Posts by croc

Senator Wyden goes ballistic after US telcos caught selling people's location data yet again

Re: Instead of piecemeal legislation

I hear that the south of France is nice this time of year....Not part of Five Eyes, either. Nice. The town, that is....

Facebook flat-out 'lies' about how many people can see its ads – lawsuit

Zuckerberg for President!!! After all, "they trust me. Dumb fucks"

Microsoft: The Kremlin's hackers are already sniffing, probing around America's 2018 elections

Paper Ballots.

Why Google won't break a sweat about EU ruling

I would much rather that the EU take on the OEM's locking some 'features' down to the users' detriment - Samsung, and its Facebook lockdown as an instance.

When Google's robots give your business the death sentence – who you gonna call?

Re: If its mission critical

A group of scientists built a box with four ways out, differing complexity, to test the intelligence of gorillas. The first gorilla promptly bashed his way through the box, using none of the designed ways.

As to the whole 'cloud' bit... If you don't own the infrastructure that you make money from, then you deserve what you get. Just ask Mr. Dotcom's clients.

Facebook previews GDPR privacy tools and, yep, it's the same old BS

"People just submitted it ... I don’t know why ... they ‘trust me’ ... dumb fucks"

It is my self-appointed job to forever remind people that leopards never change their spots.

That long-awaited Mark Zuckerberg response: Everything's fine! Mostly fixed! Facebook's great! All good in the hoodie!

Re: <<< Isn't it time for Kalanick 2.0 to go >>>

"Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks

Instant messages sent by Zuckerberg during Facebook's early days, reported by Business Insider (May 13, 2010)"

A timely reminder...

FCC levies largest ever fine: $614m on Verizon (that's about three days of profit for telco giant)

I think that bandwidth auctions should include a use-it-or-lose-it proviso. Two years should be adequate.

5 reasons why America's Ctrl-Z on net neutrality rules is a GOOD thing

If I remember correctly, there is an article in the US Constitution that seems , on its face, to be about revolution. I think that it is the Second Amendment, the Amendment that is also responsible for the fact that there are more weapons in the US than people to fire them....

Now, I am not (and would never) advocating a new Revolution. And I do not live in the US.

However, you all know what you should do.....

Kotkin: Why Trump won

Trump KNEW that he was going to win, the fix was in. Putin, for just a few hacks on a few machines in a few key states, has bought himself a brand new puppet. It will be interesting to see which way the strings are pulled.

Today the web was broken by countless hacked devices – your 60-second summary

And we've been banging on about SCADA devices for how long?

Shirley, SCADA devices are even more critical to lock down. Have we done so? Well, pretty sure that the Iranians have, but the rest?

Bang on all you want.

CIA says it 'accidentally' nuked torture report hard drive

Put the IG in contempt, jail him until the drive is found. After all, it is good enough for people suspected of other crimes, and this crime amounts to almost a treasonable offense. (The War on Privacy...)

Snowden WAS the Feds' quarry in Lavabit case, redaction blunder reveals

I ran a search for the word 'snowden' in the comments and did not run out of fingers....

As to all of the folks getting all nationalistic, philosophical, or just playing devil's advocate... When it comes to humankind there are no truths, there are no facts, so just get over yourselves. Better and worse are just two words made up in the human mind.

Terrified robots will take middle class jobs? Look in a mirror

Terrified Robots...

The REAL reason we can't allow robots to ever have any AI... Poor bank droid....

DC judge rips into the NSA over mass surveillance

While most of you are not aware of the facts, (as they are highly classified) the NSA has stopped many hundreds, if not thousands of attacks on American soil as well as around the world... End our programs at your peril.

How Microsoft will cram Windows 10 even harder down your PC's throat early next year

Re: wsusoffline - win

Well, if that approach is good enough for Microsoft, why not you?

Don't want to upgrade to Windows 10? You'll download it WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

Nice article, and a fair number of well-reasoned comments. Kudos to David 123 for his '"Personal" computer no more ' comment.

That said, I keep seeing all of these comments about MS' 'telemetry'. I've worried some over this, enough to run Wireshark for some fair few hours, and I canot see much of this actually happening 'in the wild' as it were. Can someone with more packet analysis experience than I please chime in regarding all of this telemetry that I am not seeing?

Spotify climbs down on new terms and conditions

Idiots... They tried to 'go for gold' in one huge grab, generating several huge headlines along the way. They should have learned from Facebook ("They trust me. Dumb fucks.") and only made small grabs to eventually reach their goal. But since they didn't (and have now telegraphed their whole future agenda to the world at large, WRIT LARGE) they will now have to pull their horns back in for a few months - at least. THEN they can go the timeless proven way to acheiving their privacy-busting goals, one small step at a time.

Hire some better psychanalytical types this time, OK?

The US taxman thinks Microsoft owes billions. Prove it, says Microsoft

I don't think that being in existence for about 1 more year gives MS that much of a head start...

Apple Music: First three months for free? We lasted less than 3 hours

Re: Meh or just a me too service?

"Since subscribing I have not bought a single album so saved money each month. I have also discovered a load of artists I would never have done and developed an interest in Folk Music that I never listened to before.

