Posts by sisk

Dad who shot 'snooping vid drone' out of the sky is cleared of charges

Yes, it is hard for an individual to kill a lot of people with a knife than a semi automatic weapon

Not really, no. Mass stabbings actually have similar body counts to mass shootings, believe it or not.

@SucessCase - Not the best example. Clay pigeons shatter if you sneeze on them. Just because you can break one at 50 yards if you're a crack shot doesn't mean you'd be able to shoot down a drone at that range.

@Mark 85 - Smaller shot actually. We use 8-shot for trap. I guess it's technically the smallest bird shot you can get, but I don't know anyone who'd actually use it for birds.

The criminal mischief charge never had a chance. The drone was hovering on his property. That's trespass and under those circumstances the precedent is well established that he had the right to destroy it. The endangerment charge makes a bit more sense. Depending upon exactly which jurisdiction this happened in I could see that one being more problematic to him. If he were in a jurisdiction where level heads prevail they'd realize that a shotgun fired into the air doesn't actually endanger anyone. Shot doesn't fall fast enough to be a problem and it sheds it's angular velocity very quickly.

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

Nobody is going to be much impressed if you offer to restore year old backups in a full recovery scenario

You misunderstand. We have this week's tapes in the drive, the previous weeks plus the first week of each month from the last year in the tape safe, and the first set from July for the last seven years plus the two weekly sets previous to last week in the safe deposit box. Our worst case scenario is two week's worth of lost data. And that scenario would require someone leaving the fireproof tape safe open (or dousing it with something that burns at 3000+ degrees) and the building burning down. Anything less dramatic than that and we can't lose more than a weeks worth.

I can name one excuse: The backup system was affected by the attack and thus all the backups were encrypted by the same ransomware as everything else. This happened to the Public Services department of the local junior college (where my dad's an instructor). They lost 30 years worth of data, but being an educational institution paying the ransom was not an option. The budget just wasn't there.

Now quite how the backup system was affected I have no clue. That's not my IT department. My IT department would have had a years worth of backup tapes in a fire safe and at least another seven years worth safely tucked away in a safe deposit box. I can only assume that either they used a tapeless backup solution or that the ransomware had been on the system longer than their tape rotation cycle before it was noticed.

Backups!

More important now than ever thanks to ransomware.

It's all Me, Me, Me! in Doctor Who's The Woman Who Lived but what of Clara's fate?

I'm warming up to Capaldi (Dunno how to number him, what with the War Doctor lurking anomalously in the list somewhere,)

He's 12. The War Doctor doesn't have a number. He's just the War Doctor. He didn't even think of himself as the Doctor. One of the first things he said after regenerating (maybe THE first thing - I'd need to watch Night of the Doctor again to say for sure) was "Doctor no more".

After all, she is the Impossible Girl. She tore herself apart and flung herself into his own time stream

That time stream ended at Trensalore. By convincing the Time Lords to give the Doctor another regeneration cycle she changed it. His grave isn't at Trensalore anymore and thus neither is the time rift she threw herself into. And certainly she wouldn't have interacted with any incarnation later than 11, as that was HIS grave she visited.

did the Doctor forget that she's literally a Viking's daughter, daughter of a raider, who made his living sailing over the water to that which belonged to other people?

That particular historical stereotype is inaccurate. The Vikings were no more warlike than any other peoples of that period of history. Which is to say they were plenty warlike, but they didn't go around raiding villages willy nilly.

if Sontarans live that long.

They don't. 20 is absolutely ancient for a Sontaran. Strax is already well past middle aged and quickly approaching venerable.

You actually spent the mental energy to take note of and analyze the racial makeup of the crowd? Why?

Re: I think you guys are being unfairly harsh on Rufus

Exactly. Note the line: "Yes, but while you're laughing I'm living."

Re: A friend in an enemy, an enemy in a friend.

Meh, remember Missy counts herself as a good friend to the Doctor also. Apparently "friend" has some odd connotations when used between immortals.

