Posts by dssf 1750 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2010
Crewman Daniels
The Starfleet Temporal Commision
The Xindi
Captain Janeway
Crewman Braxton (if he ever gets out and re-promotes himself)
And a slew of others, just from Trek alone, hahaha....
Hahaha
Besides, IF you can timetravel, you owe it to the continuity of time to not assist any frackkin humans of this strain with any quantum or time-related fact.
Further besides, humans are not yet ready for even solar travel.
And, if you help any alphabet soup agencies, you'll screw up the "Earth: Galactic Comedy Central Pitstop" status I "presciently" accorded to this planet weeks ago and intermittently.
A Kodak Moment, or even a moment at Kodak.
One'd wonder why camera companies themselves don't contribute the way Papandriopolous did. Oh, wait... Competitors....
But, imagine if Kodak, which, IIUC, may still have cashflow problems, had managed to strike a deal with Apple, or Samsung for a nice, tidy stimulus package.
Good for Papandriopolous! But, his fans and users will have to wait to find out whether Apple bought his goods to fold them in and shut down the site for good, and rebrand the stuff into invisible, non-user-land Apple interfacing type of code.
But, top app in 16 countries. Imagine the envy of app developers toiling away to be that popular. I wonder how many want to be a popularPapandriopolous... (Say THAT 25 times, fast)...
I've been pondering this for years.
Lately, it has come back to mind that between infiltration in the past and insinuation of the recent Snowden fallout, I suspect that this quantum encryption cracking is a red herring of sorts. It may be that the NSA and GCHQ and others want real-time access to applications downloads. If not already in play, I really think they will be doing MITM attacks on people's and organizations' downloads of binaries, patches, and templates, to make sure that even if the data is encrypted, there will be unblockable access to machines that are "always on" on the Intranet and Internet.
Since it seems the routers, switches, and hard drives have been LONG compromised, it's a logica next step to ensure that apps are always targeted. I REALLY started thinking about this when first using AOL and other ISPs "installation disks". It really hit home that I began suspecting AT&T and Comcast of wanting keystroke access to (or, at the behest of the NSA and others, enabled access to) hard drives. This hit my mind way back in 1992/1993. And, to think those Lotus cc:Mail division software gurus told me I was crazy when I, as a lowly temp doing data entry, said NOBODY could ever crack a computer via a modem.
When Comcast in 1999-2002 had me as a "customer", they must have been pissed that I refused to connect to their services via their setup disk. I made their tech set me up with HIS laptop, not mine, on one occasion, citing I used Linux and would NEVER voluntarily surf via windoze any more. On another occasion, I had to use one of my computers, but I bluntly told them that after configuring the router via their keystroking disc, I would reformat my computer.
Nowadays, that trick obviously won't work -- WD, Hitachi, Samsung, and the slew of disk makers probably have signed or acquiesced globally to an unmitigable "expose to play" doctrine.
And, to think that now Linux is compromised to a painful extent. And, to ponder all the USA-driven rheotoric about China invading privacy rights of people when in the background, the NSA has been doing it to the WORLD.
Oh, don't let Android off the hook. Ponder how many of those free apps that might be agency sponsored or not, but which quietly compress and return to home every little tidbit of your mind jab into your pocketable devices.
DMZ Earth: Galactic Comedy Central for ALL Spacefaering Primitive-Species-Monitoring Anthropologists.
It is almost ludicrous, hilarious that, while regarding the Chinese government as mortal enemy number one, the USA also regards it as Benefactor Number One, allowing its so-called enemy nearly TOTAL access to the entire country, the etire economy, the debt base, and basically the soundness (and the soundlessness) in the "sanctity" of the US dollar.
Just look at the politicos who'll sell their mother, spouse, or child for a buck. Or two.
They are hypocrites, partially, and scary as hell, partially.
But, what to do? What to do? Don't become loud enough to get put into their crosshairs?
That is akin to teling some one name Margie Thatcher, born outside of the UK, that she cannot put "Margie (born as Margaret, in 1972, outside of the UK)" on her business card if she should desire to open or expand to the UK or EU a company selling gowns, crowns, and makeup to cover frowns in big and small towns.
OK, as for advice to Pinterest, and I say this because I think I in 2011 or early 2012 met (informally) one of the girls who worked/works at Pinterest, while I was in J-Town having coffee in a budding Korean coffee shop.
My advice is that Pinterest or someone with extreme interest in Pinterest gets Snowden to release some of his seemingly unstoppable releases to Pinterest. Or, maybe just non-class/declas nature shots taken by his hand, and posting them on Pinterest. Eventually, someone from the press may use it as a data drop. At that point, GCHQ and the NSA take and EXTREME SPYnterest (no relation to the activity in Greece, mind you) in it and will want to keep that "data drop" alive and active, if anything, to try to get a bead on the data source. So long as said human data source cannot be unmasked, two MOTUs (Masters Of The Uniwerse) will override the stupidity that interferes with existing, functioning, viable businesses using their names the created devoide of malice or devious coat-tail-riding circumstances.
Imagine if the agency denying Pinterest its name visited the USA, just to use as an example, and discovered how many "Acme" companies exist ALL OVER the country, seemingly without clobbering one another, so long as they do not engage in similar services in the same county or city lines, or wear confusingly similar uniforms, or mimic one another's web sites.
If Pinterest went into the commodities or whatever biz Premium Interest is or is trying to succeed in, then what is the DAMNED problem?
(Disclaimer: I don't use (yet) nor have any personal or professional relationships with anyone at or helping out Pinterest.)
