Posts by Tikimon 800 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Nov 2009
So all my life, every cassette tape, CD, DVD etc had an extra "levy" bolted on to their sales price. This presumed-guilty tax was supposedly to help pay for the nefarious effects of them being used for unauthorized recording. We've all been paying extra for media that we didn't actually get.
They want to assume I'm a criminal and proactively fine me for it. Okay, I'm going to get something for the price I've paid. Shame to waste my money.
Actually, you never "drop it on purpose". That's a dangerous myth. A motorcycle sliding on its side stops slower and farther than one on its wheels using the brakes. "I laid it down to avoid a crash" is wrong, that's low-siding INTO a crash.
An upright braking bike may still hit something, but the sliding bike will hit harder. Upright and brakes on FTW.
Destroy the honest ones who won't play along with invasive government spooks. Then there will only be left "compliant" companies like Microsoft and Google and Verizon - the ones that roll over and give the government front-door access straight from the source.
This isn't about Kaspersky being Russian. This is a move to discredit and remove a large and painful thorn in the side of US surveillance. The anti-Rooskie spin is just cover.
"The FBI want them to stop it- it's affecting the NSA's work."
Bullseye. Kaspersky is exactly what the FBI et al do not want to have to deal with. An effective security company that is honest, can't be bought or threatened out of their ethical standards. One that freely exposes the tentacles of government malware and other attacks. So of course they must be stopped. The US gummint lacks the authority to directly shut them down, so they try to destroy their reputation instead.
You know what? If the Feds and Friends are trying that hard to attack Kaspersky Labs, I can't think of a a more glowing recommendation.
It's the only way to be sure. The company culture is far too ingrained at this point to ever be cleaned up. They might push a lot of it back into the shadows so it's less overt, but real change? I wouldn't take that bet.
Lyft and others will happily fill the void left by Uber.
It would be impossible for Uber to have the toxic reputation it does unless a significant portion of the staff are immature jerks. There are undoubtedly plenty of Uber-ites enough like Kalanik to like and identify with him. Those types would genuinely want him back. So this might be a legitimate employee-driven petition, from the ones who helped make Uber the cesspit it seems to be.
Of course the non-jerk employees are horrified.
First some stock xenophobic space aliens attack our Mars bases, to stage their Earth invasion from the Red Planet. A handful of plucky (and beautiful) humans escape and try to sabotage their evil plans. When all looks lost, someone thinks to reactivate Curiosity. They program it to trundle into the aliens' headquarters and laser the control panel for the Main Reactor to blow them up and Save Humanity. Optional if you want to install an AI into it and have scenes of pathos as it is about to be annihilated in nuclear fire.
Hey, I could be a Hollywood screenwriter. Who knew.
The Martians are far too smart and cool for that. They're actually hanging around just out of camera view, lighting their cigarettes off the laser. Later manned missions will be shocked to discover extensive graffiti on the rover, including what will later be determined to be the Martian analogue to dicks.
Are you really claiming that there will not be huge parts of the world without internet access into the foreseeable future? When people use generators a couple of hours a day, or have the state-run power go out daily, do you think they have internet in EVERY HOME? Because the IOT thing won't work unless each home has its very own address.
Get the government to lend a hand? What crack are you smoking? I'm referring to places like Nigeria. The corrupt government is happy letting its citizens go without many things we consider vital. Or Cuba, where USB sticks of shared content substitute for internet access. Do you imagine they'll subsidize internet access? What, so their opposition can organize against them and start a revolt?
Sorry folks, the whole world will not be individually internet-connected for a long, long time.
Plenty of places in the world do not have a wireless phone system, nor common reliable internet connection. There will always be manufacturers making products for these markets. They will not have IOT or other spying because it won't work. And there's where we can find our non-IOT appliances. We won't have to go back to beating clothes on the rocks at the creek, only buy a "developing market" washer.
No, the big outfits won't stock those locally. But someone will if there's a demand. I know of a shop that repairs and restores vintage appliances. Most of these for for the buyer to USE, not for show, and they sell rapidly. People are willing to defrost manually because that fridge was built to last and will to your kids, not like the short-life appliances sold today.
"It would need tracking to work, but that tracking wouldn't necessarily be used for anything else and avoiding it would almost certainly be considered fraud."