Re: Osgood is back !

My thought is that Missy's ray gun thingy wasn't the death ray we all thought it was. After all, it didn't kill Missy, why would it kill anyone else?

Capaldi's a great Doctor in my opinion. He reminds me a lot of the early Doctors actually. But those sun glasses.....yeah, that abominable idea has got to go.

She's got a long wait. If memory serves Jack landed in the 1850s or thereabouts. She's got about 200 years before he's around for her to track down.

Here's hoping that Jack shows up a time or two this season. He's definitely one of the better companions to come out of NuWho. And if you don't count Torchwood one of the most underused.

Re: I thought it was a great ep

I didn't get the impression that Sam was supposed to be all that funny. Rather he struck me as a sort of "useless at everything, including comedy" type character. His utter incompetence was the only thing funny about him, and I think that was rather the goal. Unless, of course, you believe the Doctor Who writers so out of touch with real humor that they thought that 'well hung' line was actually funny. I've got a pretty puntastic sense of humor that often leads to groans and eye rolls by those around me and not even I would have made that joke.

No, I contend that Sam Swift is not supposed to be a funny man. He has his strengths, one of which is undoubtedly his positive outlook on life, but being funny isn't supposed to be one of them. And if he truly is immortal (probably) we'll see him again. At which point I suspect his other strengths will be revealed.

Laser razor binned from Kickstarter resurfaces on Indiegogo

Re: Eh?

Bic (and the like) plastic disposable?

No no. He's talking about newish straight razors with replaceable blades. The blades themselves are a lot like the blades for single edged safety razor blades, but longer and, obviously, held in place via different mechanisms.

Personally I'm not brave enough to try a straight razor, but for good reason. My hands shake. Not enough for it to be a cause for concern, but more than enough to make putting a naked razor blade to my face foolish at best.

Eh?

But they do have a working prototype. They've got a video of the thing. Mind you it doesn't work WELL, but it does work.

They claim the production model will work better because it'll be using better fiber. I want to believe. I really really do. But I'm skeptical. And until it's proven to me I just can't bring myself to drop more on a razor than what I normally spend on shaving supplies in a decade (no, really, a $4 puck of shave soap lasts me about a year and I'm on year 2 of the last $20 box of blades I bought -- the advantages of using a razor obtained from an antiques shop).

Laid-off IT workers: You want free on-demand service for what now?

"So you're firing me but you want me to provide you with free support for the next two years? Yeah, we can do that right after hell freezes over."

Microsoft's top lawyer: I have a cunning plan ... to rescue sunk safe harbor agreement

Getting the US Congress to act is nothing at all like herding cats. It's much, much harder.

Elderly? Disabled? You clearly need a .38" Palm Pistol

Maybe you are confusing .38 S&W with .380, which is a smaller, weaker cousin of the above mentionned 9mm...

Nope, I mean the .38 S&W. Anyone who's been around guns at all knows the .380 is useless for anything except paper targets and bowling pins, but some people actually think the .38 is a good choice for self defense. Probably because it was the police weapon of choice once upon a time.

And for the source of my info, my dad is both a gun collector and a paramedic. After 30 years of patching up gunshot victims he'll flat out laugh at you if you tell him you're using a .38 for self defense. I know because I've had that conversation with him.

Yes, the .38 can kill, but it has lacks that oh-so-important attribute for self defense: stopping power. You will not drop an assailant with a .38. They might die a few minutes after being shot, but that does you no good if they've killed you while they were bleeding out.

Re: Metrication

.38 has a much lower muzzle velocity than a 9mm, around 800fps vs around 1200fps. And, as good ole' E=MC2 tells us, the velocity is more important than the mass for such things. That's also why the less-massive-yet 7.62mm round, at 2300ish fps, is so much more deadly.