Include porn, baby formula, holy see, monestary, VD/monistat, toothpaste, construction tools, and about a dozen, different-per-message URLs
All of them would eventually see an uptick in their sites URLs, but very few REAL, meaningful pay-worthy visits after a few weeks of painful parsing. And, if the world gets wind of it, fb's value would go on a hellish, vomit-comet rollercoaster ride. It may regain value, but it will be a dizzying whirlwind for them and their tributary partners. Might wring them dry of sweat and cash. One helluva form of "sweat equity".
If the courts don't order the "payday packet", the plaintiffs get no joy. Even if the courts DO order the class action to be in place, fb would just stall. So, the only way to make such companies bleed cash is to vicariously loosen a few bolts on their carefully-constructed roller coaster. It won't crash, but it'll be clacky and rickety as fuck, and word will be unstoppable -- well, for a few weeks. Thrillseekers will get back on the ride, and others will just ignore the bad news and remember the bits about effective and lasting repairs made.
But, imagine if fb and the likes of them had to but up security bonds worth 45% of their fake/purported value, and that special, untainted courts had the power to fast-track the cases and render verdicts/opinions in FIVE DAYS. Boy, that might "stifle innovation and competitiveness", but it would put such companies on notice, too.
Wait... I hear an i-phone-case/i-pod-case diamond stylus etching my name on two .50 caliber bullets for uttering such ideas in an open forum. Yep, I recognize the latent aroma of aluminum powder accented by diamonds and fresh cooling water. I have to go and take cover....
Turn that reader into a "colophone" (if you get what I mean) and thieves and access penetrants would need to steal not only an eye and a hand, but the colo-cation access apparatus (lower torso, for the less groovy-tubular-minded), AND hook it all up in a fashion that helps bypass security. Yes, it's unlikely to be a hacking method (hacking the parts to hack the device), but it would be a new, yet tactless and unclassy form security through abscurity.
Now, if Samsung could come up with a soul-partitioning appa- (or oppa?) rat-us device, Big Brother and overseeing Father could spy on the minds of mere mortals.
A true security breakthrough would be in teaching people to secrete their secrets via biofeedback so that passwords could be formed electrochemically (not just waves and endorphenes, but complex, cryptographically classed), meaning a stolen finger kept on ice (as in MI-5/Spooks, Season 6, Disc 1 or 2, IIRC) could not be used to bypass a finger reader. And, torturing would mean jumbling the passwords/bio-cyphers into uselessness.
Oh, wait, that would just reduce the covert intel ops to sniffing the EM spectrum, which might be just as effective but with less hassle of coercion and deck-stacking to keep doors open...
Anyway, this is just an opportunistic cyclical thing. In a couple of weeks, we could be seeing a revisionist version of this story, but instead, reading of how Sam sung its way to the bank due to booked orders from last year reapoing 54 trillion won of profit for 1Q14". This reminds me of how in the USA, half the papers report gloom and doom, and 12 hours later, its all roses, peaches, cream, and endorphine-solied bedsheets of joy on the very same doom article.
Grain of salt...
Maxwell Smart.
Control and Kaos, disorder from order.
Terrorists in the high skies, writing messages on Etch-A-Sketch, or erase-film writing pads of the 70s, in a long slender tube, with not enough money and manpower to Toss-Across-Like or Twister-Like occupy every-other-seat fashion spy on passengers surely WOULD send the aplabtes aegceis into to a tissy. All that dehydrator noise (note: IIUC, human perspiration rehydrates the planes once at altitude or pressurized) would likely wreak havoc on cabin-mounted spy mics -- even if a bug is under every seat and in every head rest.
Phones-less planes are just a slender cone of silence. OTOH, if NOone can use phones, the agencies shouldn't be in a tissy -- it is just the status quo. It seems they WANT to get the extra, junk-filled civvy chatter rather than knowing they've got burden-relieveing tubes depriving everyone of comms. One'd THINK they want brief respites now and then. But, I guess this proves we'd be damned wrong, not just wrong.
Just underscores how they think they ARE the masters of the uniwerse....
Where are the ETs to ask them for the punchline? Or, would that violate a Prime Directive/Non-Interference Directive? Oh, what a juicy, fertile, RIPE, RICH anthropological playground this planet must be in the eyes of advance lifeforms. Fortunately for the spy agencies and non-legally-baddy types, no god-like hands are intervening in the fortunes and carryings-on of these agencies. If a god or superior, externa... Umm, off-worldly force stepped in, these agencies would howl "UNNECESSARY CONTACT/ INTERFERENCE" and quasi-football sportscaster terms... Is one of them "excessive contact"? Hahahaha. But, there's one term struggling to come to tongue, and heart anguishes that the appointed, annointed term is elusive presently...
I like the name "IRATEMONK", inventive...
As for HOWLERMONKEY, I months ago became suspicious of those little RJ-45 ports at the tables in SFPL. IT just put them there, with no notices to the users, as if we're supposed to use them instead of the ones already in the tables' midsections.
As for:
" And if that fails, agents can simply intercept your hardware deliveries from Amazon to install hidden gadgets that rat you out via radio communications "
this, I suspected months or years ago. After all, in the early and mid-90s, gangs were stealing mobos from trucking shipments. Probably they came up with the idea unilaterally or were inspired, and maybe they inspired the NSA and other groups. But, then, mobile vehicle tracking came along. I wonder when THOSE devices were modded. I would imagine, though, that FEDEX, AIRBORN, EMORY, UPS, and numerous carriers of the time and of today had or still have no idea when their fleet vehicles are being diverted, shunted, delayed, penetrated, or even outright replaced (maybe the cab, too?, but the personal effects transferred) when certain high-value shipments needed/need to be tampered with.
