* Posts by danR2

217 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Nov 2012

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Is Google prepping an ARMY of WALKING ROBOTS?

danR2

Re: Nope they have to

The "Don't be Evil" company is going into the replacement of the human race. Why don't they just make nuclear weapons and sell them N. Korea?

Chinese hackers targeted G20 in Syria-themed attack

danR2

Nice try...

... tit-for-tat counter-accusation CIA, oops, I mean 'FireEye'. What a coincidence that this claim comes shortly after the Snowden material on U.S. spook-staff flooding the embassy in Canada on the G-20 summit there.

Microsoft: C'mon, you can trust us... look at our gov spook-busting plans

danR2

Re: Keyloggers, Mouseloggers

One downvote already. Did I upset the NSA? keylog vendors?

"Who tells the truth is driven from 9 villages" --Turkish proverb.

danR2

Keyloggers, Mouseloggers

What does encryption matter if both govs and crims can get access new passwords more securely than you can write them down?

Secured input services should be built down in the OS kernels (and even chip-maker microcode) of all major vendors so deeply that unless the user sets an option, it would be impossible for keyloggers to work at all, even commercial ones installed by the users themselves.

One major hack just in the news appears to have depended on keylogging. Change your password with all the best salting and length in the world and the hackers have it.

Bad genes? US watchdog halts 23andMe's handy home DNA test kits

danR2

Now Google has a crappy gene test...

...to match their increasingly crappy search engine. You have to put quotes everywhere, even quotes won't work, garbage returned that doesn't have ANY of your terms, cache that no longer shows coloured terms (Bing, bless their incompetent souls still has ONE thing right, however trivial), horrible youTube changes...

Did I mention the search engine is crappy? Well, what do you expect from glorified internet PR flaks? Search? wtf is that?

Hello Warsaw: Greenland ice loss will be OK 'even under extreme scenarios'

danR2

Re: IPCC blaming heretics again?

As ice is removed from Greenland, the viscous asthenosphere beneath rebounds upward, with compensatory replacement from peripheral oceanic upper mantle, lowering the seafloor. Crustal rebound of up to ~ 1.0 cm/year has been measured in post-glaciation areas of north-eastern Canada.

Connect the dots, Professor Gore.

HUBBLE turns TIME MACHINE: Sees GLINT in the Milk(yway)man's EYE

danR2

Re: I hate hype.

With my Google news page science/technology already glutted with climate-change porn and more and more thermocalyptic drivel, it's depressing to see highly qualified scientists and researchers making such patently poor use of adjectives for something so fundamental as a COMPUTED imaging of the early galaxy.

'direct', my arze.

'First DIRECT image of a neutrino!'

'First DIRECT image of a T. Rex!'

Google, Microsoft to drop child sex abuse from basic web search

danR2

Re: Title is too long

Encryption would prang the hidden watermark. And, as someone has said, evolving code would bypass filters: eg. cool David Cameron.

Google SO CAN scan ALL BOOKS onto its sites - judge

danR2

Re: Excerpts only

I find an unexplained absurdity in some older Google 'Books': stuff that's been out of print for 200 years that is only allowed snippet views, and sometimes nothing at all, just the fact that it's there.

It is my suspicion that every time one of these books is quoted by a modern author and a citation given, Google stores the quote as though it were the modern author's writing and refuses any further data from the thus cross-indexed original as well.

Pop OS X Mavericks on your Mac for FREE while you have LUNCH

danR2

"Free is good". OK then...

"Today we announce a new era for the Mac, because today we're announcing that Mavericks is free," he said. "Free is good."

Bring back Hypercard. Updated, bundled, and free.

Adobe hit by 'sophisticated' mega hack ransack

danR2

Re: Shock

With all the constant 'security' and other updates Adobe pesters me for free Reader, it's not shock to me. Since Reader is the only point for their existence for the vast majority of people (I use Gimp for example), why don't they just abandon all their other junk, and do ONE job right?

Google reveals its Hummingbird: Fly, my little algorithm - FLY!

danR2

Question, google.

Google, why can't you find me all pages explaining why a search query with all of a small number of keywords and phrases won't give me exactly what I want and only what I want and not force me to put every cotton pickin' keyword in quotes?