A single shot .38? Please for the love of sanity don't try to use this thing for self defense. There's a good chance you're just going to piss off the guy trying to mug you with it. Seriously, look up how often people report to the ER with .38 gunshot wounds and it turns out that they need nothing more than a couple stitches because the bullet bounced off a rib or skull. .38 is not a self defense caliber. 9mm is the absolute smallest caliber you should consider for self defense, and even that's pushing your luck if you have to use it. .38 is just way too small.

Internet daddy Vint Cerf blasts FCC's plan to ban Wi-Fi router code mods

Absolutely ludicrous. What's to keep me from cobbling together a crystal transmitter device that broadcasts on whatever frequency I want it to? That's not exactly difficult. In fact if I remember correctly it was a mainstay of the electronics project kits I had when I was in middle school. I'd even go so far as to say it's easier that getting an unsigned firmware into a router unless you've got instructions for cracking it from someone who's already figured it out. If I REALLY wanted to go off spectrum that's what I'd do. That being the case what's the point of crippling consumer grade routers and access points even more than they already are?

Android users left at risk... and it's not even THEIR FAULT this time!

Re: Updates

Obscure? iOS? LOL :).

Yes, iOS is relatively obscure compared to Android. Any neophyte script kiddie with a basic understanding of java can get the source code, spend a few months studying it and know the ends and outs of how the system works. With iOS unless you work for Apple you don't actually know exactly what's going on under the hood. That's what I mean by relative obscurity.

Re: Probably a stupid question

Actually, now that I think about it, this coupled with a Raspberry Pi and some creative coding might just be able to do what you're talking about.

Re: Probably a stupid question

is there any reason other than attempting to enforce user lock-in that one can't simply install any OS one likes on modern 'smartphones'?

The biggest barrier is, for lack of an easier way of putting it, driver issues. If you tried to install iOS on an Android device it would never work because iOS support for non-Apple hardware doesn't exist. Ditto for installing Android on an iThing. There is an app in the works that lets you install Windows Mobile on Android devices, but I've not read anything about it other than that it's in the works. No bets on how wide the support for it is. With some Android phones you don't even have the option of custom ROMs because there aren't any with hardware support for that model.

Really the only way to get a similar level of control in your mobile device as what you have on a desktop is to buy an Android device, root it, and install a custom recovery on it (which, of course, voids the warranty but gives you access to custom ROMs, which is about as close to an alternative OS as you can really get). Jailbreaking an iOS device can get you close to the level of freedom you enjoy on the Mac, but you're still stuck with iOS. Unlike Android you don't even have any custom ROMs you can install on them.

Re: Updates

Toires, LBTM, and FindCall. There are three trojans that can infect un-jailbroken iOS devices. And that considering that iOS is undoubtedly one of the hardest to infect platforms currently available. Granted one is proof of concept and the other two have been removed from the appstore, but if three can do it then more can as well. I personally view anti-virus on hardened OSes the same way I view the carbon monoxide detector in my house: the odds of needing it are astronomically against it, but if I ever DO need it I'd much rather have it than not.

There's no doubt iOS is more secure than Android. How much of that is due to good design and how much is due to the walled garden and relative obscurity of the underlying system is up for debate, but it's a purely academic debate. I realize that the odds of ever actually encountering iOS malware are pretty insignificant, but just as I would probably tell my landlord where to shove it if he tried to make me get rid of my CO detector I would be uncomfortable not having access to decent anti-virus software. There is simply no such thing as a perfectly hardened system.

Re: Cambridge boffins

Just because "allow unknown sources" was off, doesn't mean it's ALWAYS been off.

True enough, but I know the owner of that particular phone very well. I can say with absolute confidence that it's always been off on that phone.

LG good? You're kidding, right?

I was rather distressed to learn that LG cuts you off if you root your device. Every other manufacturer I've ever had an Android from will at most unroot your phone during an update but LG blocks you from their updates completely, even after unrooting. If you root an LG phone you'd best be running a custom ROM if you want updates.