Years ago, I used to posit ideas like this, and time after time, people snarled that I was looney. FUCK, if reality doesn't come along and bite THEM in their asses. I hope some of them sit over a mug of draft and say, "Say, remember that daft guy who had all these ideas?" Well, some of them I cannot recall, but, it's funny and frightening to see this shit in the headlines. Vindication and vomitus stirring in the same pot and pit.
Now, this'll just end up in movies, or in more movies.
BTW, get around to watching a HK cop-thriller about a financial irregularities unit spying on crims manipulating the HK stocks. They get found out by another security apparatus, and the baddies, too, find out. All hell breaks loose in sophisticated yet brutal HK film manner, and it is utterly devastating to the cops who thought they'd take a dip and skim off the top. The best part was when I heard one character tell another that even removing the phone's battery would not stop it from remote manipulation -- that the phones usually havve a second, hidden battery, and that the phone needed to be drowned out by loud music and EM, or put in a securing box. Of course, it ratcheted up the stakes in the film, to make the cops have to physically access the room needing to be surveilled. And, that movie was out around 2007 or 2009, and I only saw it around 2008 or 2011. Overheard 2 is not as great, from what I read.
Net result of all this may be public desensitization and blitheness overall. Who knows? But, it should make it easy for some creative screenwriters to get really on the fringe of imagination and make even more tense and intense viewing moments. Well, assuming the reviewers and censors don't force them to drop such scenes on the cutting room floor/digidal dust bin.
Of course, all this I write, and most of us write, could be on virtual/honeynet servers, and that we're so well monitored that no matter what machine we try to find our postings on, we'll be served up on a silver platter to... Ourselves.
All this makes me even more disappointed in writing to friends in places such as SK, where some messages never seem to be replied to, or replied to DAYS after, and some message replied in person with "I never saw it... I looked, and never saw it..."
Once, in Shanghai, last year, someone in the apartment bloc got between me and and a SK-situated friend, taunting me. My SK-based friend said it wasn't him, and it was quite unsetteling, unleasing all variety of "If for just two minutes I were a god, what malevolent violence I'd unleash upon any and all related to this moment's intrusion" feelings.
So, some of the public will be desensitized, and some will be sent into circular fury, with little room to vent. Such will be worse than the terrorists these programs are meant to derail. Unfortunate, nerve-wracking, and, well, unfortunate... Circular Terror might become a new buzzword.
Don't for get "a-gender", as in "agender", not "a gender".
I only learned of that one a few weeks ago. Maybe it's an SF thing?
As for Turing being purportedly killed by the CIA, maybe it was the CIA's doing at the behest of MI-5? Never forget, such agencies thrive on "plausible denial", tho I concede I have no stake in their involvement one way or the other.
Also, for those of us who never knew what Turing looked like, I always presumed an older, rounded-more oval-shaped head, with balding hair. Then, on seeing his photo here on theRegister, I was disapponted that there was not a game of "guess what photo is really that of Turing".
Years ago, someone did some app or web page asking people to pick the face they imagine to be that of a famous person they'd never seen in photos or in real life. Many people purportedly are very bad at associating correct photos with names. Still, it makes for an intriguing game.
Imagine, though, if Turing lived, and that so-called civilized countries' governments had no McCarthyism apoplexies afflicting them, and that he inspired other, mathematically and scientifically-minded closet cases or gay-tolerant/accepting researchers to feel safe in the world. Such people might exist even in the absence of people like Turing, but imagine if more thrived in research -- cryptographically-minded people from that era might be as good as if not better than human-programmed computers at attacking HIV/AIDs problems, closing in on cures for it as well as for cancers, flus, the common cold, and all number of other malades of our and their times.
When will we ever truly learn from our ignorance that intolerance, abuse, witch hunts, fear, and fear-mongering don't do us much good? OK, off of my horse and platform and on to hobbies.
It's shit like this that renders this planet to what I call "Galactic Comedy Central Pit Stop" for any advanced lifemforms that may have settled here or dropped by. This is probably an ET anthropologist's DREAM world. Probalbly any species that stumbles upon or hears about the place probably instantly signs a no-earth-battlefield pact just to keep this place alive, possibly for comic relief, or to exa ine angles on how their long ago ancestors conducted life, segregating, marginalizing, and classifying peaple as worthy and unworthy of products, services, rigts, protections, opportunities, and more.
This kind of stuff makes us, aliens present or not, look like, well, a joke.
If it was him, then he wasn't smart enough to write his way into a legit excuse to defer the exam.
According to this:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/17/eldo-kim-threat-profile/
It seems to me that he had quite a promising future ahead of him. Something must've derailed his studies or studying enough to get him off track to not be ready for the exam/s.
Tragic waste. And, he's just adding yet another bit of injury to the recent string of exchange/foreign/immigrated student crimes by someone hailing from Korea. One recent one coming to mind is the med or nursing student who gunned down multiple people in Oakland, CA in late 2011 or early 2012. But, this one didn't kill anyone, only sent dangerous threats.
What he probably had not put into his calculus was the likelihood of the recent Boston Bombing incident putting Massachussetts on an ever-high alert, meaning probably EVERYONE in MA is being sniffed more aggressively. He should have taken the exam fail rather than epic/social fail.
Probably, though, since it seems he was in the USA at age 16, he has not yet served nor chosen a nationality, as all able-bodied South Korean males not in a special exemption status (father was a hero; missing rear molars; missing a trigger finger; colorblind; misaligned joints/arms/feet; last surviving son in a family; and a bunch more that exist), he probaby will be released from having to serve if his has not chosen a country by age of majority. His parent probably are reeling to and fro in agony.