Is that more complex enough for ya?

Google tentacle slips over YouTube comments: Now YOUR MUM is at the top

danR2

Yes, I've noticed that. I'm surprised only one person has commented here so far, and I wonder if the author actually uses youTube.

Chaos Computer Club: iPhone 5S finger-sniffer COMPROMISED

danR2
Paris Hilton

Tim Cook, can you really be this dumb?

I knew it would be hacked eventually, but only practical by commercial/government clients against high-value targets.

I can't believe it happened this soon and this easily.

Will wait out the next few days for official confirmation. If so, they have bricked a major Apple next-big-thing system almost as soon as it's released, which has never happened in history.

Securo-boffins link HIRED GUN hackers to Aurora, Bit9 megahacks

danR2

Re: Chinese Hacking Group?

With 50-100 experts, one or several of them may be near-native English speakers with a lot of social and net-savvy jargon providing a false front appearance.

Even the small, informal lulzSec had Jake Davis doing a lot of the 'talking' (although there was no intention of linguistic misdirection), and lacing the content with Briticisms, but the core leader was American Sabu.

Zuckerberg: I want the WHOLE WORLD in my hands

danR2

Re: Hm, I'm not getting it

You lack faith.

Charity, technology, and capitalism—the Three Virtues—join hands in the dance of life.

The heavens open, the angels sing; Zuckerberg, Google, et al. find ways to monetize poverty.

danR2

And billions without basic eye-tracking assistance

They must be rescued from activities that might endanger themselves. When they are all looking at FB ads and nowhere else, they can do no harm...

Google proposes eye-tracking ad-tracking

danR2

Saw this sort of thing long ago

As soon as Samsung's eye-tracking arrived, I widely posted a basic algorithm that goes even further than that:

forced tracking of ads:

If eye(x,y)<>adCenter(x,y), then eye(x,y)=adCenter(x,y)

So, they will charge a premium for advertisers who want to insure users ARE looking at their ads.

Maybe the Luddites had a point...

IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

danR2

Re: Power still kicking? imagine the

I appreciate all that, but I assumed Power was simply filling in a humble role where it could no longer have the market-forces to evolve into leading edge computing functions. Apple dropped the chip because they simply felt it had run out of gas, and that was years ago. I was disappointed of course.

danR2

Power still kicking?

601? I thought that architecture was dying a slow death inside embedded systems, such as solar-powered climate-controlled coffins.

China Labor Watch gumshoes uncover TOP SECRET PLASTIC IPHONE

danR2

Plastic and human wrongs, oh my, Mr. Cook.

How will you explain this to the coffee and cheesecake at Starbucks, yoga-mat tree-hugger higher income crowd?

Lenovo, et al. don't infer they are saving the poor, eliminating blood-diamonds, and stopping the nefarious big-oil plot of global warming. Apple does all those things, and more.

But...plastic? Your base will be terribly upset.

Apple: 'Average' iPad toiler does a mere 46-hour week

danR2

Re: @AC 13/07/29 10:45

Bingo.

Apple's sleek, sculpted, cool social progressive form-factor sits only too well with the coffee and cheesecake at Starbucks, yoga-mat tree-hugger higher income crowd.

Lenovo, et al. don't infer they are saving the poor, eliminating blood-diamonds, and stopping the nefarious big-oil plot of global warming.

Titsup Apple Developer Centre mystery: Database interloper fingered

danR2

Re: And we thought ...

It's software and hardware reviewers fault that misperception continues.

When's the last time they did an in-depth look at the landfill of complaints over the past 20 years about Apple stuff on Apple's own tech-help and 3rd party help websites?

Because an issue is restricted to <1% of users, it doesn't reach any threshold of action or discussion. But there are literally thousands of such issues that never do get resolved. I know this, having used Apple computers almost exclusively for almost 25 years.

danR2

China seems to take the same Keith Alexander, NSA approach to data. The whole haystack, vacuum-cleaner approach. See what neat stuff falls out of the bag.

And no, there are more there than fart apps.

danR2

"...customer information is securely encrypted."

[I feel so much better now.]

China has the world's fastest supercomputer.

