@Dan1980: Just guessing here, but perhaps they don't want to do what you suggest because that might run too much afoul the law. Just having a warrant canary in the first place seems to be close already (sad to say).
Posts by beep54
513 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Dec 2010
Reddit's warrant canary shuffles off this mortal coil
'Planet nine' theory boosted by Kuiper Belt Object with odd orbit
Microsoft's bigoted teen bot flirts with illegali-Tay in brief comeback
Microsoft adds 'non-security updates' to security patches
Sunday 13th March 2016 17:41 GMT
Re: I'll jump in before everybody starts to state the obvious....
It is fucking worse than I imagined. In the past patch tuesday all the updates, with the exception of defender, had to do with telemetry and 10. I hid them all. As I have updates set to install when I tell them to, I kinda expected that to happen. HELL NO. Just now windows installed 16 damned updates including, of course, the lovely and talented Get Windows 10 with absolutely no input from me. What is utterly mindless about this is that I cannot install 10 even if I wanted to. There's a video driver cock-up that will cause it to fail. I am sick of this shit. Microsoft is now apparently of a mind that IT, NOT YOU, is in control of your machine.
Austinites outraged as Google Fiber tears up Texas capital
Tuesday 23rd February 2016 01:57 GMT
Getting used to it
At least downtown Austin is kind of used to this. First, during the 80's boom dot bust, everyone, including their long-lost relatives were digging up downtown to lay fiber and cable because the permit process was, apparently, merely announcing: I'm digging here and then doing it. [on the flip side, it took ages and ages for the first sidewalk cafe permit to go thru...] At any rate, there should be tons of dark fiber down there. Austin bounced back quickly from the bust and next there was monumental construction downtown (which hasn't shown any sign of slowing none in the past 10-15 years). And of course, this made the wholely antiquated infrastructure impossible so, basically, downtown had to be dug up once more. Somewhere around this time, we thought, hey, what the heck. Let's just put a ginormous tunnel under Waller Creek downtown while we're at it, ya know, fer flood control (and the attendent property values rise). While the infrastructure is pretty much done and the tunnel completion is in sight, construction goes on apace with more towering hotels and condos. Even the Convention Center is mulling another expansion. So, yep. I'd say we're kinda use to it here. If fact, it seems normal now. Austin: City of Cranes.
Did you know ... Stephen Fry has founded a tech startup?
Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide
Friday 8th January 2016 01:34 GMT 
What's truly pissed me off is that I literally cannot upgrade to 10 (on my rather old desktop) due to some graphics problem which MS should now know about (surely it phoned that home the first go round). But did this ever stop the attempt to 'upgrade'? Nosiree! In trying to fix this mess, I've somehow gotten my system at a point where it is in an infinite loop of 'You need to restart your computer before...' regarding updates. It is just a mess. On the other hand, I think that this has inadvertently saved me from the telemetry updates, so there's that. Yep, be moving to Linux soon.
Kiwi judge rules Kim Dotcom can be extradited to USA
New bill would require public companies to disclose cybersecurity credentials
Pandora pleased with 15% rate hike for streaming music
Enraged Brits demand Donald Trump UK ban
Obama calls out encryption in terror strategy speech
Wednesday 9th December 2015 09:06 GMT
"Atheism is the belief that there is no god (or gods) and cannot be. If you accept that there might be then you aren't an athist. You're an agnostic. Atheism is not a lack of belief. It is an ardent belief in nothing."
Ah, Trevor....you were doing so well up to this point. You seem to have a belief that "[a]theism is not a lack of belief. It is an ardent belief in nothing." Sigh. Look at the formation of the words. One is pretty much non-theism and the other non-mystical (gnostic). They really are not mutually exclusive.
While I am here, (as an atheist/agnostic) I would like to recommend to all two books by Karen Armstrong, a former nun. One is 'A History of God' and the other 'The Battle for God'. The first outlines how humans have perceived the concept of God throughout the ages and lays the foundation for the second book where she tries to understand the rise of fundamentalism. Both books pretty much limit the discussion to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The books are about 20 and 15 years old now (respectively), but still very timely.
France mulls tighter noose around crypto
'Dear Daddy...' Max Zuckerberg’s Letter back to her Father
Music publisher BMG vs US cable giant Cox: Here's why it matters
Thursday 3rd December 2015 10:28 GMT
Re: In the U.S. paid...
@sisk 4) needs to be amplified: on her crotch. Now. I would like everyone to imagine a first degree burn. Ouch. Got that? Good. Now imagine a third degree burn. Mofo ouch. Got that? Good. Now imagine third degree burn and your balls. .... you can't really quite do that now can you?
Windows 10 lags 7, 8 … and even Vista in the channel race
Google snoops on kids via Chromebooks, claims EFF in FTC filing
'To read this page, please turn off your ad blocker...'