Sad.
In the vein of piracy and privacy, if the bounty hunters break the law and capture the entire ASS of the targets, would that resullt in just a bounty, or also a "booty", or a bountiful booty if the prize is very valuable?
I know it takes a lot of... gall, or.... nerve to ask, but, what about "nerve bundles"?
(So far we collect: retina, hair, blood, saliva, finger, toe, and similar tissue and prints. There's at LEAST one that, for practicality and embarrassment reasons, is not collected, but could be useful if a torso and very dry blood are all that are found.
I wonder whether morticians, medical examiners, and forensics examiners pondered but never posited it, hehehe (might spell "the end" of their career... for suggesting such a nerve wracking and nerve wrecking collection)
How can he expect legal protection from lawlessness in Brazil?
IIUC, it can be as cheap in Brazil as it is in the Philippines to hire a contract killer. Several layers of them, too, to get rid of at least 2-4 layers of hits. One layer to kill the primary target, another layer to kill the PT's killers, and a third layer to scrub the previous two layers of killers. IIUC, a contract killer in the Fils may be around USD$50-$200 per person. I suppose the complexity of security arrangements and notoriety of the target make a big diff, too, but how can Snowden expect to NOT be found and hounded and in less than 6 months be "factory recalled" if he ever goes out of doors?
His move (blowing secrets he exposed, rightly or wrongly) is not a move I'd be envy of... None one I'd make, since I want to live to at least 100-110. A lot of interesting shit (not talking about fatal fall pushes, lead or radioactive bullets and pellet, cement barrel dunkings, and the like; I'm interested in mil/aero/astro/medical/architectural advances, among many other things) will be happening over the next 50-70 years, and I want to see or read about at least 80% of that timeframe.
So, for users to express dissatisfaction with a mate's comment, said user must BUY these down-thumb icons?
Did I read that correctly?
Cha-CHING! ??
Probably not. I doubt that that many users will pay for those icons/buttons enough to make it worth fb's time, unless fb is just writing it off as the cost of biz to keep users from leaving if they don't get their down-thumb. After all, even basic news sites offer thumbs up and thumbs down, Plus/Minus, and their various analogs.
Maybe the thumb down is a way to actively generate heated debates, maybe creating some sellable content to other sitess, generating income for fb? Maybe it's a way to help users incrementally purge undesirable blokes/nuttters from their friends lists, but not directly-immediately do so? Maybe, if users have reduced "friends" counts, it might save money for fb?
Maybe the "friend" list can be publicly expanded and new labels (aside from "followers") can be added: "shitlist", "on thin ice"? No, that might lead to litigation when "friends" become "fiends" and start engaging in "defriending murders/assault"....
Peeved enough to take such an act almost seems (or might be) akin to "we're going to SCREW YOU with negative publicity", even though some contracts that run the risk of being outted as boondoggles come ridden with NDAs and such to mitigate the risk of being publicly outted as a money-wasting frackjob.
Still, a $120M tech update, amortized across how many years? Five? 10? 20? If just 5, and solely recouping costs in Canada alone, would mean, expecting Canadians to spend $25M a year on beauty and relevant-cost-center/revenue-center products. Do that many Canadians exist to cover a $25M expectation?
As of mid-2013, it was reported that Canada's population was 25.16 million, up by around 404k. So, I doubt Avon expected maybe 4.8M women (assuming .2 of the population contains the target audience buying enough Avon products...
Wait, 4.8M women (or aggregated, valid consumers of Avon products) who spent $200 each (in just ONE year) would theoretically bring Avon $960M. So, if Avon publicly outted the project as a distracting, major failure, then those women or valid consumers probably sniffed and walked away due to the CRM/related interface, or spent just a fraction of what was hoped for. Even if only 10% of those visiting bought just $100, that could mean $48M, and if that sustained for 5 years (if that was the break-even time), then even THAT crying, low threshold must not have been met in the trial, the test phase, and the projections in meetings. Maybe only 5,000 people actually bought anything in that time, and probably spent only $35 each.
$175,000 won't do it in ANY stretch of accounting tricks in 5 years.
Avon must be seeing blood and tears to have lobbed SAP out the 10th-floor window...
What so far has not been commented on: battery consumption...
The biggest thing that comes to mind after privacy and bandwidth (and possible noises or visual annoying or embarrassment) issues is the battery consumption issue for some.
Forcing the play of and caching of ad content means adding two more events that consume the battery of users. In the USA, I virtually NEVER see phone users swap out batteries. After all, iPhones and some Samsung batteries are non-user-replacable items. But, in Korea, I saw many people (usually in coffee shops and on trains) swapping batteries. The thing that sucks is that some of these ads -- if FB and others deem them crucial to ramping up their revenues -- will become prevalent enough that some users -- depending on the sites they frequent -- will be bombarded by streaming (wi-fi or cell site) vids and audio files.
I wonder how many people will pay attention to their battery depletion rates. Battery depletion incurred by download and by play.
Another issue is the fact that these files are being forced in by fb and other sites. Why do our permissions for these apps allow them to force onto our storage space files WE did not invoke/command to be downloaded? Will they come in with self-expirey flags, and, if so, will they enable cross-infection of other files by malicious apps posing as legit/related content-senders' content deletion?
Will AV companies enable us to identify and wipe IMMEDIATELY conent that downloaded which we did not say "save..." to? Will that raise the stakes in the "battle for eyes and minds" and give rise to miscreants to devise software to simulate download commands by users who are face with "download/do not download" buttons on screen? After all, we've read about affirm/decline buttons both being wired with "do-it-any-fucking-way" code, with the user reading and thinking s/he hit "decline" and that "decline" was honored.