You, sir, have outlined our future government requirements for internet usage. And you said it like it was this benign thing, what could go wrong?
That time and place is NOW. The Creationist camp is actively and energetically doing everything it can think of to destroy Science. They want our schools and students to reject hundreds of years of human learning in favor of 2000-year old myths. And so on.
So if the Creationists are bashing away as hard as they can, is it not a wee bit logical to fight back?
Let's see. No conscience, no empathy, manipulative to the point of destroying the target. Compulsive attention-seeker and willing to do heinous things to get it. Coldly induced a guy to suicide, calmly listened to him die, then immediately started the "poor me" routine.
At least sociopath, if not psycho. Which is chemical and not her fault being that way. However, even anti-socials know Right from Wrong if only to fit in with the rest of us. Deliberate premeditated act of murder, no excuses.
A tie is a pretty thin reward for the violent and often damaging experience of ejecting from an airplane. It's probably one of those things you're glad (I'm alive!) and yet reluctant (oh CRAP that hurts) to obtain.
We need a new word meaning "Something unpleasant and eagerly avoided, but gratefully embraced when necessary." Let's ask the Germans, they're good at that.
"... as with most things, all of this is stated in the small print. It's just that nobody bothers to read it "
You are referring I presume to multiple pages of legalese, a jargon crafted specifically to obfuscate information? I've read plenty of them, and they make it as difficult as possible to know exactly what you're agreeing to.
Doesn't matter anyway! Their TOC always states they can change anything anytime without notice or approval from you. So whatever you agree to TODAY won't protect you any longer than it takes for the echo of the mouse click to fade.
"I wouldn't be so quick to question the methods Apple used. They worked."
THIS TIME. Lucky once does not validate a stupid decision. Ever hear of Russian Roulette? Five out of six times that goes without a problem as well.
- If they felt the need to test it, then there was a chance it would bomb.
- They did not notify or ask the userbase about this.
Apple thinks it still owns the devices you carry and has full rights to manage them anyway they want. That's bullshit. FAIL.
Clearly these government idiots can't recognize hypocrisy when they spew it. On the one hand, Germany (to pick one) wants to remove extremist and terrorist content from the internet. Simply keep people from ever hearing those horrible lies and they won't ever cause trouble. We have to stamp out these evil, violent people, protect our country from evil revolutionaries.
Now substitute "North Korea" or "Iran" for Germany. However, when THEY censor, block, de-anonymize and punish people, it's evil oppression and violation of human rights. Guess what Europe? You're calling for the same oppression and using the very same excuses the nasty regimes do!
I don't support the nasty views of terrible people. But my fair country began in just such a way. Extremists spread their views through media and meetings, radicalized the population and started a bloody revolution to overthrow the legitimate government. And later we named it the United States of America. Allow any form of government content control and it becomes a tool to use against whomever they feel threatened by.
- Make Opt-Out the default for every service.
- Force EULAs and TOCs to be in plain-language.
- Recognize that "legalese" is intended to hide important information and use of it is therefore fraud.
- Force data-holders to delete all data about one on request.
- Impose timely and painful fines for any violation of the above.
Easy fix, but it would never get past the Vested interests...
This is beyond parental influence. This girl is clearly some level of sociopath or psychopath. There's no changing those people, there's just not. Most counselors and such won't even try to treat them because all they do is learn to fake being human better. I'm all too familiar with this, personal experience with a few.
So no, punishing the parents would be grossly unjust.
"Debit cards are by far the most common method of card payment in the UK, if not the EU (i'm not sure what the stats are on that)."
So the biggest crowd of sheep is always right? That's a pretty weak argument! Facebook is clearly the best company ever by that standard.
Yes, lots of Americans here, and the additional protections for credit cards over debit cards pay off for us handsomely. I'm an AmEx user because they always have my back covered. The annual fee for the AmEx is totally worth the peace of mind and their history of going to bat for me. Neither do we get shafted for additional fees to use credit here. But don't let that stop the debit users from downvoting, hah...
It WAS a bone, but its structure has been totally replaced by rock over the ages. Since this slowly occurs at the molecular scale, the resulting rock is a perfect cast of the original, so you can treat it as the actual bone for anatomical studies.
