Posts by Bill Michaelson

Ethereum will have transaction chops of Visa in 'a couple of years', founder claims

Re: The whole point of bitcoin is that it isn't subject to governments.

Why do you (apparently) believe exchanges are required to transfer bitcoin? Do people not use paper money in pubs in China?

America throws down gauntlet: Accept extra security checks or don't carry laptops on flights

Did someone really say...

"...we can't play whack-a-mole?" Unironically?

Break crypto to monitor jihadis in real time? Don't be ridiculous, say experts

Inane?

Therefore we should not be allowed access to tools to lock up stuff for ourselves more effectively? Because it is futile?

Privacy mean bupkis to him

"What’s needed is not a clampdown on encryption — after all, it’s essential for financial transactions and the modern economy... the Home Office has developed sensible proposals that require a judge to give permission before real-time communications can be monitored — ensuring that suspected terrorists can be stopped before it’s too late, while also protecting against the mass surveillance that the public is worried about."

Notice the implicit distinction between needs and wants. He seems believe encryption is only "essential" for banking. The other consideration is lip service to placate the masses. But they do not deserve robust protection from abuse by authority.

Retirement age must move as life expectancy grows, says WEF

Re: So... we should do the opposite...

"Why should people be paid a salary, yet not contribute and work in some manner (obviously assuming they are able)."

They shouldn't.

But why should they not be paid a dividend for their share of the common wealth of society? We do believe in capitalism, don't we?

Pai guy not too privacy shy, says your caller ID can't block IP, so anons go bye

Re: Phones and cars

"Sorry officer. Just adjusting my insulin pump."

Would that be your Bluetooth-connected insulin pump?

Re: >If I'm calling to report a crime, why wouldn't I want to talk to the police?

Yes, they do, and it's not enough. You excised the comment about diminished capacity, or disregarded it. Perception of the actor is key. A person in such a situation does not consult a lawyer to inquire about local laws. They want to be anonymous, and we want them to report the emergency without delay.

Those who only consider the pitfalls but do not understand the value of anonymous speech need to think harder.

Comcast accused of siccing lawyers on net neutrality foe

Title confuses me

Is the sense of the title reversed? Who is the foe of net neutrality?

Last week: 'OpenVPN client is secure!'
This week: 'Unpatched bug in OpenVPN server'

Re: I think the headline is way off!

Yeah, thanks. I read it and said to myself: "Whuh? OpenVPN has a web interface?"

Relieved by your clarification. I carry on...

Verizon is gonna axe its 'unlimited' data hogs

Re: To all the wireless carriers...

Half-right. "Unlimited", does not mean infinite. It means there is no limit. It means that you can use the available bandwidth throughout the contract period without limit. Aggregate data transfer will be finite. It is the responsibility of the service provider to provide that data transfer accordingly. It is not the responsibility of the consumer to consider the network load implications.

Contradictory fine print is inherently deception.

Forget aircraft – now cretins are laser-blinding ferry boat crewmen

Re: Bah!

A minimum age for possession, or appropriate adult supervision is probably a reasonable legal constraint. Beyond that, yes, misuse must incur appropriate penalties.

Mercedes answers autonomous car moral dilemma: Yeah, we'll just run over pedestrians

Aviation parallel

In flight training I was taught to constantly consider one's options in the event of complete engine failure. This inevitably leads one to consider hypothetical situations in order to be primed for action. One of these is the beach below. Land on the sand, unless it is populated. If there are people, ditch in the water, at considerably greater risk to one's own health. Similar situation with golf fairways vs. rougher terrain, etc.

Maybe I've been planning it wrong?

Super Cali: Be realistic, 'autopilot' is bogus – even though the sound of it is something quite precocious

Re: Autopilot on an aircraf.....

Correct. Even the most sophisticated autopilot system that includes the capability to land the airplane is only there to reduce the workload of the pilot - in order that the pilot can devote more attention to monitoring the progress of the flight more carefully and assuring safe operation. A machine assumes zero responsibility.

When drivers understand this, so-called self-driving - or whatever we call them - cars will bring a net positive value to us.

Self-driving Google car T-boned in California crash

We all compensate for each other

The human system works because we correct each others' errors. I frequently adjust for other drivers' moves that are dangerous mistakes, and I know others have done the same for me - obviously more times than I can know.

I wonder how effectively the robot does this. Will we need to go to robot-only roads to each a real safety improvement?

Unimpressed with Ubuntu 16.10? Yakkety Yak... don't talk back

I just want KDE 4.X

But I couldn't get it to run on 16.04. Cannot/will not deal with the regressions in KDE 5. So I moved back to 14.04 for desktops.