I intend to stay off two - 3 weeks at a time, checking only one day or two to allow REAL friends to have a window of oppty to reach me, and then I'll duck out for another 2-3 weeks.
I have saved SHITLOADS of time jsut avoiding fb. I not only not checked on posts, but I've logged OFF on my two normally-logged-in devices. This should, to some extent, deprive fb of getting tributary site/partner site feeds/stream info from me, unless those sites pass on the info based on my browsers' fingerprints.
I intend on my next log in to warn my friends to contact me via e-mail if something is important, that I won't be on fb for 2-3 weeks at a stretch.
As for birthdays, I'll just post "Happy Belated Birthday/Happy Birthday In Advance" to all my friends and let them know it's exasperating customizing HBD messages and not getting responses around half the time, or if I get a response, it's 3 weeks later, when I may wonder whether they're busy, ignoring me, or doing what I'm about to do -- stay off fb 3 weeks at a time -- even tho it now is hard to (without getting some dodgy apps) know who's looking at my profile.
So, fb sends me messages saying "You have X number of messages, X number of invites, X number of pokes..."
SO WHAT?!
But honestly, depriving fb of faux love meant in reality having more time to shifting time into other apps. But, since those other social apps have less "hook and bite", it's easier to get in and out of them with less addiction/withdrawal, and that means a net of recovered time.
I'm not trying to DESTROY fb -- it does do some good, and I do sometimes contemplate using them to get messages across if I have products to sell someday. But, I'm also tired of the rat's race feeling and the "constantly watched and bartered-away" feeling.
If they don't like it, then they can change their business model. It's NOT my duty to exits for THEIR survival. Well, not unless they dramatically enhance MY survival by using some of their billions to help create a pool of start-up helpers that can supplant the likes of indiegogo and others that play super-selectivity (PC/exclusivity) games on their front pages.
Just how blue is "Big Blue"?
$15B wipeout blue? Or, is $15B wiped insignificant to IBM if allocated across the next 8 years? Maybe the investors don't want to wait 8 years or 5, or 10 for IBM to recoup this after this all blows over (IBM might sell China tech and hardware to spy better on the domestic populace, and suddenly be back in bed panting and rejoicing with the Party), but IBM probably can wait.
Things happen in cycles. Somebody might get fired for NOT buying IBM before the tide goes back in IBM's favor...
Left hand, Right Hand, Endprompt too "meet and greet"
While the right hand helps to "issue" and "stroke" of "rejoicement", the left hand, and particularly the THUMB of that left hand, indignantly clogs up the "pipe" on the back end....
I wonder which Director gets to brush and floss with habanery and capsicum spices to rid the backsliding-caused between-teeth hairs that got stuck...
Google Analyticssss is a Ssssic... It wassss meant to be Google
Anna Lick Ticksss, a special project of the V Ssssecurity Apparatussss to find the remaining human ssssympthizers amongt the V sssshipssss. Ssssnowden wassss almosssst captured, and wassss partially sssskinned alive, but with help, essscaped. The Vatican would have no more V activity exposssingg their operations, and sssso Ssssnowden was ab-sssconded to Russssia.
Word hassss it that he sssstole and managed to hide the ssssignature of a Blue Energy generator matrixxxx. What can you report on thissss sssset of developmentssss?
But, it ISSS. You misSSSsed a few hundred staff meetings -- otherwisssse you would not hhhhold in contempt our great SSSStansuuu SSssiglorsssuu. You would have ssseen the weekly WAR reports indicating that the Earth rat population is down by 62% in NYCcccc and Gainessssville, Florida sincccce the human insssurgentsss demolissshhed two of our rodent reproducttttion faccccilitiessss.
We will reprogram you and then Anna will decccide your fate.... human ssssympathisssser...
(SSSSorry... I could not ressssissst. Human humor attemptssss overrun me in thissss bodily form....)
If Google has been subverted, you can bet your ass that everything else of weight has been, too. Some willingly, some less so, but compliant nevertheless, if they want to do business in or passing through the USA. Just a safe assumption, even if not provable.
And, now, is this vindication against all those who --blindly, negligently, ignorantly, deceitfully -- who for YEARS kept telling us, the world, that cookies are harmless, that they cannot be manipulated, that they do not carry payload, and only collect, not command?
And, people supposedly smarter than myself would consider me paranoid. I love getting vindication, even years after the fact, but lament the fact that lots of wrongdoing can be done, or has been done.
Just add a sliding cover with a semi-liquid view port, some rubber flex/duct tube, and an eye patch with LEDs, and it's a PlayBorg Maturation Chamber.
After all, the infant can learn shapes, languages, tactical combat, acrobatics, marching, Jody calls, trillable voice patterns (besides oohh, koo, gahh, and goo-goo).
Hell, the child could be the earliest MENSA inductee in history. It might, however, also turn into a Charlie X, a more corporeal Napoleon, or a Dig-ME! Howser (sans a Mauser?), or just another Spelling Bee whiz, Academic Decathlon participant....
It could be worse (aside from possible worries of opthamalogical conspiracy theories which might suggest that infants could be groomed for compulsory eyewear or corrective surgery. Might give rise to ocular (or, occultular?) implants....
Independence... is... EEreleVent... Parents who ... resist.. will ass-immolated... YOU will service... US...
Now, for removable batteries on iPhones, and split batteries on all mobiles for when no AC is available.
Such power-hungry virtual OSs will probably suck the mojo from most physical batteries, shortening their physical lives. This means iPhone users and users of other phones which seem to be (re)turning to non-user-removable batteries will probably quickly return to all-removable batteries.