Re: Updates

There's malware in the wild for iOS too. And no, you don't have to jailbreak your iWhatsit to get it. The difference is that you can get decent anti-malware for Android while iOS anti-malware is somewhat crippled by restrictions Apple places on it.

I've said for years that no matter what platform you're running only a fool runs a system with access to the internet and no anti-malware and I stand by that. Unfortunately Apple encourages people to be fools in that regard.

Re: Cambridge boffins

I have yet to EVER see ANY Android device with Malware

I've personally seen two infected devices, one of which was mine and I always double check the permissions on my apps before I let them install. The other wasn't even rooted and didn't have the "allow unknown sources" checked so the infection either had to have come in through stagefright or something similar or from the Play Store itself.

Not to slam Android, because it is still my mobile OS of choice and most likely will be at least until a new player comes into the market, but the malware for it is out there and works. That's why I run a security app.

Man goes to collect stolen-car court docs found in stolen car in stolen car

Just goes to show crime isn't an occupation for the intelligent.

It's BACK – Stagefright 2.0: Zillions of Android gadgets can be hijacked by MP3s, movie files

Re: The fix is obvious and elegant

Brilliant idea, but I could see this causing some issues with custom (and vendor modified) ROMs if it replaces a customized file with a stock one. Still it's probably the most workable solution to patching vulnerabilities in an ecosystem as fractured as Android as I've seen.

Re: Only for recent phones...

My advice for Cyanogen on the S3 - don't. I've tried various different ROMs and the most stable one I've found is Archidroid, and even that has severe lag and FC issues at random.

Edit: Just five minutes after posting this comment, the gods of Cyanogen smite me with a random reboot, the third this week...

I'll second that. On my S3 Cyanogen silently reboots so often that the space being taken up by reboot logs has become a serious issue. I have to go in and purge them every couple weeks or I start having lack-of-free-space related issues from the gigabytes they occupy. Cyanogen used to be a good custom ROM. Not so much these days.

Re: Microsoft phones

My guess is that without Android we would all have Windows phones which would probably be a better place than we are in now.

Have you not seen the cluster that is Windows phone? The only reason it's not rampant with viruses is because no one uses it. No sir, the handful of malware that can infect droids is better than what we'd have if Microsoft had Android's market share by far.

NEW ERA for HUMANITY? NASA says something 'major' FOUND ON MARS

Re: Great.

We need a great deal more than just water to colonize the planet. Water's a start, but even our most theoretical current terraforming tech isn't quite up to that task yet.

It's a tripod mounted war machine of course. Or, more likely, the remains of one that didn't pass the inspection before they were buried here on Earth umpteen thousand years ago.

Mines the one with the Kindle loaded up with classic sci-fi in the pocket.

WATER SURPRISE: Liquid found on Mars, says NASA

So, waters of Mars then...

Where's a Tardis when you need it?

VW: Just the tip of the pollution iceberg. Who's to blame? Hippies

Re: re: I still don't understand the irrational fear of nuclear power though.

The problem with disposing of nuke waste underground is that some idiot in the future may bring it back to the surface with indiscriminate fracking,

Given the timescales we're discussing here it'd be more likely to be some future archaeologist who mistook our signs of "Danger, deadly stuff buried here" for signs of "This place is important to us".

Re: Diesel is dead

Diesel engines can run on much cleaner stuff than the filthy byproduct of gasoline production.

nobody seriously thinks that the human race can power itself using renewables

Not true. Some people think we can. Nobody who has actually seen the numbers mind you, but since when is policy driven by people who've actually bothered to learn something?

I still don't understand the irrational fear of nuclear power though.

I understand it perfectly. It's the result of the horrifically inefficient power plants that they insisted on building in the 60s because instead of using technology appropriate to the application (ie breeding reactors or thorium reactors for industrial/commercial power generation) they simply scaled up the reactors designed for nuclear subs, which, obviously, have entirely different priorities. The end result is that we have nuclear reactors which create massive amounts of nuclear waste and most people don't realize that it's possible to build reactors which produce only very small amounts of waste that can mostly be reused.

