Posts by bombastic bob 10282 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
agreed, it's been the general policy of the U.S. justice system to extend the same *kinds* of constitutional protections to non-citizens, due process etc. while they are guests in our country (even illegally).
As far as the 9th Circus is concerned, I think they (like the proverbial broken clock that's right twice a day) got it RIGHT this time in their ruling. I also look forward to the U.S. Supreme Court turning this into legal precedent. I suspect that with all of the FBI shenanigans recently uncovered, there's little chance the Supreme Court would differ from this position. "Rogue" and "Overly Aggressive" FBI agents who illegally collect damning information and THEN intimidate the accused into a guilty plea have to be STOPPED. That's certainly NOT "due process". Right General Flynn?
strangely I just heard about this on El Reg. Where are all of the otherwise LOUD civil libertarian ACLU types on this???
you could have stated that differently and actually been accurate...
There have been some indications that Google has a "culture" that does not tolerate CONSERVATIVES, and that promotes politically liberal kinds of things. And, in SOME cases (or at least, one DOCUMENTED case), an outspoken conservative opinion got someone fired over taking a position CONTRARY to that of the company [one particular guy a couple o' years ago comes to mind, with respect to 'affirmative action'].
All snark aside, I'd laugh my ASS off if Google employees formed a union. Oh, the IRONY!!! As in, those who LIVE by the left, might just DIE by the left!
My Nicname when I was in the U.S. Navy was "The Geek". At first I wasn't sure what that meant, but someone told me that a 'Geek' was someone who did unusual acts in a circus, such as biting the heads off of chickens. I was actually kinda HAPPY to have that as my nicname after that.
SJW's need to just BUTT the FEEL OUT. We *GEEKS* do not *NEED* *YOU*
/me wears such titles with *PRIDE* but I can't remember what my 'geek code' is...
Just like Micro-shaft, looks like Apple wants to "lock down" the kernel using *cough* certificates THAT YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR.
Nevermind the effect it has on OPEN SOURCE and FREEDOM TO USE YOUR OWN COMPUTER HOW YOU SEE FIT...
Also: besides being IRRITATING, it's a FALSE sense of security. Widespread cracking of _THAT_ is just a matter of time... and I doubt they're making any developer friends in the process.
[you could make the case of having a strong lock on a door; however, it's my opinion that putting a TOLLBOOTH ON THE PROCESS is _NOT_ the way to do it! That assumes that Apple _CHARGES MONEY_ to sign the drivers, just the way that Micro-shaft does]
should've used a 'snark' icon because this "Buzzword Bingo" thing has been going on WAY too long, we've all seen it before, half the time it was Micro-shaft doing it (whatever happened to Silverlight?) and now it's GOOGLE doing the SAME THING.
I didn't like JQuery, I don't like NodeJS, I *REALLY* hate UWP and ".Not", and now "THEY" are horking up some "new thing", only THIS time it's Google doing it.
Yeah. THAT'll make it *BETTER*. </snark>
(and don't EVEN get me started on 'materialize')
"had the wretched Obama spun this idea the media would be falling over itself to grovel before his 'cool' intellectual brilliance."
THAT is a foregone conclusion. 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' is alive and kicking.
During WW2 the Air Force was 'Army Air Corps'. It split off some time after the war ended. Now it's going to split again. Seriuosly it makes sense because a 'space force' would be able to focus on space, and not on 'Air Force' kinds of things. At some point in the future, when actual ships are being flown, it'd probably make sense to have a separate 'Space Navy'. I would guess that when it comes to managing ships with a crew of dozens or hundreds, the Navy has much more experience. But a crew of 2 or 3 or 4, Air Force can manage just fine.
It's just an evolutionary thing, really. You can make fun, until it makes sense.
hmmm... Martian beer [I like it already]
1. Aries Ale [Aries being the Greek version of Mars]
2. God of War
3. Red Planet Ale (there's a local brew in San Diego called 'Red Trolley Ale')
4. Green Martian Malt Liquor
5. Cydonia Stout
6. Martian Viking (named for the some of the first space-bots to go there)
7. Bradbury Brew (named after the author of 'Martian Chronicles')
8. Space Beer (ok could be brewed in orbit or anywhere off earth)
(alternate: 'Beer from Spaaaaace')
9. Rocket Fuel
10. Alien (any kind of brew, this one-word title just works)
11. Space Buzz (a vague reference to the 2nd man on the moon, and what beer does for ya)
12. Kasei Beer (japanese name for Mars is 'Kasei')
running out of ideas, now...
*ahem*
It is not the presence of advertising that is the problem.
It is the TRACKING and IRRITATION and TARGETING that is the problem!