Amazingly, a few fossils still contain preserved soft tissues (collagen, possibly blood cells) so some of the original animal is still there! The fossils actually smell bad, like something dead (Hell Creek Formation). Doesn't that blow your mind?
Further weirdness, sometimes fossils are subjected to pressure and deform over time. There's a local T-rex skull that's noticeably flattened side to side and curved to the left.
If a stone tool isn't convenient to carry, the larger core stone you'll strike them from is certainly less so. You'll also need your knapping tools (some of which are also rocks) and your leather apron (flint chips are razor-sharp) when you're ready to make something. You don't just pick up some rocks and bang them together.
Flint knapping is one of the few weird skillz I talked myself out of learning. It's hard, and takes lots of practice.
Seriously. "Those evil Rooskies skewed our elections!" What the hell? Multiple parties and entities within the US have been trying every way they could think of for decades to sway and skew elections. Are they really suggesting that the Russians are better able to influence a US election than the home-grown crop of meddlers? Bullshit, bullshit, and steaming shite of a bull. US politics is like herding cats for Americans. It's ridiculous to insist that Putin and friends can do it better.
And as the subject hinted, I would be ashamed to admit that the Russians managed to influence an election more than my domestic campaign. Either way, the Dems blew it. (and I supported neither unsuitable candidate)
I assume you're thinking of both pilots moving their wing down (or up) at the same time. It's definitely amusing to imagine the airplane flexing up or down in a U shape! Reality is less interesting, since that would lift or lower both wings at once and the plane would simply rise or sink.
Nevertheless, I'm having fun imagining the plane flexing around into interesting shapes as two pilots struggle for control. If they got into an oscillation loop fighting each other, you might see the wings actually flapping up and down as it flew, wouldn't that be a sight to tell your grandkids about?
Not exactly on topic, but related to comments here. We're using a clown, sorry, cloud offering for our business data storage. Let's agree for the moment to leave aside all other contentious issues of sense, reliability, and such, lol... Anyway, I had an encrypted file container stored there. It's my stash of personal junk - journal, etc.
One day I decrypted the container and found the last six weeks of data GONE. As near as I can figure, here's what happened. Any changes made are saved within the file crypt. The crypt file itself never changes size, and apparently doesn't change "modified date" either. So for some reason, the off-site servers decided to overwrite my crypt file with an old copy which to it looked like the same file.
SO BEWARE, if you're saving encrypted file containers in a "cloud" you might should make sure something about it looks different now and then.
"...why didn't he simply knock on the door, instead of doing this over the top, convoluted means of letting them know."
Perhaps because you say these kind of things to people and they are ignored. Maybe their eyes glaze over. Maybe they've stopped paying attention to security warnings. Maybe they thank you, say they'll address it later and their regular day pushes it into Indefinite Limbo. It's just words, and those carry little meaning with civilians. How well do they respond to your other warnings? Poorly, of course.
Demonstrate that someone can invade the network and print anything they like and you'll get their attention QUICK.
There's at least one phone app called Gas Buddy that shows prices at fuel stations. Users enter the prices, and you can see how long since they've been updated. If word gets around that stations are twiddling prices like this, then the app users will have reason to do more frequent updates. More traffic will go to the non-gougers.
Word can get around pretty quick in a digital world.
My company wants short messages on the Hold track, upcoming events and "did you know?" informative bits. I select instrumentals that are lighthearted without being obtrusive. I'm noted for my pleasant "airplane voice" and read the messages myself. Then I overlay them every 20-30 seconds on the background track, dropping the music volume so the vox doesn't have to be loud. Loops every four minutes or so.
I do my best to make HOLD a pleasant or neutral experience. We get compliments now and then. It's not difficult, and I wish more companies followed that simple philosophy.
It's bloody difficult to do anything totally original. One can create it out of the blue but someone else may have also. We only have a couple dozen Latin characters to share among us and a handful of discernible colors. I suspect many logos exist around the world composed of a single blue P. We can't allow companies to claim any and all possible variations on a simple theme. Frickin' Apple thinks they own ANY fruit logo in any color.
PayPal compared to Pandora:
Slanted vs vertical
Rounded corners vs sharp
Double letter with overlap vs single
Two-color vs single color
There's four major differences and PayPal should shut the hell up.