If a phone becomes the new PC-level battleground, and is able to stand alone or as an "interconnecting unit" of other computer-powered devices, it will need either a revolutionary leap in battery re-charging and discharging tech, or the batteries will need to be removed from the "safety" and other aspects positioning of powered-on-devices. In some phones, even when AC is connected, the phone will instantly shut down if the battery is popped. As with some laptops of the past (and maybe some current ones), I have an idea: TWO batteries, akin to older laptops, where the drained one can be removed while another fresher or not-yet-near-drained one can keep the machine running during the swapout. And, if the device IS on AC, then both can be swapped of their drained ones and extended with fresher or different/newer ones that will run longer or even longer. So, a user (regular or power user) can be constantly on the move, say between work tasks or just during transportation.
A laptop for power or corporate or infrastructure users might be a brick in and of itself. A laptop for a consumer or prosumer at certain levels might be a simple, removable or non-removable guaranteed-30-seconds-to-2-minutes forever duration battery to allow swapping the main, drained/draining battery provided the user has it in-hand and can swap in less than a minute, when AC is not nearby. The sliver battery could be slide-in/slide-out, snap-on, or plug-in, or click-in.
The idea is probably not new, but in the future, I reserve the right to make these words actionable provided no existing patent has a factual timestamp prior to my writing this or prior to my posting this around a year or so ago in another forum.
If this were easily accessible to semi-competent USERS, such a VM-like piece of code could be used for making existing OS more resilient and less subject to crashy apps. For example, I use a CAD app that now is around 30MB in file size, yet in RAM consumes 700-1,000 MB. At some point, when unhiding previously HIDDEN (not "off" layers being turned "on", but stuff selected and then hidden, which I think adds to the file size reaching 60 MB on some saves, and then other saves dramatically dropping to 27-35MB), the CAD app and Win 7 BOTH no longer can accept keyboard shortcuts such as the Shift key. Caps Lock works, but then given the dearth of shortcuts in the CAD app, it becomes suddenly torturous trying to continue to work, meaning using the menu and visible icons and any still-accessible keystroke shortcuts. Curiously, not ALL the Shift-related or Ctrl-related keys die, just random ones.
The machine has not been on the net for months, and the behavior seems ONLY apparent when that in-RAM-large-ish file is running. When I attempt to write in Notepad or any other app, no Shift combinations for letters will type as upper case. This forces me to menu-level save the file, then shut down the app. Then, I have to shut down (it seems, not just "restart") Win 7. That OS is running in VirtualBox (an out-of-date-version), running in an out-of-date version of PC LinuxOS, on an 8-GB laptop with 4 dediced to Linux and 4 to VBox to hand over to W7. Again, it appears to be the file size in RAM, and maybe it's due to the fact that the CAD app is 32-bit, not 64-bit. The issue only started to become visible weeks ago, but I may have experienced it a year ago and just did not know it was apparent had I tried to type in Notepad and word processing apps.
So, I wonder whether virtual machines could run individual apps in parallel, but bridge them in a way the one mirrors the open files, but guards against crashiness in the file or against the app trashing and thrashing Win7.
"POSE" could stand for...
pAIN oN sTART eVERYWHERE // Pain On Start Everywhere.
How about a license called "PLIGHT" -- Possible Litigation Is Going High-Time...?
On the serous, umm, SERiOUS side (seriously!), how long before virtual OSs will come to "green, disposable" (flushable/dissolvable) micro appliances so that users can either via wire or bluetooth or other air-delivered protocol surf with less need for worry about device (laptop, desktop, phone, household hardware)? Such virtual machines could be interfaces in the physical, too, either atttached to or sitting between individual devices, akin to a supercomputer-based anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-anything-you-despise-trying-to-get-on-your-devices firewall.
A couple of scenario questions come to mind:
1. what if the "trusted recommending person" is really an agent of the "formidable censorship apparatus"?
2. what if the trusted person inadvertently recommends an agent of the formindable censorship apparatus?
In the first scenario, every person who the referring parting gets an invitation is eventually going to be trackable in some sort of digital pool, unless the Lantern project becomes more "IR Beacon" of some sort, something less of a beacon and more of a laser. It would have to limit the number of people the referrer can refer, so as to limit the number of people potentially at risk of compromise.
In the second scenario, much like the first, the "trusted person" needs to be limited, to.
In both cases, some sort of anti-aggregation measures would need to be implemented, too, to reduce the risk of sleuthing the IDs and traffic between parties. Probably, in tech terms, this might mean loads of encryption, varying randomly, between parties. Maybe they need to do similar to military communicatons: Ra-days, or radio days, changing up the crypto and even the channels between communicating parrties, even if they are known to each other. Problem is, though, so many people will be communicating that changing the crypto times and codes randomly and on any schedules requiress utmost discipline of the users, and timely recognition of and response to and negation of actual and presumed compromises.
Gonna be tough. All-weather, multi-spectrum, high-altitude, homing-carrier pigeons should still be active on some occasions...
Obviously, given all the "plot holes" in what I wrote, it is to be merely seen as an expression of futility and a bit of infuriation/frustration. (And, there've been plenty of holier plots written as movies, which moved millions of dollars from the wallets/purses of those willing to suspend disbelief, no?)
Really, for those who missed it, how would poker player get ahold of any of the heavy metals? Only likely a very wealthy (and bitter) gambler with very, very deep connections. Even then, s/he'd be highly unlikely to use the stuff.
No caffeine was involved.