(from the article)
"These intermediaries, such as browser and operating systems, can impede consumers' ability to exercise choices via the internet that may block digital technologies (e.g. cookies, JavaScripts, and device identifiers) that consumers can rely on to communicate their opt out preferences,"
THIS ALONE tells us what these ANTI-PRIVACY advertisers are up to: They want to (LITERALLY) restrict THE OS and THE BROWSER from using ANY technology that MIGHT interfere with what THEY are up to! They *ASSUME* "opt out" as the ONLY CHOICE!
Obviously *NOT* an option, to go THEIR route. And, HOW are you going to STOP an OS from blocking their CRAP? HOW are you going to STOP a BROWSER (or plugin) from BLOCKING THEIR CRAP? Because, you *KNOW* there are SOFTWARE AUTHORS (like me) who would GLADLY VIOLATE THEIR "laws" and MAKE SURE YOU *CAN* block them! Because, I would be doing it, too.
And since it ONLY affects California, I could *MOVE* *TO* *TEXAS* and PUBLISH IT THERE.
These ANTI-PRIVACY advertising IDIOTS are behaving like a STREET HUSTLER playing 3 Card Monty, with the SHILL standing there so unhappy that he keeps losing, while 2 or 3 onlookers can see where the king is, and then one of the onlookers wants to try, and it's like "how about $50", and next thing you know, the hustler and the shill are GONE, you're out $50, and you're like "whu...?"
icon, because, FACEPALM you'd ever suggest something about 'alternate internet funding' like there's ONLY a choice between INVASIVE ANTI-PRIVACY ADVERTISING and NO INTARWEB REVENUE AT ALL.
"How many of you armchair Admirals have actually served in the Royal Navy?"
I was in the U.S. Navy - does that count?
Also visited the China Fleet Club in Hong Kong (1985 ) and went on both A and B tours while I was there. Didn't meet any Royal Navy sailors, though. DID get some nice dishes and a tailored suit.
"When this is sunk by a Chinese anti-ship missile"
*sigh* - why can/'t you just say it's a really cool ship of the line, and it's making UK look good?
I find it interesting that they use non-nuclear propulsion. But apparently it's almost as large as a U.S. Nimitz class carrier. No angled flight deck, though. Apparently designed specifically for STOL and vertical take-off aircraft.
Other specs look pretty good
Oh, and China wouldn't *DARE* sink your carrier. Seriously.
I do not think that phrase meant what you think it means...
'For the children' (to me) is more like a generational thing - the basic idea is to leave the next generation a world which is BETTER than the one left to US.
"Only back-doorable encryption" isn't "better" - that's like saying "only master-keyed locks on your door"
"Care about the children" - All joking aside, I do care, actually, and to really protect the children, we need their web traffic and device storage ENCRYPTED for privacy reasons, at the very least.
But let's not stop there... NOT being tracked, marketed, exploited, etc. should be high on the priority list as well. Right Google? Microsoft?
And if it is possible for any government to go on a "fishing expedition" ["don't worry if you have nothing to hide" you say? have you been paying attention to the news inside the U.S. House of Representatives? have you EVER been falsely accused? Have you EVER gone through a divorce? "Fishing Expedition" is your WORST NIGHTMARE! ], if it becomes THE NORM to have your data rifled through EVERY TIME you are interviewed by a police officer, or (worse) WHEN ENTERING A FOREIGN COUNTRY, then your rights have just entered the bottom of the vortex and gone down the pipe.
Anyway, some of this should just be obvious to the most casual observer. And it's always "ok" when it happens to "someone else", until it happens to YOU...
as for me, all I have is a pre-paid "dumb phone" and anything of importance isn't stored on any OTHER computing devices I might carry with me. A lot of people don't like that idea, and so UN-CRACKABLE encryption SHOULD be "the norm" so you don't HAVE to!
I think what you want to do is mention something about 501(c)(3) in the USA, which _APPEAR_ to be somewhat ABUSED, to not only SHELTER income from taxation, but to use it improperly to engage in (let's say) questionable purposes, like political activism (right George?)
So, for THESE very rich people, who might have a foundation or 10 that are 501(c) tax exempt, all of the money poured into these non-profits is just THAT, i.e. TAX EXEMPT. if you THEN use it to "buy something" you want, whether it's inflated salaries to friends and relatives, or uber-special vacations for board members, and maybe some stealth-political-activism in the form of employees that are effectively paid to BLOG all day, you end up amplifying the effectiveness of whatever money you funnel into these things. And your personal overall effective tax rate gets lower, and lower, and lower...
But of course you'd have to be SUPER wealthy for any of this to work.
