Posts by William Boyle 293 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2008
Ok, 1 in 500 of 29M == 58000. 3% of that == 1740. That's the number of "real" offenders "captured" by the cameras. Not a small number. Does that justify the invasion of our privacy to move about freely? Can they determine which plates are associated with real crimes? Do they care? These are the questions we need to ask.
So, what the politicos are saying is something like "There is nothing to see here. Move on now."... The problem is that when sensitive data is collected, there is a finite probability that it will be maliciously exploited, no matter how "secure" it is stored (and usually it isn't very secure in absolute terms). So, storing so much personal data, no matter where or how, someone is going to get access to it for their own personal exploitation. This is one of the major issues about these data scooping activities that isn't being adequately discussed - it affects ALL of us!
Yes DSL is slower than cable, but DSL connections have dedicated bandwidth (or should), whereas the DOCIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) based connections provided by cable services use shared bandwidth. IE, with cable, the more active connections to a single DOCIS hub, the slower each is.
So, in the final analysis, DSL is slower, but more reliable regarding bandwidth and cable is faster, but bandwidth may vary significantly, especially during peak hours.
" If you fully understand your specialty you can weather the storms that will hit your career."
Indeed in truth! I am an old fart software engineer, with 30+ years experience (and 65 this past January). I was laid off my position as principal engineer at a major software company at the end of 2005, did some consulting until the end of 2011, and because of my experience, knowledge, and capabilities, was hired 18 months ago as principal performance engineer for a tier-one corporation to design/develop performance gathering and analytic tools to help in the management of our world-wide data centers comprising thousands of servers. FWIW, "consulting" is a euphemism for "gainfully unemployed"... :-)
Pretty soon, if anyone has something to communicate with others that they don't want the government to know about, they will leave their phones at home, disable their vehicle GPS and anti-theft devices, and meet with their compatriots in the mountains (dark country) where cell signals are not functional. Of course, they will still be visible on satellite... Doh! Guess we are all just so screwed!
Yeah, and of that 100 plots/arrests made by the FBI, 99 of them were hatched by the FBI as "stings" targeting otherwise innocent people. If there is a conspiracy active in the USA, it is our so-called "security" and "justice" organizations who are conspiring to enable a 1984-esq society, the US Constitution be damned!
What do you want to bet that all of such firearms will have an "open" mode that allows anyone to use them, and that quickly will become the default setting? This is what happens when clueless legislators try to control peoples' actions. There are more ways around the barn than horses inside of it... :-)
A zip gun is a very effective short-range weapon, consisting of a length of tubing (copper, plastic, whatever), some duct or electrical tape, a strong rubber band, and a short nail - plus the cartridge naturally (usually .22 caliber), plus a possible bit of wood for a handle. Bingo, you have a weapon that can kill at short range. Accuracy sucks, but at a few feet, it is quite deadly!
I still prefer nedit - a free programmer's editor courtesy of the US Fermi National Laboratory, now in the PD on SourceForge.net. The only downside to it that I can tell is it's reliance on X-Windows for display. So, on Windows, I use Cygwin. On Linux... well, it just works, and is a standard editor for a number of distributions.
Just have the remote "employee" log into your personal system and do the work there. Then, you just upload it to your employer under your aegis. Who's to know? Alternatively, let them connect to your home system, and then they tunnel into the corporate network under your aegis. From the company's perspective, it is just you doing your work, assuming your sub-contractor doesn't put comments into your code in Chinese! :-)
So, this guy got caught by being sloppy.
There would be dismembered, gore-dripping, body parts lying around... His response to this crud is as measured as it can get, IMHO. This entire kerfuffle with regard to UEFI and secure boot is just a ploy to lock people into systems that violate their freedom and expose them to even more egregious exploitation.
I have known RM since the early 1980's - I sold 3com their first 100 PC's... Later, when I was a principal engineer at a major Boston area software company, we used to meet for dinner before IEEE meetings in the area (usually at Mitre). Now, I am a senior systems engineer at a tier-one mobile phone manufacturer - Robert and I are about the same age. So, I can only say ... "Robert! It is time you get back to your roots!".
P.S. I have utmost respect for RM. He has been one of my tech heroes for 30 years now. :-)
Just so people don't forget, that this was NOT an internet hack, but some sort of social-engineering attack, or deliberate attack, in that infected USB drives were delivered into the hands of staff members of the facilities who then attached them to their PC's and thus compromised their systems and networks. All too often, this is how such stuff gets into play. As is often the case, people not networks are the weakest link!
Honestly, in the past I was a major violator of this principle, but it was out of necessity since I was writing that code before std c++, and templates did not exist. Now, I rarely write macros, and try to limit that to only absolutely necessary cases. Since the invention of the STL, complex C++ macros are mostly unnecessary, and undesirable. Thanks Bjarne for your great work - I am definitely going to plunk down some of my hard-earned $$ and add your book to my library! Stroustrup and Ellis has long had an honored place there - both the original edition as well as the ANSI version. -)
Just one router did this? What? No hot fail-over? This is the danger of a mono-culture in ubiquitous tech. A single point of failure will always fail... I build tools to monitor very large scale network systems, and our gear can continue operating at full load after 2 failures at any point in the system - hardware or software. The worker drones at BT aren't at fault here - they are doing their job to the best of their considerable abilities. It is management that should be taken out to the woodshed because it is they who likely said that redundant routers, load-balancers, or whatever would cost too much...
That in 1999 I was using a headset w/ microphone with my Ericsson mobile when travelling between Boston and Chicago... I'd use the hands-free feature (with voice interface) to call my wife when I'd get to Cleveland. These people are dumbots and should be taken out to the back 40 acres, and disposed of in an unfriendly (but legal) manner!
Modesty taboos are an offshoot of religious strictures, both of which have no place in a pluralistic society. Let people wear what they want (or not, as the case may be), and let them believe what they want in the religious domain - just don't let others tell me what to wear (or not) and what to believe!
As for people who cancelled their subscriptions over a few errant pixels - their loss, and probably fewer trolls for the rest of us to deal with!
And memory. I LOVE all the QM productions, and have collected all that I have been able to. They are hokey, dated, and their production quality horrendous! That said, they are STILL tonnes of fun!
FWIW, I also collect old Vincent Price horror films, and one that turned me into a quivering bit of sniveling slime when I was 10 or 11 (House on Haunted Hill) now turns me into a quivering mass of laughter! :-)
The Republicans in Maine are idiots! Why are they criticizing someone for a perfectly legal, non-threatening hobby? Should we criticize them for fishing 4 weeks out of the year? What about hunting? Chasing tail? All I can say is that they got what they deserved, a good solid smack-down by the voters in her district. Congratulations Colleen! :-)
It would make sense to me, given our security services' past activities installing trojans and spyware on our perceived enemies' gear. As I understand it, we installed some compromised chips in an Iraqui network printer before the first Gulf War in order to spy on, and compromise their command and control systems. Apparently, from what I read, it was a VERY successful operation...
So, let's not allow the pot to call the kettle black, shall we?
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