

Airport plods seize man with electric vibro-pleasure shoes

Robin 1
Thumb Up

Best be careful...

Once onboard, he could disassemble the circuitry in the shoes and attach them to the tub of "play doh" (read C4) that his child brought on board... Bad times for everyone.

It's most likely best if from now on, all passengers board without clothes and carry on. Can't be too careful.

A user's timetable to the Digital Economy Act

Robin 1

Downloading vs. Sky+ / TiVO

[quote]I'm still waiting for some to qualitatively (or quantitively) define the difference between downloading a series of, say, Stargate Universe or House, from BitTorrent and keeping it on your PC as compared to simply hitting SeriesLink on Sky+ and automatically recording each episode that you can then keep forever. Or putting a blank DVD in a recorder and making a perfect digital copy. Or even a videotape for f**ks sake![/quote]

Availability.

You can press any button you like on any device you like, but if it isn't being broadcast right now, you're not getting it. With the torrents, you can download just about anything you like, any time you like, whether it is currently broadcast or not.

This is the current model of broadcast / cable television. Advertisers gamble on what many people will watch and won't watch. Content owners rely on advertisers for things many people will watch, and dvd sales for things many people won't watch.

With downloading, you break the second half of that model. People who want to watch shows that broadcasters can't sell don't need to buy the dvd anymore. They can download it and avoid the costs.

Folks, this is where the distribution companies are right in their assessment of losses (that they are experiencing them, not the $ value they assign).

I don't like it any better than anyone else, but the truth is that for some of these tv series and movies that aren't routinely broadcast, people *will* pay for the dvd. With downloads readily available, people are less inclined to do so. Certainly the folks who don't have the money won't, but there are lots of people with money who don't buy them because downloading is cheaper and more convenient.

Like it or not, download *has* affected the dvd and cd industry. You can argue that those bastards had it coming, and I'd be right there with you, but you can't pretend that some (many?) people who used to buy dvd's and cd's stopped once downloading became easy.

Wall-punching Brit gamer foams (milk) at the mouth

Robin 1
FAIL

All those violent games and the boy still can't punch properly.

The boy needs to learn how to punch properly. Between the first and second knuckle, son. Anything else nets you a broken hand.