The Laffer Curve discusses this sort of thing
/me withholding political pontification on this subject - worth mentioning I don't agree with a lot of the details in the wikipedia article, yet it DOES describe the basics pretty well
in seriousness, the adversarial court system for criminal trials is there to make SURE that the guilty person is the one getting punished, by giving as MUCH advantage to the accused as possible.
That's the argument, anyway, and without proper defense, the prosecution might as well be a 'Star Chamber' trial. (Or somethign that the US House of Reps does when run by the current bunch...)
competitive advantage, yeah.
Some of what the article was talking about includes some "marketing-spin" kinds of info, talking about Nitro and what it does, etc. which is good since it's informative, but you have to expect every spokes-droid for AWS will put a market-spin on things whenever possible.
Still also worthy of mention: if you do not RE-DISTRIBUTE open source software to 3rd parties, you do NOT have to disclose your patches!!!
Just thought I'd mention that...
yeah that'd really fix things. It would also revive USENET (maybe alt.president.trump - heh). Then people would discover the TRUE freedom of USENET (or any other existing, free-er platform) and completely ABANDON Tw[a,i]tter. Yeah, maybe that'd be a GOOD thing...?
And 'silencing speech' like THAT might also get MORE (and more SERIOUS) 'unwanted' INVESTIGATIONS on the "social media empire" . [that TOO, might be a GOOD thing!]
"May the Americans have the wisdom to vote intelligently."
I agree with that statement, as a set of words forming a sentence. But the details most likely differ from your interpretation.
I *think* with my brain, and *feel* with my fingers - and THINKING is how *I* define "intelligently" - and when liberals vote, they usually 'feel', not THINK - and 'feel' is how politicians all too often MANIPULATE people (via emotional hand grenades) into voting away their own freedom.
Actually no it won't.
a *bit* off topic here (I'll attempt to remedy this), but if you define success as "convincing the senate to remove Trump" there's no way THAT will happen. You'd need 67 senators voting 'yes' to do that. Keep in mind when Clinton was impeached, for actually COMMITTING several crimes (lying under oath being a particular one, even got him dis-barred for a year), the senate would not remove HIM from office. Seriously the HR's "impeachment" is nothing less than a 'Schiff Show' as described by more reliable news organizations.
So depending on how you define 'success', i.e. "a vote to pass articles of impeachment" (will most likely happen) vs "the senate removes Trump from office" (snowball's chance in HELL of THAT happening), and the general view that the American public has over this obvious SHAM in the House of Representatives [while not addressing REAL issues like the US/Canada/Mexico trade agreement], it's a total LOSE for Demo[n,c][R,r]ats. (that last part is the key)
Anyway, you all brought it up. but if you don't believe what I'm saying here, I suggest checking out Fox News' latest headlines in that regard... the perspective might be "enlightening".
(and now steering this to be SOMEWHAT on-topic again)
Still I wouldn't put it past Bezos to execute influence over HR members (via lobbyists) to ADD HIS CLAIMS (related to the article) as another "article of impeachment" complete with secret hearings, scripted "testimonies", one-sided viewpoints, and laughable "charges".
[I've seen better con-jobs from street hustlers doing 3 card Monty, as compared to what Demo[n,c][R,r]ats are attempting to do with 'impeachment']
"This is kind of awesome to watch Amazon on defense for a change"
(If this forum had attached images I'd attach one of a baby crying)
Personally I would expect the decision to have been an ECONOMIC one, and possibly one focused on entirely on RELIABIILITY. Maybe Microsoft and Azure is just BETTER?
MS already had a "Windows for Warships" kind of thing going. And it's also possible that the DOJ was concerned about SJW-types mucking with things in some kind of internal company politics... [yeah THAT doesn't ever happen, right Google?]
And while the public probably will NEVER know all of the details of the decision [some of which MAY actually be CLASSIFIED] I doubt Trump influenced the DOJ with any personal malice towards Bezos.
Still it makes for a fun read, with Bezos crying like a baby over this...
amazingly Java still manages to be #1 or a very close #2 on the TIOBE index. But it _does_ run cross-platform. And on Android. But of course what Android apparently does is re-compile it into something native, rather than relying on running Java's pseudo-code. And, THAT causes significant startup delays every time something "upgrades". I HATE that. (let me start my slab up really quick so I can test this... OH @#$% the @#$% @#$% just @#$% had to UPDATE, and now I have to wait for @#$% @#$%^ @#$% to finish before it'll finish starting up, @#$%!!!)
i can't imagine what would happen if you get a WebAssembly "thing" somewhere down the line, where it's forcibly 'optimized' (read: re-compiled for up to a minute or two) while your browser and/or the content on the page has to WAIT FOR IT because, "updates". Yeah, does not happen FOR NOW, because it runs that code with a virtualizer. but that's not FAST ENOUGH, and you know, it COULD become NATIVE CODE, and next step in the "evolution" puts us into the situation I JUST described, and and and (you get the idea). And we ALL know who devs LOVE to SHOVE THEIR UPGRADES into our body orficies, because ALWAYS BETTER even with FEATURE CREEP!