Worth every penny that I (DON"T) spend on it." Fixed your statement to clarify its meaning....

Too bad about those new artists, eh. Guess that they can get along just fine without you, yeah...

Taylor Swift boycotts Apple Music over no-pay-for-plays shocker

I once had a new manager bring in a coffee cup that had printed on it: "Me Boss. You Not." I soon had another new manager...

Sadly, Apple cannot be swept under the rug quite as easily as that for having a BAD ATTITUDE! It is interesting when people of the calibre of Swift do rub Apple's nose in it. Apple, we all know that you ARE the 900 pound gorillla... You don't have to act like it. Its not like paying people fairly for their labour is going to bankrupt you.

Let downloads roam free, says ACCC

I just love how 'Global' applies to Business (Murdoch wants Global reach) but not to Consumers (Murdoch wants to be able to sell A in markets A, B, and D, but market C either has to pay more, subscribe to a 'bundle' or possibly not get 'A' at all.) Murdoch is only one example...

No, really, the $17,000 Apple Watch IS all about getting your leg over

"A result of this is that the usual estimate is that 80 per cent of the women who have ever lived had children while only 40 per cent of the men did. We see echoes of this in even modern populations when they're put under stress: the ratio of boys born to girls falls. In famine, for example, a child is likely to be undersized as a result: but it's going to be easier for an undersized woman to have those desired grandchildren than a runt of a boy."

I think that the author and I live in different universes... In MY universe, the number of (human) males that have ever conceived children is something Very Close to 0%, where in the author's universe it seems to be about 40%. And in MY universe that percentage does not vary much, if at all, even if the foetus is under-sized... Males conceiving and carrying even runts to full term is still Pretty Close to 0%.

Kaspersky Lab hits back at Bloomberg's Russian spy link hit piece

Not that it matters, but I was born in the US. So I am an American. I have not lived there in about two decades, so there it is.

I have a Huawei router. It MIGHT have a backdoor built in, to the Chinese spy agency du jour. However, since I live in a 5 eyes nation, I can be pretty sure that the NSA has a 'tap' into my chosen ISP, or rather ANY ISP as they have tapped one end or the other of the Southern Cross cable. (My best guess is somewhere in Hawaii.) So why would I be worried about the Chinese? I also use Kaspersky AV. So why would I be worried about the Russians? Are the Chinese or Russians going to 'disappear' me? Can't really imagine. Are any of the US three-letter agencies likely to? Percentage-wise, I'd say that the chances of that happening are 1000% better... And, it would be LEGAL! Now, if I were Chinese or Russian I might feel differently. But frankly, I REALLY DON"T have anything to hide from either the Chinks or the Rooskies. As well, I have nothing to hide from the Yanks, either, but I still worry more when I cross the US border than the Chinese or Russian borders. Isn't that a shame?

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

"They trust me."

"Dumb Fucks..."

Sick of Chrome vs Firefox? Check out these 3 NEW browsers

Try 'Browser in the Box' (BitBox). It should be the required browser for the tinfoil hat brigade...

http://www.sirrix.com/content/pages/BitBox_en.htm

FIVE Things (NOT 10: these are REAL) from the WINDOWS 10 event

It would have been nice to have seen an analysis of what Win 10 actually is bringing out new to the preview. I guess I should have looked to see who the author was before I started (hopefully) reading the article.

Saudi Arabia to flog man 1,000 times for insulting religion on Facebook

Re: "right to freedom of expression"

""Quite the opposite, ALL civil rights are granted by government."

Correct. It galls me when heated discussions about the most "basic" rights (right to live, right to freedom ect) almost always end up with someone using the phrase "God-given""

I'd make the point that 'rights' as such do not even exist until someone tries to limit them. Much like air, everybody used it but no one ever questioned it for many thousands of years. Therefore, it did not really exist, it was just there. So too with, say, 'Freedom of Speech'. Gog and Magog went around 'f this' and f that' and Gung (the tribal leader) finally had a gut's full and said 'Gog, Magog, I hereby forbid you to express the 'f' word. Thus began expression, by the limiting of it.

Huawei? Apple and Samsung's worst nightmare, pal

Re: Whose worst nightmare? Samsung's! Not Apple's.

Ah... That would be Australia's Aborigines, I believe... ~50,000 yrs. and counting.

Re: Consequences - just like the US

"The consequences of offshoring to China were so predictable that calling them "unintended consequences" would imply staggering stupidity on the part of managements."

I prefer the more politically correct term "90 day tunnel vision".

Leaked screenshots show next Windows kernel to be a perfect 10

Get the current release build number right before you whinge about things that might never be...

TPP takes another tiny step forward

"It's worth noting that controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions aren't mentioned at all in the report to leaders, perhaps indicating that these provisions have been signed off by the 12 countries involved in the TPP negotiations. ®" I propose replacing 'dispute settlement' with 'inequality settlement for most of the world, or 'inequality leverage' for Obama and Key...

Droids - everywhere! Is Apple really even in the game any more?