D'OH! Use Tumblr on iPhone or iPad, give your password to the WORLD

danR2

Re: The sex-blog platform

I'm not starting an account with a site that still cannot spell its own name.

Microsoft DENIES it gives backdoor access to Outlook encryption

danR2

Please Eric Holder, permit me to stop lying.

Sincerely,

Agent Smith.

'Clippy' coup felled by Microsoft twitterati

danR2
Terminator

Tapped for MS Security and Backdoors is...

...James Clapper. Yes, folks your favorite perjurer, and inheritor of J. Edgar Hoover's coveted bra, will make life all that easier for the NSA as they spy on the taxpayers and other terrorists who think they can push America around.

US public hate Snowden - but sexpot spy Anna Chapman LOVES him

danR2

Suspect pollster

It's a bit hard to enlighten when an article uses a suspect pollster:

"Is it worth it to point out yougov's political affiliations - for instance to the Murdoch press, and its directors who are conservative supporters? Wikidea 15:08, 9 April 2010 (UTC)" --Talk Page, YouGov, Wikipedia.

The main page transparently promotes youGov's supposed 'accuracy' by selecting those predictions that are...accurate. Of course, it works for psychics, why not pollsters?

danR2

youGov's affiliations and WikiPedia's cherry picked 'accurate' predictions

"Is it worth it to point out yougov's political affiliations - for instance to the Murdoch press, and its directors who are conservative supporters? Wikidea 15:08, 9 April 2010 (UTC)" --Talk Page, Wikipedia.

The main page transparently promotes youGov's supposed 'accuracy' by selecting only those predictions that are...accurate. Of course, it works for psychics, why not pollsters?

FTC tells Google and pals: Not labelling ads properly is 'deceptive'

danR2

Re: Funny how Google can use plain language...

Why would this get a thumbs-down? Is Google shill-voting on El Reg?

danR2

Re: What about magazines?

A magazine isn't a search engine. In fact magazines are pages of ads interspersed with content to glue the ads together. A search returns related-content ads that are often unique to that search. If you read the same magazines the ads appear over and over again, with only minor variations. They are easily visually filtered; nobody has to read the fine print.

Again on this Register page there are two items of ad-drivel that have nothing to do with this story or the comment section. I filter them out automatically.

danR2

Funny how Google can use plain language...

... for example their 404, busted robot, error message: "That's an error."

But Ads? Hey Sergey, how 'bout:

"These are people who want to sell you something. That's all we know:"

Hitchhikers' Guide was WRONG, Earth is not in a galactic backwater

danR2
Pint

"...beaming out of faraway clouds of water and alcohol."

This story doesn't need a punch-line.

NASA: Trip to Mars would exceed 'fatal cancer' radiation risk

danR2

Any substantive objections?

Thumbs-down hardly critique the flaws, if any. If speed is what's really called for by the experts, mass-drivers are the way to go.

danR2

I think the eventual solution will have to be mass-drivers built and stationed on the moon (using mostly moon materials). Craft will accelerated to ~20 miles/sec over 30-40 mile track and sent ballistically, with mid-course corrections by nuclear propellants, to the planets. This will reduce time and allow for more robust shielding. G-forces for humans would be mitigated by almost complete immersion in neutral buoyancy tanks.

Energy for launch would be nuclear or solar.

China breaks ceasefire, restarts hacking US government

danR2
WTF?

Re: I don't believe IT ..

Yes, security companies vector through a top University to target NYT reporters who happen to be exposing a Chinese Premier's billionaire relative clan. And hacking into free Tibet interests. That's Mandiant, alright.

Your Flying Car? Delayed again, but you WILL get it, says Terrafugia

danR2
WTF?

Center of gravity...

...and the center of lift. The animation for this thing just doesn't add up.

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

danR2

Re: All very true, but..

I'm wondering how Harlan Ellison became the authority on more than cooking up specious lawsuits against rival s-f writers and movie producers. Having got that off my chest, you just have to google images "zip gun", and see the amazing range of options for making crude but workable (smooth-bore, short range) hand'guns'.

My favorite is the paper mache gun, although one of its claims (burns itself up on firing, self-destroying the evidence) should be taken with a grain of salt. You'd probably want to wrap any thin-walled tube round with several layers of fiberglass tape, just to be on the safe side. Or better, not make a zip-gun at all.