Oh, and Chernobyl didn't help, but on that front even it's not so bad there as most people think. There were folks moving back into the exclusion zone less than a year afterward and they haven't died of cancer yet.

Honestly I think that unless fusion power generation really is less than 20 years away now and really is as clean as we're all being told it is nuclear will eventually be our primary power source as reality asserts itself. Even if it is really 20 years away really since fusion is just another form of nuclear power, even if it's not what most people think of.

Devious Davros, tricksy Missy and Dalek Clara delight in The Witch's Familiar

Ditching the sonic screwdriver in favour of cheap sunglasses strikes me as a dumb move. Other than that (and the predictability of Missy and Clara's survival) I loved this episode.

BOFH: I'm not doing this for the benefit of your health, you know

Oy, the fracking lux requirements. I'd gladly take out half the florescents in my office if I thought the janitorial staff wouldn't replace them that very night. I swear it's brighter in here than it is outside at noon on a clear summer day.

Quid-A-Day veteran fuelled by vastly improved nosh stash

Fresh greens must be cheaper there

I'd have no trouble living on a quid a day at the current exchange rate. Heck, I've DONE it. It's not fun and probably not healthy, but when money's tight it's very doable. It comes out to $1.50ish US per day. That's enough for toast for breakfast, a lunch meat sandwich or a couple hot dogs for lunch, and a filling meal of beans and rice (cooked on a rocket stove - yes I have one - with twigs from the yard for a zero energy cost) every night for dinner*. It gets even easier if I take a couple hours every day to make my own bread (then I could probably afford some butter for toast and cheese for the sandwiches, provided you're using a loose enough definition of "cheese").

But fresh veggies? Not a chance. A single serving bag of frozen veggies would be the whole daily budget and fresh ones are easily twice as expensive. Based on the prices here the veggies in that picture alone would have blown the entire budget for the week, if not gone over. They must be a lot less expensive over in the UK than they are here, which might just explain why America has such an obesity problem.

*There are other options, but I like beans and rice and it's hard to match how filling it is for how cheap it is with other things.

Pope Francis' first act in America: Halt iPhone 6S, 6S Plus deliveries

Re: Oh dear

Puns that bad would get a stand-up comic crucified in reviews....

POLAR DINOSAURS prowled ARCTIC NIGHT, cast doubt on COLD BLOOD theory

Haven't we known for several years now from examining bones that many dinos were more than likely warm blooded?

It's alive! Farmer hides neglected, dust-clogged server between walls

Re: Seen it too

I actually had a Slot A Athlon at one point. I can confirm they existed, though not where I got it or why I had it since to my knowledge I never had a matching motherboard.

Re: On failure...

"Sweet dreams are made of these" by The Eurythmics, but with "Green screens" instead of "Sweet dreams"

And that'll be stuck in my head for the rest of the day...I'm sure I'll get some funny looks later when someone overhears me singing "Green screens are made of these..."

Re: "The farm decided to go with a more modern, off-the-shelf software solution."

An RPi or such depends on SD Card storage and I would never recommend that.

You could run the OS itself off an SD card and mount a USB SSD for the /home, /var, and /tmp directories. That would solve the problem of write fatigue on the SD card nicely and still give you a ridiculously small system that requires no real effort to cool. But of course, as you said, that means you're on Linux. You CAN run Windows 10 on a RPi2, but it's not a particularly functional build of Windows 10.

Doctor Who storms back in fine form with Season 9 opener The Magician's Apprentice

little revival of a minor science fiction series

How could Doctor Who ever be considered a "minor science fiction series"? The classic series ran for over 25 years, which utterly smashes the record of any other sci-fi series. Not to mention that when it came back it already had a following to rival any of the Star Trinity (Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate) before the new series even started.