Imagine the challenge of a local police officer at a parade trying to determine which:
- drones are properly there to photograph the festivities
- cars are legitimately parked and do not contain bombs
- backpacks are legitimate and do not contain a bomb or firearm
- propane tanks are legitimate for food vendors and not really a bomb
- children's balloons are legitimate and do not contain nerve gas
- people are legitimate and not there to unleash ninja whoop-ass on the crowd
...and which may be operated by individuals with more sinister purposes.
Cops should learn to do their feckin' jobs and not expect Bad Guy - Good Guy lists to do it for them.
That's on a red button that lights up in my head when I notice an unpleasant Critical Trait in someone. Suddenly you know exactly why they're not partnered up, and that it will probably never change. Like my old girlfriend with the occasional out-of-the-blue rages, who's past 50 now and still looking.
The only question is, does it apply to one or both of them?
They can establish any review process they like. Simply make sure that - not hard for government agencies - it takes a year or so for any vulnerability to trundle through the review process. It's as old as time, if you don;t want to do something, drag it out forever.
The relative length of those fingers seems to be directly controlled by testosterone vs estrogen, giving longer or shorter fingers respectively. Among men, differing levels of testosterone will cause variation within the gender. So really, it's an indicator of testosterone expression in the individual.
Here's a good one... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110905160922.htm
This has NOTHING to do with the article, only the referenced post. You been warned.
The scene: a multi-day paddle/camping trip into the Okeefenokee Swamp. Six canoes worth of recreational drunks and stoners had to pack onto wooden platforms every night. Tents edge to edge, was a bigger group than the platforms normally held. Two of the group had magic mushrooms saved for this night. Eventually the rest of us went to bed, but these two stayed up. Something made one laugh, and he tries to quietly laugh. The pressure generated forced some gases noisily out the back end. Which made them laugh, which caused more audible gas leaks. The cycle continued for ages, a mere ten feet away in an otherwise silent place.
So it wasn't exactly "a shits and giggles act" but the rest of us had to deal with a FARTS and giggles act for hours. We almost fed them to the alligators, simply push them in and wait. We discussed this option between our tents where they could hear, but it only made them giggle again.
So autos will now be packed with pre-installed bloatware and spyware that we won't be allowed to delete? FAIL and move on to other brands.
Maybe we can hope for a future John McAfee Sport-Utility Vehicle? No internet connection, face-distorting windscreen, encrypted ECU data, explosively self-destructs if stolen...
Help me, Obi-Wan McAfee! You're my only hope!
I blame the modern software tendency to Just Do It For Us. They realized we turn off bull**** functions and/or don't activate cool new spying features, so they program to be default ON, Opted-IN, and no way for us to turn said "features" off.
Products aren't designed for consumers anymore. They are designed to drive a business model, and they expect us to quietly follow along with whatever asinine scheme they have cooked up. These days that means subscription based spyware and no user control over anything.
All the IOT disasters are just symptoms of this strategy.
"Having worked with Cloud products for near 10 years now, I can say that in general they are much more reliable and lower cost than an on prem equivalent".
Perhaps in general but NOT for us. Since moving to Office365 last year (not my idea) we have had multiple DAILY problems. Users are requested to sign in over and over, random "the network cannot be accessed, try again later", endless connection issues like this. Simple things don't work, like clicking a PDF attachment and it opens with your PDF viewer. When the wheels fall off, we can do nothing but wait for Microsoft to figure it out. It's a crap experience for my users, who don't trust it.
Previously we ran it all from here and it worked brilliantly, daily, for years. When it broke, we fixed it quick and back in business. Properly maintained, on-premises kicks the crap out of clown, sorry, cloud offerings.
"Full of politicians then ?" No, they're only used to fill the gasbags aboard ship. The apparatchiks stay on the ground.
Airlander thus have failed to solve a problem of the old airships, that of needing special facilities at ports of call. One can't simply throw a group of politicians in a room, they'll cause all manner of mischief. They would need specialized containment systems at each port of call, probably expensive.
If you ever manage to force a cop to admit error, make sure you immortalize this glowing one-off event for history. Closely related to how they will close ranks to protect one of their number, not matter what heinous crime that officer has committed.
Throw in some illegal spying and does anybody wonder why nobody much trusts the police anymore?
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