Bad analogy. What killed Betamax was cost. Tape cost. Secondarily it was length. A long play VHS was able to record up to three movies on one tape. The quality was crap, but the cost was cheap.

FBI boss: We don't want a backdoor, we want the front door to phones

I'm confused... What does an encrypted device have to do with legal interception? AND if I want to encrypt MY communications, until it is made illegal, who is Comey to tell me not to? If I want to encrypt MY data, good luck with getting me to de-crypt it UNLESS you have a valid warrant from a court I deem to be valid. None of this FISA secret court BS, nor any of your 'National Security' BS.

Last I heard, the rule of law in the USA was that it was up to the accuser to prove guilt, NOT for the innocent to prove their innocence. Chock off, Comey.

Microsoft left red-faced after DMCAs dished out to Windows bloggers

Re: KILLING YouTube...?

"I've since moved most of my content to Vimeo -- no anal-retentive music police, no pop-up or pre-roll ads, no "recommended" video links, no wading through endless footage of twerking and ice-bucket dumping and cats falling off of tabletops and plane-crash porn and schlocky music videos and people throwing dry ice into swimming pools just to find some interesting and challenging content."

.......Yet......

Windows 10: Forget Cloudobile, put Security and Privacy First

Re: rant-like journalism

Ah... The peppered moth (Birmingham moth) rears its ugly head again. It is a clear example of natural selection, not evolution.

Some would say that ADD and ADHD are also examples of natural selection, but I fail to see what the selection process is that chooses what seems to be a deliterious mental state as 'better'... Or are we just better at observing and naming (and possibly over-treating?) a trait that has been around forever? When I was a young'n, there was no such thing as ADD or ADHD. So, (obviously) there was no treatment for these non-existing conditions. Now, it seems that in certain countries these conditions are rampant. In others, not so much. (Iceland, Sweden, Italy and Australia seem to have much lower rates of ADHD compared to the USA.) What does seem to be a factor is that the US has studied (and treated) these conditions for about forty years. They have commonly been referred to as American conditions. It will be interesting to observe the outcome of this particular social experiment, however I am relatively sure I will not be around to see the conclusions reached.

FBI boss: Apple's iPhone, iPad encryption puts people 'ABOVE THE LAW'

Re: Biter Bit

Well, from Comer's point of view, to paraphrase Tricky Dickey..."I guess you could say that if the (insert 3 letter org. here) does it, it is not illegal." So, to have those pesky US - Global entities Apple and Google go ahead and put themselves in the position of not being able to be summonsed, well! That JUST WON"T DO!!!! THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!!!!

'In... 15 feet... you will be HIT BY A TRAIN' Google patents the SPLAT-NAV

Re: How can it help dumb?

Oh, we had long past solved that problem... We sold the underutilized signalling system seven ch.'s 1 & 2 via our SMS gateway...

How can it help dumb?

Walking to lunch with a group of fellow telco-ites, we watched a person so thoroughly engrossed in his phone that he walked head first into a power pole. I knew then that we had helped create a monster... I promptly named our monster 'Darwin'.

Your chance to win the world's only handheld ZX Spectrum

Re: Can we be told ......

Snowball. It is 'snowball's chance in hell'. I'd imagine that the chance of getting a good fucking in hell would be pretty good. Possibly even into the over 100% range.

Kaspersky backpedals on 'done nothing wrong, nothing to fear' blather

"We have always been at war with eastasian terrorists." pp fr. George Orwell, '1984'

Women-only town seeks men

I've just checked my calendar. It is not April, or late March... Better start brushing up on my Portuguese.

Cracking copyright law: How a simian selfie stunt could make a monkey out of Wikipedia

Totally Off Topic...

Some acronyms just should NOT be used... Such as I ANAL. Though it could be a good title for a psycho-sexual thriller... I ANAL, by Ian' A. Ger Bil.

Some acronyms just should not be used.... I ANAL is one. (However, it might make a good title for a psycho-sexual thriller.)

Kate Bush: Don't make me HAVE CONTACT with your iPHONE

Cure the problem!

Confiscate all i-devices at the door, then arrest the pirates for pre-piracy crimes.

The internet just BROKE under its own weight – we explain how

BGP? IPv6???

If we had all agreed to use ATM we'd not be having this discussion...

(where's a good duck when you need one?)

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner: Capital is top target for computer thieves, say police

Das Kapitol?

"Capital" refers to money... "Capitol" refers to a nation-state's seat of government. I can understand how it is easy to confuse the two, but don't conflate them.

Microsoft's Euro cloud darkens: US FEDS can dig into foreign servers

Re: Doom for US tech companies

Why "dual-dc"???

Can it be true? That I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of PUREST ... BLACK?

Re: If I coat my car with this...

You need to get some radar absorbing ablative from most any small air to ground missile produced since the early '70's. About US $350 for two litres. Won't do a damned bit of good against laser guns though. Maybe this will. Hmm... Ablative painted over with this material...

Read the proposed US ASTEROIDS Act to green-light mining IN SPAAAACE

But they DO apply to any other country if the USA says they do, but no international law applies to anyone in the US Government... Geez. Wish the US would make up their minds on what laws apply to whom and when.