Lyft, Uber throw Texas-sized tantrum over Austin driver law

Why don't they just do it right?

Uber should be playing the role of guide for drivers, arranging for adequate insurance at competitive rates (instead of the crap they try to pull now, leaving drivers exposed). They should be certifying and rating financing services and maintenance facilities. They should be arranging for local ordinance compliance by scoping out localities and easing the path for drivers with individualized guides. They should be offering a background checking service. In the political arena they should be working to harmonize laws across jurisdictions not by fighting regulation but by promoting regulation that is both easier to comply with and that protects their customers and drivers, which incidentally, probably gives them a certain degree of release from liability, aside from a long-term enhancement to their reputation. With a $50B valuation, one might think they could muster the resources to provide real value to the system. It seems they just want to run some servers in racks instead. Leeches.

This is what a root debug backdoor in a Linux kernel looks like

Re: Mr

I think you'll need to exploit the vulnerability to remove it. Write the magic string to the device to become root, then you can remove the device from the FS. Then abandon your root privilege.

Something like that.

Cops hate encryption but the NSA loves it when you use PGP

Re: " I'm already looking at tunnelling my home connection through a dedi in a DC "

Right. That's what I did with a Linode VPS in my own state just to get Netflix to stop stuttering. Sometimes I run through it just for the hell of it, on general principle.

New HTTP error code 451 to signal censorship

Still unclear

How do we distinguish between "Censored: we don't want you to see this page" (451) and "Really Censored: we don't want you to know this page exists" (4??).

Free HTTPS certs for all – Let's Encrypt opens doors to world+dog

Re: wonder how good mobile support is

I tried Firefox, Chrome, Dolphin and the native browser on my CM12.1 Android. All worked with no certificate complaints.

Wikimedia tries AI to catch bad edits

Re: Filter feeder

You're probably right, and neither is irony.

Australian test finds robot essay assessors on par with human teachers

The type of grading feedback that a computer can give to a student...

...is probably valuable enough to apply to less than 5% of student work. Beyond the most rudimentary assessment of spelling, grammar and simple structure, it is nearly useless. Additionally, if students learn to apply the formulaic style that is likely to elicit the best grades from the machine, we are probably doing more harm than good. There is something to be said for ignoring simple, rigid rules and allowing some creativity to flourish. I doubt the application in question is sophisticated enough to strike a good balance. Very likely, there is no balance at all.

Training and education can be seen as distinct and complementary processes.

Think Fortran, assembly language programming is boring and useless? Tell that to the NASA Voyager team

Universal ops are still universal

IBM 360- and 370-series BAL programmers of the 1970s and earlier carried accordion-folded "green cards" that listed all the operations. I had white cards and yellow cards that covered later 370 models like the 370/168, but they were still known as green cards. The summary information all fit on the card and reference to the big manual that actually described how the instructions worked in detail was only occasionally required. The instruction sets of the DEC PDP 11/70 had a distinct flavor (memory addressing and subroutine calling conventions, octal vs. hex, ASCII vs. EBCDIC), and the programming conventions were different but the basic concepts were the same. The IBM Series/1 minicomputer instruction set, for which I coded assembly for several years was relatively byzantine. The equivalent "green card" was actually a booklet, and the full processor manual was a little more useful. I only dabbled with Motorola 6502, Intel 8088 and the like in assembler, but can say confidently that the knowledge is universal and relevant even when working in much higher layers such as say, Scala in a JVM, but less often applicable.

But all this knowledge could be circumscribed well and is limited in scope. There is much more to know in today's environment and I believe the work is even more challenging to do well. We have tools to protect us from the old classic errors, but as creative humans, we will continue to find new ways to screw up. I believe an assembly language experience is worthwhile for any coder.

Ransomware victims: Just pay up, grin, and bear it – says the FBI

Backup procedure enhancement

Apparently backup procedures need a validation component. This is probably application-specific, but certainly practical in most cases, isn't it? Can a backup region be seeded with validation markers that would be corrupted by rogue encryption that the ransomware cannot detect?

Security gurus deliver coup de grace to US govt's encryption backdoor demands

Narcissism in law enforcement

That's the problem.

'Just a kid' Zuck's word is his bond ... but NOT in his backyard, lawsuit claims

Re: Markie Sugar town Cannot be Trusted

Those parents might be part of the problem, but that's not their kids' fault. Do you have a proposal for what to do with (or to) those kids? Let me guess: You can't be arsed.

Mobile broadband giants blow $45bn on Uncle Sam's finest air

A public resource was leased for 12 years at market rates

This can offset some of the regressive taxes I've been paying.

Want disruption? We got disruption: Race protest halts VC Thiel's Q&A

It's no about Brown or Garner

They were just catalysts.