Well, what d'you know: Raising e-book prices doesn't raise sales
Dead Steve Jobs' life and times are being turned into an OPERA
Monday 10th August 2015 07:14 GMT 
More humm...
Not familiar with this composer. My first thought was John Adams (whom I like) who composed the totally unexpected "Nixon in China" opera. There's just something marvelously outre about Nixon and Kissinger (baritone and bass, resp.) singing at one another on an airplane to China. So at first, my reaction to this was rather positive. Could still be interesting tho.
Github's 'Atom' text editor hits version 1.0
Beyond the Grave: US Navy pays peanuts for Windows XP support
In memoriam: Christopher Lee, Hammer's Count Dracula
Free Windows 10 upgrades from Microsoft will FLATTEN PC sales
Verizon: fibre is MUCH cheaper than copper, we're going all-FTTP
Jay-Z freestyle attack on Tidal's rivals leaked to Tidal's rivals
Brit boffins blow up Li-On batteries and film the melting copper
Grandmaster FLUSH: Chess champ booted for allegedly cheating with iPod app in the loo
Monday 13th April 2015 23:43 GMT
Re: Apple Watch is next
Don't understand the down votes as Go is definitely far more difficult for a machine than chess. And I spent a long, long time just to get to an upper B level in chess. Still machine v. machine would be pretty much boring for chess. Give me the crazies that chess produces. Fisher, for all his quirks was relatively normal. Nimzovitch was rumored to have stood on a table and peed on a game. And if this didn't happen, well, it should have (for entertainment purposes only, of course....)
Microsoft drops Do Not Track default from Internet Explorer
V&A Museum shows Guardian's destroyed MacBook as ART
Friday 3rd April 2015 03:42 GMT
Re: Security Alert!
"Maybe 3 hours in the oven at 200C?" Not only would this probably stink, it could well be toxic. Ages ago a friend came up with the following idea for a piece of 'art': Bake a loaf of bread with the dough placed on top of a manual typewriter; then shellac the thing. You have no fucking idea the horrible wretchedness of baked typewriter. None.
Netflix teams with AWS to launch VHS-as-a-service
Snowden tells tech bigwigs: It's up to you to thwart mass surveillance
FCC chair heads into two-week political hazing period
Wednesday 18th March 2015 14:17 GMT
Re: WOW! Why dont you just stroke him off while you're at it here!
You, sir, are an idiot. The most recent unelected bureaucrat that served as President of the US was George W. Bush (or Shrub, as we like to call him in Texas, when not disparaging him as a dam' Yankee). Also, you apparently have no freaking clue as to how argument works.
Redmond's Patch Tuesday to kill off the Windows FREAK show
Mattel urged to scrap Wi-Fi mic Barbie after Register investigation
Why does the NSA's boss care so much about backdoors when he can just steal all our encryption keys?
Mozilla mulls Superfish torpedo
Something Coming Through – aliens, LA noir, techno-thriller, dystopia ALL in the mix
'Net neutrality will turn the internet communist – and make Iran's day'
Thursday 19th February 2015 01:42 GMT
Re: The Internet turning Communist?
"The US is becoming a corporatist state. More than any EU nation is, or ever has been."
Sir, an an American and, yes, even a Texan, I demand that you withdraw that odious word, 'becoming' so that your statement reflects more accurately the truth of the matter!!
GCHQ: We can't track crims any more thanks to Snowden
Wednesday 24th December 2014 06:16 GMT
Re: Suggestion for law enforcement
AC: "Personally I would cut the drugs with something useful e.g. cyanide and sell that cheap for a while. It could clean up the drugs market and give the undertakers some useful business"
This was actually tried by the US government during Prohibition. It had zero affect of the usage of alcohol, but it DID certainly increase the undertakers business.
Kim Dotcom Dotcan remain on bail, despite Fed protests
NSA mass spying reform KILLED by US Senators
Wednesday 19th November 2014 10:44 GMT
Re: Do I care enough to comment???
@KrisMac: Changing the figurehead at the pinnacle of power rarely if ever does anything to alter the corruption within the edifice upon which that power is based...
This might be a good time for us all to re-read Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly".
Also, I totally blame the Intertubes.
It’s payback time as humans send a probe up alien body
Preview redux: Microsoft ships new Windows 10 build with 7,000 changes
Wednesday 22nd October 2014 20:38 GMT
Re: Windows 10 ?
I was (quite graciously) given a Chromebook. And while I can see that this might be useful for dicking around the net for a given proportion of people, the fact that I could not USE it in any really meaningful way quickly drove me nuts so I soon made sure it would also run full blown Linux. I effing want my PC's to work, dammit!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