However, the flourescent green dye marker bit, that, that is a lot safer, and likely would result in either exposing or apprehending (or both) any suspects or thieves. Some inconvenience to the staff, if one goes rummaging guest room safes. But, the dye would need to be trackable by day (it should glow at night). Anyone trying to wash it off would need some planning, since some dyes are difficult to get rid of neatly and in short order. Now, if only the police, private security, and hotel doors/thresholds had resources to speed up thief-catching.
Dyes and Markers, Bats and Nails
Next time, rig the room and the safe with flourescent, Cobalt-60 dye packs. Tell the invaders to fuck off and die with radioactive dye. If you cannot get C-60, then sidle up with Putin for some easy-to-transport Polonium powder. Dust your (fake) laptop with it. When C-60 or Polonium incidents surface in the news (if they do, that is), you might take satisfaction.
But, really, seriously, it's getting tiresome hearing about these infiltration incidents. A baseball bat with nails and a cloaked room guard (able to evade heat detection from out in the hallway) batting and beating the ass of the intruder like the crowbar attack in the tunnels in CounterStrike might knock these invasions down a tick or two.
Hell, try affixing a fish-eye lens, or a kaleidescope. Keep the watchers bizzzy-as-beeezzz, hahahaha...
Or, FORCE ms to go into a new end-dust-stree.... SEXBOX--- Play naked, with a partner. That'll force the watchers to devise some cunning software to block out the cunning hardware...
(No, not trying to become a cunning linguist, hahahaha)...
However, I doubt the either ms or the share holders want to ass-so-ci-ate ms' name with the sex therapy industry. Howevver, some en(d)(t)er prizing psychs and devs joining forcess could ass-pire to endtroughduce some tantillating and titilizing software titles. Talk about merging hardware and software on new levels, and levels... Even Guiness Book of World Records might get sucked into it.
Lala BOOM!
Tinky-Winky BLAST
koo-kooo, kooo-koooo,
khuurrrhhrr, khuurrrhhuurrr
After two weeks of infiltration assinment on the world server of a Teletubbies First Person Shooter meets WOW or COD, the NSA analysts will go anal list, taking early retirement due to psychological stress, hehehehe. Or, if denied leave or early retirement, they'll be playing in a hyperbaric chamber with altitutude settings to provide for on-the-fly attitude adjustments, along with mandatory use of anti-psychotics and a batch of muscle relaxers, to prevent lung collapse due to excess laughter and whimper episodes...
No, wait, that would just cause creation of new legislation about not using childish avatars/costumes to express, participate in, or glamorize violence. After all, IIRC, it's illegal to make cartoon pron that uses purely digital minors. So, do NOT say I inspired anyone to actually fund, create, enable, and distribute a TTCOD/TTWOW global gaming bazaar, hehehe...
SHIT, I think **I** will need they hb chamber... I'm seeing tinky, lala, and the others bounding and waddling over those knolls and in the valleys lobbing grenades and rainbow sprites in my eyes... sigh....
What "comPetent" "veteran" "software designer" doesn't vet date problems? Sounds like that "developer" did not want to force the users to put dates in specific date fields and use those fields in boilerplate reports and letters components.
I despise developers who allow users to enter any old random shit in any field the user chooses just "because data type entry enforcement slows us down" is what power-wielding users/buyers will sometimes bandy about.
(In the early 90's, I once temped at a famous "memory leak detector" software developer. I and 2 others had to trudge through MS Access to clean up data so that future sales types (replacing the ones who must've been binned, I sometimes wondered, or for future investors) who entered phone numbers in conversation fields, addresses partially in phone numberr fields, states in the city fied, and so on. It was horrendous, mind-boggling, and blood-pressure boiling, and I'd only been at home playing with Lotus Approach for under two years or so.
It was supposed to be a 1-week contract, or maybe it was 4 or 5 days, but after two days of that shit, and the ratty interface cobbled by some wannabe or unfortunate Access interace putter-togetherer, it seemed to me it would take 3 weeks or longer to comb through multiple thousands of records and make the data all-right and alright. I recommended Lotus Approach for this task, not to replace Access, but to from a non-programmatic, data-entry-clerk-on-limited-time basis. I convinced the in-charge developer I knew what I was doing and of what my limitations were, and what I'd done at home with Approach. He permitted me to install it and give him a quick run-through of what my plan was, and after a few minutes, green-lit it. We did the task in around 3.5 or 4 days total rather than the 2-weeks or so it was clearly becoming as we earlier kept uncovering more and more SHIT entered by uncaring, clueless, reckless sales/marketing people who obviously did not value a need to revisit and make sense of the data.
Similarly, I did this at 2 or 3 other South Bay offices but staffed with fewer than 20 people, NONE of whom wanted nor had time to do this "drudgery" type of work. Unfortunately for my ego, Approach was usually never to stay around and take hold. Ditto in the mid 2000s when I again was at (larger) firms with maybe 5,000 employees and 10s of thousands of records, one problem being sifting out related, duplicate, and possibly fraudulent multiple (dozens) entries of employees for pay enhancement purposes. At least, that is sometimes what seemed to keep popping up in my face as I kept relating sites to employees. I was not privvy to SSN information, so, I was not able to fully settle my suspicions. Still, in that industry, it would not be uncommon for employees to be related to each other by 2-4 people. Unfortunately, some relatives had very similar or identical middle or between names.)
If a sub is actually carrying Tomahawk-displacing drones, it will be for very tactically important reasons.
It's possible the photos are really for public consumption, and the drones are loaded into quad- or six-pack tubes, much akin to a revolver pistol. So, maybe SIX drones are displacing one T-Hawk. Besides, a 2000-mile range Tomahawk could be reconfigured as a very large, very expensive drone of sorts, sans warhead, or with droplet munitions packages to take out targets of opportunity so long as their is fuel onboard and as long as their are comms links to the missile, or some AI programming telling it how to deal with a decided-upon "target-rich environment" in advance.