No more lies, T-Mobile US: Download speed caps magically vanished on speed test websites

Good point

When I had T-Mobile (whom I despised otherwise), I liked that part of the deal. My monthly cost was capped, yet I didn't have to worry about service being absolutely cut off either. Throttling might be an inconvenience, but I rarely experienced it, if ever. I don't rely on mobile for serious data transfer. For me, it's for ubiquitous connectivity.

One could argue that the speedtest scheme is reasonable because it enables one to measure capability independent of current throttling state. But then, who is to say what the consumer is trying to measure: potential or actual speed? I know what is more likely, so no, the speedtest site scheme was a slimy fraud.

Google offers sweet new SDK to let Android devs join 'Lollipop' guild

Re: Not sure about this

I was especially annoyed when they removed access to selective permissions control that had been discovered by some in about, say 4.1. That's what really drove me to CM.

Re: Not sure about this

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard&hl=en

With ctl and esc and alt. Running on my CM11 Nexus 4. Good with ConnectBot. Does that help?

HBO shocks US pay TV world: We're down with OTT. Netflix says, 'Gee'

"I don't see that HBO is going to break the bonds with pay TV," he said. "They both have too much at stake to be rocking the boat." -Jeffrey L. Bewkes, TWC CEO, c|net October 25, 2013

http://www.cnet.com/news/dont-let-the-cheap-comcast-hbo-deal-fool-you-cord-cutters/

Cable internet won't need dose of fibre to stop feeling bloated

tc qdisc red?

"Under AQM, the modem and CMTS include software that watches over their buffers, and if TCP is keeping buffers so full that it has an impact on latency, the devices will drop “just enough packets to send TCP the signal that it needs to slow down, so that more appropriate buffer levels can be maintained”.

Reminds me of the Random Early Detection classless queuing discipline, as provided by the Linux tc command. From man tc(8):

red Random Early Detection simulates physical congestion by randomly

dropping packets when nearing configured bandwidth allocation.

Well suited to very large bandwidth applications.

Italy's High Court orders HP to refund punter for putting Windows on PC

Re: If

More like an option to change the firmware in the car. I wouldn't choose an alternative, but I would like to change whatever constant needs to be changed to recalibrate and correct the fuel flow metering which consistently under-reports consumption by about 7%. Opening the code up so that any mechanic (not just at the dealer) has full access to functionality? That would be good.

NSA data centre launch delayed as power surges 'melt metal, zap racks'

Re: The sooner I start the project, the later it will finish.

There is never time to do it right. But there is always time to do it over.

Nuke plants to rely on PDP-11 code UNTIL 2050!

I did Macro-11...

Vaguely recall working on code for a messaging system for Continental Grain on a PDP-11/70 circa 19, uh, 78, maybe. 64KB address space, with another 64KB available in another mode. Very foggy on this...

Then I did IBM Series/1 assembler for a few years. No OS initially, just some utilities called CPS and BPPF. Reboot to start text editor, type disk sector addresses. Reboot to run assembler, similar drill. Debug with membrane keyboard and sixteen bit indicators. Develop a branch banking system. Develop a brokerage trading system. Develop a commincations switch. Get real good with hexadecimal and binary patterns. Ahh... ZZZZZ

Where is the cobweb icon?

Swartz suicide won't change computer crime policy, says prosecutor

This is why some prosecutors like having the death penalty on the books

It expedites things.

New driver-snooping satnav could push down UK insurance premiums

Statisitcs measure what statistics measure

So now part of the risk calculation will be shifted to a set of factors that the driver can more easily game. Convenient for some. Annoying for others.

WD tera-fies home storage buyers

'bout right

Current sweet spot in the price/capacity curve for run-of-the-mill SATA drives seems to be 1.5TB at around $125. I wouldn't pay it, but $700 for what's in this device is roughly in line with market.

OpenOffice 3.1 ready to lick Microsoft's suite?

Why MS stays on top (it's not the quality)

I once tried to use OO Calc to view an Excel spreadsheet for the budget produced by a school district. Some incompatibility caused it to display incorrect results. Upon investigation, I discovered that the bug could be considered a feature, and the incompatibility was a matter of interpretation. I posted a problem report to the maintainers' site. The response I received was about ideological purity: how OO does it right, and MS does it wrong. No interest in resolving the compatibility problem.

It was then I realized that MS will maintain dominance for a long time. Very discouraging.

Intel chip flaw gets double exposure

@AC - fame

The researchers can't fix it. Intel can. But as was noted, the flaw has been extant for years, apparently with no action on Intel's part.

So how do you suggest that they be more ethical, precisely, aside from shining a spotlight?