"new generations growing up and re-inventing the wheel because they weren't around for the previous debacle."
Or, in the case of the invasive/pervasive 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE FLATSO FLUGLY interface "design", re-inventing the wheel "for the lulz" "because they CAN" (and TOTALLY b0rking it, out of arrogance NOT going back to what was OBVIOUSLY BETTER BEFORE) and THEN cramming it into EVERYONE ELSE's body orifice and calling it "modern".
Because, after all, it's "their turn now". and everyone over the age of 'whatever' is OLD and STICK IN THE MUD and WRONG and WON'T LEARN and and and... [you get the idea]
yeah having all competing choices (effectively) taken away is the MOST irritating part. Expect WebAssembly to do THAT, too.
"Java plugins in browsers worked by Java having arbitrary access to the machine and then imposing its own (broken) security model. That's why Java plugins are basically dead now."
That's part of it, yeah [probably the biggest part]. However, what makes you think WebAssembly is NOT heading down the EXACT SAME PATH? I suggest that it _IS_.
"Unsafe at any speed" - kinda fits this, too.
Do you REALLY want automatically downloaded PROGRAMS being run by TRACKERS and ADVERTISERS (and scammers) running on YOUR computer? Just like the way I block scripting with NoScript, this 'WebAssembly' crap needs the SAME kind of treatment. Ideally, it can have a finer level of control applied to it, such as blocking 3rd party scripts, block 3rd party WebAssembly, or ALL WebAssembly for that matter...
hopefully NoScript shuts that *#!+ off, too.
from the article: "wasm modules operate in a sandbox that isolates them from the host runtime"
I've heard this rumor about JavaScript, too. And yet, HOW MANY TIMES has it BEEN ABUSED to SPY on us, STEAL CPU CYCLES for crypto-mining, and so on???
FACT: This is 3rd parties RUNNING CODE on YOUR COMPUTING DEVICE, quite possibly inviting RANDOM 4TH PARTIES [advertisers] TO DO THE SAME.
Yeah "no security risk" doing THAT, right?
My hacker-mind ALREADY envisions the potential abuse of THAT kind of "open-ness" on the CLIENT. And it's as bad as the first MS-DOS viruses and MAC viruses that prompted an ENTIRE INDUSTRY of anti-virus tools.
NO THANKS opening my LINUX or FreeBSD box up to the SAME KINDS OF CRAP that Windows users have to protect themselves from...
WebAssembly: *FAIL* (might as well use embedded Java objects, and WHY was that dumped again?)
agreed, being truly anonymous is difficult these days. we all have an IP address, and it doesn't change often even for dynamic providers... unless you're behind an ISP NAT, in which case the ISP would have to divulge which IP you're on.
the tracking techniques employed within/by browsers and web servers have been mentioned in too many 'The Register' articles to count, more recently THIS one (using DNS to stealthily track you).
false flag is as old as warfare. Stealthily attack your enemy, blame their OTHER enemy for it.
Sun Tzu's book is full of stuff like this.
As far as general deception goes, it's like "the art of warfare is deception".
Being 12/7 (Pearl Harbor day for those who failed history, ha ha ha) I ought a leave a nice WW2 example of deception in warfare, of how prior to D day, General Patton was put in charge of a fake army complete with rubber tanks and jeeps, which were basically movie props, moved about by soldiers every day so that it would look like a real army to Nazi reconnaissance. They made it look as best as they could that they were going to invade at Pas de Calais, but it was really Normandy [which we all know from history class]. Anyway, this kind of thing is as old as warfare, too.
any black-hat worth his hat color would assume a few things up front, and most likely know what info is being sent or left behind when malware strikes, and ALSO know what to modify in order to cover his own tracks.
Otherwise he'd be laughed at for being such a "script kiddie". It kinda reminds me of the movie 'Hackers' when one of the n00b guys tries to impress his friends by cracking into "the Gibson", but he did it from his home phone, such that the call could be traced. And of course, it was. Anyway, it (somewhat humorously) illustrates the point that if you do something nefarious, you have to leave no breadcrumbs.
Or, in consistency with the article, plant bread crumbs that lead authorities to the wrong place.
(I'm a white hat hacker with a touch of grey - I'm not opposed to doing things that might be considered 'black hat' if it's for the right reasons)
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