The drones probably need be in only around 6 inches in diameter radial tubes. And, given the length of a VLS tube, it is possible that some drones could be only 2 feet long, meaning that possibly 3-4 vertical stacks could be used. So, if a huge net/mesh needed to be built for a tactical picture that for some reason U-2s, AWACS, satellites, or P3 ASW planes could not configure in a timely manner, a suitably-equipped attack boat MIGHT really have not simply ONE single large drone per silo, but maybe 4 or 6 per ring, and maybe 3-8 rings, meaning 12-48 drones. Simply fire the top ring first, and every subsequent launch could then either be the most immediately-below position's ring or alternating between an upper ring and a next-below ring so that multiple vacant rings up top can be exploited. The drones then could either be directly fired from all the way below, or moved up by some type of mini-ram to make the acceleration path in the sub as short as possible.
Mind you, this is just stuff I'm making up as I write this, not pre-planned before writing. The serious drawback to my idea is that once the rubber/water-blocking membrane is blown off, water will deluge the silo. That much water weight could rupture the walls of any adjacent silos. But, as I think I can recall back into the mid-80s, from looking at magazines, those 3 to 6 VLS tubes could optionally be made as each carrying 3-6 mini tubes. Of course, the main tube's diameter is not as large as the ICBM/Trident silo tubes. But, one can still imagine that 12 drones can build a better mesh/grid tactical picture than one, especially if there is a need for a self-healing eye-in-the-sky network. If the launching boat is attacked, shadowed, or harrassed, it probably could shift tactical control of the drones and the mesh to a back-up boat. Hence, "Wolfpack, anyone" in the subject line. Of course, it would be a very-spread-out wolfpack since the ranges and speeds of such boat's weapons are vastly greater than the German U-boats and wolfpack fleets of the past.
Also, with so many on board, they can be various in model type, range, and maybe even have an ability to drop a sononbuoy or two. These could offer stealthy relay advantages of some sort. With such a number of drones onboard, the probably would not be a real reason to "recover" the drones. They could be designed to be "biodegradable", not for "green" reasons, but to ensure that if they ditch- and they will at some point -- feet wet, then their dissolving could mitigate risk of "enemy" capture and reverse engineering, meaning a reduced incentive to put lives at risk trying to recover such highly-classified-likely devices from defended territories Once they go feet dry, though, some sort of self-destruct/auto-immolation might be desired, but might conflict with safe handling and storage/stowage aboard a sub.
Maybe they thought it was a beacon to a Resurrection Ship, to Caprica 6.... Or, they planned on making a Cylon Cylon detector. IIRC, Dr. Baltar and his amazing cylon detector used Plutonium.
Sorry, but I have to quote Scripture, again: "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."
The public would en masse drop off the social and email sites for a week at a time, go in for one day, the drop out for TWO weeks, wash rinse, repeat. Once the adverts REALLY are not clicked on, the ads will be pulled. MS, Google, Yahoo!, and loads of other companies one by one would lose market share and value in weeks. But, jobs would be lost in the hundreds of thousands in half a year. This could go global in weeks, with subsids circling the drain.
Otoh, if the public did it efficiently, they could REALLY pressure the ad slewers and slingers to ramp up the pressure on the alphabets to either back off, or go deeper and stealthier.
In the wrong country or countries, I could disappear in the night or the afternoon for even mumbling this...
No, it's about context, and where you are. I see people all the time futzing with their pockets around police, who, for all they know, could be getting seduced into a shootout. Granted, in a bad or risky neighborhood, police will at the ready if the call is dubious or they have some "bad blood" or revenge types known to live in the call area.
Still, I take your point. I'd rather see -- to the extent possible -- with paired cops that one carries the lethal weapon and acts as backup, and one takes the LTL beanbag shotgun, and takes point in tight areas. A real shotgun might be better, indoors, too, than a 9mm pistol unless it ends up an unlucky case of drugged-up assailants not falling down even after 4 COM, grouped shots. Now, if 3 or more are closing in on someone, and no deadly weapon with reach has been observed, Taze AND beanbag the target.
Maybe Google can get on the good side of cops by making Glass interoperate with insect-sized drones, so Cops get the upper hand, well, for the time being. Of course, it could lead to an arms race, and all users end up jamming the EM spectrum just to beat hasty retreats to regroup with IR gear on the 2nd go around....
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421431,00.asp
http://www.slashgear.com/pioneer-navgate-hud-launches-with-on-windshield-navigation-projection-04296284/
Earlier, I may have neglected to specifically include emergency responders, besides just stating suitably trained motorists. But, this kind of tech might be useful in the hands of some, and incredibly and unfortunately dangerous in the hands or eyesight of others. Just depends
Now, I imagine if digital feeds or physical periscopes provide high-res detail of an obstruction 10-40 seconds ahead, and records the warnings, and a motorist tactfully esplains it to a cop about to issue a citation, the cop might reverse his/her decision if the warnings appear kewl, timely, useful, and life-saving in the context. It should not be a free ticket to read about traffic crashes or obstructions while moving the vehicle if the info is out of context, soon-expirable, or not along the driver's next-coming leg of transit. Pushing reasonableness too far might re-cement getting that ticket of a moving violation kind.
It would be interesting to see whether such gear, Garmin, Panasonic, Google, etc, gets used in high-rise/tower construction/lifting cranes. I wonder how many licensed/certified crane operator prefer the Mark 1, Mod 0 optical device.
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