Office 365 supremo seizes control of Microsoft's purse strings

danR2
WTF?

"the strategy development '[sic]' " ?

What's the problem? The spelling is correct, and 'development' is the modifier (so to speak) of strategy ('development of strategy'), not the other way around.

FONDLESLAB market DEATH STRUGGLE: Latest rankings in

danR2

Windows type-slabs are reference machines

MS is just showcasing their technology; they don't want to upstage other makers. Hence the high prices. I don't know whether the silly hybrid design is deliberately part of that showcasing, but it hasn't helped the product if it's rather just a silly hybrid design.

Mozilla accuses Gamma of dressing up dictators' spyware as Firefox

danR2

Re: Where can we download the source?

Can't see the downvote.

I'm simply offering a conjecture based on the wording copied straight out of the agreement.

danR2

Re: Where can we download the source?

I'm suspecting the laws in various countries make exceptions for commercial interests dealing with defense, security, and law-enforcement parties. There's the notorious secrecy law surrounding RIM/Blackberry and law enforcement a while back; but the details are no longer in my memory.

danR2

Re: Where can we download the source?

I imagine here is a security-exception escape clause, especially the last sentence:

__________

4. Inability to Comply Due to Statute or Regulation

If it is impossible for You to comply with any of the terms of this License with respect to some or all of the Covered Software due to statute, judicial order, or regulation then You must: (a) comply with the terms of this License to the maximum extent possible; and (b) describe the limitations and the code they affect. Such description must be placed in a text file included with all distributions of the Covered Software under this License. Except to the extent prohibited by statute or regulation, such description must be sufficiently detailed for a recipient of ordinary skill to be able to understand it.

__________

Atoms star in ball-bothering boffins' Big Blue movie

danR2
Paris Hilton

No, it's an artefact

I'm mistaken completely. The apparent 'light'-source changes from area to area.

danR2

Re: Background?

I believe it's copper. Possibly the imaging probe doesn't register conductor well, only molecules that don't conduct, or perhaps there's some tuning parameter that emphasizes Oxygen. However, as I mention above, the carbon atom is evident as a smaller item near the O, and it's not an imaging by-product. These are the CO molecules being imaged, not 'atoms'. Guinness should revise their record to 'molecule', because eventually someone is going to do this again with actual single atoms.

danR2

These don't look like 'atoms', but the molecules which they actually are. There are two parts, if you look very carefully—which change orientation for various...pixtons? axels?—in the movie.

Methinks there's some IBM marketing bending here. Should be called A Boy (could be a girl, for that matter) and his Molecule.

Another negative climate feedback: Warmer plants cool the planet

danR2

Re: Albedo

It is *because* climatology studies a complex phenomenon that dire predictions of a 2-3 degree rise by 2100 should not become the daily fodder of the media and AGW apologist websites.

It is because a 2-3 degree rise by 2100 would simply put us in a temperature regime similar to the ecologically diverse mid-pliocene that we should not be bemoaning the heart-wrenching, drama-queen, loss of whales, polar bears and poor helpless sharks. But at least they can take heart in the purported high-latitude plague of malaria-bearing mosquitoes, fleas, locusts, frogs, camera-clicking tourists and the like.

It is because the world is not going to dissolve in a horrible bubbling effervescent acid-bath of CO2-ed ocean, and it is because the balance of carbo-philic plants, marine and terrestrial will simply take over where carbo-phobic species are compromised, and because carbophilic genes could be transplanted into many useful plants, and because the paleohistorical ecological diversity of the Earth does not show any more marked aversion to CO2—in fact the oceanic fauna suffered a 4-fold *increase* during the high-CO2 (and oddly coldish) late Ordovician—than it does to warmth that professor emeritus Al Gore, et al. should go jump in a cool lake.

It is because, although it's hard to 'falsify' hypotheses entailed by a complex system, the predicted steady thermal rise is risking a breach of the low end of the 95% confidence level envelope we should be alarmed that AGW computer-crystal-ball-prognosticators are developing an increasing stranglehold on the minds of world leaders who have the next decades' multi-terabuck economic decisions to make.

In short, carbocalyptic prophets should get off our leaders' backs.

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